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Chris Doyle is the founder, president, and CEO of Billd – a disruptive payment solution for the construction industry that helps contractors and suppliers grow their businesses with less hassle and risk. Recognizing cash flow hurdles contractors face when purchasing materials, Chris launched Billd to make traditional Wall Street working capital accessible to these small business owners. Chris sits down with Chris Snyder to share how Billd is helping to change the construction industry for the better.
Chris Doyle is the founder, president, and CEO of Billd – a disruptive payment solution for the construction industry that helps contractors and suppliers grow their businesses with less hassle and risk.
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Chris Doyle is the founder, president, and CEO of Billd – a disruptive payment solution for the construction industry that helps contractors and suppliers grow their businesses with less hassle and risk.
[00:00:04] Hello, everyone. Chris Snyder here, host of the Snyders Showdown President at Juhll Agency and founder of Banks.com. On this show, we take a no bias approach to business success and failure told through the stories of the top entrepreneurs and executives who have lived them. Join us today as we get the unfiltered back stories behind successful brands. Today's show is sponsored by Banks Dot Com, the world's most comprehensive and trusted branding and discovery platform for banks and banking related products and services. Banks dot com is launching consumer core values with trusted financial institutions, bringing attention and awareness to leading financial brands. To learn more, you can go to banks dot com for partners, or you can send an email to info at banks dot com. Our guest today is Chris Doyle. He is the founder, president and CEO of Billd. They are a disruptive payment solution for the construction industry that helps contractors and suppliers grow their businesses with less hassle and risk. Recognizing cash flow hurdles contractors face when purchasing materials. Chris launched Billd to make traditional Wall Street working capital accessible to the small business owners. Chris is here with us today to share how Billd is helping to change the construction industry for the better. Welcome, Chris. Chris, thanks for having me on. All right. Maybe we should do the the football or sports thing. We'll go last name with each other, right?
[00:01:48] Oh, yeah. OK, there we go. Doyle Doyle inside. All right. So first question out of the gate. Tell us a bit about your upbringing, where you grew up and how you got to where you are today. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm from from Texas. You know, I think the name probably describes it as Conrow. It's a little sort of. Yeah, it's a little suburb of Houston and spent the first 18 years there. I grew up. I think maybe a lot of people my age I'm thirty nine, grew up or lived in a trailer growing up and then kind of rode that that wave in the late 80s and 90s. My parents kind of got better, better jobs. And so so really know what it's like to just grind it out a little bit. You know what's interesting about that?
[00:02:41] Because I grew up with, you know, not much either military family. You know, you don't you don't really.
[00:02:49] Did you notice that you didn't have as much as everybody else? Because I think back to those days and I think I did at times, like when I was wearing my brother's hand me downs or, you know, we're shopping at the Salvation Army or anything like that. But did you notice that there were other people that had a lot more than you?
[00:03:09] I did not really in a bad way like I'm without. I just remember. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, but like my neighbor, I think everyone that grew up poor has a shoe store. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Tell stories like my neighbor, like pumps to the pumps. Yeah. I think there were before Jordan's really hit. But yeah, my neighbor had pumps. I just thought they were so cool. And of course they at the time they're like one hundred dollars like no freaking way. My parents would spend 20 dollars on shoes and yeah. My neighbors, you know, like the soul separates from the toe. Well he had some and that had happened their shoes and they were too big for me, but I was like, well can I have them. Yeah. And so like did some like glue or some kind of contraption and I'll walk around for like a year or something. Yeah. So I had Ponsford, I was a kid. Were they big or were they the right size. No, no. They were too big. Yeah of course they were not clean them up you know. And I got some problems man. Yeah I think yeah. Like what you do is you like stuff, some stuff, some tissues in there. So you're so you don't fly. Yeah. Yeah. Well when, when the soul is on the front, you know I think maybe how to do it from the back or something but. Yeah. Yeah. Well you know what those are for all of us.
[00:04:32] I think they're formidable years and they, I think they teach you I mean from a very young age, if you wanted something, you had to work for it to go get it.
[00:04:40] You got to mow the lawn. Did you mow lawns? I mowed lawns. I got man what all this stuff. I mean, when I. I started working, working, working, probably when I was about 14, the first job I ever had was out and cut and shoot. This is a neighbor to Conrow City. Name is called Country. What's the name of it. Yeah, it's called Cut and Shoot. Cut and Shoot. That's the name of the. No, no, no. It's definitely a more hit than that. Cut the letter and shoot. And so they don't know. Yeah. And she gets three, three words. Yeah. OK. Which at the time was like nobody's like. Yeah right. That's true. But when I said now people are nose cleaning dog kennels outside dog kennels you had at the time. I didn't think twice about it. It was like paid like ten dollars an hour or something. Yeah. And it's spray down the poop from the end. It would go down into the grades then. Yeah. So that was my, my first like officially paying job. Yeah.
[00:05:49] And you figured probably that getting into construction was probably there was a bigger future in buildings and materials and probably working in the hot sun because you got your starting construction around the age of 16. Is that accurate.
[00:06:06] Yeah. So I a buddy of mine had a framing crew or his friend did and you know, in high school. So when you start framing houses, you don't actually do a lot. You basically carry the wood from the front where they drop the lumber to the house where they need it. And you basically, you know, got a broom sweeping up. You grab the USB you're carrying to about Twelve's. So one, you actually gain a lot of muscle like it's a workout. Every day you're on the signs, you get a tan and you get paid cash every week. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a high school kid that's that's great. So I've done that over the summers all through high school and a little bit in college as well. And learn like the hierarchy. Right. So it's like you start as the laborer and then you move to like maybe you're up on the roof and like kind of positioning this the rafters to go where there are then the guy with the nail gun, it's like actually put them in and then you're saw, man.
[00:07:06] So like I like had a stat or a tryout I saw man, but I messed up too money to buy tools because those things are expensive, where if you cut it wrong, it's like the whole thing's gone. Well, I notice you still have your fingers though. That's why I thought you were going to tell me. I tried that. I lost a few fingers and I got demoted or it was a lateral move. It wasn't a demotion. It was a lateral move. I, I, I got my shot at it. I failed. And they're like, not you're back. You're back to the to the labor guy. Well, getting up on the roof, that seems that seems really dangerous at some level. Are you guys strapped in or back then and back then towns like cut and shoot, they're like, I let Doyle get up there, he'll handle it. Yeah, pretty much. Luckily, nothing bad happened, but I shouldn't have. I mean, because it's not just you're on a roof, but you're carrying a nail gun. It's attached to a hose. Yeah. So it's kind of the nail that's pretty heavy and. You normally, if you're trying to look cool, you had it strapped on your on your on your tool belt, right? And you're not wearing a shirt, of course. Of course. Tennis shoes. You got your hammer and all your nails and tape and stuff. And you're toolbag, you're like walking around on a two by four. Right. 12 feet up in the air with nothing to really hold on to. So I'm like realizing, as I was saying it, it was not safe at all and I never see any.
