You never know what an idea is going to be until you kind of throw it out there to the world.
Welcome to another episode of Builder Nuggets, the show where builders and remodelers discover how to build thriving businesses while working less. I'm Duane Johns and together with Dave Young, we share the elements of success that have helped hundreds of contractors like you build better lives.
(00:23): We've got something fun for you on this episode and it involves beer. We'll get to that in a moment. Our guests today are on a mission to make the home building industry better
(00:33): Through education, collaboration, and giving back to our communities. That's right, Dwayne, their unique spin on builder events is bringing like-minded builders, remodelers, architects, designers, and students together to work on their game and have a ton of fun while they're doing it. They're building
(00:49): A brand or their educational socials and builder nuggets is excited to introduce you to the founders of builders
(00:54): And brews out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Welcome Stephan Wright and Myron Brooks. Welcome guys. Hi guys. Thanks for having a song. Yeah, we're, we're excited about this because we know what you've been doing is, has been super successful in a ton of fun builders and brews. It just sounds like a winner. A but I bet when you first started, you had no idea about how quickly are your events would become an industry smash hit. How, how did you guys cook this up? Really? It's a, I can break it down to being an elaborate ruse to legitimize my craft beer consumption and turned it into a tax write off. So everything else just kind of stemmed from there and has worked out nicely. Anybody from CRA who's listening or the IRS can, we'll just delete that, edit that you guys are, you know, you have custom home building a company, successful company, high doing high end homes, architecturally driven homes, just decided to get involved in the community.
(01:54): And we'd definitely want to hear how you got started with w w with your business, but tell us, maybe give us a, an overview of, you know, builders and brews where it is today. Sure. Yeah. And I'll, I'll go back and then I'll let Stephanie fill in on, on how we conduct events now and what it's sort of turned into. But we conceived of builders of brews originally because we were actually building a taproom. The craft beer industry here in Alberta has blown up over the last four or five years. A couple of hard driving brewers got the rules around what volume of beer you needed to produce to become a legitimate brewery. They got that reduced. So it lowered the barrier of entry. And that led to a proliferation of craft brewers. And we were helping as our company and I was on the tools.
(02:39): We were doing a cabinet install for a taproom for a local brewery. And we got to see firsthand how that industry worked together to build each other up. And what that would look like is we'd be there building these cabinets and a set of brewers would come in and would say, Hey, like, what are you guys doing here? They were from down the road, their competitors on paper. The guys from abandoned peak actually came in and said, oh yeah, no, we messed up setting up this piece of equipment when we were doing our brewery. And we don't want Eric on injured to make the same mistakes. So we're here just to show him how to set it up properly. And I thought, okay, cool. Like that, that's neat. They're really nice. Then the next day a different set of brewers would come in with a pallet full of bags on it.
(03:19): And it said, what are you guys doing here would say, oh, these are hops. We had extra, like, hops are hard to get. I didn't know that. I think everyone's learning a little more about hops over the last couple of years, but hops are hard to get. So they had extra. They said, we know they need it for this batch of beer. So we're just dropping it off again. I thought cool. Like our industry doesn't do that. I've never had a, a trim carpenter. Just say, Hey, I had this X some extra crown molding. Do you want it? Or like cabinet boxes that just doesn't happen in our industry. Nobody's going to bring any extra plywood right now. Yeah, no kidding. The best you'll get is some soggy tubes of PL like here, these are going to waste anyway. But then so I thought, okay, there's a pattern here.
(03:57): Then a few days later, more brewers came in, pushing kegs on a, on a trolley and said, Hey, what are you guys doing? Is it all the openings in a couple of days, whenever you guys are done fart around installing these cabinets they're going to throw these doors open and people want cold beer. So annex is going to sell our beer on their opening day. That just made me look at it and say, okay, there's some kinds of a pattern here. Like they're doing something differently. And I pulled a few of the brewers aside and said, like, what what's going on here? Like, why, why are your competitors helping you out? And they just recognize as an industry that they're better building each other up locally sharing resources when it comes to marketing and advertising and staffing and education and all kinds of things that they worked to collaborate on, recognizing that they're trying to educate local consumers to steal a bigger piece of the beverage pie from the index and the Molson's and the multinational big beer conglomerates.
