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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
Build or Buy? The AI Choice Reshaping AEC
Every AEC firm faces it: Do we build our own AI tools or buy what's already on the market?
In this episode of KP Unpacked, the number one Podcast in AEC, Jeff Echols and Frank Lazaro dive deep into the strategic dilemma that's dominating boardrooms and innovation teams across the built world.
From skyrocketing subscription costs to the reality of custom bot deployment in under 10 minutes, they unpack the tradeoffs, timing, and total cost of ownership behind the build vs. buy decision.
You’ll hear:
- Why most firms overestimate the need to build
- The real ROI of custom AI tools
- How low-code platforms are changing the game
- The hidden cost of falling in love with building
Six sharp takeaways to guide your AI investment strategy
- Start with the problem, not the tool.
No AI investment works unless it maps to a real pain point. - Speed > perfection.
Getting something into the hands of your team beats endless deliberation. - Adoption is your signal.
Give teams low-stakes tools first — and watch what they build around them. - Cost strategy matters.
$20 tools add up. But so does maintaining custom code. Run the real math. - Don’t build for your ego.
The most overengineered tools often become the least used. - Don’t wait.
Action beats analysis. Start with buy, evolve to build. But move.
Whether you’re a 5-person studio or a 5,000-person firm, this conversation will challenge how you think about innovation, adoption, and what it actually takes to future-proof your tech stack.
Ignite what's next
We're launching something new... It’s called Catalyst.
It’s a space for AEC forward-thinkers are reimagining what’s next. This is where the top minds in the industry are sharing ideas, leading change, and pushing the future of AEC forward.
Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/
Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers
Hope to see you there!
Hey, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is where the biggest ideas in AEC, ai and innovation they all collide in one podcast. It's powered by KP ReadyCo and this is where we break down the trends, the discussions, the technology, the strategies that are all shaping the built environment and beyond. If you're looking at the screen right now, if you're listening, you have no idea yet, but if you're looking at the screen right now, you'll notice that I am joined today by my colleague, frank Lazzaro, because today we're going to do another AI and AEC. My name is Jeff Eccles. I am the Executive Director of Catalyst here at KP ReadyCo. My friend Frank here is a senior advisor. He runs our advisory program here at KP ReadyCo and every week we get to get together and unpack, if you will, ai tools, ai policies, technology that you maybe can, maybe should be using in your AEC firm. So, frank, welcome. Glad you're here today.
Speaker 2:Excellent, yeah, it's always exciting to be back and you know, I always look at the show notes and kind of think about these topics, and you know this topic that we're going to be talking about today. You know we just had our one day mastermind here back in Atlanta, so it was always good to kind of see you in person, jeff, but it was again. This topic was one of those things that literally came up over and over again throughout the whole day. So, um, again, I think you know it's real timely. We bring these things up and we write these show notes and then the real world happens and we realized that, you know, we're definitely hitting on those topics that everyone wants to hear about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it kind of begs the question if, if we talk about it, if it's in our show notes and we talk about it, and then it happens in the real world, are we affecting the real world?
Speaker 2:I think so Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We're guiding it right here, right here, from, uh, from our chairs in the podcast studio. We're guiding the real world.
Speaker 2:We don't have a crystal ball, so it's not like we're predicting what people want. Literally, it's the same questions that you and I have, and what our teams have is what we're seeing in the real world and what our clients are saying. I appreciate the fact that we seem to be spot on every time we talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that brings up a good point too. Yes, we had our in-person mastermind on Tuesday, as we're recording this, and it is always fun to get together with you and the rest of the team when we do our in-person events, and this topic did come up there, as we just were talking about before we hit record. This is one of the most brought up, I guess, topics in our mastermind groups themselves.
Speaker 1:You know, in our virtual meetings and all the other times and when we jump into this. I think you as the listener will understand why, probably. But another point is and usually I wait to later in the later in the episode to talk about this. But if you're listening to this, you know wherever it is that you're listening to this, whatever platform, apple, spotify, whatever it is Audible. If we talk about something and you go oh, what did they say? Where do I find that? Just go down to the show notes.