[00:08:34] Did you say did you ever see any accidents or was there anything that ever struck you about that? That's I mean, I know you're understanding it now, but no one ever got hurt that.
[00:08:43] No. Yeah, I guess luckily not. It happens in construction though. But yeah. I mean commercial. They really pay a lot of attention to it now. I mean, it is not cool at all to walk out on a commercial job without your full protective gear. You know, like you can get away with stuff like that, that the culture of safety has changed a lot in construction. Yeah, I think they have.
[00:09:09] You know, my sister does this for an electric electrician company in Alaska. She's actually the person who gets after those guys. Like these guys. They have a minder. Right, the safety minder. And I guess a lot of these folks will try to, you know, show up without safety glasses, show up without helmets, do unsafe things. And I don't know if there's federal or state regulations around it, but I guess if you get too many demerits you want to call it that, they could shut you down, I guess.
[00:09:48] Yeah. I mean, OSHA handles a lot of that. And it's a little bit like the, you know, two hundred fifty thousand dollar fine. That never happens, you know, so it's a it's a big threat. But, you know, I've been on a lot of job sites. I've never seen like an official OSHA visit where they come out and audit you or anything like that. But wow. Well, again, I think the culture is just different now. I mean, it's just not it's not cool at all to show up and try and go, well, this is easier to not do it this way. It's like, no, no, no, you got to be safe. No one.
[00:10:18] Yeah, well, that's unfortunate. All those young men who are looking to show off their awesome tan.
[00:10:25] Well, that's the thing. And this is the girls. How the hell are you supposed to get girls if you can't walk around without your shirt off? No helmet, no safety glasses. Come on. Little bandana, maybe headband.
[00:10:37] Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Excellent. Well, so so you started at a very young age. It sounds like you kind of went through the process and was it was it always roofs and framing or did you move around to different verticals? Because there's there's concrete, there's there's all kinds of different. There's commercial. There's residential. So you started there. Where did you what did you do after that?
[00:11:05] Yes, I went to school. I went to Texas A&M, which is, you know, Texas College Station. And then I had worked all the way through college, you know, waiting tables and a few other kind of random things, actually. Funny story, I, I applied for this job. It was like a frame framing associate, right? It was it was for the school, which was great because you don't have to do a lot of work and they just pay you. So it's during the day. So I have two jobs waiting tables and this would be during the day job. So it's a student job. And I was like, oh yeah, it's perfect for me. Like I haven't done this now in a couple of years. So I like framings. Right? So I get there is like, oh, framing like like like a picture frame. Oh. Like well you know, I remember the interview. I thought you meant like the other kind of framing because I know I do woodworking and things like this and it's like no this is like maybe it'll translate. Right. And maybe I oversold a little bit what I could do woodworking wise because I get fired at sommat and this was I didn't get fired from the job just as the role. This was the first job I'd ever been fired for. I've been fired from two jobs. This was one of them where I took the job. And it's a studio job, man. This is like work study. This is like a six. I know, but I was so bad at it. It's more like finished carpentry. Right? Things have to look pretty. And I was so bad at it. They're like, man, we just can't use you for anything.
[00:12:36] So, you know, you're going to that would go so well and so and you had to where you had to wear a shirt for this job to which is a huge bummer. Yeah. They'll get to walk on. I wasn't I wasn't Tannen's. I probably better at that point. Yeah. So, so, so that's hilarious. Framing, framing. It's all the same thing. So what happened after that. You went to college and actually let me ask you a question about going to college. I mean, you've been working from a very young age. You. I did as well, and one of the things when you go to college, you see a lot of kids there that that don't make it know. I don't know what the numbers are, maybe half of them or whatever. Don't finish. Maybe those numbers have changed since I graduated 20 some odd years ago or twenty five years ago. But did you find that working these jobs, I'll call them shit jobs. It literally one of them was know passionate. And you find that when you were in college, you're like, I'm going to actually grow up doing this if I don't get a degree. Did that ever go through your mind when you're going through college?
[00:13:42] No, not really. You know, it was just like it was just go. Yeah, it just it was just like, you know, what do you want? You know, I don't even know how I got in. A school is a good school. I only applied to that school only I didn't even have that I could have grades. And then when when you get there, it's, I think maybe social presence and social pressure of you. I don't want to be the dipshit. Yeah. That was probably more of the driver. And then, you know, when I got there, I didn't even know any different. But a top job was at work. I almost filled out the my first semester. And I think the pressure was my parents. It was it was the social pressure was like, do you want to be the the guy that fills out the first year, got my shit together, started hanging out with people that were responsible and cared about their grades. And, you know, from there it's like, OK, now find a nice little environment. And now college is actually pretty easy after a couple of years. It's really it's really easy. But this first couple is just such a such an adjustment, especially if you haven't, you know, really focused on academics and everyone's wired differently. You know, a lot of people go in my business, I got my MBA as well in that business school. These people are like just so, so focused on school. I'm gone and I feel like it's over after this. You don't have to go back. No one's going to ask for GPA. No business school, I promise. Yeah.
[00:15:09] Yeah. No, I it's it's interesting. You really only go to class like four hours a day. I mean. Yeah. That hard honestly. I mean you can easily work, play a sport, whether it's a club sport or, you know, regular, go to class and graduate in four years with decent grades like it's not as you look back on it, it's probably some of the easiest days of your entire life and the funnest days of your entire life.
[00:15:44] That definitely the fun is the issue is they throw you roommates and it's like your first time to be like totally independent. And you're, you know, you're with three other dudes or maybe girls if you're go ahead. And it's like there's a lot of fun stuff to do. And I don't even mean like the drinking and drugs and all that stuff that can happen at college. But just sitting around and doing nothingness, you know, playing Frisbee golf or doing whatever, like. Yeah, I mean, doing that all the time, then how do you fit that into your four to four hours and plus your work. And that's where it starts to get a little, a little bit dicey.
[00:16:21] Well I'm sad. It's sad, sad, sad to admit it. But when I went to college, we stayed in the dorms and it was it was all dudes. But I, I found out, like after the first week I was there, that a bunch of dudes would gather to watch two shows during the middle of the day, Jerry Springer and Days of Our Lives. No, I was like, wait a second.
