 The things that technology can never really touch, which is the human spirit and imagination. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I'm your host, Beth Papnikolov. I have a guest co-host with me today, our director of growth, Steve Coffey. And we have someone in the studio who we literally, you guys have just been like riffing for 15 minutes, because we have so many thoughts. I'm really excited to welcome Omar Fagundo. He is the vice president of Railco. He's also the founder of 3d.object.io. And we here at Benvio just love chatting with him about marketing and disruption and technology and the building material space. So you're just in for a great treat of listening into the brains of people who think about these things way too much. So Omar, welcome to the show. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much. So the topic in the room at this moment is disruption. And Omar was at our event in Denver that we hosted with the Farnsworth Group and a hot topic there that was offline and not on the agenda was, our industry is ripe for disruption. And I feel like I just heard the eyes roll of all of our listeners because of how complex we know our industry and the supply chain and specifying to purchasing, to installing, to inspecting, to submitting warranties and building life cycles and getting occupants in and selling that off and who is on first and what's on second. All the reasons we know that technology hasn't just kind of easily been stood up. There's a big but coming, but isn't that what makes something right for tech for disruption is the acceptance of it is the way that it is because it's the way that it's always been. So Omar, I'd love from your perspective, where do you see the biggest either risk or opportunity, I suppose, depending on what side of the fence you're on for disruption in our industry? I think without a doubt, if you start looking at 3D technologies, so I got into this through virtual reality, augmented reality and the Cambrian explosion that's been going on over the last, just the last year in this space is definitely gonna be disrupting building construction and building materials that are tied hand in hand in the next three to five years without a doubt and any company that could start taking advantage of these technologies is definitely gonna have a leg up on their competition because like you said, most people are very comfortable doing everything like they've always done it. And those companies that can start experimenting and figure out how can I apply this one solution that's already available on the market to a problem that I already have always had, those are the ones that are gonna see outsize rewards for their efforts. Can I just challenge your thought there because I wanna hear more behind it. 3D, it feels like 3D technology has been on the precipice of breaking into the industry for like five or six years. I would put it actually in a similar category to how I feel about modular construction. When you look at it from the outside, you're like, this is a no-brainer. Why doesn't everybody do this? There's obviously reasons, there's obvious reasons why everybody doesn't do it but why hasn't it seen widespread adoption because of all of the ways that it seems like it introduces efficiencies and answers questions and solves pain points. So I would put that to you about 3D imagery or 3D capabilities, what's the hurdle or what's keeping it from the floodgates just opening and having this widespread adoption moment? Sure. I mean, if you just look at our industry and the demographics, you're seeing a lot of the old guard retiring, being aged out of our industry and with them a lot of their old school methods and ways of doing business and intercoming the millennials, right? We are now, if you're a millennial, you are the majority of the workforce and now we're being put into positions of power, of leadership and we're more open to technology. We are digital natives and we're very comfortable with not only the digital realm but with changing how things have always been done. And so you look at, you know, you look at Apple, they're coming out with their headset imminently, right? They've been teasing it for the last couple of years. They've been teasing it for like years, yeah. Years and it's kind of frustrating for anybody who's been dying to buy one and actually deploy it but we all know that once they put something out, it's gonna be special. And I feel like we're kind of waiting for that moment for it to finally take hold but just look at the numbers and anybody who just, there's a business case for it. There's business case for saving tons of money to change, right? If you actually deploy this stuff. This is, like I am involved in building construction projects from the ground up and so often there are so many rework orders and oversights and things that people just didn't plan for because no one had the vision to perhaps 3D model the entire project from the get-go and think through of all the different things. And this technology has been around forever. So it's crazy that I still have to go through 2D plans to bid out something that's another tangent. So, you know, we are ripe for the picking because of a change in the old guard to the new guard. And I think as people start coming online that are very comfortable with technology they're gonna be way more willing to try something out like AR or even, have you guys heard of NERFs? NERFs are neuro-radiance fields. And this is a technology that just came out last year through NVIDIA. And so it allows you to take a couple snapshots of anything, for example, I mean my field like let's say a gate, right? Take a couple snapshots of a couple different