Speaker 1:Our production team listens to these episodes. They pull out the things that need links and they put links to all of these things in the show notes. So that's one thing. But the other thing is, if you have a question about what we're talking about and maybe you're watching this on YouTube but if you have a question about what we're talking about or a comment about what we're talking about or a suggestion for a future topic, the easiest thing to do is to go over to YouTube, find the video. You know you'll see exactly what Frank and I see right now as we're recording. Find the video and then go down to the comment section. You'll still get the description. It's a description on YouTube versus show notes somewhere else.
Speaker 1:But in the description you can find all the links, just like everywhere else, but then you have the ability to comment. You can find all the links, just like everywhere else, but then you have the ability to comment, and that does. We see this week in and week out as we record these. We really value and appreciate your comments and your questions because it does help us guide. We have a document open in front of both of us right now that we were mapped out five, six weeks or so into the future at this point, but it's really great when your questions and comments can either confirm or help to map out the topics that we'll be talking about next episode the episode after that, because that means that what we're talking about is really, really relevant, right, it's meaningful, it's relevant and, of course, our goal and you hear this if you've been listening to this for any amount of time our goal is to make these, um, these episodes not only relevant, but also actionable for you.
Speaker 1:And so, at the at the end of the of every episode, I asked Frank okay, what's what's one thing? Right? What's one thing our listeners need to do this week? Now they've heard this, what's something they need to do this week? Now they've heard this was something they need to do this week in order to make this actionable.
Speaker 2:So, that's and that's the. That's. The hardest part about this show is asking me to come up with just one thing, cause usually it's like you need to do like six things, but if I had to pick one, All right, Well, today I'll do six Frank.
Speaker 1:What are six things? What are six steps? That our listeners need to take.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody get out your notebooks it will be in the show notes, but Frank's going to give you six today. Six Awesome Magic number. All right, today we're talking about build versus buy, making the right AI investment and, like I said, you said it first in our in-person on Tuesday in Atlanta. This came up over and over in our mastermind groups and you pop into our mastermind groups from time to time, but our innovation leaders, or our construction tech leaders, mastermind groups this question pops up all the time the people that are guiding innovation, which many times includes AI. The people that are guiding innovation in AEC firms across the world.
Speaker 1:We have mastermind members literally from across the world. They are contemplating this question all the time. Do we buy this tool or do we build this tool? Or maybe I'll throw in another, maybe a nuanced version of this. We partner with somebody on this tool. There's another version of it that pops up, but we'll get into that right now. So should we build a custom AI or should we buy an existing tool? It's talked about all the time, but where does this question come from? Where does it pop up most often, or what's the impetus for this question most often, frank?
Speaker 2:So I think the impetus for the most part and I hate to say this, but it usually comes from a misguided perception of what they should do, and I'm not comfortable with using the off-the-shelf like go buy a subscription tool. So therefore, I feel like I have to build my own so that I get the security I get. You know it's using my data, it protects my data. So it's usually it's some either security related thing or some fear related thing around. What is the AI using with my data and how is it doing it? I would say nine out of 10 firms out there could get away with just using what exists commercially. Just go buy chat, gpt teams or something along those lines. Now, interestingly enough, right and I tell this to people all the time if you just buy the individual subscription, you don't get a lot of protections with your data, you don't get a lot of control. You do have to buy a certain version of these tools in order to accomplish those security things, but you don't necessarily need to build something completely customized.
Speaker 2:So I think the genesis of a lot of this is that one not just understanding the nature of what tools are available or what some of these more commercialized tools can actually offer. The second area this comes from is it's a cost thing, right? A 40 person architecture firm it's easy to give everyone a $20 license and be dealt with. You're a 1,600-person firm. It becomes very, very expensive, very cost-effective to do that. So when you start thinking about this and I say this all the time when I talk to the firm leaders there's this common consensus that everyone's being subscription to debt.
