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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation—unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
The Secret to Making an Impact in AEC (Even If Your Boss Hates It)
In this episode of KP Unpacked, we dive into one of the biggest mindset shifts that can define your career: Are you high agency?
Host Jeff Echols sits down with Abby Coleman, a rising force in AEC and an Innovation XR Specialist at IMEG, to unpack KP Reddy’s latest Sunday Scaries article: Are You High Agency? What About Your Team? They explore why some professionals take ownership, push boundaries, and disrupt industries—while others settle into the status quo.
They discuss:
🔹 What it really means to be a ‘high agency’ innovator
🔹 Why AEC firms struggle with change (and how to break that cycle)
🔹 How VR is shaking up real estate and design decision-making
🔹 The hidden career opportunities for those who embrace disruption
🔹 Why surrounding yourself with ambitious people is the key to growth
Plus, Abby shares how she’s using virtual reality to accelerate decision-making in AEC and why she believes high agency thinking is the missing piece for innovation in the built world. If you want to future-proof your career and make an impact, this episode is a must-listen.
🎉 Special Offer for KP Unpacked Listeners: Get 55% off your ticket to the 9th Annual AEC Summit on October 29th at the Diverge Innovation Center in Phoenix! Click the link below and use promo code UNPACKED55 at checkout.
Don't miss this opportunity to connect with top minds in AEC and beyond. Tickets are limited—act fast!
All right, welcome back to the KP Unpacked podcast. This is usually my opportunity to sit down with KP Reddy, the CEO and founder of KP Reddyco and founder of Shadow Ventures, and say hey, KP, I was reading your post on LinkedIn. I was just wondering what were you thinking when you wrote that KP's not here with me today. You might have noticed that if you're watching the video version of this right now. So this is another version of KP Unpacked that we've started to roll out. This is our mastermind edition of KP Unpacked. It's where I'm bringing on members of our mastermind groups from our innovation leaders, our construction technology leaders, our early and mid-career in AEC folks, and we're having conversations about who they are, where they work, what they do, what they're looking forward to, what excites them. And we may get to unpacking one of KP's posts before we wrap this up, and we may not. We'll just see how it goes here in this conversation. But one of the things that I do want to do is build a platform where all of our Mastermind members can come on and talk about what they're working on, what they see in the AEC world and what excites them.
Speaker 1:So today I am joined by Abby Coleman. She is a member of our early and mid-career AEC mastermind group. She's very active. She has to be so, as we're recording this. Last week her boss was one of the guest mentors for the early and mid-career mastermind meeting and I guess it's bad form to not show up if your boss is speaking that day. But I really appreciate Abby. I appreciate what she brings to the group and I'm glad that she's here on the podcast with me today. So, Abby, thanks for being here, and why don't you take a second to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. Thanks, jeff, for having me today. I'm super excited about this podcast, but I guess to get to know me so, hi guys, I'm Abby Coleman. I work at iMeg and iMeg's just an engineering consultancy firm and kind of what my role is there is I'm our innovation extended reality specialist. You might be asking yourself hey, abby, what is that? That's a mouthful of words. Essentially that just means I'm our virtual reality specialist and augmented reality specialist. I lead all of our efforts and kind of what I do high level is I take our Revit designs and I throw it in VR and then I show that design to our clients and our engineers. You know unpacks a lot of benefits from that. But yeah, I'm a background mechanical engineer and I'm pretty new to this industry been maybe two, three years in this industry so I'm a blank canvas and I'm eager to learn.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's. That's all. Very, very cool. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit because a few weeks ago, as we're recording this right now, we had Mark Teixeira, former Major League Baseball player, baseball star, as our guest mentor for the early and mid-career group and you asked Mark. I thought a really great question, and of course it was. You know I'll give part of it away, but no spoiler alerts here. But you asked Mark, who is a real estate investor he's retired from baseball now. He's a real estate investor and you asked him about VR and real estate development. So what did you think about Mark's response to that? And has that changed the way that you think about your job at all, or maybe confirmed the way that you think about Mark's response to that? And has that changed the way that you think about your job at all, or maybe confirmed the way that you think about your job?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of knew the answer, jeff. I was kind of you know setting him up, but yeah, wasn't surprised.