(04:52): And they've seen some real success through that approach, that collaboration over competition in the craft beer scene. And so that inspired us. And I reached out to a few of my construction and design colleagues and just said, Hey, this is the experience I had. And let's get together and see what this could look like for us. And since then I was two and a half years ago, builders and bruise was just kind of born from there and it, people haven't let us kill it. So it means we got to keep it going. And now it's where it is now with all that Stephan elaborate on. Yeah. He mentioned it, Dave, it's been really amazing to see how the community is picked up on it. You never know what an idea is going to be until you kind of throw it out there to the world.
(05:34): So to see this thing grow, and like Byron mentioned, people kind of, won't let this thing fail. We've done our best on social media to kind of broadcast it locally. But here we are talking to you guys. So the idea speaks for itself and it's been really amazing to see it just grow and grow and hopefully continue to do so. Tell us about the very first event and the format and you know, how it was received and then how it's grown for sure. So the very, very first event we did and a lot of the ideas from builders and brews stem from if I, or somebody, another member of the community sees something interesting. You know, you hear those ideas and you're like, God, more people need to know this. They could put this to work right away. So I had met with a interior designer named Kevin Gray and architectural designer named Ken.
(06:22): I met with them and they showed me their process for how they approached the pre-construction phase of construction and how they come to the clients with their team in place already. So they have a preferred contractor, they introduced them as their team to build this project. And they just had some really interesting visuals for how they showed that they had some really good language around how to describe that approach to clients in a way that sort of stepped away from that competitive bidding. And that the part that none of us love about this industry. So when I heard that presentation from them, I said that, man, do you guys mind if I put you in front of a group of people and you tell them about this? So we did that. We did a free event at a brewery called Prairie dog brewing here in Calgary.
(07:03): And we had about, I think 50 or 60 people attend a mix of designers and trades and builders. And it was great. It was fun. We did a short, like 40 minute, those two Ken and Kevin did a presentation. And then we just had an open networking and drinking beer with your, with your colleagues. I often use the phrase, nothing unified as like a shared struggle. And some of those struggles, especially around estimating and pre-construction are struggles that we all share, whether it's a designer or a, or a painter or a builder. So following that event, we did that. It was fun. We, we all got to drink beer and then chat about construction. But a few months later I got calls from two different construction guys who said, Hey, just so you know, since you did of, we did that event. I haven't been a job for free.
(07:47): And my enjoyment of my work has gone up dramatically. And I got that from two sources and slightly different wording. And that following that I thought, holy smokes, there's something here where we can make an impact on people's work and their lives by association. So following that event Stephan connected with me to say, Hey, Byron, like I see what you're doing here. How can I help you? And so he's really helped move this ball forward. While I focus on running my construction company, it's pretty cool. And you mentioned earlier that people wouldn't let it die. You wish you would have had some challenges through COVID, but it sounds like you kept the community alive. And in a second, we're going to get into how you're going to, maybe you're starting to look at replicating it and some of the things that have been working, but walk us through a people not wanting to let it die.
(08:33): Yeah. I think it just speaks to the power of connecting with people that you see on a regular basis through work. But instead of talking about all shop talk, you get to have those kinds of fun conversations about what's coming up on your calendar. What's innovating, or what's innovative. What's exciting for you and just the power of connection getting together. So when COVID hits, we realized people still want to get together. Everybody transferred over to virtual. We transferred over to virtual as well. We use the platform called Galilee. So it provided guests with kind of a nice autonomous feature where they could move around as if it was a real event. And it provided that events space for people to still come together. Something cool that differentiates you guys from other versions of this, this type of thing that we've seen is you're now putting actual structure in behind it so that you can repeat it.
