Transforming Construction Culture and Compensation with Michael Fortinberry

Welcome to the construction disruption podcast, where we

uncover the future of design, building, and remodeling.

I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer

of specialty metal roofing and other building materials.

Today, my co host is Ryan Bell.

Mr.

Bell, how are you today?

Hey, Todd, I'm doing well.

How are you?

I'm doing well also doing great.

So, uh, as is sometimes our tradition, we start out with a

little bit of lighthearted levity.

Uh, do you have any lighthearted levity for us here today, Ryan?

I

have some dad jokes.

Why did the adventurous explorer bring a ladder on their expedition?

I don't know.

Not a clue.

Cause they wanted to take their exploration to new heights.

Now that's good.

I'll give that like a seven or eight.

That's good.

Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon?

No, I have not heard about the restaurant.

I mean, tell me about it, right?

Great food.

No atmosphere.

Okay.

I like that one better.

Compliments of chat.

GPT.

Awesome, man.

Chat.

GPT can come in handy sometimes.

Well, shall we be off to the races here?

Let's get started.

Well, today our spotlight, a guest is Michael Fortenberry,

based in New York city.

Michael is senior vice president of perennial, uh, perennial

construction solutions, one of the nation's largest multifamily

turnover and renovation companies.

Um, out of that then in 2021, he co founded PROTIV, um, that's P R O T I V for

those of you who are out there Googling.

Um, an online workers incentive program that directly links your project

budgets to team incentives offering a performance based alternative to

the old style of just hourly pay.

Um, Oh, one of the things I should mention too, before I bring

Michael on, we are doing challenge words once again, this episode.

So listen for any funny words we may work into the conversation

and you'll know it's maybe it was our challenge word we had to use.

And at the end, we'll talk about those and whether we were successful.

So Michael, welcome to construction disruption.

It's a real pleasure to have you today as our guest.

Oh, super excited to be here.

Appreciate y'all.

Have me on the, on the show and look forward to talking a little bit

about, uh, what we've built here and, uh, you know, the, our approach to

company culture within our industry.

Well, I'm excited to hear more because, you know, we see

a lot of folks doing a lot of things out there with apps and tech and, um,

things, and I have never seen anything, uh, like what you guys are doing.

So I'm really anxious to learn more.

Um, but let's.

Let's kind of start a little bit before of the development of Protiv.

Um, you've been with Perennial Construction, uh, Solutions since 2019.

Can you tell us a little bit about Perennial and its scope

of work and, uh, what it does?

Perennial was started, there was a group of us that had

already been doing some multifamily work.

That was my background prior.

And, We had an opportunity to start doing some large scale multifamily renovation

work in New York city, which is frankly, it's pretty straightforward construction

business, but it's a really complex logistical business and there are only so

many companies that can do it at scale.

It's one thing.

If you're going to go renovate or turn over 20 apartments, you know, over a

month or something, what can you do?

20 in 1 week or 50 in 1 week, you know, you've got to have 50 starts

with 50 crews, 50 sets of materials delivered into specific units.

And some, sometimes you have 3 days, you know, and sometimes you get 2

weeks, depends on scope that's that.

Complexity we found was an opportunity and perennial was really built

specifically to go after that market, large scale renovation work in the city.

Okay.

So I'm curious are these usually your properties or properties you're doing?

Uh, you're renovating for other owners or is it kind of a mix?

Well, 1 of our.

Clients early on the property was, uh, sold for five and a half billion dollars.

So I wish I had this.

So yeah, not, not mine.

Uh, no, we do that for, for owners of, of large properties in New York.

Some of our.

Clients have 10,000 apartments in one location.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Core perspective.

They have, we also do a lot of nycha, uh, which is the

public housing renovation work.

Okay.

In the city.

Gotcha.

So, which is prevailing wage, um, work, it's, it's a little bit different

and, but we really, we really like.

That work, it's been good for us as a company and it's kind of expanding into

that space a bit is they're putting a lot more money into renovating public housing.

It needed it, frankly.

Yeah, it is surprising how much money I'm seeing going

into what I call infrastructure type projects like that.

You know, what's great is that what they.

Came up with was a good public private partnership.

A lot of times I think you think about public housing, we think about

our tax dollar, just getting dumped through an inefficient process into

his black hole of, of public housing.

This was a lot more creative.

They've started these hundred year.

Partnership deals with private management companies, basically give

them the keys to the property, let them manage the renovation work, then

manage the leasing process, let the revenue flow through those entities,

some tax breaks associated with it.