points of view upload it and then get a 360, not only is it a 360 view of it but it's an immersive view that you could literally look at this gate from every single point of view. I mean, this is crazy technology and it's gone so far in one year that it's nuts. If anybody wants to try something out like that there's an app out there called Luma AI. You can find it on the App Store and have at it, start experimenting with this because this is the future. This is what's going to set people apart in the very near future, especially if you're up on it and you have your finger on the pulse. So 360 degree view images is not new but for anybody who's never created a 360 degree like image for like having it on your product page on Home Depot or something, it's typically I think 27 separate shots, 27, 57. It's something like that, like separate shots. When you're clicking and dragging a paint can in a circle like every angle of that paint can has been captured and I know this because I've been part of those projects and had to painstakingly upload each of those exact angles and in the right order, because if you get it wrong, it doesn't work. So the fact that it's like three images to get 360 is wild just to give some time. They brought up to the masses, they democratized it. They're leveraging AI to basically fill in the blanks between the three pictures that you took. AI understands, okay, this is a black cast iron gate with this type of latch system and this like one inch by one inch bars or whatever. And so then it knows what the whole thing, that's wild. That's very cool, that's wild. Steve, I'd love to know from your perspective what's your take on what Omar is saying that it's old guard has been hesitant and we can't say everybody hasn't gone into technology. You're not the first person I've heard say Omar, we know that this is a really important piece, we know this will bring efficiencies. The lift to get it pushed into the masses at current state is probably not, is gonna have not the return that we want, but in 10 years there will be almost no lift because the generation will have flipped to the next one and the demand will shift. Steve, I'd love to know from your perspective because you talked to hundreds of manufacturers a month, maybe more, what would your response be to what Omar is saying? Well, I think Omar, you're exactly right in that. I feel like we're waiting for that moment when things begin to happen. And I think you had alluded to it, Beth. I don't think there's ever been a more likely time for that to happen within this industry. There's so much content, there's so much availability of technology. All of the groundwork is there. And I feel like there has never been a time where a contractor, a GC, an architect, an interior designer, or the homeowner, the building owner wants to interact with technology to experience what they're purchasing. I don't think there's ever been a time where that's more prevalent. So all of the groundwork is there, the technology is there. I feel like we're just waiting for that moment. And I'm excited to see what that will be. I am curious, though, Omar, as to, and this is just interesting to me to think about, what are the old-school ways that you think will remain true as we begin to adapt to new technologies? What are those things that are gonna be carrying over? That the old guard will leave on, right? That we'll continue on? What are those things? Well, I think strong leadership, follow-up, and aggressive communication schedule, knowing where everybody's at, those things will never go away. Now, can technology help facilitate that? Absolutely. But I think there's definitely the work ethic, right? All that will remain, being analytical, creativity, and imagination. Those are things that technology can never necessarily tap into, even though you look at some new technologies like mid-journey that came out last year, and it kinda helps you generate ideas, right? So we're just gonna be seeing a melting and a melding of technology with the things that technology can never really touch, which is the human spirit and imagination and stick-to-tiveness, right? All those things are just always gonna be around. And we can just only hope that technology makes it better and makes it easier. And for me, it's also a matter of affordability, right? We are a generation that is having a tough time buying a new home, I'm in that bracket, and definitely here in the South Florida area, it is tough to find something that is affordable and reasonable and you don't have to put a ton of work into. I think Beth, the last time I heard you were on the same boat. Yeah, I'm renting for life at this point. I'm not proud, but those are the facts. Exactly, yeah, right. There's a lot of us, right? So I think it's a matter of doing right by this generation and the next generation and our kids to make housing affordable again. And if technology helps us get there, gee, let's go ahead and do it. Steve, I think that question is spot-on because it's time to start shifting the conversation from what if technology gets adopted to what do we not have to solve for? And how can we expect what we love about our industry to continue? And Omar, I love all of your responses. I think there's two things I would add to it is, one is what you're basically saying to the same thing is relationships. We know that our industry is built on relationships and an era that I'm excited to see is to have a dominant generation in our industry that views technology as a partnership to relationships, not a risk to relationships and also not just a tool to be leveraged. But I mean, so most millennials, we remember a significant amount of our lives before the