(09:29): You can scale it, but there's some core principles that sort of go along with this that I've noticed from, from your past events and that are becoming part of your DNA. So to speak, one of them is that this isn't just for builders. This is for industry professionals. So we see your, you know, the, the benefit that you get from inviting designers, architects, trade partners, other industry influencers, really it's open to anybody who wants to help further the industry. So that piece is super cool. The fact that you have, you create extra opportunity for young people, students of design, students, of project management, you're getting them in the room. That's a really interesting wrinkle on this whole thing, because long for a long time, we've been thought of as sort of a stodgy dying industry and to breathe new life into that, everybody's looking for ways to attract that younger audience.
(10:22): You guys seem to be able to do it. And the third piece that I think is makes you somewhat unique as well, is that you're putting a charitable component onto it. And there's, there's, I shouldn't just stop at three there's lots of unique things that you guys are doing here, but that combination of getting all the players in the room to work on each other's problems together, having focus topics leaders in, in, around those subjects, bringing in the next generation and aspiring them and trying to attract more of them and then getting everybody focused on a good cause who's not going to love that, you know, it's it's great. So there's also beer and there's beer. And, you know, for the people that don't, don't drink beer, there's lots of things that you can brew and drink. It doesn't have to be beer.
(11:08): I was talking to a guy, yeah. Talking to somebody in North Carolina. And, and he said, you know, could we do builders in bourbon instead? And I'm like, well, you can serve up whatever you want, but the purpose is to get everybody everybody together. And you guys are doing that really well. Dwayne, do you have any observations you want to chime in on, just talk a little bit about your, you know, maybe your backgrounds, what you're involved with on the construction level now, how you see your involvement in and where maybe builders some brews goes in the future. So just give us a sure. I'll go first because I do not come from a construction background, so to speak. I did fork for Byron's company broke, right? He founded it with my father actually which I was fired from not once but twice.
(11:55): So I have a video of my father firing me from his own company. It was, it was a momentous occasion in my life. My background is in sport and recreation management. So that's kind of how I saw this going was event management. I saw these events were bringing in just an amazing community and mostly just like-minded people, like-minded people bringing everything together. And so I reached out to Byron, I'm kind of the event operations manager, and that's really what I bring the table and that's been awesome. And that's a Testament to sort of some of that youthful energy that's that's imbued throughout brothers and Bruce as well. It's a Testament to Stephan's work. I'll get into what my, what my day to day looks like and how I got to here. But I did want to talk about a couple of the things that you were mentioning there.
(12:37): Dave, I think our industry does have sort of a siloing problem and this part of what we developed builders and brews to be a reaction to where you can be a part of the home builders association. And that's great, or you can be a part of the plumbers union, or you can go to wine and cheese nights with a designer. There's nowhere where all those people get together and discuss our industry and discuss how we can make it better. So being able to provide that platform has been really interesting and a lot of really positive working relationships have been formed out of builders and brews events, which has been really cool. And I just don't think that opportunity exists. Sales don't think it's a reaction to social media. Like we all, mostly Instagram use social media in our businesses, but you meet all these people, meet them, you see them on their work on Instagram, but being able to provide a forum to actually have a meaningful connection with that person is pretty cool.
(13:26): So one of the most powerful things we've been able to do is like, is there any, w we try and shy away from like the old realtor, like winging out business cards all over the event, but we do offer people in our post event surveys, Hey, was there anybody you wanted to connect with further, we'll make a personal introduction so that they can have a meaningful conversation with that person personally, which buffers some of the salesy networking atmosphere, which I've found helpful. Anyway, thanks for acknowledging that, Dave, I think that is one of the cooler parts about the building, the brews community. And as far as me, my background, so I'm a carpenter by trade performed a variety of construction roles in commercial. And then that led me over the years to starting a company with Stephen's dad, Brian here in Calgary doing high-end custom homes.
