Construction Business Benchmarking with Josh Bone

Todd (00:01)

Hey, how do you know if your financials, your operating metrics are good or not? I mean, sure, you can look if you're profitable and you can see your cash flow, your overall growth, but how do they compare? I mean, is everyone else growing at 10 % and you're only growing at 2 %? And maybe that's what you want, but maybe you don't want that. Maybe you want your business at least keeping up with the market. How do you know unless you know kind of what people are doing in your area, in your type of business? And you know, what is your cost per bid, per PO?

Why does that matter and should it matter? But how do you even know if that's a good number or not? it 50 bucks or 150 bucks? mean, how can you know these things? Maybe there are ways to improve your business down like in the engine, you know, like that you don't see the way things are running. But how can you know unless you have some sort of standards or metrics to measure against? Well, this is why I invited my friend Josh Bone with Electri. So he mentioned an industry benchmarking report.

website repository they're working on and I got really excited about that and he's excited about it and so I wanted to have him on to kind of talk about the project and what it's doing and now it by the time this show airs it may already be live but check the show notes and we'll make note of that and see if it is live if it is we'll you know post a link to that in the show notes so when we're talking he's still developing things but it may be live and going so that's pretty cool so we might be able to check that out

But you can use this website for free again to compare yourself to similar region, union, non-union type of business, type of work you do, or your new construction or service. And you can kind of compare the health of your company with those others. So I'm excited to talk to Josh and see what he has to share with us. Real quick, know, the show, I'm trying to create a community here. And the way that we can do that is building by the number of people who come in.

who subscribe and rate and review the show and then start a conversation among myself and you, the listeners and viewers. So if you could give us a rating, a thumbs up in whatever app you're using, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Audible, YouTube, it'll really help the show and help us know who's listening and let me know if I'm providing the right content for you. So thanks a lot for doing that. Well, welcome to Keeping the Lights On. I'm your host, Todd Reed, and on this

A show I like to connect with the owners and pros who designed, built, and maintain our electrical communications and industrial world to explore the best ways forward. Let's get into the show. All right. Welcome, Josh, to the show. I'm excited to talk to you today about the work that Electri is doing and specially focused on industry benchmarking. This is a new segment I want to do here, and I want to give you a choice. So it's guest or player's choice.

You can take 30 or 60 seconds, up to you, to just do a little introduction of yourself. Like who is Josh? And you can say it's a long elevator ride or short one. So which one do think you wanted to go with? You can do it in 30 seconds or you wanna go for 60?

Josh (03:13)

I can do it in 30.

Todd (03:15)

Okay, all right, you're up.

Josh (03:16)

No, I've been in the industry for 27 years, started in 3D modeling, focused on technology, have done that throughout my 27 years, always had a play in technology. I've gone from 3D modeling into using apps on an iPad. And today I am the executive director of Electri International, which is the foundation that helps electrical contractors stay ahead of pace of change. And I think all this technology,

has led me into what is now AI, quantum computing, fusion, all these great things around electrification. So, so passionate and excited about the things I'm getting to work on at Electri.

Todd (03:59)

Hey Josh, one of the things that know, my kind of my intent with the show is to bring people together that are coming from different backgrounds or you know, who are unfamiliar with each other's the work they do. And one way to do that is you go out to eat together, break bread, breakfast, lunch, dinner, because you can kind of relax. So

If I were to visit you in your hometown or travel with you, where might you take me and some of the listeners of the show to gather around and have a meal and talk about the industry and life?

Josh (04:30)

So you know me, Todd, I travel quite a bit for work and that's a wonderful thing. I love travel. I'm gonna step away from Atlanta. I'm gonna step away. I live in between Atlanta and Chattanooga and while there's some great restaurants in Atlanta, there's some great places that I love to eat in Chattanooga. I'm gonna go to my favorite spot. We're gonna meet up in New Orleans.

Todd (04:52)

Okay.

Josh (04:53)

And while there's a ton of Cajun food that we can go sit down and enjoy together, I'm going to go to the staple and do the charbroil oysters at Drago's. And that's where we're going to start. And then maybe we have a few oysters and we head over to MRB's, which is Mississippi River Bottom. We play shuffleboard a little bit, have a couple of cultures. And then who knows? Who knows where the night leads us from there.

Todd (05:23)

Okay.

Josh (05:24)

But Cajun

food is my favorite. I love Cajun food.