Public private opportunity that we believe is going to be very successful and

probably repeated in other markets where they have large scale, uh, public housing.

Wow.

That does make a lot of sense.

It kind of gives folks some incentive to, uh, make these projects work.

Also

my favorite word incentive.

I love it.

Yeah, we're going to talk more about that.

That's right.

So I understand that perennial kind of has, you know, it was designed

and has a reputation for being sort of a different kind of contractor.

And, um, one of those differences I understand, and this is pretty different

as you have your own, uh, software development team, um, what are some

of the ways that you see perennial standing, um, above other contractors

doing, you know, similar types of work?

You know, the funny thing is we have that, and I

think if we had to do it over again, we would do our best to not have that.

Oh, really?

Oh, my gosh.

What a, uh, it's a challenge.

And it's funny because I even knew how hard this was going to be.

I think we knew how hard this would be going into it.

And yet we stumbled down the road anyway.

What was interesting is we had a unique type of construction that Our jobs

were too big to be a work ticket and too small to be, you know, pro core.

Right.

We had mid sized jobs.

It didn't really fit some of the platforms that were out there for management.

So we started building some tools just to manage our own stuff, you know,

that wasn't really in the market.

We grew quite a bit.

We, uh, we put 130 people in the field there, you know, in the summers and.

So as we grew, we needed just better systems to manage, manage that.

And so, yeah, we ended up stumbling down the road of software development,

uh, by, by necessity in some ways, sounds kind of adventurous.

So it was a bit adventurous.

I'll give you that.

Well, I'm kind of curious, um, You know, what were

some of the particular challenges you saw with employee compensation?

And, and, you know, perhaps many of our other or of our listeners have also

experienced some of those challenges.

Uh, what were

some of those?

I can pretty much guarantee you that every one of your listeners as hourly workers

in the field understands this problem.

Hourly pay is structurally an inefficient model.

It's, I get why we pivoted towards that a hundred years ago, 125 years ago.

But it creates a dynamic of conflict between management and the

workers because the model is not built on teamwork, communication,

productivity, quality, safety.

None of those are in the formula.

It's just time.

The formula on time and time is not our friend in construction, right?

We, we need to get off these job sites.

We always wonder why does that last 5 percent of the job

take 20 percent of the time?

You know, why is, Bob taking, you know, so long at home Depot.

Why did two of them need to go to home Depot?

Right.

It's all these little examples.

And I guarantee everybody listening has got a hundred examples of that.

And it's not that our crews are lazy is they're not incentivized correctly.

Yelling at them and saying, hurry up is not as effective

as we like to pretend it is.

So we were looking for ways to get people to be motivated.

We get some cold winters here.

You can imagine, right?

We were out there and I've got to get.

To get out there in the cold and get over to this apartment and, you know,

get, get a new floor put in or whatever.

We got icicles hanging off the buildings look like giant popsicles.

We've got all this effort into, you know, the, what it takes to get

logistically all the materials there.

If they're not motivated to push through that and be

productive, it's a, it's a thing.

And how do I get them to want to do that on their own?

It's not, it's not just me asking them to or telling them to, it's they get

internally want to do well, communicate, work as a team, be productive,

do the job right the first time.

And what you guys probably heard this, right?

Bob comes to your office.

You guys probably have Bob and he says, uh, Hey Bob, can I get a raise?

Baby needs shoes, whatever, you know, and the reality is the only thing that's

actually going through my head is, okay, I want to get barber raised, but the only

thing that changes is my costs go up.

Nothing else changes in my business.

My costs go up.

I don't make any more money.

I make less money now.

I don't get any more done.

Folks don't understand.

Well, what extra do I get for that extra?

I pay you.

So we set about tackling those two things.

I need them to care more.

On one side, I need them to teamwork communication because they want to.

And on the other side, they want to make more money.

How do I get those two things together?

And that was what Protip was born from.

That makes a lot of sense.

And you had a good word in there too.

You know, you got, you got to have them to care.

And sometimes that thing of just browbeating folks to work

faster means quality goes down.

Yeah, it's not speed.

It's, it's the combination of do it right the first time and think,

be productive, good teamwork.

We find that the secret for most of these crews to finishing the jobs

on schedule is teamwork, the way they communicate with each other.

Eliminating rework because they do it right the first time is arguably the most

that, that, if we just didn't do anything else as a company, but just eliminated

rework, my profits would jump, right?

Rework kills us the minute I have to go back.

I'm probably breaking.

Even if I have to go back twice, I probably lost money.

It's I need the crew to want to do it.

Right.

How do I get them to care?

