AHL: Future Proofing Low Voltage

We take rapid-fire questions from the field and turn them into practical guidance for low voltage pros who want stronger designs, cleaner execution, and fewer budget surprises. We get blunt about what really drives performance and profit, from cable pathways and fiber choices to labor risk, change control, and training. 
• Framing AI-ready buildings around business outcomes not hype 
• Future-proofing with larger cable pathways and extra dark fiber 
• Building leadership by earning trust through quality and problem solving 
• Communicating clearly with project managers and customers 
• Thinking like a leader by learning budgets schedules and expectations 
• Avoiding estimating traps like labor guesswork missed infrastructure and site logistics 
• Handling scope creep by documenting every change and showing schedule impact 
• Planning cabling for Wi-Fi 7 including Cat 6A considerations and PoE realities 
• Reducing healthcare infrastructure risk through growth planning and EMI awareness 
• Protecting quality during labor shortages with training mentorship and visible recognition 
• Keeping smart buildings usable through interoperability and outcome-driven automation 
• Staying involved in construction so designers learn from the field and improve bids 
• Tracking hyperscale data center trends like high-density fiber prefabrication and single mode 
• Knowing when a bid is too risky by spotting red flags and GC reputation 
Make sure to send me your questions. They might show up in next week's show. 

Transcript

After Hours Kickoff And Drinks

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Wednesday night, six PM Eastern Standard Time. You know that can only mean one thing. Live after hours with your favorite RCD. Tell me in the chat box who's your favorite RCD. Go ahead and tell me. Let's be honest now. Who's your favorite RCDD? Because I'm betting it's me. I'm betting it's me. Yes. Alright, so let's talk about this. Uh oh, so what are you drinking? I forgot the first thing I always do. What are you drinking? Chuck is drinking water. Water. And citrus magnate or magnate citrus or whatever that stuff is. Put those two together and you'll figure out what Chuck's doing tomorrow. Yeah. Holy smoke. So I'm just drinking water. TJ's drinking Pepsi. Tell me in the chat box, what are you guys drinking tonight? Getting ready for the study group. I hear you. Yep. It's gonna be a good one tonight. Wireless. Wireless. Study group tonight. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, let's go on move to the next one. The acronym challenge. The acronym challenge. Tonight's acronym, ZDA. ZDA. Jay, who's drinking Diet Coke? What does that acronym mean? Z D A. Tell me in the chat box. I got 10,000 points to the first person who gets it correct. ZDA. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun one. Do you do access control and intercom? Um I don't, but I know people who do. In fact, there's somebody in the room tonight, right now, who does it, so he can absolutely ask this question. Zone dedicated antenna, nice try. Zebra again, no, no. ZDA, zone distribution area. Zone distribution area. You find them in data centers. The zone distribution area is like the consolidation point, but for data centers. That's what that is.

Acronym Challenge And Upcoming Shows

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Let's talk about some upcoming things on the show, the podcast. Monday's Monday's show, we're going to talk about Infocom. Infocom's helping next week in Las Vegas. So I got an Infocom veteran coming on the show to talk about why you, as a low voltage person, should be doing going to Infocom, right? Because there's lots of good reasons for that. I've also got another show lined up with Ed the old tech guy talking about the data center controversy, why everybody doesn't want a data center in their backyard, but yet everybody wants to use Chat GPT. Everybody wants to use Google Maps. You can't have both ways. Who was it? You can't have your cake and eat at the same time? There you go. And then also I got a show with lined up with Shelly Olmsted talking about how to find and maintain quality employees. There's another one right there. Honeycomb, the cable dresser guy. He's coming on the podcast. He's coming on the podcast. Um has Barbie reached out to you for a date and time yet? Let me know. Um I'll follow up with her after after I finish this. So tonight's for those of you new tonight, QA, question and answers. So I've got some questions that were submitted to me over the week that I stack them up. And uh so we're gonna go through those questions. If you have questions, make sure you put them in the chat box. Okay?