Speaker 2:You know, jeff, you and I are old enough like we would buy a software license and we owned it. Right, I go get an AutoCAD license, I own it. I don't have to pay Autodesk any more money for that license. Now, everything's a subscription-based. So you think about that your Microsoft Office license, and then your Copilot license, and then you got Autodesk and Revit and Bluebeam, and then you realize that you were roughly two, three, four, five, ten thousand dollars per employee just in software, right? So the other genesis of that is that when you start getting up to size right. Being able to just build your own to where it's your cost of your investment for the development but you don't have ongoing subscription fees, plays a much bigger role in terms of why people want to build versus buy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we hear that a lot. In fact, I was having at the happy hour after the one day mastermind event on Tuesday. I was having a discussion with a couple of engineers and one of them said you know, it's only the tool that we were talking about at the time, which was Gamma actually. He said well, you know, it's only like $20, right, but then it's that $20 and it's another $20 and it's another, and pretty soon you've got a lot of $20, you know a lot of $20 bills going out the door every month. And then, on the other hand, we hear this a lot from, you know, to your point, smaller firms. Maybe you can absorb that better because it's a small number of licenses.
Speaker 1:But we also hear you know, co-pilot is a common discussion around these parts, so to speak, and expensive, right, more than $20 a month. And so we hear that quite often too is like well, you know, only certain people are getting the co-pilot license. We're introducing, you know, 40 licenses. You know we're rolling out 40 and we'll we'll expand, and you know strategies like that. But your point is a good one. Yes, we are being subscriptions to death and and that's part of the cost of doing business. So there's that, but but yeah, you know, I like, I like what you're saying. It's like we've got to be strategic about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know. So. If you're so, it's like we've got to be strategic about it. Yeah, so you know. So if you're a firm and you're thinking about this and you realize that just the off-the-shelf licensing, the pricing is within what you would call your investment window in terms of software licensing, you may be better off with not building. And one of the things I tell most firms when they ask me this question is that you got to remember something If you build it, you own it right, and I'm not talking about like, oh, now that we own it, it doesn't cost us anything. Well, when you need to update it, when you need to maintain it, when you need to do all those other things too, that's on you, and so you have to go back and that has to be built into your, into your ongoing support costs for that particular tool. If you buy ChatGPT Teams, when they do a feature update, when they do something, it's yours. It just shows up. So there are some pros and cons when it comes to some of these tools in terms of what you want to do. I don't dissuade anyone from saying don't build or just only buy.
Speaker 2:You really got to kind of start with. There's at least two or three big questions that you need to answer before you kind of move down a certain path. Right? What is your long-term strategy for AI in terms of are you willing to continue to invest in it? And if you are great, right, answer the security question. And then the size of your firm really is going to dictate.
Speaker 2:You know there's a firm that I was working with out of Virginia. There were 1,600 people. You know 1,600 times, you know, 20 bucks a month. I mean it becomes really, really expensive. You're talking 30 some odd thousand dollars a month in additional software licensing. You're talking 30 some odd thousand dollars a month in additional software licensing Over the course of the year. You're looking at upwards of what? $400,000 just to give people ChatGPT. Maybe I should build my own tool and make that investment, because the 100,000 to 200,000 I'm putting into the tool long term I recoup that ROI within 12 months, in 12 months. But in two years what you find is that it completely pays for itself. And now it's a great opportunity to save money when you do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and we do see quite a number of firms that are building their own chatbots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, it's gotten easier?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it has, it has. And as an episode or two ago you brought up the idea of, or the reality, that low code and no code, right, it's been a thing for a while, but it's become more and more accessible, more and more powerful, and that has changed the landscape a little bit in this realm.