(14:13): And as we've built our team and I've been blessed to do some really interesting projects, it's it's been neat to see that grow and see some of the interaction with our clients and our architect partners and our, our team been really gratifying. What kind of benefit have you seen to your construction business from personally getting more involved in this and taking a leadership role within the community? It's increased my like recognition, someone I didn't really, I wasn't doing, I didn't think that would happen, but it does happen. And it's made, it's made me a bit of a hub, but, but in the best way possible, like I just had some, some guys from another company here reach out to us last week and say, Hey, our project move into Vancouver island. Do you know anybody? And that's the best, like that feels so good to be able to, to, to help and apply my network to helping them.
(14:59): On the job side, it's turned into a couple of positive jobs for us, just because of the opportunity to set up these events and stay connected with different designers and architects. Through those events, I can draw a straight line from hosting builders of events to successfully completing jobs with, with those designers, which has been a cool side benefit. And then it makes me even more inspired to like lean back into builders and brews and figuring out how I can help other people gain those benefits. I can multiply it, multiply those not just for myself, but for other people in and out of that builders brews network. While I was just going to say, like, when Byron talks about sending somebody to Vancouver island and helping them look for work, we were talking about building like a trust network so that, you know, when you send someone somewhere, you have that trust, like, okay, I'm getting the right person for the right job.
(15:51): You don't have to be concerned about, okay, I'm getting this person from so-and-so and they show up. And I don't know if the quality work is there. That's a big part of our community is people who just, who are super passionate about what they do. And you know, that, that skill level, that quality work is super, super high. Yeah. And the level of commitment we talked about it with the like-mindedness earlier, the only people who are coming into that room are the ones who want to, who want to go on that mission with you guys. So that's, self-validating right there. And then, you know, it's human nature. When other people are passionate about the same things you want to support them, you want to drive together. It's it's, it becomes a mission you're on. And it's one of the reasons that we were attracted to what you guys are doing and wanting to have you on the show, because it aligns so closely with what we're doing with builder nuggets, where it's like, we want to hear the stories we want to share.
(16:41): What's work, who's doing what out there and how to connect them so that we can solve all those industry things and create more opportunity for each other. So, yeah. Lines up Greg love and having you guys on the show and such a, such a cool story here. If I can, if I could describe one thing that helps that helps us frame how we think about builders and bruise, people have asked before, like, okay, what makes you different from the Calgary construction association or what makes you different from any other Oregon like official organization? And to us, I think the part of the industry that we represent is the craft side of the industry. And the easy parallel there with craft beer is our industry construction. Building design is typically viewed as a commodity industry. So now we're thinking of like the, those big builders that do thousands and thousands of homes a year.
(17:29): They're a commodity industry where you're trying to keep the input costs low, keep the sales cost as high as you can, and it could be soybeans. And that's how a lot of our clients perceive our industry as a commodity. Okay. How much per square foot, how much per square foot, when's it going to be done? Those are metrics where, what we represent is the craft side of the industry, who are we got into this because we love building and we love creating, and we love the interaction with clients. The parallel that with there with beer is that you can go to Costco and get a 50 pack or whatever it is, a 48 pack of Budweiser. And the unit cost is a dollar six per can, but you won't hesitate to go downstairs to the taproom at annex sales and pay four or 500% more for the same volume of beer, because you're getting a better experience.
(18:14): You're getting a connection to the person that made it. You're getting way better quality in terms of the beer that you're getting. So I think that's the parallel that, that I use to think about the part of the industry that we represent and the part that we want to promote, because there's a big hill to climb in educating clients on the extra value that we add as custom builders and passionate trades people and designers. So I want somebody, if somebody is willing to do it, I want somebody to do a test. The one time that show up to a client's house and have a six pack of Budweiser and a six pack of a nice IPA and then make, let the clients choose which one, which one they'd, they'd gravitate to could backfire. Cause maybe they just love drinking bud light, but we'd have to see it being interesting.