AI Ready Buildings On A Budget

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Put them in the chat box. So the first question comes from uh a fellow RCD, and uh his name was Fiber Design Pro, and he asks me, how are you balancing future-proofing designs for AI ready buildings without significantly increasing the project cost today? Okay, so first off, I think we need to be super careful, super careful because you know, AI is a catch-all term. People lump it in for all kinds of stuff. You know, AI is typically gonna be like your hyperscale data centers, not your not your you know, your your your buildings. Um can AI obviously affect your buildings? Yes, you can you can have those systems with AI running it, so it's gonna help you, but it's not gonna really impact the the the cabling for that building so much, right? So we really need to talk about if you want to know what how it's gonna impact your building, first the conversation we need to have is what are the business outcomes? What do they really want from deploying AI in that building? And I really as I as I thought about this question earlier today, I really think that you know if you really want to future-proof your building for any kind of AI stuff, the biggest the biggest bang for the buck is going to be increasing your cable pathways. Increasing your cable pathways. So instead of going with like a you know, like a like a uh uh maybe an eight-inch wide tray, go to a 12-inch wide tray. Because you know what? The only difference between putting an eight-inch tray and a 12-inch tray is the cost of the material. If you do it later, then you have to worry about labor and a bunch of other stuff. That's the easiest way to future-proof anything inside the building is cable tray and pathways. The second thing you wouldn't really want to think about, and this is another easy one too, um, fiber. Fiber. So if the building design says, hey, look, we want to do a we want to do a 12-strand of fiber, right? Why not do a 24-strand and then leave 12 of those strands dark? So you're again, you're only increasing the cost, the difference between a 12-strand fiber and a 24-strand fiber. And then when they go to integrate AI, you have the backbone, you have the bandwidth, you have the capability to increase with very little labor cost and material costs. So it's better, it's kind of like it's like the old AMCO commercial, right? You can pay us now or pay us later. Put that pathway in now, put that fiber in now, leave some of the fiber dark, and then when they do just put do put it in, because it's still gonna be a little while if we start seeing AI impacting, you know, um AI-ready buildings. But if you have it already there, it's gonna make it easier. Another thing, too, you know, everybody likes to talk about bandwidth, and obviously I just did. But AI is really driving conversations about power and cooling. Power and cooling. You keep keep that building cool, you reduce the power cost, and you know who needs to know about that kind of stuff? Obviously, the electricians, the mechanical guys bump my glasses. The mechanical teams are gonna need to know that, but also the low voltage guys. Right? We need to be part of that conversation as soon as the customer decides that they want to start talking about AI buildings.

New Tech To Leader Skills

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Question number two: this comes from Junior Cable Tech. He's a tech with two years' experience. He says, What skills should newer technicians focus on if they want to move in leadership role? You know, this is the third week in a row, the third week in a row where I've gotten a very similar question to this. And you know what that tells me? It tells me that there's people hungry to move up the ladder in this industry. And that's good for this industry. Because this industry, not only do we need new people, we need people to run crews, we need people to project manage, we need people to estimate, you know, we need program managers. So that's a good thing for us. So I got three tips for you, junior cable tech. Number one, build your technical credibility first. You know, when it comes to leaders, they want, you know, they're really going to they're really gonna help you get to those goals you want to get to if they trust you. If they trust you. And trust starts with doing quality work. Doing quality work. Now, how do we do quality work? Obviously, it's not doing quality work is not uh not by following this book for sure, right? You don't do quality work by following this book, right? In fact, if you follow the code book, it's called minimum quality of construction for a reason. So you want to do the with per the standards or per the um the best practice manuals, like the T DMM, right? That's how you do quality work. If you don't have if you don't have that training or education now, lots of free resources out there. And here's the key thing: you don't need to oh know everything, but you really need to be known for solving problems. There's a guy I used to work with in uh when he worked for Hinkles McCoy, he used to be based out of the Atlanta office, and we hired him on, and he didn't have a whole bunch of low voltage experience when we first hired him on. But that guy, he became known, he his nickname out of the Atlanta office was MacGyver. McGyver, because he was known for solving problems, even if he didn't necessarily know everything. So know how to solve those problems. The second tip I got for you, junior cable tech, is learn to communicate. I told you I have a list of 147 pro tips, and communicate, communicate, communicate is tip number two, right? The best technicians aren't always the most technical, but they are quite often the best communicators, right? Again, you talk clearly, concisely, you don't add anything on. Remember, project managers, estimators, operations managers, they're they're juggling lots of things. So when they want you, when they ask you a question, they want the short, sweet, concise answer. And if you can start off with, well, I already fixed it, here's how I did it, that's gonna make them even happier. Even happier, right? So being able to explain those issues again to the project manager, even let's not forget the customers. That, sir, is a career accelerator. Career accelerator. And then the third thing I got for you, you know, you said you only had two years' experience. Understand the business side. Understand that leadership requires understanding you, the labor force. They need to understand schedules and budgets, they need to understand the customers' expectations. Those are all very important things you need to know on the business side because the sooner you learn how to how projects make money, the sooner you're gonna start thinking like a leader. Yeah, I get asked all the told all the time, you know, oh, I'm a project manager, Chuck. I go, yeah, what's your labor budget? What's your material budget? And all I hear is criggets. Crickets. That's all I hear. Well, again, then you're not a project manager. Question number three.

