The First Choice Podcast
Bringing you the latest in Real Estate, Real Estate Investing and Custom Home Building, based out of Sheridan, WY. New episodes every Friday @ 10.
The First Choice Podcast
14 Illuminating Success: Shedding Light on Business Growth and Team Dynamics
In this enlightening episode, we delve into the intricacies of growing a business and fostering a dynamic team with our special guest, Thayer Hendrickson. Join Drew and Thayer as they explore the art of using lighting to create moods, the unexpected challenges of rapid growth, and the innovative restructuring plan that's poised to redefine Windsor Engineers. Discover valuable insights on leadership, business strategy, and building a workplace where employees thrive. Don't miss this illuminating conversation!
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All right, guys, so today we have a guest on our show, Thayer Hendrickson from Windsor Engineers out of Washington. Thanks for being on our show. Good to be here.
Thanks for having me. So I kind of wanted to kind of just have a casual conversation and ask you how your business is structured, how you have your growth plan, and how does engineering benefit building. You obviously first Choice builders is a builder.
So how does engineering benefit that and just kind of have a conversation about that and see, I think there's a lot of good information that we could get out of it. You bet. Do you want to give us a quick rundown of who you are and where you work and what you do? Yeah, you bet.
So, I'm Thayer Hendrickson, and I am partner and operations manager at Windsor Engineers. And Windsor is an engineering consulting firm. And what we do is we provide consulting services to different clients.
We work for architects. We work for developers, contractors, anybody that needs engineering done for the type of work that we do. And what we do is we do mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and civil engineering.
And we work on lots of different project types. We do lots of buildings, so we'll work on multifamily buildings, commercial buildings, healthcare, industrial, that type of thing. And then we also work on municipal systems, so we'll work on water treatment plants, water pipelines, and pump stations.
And we also do land planning, land development, engineering, and design. So fairly broad range of markets. We have I'm located in the Pacific Northwest, and then we have offices also in Minnesota and Duluth and Minneapolis.
So, yeah, we're what you'd call like, a mid sized firm. We have around 50 ish people, and we're kind of split half and half between the two regions. So does that pretty much cover it? Yeah.
That's awesome. So a couple of things that stood out to me. One is you do land planning, you do civil.
And those two things are super interesting to me because, one, it obviously has a lot to do with land development and planning your streets and best layouts and use for your be. It seems like that'd be kind of a challenging thing, especially if you get into some challenging train, like, say, in Washington, where there's lots of trees and a lot of government regulations for what you can do with the land and the terrain itself and the soil conditions. So what's a challenging project that comes to mind that you've been like, okay, this has really tested us a little.
Yeah, there's been a few. And just like you said, Washington is it's a fairly mountainous region that we live in. Flat land is hard to come by.
So generally what you end up with is developers are trying to maximize the use of the land that they have, which oftentimes it can be lots of slopes and very various terrain that's not super suitable for building on. And then the other issue you have is wetlands. Washington's a very wet area, so there's lots of areas of land, I'm sure you guys probably deal with this, where you have a land that's wet year round and it supports different wildlife that's sort of protected.
So almost every project we work on that's having to do with planning and development is going to have a wetlands consultant. And so they'll be one of the first ones to work on the project. So when you're planning, let's say it's a subdivision, 50 lot subdivision, when you're planning that, one of the first things will be to bring in the wetlands consultant.
And they'll analyze the entire property to establish where are the wetland boundaries. And they have scientific procedures they follow to ensure that these wetlands are protected. Because essentially you can't really use that land for anything.
Number one, it's not geotechnically suitable. But number two, there's legal issues associated with using wetlands. And so that's one issue we work around, so we protect the wetlands.
And then the other issue is how do we utilize these sloped areas? Are we able to build on these lots? Are we able to make lots that you can build on? Or do we need to look at installing retaining walls? Do we need to move lots of dirt? And so lots of times what you'll end up with is a potential solution for a subdivision that requires too much dirt to be moved. And if you have to move too much dirt, then it's not going to pencil for the developer anymore. So we had a specific project that was actually fourplexes that were going to be built on a real steep section of land.
And if I recall, I think it was around 120 ish units altogether. And it was really challenging. So it was a steep lot, but had a great view.
So they wanted to really maximize that view. And the other issue is it was rocky land and so it's really challenging to build on that property. We ended up having to do, I think it was a 30 foot retaining wall, so it was pretty significant and lots of money involved.