Speaker 2:He said that his answer was yes, vr can help, you know, benefit, real estate and selling that, and it kind of I guess it did confirm in a sense of like, oh, I could take action on this, this is an opportunity I can seize. And I don't know, I thought about, yeah, that I could, my career, the way I'm going, there's lots's, lots of uh avenues I can go down, and so that's kind of open and clarified and, um, solidified, like, hey, this could be an avenue or action I could take.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I, I like that, I like where you're going with that. And actually this came up in one of the episodes that KP and I recorded. We were talking about business models. We were talking about a lot of different things and especially, I think, with maybe a change in the economy and things and the way that firms may look at technology, emerging technology and tech-enabled services. And KP brought up your question to Mark to share and we talked about it a little bit and I think, as we think about, how can architecture firms, engineering firms, you know, ae construction management firms, wherever in the AEC world, how can they use technology to change the way they serve their clients? And I thought that your question was fantastic.
Speaker 1:I thought, you know, coming from the answer coming from Mark to share about, hey, I may not, maybe I don't want to I think is how he said it Maybe I don't want to have to completely trust the architect, right, and you know what they say and they show me a two-dimensional, whether it's a floor plan or an elevation or interior elevation or whatever it is. Maybe it helps me a lot to see this through the VR goggles, right, and so KP and I were talking about this and one of the things that strikes me about that is, as we think about developers, you know the commonly the largest line item in their performa is interest carry. That's why they push, they push, they push, they push, faster, faster, faster, faster. We need to get this out, because they don't want to carry the interest on the loan right, because they don't want to carry the interest on the loan right, and so this idea of getting things done faster, it always bogs down in a decision-making process.
Speaker 1:So when you have the ability, when you, abby, have the ability to show a client something through the VR goggles, giving the client the ability to see things, to visualize things through the VR goggles, giving the client the ability to see things, to visualize things through the VR, is going to speed up the decision-making process and, I think, probably reduce the number of changes, reduce the number of oh, I didn't realize it was going to look like that or feel like that. You know those types of things. I think there's a tangible benefit to what you're talking about, what you're doing, in terms of changing the way that architecture firms or engineering firms or whoever's you know whoever's creating the VR, controlling the VR I think that can fundamentally change the way that those firms are serving their clients and I think again, I think there's a tangible benefit to the bottom line there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm a firm believer that, yeah, virtual reality is going to be a disruptor in the AEC industry in the best way possible. So I guess, if we take it back, like, say, you're buying a car, right, typically people want to test drive the car, see what it looks like, before making that medium-sized investment of like $30,000 or whatever. And it's just like it's crazy. You know, in the AEC industry we're building a massive building, millions and billions of dollars, and it's like we're just kind of blindly going in and, you know, confirming things on like a 2d plan. That's like not even I don't know, I'm a visual and tangible person. So like, um, I couldn't fathom how other people you know do that and decision make off of those um. So it's like, how can we bridge that gap, you know, with our engineers, our architects and especially our clients? Because I feel like our clients and owners are typically not non-designers so they can't visualize things in 3D. And so, yeah, virtual reality can definitely help speed up that decision-making process.
Speaker 2:I know, when I attended AU Autodesk University last year, they had these industry trends and I'd like to share. So industry trend of like 2.6 trillion foot square whatever it says One New York City size buildings built every month until 2060. Over 33 percent of construction projects come in over budget and the industry annual of rework caused by like poor project data and communication is 280 billion dollars. So there's a big problem there and I'm a firm believer that virtual reality can help reduce some of those problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, that's obviously a very significant number and not that to your point. Yes, some of those problems, right, Not that virtual reality is magic or a silver bullet or anything like that, but it could have, I believe it could have a big impact on on that particular number. So thank you for sharing that. That's great. Um, you mentioned you use the term disruptor or disruptive.