Estimating Mistakes That Kill Profit

SPEAKER_00 11:23

This comes from a senior estimator with 12 years experience. He wants to know what's the biggest mistake? Ed, the old tech guy's in the house. Ed, get in touch with Barbie. Um, so what's the biggest mistake you see estimators make when pricing structure cabling products? The three biggest things I see is underestimating the labor, missing the infrastructure, and ignoring the logistics on site. Let me break those three down for you. Underestimating labor. You know, when estimators estimate a project, the material side's easy. You literally take a scale and you roll off all the cable distances, you count up all the triangles, and you multiply them by, you know, two if you got duplex jacks, three if you got triplex jacks, one if you got single jacks, and then you put in the jacks. The material side is super easy. I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you something that most estimators don't want you to know. You ready for this? Here's what what most estimators don't want you to know. Most projects, most projects make their mistakes in the labor, right? That's where jobs are won or lost. And when they do win them, if they're profitable, not profitable is in the labor side. See, that's what the biggest risk is. That's the biggest, it's the unknown. And because you know it's hard to tell. I bet you, I bet you TJ in the house can terminate fiber faster than I can. So if the estimator bases it on how fast TJ can terminate fiber and I'm the one that gets put on the job, guess what? I'm not gonna get the job done in time. I'm gonna go over my hours. See, that's that's it's a people don't understand. Estimating a project is like taking a dart and throwing it at the board and hoping for life's sake that you get it right. Right? So those are the two biggest things is is the labor. The second thing I mentioned was missing the infrastructure scope, right? So technically, again, they're great at coming up with the cable footage and the counts, but they also forget about okay, J hooks or powder actuated shots to secure those J-hooks or beam clamps, right? That's where they mess up a lot of times. And then the third place that they really mess up a lot is going to be um ignoring the site logistics. A good estimator, if they can, they absolutely will go visit a job site, even if it's a new construction site. They're gonna don their hard hat, they're gonna put on their PPE, they're gonna put on their safety glasses, and they're gonna go look walk that job site. Because you they need to know are there access restrictions? Is that does the GC only allow the deliveries to be between certain hours? Are there security requirements? Does everybody have to go through a background screen just to get on the site? And are are the occupied spaces going to affect the productivity? So you got a bunch, you got a bunch of people in there, you got HVAC contractors, fire sprinklers, electricians, painters, drywallers, you know, are you gonna be in the same space then? Because if you spend a half an hour every day trying to just get on the job site, that's a half hour day that needs to be billed into the estimate. And that's one of the things that a lot of estimators miss. So I hope you caught that estimating edge. Question

Controlling Scope Creep With Change Logs

SPEAKER_00 14:43

number four How do you handle owners who continually add scope without understanding the schedule impact? This comes from a uh PM data center guy with 15 years experience. I'm gonna tell you right now, I've estimated, I don't know, thousands of projects in my career. And I can only think of one, maybe two, that actually went the way that I estimated it. I mean, I mean, exactly it got executed the way I estimated it, it got done on time, got done under schedule. Every project has change. Some changes are small, some changes are big, right? It just kind of really all depends. The first thing you need to know, especially being a project manager, is document every single change. Because not every change is going to be a big whopping change. Sometimes there's 15 or 20 small little changes. And as those 15 or 20 small little changes can put your project behind schedule as much as one big change can. So document every single change. If the customer likes to do like verbal changes with you, verbal scopes, right? Again, that's where a lot of those projects begin. Then what you need to do is you need to have a conversation after about the second time with that with the with the telecom guys in the house when they start doing those verbal changes. Well, number one, if they're doing verbal changes, document those changes. Emails or or or something. Document all the changes. In a project logbook, one of these days, remind me, I got in my in the cabinet behind me, I have a green construction logbook. And it's perfect for documenting those kinds of changes. So that way, when the customer keeps adding on, keeps adding on, keeps adding on, sure it might seem little or minor, but again, when you stack them all together, that two-week project might now be a three-week project. And that might impact when they move in. Show the domino effect. You know, make sure you let they know that look, yes, you know, okay, so fine, we're changing the color of the jacks. That's a small impact. But you know what? We already have the jacks on the job site. It's gonna take another week to get those fuchsia-colored jacks in, right? And then they put it, put another change on there and say, look, this is how it impacts the job. Customers don't think about that. The first thing you always need to do is when you get issued a verbal change order, even a documented change order, figure out how much time that's going to cost your project, how much additional time is it downtime, or is it labor that you already have to do? There are some changes that don't really affect labor. For example, I did a project at a data center one time. They wanted to move the uh the bearded knowledge in the house. Um they wanted to move the racks in the data center, but we hadn't installed them yet. So when we talked about it, same number of racks, same installation method. So the only thing that changed was where we mounted them in the data center. And at that point, it was a brand spanking new data center. All it had in it was the access flooring. There was no cost impact for that. But that's rare with change orders. Very rare with changers. What's happening, Sharon24? Question number five. What

