EP135: The Importance Of Knowing Who You Are: An Interview With Ron Nussbaum

Yeah, the million dollar question is who is Ron? Yeah, so I'm originally from Akron, Ohio. I went to the Marine Corps in 2007. When I got out in 2011, I ended up in Michigan. That's where my wife was from. She wanted to go back home. I never planned on going back. to Ohio. And I actually ended up farther north than I even started out, go figure there. So I was looking for what's that transition look like. And I kept coming across this foreman and training ad. And I had never had any construction experience. My background was automotive, reconditioning, body work, that kind of stuff. But finally, one day I looked in the mirror and was like, damn it, Ron, if you want to go be a foreman in training or be a foreman in construction. You can go do that. So I applied. I ended up getting a job. And that is kind of history for me in the residential construction space. I then spent the next over a decade growing and scaring a residential construction company to eight figures. Just great experience. I've done everything from digging the hose to running the company. Foreman, field supervisor, operations, leadership, management. Went to a couple hundred employees,30 crews, and had some escalated customers. So now I help take care of those escalated customers. I ended up building out communication software that was built for the residential construction industry. And that's what I currently do. And I host Construction Champions Podcast. So I really fell in love. I transitioned out of working in the construction industry and working in service of it. And I just fell in love with that. Like the impact that I could have is a lot more than just out working on houses and doing that aspect. And that really got me excited. That's what led to starting the podcast and what led to us meeting, which is amazing because I get to do stuff like this now, which fires me up because. This is going to be an amazing conversation. It's going to have a big impact for people.

Oh, really? You mean we spent all that time together and that never came up?

0311.

go. I was with 2-2 Golf Company at Camp Lejeune.

There you go. I did SOI here, and I took the short bus ride right over to Camp Lejeune and got dropped off. The rest is history on that.

Yeah, except for when we went to Iraq. So that was home base the entire time.

You know, if my plan was to be in longer, I really felt like God has a plan for you. I felt like it was a calling to be in the Marines. I had a tattoo on my neck. I spent 13 months getting it removed to just be a Marine. And then once I got there, I thought like, that's what I was going to do. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, like I had this conversation with her that this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be deployed. I love this shit. And that's like, if you're not alone for that ride, then this isn't going to work out. And what she was 100% on board for that ride. And. Then it ended up the Marine Corps. It just it wasn't. I blew my knee out in our Afghanistan workup and they pretty much told me is I can go sit behind the desk or I can just not be in the Marine Corps anymore. And I just couldn't picture myself as being in the Marine Corps and sitting behind a desk like that just didn't jive well for me. And that's really like what I say. I ended up in Michigan in this transition and found construction. That's what it was. Like, I wasn't planning on being in Michigan. Like, I thought I was going to be in Afghanistan. I thought I was going to be doing this and continuing my Marine Corps career. And that just, it didn't pan out that way.

The greatest post-military job you can have, no matter what you did in the military. I'm a firm believer that you can transition very well into construction.

No.

Oh, there's always that if you want to continue to serve.

So, yeah, no, I know what you mean. Use, if I was going to do that, I'd want to be SWAT or something.

But you've got to do all the BS to get there. I,

Anything below grade. Like that was foundations, basements, crossfaces, all of that. The easiest way to explain it is just anything below grade.

Retrofit. So we did a lot of foundation repair stuff, a lot of basement waterproofing, crossfaces. You know, a lot of houses just not build on the right foundation and you can retrofit that instead of come in and have to lift a house up and just pull a brand new foundation.

No, it was that same thing. I'm a pretty loyal person, so I stuck at it. You know, I had a chip on my shoulder to say because I was a high schooler. We got a high school diploma, four years in the Marine Corps, and everybody that I was being hired with had construction management degrees. And I was like, wow, I'm just going to have to outwork them. I'm going to have to run Nussbaum this and just show up and learn as much as I possibly can. Every day. So that's just what I did. Like I figured like that. Why other people were sleeping on me. Because they had this construction background or the college education around construction. I was there learning and figuring out how I could bring the most value to this. And that's just what I did day after day for over a decade.

So I've had some of my own businesses, but the main one that was built was somebody else's.

Not even as a foreman, man, as a labor on a crew running a jackhammer back behind an AC unit for 12 hours a day. And then. became a foreman and then became a field supervisor, which led to production management and then operations management. And like I said, running a operations department of over 100 people,30 crews, doing almost doing almost 25 million a year in annual revenue. And we went in about five years from a few million to that 25 million. So rapid scale, a lot of growth. You learn a lot of stuff along the way. One thing I didn't learn was I didn't want to build a business for somebody else anymore.