Todd (05:27)

What are some of the basics of this industry benchmarking project that you and Electri are working on?

Josh (05:33)

So Todd is what I'm most passionate about right now. actually.

think about this all the time is key performance indicators. Identifying what key performance indicators in a business can help electrical contractors understand their strengths and their weaknesses. For me, when I start to look at where we are across the industry, we do a lot based off of our gut and our knowledge and our history. And there's so many things that we do operating day in and day out.

I hear from our contractors, Josh, what do I need to do? I feel like I'm running a mom and pop business now that does millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually. What do I need to do?

where I think the next phase in this journey for the construction industry is specifically for electrical construction. That's because that is what I love and where I'm excited to be working in this space is how do we become moneyball contractors? How do we take our intuition, our knowledge, our gut, but look at the baseball card. How do we look at those stats and understand what drives business outcomes?

Moneyball, was on base percentage, on base percentage, on base percentage. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill talk about on base percentage. That was the one metric that they followed. What I want us to be able to do is look at financial KPIs. I want us to be able to look at labor and try to understand labor metrics, safety metrics, other types of outputs and outcomes, whether it's around BIM or prefab. What I want to be able to do is get the industry as a whole

to measure things the same way. So if I ask you how do you measure overhead, that Todd measures overhead the exact same way as Josh, is the exact same way as all the electrical contractors in this country. Regardless of your size, regardless of your level of sophistication, how can you run a report from your accounting software that you can fill out these metrics? It's one thing to have the data, but it's so important that you can benchmark that data, Todd. If you can't benchmark,

then you can't identify what is a healthy amount based off my revenue, based off profit, based off all these factors that come together. If we can start to look at data.

and start to benchmark those things together. I believe we're gonna see correlations that helps us identify trends and see where the industry is heading before we get there. The whole thing is yes, let's make better decisions, but ultimately the goal is to be able to be predictive around our decision making process. That if we can trend revenue for small contractors in the Midwest,

over a period of time, we can start to see when things turn. We can start to see where is backlog increasing, where is backlog eroding. What if there's a correlation based off my profitability and my safety score?

that there's a give and take there. I believe that is the future of this industry. If you go to healthcare, if you go to the restaurant industry, if you go to other industries, especially retail, they know every month, they forecast what's our revenue, what's our goal, what's our profit.

You can go from a PetSmart to a Nordstrom's and you're going to see similar KPIs that they're measuring, that they're looking across every branch manager, every regional manager. They're going to be looking at the baseball card of that store, of that area to look at what is healthy. And I think that's where we've got to turn eventually is how do we identify the strengths and weaknesses of a project manager, of a superintendent, of a foreman, of an engineer, of a GC?

of a job. Some jobs are better than others and I want us, I want Electri to be at the forefront helping drive these key performance indicators understanding that

And you go back to the old baseball cards, Todd, I was in St. Louis not too long ago and I showed Stan Musial's baseball card. Games, at bats, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, average. Looks no different than Mark Maguire's baseball card for the Cardinals in 1997.

Now you go today and look at Paul Goldschmidt's baseball card playing today for the Cardinals. There's on base percentage, there's slugging percentage, there's OPS, which is slugging plus your own base percentage, there's war, there's all these things, this earn run value. There's all of these new metrics that they're measuring these players by to really understand what performance is driving an outcome.

And I hope that's where we can take this industry, the electrical construction industry, even help the industry learn to play moneyball.

Todd (10:44)

So every contractor, yeah, they use all basic kind of accounting principles that you use in the US. We'll just keep it there in the US. How do you get someone lined up? Like you and I are running two different contracting businesses and you're saying we need to do things similar. Does that mean I have to change the way I'm doing it to align with you? What are some of the similarities there?

Josh (11:03)

No, we're trying to meet them where they are. What I'd like to think right now with these key performance indicators, as far as understanding

which key performance indicators are most valuable to a contractor's business. We don't know that. We've not done enough research today to say that a beta is more important than some other factor or metric or accounting practice that we're looking at. And we're at this learning stage right now as an industry.

And when you think about where we are as an industry, I like to use a moneyball analogy because it's something that people can relate to. And I encourage people to go back and watch that scene when they're sitting around the table and they're getting ready to pick the players. Moving beyond that, what we have to understand today is that our economy is changing. people hear that term, data is the new oil.