But in the end, it still made sense to do this because it pencils out. And then if you can sell these units and the project works. But it was very challenging.
Lots of engineering, lots of subconsulting, and lots of coordination with the jurisdictions for them to allow us to do this. For example, these buildings were four stories. So you had two stories that were accessed from the lower section.
And then since it was built into a hill, the other two stories were accessed from the other side on the uphill side. And the jurisdiction was concerned about fire access because when you have tall buildings, at a certain point, it gets difficult for the fire trucks. And they have different jurisdictions that have different rules when it comes to this, but accessing those upper units was a concern for them.
And at one of the pre application or city like hearing meetings, they were going to disallow the upper floor so they would cut all the buildings down to three stories. And it got a little tense there for a while, because if they would have done that, then the project would have fallen through. And there was already lots of money probably went to cash flow it anymore, and there was already lots of money invested.
And so there was a kind of a negotiation period of a few minutes where we were able to convince the jurisdiction to allow this sort of a variance, I guess. And so the project did go forward. But those are the kinds of planning issues that you can deal with when you're working with jurisdictions, land use and stuff like that.
That's really critical to think about. And I'm glad, I don't know who this development was even for, but I'm just glad that you're able to have this big problem and able to work through it. And that's a big win for any developer, right? Yeah.
And that's a pretty, I guess you would say, like a satisfying part of our job is allowing or finding solutions for the developer that allows them to build their project and using sort of our experience and expertise to provide a solution that works for them and allows them to develop and grow because that's what we want to do. Our mission as a company is to provide a world class client experience. So everything we do at work is sort of through that lens.
That's one example of that where if we weren't really on top of that issue, then they could have lost that project and that would have been a big loss for them. That's awesome. So along with the vertical side of construction, you guys are also doing full MEP, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, engineering.
Well, obviously one thing that's major on a commercial project is it's required to have that in your plan set. You have to have stamped engineered plan sets. But other than the actual jurisdictional part of it, what about the benefits as an owner? How does engineering in those three aspects get a better return or benefit the owner in the long run? Yeah, well, so that's another part of a successful project is that the building systems need to be suited for the owner, for the project, the building type, let's say, and the owner's goals, because a different type of building or the same type of building for two different owners may have two different sort of priorities.
Because one of the first things we'll ask up front on a project is do you plan to keep this project long term or do you intend to sell it and sometime, say within the next five to ten years? Because that can really make a difference on what type of systems you choose and what the priorities of the owner are. Because usually with any system you'll have say, a lifetime cost and a first cost. So you want to kind of keep that lifecycle analysis in mind when you're specifying selecting systems, selecting fixtures.
And it's not to say you want to use cheap stuff, but there's always a balance between upfront costs and lifecycle costs. So the engineering of a building always needs to take those issues into account. So I think that's one area where we can really help is we know we've experienced these different systems, different products, and we know which ones are going to be well suited for a long term use.
Whereas if the owner intends to sell it soon, then they're not super concerned about the maintenance aspect of it. Right, so that's one way that engineering can help. Another thing is while you kind of mentioned the jurisdictions and permits, most jurisdictions are going to require some level of design.
They may or may not require a professional stamp or a license, but we can really help with that. Just smoothing that whole process over, finding out what the jurisdictions really want and designing the systems accordingly. And then the third thing would just be ensuring that their system is safe because that's another important part of MEP systems, is there's a lot of life safety aspects involved.
So for example, every commercial building and or large multifamily building will have some sort of emergency lighting. If the power goes out and there's an emergency, then they need to be able to exit the building safely. An important component of that is emergency lighting.
And that needs to be designed to specific codes and standards so that it's effective. Another example would be lots of taller buildings we work on have smoke control systems and that's like what that will do is if there's a fire inside the building and you have smoke starting to circulate within the buildings, it will keep the exit passageways free of smoke. Oh, interesting.
And that's all another thing that's really important to do correctly. And if it's not done correctly, there's safety implications. Those are a few examples.
So you mentioned a taller building. What do you mean by a taller building? Like ten stories? Yeah. Ten stories? Yeah.
We've worked on buildings like that. We do a lot of work of let's say like four to seven stories sort of in that range. And a lot of those buildings will have those types of life safety systems.
It really just depends on the details of the building, what the goals of the project. Are there's ways that you can save money on your materials by installing different life safety systems. So that's kind of a typical size of building that we would work on.