The entire state of Michigan.

Yep.

No, no. We had a proprietary system. We had stuff that we used that was exclusive to us. Okay.

Yeah, we had, we had all own prop, not, not necessarily all own products, but we had exclusivity on all products.

it or not, we did. We ran everything out of one office. Made it interesting.

we traveled. We just, we would travel and put guys up in hotels. And it was, that's just kind of how it was. It's expanded from there now to the point where it's big enough where there is other satellite offices and stuff. But in my tenure of being around, we did everything right there out of one central location.

Well, I mean, it's the construction industry. I mean, I believe that construction, if you treat it right and you run it as a business, the money's there, the profit's there. It's truly one of the only industries where you can see somebody in a brand new truck and you're not sure how they're getting any work done. And it's because the money is there. If you just do the right thing by your customers, by your employees and by your business and you just run it as a business and you don't just say, I have a construction company, you can drive profit margins.

Absolutely. And when you put the systems in place around that, it makes it very easy. Easy is not the right word because nothing's easy.

Yeah. It makes it duplicatable. I think that's where we get hung up a lot of times in construction is we don't make stuff duplicatable. Like, as I grew through the industry, like I just build on my experience. So I could look back at, you know, what was it like to be that laborer? What was it like when I was that foreman? How does that work? And, you know, my best memories of the construction industry is working out in the field doing that kind of stuff. But you have to make that stuff predictable. and able to be reproduced like ron nussbaum can't be an obnobody like if i go do it and i'm the only one that can go do it that's not going to work long term you have to be able to recreate that so somebody else can go do it you can develop somebody that can do it what does that look like what are the standards what kind of numbers can we do just without killing anybody because i'll tell you you know i'm I'm a component of the industry where I came through that, you know, you can maybe kill some people along the way and not like from an unsafe perspective, just from like the burn in it, just burn, burn, burn, because that's in my mentality. That's what I mean by like, it can't be an obnoxious. Like myself, if I go work a hundred hours a week, that's not sustainable for another crew might be sustainable for me, but like to do that 30 X. it's not going to work. So you have to figure out what are those systems, what are the processes that can get the same results that you desire out of multiples of people. So I think I was just a little bit of a tangent. I don't even know if I answered the question.

I think a lot of them are afraid to not be the guy. So we really get this feeling that we have to be the guy and be the one that's involved in everything. I mean, we're in construction. We like to fix things. We want to be the person that's out there, that's doing the stuff that creates the change or that transformation. But we don't have to be. Like, if you're a one-man operation and you want to be in charge of that and do all of that, and that's all you ever want to be, like, that's fine. But you have to be okay with that. You can't be like, I want to be this or I want to be bigger and go at it with this mentality of I have to have my hands on everything. I think a lot of the best construction companies from a business perspective I have ever been around or seen are companies that not maybe necessarily one of the people that are involved in running it is a construction guy. They're just a business guy. that can look at this in layman's terms and say, hey, this is what needs to happen from a business perspective. Like you're probably not the best sales rep, but you're probably not the best installer. I always used to say, like, I'm not the best at anything, other than I will work my ass off nonstop. And the problem is, is like I said, that's not reproducible. That's not duplicatable. But you can, I can find people that are better than me at everything that don't have to work their ass off because they're just naturally better. I'm like, I just kind of say, I'm just mediocre at everything, but I'll work until I die to get the job done at a high level. And we don't have to be that way. We can go find those people that are the best of the best. And let them run with it. And I think that's what's the hardest part for guys is to just let go of that and say, hey, you're so much better at this than me. I want you to just go do it and do it at the highest level you can. So I can focus on what I can do to help grow this business. So you have a thriving environment to work.

I would say it's probably a combination of all the above. Like it's who we are. When you look at contractors and builders, like why do you become that? Because you want to fix things or you want to build things. Like you want to be that one that is doing that. So it's naturally in our blood. To be the one doing it. And we feel like we need to be the fixer there. We need to be the one figuring out how to overcome the problems. But the greatest problem we can figure out how to fix and overcome is the business aspect of it. Like if we dove into that and learned how to overcome that and hired the right people to overcome the problems in the field and to do the actual building and to be responsible for that stuff, that's when we can really start to grow.

That would be amazing. Especially ones that came from the industry.