Think about that for a minute. I like to help everyone understand that when we talk about our economy is changing, data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. needs to be refined, processed, and turned into something useful. Its value lies in its potential. We are data rich, insight poor as an industry today. We are on our first stage of this journey that is tied to the importance of

power data convergence. We're seeing electricity and technology, the lines are blurring. And our industry as a whole, how do we make these decisions? We're part of this bigger trend of electrification and this energy transition. You apply that Todd to where we are with data centers, artificial intelligence, something news comes out every single day on quantum computing.

fusion that we're breaking a new milestone every week. The French surpassed, you know, I had 22 minutes in a fusion loop the other day. There's all these companies. We are living in the future and the old economy that was so heavily tied to oil and to manufacturing and to physical commodities is now shifting over to this new economy that is based around intellectual property and data.

and more tied to the world that we see in this digital age. And Todd, what I truly believe is what other businesses have figured out over time. Our world is so siloed, is so fractured in the world of construction. There's so much risk. You've to break up that risk. And we're in these early stages. I know one thing. Our contractors are competitive.

And if I can show them they're winning or losing, that'll drive their behavior. They hire, they hire a team made up of winners. So how do you show them when they're winning or losing? it's not with all this data, it's a hard thing. I've been learning this now for about the last four years. Data is not a stick. We don't beat people over the head with it. And it's not a carrot. Data is data. So how do we look at it and objectively be able to take that data and say, okay, this tells us we need to

steer in this direction. This data tells us we need to steer in this direction. It's information and what I hope that we can start to do as an industry is get this buying, get these large data sets to be able to work with data scientists, anonymize all of it. I won't know if it's Todd. I won't know if it's Josh. We're going to anonymize. We will not be able to see on the back end. We'll know that this is a

a contractor that does under this many labor hours in the Northwest based off certain factors, but we'll have no clue who that contractor is. But they will see, hey, I'm Contractor X and I can compare myself now to other contractors. Wouldn't you like to know?

that contractors in the Northwest are more or less profitable than contractors in the Midwest. Why is that? What does that mean? What's happening there? We don't know what we don't know today in this industry. Again, I will say it, we are data-rich, insight-poor. How do we start now gaining insights and leveraging that data to drive decisions?

Todd (15:34)

Hey, Josh, one of the things you've brought up to me a few times as we were kind of prepping for this call and just in conversation, you've talked about the evolution of a business. It's really any business, but you kind of focus specific on electrical contractor business. I think it's four steps, four stages. you mind maybe just talking about what you mean by the evolution of a contractor business?

Josh (15:54)

So trying to break this down as clearly as possible, we're always talking about large contractors, small contractors. In our world, we're trying to put these contractors into buckets and try to understand where they are in their journey as far as the level of sophistication that they're at. And it really has nothing to do with small, medium, or large. What I've learned is business evolution really can be put into these four buckets. An electrical contractor goes out, hangs their own

shingle, they become Todd Electrical Contracting, and you're focused on revenue. You're trying to build a business and you're trying to get stability in that revenue. But it's all about supporting the life cycle. And you may run that business for a period of years and, you bought the boat this year.

signs that things are good, right? Maybe over time that you're able to, you know what? We got the lake house. That's good. Now we got the boat. We've got the lake house. You know, I want to take this business to the next level. Todd says, there's only me. Everything's tied back to me. The business runs and hinges on me and this lifestyle business.

How do I grow? That growth mindset comes in. Now I'm going to invest in Josh. Now I'm going to invest in Mike. Now I'm going to invest in Dana. I'm going to start to invest in these individuals and help them grow and build a management process so that we can grow our team. We're going to have have this growth mindset and we'll grow as a company. And you do. Then you reach a point. Okay, we just can't continue. How do get better at what we do? 3.0 is now.

process. Now you're really starting to think about how do I get out of the mindset of being so reactive and everything being project driven to actually creating processes in place around our business that there's a progressive mindset now.

around how are we going to standardize. The thing that we learn through our research is inconsistency breeds inefficiency. So how are we going to start now standardized process and get better at process? And then once you start to really dial in processes, you'll see this next wave. And this is where the data really starts to come into play is now you start to have this abundant mindset.

We don't see a lot of contractors there. I know a few contractors out there that how they look at their business and they say, I know where I'm profitable now. I know where I'm not profitable. And instead of me trying to hold on to an entire job site, eat all of the scope and know that there's loss leaders in the scope. Why am I going to go? I've got a labor shortage. I've got to think differently than I did in the early 2000s and the nineties when I started this business.