So on the mechanical side, do you guys deal with efficiency? What's it called? I'm thinking of like the grading systems, like lead or anything like that. Yeah, sustainability programs is what we would call that. Yeah.
So that's another important thing to know right up front. And that's always one of the first things we ask when a project is getting started or over proposing on a project is what are the sustainability goals? Because there will be different reasons for having different sustainability programs. There will be local jurisdictions that will have their own programs that they will incentivize by, say, giving us a reduced tax rate for a period of time by following this program.
Or other times, there may be an owner that just wants to have a super efficient building. They want to have a lead platinum building that they intend to keep long term that will have low utility and maintenance costs. So that can be one driver and another driver is in the Pacific Northwest where we are.
They're relatively strict energy codes and they continue to get more stringent as time goes on. So we're at the point now where when you design a building to energy code minimum, you're already at an efficiency level that doesn't take much more to qualify for a sustainability program. So there's a lot of projects that will just take that little extra step to get the sustainability certification, even if they don't have to.
Okay, so how does that reflect on the cash flow? Does it make it efficient enough building that you can actually see it on your or do you get into that at all? Yeah, we will sometimes. And it depends on what level of service that we're contracted to provide. But it can make a difference, especially on, let's say, a commercial building that will be kept long term, a public building, let's say a library or something like that.
There's a greater incentive for the owner to do highly sustainable and efficient building in that case because they're going to be paying utility bills for a long time and they're going to be doing maintenance on this building and so they want it to be an efficient building. A lot of what we work on are larger multifamily buildings. And in those cases, in most cases, the owner of the building isn't actually paying most of the utility costs.
Okay, so then it's not as important because it's cash flow is what okay, exactly. So it doesn't affect their cash flow. It affects the tenants more.
But it's not a super high incentive for the owner. Usually it's a jurisdictional incentive that pushes those owners and developers to go a more sustainable route. I see.
That's awesome. So you specifically are an electrical engineer and what's your favorite project? Favorite project? The type of project not specifically like a building you've worked on, but if you were to say, okay, for the next six months, I just want to focus on this type of job. And what do you think that is? Yeah, well, there's lots of aspects of my job that I think are interesting.
I think I would say probably two things, kind of a toss up. Number one would be the initial planning of a large infrastructure project. Whether that's a large building or maybe it's sort of like some sort of industrial or process plant.
There's going to be a time at the beginning of the project where you have to make of lots of decisions, like what the voltage is going to be, where the distribution centers are going to be, where transformers, all this large equipment. And it's a balancing act of how do we maximize the value for the owner while using the lowest amount of resources possible. So you can change different things, you can change voltages and stuff like that to make sure that you're building efficient electrical system.
So that can be lots of fun, kind of figuring out there's lots of load calculations and experience that kind of plays into that stuff. That's way over my pay grade. Yeah, I don't know, it's actually not that hard, but it's interesting because what it does is you have to really rely on your experience in different building types and look at historical data.
What do we expect this building to need for electrical systems? And there's also code drivers for that as well. There's a lot of code that we have to follow. So that would be one thing would be early planning.
We'd call that like schematic design of an electrical distribution system. And then the other thing is lighting design, which lighting design tends to be more of an architectural sort of discipline, but the electrical engineer actually has a pretty big hand in it because there's a lot of aspects of lighting that are super interrelated with electrical discipline or science. But the cool thing to me about lighting design is that you get to use that more creative right brain part and I really enjoy that.
And it's usually sort of a collaboration effort with the rest of the design team. Typically there will be an interior designer involved and they'll have a specific aesthetic that they're really going for. And so we'll work with them and with the architect to provide functional lighting that is achieving not only the visual goals that they want, but provides the light levels that they want for the task they're doing.
But also there's code issues factoring into it. So I was talking about life safety previously. Lighting really plays a big role in life safety and so there's always minimum light levels that you have to sort of pay attention to.
And lots of modeling, 3D modeling and calcs to make sure that your lighting is suitable. So when you get this design as you're working on it, are you using like a CAD program where that actually shows the light and how it's going to be displayed in the room and what's it called? Where the beam is going to go where the light? Yeah. So the way lighting design works, or lighting modeling specifically is there's different software programs that we use and all these lighting manufacturers out there have these, what they're called Is files.