Trier and error and a lot of reading. and a lot of conversations in the mirror you can't you can't you're going like there's going to be failures i look back at it i have so many conversations around this kind of stuff nowadays and i look back at it and man i sucked like there was a lot of times i just sucked like i took bad advice did stuff that i necessarily not i shouldn't but like it just wasn't like what was going to be the best long-term results But we can only do what we like. We can only do all best at the moment. We have to be willing to continuously learn and understand that there's going to be failure along the way and be OK with that. So see, like that's something I suffer. Like, I don't like failure. Like, I mean, you could probably relate with this. You were in the Marine Corps. Like, failure is not an option, but it is. And it's something that you have to learn to accept and learn from. So I read a lot of books at my peak. i was reading 60 70 books a year because that's what i heard that you know the top ceos in the world would read so that was my end goal is i wanted to be that so i was head deep and like how do i become the best leader the best people person i can be and like i said i made a lot of bad decisions i sucked at it a lot when i look back at it now you know you think you're winning but when i look back like man i was bad And now I just, I think the best thing you can be is the best you. Like I just try to be the best Ron I can be and lean into who I am. Like there's stuff that I'm not good at and that's fine. I'm type A personality. I'm pretty direct. Like that's fine. I just need to know my audience and be able to correlate my message to them. I don't know. I don't need to change who I am. And I think as leaders and as people that are bringing up teams, no matter how much you lead into personal development, you can never lose sight of who you are. But I think that's what we lose because we're trying to develop and develop or develop. But that foundation of who you are is what you need to build off of. You don't necessarily need to change that. You need to figure out how to make that the best it possibly can be.

I mean, I think it's the best thing people can do. And I always look back, you know, like if I would have known before, where could I have been? Or where could we have been? It could be amazing. So I think it's one of the number one things you can do is to have a firm grasp on that and understand that it's okay. I think a lot of times like we find out, like we do all this stuff and then we look at it from the wrong perspective of like we take a personality test and we say, oh, this is what's wrong with me. No, no. This is what is right about me. This is how I just operate. How do I make that better for everybody around me and not use it as a crutch? Like I used to use my personality as a crutch. Like, it's just how I am. Like, it's just go read. I used to be like, go read my disc assessment. It'll tell you everything you need to know about me.

Oh, and we use it as a crutch. Instead of figuring out how we can use it to better everything around us, because it's all too often we take personality tests for the wrong reason. We take it. We take them to try to figure out what's wrong with us or what are our care characteristics about our personality that we think we need to improve. How about we take a personality test, understand who we are, like really take some time to understand who you are and then say. man, this is the stuff I really enjoy about me. How can I utilize that to better everybody around me instead of saying I need to get better at this stuff I'm just inherently bad at?

Which that's fine if that's what you want to do, but you have to be okay with that. Like I think we get this mixed. concept where I want to do that, but I want to have something else as well. So you have to figure out what you're okay with. I relate with what you're, you know, what I loved about construction is the hard aspect of it. Like, that's what I liked. I just liked that. Not everybody can do this. Like it's hard. Well, business is hard as well. It's the same. Like I'm always drawn into these situations where it's like, How hard could something be? I want to be involved with that. Like, hence, I have a startup now. Like, it's the hardest thing I've ever absolutely ever done. But I'm the same way. Like, I don't want to do projects around my house because I know they're never going to be good enough. I don't want to do work that I have to look at all the time because it's just not like I'm not going to be happy with it. I tell I mean, I tell my wife, like, I would just rather somebody come do it than me. Like I'm just not interested in necessarily doing that. Could I do it? Absolutely.

And then be thinking about it that, man, I could have done this a little bit different and it would have been better.

I think I don't, and to back up to what you were talking about, craftsman to business owner is how good of a craftsman could you be if you could just go do that? and not worry about everything else like if you built a business to where you could go out and do what you love and not have to worry about the the profits all that kind of stuff for like getting this job like if you could just go do your favorite part Like, what would that be worth to you? Because to me, that's worth the time to do that and get that stuff in place. I know guys that don't run their day to day, but they build a business because they got tired of the disaster and everything around it because they didn't feel like it made them the best the best they could be. And they were like, if I can get this situated, if I can bring the right people on it, I can start training people. It'll allow me to do the projects I love. I don't have to do all the projects. I get to do the ones I want to do. I can have somebody that understands the business. Like how good of a craftsman could you be if you spent a few years on actually building your business and getting it to a point where you could just be that craftsman and do what you love?