I need to make decisions now that are based off data. I'm going to sub out that work. I'm going to buy prefab. I'm going to prefab this, but I'm going to start to look at a job and really understand profitability. And I'm going to know when to say no. I'm going to know when to say yes. That I'm going to have an abundant mindset that there's plenty of work now. I'm not just trying to chase work. I'm very strategic. I'm proactive in my decision making process. That is that once you start to hit that abundant mindset that says, hey, I've

perform this work. It's not profitable. I could get someone hurt. I've got limited resources. The world has changed Todd. As in the construction industry, you've got to go from this mindset a lot of individuals in their career have gone from, I've got plenty of people to do the work. I don't have the work. Now, flip that completely. I don't have enough people, but I tons of work.

If you're going to live in that old mentality, you're going to throw good, productive labor at non-profitable processes. We've really got to have an abundant mindset these days and say, when it comes to rigging as a logical contractor, do I really need to use my crew and my team that doesn't do this stuff day in and day out? There could be an injury, there could be quality, there could be all these things, but ability does not equal profitability time.

Todd (20:05)

Yeah, and I think what maybe brings some people into that mindset, the closed mindset, is when you've got a very established business, I've got a lot at risk. So I'm a little afraid to share something with you, Josh, because I've got lot going on here, and if it somehow disrupts that, I might lose something, you know? More than if I'm young and things like, I don't know, I if I share with you, I don't have much to lose. So I wonder if that kind of comes into play a little bit. Hey, you talked about, I'm kind of curious on

You said like, might say Todd's a Midwest contractor, Josh is a Southeast contractor, and Todd has so many buildings. You'll differentiate us somehow, not by name or specific, that kind of thing. Would you also, are you kind of looking at also like, I'm a service contractor and that's 80 % of my business, whereas you're a new construction contractor. that be some, mean, contractors are somewhat different in their models a little bit.

Josh (20:57)

Yes,

we will definitely be looking at how those businesses are broken down. If you're doing more commercial work, then you are heavy industrial work, or if you're doing more service work, we're going to try to lump those into buckets and understand what type of work it is that you do and looking at the projects that you're performing on. We want to be able to break that down into that level of granularity. if you're primarily doing public work and you're doing schools and you're doing public projects,

the majority of your business. want you to be able to compare yourself to other contractors similar in size and scope of work too. So that you're not comparing yourself. What I think would be interesting though is this is helpful for contractors that while we're gonna, you can benchmark yourself to say, compared to other contractors that are doing 90 % public work, that are working on schools, that are working on this type of project, that while I look at that,

Other contractors that do similar revenue to me that are doing more private work, that are working on more healthcare, that are working on more commercial, they're more profitable than me who's over here competing in this public space, in this box that I'm currently in. Maybe I need to look at how do I build off my core and start doing more work over here because contractors I can see now that are doing more of this work are more profitable than me.

Todd (22:19)

Right. Yeah. Things like receivables are different and all that too. Yes.

Josh (22:21)

good sites. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. And service is a whole different world. If you're a service, you need to compare yourself to service contractors, not to contractors that are doing 100 % new construction. That's a very different business model. Service contractors are going to have much higher margins. We talk about how long it takes to get paid. So your invoice stays outstanding.

The average for an electrical contract that's doing new construction is over 80 days. It's right around 84 days. That's crazy. paid on 30 day terms. Whereas a service contractor is getting paid.

in less than 14 days. So it looks very different. So your cash flow is a lot more robust. Your churning workout, your margins are significantly higher than they are on traditional, if you're just going out and doing a new greenfield brand new project.

Todd (23:22)

Yeah, yeah, that would be interesting because then you can look at. Yeah, like the the cost structures of those businesses too. So the next couple of questions I have is, you know, I'm not sure what you're able to share, whatever on the project specifically the so I'm kind of curious on like, I don't know how you want to measure it. Zero starting to 100 finished. Like, where are you in the project? Like percentage wise, basically, or like, how would you look at that?

