In today’s exclusive podcast episode, Taylor White of Ken White Construction takes center stage, embarking on a solo journey filled with invaluable insights gleaned from questions sourced directly from the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Instagram community. Delving into the heart of the construction industry's challenges, Taylor fearlessly addresses topics such as cash flow struggles, the significance of hard work in entrepreneurial endeavors, and the intricate dynamics of family-owned businesses. Through candid anecdotes and unfiltered reflections, Taylor offers a raw and authentic glimpse into the realities of running a thriving construction company while navigating the complexities of personal life.
Throughout the episode, Taylor provides practical advice on an array of pressing issues, ranging from stress management and strategic decision-making to the art of cultivating genuine connections with both employees and clients. From dissecting the nuances of financial management in the construction sector to advocating for authenticity in marketing strategies, our host leaves no stone unturned in his quest to empower professionals within the industry. Join Taylor on this enlightening solo expedition as he offers open and honest responses to those questions uppermost in the minds of listeners, and navigates the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, construction industry dynamics, and the relentless pursuit of equilibrium between professional success and personal fulfillment.
Topics:
- Financial Management: Taylor provides insights into the challenges of maintaining cash flow in the construction industry
- Entrepreneurship and Hard Work: Drawing from personal experience, Taylor emphasizes the value of hard work and perseverance in entrepreneurship
- Balancing Work and Family Life: Taylor opens up about working with family and the struggles of balancing the demands of work with personal responsibilities
- Marketing Authenticity: Discussing effective marketing strategies, Taylor underscores the importance of authenticity and understanding one's audience
- Team Dynamics and Hiring Decisions: Taylor shares his approach to hiring and team management
- Strategic Decision-Making: Through anecdotes and examples, Taylor explores the process of making strategic business decisions, including when to say no to projects
- Audience Engagement and Feedback: Taylor encourages audience engagement, inviting listeners to suggest future podcast topics and share feedback
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: The best thing about what I get to do every day and market for Ken White Construction is, I am my audience. You need someone creating content for your company who understands your audience. For us, it started out as just showcasing the jobs. It began with me thinking, "Hey, this is a cool song. I want to make a video and showcase this project." From there, I realized, “Hey, I’m actually doing social media to hire people.” I’m not doing it so much to show and get clients even though that does happen, but I’m doing it to show the culture and doing it to show what Ken White Construction is all about and the culture at Ken White Construction.
Taylor White: What is up, everybody? Welcome back to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Podcast. Listen, I'm your host, Taylor White, and this episode is going to be a little different than any other one you've heard. I, first off, want to start by saying I never get the chance to be kind of thanking everybody that has been listening, watching on YouTube, wherever you consume the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Podcast. I also want to thank Komatsu, which is the sponsor for all these podcasts. Shout out Komatsu. We made our shoutout to the beautiful yellow iron. We really appreciate the support. I appreciate the support.
Today's podcast is unlike any other. Today’s podcast is a total 100% solo podcast by yours truly, answering the questions that I put out on the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Instagram account. I'm answering it all. And to be honest with you, there is a common theme, the one that we had with Randy Blount. People were very interested in what he had to say in the financials. I'm excited to talk about that stuff with you guys today. I’m also excited to talk about all the other stuff. Everyone is asking, how much money do you make? What's the most profitable way to make money? What's next for KWC? What's next for the podcast? What are you most excited about for CONEXPO? So this podcast is 100% for you guys. But I wanted to make sure I thank everybody first because I never get the chance to do that. And if you're listening right now, please give us a rating of five stars. You can do that wherever you're listening. Tag us on Instagram when you're listening to these podcasts. That stuff is also a huge help. Yeah, let's get into it.
There are a couple of questions I'm going to go through. There were so many questions because CONEXPO actually put out some stuff as well. We're going to start with the questions that were directed towards our account, but there was so much crossover, obviously. So the first question that we have is from Unity Earth Works, and they asked, "What is the biggest struggle you have with the company and how are you improving it?" Boom. Let's start off with a heavy hitter, shall we? Also, towards the end, I'm going to get more specific about some stuff, so make sure you tune in around for that. But yeah, great question.