[00:16:46] You guys are watching soaps. You guys are watching soap operas. Eighteen year old, you know, men. Eighteen to twenty two year old men watching soaps in college.
[00:17:00] Talk about a waste of time.
[00:17:01] Oh, that's where Jerry Springer maybe. You know, that's especially when it started coming out. Now, while it was you really felt like every time was a once a year a moment like, oh my gosh, you're going to get a fight. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, every show, it's like scripted. It's the way it happens. But at the time you're going, man, I can't believe I'm seeing this.
[00:17:20] Yeah. So, so interesting. Major to economics and politics. I you know, I get the I'm a poly sci guy, but I'd poli sci in history through economics in there. What was the draw, you know, why economics.
[00:17:39] Yeah, I mean, I think it was a little more of like the throw a dart board type deal, I started with that and just keep going. Yeah, I served as engineer and then I mentioned my first semester already. So I got to got out of the school of Engineering and just kind of pick something. And I think this is like the advice for folks going in. Now, if you if you're not really wanting to do a specific like architecture or like engineer medical or like just find something you kind of like or or maybe don't like, but, you know, is easy. Good at. Yeah. The day just get get, you know, graduate gear to your degree. And then after that it's really just the affiliation with the school, you know that that matters. No one ever goes back and says, what's your major. Yeah. Unless you're in one of these very specific trades that you do, you do see a lot of people stress a lot over like that part of it. Don't don't worry about it. Yeah.
[00:18:38] You don't know. You never know where you're going to wind up. It is a twisty road. And then, you know, even I'm in my my mid forties sometimes you still you take different directions and different paths as you grow, you know, and even if you did, you don't remember shit.
[00:18:57] You don't do you really remember anything? If I had a beer and half the stuff, I'd be so smart, but like really nothing other than how to how to like move in the process, like how to navigate the process. I know that's good advice.
[00:19:12] I mean, that's and that's good advice for anyone. Whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you're at a company, you have to figure out the system. Right. And once you figure out the system, you learn how to run the system and then you just evolve. You evolved from there. Now, that's so. All right. So you did all this. How did you get back into construction?
[00:19:34] Yeah. So graduated and was going to go into hospitality just because I had been doing it for four, four years and I had randomly applied for a homebuilder that was had a reputation of bringing in folks from, you know, ten or fifteen a year just working like crazy and just like putting them next to each other, having them compete for metrics and stuff like that, and how quickly they can get homes built cheap. All the stuff randomly that applied you again had because some construction business. But I wasn't a construction major and got hired there, so was nothing new to me at that point. And so I worked for a home builder. This was Royce Homes out of business now. But Guy, I guess it was about five years and it was within six months. I think this is like where the kind of entrepreneur journey starts. And my advice a lot of times to people is like work within a company, but like go start a new division for them. Yeah. And that gives you some practice about how this actually works. And if you're just to totally start cold, you're going to get some hard lessons. So, yeah, I'd worked there for about six months in Houston. They had an opportunity to to start a new division and Dallas so took that. And yeah, I worked in Dallas for about four or five years building houses and about eight different neighborhoods. Really a lot of fun. Sit in the trailer with other dudes my age, you know, really competing on how quickly you can get houses built. A bitching about homeowners, you know, just a lot of fun at a school or the custom.
[00:21:21] Were these custom homes or these like tracks. You basically have project managing or I guess you would own a PNL for each one of these tracks and you had crews of people coming in and you had to make sure they got their shit done, right?
[00:21:34] Yeah. Yeah, there were there are more track homes and. Yeah, just exactly. Managing the PNL, really learning how to work a system at that point. And from an early age it's like, OK, how is overhead calculated and been accounted for on this project and how do you work that literally go through every invoice and make sure is coded the right way. So my metrics look good and learning that like a good job cost accounting tricks. And again, it's like working the system. Right. And about this time is when the housing crisis started because I graduated twenty three. So this is like four or five years later, I saw the writing on the wall there and kind of again like randomly applied for this commercial construction role with a subcontractor called Southwest Construction Services and got that job as like a business development person. And it's more like business development, project management and, you know, work there. For about a year, same same story found an opportunity to start a new division. This was a little bit big of a deal at the time because it would have been me running the show and I took that and so launched division and Houston and Austin. And I think I probably learned more at that company than I have in any four to five year span of my life. The owners were fantastic. Just learned so much about how to not so much like the the academics or the hears the lessons learned. It's just really hard to have fire for your business and your employees and your customer. You see, and seeing that, that paves the way for so much for your employees and like how to be unapologetic about everything you do. Right. Unapologetic about your background and how, however, you may have started unapologetic about I've taken great care of you, customer. And if you're going to if you're going to not appreciate that and fuck off. Yup. And I think that still is like at my core and it certainly is the case here as well. Yeah, no, that's interesting.
[00:23:52] I mean, I think a lot of us grew up in this, this with the mentality. The customer's always right. And obviously there's some there's there's some truth to that. But, you know, there's it depends on what kind of customer you have and what business you're in and and the the profile of the customer that that you want for your business. And so and, you know, there are customers out there who who aren't a good fit and sometimes who lack the decency and the respect for what you're doing. And I think in that case, you know, a lot of the times, like if you look at Elon Musk, I don't think anyone was like, Elon, you have to build me a car. You have to build me a car that looks like this. And it has to go this way. He's like, yeah, he's got a vision for that business, you know, same with the boring company. He's got a vision to put all this stuff underground. He doesn't I don't know if he cares so much about what the customers think plowing through that that visionary stage and nobody goes into it there. You get there and then they're like, oh, oh, you're a great visionary. Well, yeah, that's because I. I carried it through. I didn't listen to everybody. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so this is still a residential building just in a different neighborhood, you carried it through to Austin or is there a commercial and.
[00:25:17] Know this was all commercial? Yeah. So the next the next gig was was all commercial and which doesn't really happen most of the time. You don't make that transition. Yeah. And I guess there's like three pretty pivotal times in my life or like I really didn't have a shot. I don't know why they hired me. I think there's just right time, right place. And I'm so grateful because who knows where I would have landed could have been a deadly place. And it really did fire me up. I brought over three or four folks from my old company that are still there now, actually. Yeah. In fact, all of them are. So it's that's great because I really, really like a company. And after that I jumped into more like the finance world and renewable energy and found myself at a company called Dividend Finance is a consumer finance company that marketed that had a product sold by contractors. So I was like the perfect fit at that point. I had a finance background. By that point, I'd finished business school and. And I'm from construction, so like pairing those two together, and so I was like the maybe fifth or sixth employee, they're really fantastic crew, great founders, learned a ton there. Take that back. I probably learned more there than I did the other one and went through their series A and just like a really great growth, you know, they were doing when I started, it was almost like pre any any loans. And then when I left, it was it was close to seven hundred million annual run rate with a real fantastic team. And from from there I actually started Billd and that's it.
