Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

Samantha C Prestidge: Most of us know that the tech available in construction is an absolute mess. Too many solutions built in a vacuum with not enough or not any real world input.

But Tyler Campbell is changing that with field proof. Welcome to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence the podcast where we cut through the noise to uncover what truly drives success. In the building industry, I'm Samantha. C. Prestige your guide in simplifying operations and helping you make managing your team simpler.

You can explore our past episodes@constructiontrailblazers.com and start your journey to excellence. So as the founder of Field Proof, Tyler's on a mission to make sure that the tech hitting job sites actually works for the people using it. Today we're diving into the massive disconnect between tech companies and the field.

Why bad tech is costing the industry millions, and how Tyler's shaking things up to fix it. Fix. All right, so Tyler, you've [00:01:00] built this. Super awesome testing network that actually compensates industry pros for their feedback. Talk to me about like, what sparked this idea and why do you think no one's done it like this before?

Tyler Campbell: So the idea was sparked by pain. All right? Pain and anguish. And, uh, also a little bit of complaining on, on my end, uh, if I'm honest, I was a structural detailer for 10 years, so I detailed steel, I modeled things in 3D. That was my day job at a computer working in the commercial construction industry.

And so I was. Honestly, I'm, I still am. I am passionate about technology. I'm passionate about the benefits that the industry can see from leveraging technology and finding new ways of doing things. I love that. However, , a lot of times I would see issues with new products coming to market and they would not fit.

It wouldn't even fit [00:02:00] into a workflow. It would be like, who came up with this? Who came up with this idea? Right. And, and it wasn't even that they were trying to reestablish a workflow or re reconfigure how things get done. It was, it was just completely cockamamie. And, and I don't know where it came from right now.

When I talked to people that are in the industry across the board, that is a very common sentiment, very common sentiment. It is. They're annoyed. By the technology. They're not excited by it. The people that are excited about it are probably like 15% and they're excited about where it can go. I actually might even fall into some of that 15% if I'm honest.

But the thing is, is like how do we get the 85% of people out there that are still going, Hey, this sucks. To start giving us the reasons why it sucks so we can make it better. Like if we're really gonna change our industry, it needs to be a feedback loop. [00:03:00] There needs to be a feedback loop. And so for me, I started with the pain that I had that, of experiencing a product and, you know, turning it on, getting really excited about it and being just completely let down and realizing this thing has no practical application whatsoever.

It's a showpiece at best, a concept, but they build it as this game changer. Like, okay, it's not a game changer right now. Can we kind of be honest about that? Maybe in 30 years it could be like maybe with a lot more development and a lot more, you know, changes to the hardware and all this. Maybe it will be.

It's a good step. But let's talk about it like it's a step, not the actual thing that will change the game. Because the reality is people in the field aren't gonna use it. Like, , I saw it a lot. And so I, and when you talk to people out in the field, this is a very common sentiment, is this kind of gets in my way.

Now you talk to the technology community and it's like, this is gonna be [00:04:00] amazing. Oh my gosh. Everybody needs and mind blowing. Yes. Right. That's the sentiment that I'm getting out of them. And, and so I'm like, all right, Hey guys, let's get in the room. Let's, let's really get in the room and get some unbiased feedback.

From people that are trying to use the products. But , the products are working against them, not working with them.

Samantha C Prestidge: Mm-hmm. So that's the whole idea. I, first off, I think anytime that you can jump into a market where like there's very clear pain and anguish and cockamamie as you said, like that's.

That's a, a great idea, but I wanna touch on a few things. You said like going back to the beginning of when you find tech and you're like, who even created this workflow? I mean that this happens even outside of construction. I was testing a new like CRM and business management tool and I was like, awesome, it's gonna be this all-in-one.

I can get rid of like these three other platforms. Yeah, big part of it was a scheduling tool, but the scheduler doesn't actually [00:05:00] send a calendar invite, it just sends an email confirmation and I. Would I ever use this? Right. Yeah. But also touching on, you said feedback loop and I, I don't wanna brush over this because it's so important to have someone ask those unbiased questions.