Well, you've touched on a number of things there as far as

challenges that, you know, you can solve for companies by addressing this issue.

Any, any other challenges?

I'm kind of curious, you know, how does addressing this issue

even affect company culture?

It is all company.

That is actually our word, right?

It is incentives become woven into your company culture.

We are convinced at this point, having done this for a few years

now and worked with a lot of different kinds of companies that.

If you lean into performance pay, it's central to your company

culture, getting everybody on the same team working towards success.

That's the secret.

The software we've built is actually pretty straightforward.

It's complicated behind the scenes, but the way it operates is very simple.

The hard part is the culture side.

How do I, I want to, I want to know that my team is frustrated with

the procurement team because the materials aren't there on time.

I want them to know that the estimator can't tell a meter from a

foot when they're measuring, right?

I need to know this so that I can get better right now.

They don't really care.

They kind of care, but not really.

So if the, if the stone isn't delivered or the paint's not there or the

conduit doesn't show up, Whatever, you know, I'll wait happy to wait easier.

The minute that the labor budget becomes their money, all of a

sudden they're on the phone with saying, boss, what are you doing?

You got to get our materials here.

You're costing us money.

That is a culture shift because now the, now everybody's pulling for success.

That's what we're, that's what we push for here.

I'm kind of curious as, as you sort of develop.

You know, protive and developed it for your own company.

Did you immediately think, Hey, we're onto something that would

benefit other companies as well, or did that kind of come later on?

It

actually happened pretty fast and we had probably had

about two years of stumbling through how to make it work with tech.

There was a couple of aha moments.

One is that we had to simplify.

The equation so that it was easy for the workers to understand exactly

how much they were going to make based on how they performed it.

If it was a, if it was a black hole, like, if they didn't really see

it, then they didn't believe in it.

They didn't change behavior.

So we started texting them every day, the budget, what

they'd use, what they had left.

So they could see the differences, what they got to keep.

That simple thing, all of a sudden their brains came on, you know, it's a great

thing when you hire someone to, let's say you're going to put on a roof and

I'm going to hire you to put shingles on or whatever, and I'm paying you

for that task that you're back, right?

To put on shingles, I get you at your hammer and you're putting

on shingles all day, whatever.

I don't really do it that way anymore, whatever.

So the reality is you actually get.

It's like a gift of purchase, a free brain.

It comes with the back and we don't use it.

We don't, we don't ask them to use it.

We don't take advantage of this free gift that we got with every employee.

Now, some of them are better than others.

I give you that, but there are, there is an opportunity to unlock more.

From our people to get them to bring their brain to work and to

think about how can we work better.

And that when, when we saw the behavior change, when they could see, I'm going

to make more money on Friday because of how I work on Tuesday, all of a

sudden they brought their brain to work.

Man.

I love that.

I'm kind of like.

You know, bingo, you hit it on the head as far as realizing that, hey,

these workers have a brain too.

And let's figure out how to use it and not just be using their black, their back.

So can you go into a little bit more in depth dive on, you know,

exactly what, what the protocol is?

Platform proto, uh, software does and how companies use it.

I mean, what this means to them from a very practical standpoint.

Yeah.

The software itself always starts with the labor budget.

We integrate to your ERPCRM systems, wherever your labor budget lives, pull

in your labor budget, dollars, hours.

How long did you think you were going to spend?

How many dollars do you think you're going to spend on labor to do that task?

It could be mowing Mrs.

Smith grass or.

Putting in 300 miles of highway.

I don't care.

The other side is I pull your actual time off of your time tracking.

So we will, we integrate, integrate to time tracking systems so that we know that

Bob clocked 27 and a half hours this week on that cost code on that project on that

job or five minutes or whatever it was.

So, but that too, those two pieces of information, I have

budget and I have actual.

Once I have those two pieces of, uh, Of information, I've got a platform on

which I, I can measure so the software pulls the one pulls the other and we show

the workers right on their phone those numbers so they can see it and they can

set goals as a team so they can see it.

They can say where we've got 200 hours to do this work.

If we get it done in 180, how much is our team bonus?

The crew leader can talk about it.

The workers can see they're part of it as the job progresses.

We're tracking actual.

So I know that this is how you're doing against the goal you set.

They can see those numbers.

They can talk about how we're doing.

What do we need to do different?

How, you know, how are we progressing towards what we thought we could earn?

And at that point, we finished the job up.

If the job was done ahead of schedule and the job is done correctly, if they have to

go back and fix it, customer's not happy, whatever the team loses on the bonus.