[00:27:08] And they did construction loans, I'm assuming.
[00:27:11] Yeah, they did so for they started in solar.
[00:27:15] So this is if you need a solar system on your roof. So areas like Utah, California, New York, where electricity prices are so high, Utah is actually not that high.
[00:27:29] They got solar that offsets your energy consumption from the grid and you save a lot of money. So it's like thirty thousand dollars. Homeowner doesn't want to pay out of pocket, so they get it, they get a loan. And so that loan was like through dividend finance and they had competitors and stuff. It's a it's a whole market now. But what you're really doing is your your your sales channel is the contractor. It's like, what financing do you offer your customer.
[00:27:55] Got it. Well you've got so now you've been in construction in various levels of it from project management, you've been on site, you've seen the finance side of it. So when did the AHA moment strike with Billd or when did you put all this together and say wait a second, we need to, we need to do this Billd thing. How did this all happen.
[00:28:17] Yeah, so we had done like a pilot at a dividend, that was when we found that our customers more our channel, our contractor channels, needed advanced funding more and more. This is all residential, but they couldn't take on the next few projects and they were growing like crazy without without advanced funds from the basically prepaying the proceeds of the loan. And it was like the crack for them. They needed the cash. I say that in such a negative. But it's not. It isn't. It's like the reality is it's a capital intensive business. You don't you don't sell the house and live in it. You build a house and then you sell it and then you live in it. And then we'll spend a year building the house. They got to get paid. Right. And and so we ended up advancing funds and it'd be like a product feature, like use us because we'll give you 30 or 40 percent upfront, which isn't really a good thing to two very different products. And so the investor who had worked with closely at that company had agreed to to start and fund this other business. It it just so happened they had been presented with an opportunity with a company that was no longer in business, that had had done something similar. And so say, hey, we have to start this business bill and we'll acquire the assets of this other. It was almost a nothing acquisition, but at least we had some data to go off of and and Billd. So it's a very different story. And starting the business then, you know, me and me and by the way, my co-founder Bill was a dividend as well. So we ended up being able to leave together and. Yeah, so we we didn't have to do the full grind, you know, we're like two years we did nothing but, you know, not take paychecks and write things out. We were we were really landed with our initial 10 million dollar investment and a pretty long run away from funding deals. And so we were able to just hit the ground running. So let's so let's talk about that.
[00:30:25] So at what point, though, did you realize dividend finance was obviously a great company, but maybe you would evolve to a point where you really did you know, that you were itching to do something on your own and be one hundred percent accountable instead of doing someone else's thing?
[00:30:44] Yeah, because I had started another business right when I started with the with dividend. And so at that point it's like you're you're recognizing what drives you and and building a dividend rather and building my other business I capture is what would get me excited and drive me. And there was a point where a dividend when you go to a certain stage, it was like I felt like a lot of my work was more internal. I wouldn't call it politicking because that seems negative and dividends. Fantastic company and had a great team. So it wasn't really that, but it was like I felt like trying to like, get my colleagues on the same page. And that's not my my expertize. That's not what I like doing and that's how I'm good at. So you like moving stuff forward, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of get out of the way type stuff, not how do we work this out as three people. Yeah. And so yeah it's pretty clear what helps even at Bill is a Yeah. Maybe three years. I'm out here maybe two years. I'm not here because there is there's a point where it gets well this successful operating business like I'm going to exit with stage. Right. I don't know, x rays. Yeah.
[00:32:02] And it's not you know what, I can speak from personal experience as well. It's not it's not about the money. If you just take the money off the table, it's it's more about like what you want to do with your life.
[00:32:14] And walking into a conference room with like eight people all just talking to talk or do what? It's just you some people can't deal with it.
[00:32:25] Some people are good at it and they should. But there's evolutionary stages in these companies. And it's like we're sitting here talking about this shit, like, what are we even talking about? Can I can I be disinvited to all these meetings moving forward, please? Because I have shit to do.
[00:32:40] I know, you know, if I'm not talking to a customer or someone on my team. Right. Or a vendor about creating a product or proving something. And it's like, what am I really doing here? Yeah. Yeah. So site capture.
[00:32:54] So it's interesting. You've got some product innovation in you. You're just seeing things that happen on these job sites or you're seeing your customers struggle. And so, you know, site capture. What what triggered you for for that? And then let's move back to Billd because site capture is kind of in the middle of this, too.
[00:33:20] Yeah, well, site capture was and I think most people that like to start businesses, they just are always thinking like there's a better way to do that. Right. There is whether it's in business or you're walking down the street or parking your car or ordering. It's always like this is like slightly inefficient. But if you do that, so your mind's always going that way. And my advice to people starting a business is, you know, when you're talking about something or thinking about something in something, you know very well, like, let's call it my kid's construction, like that's where you should focus on. Yeah. And when you have those ideas, like actually execute try to build something around that and do something with it. But and I, I'd mentioned I'd gotten a little bit on the finance side and my career track. Well, what was going on was in renewable energy, there's a lot of capital being put to work and funding and solar projects and investors had no idea what they were there. So there were some like asset understanding and try to get very much involved in that and built out a team for a company I was at for just a few years to go out and verify like site conditions and asset verification a little bit more than just like take a picture, but, you know, take detailed photos, make sure the systems operating and quote unquote bankable because its ability to produce electricity is it is the cash flow for the business. And so I had about twenty people around the country taking pictures. And it's like, take your picture, take your SD card drop and Google Google Drive and found that that took no matter how good they were, you take like a week for me to get the information. It's like, nah, let's there's got to be a better way to do this. So I launched Cycad. Which is basically a mobile technology that allows you to take photos and record job site information and and sold it to solar companies and solar finance companies. Wow. Yeah.
[00:35:16] I want to I want to go back to a comment you made about and I don't know if this is being an entrepreneur or whatever you want to call it, but when you when all you do is walk around every single day and you see inefficient things happening. Yeah. You know what the interesting thing about it is, I guess some of your friends and family, and I've been told this before, they're like, dude, do you do we really have to hear about your idea about how to make the fucking vending machine better right now? Because that, yeah, we really have to hear about how whatever we buy our kids too many books and then they read them and then like, why are we buying them but can't we share them? Can't we create a book club that's free? But yeah, kids manage it like people look at me. They're like, seriously, this is like the hundredth one this week. Yeah, but but it requires I think it does require a certain level of curiosity in love for just making things better and solving problems. I think it's I kind of I kind of took it for granted after so many years of just always thinking about these things. And then as you get older, you realize, I know, you know, execution is is super important. Obviously, it makes it's like the lifeblood of any company. But there's not a lot of people thinking about this stuff. There's not a lot of people with good ideas.