Mm-hmm. Because I think if you just had a tech company with maybe customer support or those sales people asking the field guys first off, yeah. The actual like field guys, like they don't wanna be sold to, so they don't trust the questions you're asking. And second off, like a lot of times those sales customer support people, they don't know how to ask the right questions or they don't know how to really dig deeper into certain things.

Yeah. So we need people like you as that conduit to really get to the root cause.

Tyler Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the people, that are in the sales roles, some of them might actually be of the industry and have a lot of that experience. , and so they, they kind of have context for what their clientele are going through.

Many, many times though, that's not really the case. You know, I, [00:06:00] I'll say Silicon Valley as kind of a sweeping term mm-hmm. Of tech bro, tech gal, whatever you want to call it. Right. Like, yeah. You know, technology is their focus and that's not a bad thing. I'm not gonna knock that. However, in a lot of cases, they lack the context of what the people in the field are dealing with.

And so, yeah, they don't have the ability to connect back to the field and just have the conversation and learn. Mm-hmm. Like, because really, I mean, innovation comes through learning. Innovation comes through discovery. And many times it's really hard for people outside of the industry to get access to.

'cause they just don't know the industry.

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Campbell: They don't, they don't know who to turn to. They don't have the network, they don't have people that they can talk to. So for me, I think it's super important to try to help build this conduit because Okay. Like, I mean, if we take the CRM example that we had, you know, you just talked about like, okay, that's a, that's a great idea.

For sure to have a calendar integrated in [00:07:00] there, but. That's also not like the way tech innovation's really gonna work. It's, it's like building a building, right? We gotta start with the logical steps and we'll build into it over time. We get the feedback, we roll out new features, we build on it.

We make it better over time. But right now, the biggest problem on the ConTech side, I'll point to, because I would argue. That, that feature's probably coming to that CRM that you're using, right? Like I would, I would argue it's probably on the horizon because enough people have talked about it, but they have good funnels and channels to be able to get the feedback and then implement it and put it in the roadmap and build it out with ConTech

that doesn't always exist. Like there's, there's, there's the client feedback. Which isn't bad, but what are the other people that aren't buying your product gonna say about it? Like what are their hangups?

Yeah, because

Tyler Campbell: your clients are used to the warts, they're, they're used to the workarounds, [00:08:00] but the people that don't use your product, they're gonna be kind of brutally honest and they're gonna tell you what they really think.

Like feedback is gonna be the lifeblood. For these tech companies as we move down the road. And I, I think it's so often overlooked because people just, it's hard, it's hard to get access to people in the field. It's really hard. I mean, I had to, uh, 'cause our testing network's still young. I had to leverage a lot of my connections to go out and find a bunch of superintendents for a specific project and I was able to make that happen.

We pulled in ten soups, uh, from all across the United States to sit down and give feedback on. Basically validate a product that we're helping a client, you know, build.

That was extremely difficult. But to the client, they were looking at me like, oh my gosh, dude, what sort of wizard magic?

And I'm like, well, here's the thing, I know the industry. And so that's, it's a good start for me to be able to know the [00:09:00] industry and connect those people. But how can we do that at scale? And that's kind of the next iteration of field proof, is how do we scale this up and make this something that's accessible to a lot more people so that we can make the industry a better place.

And this is just something I'm super passionate about. I've been in the industry for over a decade. I've seen momentum. I've seen, you know, change. I've seen things grow and get better, but at the same time, like I've seen. Bigger problems that need to be solved. And I think this is one of the ways that we can start doing that.

So I, I get pretty impassioned about it if you can't tell. I,

Samantha C Prestidge: I love the passion on things and I, I think also what I really appreciate about the concept is when you're talking about accessibility, you're not just talking about connecting ConTech with the decision makers, which are often the people that have been out the field for a few years, no disc to them.

They have the experience, but they've been outta the field for a few years now. They're really like. Focused on some of the high level, more office based stuff. And you're super like that accessibility is talking about like, let's get the people in the field that are actually using it, [00:10:00] not just the decision makers that hold the check to say, yep, let's integrate this, but the people that are actually using it to say, this is what I need and this is what I don't need.