internet. I know that that's not how we're depicted, but I can tell you the day that we got internet in my house and I was like well into middle school, right? I was well into high school before we had like dedicated, I think before we had DSL, right? We all remember those moments. So we value the things outside of technology, but we also have seen the, let's just say good sides, we're gonna ignore the bad sides of social media for a minute, but we've seen how the benefits of being integrated with technology has extended relationships. We have friendships that we've created all around the world and continued that would typically not have lasted. They would just been very seasonal. And to see a moment in our industry where we can now create technology kind of without barriers, but as a partnership is there's, that's where I'm excited to see versus just like, hey, you could replace these people with this tool, because that's often how technology is introduced, right? But like here's how to your point, Omar, here's how we can make things more efficient. And here's how we can promote and further what we've been doing and it's gonna create benefit and it's gonna create ROI and it's going to decrease prices and increase speed and increase the benefits and build relationships, not attempt to replace them. I think that's really exciting. Absolutely, you had mentioned before we started recording the advent of 3D printed homes. So they're so interested in, right? Because this technology has been around, I think since the 80s with 3D printers, then we all started hearing about it about 10 years ago and someone said, hey, what if we started putting cement into this instead of plastic and bam, now all of a sudden you have 3D printed homes? Who would have thought like three, four years ago that this could have ever happened? I was inspired by one of your episodes with Black Buffalo and what they're doing. It's just amazing how quickly things could turn around and to your point, how we started this conversation disrupting this industry, not necessarily through the outside, but sometimes through the inside and it's just a combination of hybrid approach and seeing where we could get with that, right? What happens when we mix 3D printers, 3D printed homes, right? With a generative AI technology and some augmented reality, manufacturing processes, things that are done off-site, you combine all that stuff together, how affordable can a home possibly be? Oh, yeah. While still maintaining all the relationships, that's exactly where I would love to see our entire industry go. To what you said, Beth too, and then Omar, you picked up on a little bit, there's an app that I was looking at the other day, mosaicapp.com and it's for engineers and architects and it's essentially project management. And going back to the question that I asked because I think the integration of all those technologies, what you were just saying, Omar, is extremely important. I think that's where you're gonna, that's potentially where you're gonna see the aha moment is when you have all of these different technologies together. And mosaicapp is AI project management efficiency. So it doesn't, it's not saying we're gonna replace a lot of people in your organization or in your firm, we're just making them better. So we're pulling together a lot of different technologies and we're making them more efficient as individuals so that you can do better projects. But I think also you can have the most amazing, let's say on a more consumer-oriented product, you can have the most amazing 3D software and I can interact with this product and see it on my house. If it's siding, I can see it on my house or if it's a faucet, I can place it in my kitchen and all this augmented reality stuff. But if I can't buy it effectively, like if I don't know where to buy it or how to buy it, what's the point? Right? So you're spending so much money on this software that's not really doing me any good at facilitating the actual purchase. So I think the integration of all of those technologies is probably that's where I would like to see the a-ha moment as well. I hear you, not only buy it, but install it, right? I think you guys had someone on your episode, there's something on your phone with a 3D instruction manual. Oh, built. Anybody can install anything because they make it, let me proof, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just add that to the mix, to the workflow. So I guess overall, if you look at this conversation is not so much new technology, but new workflows, right? Yeah, that's a great way to say it. Take A for Steve for Steve for Steve to get, you know, Z. Yeah, I mean, I think to bring the other side of that conversation, Steve, which is, you nailed it, which is the consumer side. So we're talking a lot about how do we get technology pushed into the leadership level, the manufacturer level, the builder, the dealer, the installer level, on the consumer level, if we think about the same thing. So millennials are, Omar, you teed this up perfectly. Millennials have the largest buying power of any generation right now. However, like I said, a lot of us remember when life was analog. So we have an acceptance of lack of technology. We don't love it. Like we don't ever wanna talk to a human and we think like driving through a bank line is very weird and things like that, right? Like I don't wanna talk to a person. I love my e-com experience, but we also still leverage like experts and we believe in making those connections. But even we, like we're not the young generation right now and younger millennials don't have that same, that same perspective. Do you know they call us geriatric millennials, by