Wi-Fi 7 Cabling And PoE Reality

SPEAKER_00 17:51

organizations are doing enough to pair to prepare the cabling infrastructure for Wi-Fi 7 deployments? Okay. Here's the thing. Number one, wireless still needs wire, right? Still needs wire. Hey Rich, I didn't realize that was you, my friend. Um, Wi-Fi gets all the attention because you know what it's simple, it's easy. Everybody's got Wi-Fi on at their home, but they don't realize that that Wi-Fi, it's the cable, there's still cable attached to it, and that cable is doing the heavy lifting. And the network, listen to this, guys. The network is only going to perform as good as the cable that it's connected to. This is why I have this, that's why I have this big thing about you know, future proofing. You people argue this on the internet all day long. Cat 5e for your house. Okay, yeah, cat 5e will work. But why not do cat 6? Cat 6 is a little bit more expensive. It's gonna take the same amount of time to pull it and terminate it, but then when you go to higher networks, you don't have that bottleneck. In fact, the standards actually say 5e is the minimum, cat 6 is the recommended. You really want a future-proof, go Cat 6A. Yes, Cat 6 can do 10 gig to about 50 meters, but Cat 6A can do 10 gig all the way up to 90 meters, which means it can do even more. Trust me, you know, make sure that you understand that you build that conference, you build that infrastructure right the first time, that's less time that you have to do it. And then another side of this conversation is the power, right? Power. You got to get power to this stuff. Um, power over Ethernet, okay. So there's lots of different varieties of PoE. But you know, if you're doing cat 5e because you want to go the cheap route, okay, well, you really should think about doing 22 gauge cat 5e, not 24 gauge cat 5e. That way you can handle those higher, the the the the that much more electricity for the for the device. Question number six What are the most common infrastructure mistakes made in healthcare construction projects? And this

Healthcare Cabling Mistakes And Risk

SPEAKER_00 19:59

actually comes from a customer who's not in technology, I mean he's not in cabling, but he's uh cat 6A hurts my fingers to terminate, and it's worth it. It's absolutely worth it. So not planning for growth. Hospitals, oh my gosh, they have so much cabling in it. So much cabling. Um, they have voice systems, computer systems, access control, AV, but you're also doing cabling for nurse call cabling, patient monitoring cabling. You know, my mom was in the hospital a couple weeks back, and I was there visiting her, and I was just amazed at all the different types of cables and connectivity stuff they're putting in there. I've wired up hospitals in my career, but they were like 20 some years ago. They weren't really doing as much then as they are now. In today's environment, it's technology convergence in data in hospitals. Medical devices are being connected to the network. They're IP based. And that's gonna mean cabling. And think about this. This isn't cabling just going to your workstation. This is cabling, listen to this, that somebody's life is dependent on. Somebody's life is dependent on that cable working right. What happens if what happens if the cable is goes over top of a fluorescent light fixture and it's getting affected by EMI, so the signal's not making it through, and the nurse can't see the the vitals of that patient, and they die in the room. Hospitals are they they really, really, because they're putting stuff on the network, we as low voltage installers and people in the healthcare uh industries, we need to collaborate better because this is life safety stuff, life critical stuff. Question number seven How can a contractor improve their quality when labor shortages force them to bring in less experienced technicians?