And essentially it's just a file that has a whole bunch of data that they've pulled out by analyzing the light fixture. So they have these test labs that they put the light in and then they run this sort of gather data from that light to create this Is file. And what that Is file is, is essentially a model of that light.
And so these lighting design programs pull in Is files. And once you pull it into that program, you essentially have a replica of that light in the software environment. So with these software programs, you'll typically model the space that you're trying to light.
And then you would include any large architectural features. You would model the ceiling heights, large structural beams and columns, large furniture or fixtures that are going to be in that space. And then you would locate the lights according to how you intend to design the room and run the simulation, check your lighting levels, and kind of iteratively do that until you arrive at the design that you want.
Yeah, it's essentially going to show you where the light is shining, where the dark spots are. And one thing that I love about lighting is at one point in time I used to think that a real indirect light that lights the entire room was the way to go. That was my opinion.
Kind of like, oh, let's do an indirect lighting around the tray of a living room or something. And if you turn that up on Bright, like say it's on Dimmer or whatever and it's on Bright, it can light the entire room. And it's a really nice light in the fact that it lights everything up.
But as time has gone, my opinion is a little bit changed on that because now I feel like that's really nice on a low, like turn the dimmer all the way down and just get the accent up there and then use real specific lighting for specific things. And then it caused this kind of shadowy effect. And I personally have really, actually started to really like that a lot more than I used to.
Kind of interesting, but that's a way to use lighting to create a mood. Exactly. And lighting is that's what I'm talking about.
The right brain side of lighting. The way you use lights and the direct them and the beam spreads and different things you can do with it can create very different moods in a space. And so that's where there's firms that focus specifically on lighting.
That's all they do. And it's a fairly specialized discipline, but it also can have a really big impact on a project. So we don't provide lighting design standalone normally, but we do have the capabilities in house to be able to provide that.
Maybe not to the extent that a lot of those firms will, but it's still something we do a lot of. So a couple of things that we've kind of hit on is working with teams and systems and all these things. And so I want to switch gears a little bit and bring those I want to bring that out more thoroughly.
So working with teams, you specifically are also working on operations in the company. And what year did you guys start? You guys are on a pretty wicked growth trajectory here. Yeah.
So the company was founded in late 2018. I joined in early 2019, and since then, we have when I joined, I think we were six or seven, and we've grown pretty significantly faster than any of us really thought we would. And so now we're, like I said, around 50 ish.
I think it's been anywhere from 50% to 150% year over year, depending on the year. Why did you grow so fast? That's a really good question. Quite honestly, it's a little bit surprising to me.
Every time I turn around, it seems like we've grown again. And I think the main driver, though, is the work is there. And particularly in the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of development, and I think we happened to sort of find a niche that was necessary to fill.
The work has come, and every time we get new projects, we got to hire people, and then that cycle has kind of continued till we find ourselves today. And I've heard before that 50 people can be kind of like a ceiling. And I've definitely experienced that now recently, where it feels like we've kind of hit a point now in our growth trajectory where we might have to start changing some things, because the things that worked for 20 people doesn't necessarily always work so well for 50.
So it's kind of some new stuff for us we're dealing with. There's something interesting that I just kind of picked up on it. Repeat your mission again.
Provide a world class provide world class client experiences by focusing on people purpose and performance. So growth, in my opinion, growth you said the work is just always there. People are always just, we need your service.
We need your service. And if your mission is to provide a world class service, maybe you keep getting more and more work because people know that that's what you're providing, and the whole company is standing behind that. Yeah, I think that's super interesting because sometimes people, they might have a weak mission statement, and it might reflect on how their company is acting and then in turn, how much work comes in and how much opportunity they're given.
Right, yeah, that's been, I guess you could say, like a rallying cry that everybody can get around, get behind, because it's something that everybody cares about, and it's something that everybody understands and everybody can think in their day to day job of how can I provide a world class experience to this client? And it's something that if it's in the foremost of everybody's mind, it's easy to think the things through that lens. And I think it does come through in our service because we do make mistakes, and we don't claim that we're perfect, but when we're dedicated to providing a world class experience, we like to say, like the Ritz Carlton of engineering, then I think that clients appreciate that even if you're not perfect, right. Because if they know that you're going to fix any issues and you're not going to leave them in the lurch and that you're going to follow through to the end and make sure that they're satisfied, that's where they care the most about.