the way? Yeah. So disrespectful. So disrespectful. Do not approve, I do not approve. Right, so I was born in 85. I think I'm like right at the cusp of what you would consider a millennial. Like I'm, I think the oldest millennial is 42, I'm 38. So I'm like right there, kind of like at the high end, but the low end of millennials, they don't have that general acceptance. And if we think about the other side of, you know, in five-ish or so, let's say five to 10 years, the top portion of leadership that's currently in like the Gen X and baby boomer generation that's gonna age out and millennials will start to sit in those decision-making seats. Well, that's gonna happen from a consumer standpoint also. And those like younger millennials and older Gen Z, which by the way, older Gen Z is now graduating from college, we all think of them as 12. We're doing to them what everybody did to millennials. Everybody still thinks millennials are 25. Gen Z is graduating from college. They're going into the workforce and they're either on the consumer end of building products as they go in to get ready to buy a house or they're in the stages of getting ready to look at a career and they're looking at the building materials world and being like, what? Like that doesn't make any sense. Now that's a broad statement, right? There's absolutely a huge amount that are coming in, but I was at a presentation for our local NIHB chapter and they're projecting the need for an additional 61,000 people in the industry every month, every month. In the skilled labor sector for the next like two to three years, they need a total of two million people over the next five years added to our industry. And there's a ton of barriers to knock down there, right? I always say my number one idea is like you just throw money at that problem. You start paying plumbers $250,000 and let's just see what happens, right? But the other piece is technology. Gen Z is not coming into an antiquated industry. They're not going to adopt an antiquated career and you could overcome stigma for Gen Z from like a blue collar perspective a lot faster than you can overcome their absolute disdain for analog life. The inefficiencies just don't make sense, right? So there's both sides of the coin that kind of have to be looked at here where disruption is going to happen. And if this is where startups get this very cool opportunity to just be the Netflix of the situation, like just be growing and be nimble and be optimizing and be innovating while the big guys are like, no, we can't do that. That's crazy, right? Cause you'll just, you'll get, it'll be a landslide. Like there's huge right opportunity for disruption from literally all ends. And they'll end up blockbustered. Exactly, someone is like any startup I got my hands on at the builder show, I was like, man, I don't know if it's you but someone's winning this race. I'm like, yeah, you get like the two guys of the tech booth and they're like, oh, we don't know why we're here. And I'm like, don't give up, man. It's gonna be someone. Yeah, like what if you had a plumbing company to your point, right? That just worked completely digitally, right? They had 3D models and they sent out their workers with 3D AR headsets. They knew exactly where they were, where they were going, where they had to lay the pipe. And it was a kind of a cool job for them where they interacted with the real world, right? Cause it's very real world stuff, pipes, cutting saws, right? Adhesives, but at the same time, they have a foot in technology. So yeah, absolutely to your point. And that's been kind of a going thread, a conversation I linked in. A lot of people are talking about trades, not cool anymore, nobody wants to get at them. We need more. I didn't know about the 61,000 jobs per month debt that we deficit that we have going on. But the answer is fortunately or unfortunately, but it's the reality, it's technology, right? Yeah. It's gonna help us get to more efficient building, get us to a better state of construction, a better housing supply in the United States if we're able to attract the next generation through technology. And at the same time, implement it where we need to implement it. It's everywhere, it's rightfully. Let's say you're one of those 60,000, right, and you're entering into the industry. On that side, and we could even talk about the manufacturing side, we could talk about the A&D side, but I'm just curious on if you're one of those 60,000 you're entering this industry, what technologies do you need to know? What is it gonna be good for you to understand and have the ability to use? What are those technologies that are important right now? Right, and I think those 60,000 you were talking about Beth were like, hands-on, skilled laborers are in the field. Correct. So, and I hire some of these guys, right? And I interview for some open positions in my company. So I do get to talk to the younger generation as well as the older generation. And there is definitely a difference, right? And I think you start overcoming some of these hurdles through training, right? I think something that our industry, if you're in the trades, it's kind of been overlooked, right? It's just, okay, you just get your OSHA training out of the way and send you on to the field and the rest is hands-on training. And I think we have to do a better job as an industry overall to train and to promote, right? Because everyone wants to feel like they're part of something special and they wanna feel like there's upward mobility. So it's not so much what technology you already know, but what technology can you learn while you're employed at a trades company and a building materials company? How can you