The reason it's a team bonus is that we want them to hold each

other accountable to doing it right.

Hey, Bob, you got to do that.

Right.

You're going to cost me my bonus because we're gonna have to come fix it.

I actually have a carpenter on video saying the quiet part out

loud, which was his name's Frank.

And he literally said that his approach to quality change when he went on pro

pay, that's what we call a job because.

It cost me too much money to go back.

And I was like, Hallelujah, Frank, that, that welcome to my side of the table.

You know, I want Frank to want to hang that door straight because Frank, it's

going to cost him money if he doesn't.

And that was the, that's like this hallelujah moment where they get it.

And it's such, such a transformational thing when you

can push into that, that concept.

I remember years ago, I heard someone ask a, uh, worker,

Well, you know, about how long do you think this is going to take you to do?

And, uh, their response was literally, Well, that depends.

Is it my time or your time?

Uh, and so, yeah, light bulbs go off.

They don't care.

I hate to break it there by listening, but your workers don't care about your money.

Right?

Right.

I mean, they're somewhat, they care about their own money and they're

somewhat accountable to their peers, which is an interesting dynamic here.

So if you can get them to collectively view the labor budget as their money,

they will treat it differently.

Does this require a lot on the workers part, you know, in

putting time and stuff like that, or it's all pulled, it's all digital.

That's what I figured.

Yeah.

Yeah, we, we technically work with some

companies that don't have digital time tracking, but that's rare.

Most everybody now has busy, busy or clock tracker T sheets or, or one of

these time tracking, you know, the systems in Java and build a trend, et cetera.

So they have some type of time tracking process for it.

Frankly, if you don't, you should, because it's better for your job costing.

Uh, there's all kinds of value propositions associated with

accurate time tracking legal reasons.

Frankly, here's the other part.

A lot of people have tried this.

A lot of people have a spreadsheet while you're listening to private spreadsheet

somewhere that they tried performance Bay and they tried to use Excel just to track,

all right, Bob, I gave him 10 hours.

He did it in seven.

I'm going to pay him the difference there.

So one Excel will just break in real life.

It doesn't.

The level of calculation you really have to do this because different

people work different numbers of hours.

You have, um, people with different wage rates.

It's there's all kinds of complexities to real life construction that excel.

It's just becomes administrative burden and the calculations for.

Oh, T was called OT differential, which is a department of labor, fair labor

standards act set of rules, especially when you're in states like California,

New York need to be done correctly.

You're going to get sued.

So the software makes that easy to do, um, settings.

And then, so I've, I've run into people all the time that have

piecework structures in place today.

I'm paying them 7 percent or 20 percent of, of the job value, or I pay them X

amount per square in the roofing industry.

Most likely.

The minute they work one minute of overtime, you're a foul of the rules.

That doesn't mean you're going to get sued tomorrow, but the minute

you've got enough employees, some class action lawyer is going to

find you find where your disgruntled employees and you're in trouble.

And it's not the, just the OT differential amount they come

after is the fines and penalties.

So it's, it's, and we can solve it for people who like, if that's

what they do today, I can help you get compliant in one day,

I'm curious, have most of, uh, Your users so far for pro to have

been in the construction industry, or have you seen any other industries that are

very hourly base that have adopted it?

So construction, landscaping, cleaning kind of where

we started with all of this, but we have a pilot program kicking off with

a manufacturing company right now.

That has 18 locations where they manufacture some,

some materials and we're.

Curious where that's gonna go.

It's more of a unit based objective.

Um, how many units is my goal for my shift for my team on this shift?

And what can we actually output?

So it's just a little different, but it's the same basic problem, right?

I have hourly workers.

I need them to be.

Uh, lined, you know, with company KPIs and targets.

And sometimes those KPIs are more safety or, or quality oriented

or, or something like that.

And sometimes those KPIs are different, but whatever they are, that's part of

this becomes part of the equation of how.

Incentives get paid and what you, what gets incentivized gets done.

That's a good point.

You know, and it was like so many quotes on that.

I have a bunch of quotes often give from different kind of famous people

who talk about the power of incentives.

One guy talked about all of economics can be summed up in, you know, the four

words that humans respond to incentives.

That's it.

You know, that's economics in four words, right?

You have your degree back, you know, it's, uh, it's a powerful, powerful

thing to get, you know, once you got it in your head where we can go.

If you weave it into the company culture and get people understanding that.

We're doing this together.

This job is what we're doing together.

I've got to estimate it right.

I've got to procure the materials, right?

We're going to get our permits squared away, whatever, all those things.