In my experience, one of my favorite things about mistakes is the learning lesson you get from it, and you can correct that and make sure it doesn't happen again. Yeah. One of our core values is actually constant improvement.
And what that means is just what you just said. Anytime that there's something that we see as an opportunity for improvement, then we jump on that. We don't lose that opportunity because that's what's going to improve us.
That's what will make our service better and make our clients happier. That's awesome. That's actually one of ours, too.
Yeah, it's a pretty solid one, I'd say. I know. Okay, so you guys have about 50 people right now, and your plans to stop growing or I mean, you don't have any plans to stop growing, right.
Tell me, how do you see the company growing from here? You want to talk about that? Yeah. So we do have a growth strategy. It changes time to time, but as of now, we're seeing a growth path of 10% to 15% per year, and we want to keep a continuous growth in the company because we feel that it's for a healthy company, it's good to have growth.
And growth provides opportunities for everybody in the company. And if the opportunities are there, then we want to take them as a company, and we want to provide our clients or our employees opportunities because the ultimate vision of the company is to have a great place for people to work and for them to really experience the ultimate employee experience. So they start with the employees, because we feel like if the employees are taken care of and they love their jobs, then they will accomplish the mission.
And so in one way that you can provide a world class employee experience. What we say is to allow them growth opportunities, because people that talented people want to grow themselves individually, not only as a company, and then the company grows, then they can grow and give them an opportunity to try something new and maybe earn a little more money and continually developing themselves. And I think most people want to go somewhere they don't just want to be stuck in a dead end job.
So that's why we want to grow. And I think sort of we've grown so fast up till now. It's like we kind of want to get to the point where we're at a more sustainable growth and build and structure a company that can accommodate that growth and keep good profitability and sort of long term keep the company sustainable.
How do you see that going? In my experience, and this is just because probably because of ignorance, growth just costs so much money and to grow at a rapid pace. And a lot of those employees end up, they end up leaving because growing quickly, it's really hard and it takes a lot of attention and sometimes employees aren't in for that. They might know, I want this company that's been at 20 guys its entire life because it adds this maybe boring stability.
There's a lot of people who actually like that, although those are not the same people who like to grow as much. So how do you see slowing down your growth and making it a sustainable? Do you picture eventually acquiring companies or I mean, how do you picture that going? I mean, I'm just curious. Yeah.
So I guess a couple of things relating to what you were saying there is number one, not everybody wants to work at a big company. And we have experienced as we've grown that some people do get dissatisfied. And we've had people leave because maybe either, number one, we've grown too fast and they're too busy.
Or number two, they're just not as happy at a 50% company as they were at a 20 person company. So that's two things that kind of naturally happen as a company grows. Another thing you mentioned was the cash aspect of growing.
And that is one issue that we've seen. It's a challenge. There's a balancing act involved in growth and sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we have some tough times when the growth is faster than we anticipated.
It can be tough to kind of keep up with that. So this year, 2023 has been much slower growth than we've had in the past. Trying to reel that in a little bit.
Yes. And kind of get to a point that's catching up to ourselves, I guess you'd say. But then going forward, we actually are planning to completely restructure our company at the beginning of next year.
And I was talking earlier about ceilings at 50 people. And I think that's one change we plan to make to sort of break through that ceiling. And I think it'll be pretty cool, a big improvement for us and for our employees and our clients.
That's awesome. Yeah. And restructuring.
You're simply talking about administratively within your company. You're not talking about some sort of, I don't know what you'd say. You're just talking about rearranging your employees and ensuring that all the right people are in the right places and your.
Systems are aligned with that. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just asking.
That's a big part of it. Yet there's, I guess, two big aspects of what I would call sort of our restructuring plan. Number one is we're switching our legal business structure from an LLC partnership to an S Corp.
Oh, nice. Yeah. And so that provides some sort of tax benefits and growth aspects of the legally growing that will kind of grease the skid somewhat on us in the future.
And then number two is we're essentially changing the way that our financial reporting works and the way that the change in doing that is intended to really provide better visibility into the profitability areas of the company and also to drive accountability for the people that are responsible for driving revenues and profitability. So I can go into that more detail if you want me to. Yeah.
I think it's interesting because I'm a real small company. There's five of us. Right.