Speaker 2:So you go back to and I think we talked about this, like I agree with you, we talked about this a couple episodes ago, but it is one of those things you go back. Two years ago, the only way that you could do a custom deployment of this was to get an API to open AI, get to the backend, have someone code the front end of your application, have someone code the backend of your application and then deploy. You're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours to do, but it's a completely custom solution. I was showing a client recently, this week I built a chat bot and deployed it in about 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:I don't have any coding experience. I don't know Python. I don't know React front end I don't know any of that. I'm not a full stack developer but using an off the shelf deployment tool, I was able to go in, build the bot, connect the data, write the instructions, deploy. The longest part of that deployment was actually waiting for the system to actually kind of load the application, but I deployed a bot in 10 minutes. So you could see the power of being able to create a custom bot, more so now than I would say two years ago, and I think it's gonna become more and more prevalent as people start realizing it doesn't take a lot effort to kind of turn up these AI bots or agents, so to speak. Relatively simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and also not to oversimplify things there are a lot of these firms.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think many, if not most or all of the firms that are represented in our innovation leaders and construction tech leaders mastermind groups. Part of their innovation teams include data scientists and or developers, so we are seeing trends in those directions as well. It's like hey, how many. This is a conversation, um, not that long ago in a discussion. How many full-stack developers does your engineering firm, does your structural engineering firm employ? Can you imagine if that question had been asked five years ago?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no kidding, you look like you're an alien.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, and I think what you saw was the trend has been going that way for a while, even before AI. Because what you're finding is that these firms are like well, I need to develop a Revit plugin. Well, I can go buy one off the shelf, but I want something custom to my firm, to what we do. Where you're starting to see those firms now have these software developers that were on staff, that do those things, which then easily like well, if I'm doing it for a Revit plugin, how hard is it for them to develop an AI chatbot for me real quick using one of these low-code, no-code options? So I think that there's there. So, again, when you also think about build versus buy one of the downsides to the buy part that I'm starting to run in now that seems to kind of. It's one of these things that has bubbled up probably about three or four times in the last two weeks. It depends on. The other caveat in all of this is it depends on how much data are you really wanting to access? That's yours. So what you're finding is is that, say, chat GPT teams or the or chat GPT projects, they limit the number of documents that you can access to about 20, right On these other build type platforms, even on the low code, no code, they allow you to access upwards of 300 or unlimited amount of documents.
Speaker 2:So when you start thinking about, like, what are you really trying to solve for? So say, you're a high volume engineering firm and you need to look across all your projects, well, maybe you're doing 30, 40, 50 projects a year, 100 projects a year, you know, and you got to go back five years. You need you need more depth to be able to go back and search that knowledge base of your projects and your expertise, versus just 20 documents. So in that instance you may, just from a feature functionality perspective, want to kind of go out and build your own bot, so to speak, because you can customize it to that data set versus I'm only interested in looking at 10 files at a time. The buy option may be a better option. So that's another nuanced thing that's actually kind of introduced itself, probably in the last 30 days at least on my radar, that I'm seeing clients and people interested in building these things. Kind of ask that question.
Speaker 1:So that's a nice segue to what's next in our show notes. So when should a firm know? This is a broad question because it's you know what is a firm? Is it a five person, is it 50 persons at 5,000, whatever? But as a rule of thumb, when should a firm build versus buy?
Speaker 2:by yeah. So if I'm a firm leader, you know I'm looking at it from the perspective of the one thing I'm doing right off the bat is size right. So the right off the right off the bat is like I got to think about overhead. Is adding that $20 per person across all of my firm really kind of, you know, skew my overhead numbers to the point to where the $300,000 a year investment does not get recouped immediately, or at least you know, noticeably upfront. Those are the kinds of, as a formulator, I'm thinking about the investment.
Speaker 2:If I, if I, make a hundred thousand dollar investment, how much am I saving over the next three to five years by building my outside of that? I think you start thinking about again and we've and this is probably a current theme or a recurring theme with us is that don't start with the tools, start with the problem. Think about what you're really trying to solve. For If you're trying to access a large set of data, build is probably your better option because you have more capabilities and flexibility to do that. Are you just wanting people to be efficient at the fringes emails, meeting notes and such by maybe a better option? So, again, I think that if you start with what you're really trying to solve, for that really does dictate going forward, the appropriate strategy in terms of build versus buy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, and you know also spot. Yeah, that makes sense, and you know also. You know, when we have something that is we can, we can probably do a whole nother episode on this. But if, if we have something that is in fact legitimately unique, we have unique IP that's unique to us, we have some processor system or you know proprietary thing that's unique to us, then maybe that is a signal to build as well.
Speaker 2:But let's go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're going to so you're probably aware of this. But you know our researchers are out there at the KP Redico. So you're probably aware of this. But our researchers are out there at the KP Redico. They're collecting and researching and pulling in just large swaths of data. And one of the things that we're talking about internally is like could ChatGPT help us kind of parse this data and get information?