And you, the weather's got to cooperate and this and this, and

this Bob's got to do a good job.

You guys have to execute the project well.

And then if all that goes well, we all make more money.

If any part of that breaks down, then we have a chance to make less.

If you're the owner, you can go below zero, right?

At least the workers, we give them a floor, right?

So if you make 25 bucks an hour, you don't make less than 25 an hour.

If the owner, my number, I don't have a bottom, right?

I never can go to zero and then go below that.

Right.

So everybody out there is probably familiar with jobs that look like that.

And that's where.

Yeah, we, we protect the employees, the downside to the employee,

give them a chance to earn more.

Yeah, I love it.

Well, you, you talked about Frank and his comment, any other comments that

you can think of as far as either from managers, owners of companies, or from,

you know, the hourly based workers, um, after, uh, implementing proto,

Yeah.

The workers are the ones you get the most, uh, enjoyable feedback from, uh,

management, look, management comes back and they talk about our gross profit went

up 7 percent or, you know, labor costs came down 3 percent where they find those.

All those are fine.

There's nice quotes in a marketing brochure, I guess, but the, the.

Employees who talk about how they're ahead of inflation, you know, like

inflation was killing us and I feel like we're back ahead of the game now, boss.

You know, and they, cause they get it right.

They understand the impact on their family when they start to earn more money.

When they, I've had owners tell me that if they tried to take.

Pro pay away from their workers.

They would just leave it, lose everybody.

Like the guys love it.

Like they get into it and it, because it becomes theirs, theirs.

They just, they care about it more.

You're recruiting and retention.

Uh, we get a lot of companies talk about how that, that really is key right now.

I'm recruiting people.

By saying we have a incentive comp system here where you can, you know,

make more money if you perform.

Well, yeah, think about right.

Bob comes in your office.

He's like, I'm the greatest carpenter ever.

And you should pay me X.

And you're like, oh, well, we're going to find out, Bob, you know,

because we've got incentive pay system here and our best carpenters make.

A lot of money.

Now our best concrete guys, they make a lot of money because

they're good at what they do.

They work well as a team and they bring jobs in ahead of schedule.

They do the job, right?

They stay safe, et cetera.

That's how you recruit.

And we we've done that in our own company.

We fight our clients often sharing that back to us.

Then on the other side, who's going to leave.

When you're making our average worker right now in our systems,

making over 10 percent more in base wage than they were making before.

That's average.

Some are doing even better.

You're going to find, if you've got 30 people in the field, I

guarantee you, there's gonna be eight of them on your team.

They're going to think this is the greatest thing ever invented by man.

They're, they're just going to lose their mind.

They're going to be so happy with this.

You're going to have about 20.

They're going to be like, ah, okay, whatever you can have two or three.

That are going to hate it because it shines a spotlight

on the fact that they're lazy.

Yeah.

Right.

And to get rid of those three and you will get more done with the remaining

27 than you ever did with those 30, because they all are going to care.

So we're finding companies can control their labor costs, get rid of a little

bit of that group they don't need.

Um, They want to get rid of, they just can't right now because

they can't find people, right?

We've all got that challenge.

Can't find good skilled, good skilled laborers.

Hard and hard to come by.

It's one reason you guys started this podcast.

How do we get more people, you know, interested in the industry and One of the

ways we believe that's gonna happen is to, let's use some technology, but show them

how they can make more money doing this.

You know, it's funny, right?

As you led into that, talking about the impact on recruitment and retention.

That's exactly what was going through my head, um, was, man, this would be

a huge tool for recruiting workers.

So, uh.

Good stuff.

Any, I'm just kind of curious.

You, you guys probably have a crystal ball.

I mean, is there anything else that you think at some point, um,

protiv as a company might be able to address to help, uh, contractors?

So we are, yeah, I actually love that.

We are pushing our solution to be worker centric.

What we realized that we cared about as we were building this, we, we found, We cared

about how did the worker be successful?

They're the key.

Their, their worker is, it's the, um, commodity that's in short supply.

We don't have enough of them.

We need to care.

And they're the ones who do the work that we actually get paid for.

What we do is sell their effort.

And so we've got a process now where we can lean into them

and reward them for helping us.

So what else could we do to help them?

And that goes to, we see it through, um, communication tools, community

tools, education, um, platforms, safety, training, et cetera.

Weaving a lot of that into our system, probably through

partnerships in many cases.

We're launching a chat platform, um, built into our system next two weeks

from now, I think it's coming out.

Um, where the ownership and management can easily communicate

about project performance and project progress right to the worker level.