Yeah, no, it's absolutely what I'm saying. Cause I mean, you can build it. any way you want. But the thing is, is building it so it works and you can go do what you're best at or what you want to do. Maybe you get there and you decide, man, I really love the business aspect of this. Like what happened for you is like, I like this aspect a lot more than I actually like doing the craft, but you can never be. 100% the absolute best if you don't have all the other stuff out of the way. So you don't have to worry about it. Like you have other projects calling. You got to go do this estimate later that night when you, there's all this stuff. If you're the only guy that hoard you back from truly being how good you could be at your craft, that if you spent a few years, not even a few years, you could probably spend 12 months. Start getting this stuff in place to where you don't have to necessarily worry about those things that you don't like to do that aggravate you and make your days long and make it to where you can't be the best at your craft. And that's as much as guys don't want to talk about it sometimes, that is business building. But it's what it takes to be happy and to have some of that flexibility. So we don't just go through this working 100 hours a week, always like not getting to where we need to go. So like you don't need to build a business to just be the boss and have this big business. I say I say this a lot is like you have to what what is it that you need? Like what is that that you need and what would make you the happiest? We'll build that like. Don't feel like you need to build a $5 million, $10 million company because that's what everybody else wants to go do. If you can build a million dollar company and it gives you the life that you want to have and you have some employees and you get to do what you want to do every day, that's perfectly fine. But you have to understand what that is. Like, what do you want? So then you can go do that. I think we don't do that enough. We just end up going out and we're just building a business. not even necessarily building a business. We're just building chaos all around us, hoping that, you know, one day we sell the right job and it'll clean everything up and then it'll make it all happy. And that never happens because you don't have no clear vision on what that right job even is.

It's that unicorn. It's out there somewhere. Everybody's looking for it.

Or unfortunately, what happens is a lot, it'll bankrupt you because you're not ready. I've watched too many guys. They get that job, but then it's a disaster. And it ends up being what will ruin the company.

Yeah, so we're a customer communication platform that's built for the residential construction space. I help your customers talk to you and you talk to your customers. Very easily put. I get you out of your emails, no more text messages, no more of that stuff. We get everything in one place and then we organize it by project. So what we are is a tool. to help you be great at communication.

Yeah, we're a standalone that works really good alongside of other construction management, project management software. So we just do communication. I want to be really, really good at that. Like I feel that the construction tech space is really bloated. with a lot of companies that try to be everything in awe and that makes everything mediocre at best i think we can relate with this just in construction like if you try to do too much you end up not being able to do everything effectively so i made a decision to just do communication it's the biggest customer complaint that we have in the industry it's never the guys it's never really the work it's the communication that customers are upset about. So I'm focused on just doing that. We're going to work alongside with integrations and stuff with other software in the construction industry. And my goal is to really start bringing to other win-win solutions for contractors and builders when it comes to software. It doesn't have to be intimidating. It can be easy and it can be simple. Because you got guys like me that came from the industry that are now building software that understand what it's like to be there. So that's what I see happening for just construction software in a whole, is we really start creating these win-win opportunities.

Yeah, we're currently building out a Zap right now.

100 you need to

I'm, me and you are on the same lingo with that. I mean, I look, I get these looks in these meetings where I'm like, here's what we need to do. Cause this is what I hear. Cause I'm doing, I'm doing the demos. Like I'm talking to my customers. You know what they want? they want a la carte software. They want everything's different for every business. And they want to be able to pick and choose what works best for their business. And I'm like, that is what it should be. It's why one of the reasons I'm doing what I do is because communication, like I talk to these other, the bigger companies, you know, they're upfront is like, you know, it's not, we didn't build out what you build out for communication because we don't have to, because we're just trying to provide a mass solution. And that's what's wrong with it is like we should we should have the solutions and we should all work together. It should all talk to other is builder comms for everybody. No, but there should be solutions that work together to create the win for that contractor and builder that then their customer wins because of that. And the more of that we do as a as a software industry in service of the construction industry, the better everything will become. the better the reception would be, the better the adaption would be because guys were actually be getting what they want. And to me, that's how it should be. And if people were listening, they're going to get me on a black hole about Silicon Valley and how they ruined the construction industry because they just were early adapters. I truly believe the construction industry are early adapters. And now we're just jaded. Because we had all this software come out that sounded good, looked good on paper, but didn't function and didn't implement in the industry at first. So now everybody's hesitant about software because they tried stuff out that didn't end up working because it wasn't necessarily designed for them. But there's a whole new realm. I'm here to tell everybody there's, I'm not an, I'm still an obnobody that I came from the industry and have a software company, but I'm not. as much as I used to be. There's other guys out there like me that have said, this is enough. This is what we need a solution for. Let's build it and put it out there for people.