Josh (23:48)

So we are a 501C3. So everything that comes from Electri is open book, is transparent. We're here to help electrical contractors stay ahead of the pace of change. So nothing is hidden. We are currently in the alpha stage of rolling out this website. So we're going through alpha testing. We're having contractors fill in the information, take the survey. There's bumps. mean, this is brand new. As you said, contractors are

different things, what are they measuring the same, how do we get this data relatively easy, what's the minimal viable product right now to get the most out of this website and this solution and know that we're not gonna extend contractors and get bad data and try to get something for them that they're not currently measuring today. So we're in that refinement stage looking at how do we make this survey easy to fill out so you're gonna have firmographic data, you're gonna have your

your your labor, your safety, and trying to make those surveys as simple as possible and then instantly get your feedback immediately to look at where you are and where you score. So we're in alpha stages right now. The plan is to be able to get this into the beta stages here in the next couple of weeks and hopefully a release date by late April.

Todd (25:11)

wow. Like full release or beta release?

Josh (25:15)

full

release. It's got a lot of work to do, but that's the plan.

Todd (25:20)

How hard is it to submit my information to it? what does that look like? Can I just send it to you? like push a button and it's to you or do I need? What's it looking?

Josh (25:29)

It's

a survey, so you'll have some, you'll go into firmographic data and you'll choose, you'll see a map and you'll choose your area that you fall into. So we try to make it as simple and as easy of a user experience as possible. There'll be some dropdowns. In some cases, you'll need to put your number in. For example, if I'm looking at

an area, we may look at revenue and you may fall within a certain range. So you pull down a drop down. But if I'm talking about overhead, Hey, we need to know if you're at 13 % versus 14 % because there's a big difference in your overhead being 13 to 14, much less 13 to 18, right? In your overhead. So we show you how to measure that. We give examples. So there's some coaching along the way telling you, this is how you measure this. We're looking at a few options of how we work with

accounting softwares to create an easy export right out of the accounting software so it creates your numbers so you can look at your numbers and fill them in and go through the survey very quickly. We'll see if that works out but that's something that we're looking at. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for contractors to fill out this data.

We know it's actually gonna be harder for larger contractors than for small contractors because a small contractor can go into their QuickBooks, go to foundations, go to computer ease, whatever software they're using for their accounting and run these reports and get that information. And you pretty much know your safety numbers so you can put those in.

But that's going to be tougher for a much larger contractor that has someone that's going to be over safety, someone that's going to be over prefab, someone that's going to be over finances.

Todd (27:16)

Well, that sounds pretty awesome. Josh, mentioned something about minimal viable product, That's very common software term to get it going, get it launched. Do you have like a couple of stages? Like what do you see as that? What's minimal? And then what do you see in the next couple of stages? What do you hope to see?

Josh (27:33)

That's

much easier to do safety. mean, safety, can look at incidents, we can look at your EMR, we can look at your TRIR. There's some real easy things there for getting a more viable product safety-wise. When we get into financing, that's a very different world when we start to look at finances.

It's going to be revenue, it's going to be profit. And I know when I say that, people are, why would I share my profit with someone? Yeah. If I can show you though how to benchmark and you can start to learn from that and you can learn to trust Electri, we're going to have an end user license agreement that shows that we're not going to use this data. It's going to be anonymized. We're not even going to have visibility. The data is protected. It's encrypted. It sits behind an area that we can run.

this on, when we even get ready to run reports and do look at correlations to help us drive future resource, we won't know that it's Todd. We won't know that it's Josh. So we've got to build that trust into this process and in doing so, that's going to play a role in our minimal viable product and what information we're asking you for. I hope contractors will learn to trust us with this data because that's what we're here to do is help and add value. And while sharing your profit,

Sometimes revenue is easy to do, but sharing profit is a little harder for companies to do that. Now, what constitutes profit? We're going to tell you what that means. So those numbers start to match up and we're not skewing that data. But it's going to be, we're going to try to make this survey something that everybody can complete in in a timely fashion. And having that instant gratification coming back,

is very important. Being able to, that's a critical part of where we're trying to go with this is that as soon as Todd takes this survey and this portion, he's going to start getting feedback instantly showing benchmarking data of how he's scoring in these areas. I think most contractors today operate in a world that are making money. So how bad can it be?

When in reality, what's driving that profit? How can you build on those strengths? How can you shore up some of your weaknesses and start to see those things? Now, most contractors put out bids every month and they win bids.

Todd, had you rather put out a lot of bids and not win many or on the flip side, hey, I don't put out many bids, but man, I sure went a lot. What does that tell you? If I can see that I don't put out a lot of bids for company that my size and my revenue, but man, my win rate is very high. I'm low. I'm leaving money on the table here. It's at least be aware of that. That's a number.