Shocking to me how many owners tell us that, yeah, I don't have a great way

of just talking between the management team and the worker, I can talk to my

VP of operations, or I can talk to my.

Supervisor or maybe, but to talk to my workers, to get them information or

to feedback is a bit of a multi level process today for a lot of owners, a lot

of management, and that's, that's, we need a more direct line in some cases.

I kind of want to know what Bob thinks that Bob thinks we've got

a problem I would like to know whether he's right or not wrong.

Isn't even the issue.

It's just, I just want to know I can do something when I have information.

So communication, but it's all the idea of how do I get the workers empowered?

There's a lot of systems being built for management to get better

numbers, your accounting under control, your financials, your sales

and marketing, get more customers.

Okay, well, let's build a tool and a platform for the workers and help them.

Oh, I love it.

Now, you know, I see a lot of platforms too, that talk a lot about communication

to the customer, to the client.

Man, you got to address that internally first, or, you know, along at the end.

The same time.

I that's good.

It's very important.

Right.

And we, of course you need to talk to your customers.

Of course you need to talk, you know, numbers.

You need to know your finances need to have your, your, you don't

have your numbers under control.

In fact, if you don't know your numbers, if you have, if you're not have good

cost controls, um, job costing, et cetera, I actually would recommend

you don't implement our system yet.

You need to go solve that first.

Okay.

Sure.

Cause if you don't, you don't know if you're what your labor budget is.

Um, Yeah, just go, you need to call for that, my friend, you

know, that's a go get that right.

That's foundational to running a construction company at scale.

And we find the bigger companies we work with are even more

maniacal about the numbers.

If you want to know a picture into what the big companies do different

than the small ones, it's their fanaticism around the numbers.

Like, they don't guess

we, we see the same thing, even in, in the residential

roofing industry, those contractors who are leading their markets are

the ones who know their numbers.

Um, extremely well.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of curious.

We think a lot of our audience members out there for construction disruption.

Um.

Our younger folks, folks newer to the construction industry.

Um, any, you've been in construction a while and have seen a lot.

Any words of advice for folks who might be just getting started

with a career in this industry?

Enter your phone number one contractors frequently don't

answer the phone and don't I see this all the time small companies because

you're it's hectic and frankly, you're probably at the job site and you're,

you know, you're wondering where why the pain hasn't been delivered or

whatever you got to answer the phone.

Your customer is calling and.

When you talk to a customer there, the faster you engage with that

customer, the more likely you're going to sell that is this number

one is the most foundational thing.

If you don't answer your phone and say something nice, like engage, Mrs.

Smith is calling you and she wants a new roof, answer the

phone and talk nicely to Mrs.

Smith because she's going to call five people and the other

four are going to be grumpy.

And they're not going to answer the phone and you're going to be nice.

You're going to answer the phone.

You're going to absolutely miss Smith.

I'm happy to come over there.

It's Saturday at three in the morning and give you a quote on, on your, you

know, 800 square foot roofs, you know, that you've got a 500 budget for it.

Of course I will, whatever, you know, it's just answer the phone, engage

with your customers in a positive way is, it's a big deal, um, treat your

people really well, because your people actually take care of, you know, the

That's who delivers your product.

Your product is what serves your customer.

Your customer is what serves your revenue.

So if you, if you think your job is to take care of your customer,

you're missing the step because you don't actually the owner take care

of your customer, your people do, they're the ones who install the roof.

The roof is what makes your customer happy.

Your customers who pays you.

So there's a bunch of steps in there that you're missing.

If you're going from yourself all the way to your customer.

Oh, I'm customer centric.

You should be people, you should be employee centric.

You teach your employees to care about your customer.

That's amazing advice.

Um, yeah, there's a lot in that.

Thank you.

Um, well, Michael, this has been a great time together.

You, you are a great guest and this has been very informative.

Um, loved, uh, learning more about Prodiff.

Um, we're close to wrapping up what we call the business end of things.

Um, anything we haven't covered that you wanted to be sure

to share with our audience?

Oh, I, I'm very excited about our

industry as a whole right now.

I think we have labor challenges.

Facing us, but the demand side of our business, if you've just forecasted

out through the 2030s is so great.

It is just a wonderful place to be building a career from, given what

I think you get as an ROI in your college education, kind of loving.

This space for people to come into right now, you come out of high school right

now, and if you were to go to plumbing school and get your license or, or start

up a landscaping company and bring your brain to work every day, your chance of

retiring at the age of 38 are really high.

If you want.