And so I think, let's just say for my own selfish benefit, if I wanted to grow my company and I wanted to follow your model, maybe there's some tidbits that other people are in the same boat as me and they're saying, well, right now I'm a five person company. And Fair has been taken a part of this growth from six to 50. And now there's some lessons that have been learned that you talked about and now you're redoing some of that stuff.
And maybe someone like myself could go from instead of learning these lessons the hard way, skip all that and go straight to where you see you're going to. To me, that would be interesting. Yeah.
Well, we can't really take credit for a lot of this stuff because we're doing that exact same thing. We're learning from some of the best in the industry and from different things we've seen and different people we've talked to. We've started to come to this solution that we plan to implement that we feel will be a better long term solution, more effective for lots of aspects.
Follow the leader. Yeah, exactly. We don't want to reinvent the wheel.
We just want to create a company that's effective, profitable, and a great place to work. And other people have done that, so let's learn from them. It's the most common way of growing a business, but choosing which leader to follow is a challenge.
That's true. So the company we're specifically sort of modeling around I won't say who it is just for sort of confidentiality, but they've grown an extremely fast growth rate over the past ten years and they've maintained high profitability and extremely high employee satisfaction. And that specifically really spoke to us because that's a priority for us, is we want our employees to be happy, satisfied, and working at a place that they enjoy and making lots of money.
Making money, yeah. And having opportunity. Yeah, exactly.
So the way this is intended to work is it builds the growth. And the growth drivers of the business are usually the most talented people that usually have experience in the industry and they build trust and rapport with clients. And so they know how to treat clients well.
They know how to efficiently and profitably do work. And over time they learn what it takes to be successful in the consulting industry. And so these people, we call them practice leaders and so they are really the revenue drivers of your business.
And so we want to recognize that and provide them the opportunity to accomplish their financial goals, career goals, all that stuff. And so the way we plan to structure our business is there will be practice leaders interfacing with the clients and practice leaders will lead a practice area. And that practice area is typically going to be organized around some commonality such as a market region or a work type or something like that.
And so they're responsible for getting the clients in the door, selling the work to them, getting the people in place to do the work, training them on how to do the work and ensuring that all that is done profitably. It almost sounds like a business owner a little bit. Yeah, exactly.
And so that's really what it is, is the idea is to allow these practice leaders to essentially function as their own business unit. But the beauty of it is within a larger organization is that we already have overhead systems in place that are working well. And so these practice leaders are able to take advantage of these systems and that way they don't have to worry about all the other stuff that goes along with owning a business, marketing and the administrative stuff.
Yeah. And that tends to be a big complaint with engineering business owners, is they want to go talk to clients. They want to sell projects, they want to do engineering work, but they don't want to do invoicing, and they don't want to do HR, and all these things that really need to be done and, as a matter of fact, can be extremely important to a successful company.
So if we provide that for these practice leaders and allow them really just kind of give them the rope to build their business, then we feel like that's going to give everybody the best chance of success. And what that also does is it allows us to monitor the profitability of those practice areas and then those practice leaders are able to get compensated for the results that they're providing within their practice area. So you're going to run a PNL for that practice area? Yes, each practice area has its own PNL and so you have really good visibility into who's really making the most money and therefore that practice leader gets compensated accordingly.
Okay, that's super interesting. Here's. Another thought, is probably an obvious thought to everybody, but I'm going to say it anyways.
I suppose top candidates of these practice areas would be people who are currently self employed, who are not interested in staying self employed. Maybe they want to buy out or maybe they just want to join the team. They want to shut down their business, bring their employees over, keep running them, but they don't have to manage all the overhead and all the marketing and invoicing.
Do you think that? Yeah. And since we've sort of settled on this path forward, we've had lots of conversations with those kinds of people that have either been running their business or would like to run a business or are in a position where they could. And we've gotten really good responses to this because just what you're saying, for somebody that's been running a business, they know all the headaches that go along with it and they're sick of it.
They're like, I just want to do engineering and I just want to work with clients. I don't want to deal with all this other stuff. So when we explain this to them, it's like, yeah, that's exactly what I want.
So we're excited about that because that good response that we get from those people tells us that this is a good path and I think it's long term sustainable. So as long as we sort of figure out all those details that goes along with it, then I think it'll be a really good change for us. That's awesome.
So we've used up our time and I hope we're at a good stopping point, but we're going to call her an episode. And I appreciate you coming on. Absolutely.
It's great to be here. We'll have to have you come back again sometime. You bet.
Thanks, Drew.