Speaker 1:I think what we do here on KP unpacked is typically we take one of the things that KP is posted on on LinkedIn and, by the way, if you're listening to this and you're not following KP ready on LinkedIn, you should be. He posts about three times a day usually and his posts are. They're insightful, certainly across the AEC industry or startup world or venture capital, investing, investing um. Sometimes they're meant to stir the pot, sometimes they're just things that he's he's thinking about or has realized in in uh doing advisory work for a firm, or or maybe it's come out of of our incubator program or one of our mastermind groups, one of the conversations there. But but everything that he posts is really insights on designing building materials involved with operating, owning the built environment. So follow KP Ready. He's typically completely at the limit on the LinkedIn scale for the number of connections that he can have, but follow him on LinkedIn KP, just the two letters and then Ready R-E-D-D-Y. One of the things he does every Sunday is he posts what he calls his Sunday Scary, so it's a longer article. I'm not going to read the whole article today, but the title of the article that he posted on February 10th, 2025. So if you're listening to this in the year 2030, you got to go back a little ways February 10th 2025. The title is Are you High Agency, what About your Team? And it starts out like this I'm just, I'm going to, like I said, I'm going to read a little bit of it and then you'll have to go and read the rest because it's it's an article, it's not just a post. It says Are you High agency, what about your team?
Speaker 1:This past week, a friend of mine sent me an article on the concept of high agency people. If you aren't familiar, they used to call themselves self-starters, then it was disruptors. Now everyone in the tech set has a new self-description of choice High agency. It's a trait most assigned to people who start their own companies, seize opportunities that others miss and never take no for an answer. High agency people are rich, successful or on their way to being both. They're action-oriented and they find opportunities where others see roadblocks. High agency is about actively going after what you want without waiting for the circumstances to be perfect. That's what tech entrepreneur Andrew Young recently explained. So I'll stop there. There's obviously a lot more because it is article length here, but as we were talking, as Abby and I were talking she said, hey, let's talk about this one. So, abby, what resonated with you about KP Sunday's scary article about high agency? Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, no. Immediately when I read that um, you know the article is hey, are you high agency? And I was reading all the characteristics they listed off like you know, hey, starting your own company, seizing up people's miss or taking no for an answer, I was like, hey, this is aligning with me because I am an aspiring entrepreneur and, yeah, I think where others see roadblocks or problems, I see as opportunities, and so tying this back into the AEC industry, all these problems with a lot of rework and overcost and stuff like that that's definitely a big opportunity that I know I can kind of help with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that reminds me. I don't have the quote at hand. I should have been more prepared for that. But when? Again back to the session with Mark Teixeira, one of the things that he said that he's looking for, and that anybody that wants to be successful in this built environment world, in the AEC world, is that they need to really hone their I forget how he said it now but their problem-solving skills, basically. And so that idea of, oh, these are the roadblocks. Many, many people that I know in the AEC world they look at those roadblocks and they go all right, it's just another problem that we need to, that we need to solve, or it's an opportunity that we can leverage somehow. Maybe it's something that somebody else is shying away from.