Maybe you're good with it, but at least you know now that I don't put out many bids and I win a lot versus I put out a lot of bids and there's costs associated with that and I don't win many. Maybe I'm high. We don't have the data yet to say that, but I hope over time we can start to look at that and give you a healthy amount of range.

Where I wanna be able to go is, what does an average bid cost a contractor of this size? What's a purchase order cost a contractor? What's the menstruative cost with that? There's time and energy that goes with those things. That's where I hope that we can get.

And how do we take your day's invoice outstanding? Let's drive research and show you best practices to take your invoice days outstanding from 84 days to 74 days to 64 days to 54 days. A lot of times it's just being able to measure it. If you can measure it, then we can start to have conversations about how we can manage it and change outcomes. It's not until you start measuring it or have the realization that a purchase order costs me and my company

$120 a purchase order and I'm letting the field run wild sending in purchase orders all the time? Do we even realize how much this is costing us from a profitability standpoint? I want to be able to give those insights. Today we've got great research on overtime impact on productivity.

That is so valuable time to show what happens on a five tens compared to a 40 hour work week or what happens to a 60 hour work week. We've got that data. Contractors can go download that from our website for free. Now they just go to electric.org in the bottom right hand corner. There's a flying E the electric logo. Click on it. It's a chat bot.

type put in productivity impacts on overtime, it'll bring that research right up to you at no cost.

Todd (32:21)

Yeah, let's cover that real quick. I think I've talked with this before with people from Electri, but so how I know Electri is through NECA, right? That's how I primarily know it. But is do you hope to get data from non-union as well?

Josh (32:36)

yes, absolutely. Electric is a 501C3 that is for the greater good of the electrical construction industry. We are our own standalone 501C3. And all that research that's out there and available is available to every electrical contractor of any size. So I hope that the merit shops understand that they can come to Electric and they can compare themselves to other merit shops, to signatory. That's all going to be out there at some point in time.

Todd (33:05)

Okay, yeah.

Josh (33:06)

enough

data to anonymize it though. That's the thing. We have to enough data, large enough data set to be able to anonymize it. Once we do that, then we'll start doing reports and coming back with results and share findings.

Todd (33:20)

You know, cost per PO, cost per bid, whatever. mean, do a lot of contractors already know that information or, and this is a broader question, let me end, so let me just like it broader. Are you going to, is there going to need to be some education of some contractors about how to even measure some of these things and how to look for this? Or are they doing it pretty much already?

Josh (33:42)

We're going to help with those things. We're going to drive research around this, Todd, to help contractors learn that. So what we can start to look at is hopefully backing into some of these things around collecting this over time. It's not going to be in our minimal viable product. But if we can start to look at jobs and measure a job and how many purchase orders are a healthy amount of purchase orders on a project of this revenue, what if we could start to do...

RFIs, early RFIs sent before this time, what's the cost of an RFI before now, what's the cost of an RFI later in the stages? A PO, what if we could help a contractor understand that based on a project of this revenue for an electrical contractor, that this is a healthy amount of purchase orders? Well, how do I reduce my purchase orders? Well,

How do you centralize procurement? Maybe you use Remarkable or Kojo or another tool. Maybe you move and invest in someone to help you that. Maybe it's an AI workflow or process. It's understanding it's not the cost, it's the return on value. So let me hire someone to help me turn around my invoice stays outstanding. They're going to be responsible for that and manage that.

Yes, I can use AI, can standardize processes, there's things I can do in process, but maybe I need to have someone dedicated to this because it's going to turn my cashflow around so much that I can justify that being a full-time or part-time job for an individual. Now that's where we, I hope from this conversation, Todd, what this is doing for you and other people that are listening and realizing this is opening a whole new world and.

Take this where you think contractors are measuring their cost of POs right now. I can tell you they're not.

Todd (35:35)

You said something that got me thinking about, let me see if I can find it in my notes here. Inconsistency breeds what? So I think I heard that from Hala Nasseruddin who I. Okay, so insert her name here for quote.

Josh (35:43)

and efficiency.

Sure did, that's exactly who I quoted on that.

Yeah, you can

absolutely put her foot up. She's amazing.