(18:57): It'd be an interesting experiment. There's a lot of cheap beer lovers out there. You gotta be careful with that's true. Yeah. Commodity play because, and you know, and talking about educating the client around, around the craft of it, we just had an episode launch recently where we talked about billable time and value and commodity, and the first person that needs to be needs to be aware of what you're doing and the mission that you're on and how you add value is you the builder? I think sometimes we get stuck having been commoditized by others for so long, we get stuck in it. We start to lose hope and that there's a belief in finding the better way to do it. Being able to sit down with other people. And like you said, who are sharing similar struggles or want to create opportunity is a great forum to say, how have you struggled with this?
(19:48): And how do we not only have a craft product, but a craft experience and build a craft business where, you know, this is, this is your dream business, where you're creating freedom for yourself, creating opportunity for your team, empowering other people. That's a craft mentality as well to customize your own business with these principles. And it goes, it goes way beyond just, just the client. It's getting everybody in the room, working on that together, which is so cool. It's a big reason why we gravitated towards what you guys were doing. I mean, one of the things we do on, on our podcast is really trying to marry the craft side to the business side. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, we're business owners as well, we've got to do that, but the craft sometime can be the part that's, it's the stronger, you know, of the elements.
(20:35): And we have to ground ourselves sometimes and dating myself here. But I mean, if you go back 30 years or so there were not a lot of outlets for builders, trades. Other folks really immersed themselves in and learn more about what's going on in the industry. Really, the only thing you had was was maybe if you were lucky, you had a fairly strong industry group in your area. And I think over the last 30 years, these industry groups, and they've struggled as well, you can talk to, you can see a lot of them. I'm involved with quite a few of them. They've, they've struggled to maintain memberships. And I think what's happened is that, and especially the younger generation, you're looking at new ways to connect with folks. You know, as you said, you want to bring everybody to the table, the architect, the designer, the trades, the builders, and that's tough to find in some of these organized settings and they do tend to kind of follow the old fashioned path, as you said of network and get a bunch of people in a room, maybe have dinner, and then we're all passing out business cards and talk about what we're good at.
(21:32): Yeah. I know many builders I'll, I'll talk to builders will say, Hey, we're trying to strengthen bolster some of the membership in, in one of the local organizations, you know, what's keeping you from attending and they, they, they don't want to come into a room and be sold by 30 vendors, or suddenly you get more vendors in the room than you do builders. So I love the fact of what you guys are doing is trying to bring everybody into the room. It's a pretty open forum. If there's a topic you're discussing that people are interested in very light, open environment for it. So you guys are definitely seeing some traction. One of the things is just the pure, you know, fun. Tell us about some of the fun things that you guys have done already and the fun experiences you had tied to this event.
(22:11): Well, I know that we've got an event coming up with the children's balance castle, so that's, that'll be involved. It's only for the frappe sippy cups. No, we tailor, we try to host four main events a year, at least here in Calgary. And our, usually our summer event is just a friends and family events. So this year we've got lawn bowling lined up in years past we've just thrown kind of a black Blackwell. We used the vendor, which had the balanced castle and TV screen movie screen. So the kids can come, the family can come. And it's just a step away from business business business all the time where you can kind of cultivate that relationship past, just seeing each other Monday to Friday nine to five. Yeah. I think that's important too. Like we all bring our work home with us to some degree, whether we do it intentionally or not, and being able to bring your spouse and your kids to some of these events and see like, oh, that's Dave that you always talk about or, oh, there's, there's Wendy like, hi, I've heard so much about you.
(23:13): It's nice to be able to create those moments again, for that further connection. It helps humanize everybody that you work with every day. Right. And then the next time that Wendy's shows up and it's just a waste Bailey you have a little more empathy because you have a broader relationship with her. Yeah. So that's, those are some of the fun ones that we've done. Some of the most gratifying or the events we've done in conjunction with a charitable organization we've done. We had a really good one here with habitat for humanity, where we had them come in and present it like, okay, what does habitat for humanity? We all know the name, but what do they actually do? And their program is really interesting how they work with their volunteer homeowner clients too, who have to put in a certain amount of hours to help build their own home and also to find out, okay, what's habitat for humanity, looking for how can we as an industry help.