Yeah, which is what they should do. They should be really, really good at the project management aspect. Because that's where you start to just get mediocre. I don't think the construction industry is big enough that if you can just fix the problem as niche as it is, I'm pretty niche. I do communication. But that industry is big enough. that this will end up changing my whole family's life long term because we're going to build this out and I'm going to stick to my guns of partnerships and collaboration. It's better than me building out something else that sucks. Like that's just do what we do really, really good and follow through on our promises. and not worry about building out a scheduling aspect or a customer management, all this other stuff. Like that's just help guys communicate better with their customers. And that right there will have the biggest impact I can possibly have on the construction industry.

100%. And I think that's why I'm so like just hyper-focused on that because that's what I believe. You should just do what you're good at. And other people are good at other things. Let them do it and work together, no matter what you're doing, whether it's a construction business, life, software, anything. Like there's different people that are good at different things. Like focus on that. Like I say, I can only be the best Ron I can be. Let me be that and then surround myself with people that pick up where I lack. And by doing that. everything becomes amazing and i don't have to try to worry about trying to do stuff that i'm just inherently bad at

when you talk about doing those other things like it's never going to be as good because your heart's not in that like if i decided i wanted to do put a scheduling aspect to this so you're like your tire guy like you're not excited about that like i'm excited about fixing communication that that carpenter It's excited about doing that. He's not excited about doing tire. I want to be excited about doing scheduling. So that you lose that component where you have that emotion, where you're excited about what you're doing, where you love going and doing it or being involved with it. And then that's when you start hating getting up. It's because now you've got all this stuff that you brought on yourself. Because you're going to grow this out instead of just being really good and figuring out how to get in front of more of your customers that want your service.

I guarantee you it won't be as good as the best that's on the industry already.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, it's, you know, that's what gets a lot of people excited. And when I got, when I talked to them is like, You're just focused on this. Like this is niche enough, but it's a big enough market where this is actually exciting. Like you can you can have an impact, which, you know, a lot of people take stuff out there and there's an impact to be had. But it's so broad that it gets watered down instead of just really focusing on just having that impact, understanding like this is who we are. This is what we're doing and just go do it the best you possibly can. Is it probably going to make things harder? Absolutely. But that's what makes us better at what we do.

I love it. And you know what's amazing about when you focus in on something is because now with the advances in AI. Like, I don't know how familiar you're all with like Grammarly and stuff and how it has tone detention in there. Cause we're so laser focused on providing the best communication software that now we're looking at, cause I'm completely anti automation. I think like that's where communication goes wrong is when you automate it. But how can we use AI to just make us better communicator? It's with that tone detention. It's like a red light, green light. yellow light on incoming messages that we can pick up on total minutes that guys might miss or on a message that you're getting ready to send out before you send it out it pops up but you probably don't want red don't send this hey

like being able to add this stuff in there that that helps make us better communicators so like that stuff that is in the product roadmap as we continue to build this out to just Because we're laser focused. I can focus on that instead of focus on like seven other different things that we're trying to get off the ground. Like all we're trying to do is get the best communication platform out there going forward.

Man, I am in the middle of 100 Million Leads by Homozi, and it's the best book I've read this year. You mean this one right here? Yes, that one right there. Absolutely. So I read. I still read, I don't read 60 to 70 book because it's just not like, I just can't get anywhere doing that. So I, I'm a 75 harder. So I read 10 pages a day consistently. And that book is now making it into my office. And I always say is when a book makes it from beside my bed down into my office, almost every day, it is a damn good book. And it is.

Yeah. Yes, I have. And that was a good book.

He's amazing. And he gives everything away for free. It's what I love about it. It's how I think it should be.

So it's pretty amazing, ain't it?

rip. I mean, I don't necessarily have any motivating speech or anything, but I will say to what you just said, there's no software where ever. fix non-effective communication. Like if you don't know how to have a conversation, like software is not going to fix that. All we do is just make it easier for you to have a conversation. There's still fundamentals that you have to understand on how to deal with clients and how to set expectations. So that goes with any software. I think we can think of it as we implement something. It's going to be this quick fix. It's going to fix everything. But any software that you do, there's work that has to happen with that. There's adaption. And it's never going to just be this fix if you're just inherently bad at it. Like Builder Comms doesn't work if you don't want to talk to your customers. Like you have to want to have these conversations. We just make it easier for you to have them. But same thing with the scheduling software. If you don't want to schedule your customers and have a time when you're showing up to their house, like it's not going to fix your business. So you have to inherently understand that and be willing to fix that stuff.