Todd (35:57)

so just for the listener, she did a, I did an interview with her and she's done, well, she's done a few work projects for electric, but one of them recently was, standard operating procedures, which, well, the need for those will be fed by this data. So you can look at this thing like, my, okay. Why am I, why am I so different than Josh's business? Well, let's look at your processes. And then that could be something that is a solution to your, your challenge there. So I think this is pretty great, Josh. I gotta tell you, I mean,

Josh (36:23)

I don't

Todd (36:26)

Because otherwise it's a lot of gut. what else do you want to say about this benchmarking project so it's very close to when we're going to go live and stuff? But what's your word to the contractors about it?

Josh (36:39)

My big thing right now is that I need electrical contractors to participate. I need them to take their time, their energy, and put into this website. I need them to fill out the surveys. I need them to give us information to trust us that we're not going to sell this data. This is your data. We're trying to help educate and really raise the tide here for all electrical contractors.

can't do this without them. I tell everyone, I work for every electrical contractor and nothing's more important to me and our team at Electri. We've got an amazing team and we're all here to add value to electrical contractors. But there's only so much that we can do. Help us help you in this situation. And I know it's going to be a game changer for our industry. I know it's going to give us opportunities to help contractors be more profitable. It's going to help contractors be safer.

It's going to help contractors better understand their businesses. And it all comes down to their participation. This is dead on arrival time if we don't get enough contractors participating. We can't do this with 100, 200. We need a groundswell of contractors sharing this data and helping them understand that to do this accurately,

We need to be able to identify outlying data. We need to be able to understand the value of that data and its reliability. And we need to anonymize it. So we've got to have a lot of participation here for this to be successful. we're counting on contractors to get this where it needs to be. And there's no cost. There's no cost.

Todd (38:23)

Okay, great.

okay, that's big. Josh, just one last question for you. I always like to refocus on the why of what we do and one of your three words was purpose. So it kind of ties to that. So what motivates you day in and day out? What keeps you excited and passionate about what you do?

Josh (38:47)

There is no doubt we are living in the future. And I don't know that everybody understands that. While the famous quote, we're living in the future, it's not evenly distributed. I wake up every day and I read, I've got this, I've got perplexity in Google feeding me this information. And I am so.

keenly aware that the world is changing at such a fast pace that I want to make sure that when we look back 10, 15, 20 years from now, the decisions we make in the next two to three years will change where we are in the next 10 to 20 years. And

Now that's what has me so motivated. I know that it matters right now. My purpose is being here at this stage at this time navigating the power data convergence, navigating the electrification of everything, the navigating that is.

small-mods reactors and understand that we're going through an energy transition as a country. And we see private equity investing in electrical contractors. We see private equity investing in utilities and buying utilities. We're at the right place at the right time. How do we capitalize on that? So there's a strong sense of urgency in that purpose today, Todd. I think that urgency and purpose is what keeps me healthy, keeps me going, keeps me motivated.

Todd (40:20)

Josh, it's always so great to have you on. I always get energized after talking to you and appreciate your time. So thank you so much.

Josh (40:30)

Thank you for the opportunity, buddy. Always a good time to spend time with you and get to talk to you and thank you for your friendship and helping me in my career over the years.

Todd (40:39)

That was my conversation with Josh Bone with Electri International. You can connect with Josh and Electri and what they're working on, the headings of the links in the show notes. Also in those show notes, I'm going to put if the project is live and how to get to it, if that's available to me at the time of publication, and see if it's participation for a broader audience. So you can go there and check it out.

And I would also going to put a link to that perplexity AI that sounded pretty interesting how he gets his information. So I want to check that out myself. And I'd love to hear if you are inclined to participate in a project like this. Why or why not send me an email at podcast at graybar.com or put a note in the comments in Spotify or YouTube. Let me know if you enjoyed this episode. You can help us grow the show by subscribing leaving a five star rating or a thumbs up or however the app works to know rate it.

your, as I said, in Spotify, Audible, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever listener platform you're using there. So thanks a lot for listening to this episode of Keeping the Lights On. We'll see you next time.

What advice would you give to 18-year-old Josh Bone?

Josh (41:54)

Hmm.

18 year old Josh Ball needed a lot of advice. So I guess if I had to give him one piece of advice is to trust yourself. I think one of my things that I've always had to deal with is imposter syndrome. I'm always, every time I get up on stage, every time I get on a podcast, I'm always extremely nervous. I always have a question, why am I in this position to have my voice heard when so many other

that

I respect and admire don't have that same opportunity. So I think it creates a level of humbleness, but I think too, to at least learn to be confident in who you are, that quiet leadership is a strength. But I would say be confident in who you are, but also remain humble.