Right now, and I think that's why the Randy podcast was so engaging, especially for me and a lot of listeners, construction right now in Ottawa, I'm not talking about the rest of the world, I don't know what's going on, but it's slow. It's pretty quiet here right now. We're fortunate enough to be steady, so I'm not complaining about that. But cash flow is just terrible right now, and it's a constant battle of finding money in order to– We do have accounts payable that are aging. We print off our aging detail from our Quickbooks and it's like, "Okay, these guys are getting 60 plus now. We got to give them money." But we haven't got money in from our receivables that we have. There's stuff sitting in our receivables. The big thing with commercial is that we grew into commercial this year. Well, guess what? When you do commercial work, there's a 10% holdback on everything. So those 10% holdbacks are generally your true profit. Now, I'm going to get that in February and March. So in no way will I be able to enjoy them as profit or put the money back into the business. The money is going to stay in the business and help pay for payroll, payroll deductions, HST, which is our government tax here in Canada and Ontario. So it's just a crazy time of the year.
So, the biggest struggle is cash flow, and I don't have it figured out. That’s why I like talking to Randy on this and that’s why I like being open with you guys because I like talking about it so much that it consumes my life. And I know that a lot of people are in a different boat. You just got to do stuff and ask, “How are you overcoming cash flow? There’s no money.” Well, you got to overcome it. You got to be balls to the wall. I’m balls to the wall. I’m in this. You can make some payments or your business needs some money to pay off some bills, then you hopefully got a little bit of equity in your house and you can pull out a line of credit on your house and borrow money against the equity in your home and use that to float yourself. And then when you get money, you pay yourself back. But that’s an appropriate scenario, you can pay yourself back. But those are just some ways that I have found works. And I know that that’s not something new. I know people have been doing that forever. But for me, I’m fortunate enough to have some equity in my home and you can borrow some money against that and help carry yourself those times because it’s such a struggle, man. So to answer that question Unity Earth Works, biggest struggle’s cash flow and I still don’t have it figured it out.
This is the next question and I love this one because a lot of people are listening on here. It says, "What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs wanting to open a business?" Thank you, Josh Gillamette. Advice to young entrepreneurs wanting to open a business. I love when people ask me this because it kind of rolls into, what do I need to be successful? What do I need to find success? What do I need to start my own business? How do I grow? I’m going to give the classic, boring answer, which is work harder. I’m a big believer in working hard because I am somebody who is not super smart. I know I am good at a few things for sure, don't get me wrong, but when you can't work smarter, all that’s left is hard work. Hard work never outruns somebody. I know a lot of people who have master's degrees from universities or post-secondary special education, and I know a lot of people who don’t have and are more successful than those people. And I am not an advocate for don’t go get education. There’s nothing wrong and you will never harm yourself by getting more education. But just have a clear path towards what you want to do.
That's my problem with it. People go and they go to these courses at a university or college because blue-collar. You don’t want to go down the road blue collar. That’s terrible. You don't want to end up like Jim Bob there. I hate that because that is the furthest thing away from the truth. Blue-collar raised my family’s family. Blue-collar raised me growing up. Blue-collar my current kids, my daughter, my son. It puts food on the table for all of our employees. It’s not something to look down on. I hate people that do. There is a separation between blue and white-collar, but construction is really cool. I was talking about this with someone the other day, and they were talking about blue-collar work is cool because you can do a transition from blue-collar to white-collar. We have white-collar jobs here in the office. We have people that are project managers. We have people that are estimating, financial CFOs, or operations managers. There’s a lot of different ways that you can grow within. So just because you start there, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily stuck there.
But there also is 100% nothing wrong with being stuck there. I am in a great position. I have people in the office. I am more of a site guy. I’m not a guy who’s going to sit there on a computer all day. I need people like that. You need both people. So it’s hard to bring one type of people up and bring another down because, essentially, you need everybody to make things go run. So now that the 100% tangent is out of the way, dude, working hard man. Work hard, don’t stop. Because if you could put yourself above everybody, the next guy or the next girl, dude, you will win 100% of the time. And I get a lot of slack for the "work harder" stuff. People are like, "Yeah, like the classic, 'well, you should be working smarter, not harder, man.' " That's great. And again, I'll just say, that's great. That's all fine and dandy, but I know a lot of real smart people who aren't doing as well as a lot of people who aren't as smart as them because they just work their butts off. Yeah, I'm going to try to struggle not to go on tangents on this part, but we're going to get into some juicy stuff here.