Speaker 2:Well, the struggle that we run into is that even one small data set has literally hundreds of documents and data points off the shelf is not going to do it for us. So we're looking at our own build version internally just for our research team to be able to go back and say, if I dump in all of my research, can I then use a custom bot to look across thousands of documents to help me pull out insights? Bought to look across thousands of documents to help me pull out insights? So even internally again, you know we're we're I'm very much of we don't preach what we don't do, right, so we tell our clients to do all this other stuff, but we do that stuff internally just to the KP.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And to get back to another point you made earlier. You know we've been talking about build, or or obviously the entire episode. We've been talking about build versus buy, but we just went through you know, if this then build right and you also mentioned some buy right. The tools take care of a common administrative task.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's accounting, maybe it's whatever. You know that might be a signal to buy administrative task. Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's accounting, maybe it's whatever. That might be a signal to buy. Of course, you've mentioned several times and given several different scenarios about cost. Those are things to keep in mind. If you build it, you've got to maintain it. You're probably employing the developer, et cetera, versus the $20 a month. That's a little bit of a stretch of an example there. But also when you need it now and you need to ramp it up now, then it may be a signal to buy versus to build it. You know, just get it out of the box.
Speaker 2:And so that's the other thing too. So, you know, we like we and I think we have future episode talking about this but we want to talk about, you know, uh, this concept of innovation. Right, one of the things that we rally around, at least on the advisory side of our businesses, is, you know, we have this, this dial assessment, which basically essentially benchmarks any architecture, engineering, construction firm against peers on how innovative they are, and one of the things when we think about innovation and we think about like the build versus buy, there are a good number of firms that tend to be on the lower end of the bell curve in terms of a technology adoption, not shocking set right, we know that our industry tends to be laggards when it comes to technology. So, if you are still on the, on the cusp of trying to understand whether or not this is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, to your point, buying the tool to see how people react to it and how your firm can adopt the technology, how does the culture within your firm change over time because you have this tool?
Speaker 2:And if you see adoption pick up and you see your culture change, then go make the investment. So sometimes buying this kind of gets you to market a lot faster. It allows you to kind of try before you make a huge investment. Right, I would caution, like if you were still on the bubble. I would caution any firm to go in and go spend tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to go build a tool and you have no idea whether or not your internal organization is of the mindset, culturally, that would want to adopt it. May not be the best option, but if you just buy it you could just always not buy it and just turn it off, and then you saved yourself time and money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. That came up in a conversation recently where somebody was talking about the fact that they were disappointed with an adoption rate. Yeah, they were like 4% to 7% adoption across the firm. This is not a small firm but 4% to 7% adoption rate across the firm. This is not a small firm, but, you know, four to 7% adoption rate across the across the firm. And somebody else in the uh in the conversation said well, that actually doesn't sound that bad. Um, you know, based on the context and you know some things, I can't share all of it in this uh, in the, in this forum. But on the heels of what we're saying now, what we're talking about here in this episode, if 4% to 7% adoption rate is not that bad, that's a huge difference. If you decided to build this thing versus to buy this thing, you know that. That's, that's a. That's a great, that's a. That's a great point there. So trying it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things I love to kind of bring up with other firms. You start thinking about investments to. You know, go back to the sponsor from the one day mastermind in Atlanta, you know CTA. One of the things that they talk about is, you know, you talk about these R and D credits, these tax credits. So there are benefits to that if you are going to make the investment right now.
Speaker 2:I don't know all the nuances and the tax laws and all this other stuff, but I do understand that if you are building this technology that is R and D, you may qualify for some kind of recovery through through, through some, some tax incentive or tax rebate. So again, I think there's other things and I don't I don't encourage people to go build tools just for the tax incentives, but just know that if you are making these investments, you know I would definitely talk to your accounting teams, go talk to your accountant that there are probably things that you can take advantage of if you decide to move down this path of doing this kind of technology investment piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, shout out to Jordan Wilson, a corporate tax advisor, cta in.
Speaker 1:Atlanta. Give him a call if you need to learn more about R&D tax credits. Jordan's been a great supporter of what we do around here and also firms that we work with, because when we're talking about innovation, then we're talking about R&D and then there may be some tax credits available for that. So I don't usually have commercials in the end there, but you know, shout out to Jordan and thanks to Jordan for all of his support over the years. I think it's appropriate to do that. So to recap a little bit, we've talked about the build.