Speaker 1:Back in my AEC career, before I went off on this tangent that I'm on now, my background is architecture. I worked in AE firms and I spent a good chunk of time working with developers and doing a lot of multifamily projects and mixed-use projects, and we had one developer in particular that every single time that he was ready to develop a new project, there'd be some crazy site condition Like you know, just something that you'd never thought about, never heard of. You know there's something. What do you mean? We're going to build this mixed-use complex, I guess, if you will, on a peat bog, what Right? But he would come up with these sites and as I start to, as I think back about that, or think back on that and think about that, I look at it now and I go look at where those sites were. Those were sort of the premium sites in locations that no one else had snatched up, because they all saw those things the peat bog and the concrete washout and all the mitigation that needed to be done and all that. They saw those as the roadblocks and this particular developer, he saw those as opportunities. Right, he leveraged those things and I really think that that idea, or what you're pulling out of that definition, I guess, if you will, or description of high agency, I think that's so important for not only early and mid-career AEC people but all across the industry and, I think, really successful people around the world.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great thing to pull out there, when, when you think about what you do now, because you're like you said, you've been in the in the industry for a few years now and I know from the way that you have shown up in early and mid-career mastermind group meetings, questions you've asked and everything else. You know you're looking at the future, you know what's next. What do I do with this? That type of thing which makes a lot of sense. What do you think in terms of building a path to what's next and then what's beyond that and what's beyond that? What do you think is going to be most important as you're looking out into the future and as the industry is changing very rapidly? Is there a particular skill set or a particular mindset that you're you're trying to build?
Speaker 2:that is a great question, jeff. Hmm, hmm. Yeah, where do I see my future going and kind of, what should I be doing? What characteristics should I be sharpening, or skills? Hmm, honestly, I don't know where my future is going to lead me.
Speaker 2:I'm just kind of going to go with the flow, the flow. But, as I'm, you know, leading up to that, I think it's really important to have a, an agile mindset, being able to you know, yeah, being able to work with the cards that you're dealt with and you know, having to pivot if you need to pivot, and being quick on your feet, making those quick decisions and also building your network. I think that's really important because it's kind of really hard to kind of wrap your arm around all this change in technology and AI. So if you can build that network of you know people with those expertise and getting that high level information from those people will help you gain that knowledge quicker. And then, yeah, it's really important to stay up to date with the current news of what's going on. But, like I said, it's kind of hard for one individual to do that.
Speaker 1:So building a team to do that I found is really helpful. So, yeah, I think those are great points and it's, you know, thinking about the people that are in the early and mid-career mastermind group. It always reminds me, because we bring in what we call a guest mentor every session for all of our mastermind members to hear and to connect with and ask questions of. And I'm always impressed by the way that our members show up because they do, like Abby's question for Mark Teixeira, they show up with these great questions what about this and what about that? And I'm always reminded of a quote from Jim Rohn that goes something like you become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And so I know KP's article, the Sunday Scaries article, about high agency, goes on to talk about tech founders that surround themselves. You know, do you surround yourself by high agency people? That that may be the go-getters, the drivers that may leave to go on to something else, or or do you not? And in the article spoiler alert he says you need to, do you not? In the article spoiler alert he says you need to.
Speaker 1:One of the things that bothers me sometimes is when I hear, let's just say, senior leaders that say, well, why would I want someone to be in that environment? Or why would I want to invest too much in them? What if they leave? And of course there's another quote and I forget who it comes from much in them? What if they leave? And of course there's another quote and I forget who it comes from, but it's. But the quote goes something like you know, you either invest in them, you know, pour into them to help them develop into what they can be, what you want them to be, or you don't, and they stay right. If you pour into them and they leave, so be it, that is what it is. But if you don't invest in them and they stay, then what right? Then what are you left with? So I think that idea of surrounding yourself you're talking about building a team I love that idea because we know that we can't do it alone and we also know that if we surround ourselves by like-minded people and also people that are you know you can't see this in the audio, but, but if I'm here and I want to get to here, I need to surround myself by people that I guess, if I'm average, if I'm the average of those people. I need to aim even higher than that, right? So I, I, I like what you're saying there. I like the mindset that you have there. I like what you're saying there. I like the mindset that you have there.