Okay, so a guy named Daniel B. says, "Talk numbers, something nobody really talks about: revenue, profit, expenses, etc." So in order to talk about that, I don't know if I want to talk specifics about my own company, but I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe I do want to talk about specifics. Maybe I'm about to drop the knowledge of how much Ken White Construction does. How much are we doing? I will tell people that we are a six-figure business, and in the past four years, we've gone from six figures to seven figures. I am not over $10 million in revenue. I wish. That'd be great. I believe our profit margin last year was not the best, to be honest with you. I think after everything was all said and done, it was super low, like 6% or maybe 5%. So I think that's why this year, I really want to focus on profitability. And that's kind of what we were talking about at the start. But figuring out what's in your overhead, figuring out what type of stuff you should include in your overhead when you're trying to calculate it. And I'll refer people back to Randy's. I'm not about to sit here and tell everybody their finances, trust me. But how I'm managing it is just like every day, trying to produce cash flow projections. What's in the bank account? How much buying power do we have? What are our payables and receivables at? If all the money came in and we paid off everybody and the bank, meaning like a construction running line of credit, as well as all of our payables, what's left? And sometimes that number scares you, and that's what keeps you up at night. That's what keeps me up at night.
Right now. I am so mega-stressed. And that's why a lot of people, when they see from the outside looking in, I think that's why it's good. And I was really excited about having this personal podcast with people because I deal with a lot of stuff behind the scenes, man. Right now, I have this thing where my jaw is so locked up on the left side of my cheek because I sit in bed at night, and even then, when I am sleeping, I clench my jaw like this because I'm so goddamn stressed about cash flow and money and keeping things going. And I'm not saying that in a way of, "Hey, our business is caving tomorrow." Don't get me wrong. We'll be okay. And I'm fortunate enough that, like I was talking about at the beginning, if I needed some money, I could get some money, which we have, and we do. But, dude, it's a battle. And every business owner right now, I hope that you can sit back with me right now and be like, "Not just me. Nice."
It doesn't matter how big you are, how many followers you have on social media, how many dump trucks you have, how fit or unfit you are, how many beers you can drink in one sitting, everybody has the exact same problems. And when I was opening up about this, that's what I really love, and I like that I can kind of save it for the podcast to talk about because it's more long-form. I can only mention stuff in a minute-long clip on social media, or I'm not going to make a whole YouTube video about talking about my life, financials, and stress. But that's something real that I'm dealing with right now. My jaw is so jacked up, like, just from clenching it right here. Like, I can't go like that. And it sounds crazy and it's wild, dude. It's so wild. I went through a thing three weeks ago where just to fall asleep at night so I could actually get some sleep. I was drinking Nyquil, which, obviously, I don't recommend. And it was just like, these four days. It was four days in a row, and I was just like, "Nyquil will just absolutely help put me out to sleep." And I was just doing that so that I could get some peace of mind and at least just sleep. Because on top of all that stuff that I'm dealing with here, I also have stuff over here.
And Jimmy Starbuck actually submitted this question. So this is a great segue. But when I say I'm dealing with all the stuff over here, it's managing a family and managing not only your business life, but your personal life. It's really hard. Yeah, man. Sorry. I'm just taken back a bit. It's like sometimes I sit there and try to think about how good of a father I am, how good of a husband I am, and probably not the best. Not because I'm out doing stuff I shouldn't be doing. I'm doing stuff I should be doing, but I'm just not present enough. And even when I am present, I'm probably not present enough as well. And I hope that other people can relate to this. I hope that they can't, because that means that you got your shit figured out. But I don't have my shit figured out. I'm a workaholic. I love working. Once I hit a milestone, I'm constantly pushing for the next one. I'm not satisfied until...I don't know. I don't even know when I will be satisfied. But managing that is difficult.
And I took a two-week vacation with my family. We went to Florida. Hugely privileged to be able to go and take two weeks. We did it in January. Last year we went away in March. And March is too difficult with work to go away. Although we’re not doing a whole bunch here in Canada, it is still so difficult to go away because you’re tendering up projects and you’re trying to get fired up. So I went away, it was good, but my mind is just at work. And I think my wife can tell as well, too. So I really struggle with the work life balance, I don’t have it figured out. I am not here and going to try to talk to people on how I struggle with the work life balance. I still don’t have it figured out. What I’m trying to do is– I mean you can’t turn off being a business owner. It’s so difficult. Especially to add to the layer of that, which a lot of people now and even before, I felt like I was kind of alone in this spot. But a lot of people now are trying to grow on social media and get they’re brands out there. It’s super smart to do. But if you have your phone on you on social media, it’s 24/7.