Like if that's what you want, um, it's just a, it's a place where you

can be immensely successful, right?

And you know what?

And go get yourself a new F two 50 King ranch.

And you just honestly, it's a cool life being in the trades, right?

You know, you got your job site, you got your car hard on and

you're it's a, it's a thing, right?

It's something you'd be proud of.

Like it's a culture around this that I love.

And I really would encourage folks to, you know, consider this an opportunity

to step into something where the sky's the limit and you can build

it as big as you want to build it.

Talk to a guy not long ago that, um, started, uh, his landscaping company,

you know, mower and two friends, and now he does 80 million a year.

And I was like, you know what?

That that's legit, man.

That is just.

Because he brought his brain to work every day, you know, and he grew

and grew and built and thought and learned, got out to the conferences and

learned from his peers and networked and invested of himself into it.

You know, now he's got private equity firms banging down

his door, trying to write him gigantic checks for his landscape.

And he started with a mower and a couple of friends.

I mean, God love that.

God bless America.

Absolutely.

And great words of advice there.

And you and I were talking about it before the show too, the importance

of, uh, going to conferences, being a continual learner, um, being curious,

um, and, and taking your brain to work.

I love it.

Good stuff.

Well, we're about to ask you if you are willing to participate in something

we call our rapid fire questions.

So these are seven questions.

Uh, some are, some may be a little silly.

Some may be a little more serious.

Um, all you got to do is give an answer and it's just something fun

that we like to close out shows with.

Are you willing to do this?

I'm ready.

I'm ready to see what we got.

Awesome.

Let's do it.

Hey, uh, oh, by the way, I'll give a shout out.

I did let chat GPT write these questions.

So, uh, we'll see what they got.

Ryan, you want to start with the first one?

I would love to.

Question number one, if you could instantly become an expert in

any subject, what would it be

quantum

physics?

That sounds

impressive.

You know, I wouldn't know how the

universe works.

Good stuff.

Okay.

Next question.

Are you a coffee or a tea person or maybe neither?

And if you are a coffee or tea person, how do you drink it?

Coffee.

It's black when my dad drank it and I'd sneak it out of his cup, you

know, and so yeah, still coffee today.

I hear you.

I drink black coffee too.

I'm too lazy to put anything into it.

So we just do it.

Keep it simple.

All right.

Question number three, you have a choice on this one.

Um, what is the best or the worst piece of advice you've ever been given?

Best advice.

It's a really simplistic thing.

And Is this idea of never quit and I always, I actually used to have this rock.

I've still got it somewhere.

It's not my office now.

It literally just said on it, never quit.

And because if you never quit, eventually you can win, right?

It just may be hard.

You may stumble in a, you know, get backwards at times, but if you

just, the perseverance of that idea.

Is the battle because none of this is easy.

I, you know, starting the software company of, wow, I we've been on

the brink of not making it already.

And it's just, and then it, you make it right.

And it's just, you're further and you survive a bit longer

and it's, it's really hard.

Sometimes life's just hard and you've got to keep going.

So just don't quit.

Keep going.

You know, persevere perseverance is powerful.

Yeah, I think that's interesting.

I was thinking last night.

Um, you know, sometimes I think all of us in our careers or our

lives can start to get a little.

Oh, woe is me.

I have so many challenges and so much I face.

And I was thinking last night, you know, everyone does.

We're no one's any different than anyone else.

And, um, really the best thing any of us can do is, hey, maybe make that,

uh, Maybe make that journey a little easier for somebody else along the way.

Reframe it.

Dive into it.

Own it.

Go get it.

You know, just persevere through it.

Okay, next question.

This one's a simple, easy one.

If you were a superhero, what color would your cape be?

I'll

just go with gray.

I think hey, I'm not sure how good a superhero I'd be.

I'd probably be in the middle, you know, there's some fun stuff I'd like

to do if I was superhero that might not actually go to the whole superhero,

you know, the hero part, you know, because sometimes it's just fun to do.

So you're kind of a under the radar superhero.

This guy.

Yeah, yeah.

And I definitely have one of the masks.

I want to be able to walk around like normal people.

No.

Fame would be.

Not so good.

What would your superpower be then?

Uh, best superpower.

I'm thinking, uh, I think it was where you can move stuff with your mind.

I always thought that would be pretty good.

You know, uh, you know, doors just open as I walk up.

Someone actually said one thing I read one time was, uh, I heard it somewhere.

Someone said that they, their superpower would be to have theme

music around them at all times.

I thought that was great.

I was like, that's a cool superpower.