Speaker 1:I think it's completely necessary for everybody that wants to grow into some of these roles. I know there are a lot of people in the early and mid-career mastermind groups that look at our innovation leaders, our construction tech leaders, and they say how do I get that job? That might be a similar aspiration. How do I get that job? Maybe you know that might be a similar aspiration. How do I get that job? Well, you know, you've got to hang out with some people like that. We've got to learn from them. What excites you as you look, as you look into the future of, of the profession, of the, of the industry? What excites you Craziest, craziest thing that's out there that you can, can see what's. What do you find that's really exciting about the direction that things are headed?
Speaker 2:Um flying cars. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:Um, that's cool.
Speaker 2:No, uh, what excites me in the future?
Speaker 2:I guess, before I go into that kind of my personal, kind of what motivates me and what kind of drives the decisions that I make, is and this might be a little philosophical cliche, but ever since I was a kid, I stumbled upon a quote and it's been my life motto ever since.
Speaker 2:My life motto ever since, and the quote is to make the world a better place than what you found it. And so I have a strong passion for helping people and kind of what excites me for the future is being able to help all those people in a sense of AEC industry being helped, or being able to help, you know, future nurses and doctors, being able to, you know, build their OR or hospital, to help other people you know, or helping you know any other person building their dream building, and then also blazing the way through engineers, like-minded like myself, behind me, passing on that torch and teaching them. Like, hey, these are some of the things I did and these are what I've learned from. Take my knowledge and take what I've learned from and do even better. So, yeah, again in the future, I'm just really excited to see all of those that I can help.
Speaker 1:I love that. We need that. We definitely need that. You can mentor the high agency people that are coming behind you.
Speaker 2:We'll see. I'm not ready yet, but we'll see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of my consulting or have done through some of my consulting and coaching is I hear that a lot and I said I'm not ready to mentor anybody yet. But the thing is it's like if, if you want to, if you're just starting out or you're somewhere along this path and you're looking for a mentor, you may look at that person. That's the, that's the bona fide, you knowide expert in the field. Right, this is that person that knows everything about it. One, they're not very accessible. There's one of them that they're at that level and two, it's intimidating. So what we find is, many times some of the best mentors are just a step or two ahead on the journey.
Speaker 1:So you can look at it and say you know what I'm not, I'm not ready to mentor someone into into the director of something role, or the, the, the VP of whatever? Of course not, or you're not even there yet, but but you may not. You may think I'm not ready to mentor someone into a certain role, but you know, just look at the people that are a couple of steps behind you. You know you can, you can certainly mentor those people. You've got to, you've got to match up their expectations and their needs with, with your experience. But I think everybody has the ability to to play that role of mentor and I, I, I love the fact that you're out there trying to help people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, yeah. That's a great way of putting it, jeff. Um, I think I was just thinking okay, I need to mentor someone in a whole plethora of like a staircase for sense from level one to level two. But when you break it down into steps, I could definitely say I'm on step three and I can mentor those who are maybe on step one and two. So that's a good way of putting it. Never thought of it like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Find the people, because you're also going to grow as you go, so find, find the people that you can help in those first couple of steps. That's great. Anything else from that article that that stands out to you?
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, um, let's see. Uh, I did write some notes. I will be foreshadowing for those who have not read the article yet, but some of the takeaways is you know, and this is kind of, yeah, resonated with me, but expecting people, people on your team, to have the same ambition as you is unrealistic. And, um, that's became more apparent to me recently because I'm like, why aren't these people going and doing 110 percent? Why do they just they're slacking, they're just like average joes. What's going on? Um, yeah, so. So that quote kind of resonated with me.