This morning, I woke up. I was with my daughter at 6:00 AM, Saturday, so staying with her until 6:00 AM, which is nice. And by 6:15 I was messaging my videographer Bill and was like, “Why isn’t the video up? We need to get a video up. I’m going to miss my upload window.” My daughter had dance class at 8:45. I ended up just telling my wife, “Drop me off at the office. I’m just going to work while you guys are here.” And it was from then till now, now to 1:00 and now I’m doing the podcast and it’s Saturday. So it’s currently 1:00 and now I’m here. But just trying to be more present when I am around at home is something that I am trying to work on. So if people have answers or feedback, please reach out to me on CONEXPO-CON/AGG. But I also don’t want people to get the wrong thing, thinking that I am on here talking about how terrible it is and I am in this constant state of mind of stress or disbelief of being a good husband and father. But I think my wife would disagree. I think I am being hard on myself right now. We live a good life, don’t knock at me wrong. Like I said, I got to go away for two weeks with my family in Florida. We did do family stuff. We hang out.
But that's just how I was raised. I was raised blue-collar. Me and my dad didn't have the relationship of hunting and fishing. We had the relationship of "get your ass up and go to work." What me and my dad did together was work. I remember my youngest memory with my father, who’s going to listen to this, was driving around our yard, which is where our new property is attached to, which is super cool. And I remember him driving around, and we were looking at piles of dirt. We were driving around my dad’s old Sierra 1500. We were driving around, we were sitting there, and he looks at me and says, "What do you see while driving around here where there are piles of dirt everywhere?" I’m like, I didn't know what he was getting at, so "I don't know, dirt?" He’s like, "No, money.” He’s seeing a money tank. All this dirt is an investment. The value goes up every year. The pits raise their prices, and the value goes up. I remember at the time, it was probably like $45 or $50 for a load of fill. Now, you can sell a load of fill for $170, $180.
He definitely wasn't wrong. But my point being, that was the relationship with my father, and I thank him for that. I'm not saying that in a bad way, I am saying it in a great way. He taught me the value of a dollar. Despite what a lot of people think, I get it all the time, "silver spoon kid." I'm 28, I'm a man, and I have two kids myself. But he had the same stuff. Because I am third generation, and he was second. He had the same stuff growing up. So it's just noise at this point. He taught me the value of a dollar, how to make money, how to run a business, and how to deal in business. Another memory that pops out as I said that, and I think this is the perfect spot to talk about all this stuff, is driving up the road. I remember him, there was a guy who wasn't paying him money for trucking or some rental work that he did, and dad was just absolutely reaming the guy out to get paid because dad went through a really tough time. I'd like to get him on another podcast to talk about it that because I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about his stories so much. But he went through a really bad time. There were repo guys showing up for his pickup trucks and machinery. He essentially just like, "Hey, take it. There's nothing I can do about it. I don't have the money to pay for it." He ended up making it through, obviously. But yeah, it was during that time.
That memory stands out, not because that's how you get money or pay for things, but because it shows the testament to my memories growing up. My dad taught me how to tie a Windsor knot. I don't even know if that's a knot. My dad taught me how to fish and hunt. We did do those things, I think at odd times for sure, but I went on fishing trips with my uncle or something like that. When me and my dad hung out, it was for doing business. I went on a huge tangent there, and I got real deep. I'm sorry for that, but I just felt like it was a really good chat that was answering Jimmy Starbucks' question about family and how to manage it all. So that was my tangent onto this.
Okay, let's go deeper here. I want to say that there were a lot of people who submitted questions about dealing with stress. So reach out, man. Everybody, I'm always here to chat, always here to talk. Cool. This actually segues well. Brady Poehler said, “Working with or for your father.” It kind of segues nicely into what we were talking about with growing up and how it was with my father. Now, being in the family business, working with my father, I remember doing a podcast maybe three years ago, and I was asked, "How involved is your father?" I think every guy or girl that has a family business goes through this. What I'm going to say is going to resonate with a lot of people. You go through a point where you're embarrassed that it's a family business and that your dad or your mom is your boss and they're the reason that it's successful. But you don't want to admit how involved your dad is or your mom. So, I think there was a time three years ago where I really struggled with that, and it's still recent. I really struggled with it. People would ask me, and I was on a podcast, and the question was like,”How involved is your dad?” And I was like, "Barely. It's just this guy. It’s just me, man, just trucking along. You know me, I'm running the whole show." That was a complete lie. It was not the case then, and it's still not the case.