[00:36:34] And, you know, and then combining that with execution is the other issue. And knowing what you're talking about are sometimes you go in and I've done this, too. It's like you you think you know a problem. You you just don't know it backwards and forwards. You think you can execute on it. Then you start like one step and you're like, oh, shit, this isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Yeah. Which is my other advice to anyone starting a business, like literally go get one customer. Don't don't even develop a product. Yeah. Like whatever you think it is. If you've got a you know, if you want to build an automated coffee machine, like how to have a little person in there just doing it, you know, like don't don't even I say that because every time at the airport there was a coffee machine. You heard it here first. They have this one at the Austin airport. And I tell everyone, I'm like, you know, this is Fakhri. There's a person back there and I like Sean behind. I'm like, look, see, that's how they get in every day. It's not fake. But I always tell people that they're like, is there, you know. Yeah, yeah. But be tests right now on you getting getting that first customer, because what you'll find is you won't get it. You won't get the customer right at the price that you think. Now you'll ask the customer this happened to. It's like capture really. I had pitched a few folks and like what would you pay for this? And it was like, hands down. Oh, I definitely would do it. We pay this, like, done. All right, invest the money. We're going to do this. And you go, Hey, I've got it. You ready? Read the contract sits on us for six weeks. Yeah, I know we change your mind or thanks for that idea. We're going to build ourselves up. So getting that first paying customers is such a such a hurdle. Yeah.
[00:38:16] People overthink this stuff. I mean, I've been guilty of that myself. You you go through all the mental gyrations in the gymnastics and the deck and the value prop and the town and in your unique selling, zip it, zip it. And then at the end of the day, you realize you've spent all of this time thinking and not doing well. And you know what your recommendation is, and I agree with this a thousand percent is why don't you go out and try to get one customer and then take one or two or three of those guys or gals and have them get you to the spot where then you can go get ten and then you go get one hundred and then you go get a thousand.
[00:38:57] Just the mental gymnastics is really not helpful. Right.
[00:39:02] And just no one's going to tell you more than your customer. You can you have the best ideas that or whatever, however many ideas. But the customer that uses is the one that's going to really give you the right feedback. So, yeah, from even from a risk standpoint, go find that customer. But important product. Very rarely are you going to dream up the right product front. There's going to be lots of lots of changes. I mean, even a bill like we started with a pretty simple product and we had gotten customer feedback and say, OK, change this, change that. Now now we're off to the races.
[00:39:38] So so getting back to Bill, you had basically met another, I guess would you call him an investor, a finance person that that was running a company that that lent dollars towards projects that were just getting started but not complete that large ish investor. The company that they were working with decided they didn't want to do it anymore. They couldn't make it work. So they had the money and they had this asset, this preexisting asset before Bill came about. Is that accurate?
[00:40:16] No, not really. They had the company that we had acquired had this very structured differently. Everything that basically went out, got an insurance product and then let subcontractors money. But they they didn't do a whole lot. It was like maybe 10 million total. And but they they did have deals in the books, which we could, like, understand some type of delinquency rate. We don't think we've ever had any of those customers come back. But it did give us some data to go get a warehouse line so we would we borrow against the warehouse line. Having zero data is a nothing. You can't. It's a nonstarter. So it allowed us to go get a warehouse line. And now that we I mean, we've done about 50 million total and in half as much time. But the we have this data that we can say, hey, look, we were on like our fifth vintage, meaning we've recycled this so many times.
[00:41:17] We have real performance data that we can we can come to terms on a warehouse or at least we know what the term should be if it if our performance continues to to be.
[00:41:31] Representative, what we've done so far, yeah, so I want to get into this now because so how did you know that suppliers and when I say suppliers, I mean people that show up with big trucks to a job site and drop off wood and iron and all this stuff to Billd stuff, you've got suppliers and then you've also got the crew. Right, the actual kind of construction crew. When did you realize that, like, the construction guys couldn't do anything without capital and the suppliers wanted to get paid faster and in advance? Like when did when did that problem strike you as a big problem, like big enough for you to address?
[00:42:13] Yeah, well, you know, being in commercial like it is extremely well known. So, you know, let me do it. Probably easier to describe the product because it helps describe the problem is that in commercial construction, you you purchase material generally. You're on like 30 day terms, just like you always have to pay up front. You purchase material. Let's say it's one hundred thousand dollar project. So that's a thirty thousand dollars from the material. You install it on month one, we'll call it. You submit your pay payout. Twenty fifth a month, very standard process and all construction. So that's day 30, day one you buy it, day 30, some of your pay out. You generally are paid now for call it about 60 days, which is now 90 days from when you purchase the material. And that's like that's like standard. So you've got to pay for your material plus your labor plus your overhead for all of that. And if you're not a well capitalized business like you just don't operate. So what happens is you can't take on more projects. They're saying, hey, you've been awarded this, which is all of your work, right? You've got a customer. You did everything, which is the hard part. And then it's like, I can't take it on because I maxed out with this supplier. So I need to go to another supplier. And they're like, wait, why are you why are you come to us? Well, because I'm maxed out with them and it's just a super inefficient. Yeah, we call it like supply chain finance. Right. Extremely inefficient. And who gets the the the bad side of that is a subcontractor. Yeah. And our you know, we had like our favorite suppliers and I would just remember them coming by the office and they would they're great for like product support. Like what product do I want to use on this project? There's normally a few options that Assad gets to choose from. So you're looking at price availability, things like that, to be around quite a bit. What can of manufacturers and, you know, sometimes once a month they come with some papers in their hand and say, hey, I'm following up with these bills. Yeah, that's a pretty inefficient way. Your sales, your sales guys really shouldn't be doing that. Yeah. So it's definitely a major problem and saw this for the whole time you were in construction, you just saw it over and over and over and over again. Yeah. And we were like we were fairly well capitalized contractor and we would have these issues. Right. So it's not like they were ever running out of cash, but it was enough. So where we'd get the the owner call and say, hey, look, we need to go collect on this. You know, we need to collect because we've got a business to run and it's just taken too long. Then you have this dilemma of. I put myself in the shoes of a new business, right, so that wasn't the case here, but where you're calling the GC your customer and saying, hey, I'm not going to go work, I'm not going to continue going on to this project because. You haven't paid me in two months. Yeah, and they're like, well, we haven't been paid either. What do you want us to do? Yeah, we're going to keep working. Well, it's like I can't do it anymore. Like, do you lose a relationship? Do you you know, and then what ends up happening is it keeps going. And then maybe one day they don't get paid on the job. And that's how that's how companies go out of business and they go back. Exactly.