(24:02): And they don't necessarily need carpenters, but they do need project leads because they'll have a lot of people who are totally green to construction, come in and need to build a house. So if you're willing to put in a, a day or two a month to run a crew and actually know what you're doing, when it comes to building a house that becomes an extremely valuable asset to them. And even the story I was telling before about, we don't have other competitors dropping materials off on our jobs, through the habitat for humanity restore. You can do that. There's a step in between, but if he was stripping out a kitchen, box it up, put it on the driveway, habitat for humanity will come and pick it up and they'll put it in their restore or they'll put it into one of their projects. So similarly with that pre-construction event, we had habitat call us a couple of months after their event and just say, Hey, thanks again for hosting that we've had people reaching out and contributing to the restore, ask them about volunteering. And that just felt really cool to be able to help help their organization through ours. So it's no skin off our backs. It's just a matter of giving the, giving the right people, the right information in a way that they can actually engage with it, versus just seeing it go past your screen as an Instagram ad or, or getting it dumped into your email inbox, or it just gets deleted. So it's been nice to have that chance to provide some of those opportunities for connection.
(25:19): A quick reminder, that the best way to get the most out of this podcast is to engage with the builder nuggets community, visit our website@buildernuggets.com and follow along on Facebook and Instagram,
(25:33): Because you've been successful at it for the amount of time that you have been. Now you've learned a few things I've seen Stephen's schematics for how to roll these out. I've started, we've started to see the formula and there's opportunity for us to collaborate a little bit in, in bringing this to other markets. What do you guys think about when you, when you think about growing this, what started out as a, you know, a local thing is about to be piloted, you know, in some, some larger north American markets, how does that feel? What are the things that you think about when you when you look at that? Yeah. So for me, I'm excited for, to learn, like we are all about collaboration. So what works here in Calgary might not work in North Carolina might not work in Ontario. So we want to provide local champions enough autonomy to host events the way they like having to work for their community and their region.
(26:33): So there is a little bit of room for everyone to work with. And then to get that feedback on something that we would never have even thought of. So I'm excited to learn and how it can grow from other people who are doing it. And I'm pumped back to like the legitimizing, my craft beer consumption. If that's a part of my job in the future is flying around the country, helping hospitals in Brisbane, that feels like a dream job. Like I get to fly around, talk shop about construction, try different beers, meet different brewers. That would be super cool. And that feels like a dream to me. And through local champions, we can make that happen. That would be really cool. Yeah, it would be really cool. It's exciting to think about scaling this open. The show will attract some people who raise their hands and reach out to us on the show and we can connect them to learn more about doing this.
(27:24): Like I said, we're about to launch a, this is a pilot in a few different areas together and yeah. Eager to learn. It's similar to the show. And again, I know we keep saying that, but part of when you first start doing this, you think, oh, I'm looking forward to bringing this to other people. And you quickly realize when you have fantastic guests, there's all kinds of things that you don't know yet. And that's how you bring value to a community is to open your community up so that other experts, other passionate people can, can raise their hand, get involved and, and people who are attracted to this, they're going to get it. This thing is going to grow. And it's exciting to think of you know, something like this, starting out with you guys in your market has been tried in various ways before, but you guys have put a formula to it. I've seen that. I've seen the development that the math behind the scenes for how this all goes down, a lot of thought has gone into this. So you guys, you know, you've got a great, a great idea. That is a work in, and can't wait to see what happens next. Obviously you work with, thank you. Like you said, habitat,
(28:29): Have you had any conversations? Have you been approached by any of the builder organizations? I mean, I see a huge opportunity there because as I said, they're all trying to find ways to engage existing. Yeah. You know, and this is, this is a fresh, exciting way to say, Hey, I got a platform here with very little work on your end that we could connect then and do something kind of special. We've talked to, there's a group in Calgary here called the called Sispa, which is the Calgary inner city builders association. So we've been working with them. But they're, they're a relatively new organization. I'm somewhat organization resistant and was a member of the builds Calgary, which is whatever our local, you pay two grand a year, and then you pay $80 to go to a breakfast in year old men wheeze for an hour. I did that and I'm not enamored with it. I would worry about them, co-opting what we're trying to do in terms of like really meaningful, open, transparent, vulnerable collaboration, and turning into something, some bastardized version of that. So maybe that's a hangup on my part, but no, we haven't had those conversations specifically. I think just, that sounds like that sounds like a hang up. Well,
(29:37): I guess the only thing, you know, as, as we're always going to challenge everybody on, on this show, that's what we do. I mean, I would just challenge you to say, I see the exact same hangup I'm involved in a lot of organizations. It's also a huge opportunity for this industry, you know, cause there's still a lot of people that get a lot of, they get a lot of information, they get a lot of wealth, they want to be involved with these groups, but the groups struggle to bring the, the value to the members, you know? And I just see something like this as an opportunity. Totally understand where you're coming from. I get it. But at the same point I do, I do see a huge opportunity as well. How we've been thinking about this because part of what happens there too, is it drifts into politics very quickly. And in fact, in the meeting we just had the other day, they're like, Hey, can you send out to our members?