The fact of the matter is ,my dad is not semi-retired, but he goes up to the cabin and has shorter weeks. He doesn't come in until 9:30. His role is to aid me. He asks questions like, "Okay, so we need to put X amount of dollars on this Visa. Is that Visa paid off? Okay, we need to transfer over X amount of dollars for payments this month. Let's transfer that over into here." So he's kind of controlling, like a controller. He's kind of looking over financials, making sure that the stuff’s getting paid for. Where I’m like making sure the job’s are going, we’re getting paid for those jobs, people are getting paid for the stuff that we use on those jobs, business development and marketing. That’s his role. It's kind of nice because it's something that he's able to step back on a bit and show up later or take off when he wants to take off. That's what he does now. A very important role, a very important guy. If he left tomorrow, it would be just a cluster-F of trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do. I'm pretty confident we'd make it through, but Dad, if you're listening, I'm sorry. The fact of the matter is that everybody goes through that stage in a family business where they don't want to admit that. So that was my point with that. It's amazing working with your family, it’s amazing working with your father. I have family throughout our business. I have cousins, and my wife works here. I had my sister working here at one point. She does hair now. I also had two cousins working here. It's awesome. It's the most fulfilling thing, being able to work with family. That would be the best way that I could share. There's nothing else that beats coming into the office, seeing your family, and just having the relationship that me and my father had as well too. It's a lot of fun. Yes. That was another one about dealing with stress and panic attacks.
Cumac Landscaping asked, and this is a great question from Sam Youngblood. He said, "How do you decide what jobs to say no to?" That's something that we're dealing with now. We're seeing in our job market right now is a lot of people are pricing jobs just above cost. So if absolutely nothing goes wrong, if the job was 100% right and you don’t go an hour over, you don’t have an extra ton of material, you might make 2% or 3%. We are seeing guys price jobs like that now. Why? Because things are slower, and they have payments as does everybody else and they're getting scared and deciding to undercut and grab whatever they can. Maybe it'll work out for them. I think what you'll see is that a lot of people who are pricing jobs right now won't be able to sustain that pace of work. They won't be able to sustain that business model of, "Hey, we're just going to work at cost or just above cost." Because then what happens if you blow something on your dump truck and it costs $10,000? Now, your next three jobs are paying for that, and you're making no money.
There are so many variables in construction. So we are saying no to projects where– We just had it this week. I’ll give specifics actually. We priced a job. It was $135,000 for a new home build, relatively close to where we are as well. We priced it, and I think we priced it around 18.5% to 19.7% profit margin, which is still not even 20% but that's what we want to get because our overhead is– Construction is 10+10 pr 10-10. So you got 10% for overhead and maybe 10% is your profit. So let’s say all said and done, I made 8% on that project, which is not a lot of money. 8% of $130,000, that ends up just covering our payments and everything. But we ended up losing the job by $35,000 and we did not have anything extra on that. It was mind-blowing. The homeowner comes back and says, “Okay. Great. We want to use Ken White.” Oh, great. Thank you. But we want to see you come and match the other number. Or just north of their number. I say, “Listen, I could take off $1,000, but I am not working for free and I am not running my business at a loss. So I would say no to that project than put myself deeper into a hole or run myself at a loss.
And there is a lot of value in that because once these guys, we talked about this on Randy’s podcast, fill up their schedules for the year with these jobs that they’re doing at cost, they will not be able to handle any other projects that come out then I’ll be able to get and come in and scoop them up my regular cost. I am not saying I am going in there and be like, “Nobody else can get this jobs. I’m going 25% to 30% profit on each one.” I’m going to price jobs how I want to price them, how me as a business owner can make money at doing it. And I will be able to get those jobs so the other guys won’t have time to go out and do them because they’ll be stuck on these shitty jobs that are making them no money. Now, easier said than done, especially when you’re looking at cash flow and receivables and payables and money that you got put out, so it’s tough. But I strongly believe that this year is the first year where I have that in my mindset and we will see how it goes. So we’ll have another podcast this same time next year and I will let you guys know how that turns out.