[00:45:34] They got hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, tools, work trucks, all this stuff. This is it almost seems a little bit absurd that no one in his address is anyone addressing this or how was this problem solved before Bill came along or just it wasn't.
[00:45:51] I mean, suppliers tend to try to provide financing better terms.
[00:45:57] Yeah, but that's normally to the more the ones it just like anything else, the ones that need it. Now, I'm sorry. That don't need it. Yeah. And this is all this is always lending. Right. Lenders want to provide credit to those that don't need it and those that need it. You know, those are the ones that normally are going to aren't going to get that. But what we've found is more a unique way to look at the risk because we can a subcontractor can purchase through us.
[00:46:29] Right. We'll pay the supplier upfront. Now, the customer, the sub almost always gets a cash discount. So we of course, we pass that to the customer. Right. We don't we don't have to deal with it. You know, they get that discount normally like two to three percent and.
[00:46:49] Now we they get 120 day terms with us and we just we charge like daily interest basically just like a credit card would. And then so whether it's 60 days or 90 days, they just pay us once they've been paid on the project. But what that does is we just are we're able to evaluate the risk differently than a supplier would or certainly a bank or credit card. Right. We know exactly what they're purchasing and we know what project they're going on. There's a level of comfort with us that says we actually know who this GC is. So in the event that we have not been paid, we can contact the general contractor and say, hey, look, we purchased this material and we you know, we haven't been paid yet.
[00:47:33] And they may say we haven't been paid either, but more than likely and ourselves have always kept us in the loop on these things. Our sub actually needs help getting paid to so we can kind of jump in the middle and say, hey, look, we know you're a reputable general contractor. We haven't paid it. We expect to get paid and work it out directly with them. And if it doesn't work out, then we could even go to the property owner. And so do you put maybe potentially put Lean's on the property just given the so we could have an asset security with the building asset? Yep, we could. I mean, there's a number of things kind of call it in our arsenal there, because what normally does not happen is the business gets paid and they just don't pay us. No, it's it's it's it's normally a waterfall. It's like, OK, it's paid then. So it's paid and supplier gets paid. Not to say it doesn't ever happen, but for the most part the reason for a delay is because the sub hasn't been paid. So we we essentially are able to like help represent them and getting paid and yeah. Sending notices and stuff like that certainly can help.
[00:48:38] Well since you guys have so you have a marketplace of suppliers that love you because they get paid right away. Yeah. So they can put that cash back to work, buying more raw materials to give to more contractors or buildings and projects. And then are you also saying that, you know, the glasses or the subs, you also get them paid right away as they await their payment from the from the general contractor? So you're helping out both of those folks?
[00:49:14] No, we wouldn't. I mean, in the case that, yeah, we're we're supporting them and getting paid directly from the GC, but we don't that's not our product where we would pay them directly and then we'd wait for them to get paid. We're more on the material financing them. Got it. But I think that the secret sauce there is really that because of the way we look at construction and we now have like predictive losses, which lendings all about predicted losses, that we can underwrite a project. Right. And so a subcontractor who. So here's the thing, subcontractor's don't have great credit because they don't have credit as a business credit, so suppliers generally don't report to credit agencies. So they could ask him about that. Yeah. And so then the next option, OK, a business credit card, OK, maybe. And then you get to the limit. Well, that doesn't even scratch the surface. You need like five hundred of off limits to really run your business on a 60 day cycle. And then, you know, like maybe a baseline will baseline is going to take Senior on everything in your business. Now, when you go buy a truck or you go buy new equipment of them left, whatever it may be when you've got this blanket lane you've got to deal with. So there's there can be some issues with getting a bank line of credit. So you're really it's not that you can't just access credit, which is a problem, but you can't build credit either because suppliers don't report they're not their lenders. So you expect them to report unless it's bad. It's bad that sometimes you find that they do have ways to report the negative. So they can't even they just can't get credit anywhere because they don't have anything but their personal FICO to show for it. Now, that's fascinating.
[00:51:02] So you can actually, you know, tell me if I'm thinking about this the right way or saying it the right way, you can actually create your own proprietary business credit score for an organization that needs your service, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, Experian or Equifax or Trans Union. I mean, I think all these guys have business credit, but not not really designed for the construction industry, probably, right?
[00:51:34] That's right. And I we see these reports and it's just like, look, they have their product, but it just doesn't work in our space.
[00:51:45] And you have to know a lot more about what they're doing. And it's a big enough markets are really invest in it. Right? It's a one point four trillion dollar market and.
[00:51:55] You know, there's a lot of headroom there, so, you know, investing in very, very industry specific underwriting is I mean, that's what that's the approach we've taken. You can't we can't translate this to medical. We can't translate this to transfer. No, it's one hundred percent contraction. And that's why when we recruit people and we talk to our our our employees and our customers, like, look, we are a construction company, that's it. Yes. We happen to do lending just like the supplier happens to do, you know, fabricated steel or windows or blazin or sealants, like we just happened to help with supply chain finance infrastructure. That's interesting.
[00:52:34] Could you see yourself becoming more on the bank side like an act becoming like an actual bank, or do you see yourself providing more tools on the maybe on the construction side? I don't know. Or maybe a third one is do you actually become like a little mini credit bureau for everyone in this space and then other banks and other companies can leverage your scores in your day? Like which way do you see this thing going ultimately in the future?
[00:53:07] Yeah, I don't I don't think we would end up being more of the bureau type just because we want to hold that to ourselves. Yeah, right. That's you can make money on knowing that having that predictive glossary and selling selling it is not worth as much as if you would use it. Yeah, I agree. And so I think the question is where we're at now. We've had pretty good traction with our first product. And what do we do next is, is the question we're asking ourselves. I think for sure it's going to be a technology focus, although construction, you know, is picking up on technology adoption. But there's a bit of a yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so I think we'll we'll probably want to do is take a bigger bite of the problem, the problem that we already know exists. So we mentioned before you material purchases are an issue, but you also have labor and overhead. So how do you figure that out? You know, so we'll we'll probably come up with some products that will will help with those issues as well. And then, you know, it's it's like building off from a business perspective. It's like building the moat. It's like building how how do you create even more value for your customers and limit potential competition?