(30:17): We have municipal elections coming up soon. Can you send out to your members this, like we used to vote for this person? And that was no, like, that's not what we're about. What we are is the social and networking event planning wing of those other organizations. So as kind of a bolt-on or to do partnership events absolutely would be open to that. But to be inclusively, the encompassed would be I think, I think would inhibit our ability to meaningful connect with, to meaningfully connect with people across that whole craft side of our industry. I think the opportunity exists for the building association as well, to get involved as a sponsor and as a champion for this instead of to try and run it themselves. So they could say, Hey, look, this is something that the industry needs. We can be associated with that through sponsorship, through building awareness internally, but we're going to keep our hands off of running it, keep the politics out of it, keep some of those things out of it, but just promote the awareness of it.
(31:14): And it's good for attracting people to them as well. So if those leaders are, are coming and attending the events and, and growing their status and growing their knowledge and growing their connections, that can only benefit the builder association. So I think you'll find a way with some organizations to have a partnership, but I agree with you that it's not, it's probably you'll lose the flavor of what you're trying to do, having them run it or be the local champion. I don't, I think you missed the point. You need somebody who is passionate about the whole growth and bringing all, all the people together. So you're onto something really, really cool here. And in many of the organizations host these craft beer type nights already. So it's not a far stretch to say, Hey, we're going to, we're going to promote, gathering and talking about this stuff, but we're going to leave it to you guys to pick the topics.
(32:08): How do you pick the topics anyway? So we have, like I said, we have, we try to do four events a year. One of our marquee events is a giving back event. So that's when we would partner with a local charity habitat. We did one with Y w and then we do our friends and family events in the summer. And then the other two events are kind of, we just read the flavor of the local scene. I guess Byron is really in touch with what people want to know and what people are going to be excited about talking about. So we kind of just pick something be relevant and we try to do something that'll be relevant to again, not just builders, but we can bring in designers, trades a few vendors, architects, that kind of thing. Yeah. So we've done that. We've done them on pre-construction, we've done them on social media usage and a few other just relevant topics, but because they're so spread out and then in between, we'll often do workshops as well because we try and keep the, the speaking component pretty light in our events.
(33:05): We want to allow people that room for connection. So we keep it light and basically introduce the idea, elaborate a little bit. And if people want to really deep dive into it, then we host a workshop specific to that after. So that's the workshop that we have tomorrow. I think about construction estimating. And that's just what the group of about 20 people, but I think will be really good. And it'll be open book. It'll be transparent. I think we'll all walk away with some interesting, interesting ideas. But back to the finding what we talked about, it's really just, if there's something somebody I meet or something, I hear that I think you get that little light bulb where it's like, more people need to know this. This is why you guys started a podcast, which is awesome. It's like, people need to just know these ideas and then you can find a forum to share them meaningfully.