Like everywhere you go, the appropriate theme music is playing

around you, you know, so, all right.

That was strong.

That was a fun one.

That's cool.

Good stuff.

Okay.

Next question.

Is there a movie you could watch over and over again?

If so, what is it?

Yeah, I've seen Sicario quite a few times.

That's for sure.

Great movie.

Tombstone too, you know, going back a little, little further,

you know, it's like, uh, Yeah, Tombstone's pretty, pretty legit.

I can quote most of it at this point.

I know he's my wife.

Okay, good answer.

Well, this next question is a little more serious.

Um, what would you like to be remembered for at the end of your days?

I took my four year old granddaughter

to Disney World last weekend.

Yeah, I'll take that.

I, I don't like Disney World.

I had the best time because it's her and it's like, and that,

that was, that was just great.

We had such a great time, you know, just everything through

her eyes is, is a magical.

And if I can leave her with that, you know, the joy and an opportunity in life

to do the things she wants to do, you know, winning, winning across the board.

All the rest of this stuff is just stuff.

Love it.

Good stuff.

Final question.

Have you purchased a product or service, uh, recently that was kind

of a real game changer for you?

I like my new microphone.

That's not the right one though.

This one I got here.

Cause I, I, my audio was always a little sketchy before I had to wear the little

ear ones and I like the microphone.

I think that's been good, but that's not a good answer though.

It's a terrible answer, actually.

Um, so it's been a good product or something I've bought recently.

I don't know.

I feel stumped on that one.

I think your answer is legit.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, cause I like, you know, have

the little thing dangling out of my ear is kind of annoying.

And, and I was doing more of the podcast stuff and I was like, all

right, I should get a microphone and talk to a few people who do podcasts.

And like, you know, they recommended this, this one now.

So I try to improve my audio.

I'm a soft spoken guy.

So I don't have to, you know, yell at the screen anymore for people to hear me.

Good audio is very important.

Yeah.

Right.

Ryan kind

of lives for good audio.

I, the other game changer is when I bought my,

uh, my wife's engagement ring and we got married, that was pretty much a

game changing product purchase too.

That would be absolutely rock.

She's a rock star.

Well, Michael, this has been great.

Um, thank you so much for being on the show.

You've been a great guest and I'm anxious to get this out in front

of our audience and let more, more folks know about Protiv.

Uh, so for folks who would want to get in touch with you or to learn more about

Protiv, um, how might they do that?

And we'll put this in the show notes as well.

Oh, sure.

Uh, prodev.

com, P R O T I V.

com.

Obviously, our website's great.

It's michaelatprodev.

com.

If anyone wants to email me and just, you know, say hey or learn more about what we

do, I'm happy to show folks our system.

Um, see if it can be of service to, to people or just even if they just want to

hear about how do we implement performance pay, whether you use our system or

want to try and do something different.

I like talking about it.

So happy to, happy to talk to folks.

Um, we're on LinkedIn and all those, you know, insta talk and all that,

I think too, but, um, not really a social media guy, but it's out there.

Well, very good.

And you know, what I think is really cool about what you do, you've

not only developed the software, but you're also a user of it.

And a lot of folks who develop software aren't really using it also.

And so I think that's very cool.

Well, thank you.

Grateful.

Thank you very much for having me on and enjoyed it very much.

It was a great conversation.

It was.

And thank you to our audience for tuning in to this episode.

I think we were all successful with our challenge words.

Um, Michael, I know your challenge word was.

Yeah.

Popsicle.

Yeah.

You worked it in.

I had to work that in.

Took me a minute.

You did well.

Ryan, you got yours in, didn't you?

I did right, right at the beginning.

And then later I stole it and I used it also.

That was just an old man brain fart.

Um, got confused.

Um, but I also worked in my challenge word, uh, which was bingo and

your word was adventurous, right?

Right.

Yes.

Correct.

Cool.

Well, thank you all so much for tuning into this very special episode

of construction disruption with Michael Fortenberry of perennial

construction solutions, and also of.

Please watch for future episodes of our podcast.

We always have great guests.

Don't forget to leave a review for us, please.

And until the next time we're together, keep on disrupting and

challenging the status quo, looking for better ways to do things.

Be curious too.

And most importantly, don't forget to have a positive impact

on everyone you encounter.

Make them smile, encourage them, bless them in some way.

Um, powerful things we can all do.

So, um, take, take care, God bless.

And this is Isaiah Industries signing off until the next episode

of Construction Disruption.

This podcast is produced by Isaiah Industries, manufacturer of specialty

metal roofing and other building products.