[00:54:24] Yeah, it's interesting if if you can afford to go full stack or keep your operational costs low enough so you can continue to invest in owning the stack like you just mentioned, instead of licensing the stack, because once you license the stack.
[00:54:41] Like now, you have no competitive advantage, right, was limited in growth to your licensing, something that could be worth a lot more if you were selling, if you were lending on it now. And so is this a regional business or is this a national business? We are in we've done deals in forty eight states, although I think in the next month we'll probably get all 50 Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, D.C. included in those. So so we're certainly national and concentrated really where construction is. Right. Texas, Florida, Maryland, California, certainly Utah, Colorado and Arizona. But yeah, we're we're in the all the flyover states. So certainly national and pretty diverse even on trade. Right. We we found ourselves doing a decent amount of renewable energy because that was our background.
[00:55:34] But we work with masons, you know, glazing companies, waterproofing companies, really everything was there was there any companies too big or too small for you to work with?
[00:55:51] You know, not not really, because to be to be too small, like you got to be a certain size and to to actually be on a commercial project, right.
[00:56:05] So if you've been awarded a project that almost is the verification, that doesn't mean we take everyone certainly got it. But, you know, it's not that easy to get a commercial project. So for the most part, the answer is probably no, although too big.
[00:56:21] There are other there are other solutions out there. Right.
[00:56:25] So if you if your annual revenue is 10 million plus, although we have some pretty big contractors, you have more than likely they're on to some other solutions that are more holistic for their business, give them different different kinds of flexibility.
[00:56:41] Got it. Got it. So. So all commercial, national.
[00:56:48] So how do people find you guys? How do they know that Billd is what it is and they should be using it to help with their business? So I guess from a marketing attention and awareness standpoint, how to folks find you?
[00:57:05] Our Web site, Bill Dotcom by the Dotcom can tell a story about our absolutely. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. So we you know, we had some struggles coming up with the name. We had two bad names, which I have to embarrass you mentioned. And we we came across like a copyright, a trademark infringement with potential with a really big bank. We only had the name for a few weeks that were like, OK, let's change names. And we really struggle with bills. But we found it. We were like, I'll give the credit to my co-founder on this one. And immediately we knew that was it. But then it was like the domain, like both anxiously, like search is the domain there. No way that's available and it's not know.
[00:57:54] So we settle with the what options do we have, like the dot net, the CO. And so we ended up with Billd.com, which was a lot of debate and frustration when we were starting the business. And it's like, man, what can we do to get access to Billd.com? And so we use every everyone's like, oh yeah, like you go hire these people, they'll do it. We did it all. We did everything. And the issue was it was own. The domain was owned and it was a private ownership. And you can't you cannot get access to those owners. You can call the registry company as much as you want. They're hiding. They will not. And so we did everything we went on the way back. There's you know, there's two versions of the way back where you can look at a domain and see what it look like. Four years down the road, every single version of the website was this like cannot find you. So there's no identification of it anywhere. And then we had we had sniffed some things out based on like Twitter and Instagram, where we took that bill and like found people we thought might have it and we still couldn't come up with it. And this were like a year, a year or so into it. And we had this guy that works for us. He's got a bad ass. He does contract work for us in Austin.
[00:59:04] And he. And I was I was just joking with them one day and he had asked about it and I said, Man, I'll give you ten thousand dollars if you can find this estimated price for caramelizing, because I did excited that we had to pay them, but he yeah. So he he stuck in his little ass and techies on which their offense, as I don't want to say it that way. And the way they found it was. Some random fire, yeah, of course, so they found some fiber domain called Billd and and and reached out to that person come to find out, it was like one of the tech guys, like uncles and neighbor in New Jersey. Yeah, some crazy story like that. Six degrees of separation, dude. Got got a cell phone number and ended up being this, like, really wealthy guy. And we didn't know a whole lot about him. I talked to him many times. Wealthy guy out of California, kind of older. I think he was older than 60. He he did not want to sell it. He didn't care about the money, didn't want to sell it because he had that as his email domain and how to write this letter of like, man, I put everything in this business like this is my background. This guy I am like, you have no idea how how much this means to us to get the domain and email back saying that's fine, fine. So I said we did pay for it. It wasn't a lot, but it was more easily one hassle with it. And yeah, I mean, now we don't look so Jenky we actually have Bill this is Yeah.
[01:00:41] This, that is a great story. And honestly, if you want to get anything done, if you want it bad enough, you'll go, you'll go and get it.
[01:00:49] Yeah. That's, that's, I feel like that's the case with me. So that's how did it covid impact you guys at all.
[01:00:57] I mean I feel like maybe for the better but also commercial. There's a lot of talk about commercial. I've heard two sides of that story. House covid impact you guys.
[01:01:06] It hasn't impacted us a lot. It has impacted some of our customers. But none that we know of have been terribly detrimental to the point where one of our customers is going out of business or had had major, major issues. So very thankful for that and thankful certainly for our customers. And so so not really, and I feel guilty even saying that, but but not really, I think and again, I feel bad. I think it's. No one has definitely brought us closer because we've been our core group has been in the office and, you know, my view is this is probably got a polarizing but like my view is that a lot of business owners say, oh, yeah, know, the remote aspect of our business hasn't really affected us, much like, yeah, we do zoom now as a team and like this. And I think that's bullshit. It is. I agree with you. Hundred percent it has. And quite frankly, if it hasn't, then your employees don't want to be there and you're not that good of a company. I agree. I agree with you. One hundred percent, certainly not universally and I want to qualify with that. But if you're if your employees don't want to be in the office and are going to hate working at home, I want to be where the energy is that your company sucks and they're in and it's not as binary as always in the office or not always in the office.
[01:02:36] I think you and I both know that there's flexibility there, but. The the technology, the proprietary nature of your scoring algorithms and your zip and your dip and your zip it, it's like at the end of the day, teams matter, teams matter and people matter. And, you know, I'm a team sport guy and like a football team sport guy. And these are people you go to war with and you're trying to do something meaningful. This conversation we're having, although great for an introductory conversation, like I would rather be there, you know, in Austin, having a bourbon or drinking a beer and really getting to know someone like that is and once you get to know them, you have to spend meaningful time with them for like six months or whatever to figure out if if all these people are willing to go to war with you. Right. You can't get that done at home on the computer and code. It doesn't it doesn't make any sense.