Training Systems That Protect Quality

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And this comes from uh Mike, who's a foreman uh with 25 years experience. And this couldn't come at a better time because I've got a show coming up in about uh probably about three. Three weeks, four weeks with uh with Shelly Olmsted. Shelly Olmsted was the person in charge of training for was it IES? I think it's IES. And they are known. In fact, they were rated in like top five companies to work for in the United States. They are really good, really good with training, really good with showing appreciation to their employees. In fact, they they they retain employees longer than most companies do. So we're gonna come on the show and we're gonna talk about how do you attract people to come into this industry? How do you keep them happy? How do you keep them motivated? How do you keep them trained? We're gonna talk about that. That show's coming up in about three weeks. So to answer your question, Mike, um, invest in training, right? A lot of companies miss this. A lot of companies miss this. They what they do is they say, okay, well, um, usually the uh um the thing that happens the most is when when when companies don't win as much work, the first thing they cut is the training budget, which is the worst time to cut the training budget, right? Um train, train, train, train, train. And when you're done, train some more. And train from the very beginning, train from the onboarding process. Assign that person a mentor within your company. And a mentor doesn't have to be somebody with 25 years of experience. If you're hiring somebody in new who only has you know zero years experience, mentor them with somebody who's got five years experience, right? That's build a mentorship culture. That way they're gonna people learn knowledge transfers faster through mentorship than any other any other avenue that I've ever been associated with. I've done training, done a bunch of other stuff. Mentorship really resonates with both because people, when they get into mentorship relationship, they want to learn. They want to learn. Um, TJ says positive reinforcement. Absolutely, and not pizza parties. Oh, I'm sorry, that was the Bureau of Knowledge you said that. Um, positive reinforcement. Yes, if you see somebody doing something good, pat them on the back. And listen to this. Listen to this. When you when you pat them on the back, when you give them positive reinforcement, do it in front of everybody. In front of everybody. Don't do that where nobody else can see it. That way everybody says, oh, wait a minute, he this person recognizes good work and he he he called he'll call me out and tell me that I did that right. That will motivate people. Absolutely motivate people. Question number eight.

Smart Buildings And Interoperability

SPEAKER_00 24:36

This comes from a building consultant. Excuse me. He says, Do you think smart buildings are overcomplicated? Excuse me, or are we just getting started? Okay, so you know, really, what makes a building smart, right? It's it's not just being it's connected doesn't automatically mean it's intelligent. The focus really comes, uh really should be focused on the outcomes. What do you want to have done? There's lots of things that goes with building automation, and I think we're at I think we're at the beginning of this journey, not the end of this journey, right? The beginning of this journey. Because most smart buildings, those problems happen between systems, not within the systems. The key word with building automation, write this down your note. I know you guys are taking notes, right? Write this down your notes. Interoperability. Interoperability. Getting all those systems to work with each other. And then it's kind of like it's you'll get like a synergy effect, right? So if if one system is more efficient, that makes a little bit of a dent. But if all the efficients are working together and you all become efficient, that's a big dent. A big dent. Interoperability. Okay. Um, again, we're still in the early ages of building automation stuff, but it's really cool that some of the stuff that they're really starting to tie together. Question number nine.

Designers Staying Engaged During Construction

SPEAKER_00 25:58

This comes from an ICT designer with five years' experience. How much should designers be involved during construction instead of handing the plans off and moving on? Can you say heavily? Right? Because number one, if you win the project and you turn it over to the over to the operations team or to the project forum project manager, you should have a meeting. Now, again, a small little project that might be just a five-minute phone call, 10-minute phone call, five-minute meeting. Big projects, that might be a day-long meeting. Sit down with the person, the lead tech, the project foreman, and help them understand the why behind all the decisions that you made, right? Make sure that you give them the context that they need. So that'll be they'll come absolutely critical when the customer wants to start doing those field conditions. You know, they want to make changes, like we talked about earlier. Right? That's always going to be a big thing. And you can make sure that the project's being done the way that you designed it. While you're there, you can also pay attention to people's productivity. So you know, okay, well, right now I'm putting uh five minutes per jack to terminate my bids, but these guys are knocking them out in uh in uh in three minutes. Well, then you can adjust your bids to reflect that three minutes and you'll win more work. How good is that, right? How good is that? And then I think the biggest thing, the biggest reason why, as a as a young designer that you need to stay involved in the construction process after you win the bid, you will learn from the field. Don't just assume just because you're the estimator, you're smarter than everybody out on that job site. You're probably not. You know, pay attention to what the technicians are doing. And if they're doing something, ask them why they're doing that. Not why is because you're gonna beat them up with everything, but why are they doing it that way? Because you that might help you design or help help them make an impact in future designs, and that can make you more efficient. Make sure that you give the field feedback, and that's all always gonna improve those projects. So learn from the field, because trust me, every estimator, every project manager can absolutely learn from the field, even if they came from the field. Okay,