So you've had a lot of these conversations now with a lot of superintendents. What's something that you've been learning along the way?

Tyler Campbell: All right. So I, I'll keep it kind of broad because I wanna respect the, you know, respect the boundaries of my, my client, right? But at the same time, I think it's very important to realize, uh, the sups at that level are suffering because of the decision makers.

Samantha C Prestidge: Hmm.

Tyler Campbell: Really quite a bit.

Samantha C Prestidge: There should be some people shifting in their seats right now. Like this is this, there's a statistic from to like 20 18, 20 19, so it's a little outdated, but I don't think that things have gotten better. But the statistic was that it was like 90% of leaders thought that they made tech decisions with their employees in mind.

Only like 52% of employees felt the same way. So you had half of your workforce [00:11:00] thinking like, Hey, you make kind of shitty decisions that I have to deal with in my day to day. Yes.

Tyler Campbell: Yes. Yeah. And I think that that's the case too. And what's, what's really interesting is it's not necessarily internal. It's not necessarily internal.

A lot of times these soups might be working with a gc or they might be working with somebody else that has their own systems that they have to adapt to. Mm-hmm. And it's all disparate parts. It's all over the place. Some of these guys have to spend four to 10 hours a week trying to find data, things to do their job.

Like, guys, this isn't better.

Samantha C Prestidge: This is not working. We need something different. It's not

Tyler Campbell: working. Like, and, and so how we solve that, I think, I think it's just awareness. Like you have to know if you have a problem before you can take measures to start to fix it. And most of the time I don't feel like construction tech actually has.

This idea [00:12:00] that they, they might be broken or they might be causing more brokenness by bringing a product to market. So what I'm really advocating for is think.

Samantha C Prestidge: On that note, like the kind of on the note of ConTech being complacent, and I don't know if I might ruffle some feathers with this. I'm pretty sure I'll, I was in

Tyler Campbell: Join the club.

Join the club. I, I

Samantha C Prestidge: I'm used to

Tyler Campbell: this, right?

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah. As long as we're smiling, people can't be too mad at us, right. Um, I don't have

Tyler Campbell: it all figured out. I'm not gonna say I did, but this is where I'm at right now.

Samantha C Prestidge: I was sitting in a meeting with a commercial GC and we're talking about tech. And really, they really needed to do like a software evaluation.

Like what really should your tech stack be looking like? I always advocate like, you should be picking software based off of your processes, not building processes around software. Right. I think a lot of times we do it backwards. In any case, they skip that entire process and they're like, well, we're just gonna go with Procore.

Because [00:13:00] of how widely used it is and how many other subs already are already familiar with Procore. And in this meeting they were talking about the shortcomings, the workarounds that they would have to plan on because they're choosing Procore and they still move forward with it. So. For me, I'm like, I, I want field proof to blow up because I think we need smaller kind of startup tech companies, challenging the complacent big guys because they're not doing things completely well.

It's just that they're the most known brand and that's why we're choosing them.

Tyler Campbell: Oh boy. All right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna resist the urge to bite that one because I, I really want to, but I've got friends and I, I wanna, I wanna keep 'em. So I, I think one of the things you, you said is very spot on though, is that like there are bigger companies out there that are collecting their subscription fees or what have you, and they're fat and happy.

They're really happy and, hey, that's great. They built a thing [00:14:00] and apparently people found value in that thing. They've implemented it. Good on you. But I agree. I think that there needs to be other contenders out there in the space to shake things up. We need to put the big guys on their heels a little bit because ultimately what that does for the, it makes the industry a better place.

It does. It's make the industry a better place. And what's what's wild to me on that note is hearing the complaints from some of the soups on, on some of these bigger platforms that they're having to use. They don't like them. They like, and I'm, I'm not gonna point fingers at anyone. I'll just say just in general, all of them.

They do not like them. And it's because of the I, I used this term the other day and I love it, the digital spelunking that they have to do to find crap. Now, okay, I will defend my ConTech brethren in some way, shape, or form. Sometimes it's just disorganized. [00:15:00] It's not set up right that causes issues. I give you that.

Mm-hmm. I'll.