(33:46): That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. The nice thing about that too, is the local champions. When this starts to roll out in other markets, Stephan touched on this earlier, it's, you know, it's up to them, what's locally relevant to them to bring to the table. And one thing that we find in, in any of the events that we've done is we could throw a topic out there. It could be leadership and you attract or whatever it is, and you attract people and you get them in the room, but as they seek each other out, there's going to be unlimited conversations going on. Like that may be the topic that got everybody in the door, but that's not the topic that connected the people always, it's the side conversations that they're having, learning about each other's businesses breaking down, you know, stereotypes, all, you know, all that kind of stuff that we see happen.
(34:32): And people say, wow, we never knew this community would be like this. I've been looking for this. It feels great. And you get excited about other people's problems and helping them to solve it and get behind each other. It's it's amazing. So, yeah. Well, cool. I'm just going to give Dave a little credit and in the, who, not how book to us, and that's been super helpful. Cause like you said, there's amazing people in the room, our job just becomes translating the message, you know, make sure people understand the values and then let them run with it a little bit. If you show who you are with your, with your values and your mission and what you're trying to achieve, and you can get that out to enough people, those whose will raise their hand to you, you end up becoming a beacon for them, you know, you're the right hoop for them and they're the right height for you.
(35:20): So that's yeah, that's definitely cool. Thanks for the acknowledgement there. So in the, in the events that you've had so far just trying to give the listeners out there, maybe a, a bit of a visual on what you're seeing, obviously it's builders and brews, and you said that you've got folks, trades designers, all that. What are you seeing in general? I mean, is it the majority of the group is builders a lot of sub-trades what, what, what are you saying? Making up these groups? We try and break it out almost into like even quarter's it people self-select a little bit, but if it was 25% builders than 25% trades and trade specific contractors, twenty-five percent designers and architects and then 25%, those students or those people sort of on the sidelines of the industry, we've even had clients come out, I've invited clients to say, just come see this, like this, this thing we're doing.
(36:11): And then they've come back with really positive feedback. So we try and make it open to all the facets that it takes to put a project together. So we try and keep that industry representation even. That's cool. And I bet you that's what gets some of that real engaging conversation going on when you were describing Dave, when you were talking about the events there, like, what what's been neat is they're like mini reunions, right? Because we're all busy in our day to day. We're not worth, you might walk past somebody on a job site, but he's busy muddling the wall. So you don't want to bother him when you get to an event like that. It's like, oh, you know, do you know Francis? Oh, and you know, Dan, like, I didn't know, you guys knew each other. There's these like weird little mini reunion moments that happen that can't effectively happen on a job site where we're all there to work that this, that that's been neat to see.
(36:57): Usually we ask guests, Hey, what, what what's in the future? We've kind of let the cat out of the bag a little bit. As you start to look at expanding for anybody who wants to learn more about you guys, you can go to builders and brews.ca to check out what you're doing. Follow these guys on Instagram. If you're interested in learning more about the pilot program, you can reach out to Duane and I on the show, we'll field, some of that and make the right connections. We're working on some things behind the scenes, as we, as we grow that together. Anything else you guys want to talk about here? Yeah, I think, well, I'll add the if anybody, so if you go onto those websites, we're not wearing any gear right now, strangely, but we have worked with a group called daughter creative who made some really cool logos for us, which is just a neat, they're neat icons to sort of rally around.
(37:50): And I think that the first five people that reached out to you guys are interested in, in piloting or becoming a builders and Bruce champion in their area. We'll send you a, send them a swag pack cause it's pretty cool. We're pretty proud of what that group has done with our stuff. We have one bucket logo, which I encourage people to go check out. Cause I think it it makes me laugh and that's a good place to start with anything. Thanks guys. Appreciate you being on the show, you're doing so much for the industry there locally and we love being able to support you as you scale it and look, look for things together here. Really appreciate that guys having us on and letting us kind of spread the word. And we look forward to connecting with some of your listeners. Absolutely. It's a lot of work that goes into this. We know it the industry is going to be better for it. So thank you.
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