Hyperscale Data Center Fiber Trends

SPEAKER_00 28:20

question number 10. What trends are you seeing in hyperscale data centers cabling that traditional expertise environments should be paying attention to? Fiber, fiber, fiber, fiber, high density fiber. It's getting ridiculous now. You know, we got we got 69 12s, we got coming down the pike, we got multi-core fiber, hollow core fiber. And those fiber densities, they're just gonna get more, they're gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger to drive those hyperscale data centers. Also, watch out for a lot of people don't realize this, pre-fabrication. There's a lot of data centers because they got a really narrow schedule. There's not enough time to pull the fiber, terminate the fiber, test the fiber, so they can order the fiber ahead of time so it hits the project at the right time, and you put it in and boom. Pay attention to that. That's gonna that's gonna pre-fabrication. Number one, it's gonna make sure that you have the quality that you want, it's gonna make sure that you have the speed or the work that you want. Lots of major advantages. Lots of major advantages. And then finally, I would say, you know, make sure that they plan for future speeds. And that kind of ties in with the fiber, you know, lots of single mode, lots of single mode, because that's gonna help it. Question number 11.

When A Bid Is Too Risky

SPEAKER_00 29:36

This comes from uh uh bid days on uh uh is an estimator of seven years' experience. How do you determine when a project is simply too risky to bid? Too risky to bid. You know, as an estimator, one of your first decisions should be should I bid this or should I not bid this? You really, as an estimator, you don't want to be bidding every single project. You know, what this is not just estimators, this is small business owners too. My small little low voltage contractors. You don't need to bid everything that comes into pike. I understand. Well, we may not have enough work. We gotta keep throwing stuff at the wall until it sticks. But you know what? All it takes if you get nailed with one project that you ignore the red flags, being a small business owner could cause you to go out of business. Right? So, a couple things for you, right? How do you on how to terminate it's it's a too risky debate. Number one, watch out for those red flags I was just talking about, right? Right. Um, if if you get pro if you get issued drawings and they're incomplete, or the specifications are vague, or worse yet, the specifications are copy and pasted from a previous project referencing standards that haven't been in effect in 10 years. That's a risk. That's that's just ching ching, check it off. You know, um, does the cut is the customer quick to respond to your emails, or does it take them seven to ten days? The seven to ten days, ching, another hack mark. And then when you get enough of those, then you realize, okay, this bid is way too risky. Because if they're taking their time to respond to you while you're building their project, building something they want, how quick do you think they're gonna be when you're asking them for the money to pay you for the work you did? Answer that for me, Batman. Also, um, especially if you're doing work like under uh like a GC, a general contractor, find out what that GC's reputation is, right? Everybody every project starts with people and past experience, past mat past experience matters. Absolutely matters. They have reputations. I did a project in Niles, Ohio uh for a super huge, well, I'll just go say because they went out of business, MCI WorldCom. And so they hired a GC to build this this call center in Niles, Ohio. So they hired a local GC. The local GC there was a big fish in a small little pond, if you know what I mean. Big fish in a small little pond. He thought he was the cat's meow. The cat's meow. And I learned pretty quickly that he wasn't the easiest thing to work with because he thought he was he thought he was the cat's meow. And I've I felt like telling him, you know, because the time I worked for Engels McCoy, you know, we're a hundred million dollar company. I doubt you made a hundred million dollars last year. Right. So that's another thing. So you really need to know when to walk away, right? Not every opportunity is a good opportunity. And the goal isn't to win every bid. Listen to this. This is important. In fact, I'm probably gonna end on this one. The goal is not to win every bid. The goal is to win, listen to this, the right bids. The right bids. That is what you really, really need to win. All right,

Closing Thoughts And Next Week

SPEAKER_00 32:48

so we're at 6.31. I do have a study group tonight, so I do gotta prep for the study group. So I'm gonna cut tonight's tonight's episode short right there. I appreciate everybody spending time with me tonight, and I'll see you guys next Wednesday night, 6 p.m. Make sure to send me your questions. They might show up in next week's show. Till next time, everybody. Remember, knowledge is power.