[01:03:36] Right. You just don't get the energy and you don't get the you don't get the don't have the problems. Right. The good stuff is fine, right. Yeah. The problems like how do you deal with adversity. And Edward and I say in this adversity. Adversity, not anniversary. Yes. And you know, hey everyone, huddle up right now. We got to stop what you're doing. We got to do this right now. Yeah. We got to figure out what's the best thing to do. You just can't do it. And, you know, if everyone's happy working from home, it's just like, well, what energy are you creating as a business? What you. You're you're bigger than your individual contributors, right, and if everyone's happy and you're just as efficient at home, like, are you really? Is the company really bigger than your individual contributors or is everyone kind of maxed out at what they can do? Well, there is some debate now.
[01:04:32] You know, I think there is some debate now of voices and in, you know, other business folks wondering if you can really build a billion dollar business remote. No, we run a remote firm, but we're relatively small, you know, 10, 20, 30 people, I think leveraging globalization and pricing resources in South America and India and other. I think that's totally fine. But core group, core group kind of stuff. I think you need to kind of be together. You need to meet these people, know these people. And I'm not saying 10 hours a day, every single day, no matter what, from eight to five. Punshon, that's no, I don't nobody thinks that you and I are saying that right now. But there is something about being together and being a team. And even if you got rid of your office, why don't you get a you know, we work membership that costs a couple thousand dollars a month and have everybody come in and congregate at least once a week on Wednesday, Thursday or Monday, Tuesdays or just you got to have that human connection so you can look in people's eyeballs and really see what's going on right now.
[01:05:50] Agree completely. And I, I think it's been I mean, it's just been an advantage for us because right before everything, we end up needing to expand our office for for growth. And we had an opportunity. Our neighbor was out. So we end up having this really big office right in March is when we expanded and got to finish out everything done. And then it was like, well, we have this huge office. It's like it's OK for a few of us to come in and some of our some of the roles in the business. It kind of does make sense to be remote most of the time and then just come check in because it's like a distraction and stuff. But it's been, I think, an advantage for us because while other people are struggling and having to, like, learn for the first time, we're like punching through it. We're like, go, go. I didn't have that that handicap. If we would have had it better, a remote, I mean, it would have been an issue. It would have.
[01:06:47] I've been running remote teams for probably a better part of ten years. We've had offices over the years, but we've got one hundred percent remote two or three years ago. Now I lose track of time. But at the end of the day. There's a balance, and it's not only one way, and it's not only the other way, there is something and I also believe, like this stuff is cyclical, right? So. You know, however long ago Facebook came on the scene and everyone got their their eyeballs and their heads attached to social media, and it was the only thing for like the last 10 years or 15 years. It's just like moving to a city, right? It's like this, too, shall pass and we'll come right back around. I don't know when, but we'll come right back around and people will be like, when can we go back to the office? Yeah, a lot of these guys and gals, their kids are at home. There's dogs barking, there's shit going on. And there's nothing better sometimes than go into your office sanctuary. And like you said, if you don't want to be there, Chris, then maybe it's not the right job for you. Yeah. Don't like old senior people. Yeah. Yeah. Do it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Stop going. How does that sound. Don't work there.
[01:08:06] So I think a lot of things will change given this covid thing. You know, I think people will move to the suburbs by the way. That's not probably not was not going to happen pre covid people weren't going to the suburbs. People are going camping, people are buying campers and caravans and traveling less.
[01:08:29] And so now you're kind of like it took this event for us to cycle through it again.
[01:08:33] So I think I think there is some efficiencies to be gained from working remote depending on the size of your organization and the role or the function that you serve. But I don't think this the notion of everyone being one hundred percent remote moving forward, I think that that would be silly for anyone to think that that's going to be the normal. So.
[01:08:52] Well, CEOs love to say it's it's not affecting their business at all, I think. Oh, no, don't worry about this problem. We got this under control. Yeah, it does. You know, whether it's long term or not, it definitely does.
[01:09:08] Well, this has been criticized, has been an excellent conversation. We have about three minutes left. And I'm going to hit you with this last question because you have a wealth of good advice for entrepreneurs. Like what piece of advice would you give one or two or three pieces of advice would you give the executives and entrepreneurs listening to this show as we wrap this up?
[01:09:30] Yeah, I mean, probably the best always at this, but. I think what I find is the most helpful, and this is probably more like starting something is is open up, excel, take a five minutes. I see so many times people just don't do this simple exercise. Open up Excel type in how much you can sell your product for, how much it's going to cost, how much it's going to cost to acquire the customer and end volume. Right. And get that number in front of yourself and say, is this going to work as a business? And it takes five minutes. I mean, I've seen like just so much time and energy spent on something and then I pop it up and put it in a song like this doesn't make any sense to do this. I'll give an example. Koshary it's coworking space, right? I had thought about opening a coworking space and I just I did the simple thing we worked does. I want to say if I did like a price per square foot, it was something like a seven X or so. What you would otherwise rent it for because of the amenities. I think it may have been like five X anyway. You figure the whole and I had seen many we were something in OK, square footage. They're probably renting out 50 percent of it now at a five x multiple. But they got to pay rent. Right. Everyone pays the rent. Right. Whether they own it and they're paying on interest or they're paying the commercial owner. And then what do you have to be like from an occupancy standpoint to make money? And I did it in this like five thousand square foot place that I was looking at. I just starting something because I was sick and tired of the outrageous prices. Yeah. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. If you're not over 70 percent occupancy, you're losing money now. And it's like then you see things like now I'm not trying to say that, like I saw faint and do all their stuff and like that over us. Oh, you can exercise like that, but I it that way. But whatever I'm on is a very rich mofo so I guess you can wipe his ass with money if he wants. I guess so. But if you do the simple exercise you're going to not I that there are other things I can do to make more money with less risk than this because then and then you start a full time person and this like all this other stuff, you're going, is this really profitable for the cappuccino makers, people cleaning the buildings, books, furniture, right? Yeah. And it's profitable like. Ninety five percent occupancy. Right. Of course. But the question is like, what's the downside to it? Can you realistically stay that way? And so we do this kind of stuff all the time, just like, OK, back in the napkin type stuff. If you haven't done it, do it. And and it should be like almost slide number one when you when you go to invest money or show someone about your business as you thought about it. Yeah. It's a pretty simple exercise.
[01:12:29] Now, that's great advice. Well, Chris, this has been awesome. If I'm ever in Austin, I'm certainly going to look you up and you know, anyone listening. These guys have built a great business. Chris Doyle, founder, president and CEO of Billd - a disruptive payment solution for the construction industry. They help contractors and suppliers grow their business with less hassle and less risk. Chris, thanks so much for being on the show today. It's been great. Likewise, Snyder. All right. Thank you, sir.
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