Tyler Campbell: But even if it's set up really well and they're really dialed, a lot of times they still have some issues with that. We, we talked to a lot of different people across the United States with a lot of different methodologies and processes. That was like nine out of nine, that said that.

Um. Really, really interesting. Uh, so I, I think it's important that the little guys can come in and challenge the space. And I think it's, it's good for the big boys to be put on their, you know, put on their toes a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, Hey, step it up. We, we need you here. Stop being complacent.

Be bold. We need you to be bold. , and a lot of them are, they think they are, they think they're being. I mean,

Samantha C Prestidge: they need to light a fire under their ass and it can either be a little candle that they can blow out quickly and, and get on board with the changes. Or it could be a big ass bonfire and you know, [00:16:00] don't know what's gonna happen after that.

Right, right, right.

Samantha C Prestidge: I appreciate what you're saying right about that, that digital spel, like, I'm not even gonna say it's spelunking, spelunking,

Tyler Campbell: spelunking, yes.

Samantha C Prestidge: Um, but yeah. Hey, diving.

Tyler Campbell: Yeah.

Samantha C Prestidge: I worked with a company once and, and. The, this one employee in particular was kind of singled out as like, oh, they're, it's like the old dog can't teach them new tricks type of thing.

We really struggle to get them to adopt changes in, in new tech. Right. Sat down one-on-one with this person. You know, you and I have talked a little bit before about a lot of times people aren't asking. These people questions, right? Like they don't have a, a lane for this. And so I sat down one-on-one with him.

I'm like, Hey, just tell me like why, why you're not doing this. Let's just be open and honest here. What are the challenges? Yeah. It's like, well the tech that they were pushing out was not working for his day-to-day, so it wasn't that he didn't wanna learn. It was just like, this is over complicating.

The data entry and the workflow for what [00:17:00] he needs to do. So why would he not just do it in a Google sheet or in some other kind of workaround? Right. Exactly. I mean, Google Sheets make me cringe too sometimes, but it's like, yeah, why? If that is the simplest option and that is what's most efficient, yeah, there's a high risk if it breaking, but why would I force you to do four to 10 hours of extra data entry for something,

right?

Samantha C Prestidge: When this is a feasible option. And so sometimes it's not just. The old dog that can't learn new tricks, it's just that the tricks they have to learn suck.

Tyler Campbell: Yeah. And, and sometimes there's that internal like politicking that goes on at companies, which is a thing that gets in the way of innovation a lot of times is that, oh, he's just an old dog.

He doesn't wanna adapt. Uh, but you, a third party came in and you were able to uncover the fact that no, he just doesn't like what they're asking him to do because of X, Y, Z. Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's take that back to leadership and let's say, Hey, I heads up here is y and if they go, well, well, [00:18:00] they blow it off.

That's on them. That's on them. He's telling them what he needs. They are not listening to that. Now, there has to be a weight and balance to it. You can't

absolutely

Tyler Campbell: make, you can't let every feature be built or adopted. You can't come to everybody, but you can do your best to listen and try to adapt to what the general consensus is.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah, there has to be some feasibility in that's hard feedback that you're paying attention to.

Tyler Campbell: Very hard. Very hard. So there's grace in that. I get it. But you know, I, I, I think often we just kind of blow off Steve or whatever his name is, you know, out in the field just being like, oh, grumpy old Steve over there.

You know, he doesn't want to try out the new thing. And like, he's always that way. He just likes his paper and pencil well, right? Yeah. Thing is though, is, I'll bet you Steve really likes a new truck. He really likes a new this or a new TV or a [00:19:00] Traeger Grill or something like that. Why does he like that?

Because it does something for him. He enjoys it. If we made tech that he felt the same way about, don't you think that he would want to use that too? Like it's kind of that I'm gonna say. Simple. It's simple ish, but you have to give him that reason. He's gotta be able to look at that and be like, dude, that saves me five hours a week.

That means I can just go home on time. And that's demonstrated. That's clear to me. I can see it. I guarantee you, old Steve out in the field would gladly adopt something that saves him five hours, especially if he's out there running around like crazy. But you gotta demonstrate it to him. You gotta show him, and he's gonna be hard on it, but you gotta show him.