Speaker 2:What else? Yes, yeah, so another thing it's better to have a high agency person that has impact, like a high impact in your company for four years and then they leave, versus someone who you know joins you on your startup and then stays. We kind of talked about this and my takeaway from that is don't be complacent. Who you know joins you on your startup and then stays. We kind of talked about this, um, and my takeaway from that is don't be complacent. You know, you should always be shooting for better and wanting to push yourself to succeed, succeed, succeed. So, for those people who join your startup, become complacent and don't leave, um, yeah, they think that that's uh not a good thing. So you want to seek out for those uh high agency people when you're recruiting.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, we definitely need to focus on people that have a growth mindset. Um, you know that, um, which, which is, you know, a clinical term, but, um, I don't know that that growth mindset and high agency are exactly the same. I think there's probably a difference there, but, like you said, it's the people that want to grow that want to succeed. Those are great points.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, my last takeaway is you know high agency is the opposite of AEC and KP kind of mentioned like hey, maybe that's why AEC industry lacks innovation, because they lack high agency people, and I could agree with that. The AEC industry can use a little bit more high agency people and I think we're already seeing that, you know, being developed now. But there's definitely room for growth for the, for this industry, and I'm I'm excited to see what is going to come, uh, in like the next five years.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I think I think we can all agree that it's coming right. It, it, um, there is an awful lot of. This is the way we've always done it, and there are reasons behind that. Um, you know, some of it is KP and I talked about this on a recent episode as well Some of it is is an attempt to mitigate risk and things like that. But when you look at study after study after study and look at the the tech adoption and everything else of of one of, if not the largest industry in the world, it definitely has the largest impact on how we live and work and play. But, yeah, we are often lagging far behind when it comes to innovation, when it comes to technology, when it comes to just being open to change in business models. Right, this is the way we've always done it. My theory is that this is the way we've always done it. It's the most dangerous statement in our society today. Maybe there's something else coming up that somebody wants to call out as competition, but it's definitely the most dangerous statement for the future of this industry. So I think those are all great points and if you haven't read it yet, I'll just give you sort of that paragraph that Abby's referring to it says interesting enough, this idea is such an opposite rubric for firms in the architecture, engineering and construction space.
Speaker 1:The longevity of tenure at these firms is a badge of honor. Should it be, or should there be a bunch of X insert company name firms out there? Maybe that's the root cause for the lack of innovation in the AEC space? It's the lack of high agency talent. When I was an engineer out of college, I worked for a firm called Law Engineering. So many of us left that we all started meeting up and call ourselves the outlaws. Can you imagine a person interviewing at a big AEC firm and saying, well, I plan on giving you my best work for three years, but then I plan on moving on? Not sure if they would get a second interview.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I've got some thoughts on that, but I think the point is valid. And I do think it's one of the things that holds the industry back.
Speaker 2:I agree and I kind of resonate with that last bit, that last sentence.
Speaker 1:So anyways, All right, I don't want to cut this short, so is there anything else in this article that just says, hey, we need to talk about this?
Speaker 2:No, I think I hit upon all my good takeaways.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, great. So if you're listening along, you didn't catch this in the beginning. Abby Coleman and I are unpacking KP Reddy's Sunday Scary from February 10th 2025. The title is Are you High Agency? What About your Team? It's posted on LinkedIn. He's got a series on LinkedIn on his on his LinkedIn profile called Sunday Scaries. If you're not following KP, you should just go to KP the two letters and then ready R-E-D-D-Y. Follow him and um, watch and read and listen to what he's posting on LinkedIn, because there's an awful lot of insights for the built environment that he's talking about day after day usually two, three posts a day. So check that out, follow KP.
Speaker 1:And I want to say a special thank you to Abby Coleman, not only for coming here for this podcast interview today, but also for being a great participant and member of our early and mid-career mastermind group, and I appreciate every single one of those members because they show up time after time and have great conversations with our guest mentors every time and I love that. I love that about this group because they are a high agency group. They're the people that are going hey, how do I do this? How do I do this differently? They know that they're shaping the future of this industry and I really appreciate the fervor that they're bringing to that. So, abby, thank you, thank you for all of that and thank you for this conversation today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me on, Jeff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you out there that are listening, thank you for listening. I'll be back again next week. Maybe it's with KP, Maybe it's with another special guest for KP, Unpacked. So we'll be back. Check out KP's article. Are you High Agency? What About your Team? And I'll see you next week. Thanks everybody.