level up and get to the next place, right? Because nobody just wants to stay in an entry-level position forever. That's exactly why nobody wants to work in the trades. Yeah. Because they don't wanna just stay as the installer. Well, that's also, I mean, that's part of the problem, right? When we talk to installers or we talk to owners of contracting organizations, the issue is you train them and then nobody wants to stay there and they don't have upward mobility so everybody becomes their own boss and that is, I mean, that is just an avalanche that continues. It's valid. I mean, it doesn't feel good, but don't you get it? Like I get that. That's a, I mean, that's a problem that we should be looking to solve is not just how do I get you in but how do I make you feel like you can win and grow once you're here without having to start your own business because we've also talked to enough owners of contracting businesses to know it's not a lot of fun. Like there's a lot, there's a lot of, there's a lot of risk that they absorb. There's a lot of debt that they have to take on. There's a lot of just stuff that they have to endure that you don't really have to endure lower down but it's difficult to feel like there's a place for you to go. And that's, I mean, I just think that's really, really that's a valid feeling from an individual in a job to feel like, hey, I don't have upward mobility. I gotta make my own. Yeah, you see it so often. I see it every day. I mean, having a finger on the pulse down here and they're very active construction market. There's vans everywhere. They pick up a little bit of a skill and they want to go off on their own and the grass is greener and I end up interviewing some of these people and say, hey, you know, I've been, I thought I could make it on my own and I just want something stable and something where I could just feed my family and I have to worry about paying the bills and all these expenses and all the things that come with owning a business. Yeah, also valid. Omar, I want to change the subject a little because you have this great piece or quote that I've heard you say, which is you are constantly trying to disrupt your own company. You, so you really live and breathe the watchman for disruption in our industry. What does looking to disrupt your own company look like for you? How are you putting that into practice? It's a simple process, right? You take a look around at a broken process, a process that may involve pen and paper, that may involve manual calculations that takes a long time that you don't like to do but you have to do all the time and you figure out a way to improve it through things that are already available. And the good thing for all of us is every second that passes by, there's more and more solutions out there that you can easily shop around and implement to solve your problems. Some of them are free online. If you just take the time to actually research this. So that's what I do. I mean, when I first started with my family, I'm in a family business, right? And my father was doing payroll by hand every other Friday. No. Friday he would basically lock himself up in his office and with a calculator and calculate it out, everyone's payroll and hand write checks. So I came in there, I was like, nah, that's not gonna work anymore. We gotta use QuickBooks and Direct Deposit. And so that's just one, go for what's right for the picking. Go for what is taking you way too much time, what is causing your principles in your company to take too much time away from the things that they should be doing, which is running their business, like running the actual company and take them away from that operational side so they can focus on bigger, aspirational, more vision oriented tasks. So that's exactly what I've been doing. So for example, I picked up a piece of technology a couple of years ago with Grasshopper. So Grasshopper is parametric design software. And I was able to basically go from hand calculating to cost of any railing configuration because that's what we do, we manufacture and we also contract install railing systems and pergolas and other aluminum architectural features for new constructions here in Miami. And it's very, people like to get custom, right? With their projects. And so I was having to basically do hand calculations of what this railing configuration was gonna be. So I said, look, it's gotta be a better way. There was a Grasshopper. Parametric design software. You could go look it up and it allows you to take all your different extrusions. Let's just say all your different pieces, put some business logic behind it, which is not as difficult as the sound and come up with a costing model for what anything is gonna cost. So now I know exactly going to a project what something is gonna cost me at least materials wise. And that gives me a big confidence boost because okay, I know this is gonna cost me X amount of linear foot. Now I just gotta figure out the logistics and the rest of the pricing model. So it's just about solving the problems you already have with stuff that's already out there. Omar, we could talk forever because we're both marketing nerds. I really appreciate your time. If someone wants to reach out and get in touch and pick your brain, what's a good way for them to get in touch? Definitely LinkedIn. I love that platform. I'm an avid user. So hand me up on LinkedIn, Omar Fagundo. That's the best place that you can reach me at for sure. Great, that's awesome. So for our listeners, thank you for your time also. And if you want more great content like this, head to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe. Until next time, I'm Beth Papikolov alongside Steve Coffey.