Kyle Ansel asked: How long does it take to find out if the person you hired is not a good fit? And what do you do after? This is great because I like talking about people. This is specifically me. So I do all the hiring and firing. I am like the HR, but I am only HR with some. Sometimes Bad, my Operations Manager, takes over that because frankly, I can be a little too intimidating or– Not too intimidating. I just come off a certain way. I’m a classic alpha guy. I like putting myself out there. I speak my mind. I am very, “What’s the problem? Why are you doing that? Let’s correct it.” I am not out there to– I am just not the best person to talk to some people. I am aware. I am very self-aware. So I do all the hiring and firing and HR most at all. I’ll know genuinely after the first week. I give guys a week and then I ask everybody else. And I don't just go to the foreman and say, “So what do you think? I talk to laborers, equipment operators, guys in the office, I talk to everybody and we figure out, “Okay. Is this person a good fit? If they are, great. If they aren’t, “Okay. What’s wrong? Is it something that can be corrected? Is it something that can be fixed?” And if it is something that we can fix, “Okay. Great. What are the steps to do that?” If it’s not something we can fix, then, “Sayonara, see ya later, sucka.” And that's the fact of the matter.
So generally about a week, sometimes it takes a little bit more. At the beginning of this year, we had a guy come in, he was just a PM work for us, supervisor was his role. I hate name titles. I know that it’s a thing. Everybody, don’t get mad. I know that titles are a thing, but I hate titles. I think it’s made up bullcrap. You need titles, don’t get me wrong. I just think that some titles are like, “You don’t want to be called that? You want to be called this? Okay. Great. Sounds good. You’re that.” We hired the guy who is a supervisor. We can’t create a position because he was a guy who just kind of came around. And it was one of the ones where the first week was like, “Oh. Okay.” Somebody that’s coming to a supervisor role has a very tough position and shoes to fill. Because the biggest part of coming into a company being in a position where you are now telling other people what to do is not how good you are at planning, scheduling, or how organized or clean you can keep your track or how fit you are. It’s about how well can you gain the trust and respect of the people that you are going to be leading. That is far more important than anything else. And I know that now because I’ve seen it firsthand.
We had a guy who was a great guy. I am not shitting on the guy at all. He doesn’t work here anymore because of his decision to go and start his own business. I hope he’s doing great. But he lacked the respect and trust of the guys in the field. And that’s not up to me to go there. Because this was the situation that happened. I was there and like, “Okay, everybody. We need to be nicer, too. Trust guys.” I did my part. But then I realized, it’s not up to me. This guy truly lost his job and he truly wants to succeed and grow the business. He, as someone who is putting himself in a position of, “Hey. I’m a great superior PM.” It’s up to you to figure out how to be a good leader. I can give you tools, you can ask me for that. We had talks with him, “Hey. This is how you might be more effective at leading the guy, but you need to be self aware of that.” So that was one. Rounding it back to the question, the first week didn’t work great but I thought it was something that we could fix. And it turned out it wasn’t something that we could fix because it was out of my control. So you generally know and you’ll be able to tell if someone is going to be a good fear or not. And I guess, to summarize the story of what I just said, would be you are constantly learning the right answers to those questions. You are never done learning. I learned so much through stuff like that. Don’t stop asking yourself, “Okay. What are my problems here with this person or this event or this job?” Very important.
Another thing that ties in the conversation that we’ve been talking about today in the podcast, I feel like this one– I want you guys to let me know as well, too. If you guys want to see more of this solo podcast. We’re not done yet. I just want to know if you want to see more of this solo podcast. I feel like this one, I am focusing more on stress, financial, and family life. The kind of stuff that I am dealing with relevancy in my life, but I also have a lot of other subjects that I know that you guys want to get covered. So I am just interested in that or people. So suggest topics to us. Let us know what you want to hear.