Samantha C Prestidge: I mean that that it is simple, [00:20:00] right? I know you were kind of hesitant about that, but it's simple because it really just goes back to this ConTech, understand their customers, and it's so easy in any business, in any industry, whoever you are, to lose sight of, well, what's the value for my customer?

And I think. Oftentimes, at least what I see when I'm doing my own research on like, Hey, what's the best tech stack for this client? A lot of times what I see in the hero section of the website for this tech company is data insights. And they really drive with like, oh, now you can make better decisions with the insights so that it's a

dashboard.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah. Like, oh my God, look at this. I'm like, but the amount of freaking work that they would have to do to then get to these awesome insights, not feasible. Like that's not gonna work for them, so why are we driving that selling point?

Tyler Campbell: Yeah. Right. You know, I mean, I, I think it's, it's great. It's great that we can get insights.

Hmm.

Tyler Campbell: Problem is how do you connect all the tubes back to it to make it work? And that's the hard, that's a hard part too, because if you've got [00:21:00] information in 50 different places, how do you build back to the dashboard? So you got one single place to look at and you don't have logins every, everywhere, everywhere.

For every different contractor that you work for. Yep. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of the state of the industry right now. It's all over the place. Like who can blame 'em for being pissed off? Really? Who can blame 'em?

Samantha C Prestidge: Cranky Steve has a point. Yeah. Okay.

Tyler Campbell: Yeah.

Samantha C Prestidge: Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead. No, you're fine,

Tyler Campbell: you're fine.

I'll get spooled up in another direction.

Samantha C Prestidge: Let the rage out a little bit. Um, so on that note, right, we've got what's really , the customer value that you're pointing at, the millions amount of, of apps that you have to sign into. I'm curious to know either from the. The interviews that you've done with sups or previous industry experience, where else do you see Contech just really missing the [00:22:00] mark and kind of missing an opportunity in the market to be better

Tyler Campbell: user experience.

I want to say, like, okay, so I think what we talked about out simply there and, and we kind of touched on it a bit, was. Market validation, validate that there's actually a need for the thing. Mm-hmm. That's one angle of it. Like do they need it? D does it solve a problem? Is it gonna help 'em, or is it just gonna be noise?

Let's figure that out first. And I feel like that's kind of the first bucket that we talked about. Second bucket is just making it simple to use. And I think we kind of glazed on that, but I think that that's an area that we're missing the mark on a lot. A lot we are a lot of tech companies. I'll say, and I've seen this because I spoke to 'em, is that they'll go out to some generic testing website where they can get 30 people to do a click through test for them on an [00:23:00] app.

Who are these 30 people? They don't really know. It's not really their ICP. It's some random now. The company that they go to might say, oh, these are people from this industry. Okay, but what does that mean if they say this is, these are people from the construction industry. Okay. Is it residential construction?

Is it home? Is it home building? Is it residential plumbing? Is it residential electricity? Like what? What are we talking about here? Are we talking about people that work in data centers? Are we talking about large general contractors? Are we talking about an owner? Like there's so many different little segments of this.

So you need to know who your ICP is and then test with them because they have the context for what they need. And so often we cheap out when it comes to ux. We cheap out when it comes to user experience, the testing and the research components of that. And that is an area where, [00:24:00] for me, my ultimate goal is to be able to hand something over to my dad.

Love you, dad. Hand something over to dad and say, here you go man. Run it. And if he doesn't, throw it across the room and start dog cussing it. I think I got a winner. You know what I mean?

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah, yeah. Right. You've got some cranky, Steves listening. Let's back up. ICP being that ideal client profile or persona and then Tyler clarified UX being, being user experience.

But yeah, like it needs to be simple to use their software where I'm like, if I have to schedule a demo with someone to understand how to use this, absolutely not like. If eventually I might, but I wanna be able to get in there and poke around on my own first. And if I have to, then if I have to talk to you first and have you explain things to me, I'm, no, I'm going somewhere else completely.

Tyler Campbell: Yeah. Yeah.