I got a lot of questions about marketing. And that’s one thing that I can definitely talk about. One question was from Riley M. "What are the best forms of marketing that you have found success in?" The best forms of marketing that I found success in are the ones that are most authentic and genuine to yourself. I was at a lunch yesterday with somebody. I sat down and we were talking about marketing. And it was like, "I don't even know where to start. We tried to make some stuff, but it was boring and we didn't get any traction." Listen, if I ever want to say that from the start, my end goal was to have 330,000 people spread across three platforms, with 100,000 on YouTube. These milestones. And that wasn’t the case. I was passionate about it. I kept it authentic and genuine and I learned over the time what works and what doesn't work. I was explaining at the lunch and I was like, "The best thing about what I get to do every day and market for Ken White Construction is I am my audience." You need somebody creating content for your company who understands your audience. In my case, it works the best because I am my audience. I am between 18 to 35-year-old male, blue-collar loving guy. Do not get me wrong. I have a female audience base too. It’s about 7.5%, and the remaining 93% if my math is right and all that, is 18 to 35 year old males. And that’s not because when I first set out I’m like, “That’s just who I am going to target.” We have females, believe it or not, that work here as well too and they are far better at a lot of stuff than the guys we have here such as organization just for starters. That could actually be a whole conversation on its own. Maybe I should get Kat. She’s a dump truck driver for us. I would love to get her on the podcast to talk about her experiences in construction. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing.
I think a lot of big companies and people, small companies, they either sub it out to somebody else that maybe doesn’t know construction because there are so many marketing companies right now. There’s a lot of really good guys that do marketing. Don’t get me wrong. And don’t think that if you are listening, “He’s talking about me.” No. There are so many marketing guys now that were like, “Look at the money in the construction industry. There is so much money to toss around. I’m going to bank on this and start a marketing company for construction guys.” And they don’t know what their audience wants. For us, it started out as just showcasing the jobs. It started out as me, “Hey. This is a cool song. I want to make a video and showcase this project.” From there, I then realized, “Hey, I’m actually doing social media to hire people.” I’m not doing it so much to show and get clients even though that does happen, but I’m doing it to show the culture and doing it to show what Ken White Construction is all about and the culture at Ken White Construction. And then making sure that when people come here, I am acting on it.
So the best form of marketing is making sure that whoever is creating your content, and I am not going to tell you one platform is better than another. TikTok right now is great. I think that’s a great place to be putting your short-form content. It’s kind of getting a little bit longer now, which is cool, but also the new generation’s attention span is totally messed up. So you need to have a mix of everything. But making sure that who's doing that for you understands what you want to do with the content and understands the people that are going to be watching it. Don’t make a boring elevator music video to attract a woman or man who wants to run an excavator. Because the chances of them looking at your company and if it’s like [sings] “Doo, doo, doo - Built on foundation; Doo, doo, doo - Transparency; Doo, doo, doo - Life.” Blech! No one's going to look at that and think that that’s fun. Yeah, I am talking to you right now, that’s listening to this and that is going, “Hey. Our content is like that. We’re trying to hire construction people and it’s not working.” My DMs are full of people that want to work for us because we make stuff that’s ‘murgalo’, hardy. Understanding on TikTok what songs are you going to go with, BigXthaPlug, more rap stuff, $uicideboy$, Ghostemane. Stuff like that. I’m really getting specific. But I am passionate about making content that people want to see and I am very passionate about people that are making content that people don’t want to see.
I would not be the best person to go in and make a video for the Bank of Canada because I would go in and be like, “The people we want to see this, Taylor, aren’t going to think that this is cool. They are going to think that this is totally messed up and crazy or just like whatever.” So I know my audience. I know what I can do. I know what I can achieve so that’s why I stick to my own lane. So the best form of marketing is to get somebody that actually knows what they are doing.
I think I want to wrap the podcast up there because I don’t want to– Hey, this is however many minutes straight of me talking, but I love doing this. I love talking. I love the opportunity that AEM and CONEXPO have given me. I love that Komatsu even reached out and wanted to advertise on this beautiful podcast, so we thank them as well for doing that. But please reach out either to @conexpo on Instagram or to me at @kwc2000 on Instagram and let me know what you guys want to hear. Let me know if you liked it, if you want me to go into more detail, or if you want me to talk less. Or like “Hey, man. This sucked and put somebody else on the podcast.” And that’s fine. But this is kind of something where, “Hey, man. I am by myself. There’s nobody in the office. Let me know what you want to know. I’ll dive into anything. You want me to talk more about life, I’ll do that. You want me to talk about personal stuff, I’ll talk about personal stuff. I’m rambling.
Thank you, guys very much for listening to the podcast. We shall catch you on the next one in 1700 something many days. Until the next CONEXPO-CON/AGG, baby. Bring it on.