Samantha C Prestidge: And

Tyler Campbell: UX is a process, you know, it can't be perfect out the gate. Like, we know this, you add a new feature in that changes things around, like [00:25:00] it's a process.

So many of these products are just like crapped out by the engineering team. And the engineering team understands it, but it hasn't gone through any sort of stress testing for the industry professional.

And you know, it needs to be so simple that like my 6-year-old daughter can use it. You know what I mean? And it's not just because of an intelligence thing. That's not it. It's because of a speed thing.

I have to be quick to be able to get to this, to this, to this, so I can get that information.

I. Very quickly, and that's an area I feel like a lot of conec is lacking right now. Some companies are pressing into this. They are very good, but many, many, many of them have not even considered what the user experience of their application is. Like they just, the glaze past it, they get it from the engineering team and they put it out in the wild to see if it sells.

And they're like, why isn't it selling? I don't get it. Why can't [00:26:00] anybody use it? I'm like. Yeah, because it looks like crap, man. It looks like crap. It doesn't make sense. Crap's everywhere. Like I, I was looking at one the other day, I'm like, oh boy. Oh, oh boy. This is, this is a project and a half just in itself because it was built in an engineering environment and it made sense to the engineers that were making the thing, making the app.

But you hand it off to a construction pro and they're like, what the crap is this? They get frustrated. They never fully adopt it because it's frustrating to use. You burn a bridge with them, you start to lose trust with these guys and gals. 'cause they're like, I don't know.

And so they hear your brand name and they're like, nah, I've tried it before. Like, you've gotta make that first impression. Stellar. Absolutely stellar. Focus on that first impression. If you can win them there, then you're gonna be setting yourself up for long-term success. You're gonna [00:27:00] eliminate your churn, it's gonna make your sales go up.

Like there's so many things that ripple out of just having a good user experience that is fully baked and, and showing that to your clients and showing that you're an open book and saying, I'm willing to accept any feedback that you have. Please tell us how we can get the, get this better, make this better for you.

Mm-hmm. For you, what can we do? And again, I think there are some ConTech companies out there doing this really well, but then there's a lot, a lot of them that are not, and those are the ones that need to wake up because they have a great idea, but it's got a layer of dust and grime all over it that we gotta knock off so people can see the pearl underneath.

You know what I mean?

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah, no. Those are the ones that are lighting their own bonfire on underneath, right? Yes. This is making me think of, just, I wanna shout out. A guest will have on in a few weeks, , Bryant Solomon with Control Core. What was cool about them is he comes from the construction industry, they're like very [00:28:00] clear what's our MVP, our most valuable?

Product and feature in the software. Their whole goal was like, we need to replace QuickBooks for construction. 'cause that sucks. So how do we replace QuickBooks for construction? Let's just start with credit card reconciliation. 'cause that is such a big pain point. And then build out from there, figure out the user experience from there.

So I think they're a great example of a company that's doing it right, but no, to your point. It's built in a vacuum of engineers, and even if you have a quality control team, they're still familiar with your mission as a tech company. They're still familiar with what you're trying to do, so you need like the ignorant, fresh eyes to come look at it and tell you what's, what's wrong, what they, yeah.

Like you just need total clean slate opinions.

Tyler Campbell: Ignorant, fresh eyes with context. Yes. Could we make that an acronym?

Ignorant fresh eyes with context. I think that that matters the most. It's, you know, uh, it's not just ignorant eyes. I feel like most of the [00:29:00] time we ignore the processes that people, have already baked in to their day-to-day job, and we don't make the tech very accessible to them to adapt to their workflows.

We don't make it flexible, but also easily flexible, right? Yeah. Like, and again, like I realize like I'm saying this stuff and like this is a very difficult topic. It's hard to build a tech product. It really is. My heart goes out to the people doing it. However, it doesn't have to be as hard as we have made it.

We need to start asking people how we can make our products better. I think it starts there. I.

And

Tyler Campbell: then eventually it's gonna start getting better over time. And, and I don't know. I'm excited to be kind of leading that charge right now.

It's

Tyler Campbell: just something like, I'm really, really pumped about because again, like I felt this pain coming up in the industry and , for me, this is a [00:30:00] mission.

This is a full on war against bad tech. And it's, and bad tech, meaning the people that don't want to change. The people that said that's good enough. Mm-hmm. Like the people I wanna work with are the ones that say, no, we're not good enough. We're never satisfied. We wanna get better every single day, and we're gonna make changes to our product, even if it means a lot of pain for long-term gain.

Those

Tyler Campbell: are the types of products that I wanna support and I want to make better because we're gonna wash the rest of the ones out by doing that. Right. Nobody's gonna want this. The bar is gonna be higher. And that's what we need. We need a higher bar for ConTech.

Samantha C Prestidge: You're, you're the general, the, the doctor of the contec world, just cleaning up all the sicky crappy features, helping to, to diagnose the problem.

And I think that's, I dunno if I

Tyler Campbell: wanna clean up the sick, I, I don't know about that, but, you know. Okay. Well.

Samantha C Prestidge: General,

Tyler Campbell: I'm okay with

Samantha C Prestidge: being able to [00:31:00] diagnose what the problems are. Right. Really like what is that feedback. And don't just like pump features out to pump it out. Yeah. Now we've dissed a little bit on leadership, making poor decisions.

We've dissed quite a bit on Contech, let's also maybe not dissing our listeners. But if we look at the other side of the table, what's something that you do wish more field teams understood about the tech space?

Tyler Campbell: I think that they do have a voice. , I give, I give a hard time to the tech side for sure, but also a vast majority really do want that feedback.

They really do. They, they have a hunger to get better, but a lot of times they don't have access to the people. And for me, that is where I'd say, Hey, if you have been the one in the field saying, man, this sucks, this thing does do this, this thing doesn't do that. Get involved. It's time to stop complaining about it.

I [00:32:00] get it. Like it's time to stop complaining. It's time to start moving towards making this stuff better. Do you want to be part of the change or do you want to be a part of the whining crowd? Let's stop being the whiners. Let's get in there. Let's get our hands dirty. Let's tell the tech people what is up, what we really think, and it's gonna make the industry a better place.

So that would be kind of the charge to the people in the field, in the field, in the office. Anybody in the construction world. Like if you've been complaining about this, come and join the charge, right? , I'll plug the testing network that I'm building.

It's free to join you. Fill out the form.

And then from there we're filtering out and we're saying like, who is the right candidate to help us with this product and to give feedback. Who is the person or persons that will be good for this tech company to speak to? And so if you want to be [00:33:00] involved, if you want to be involved in making this change.

Making the industry a better place, go and join the network because that, that's an easy way of doing it. Otherwise, speak to the people that are at the tech companies you're already working with. Tell them what you think. Give them the raw and honest feedback. Please give that to them. Write it out.

Make it structured. Don't just say it in passing. Say, Hey, here are the ways that I feel you can improve no shade. I'm not trying to, you know, tell you everything sucks and so I'm trying to help you. I wanna help you because many of them are gonna welcome that with open arms. They really kind of want.

They're babies to be called ugly in some ways. Not everybody, not everybody, not everybody, but, but quite a few of them. They're very willing to take that, uh, because ultimately they know if they make their product better, they're gonna sell more of that, and it's gonna make them a little bit richer and, yeah.

Samantha C Prestidge: [00:34:00] I, I mean, I love the point of like, don't just say that the baby's ugly, right? Don't just say, this sucks. Tell them why it sucks. Give them the structured feedback so that they can actually do something with it. And also don't go around calling babies ugly. Like not, yeah, no, that's probably not a good idea.

Tyler Campbell: But if you're gonna call a baby ugly, at least bring a notepad because then it's science. All right. Oh, that.

Samantha C Prestidge: It's a legit observation. I'm gonna have to say legitimate

Tyler Campbell: observation.

Samantha C Prestidge: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. If you wanna join the charge, we'll have that in the show notes, or you can go to field proof.io/tester.

Or if you are building a tech product and you're like, hell yes, I need accessibility to this type of feedback, just go to field proof.io. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tyler. I've really appreciated it.

Tyler Campbell: So, so glad that I was able to rant for a little while. It just fills, fills the cup.