Speaker 1:You know the pros and cons of of building. You get a tailored solution, you have long-term control and a higher upfront cost, and then, on the buy side, you may be able to deploy faster. You have proven tools right, they're already in the marketplace. You're buying them off the shelf, so to speak, and they may not fit in all workflows. It may not be exactly the right tool. You may need to take some time to customize the setup or something like that. So there's pros and cons to the build and the buy. So we've gotten down to this point now where we need to talk about takeaways. So what are six things? You volunteered six.
Speaker 2:I brought them up.
Speaker 1:You brought it up. What are somewhere between one and six things that our listeners should do this week to explore this idea, to implement some of the things that we're talking about, to make what we're talking about actionable?
Speaker 2:And again reoccurring theme number one right off the bat start with what are you really trying to solve for, because I think that is very prescriptive to understand the path of where you want to go with this. The other thing, too is, you know, don't get so hyper. Number two would be don't get so hyper-focused on build, Sometimes just speed to market, getting people access to the tools to see how they're using them, to see how they're doing. Now, like you said, it may not be perfect, right, not solve every single workflow problem that you may have, but it's going to give you a significant amount of data around internal company culture when it comes to innovation. And then also it's going to, you know, the third one that kind of touches number two on this one is that it's going to show you how innovative your organization can be. Right, if you give people access to the tools immediately and you give them a little leeway to kind of figure out how it fits into their workflows, you'll be surprised, particularly when I'm having conversations with organizations, when they've kind of said here's the tool and let people kind of figure it out. What you find is is that people get really creative and trying to solve some of their own problems.
Speaker 2:The other thing, too, is like again, we touched on this a little bit earlier when we think about number four, it's you know, it's the cost. So when you're thinking about, you know, the cost of build versus the cost of buy. That becomes a significant issue, particularly once you become a firm of size Right, I don't really know what that size is. What is your tolerant for investment? What's your tolerant for overhead? That is a very individualized thing from the firm. The larger firms, the firms that start getting into the plus a thousand employees, tend to want to build versus buy because, one, they have the staff to support it going long-term. Two, from an ongoing cost perspective, it's just cheaper to build it versus own it, right.
Speaker 2:The fifth one is don't fall in love with building, right? I know that as engineers or technical folks, we think that we always have to build something and, like it's in our nature, right, we have to completely customize our CRMs. We have to completely customize everything. Don't fall in that trap. You don't necessarily have to do that. If you start with the problem that you're solving and then identifying the tool to solve for that, use what's available, available to you. Don't waste time and money trying to customize something where you end up over engineering it to the point where you don't really get any usefulness out of it.
Speaker 2:And then number six is don't wait, right. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're thinking about, um, you know, put an action into place. I was having a conversation with one of our clients this afternoon and their CEO is just like we cannot wait, let's do this, let's just get something up and let people start playing with it. So, whether you're, if you're internally debating over and over again oh we should build, no, we should buy. All you're doing is wasting time, right, make a decision and then start running forward. If you are gonna build, no, we should buy. All you're doing is wasting time, right, make a decision and then start running forward. If you are going to build, buy it now and then, as you build it, you can phase it out. And that's the nice thing about the buy part is it's just a monthly subscription. So give your people access to today and then, as you build, to a long-term strategy. That's great, but at least they have some tools that they're using today. You don't want to lose out on that product yeah.
Speaker 2:I hit the six.
Speaker 1:You did. You hit exactly six. Seems like that was maybe planned, maybe I don't know. I don't know if anybody else feels that way.
Speaker 2:I will admit that the show notes only have two.
Speaker 1:This is true. This is true. This is true. We would do a screen share. I guess I actually could, but there are only two and I still feel like from the very beginning that was a setup. Frank had planned this all along. So progress over perfection. And I also love the comment don't fall in love with building. We see that a lot. Right, and so I've. I am immersed in our incubator, have been for two years now and um, we see that in our incubator we see not only traditional startups, but we see corporate startups. So we, you know, we develop this tool, we develop that tool. Maybe we're going to spin it out, commercialize it. It's easy, as you alluded to, it's easy for folks in this industry to fall in love with building these things. Oh, we could build this ourself. Yeah, we could do this. It's okay. Sure you can. Does that make any sense? Right, and there's you went through it earlier. If you missed it, just rewind, you know, just like in the cassette tape or the 8-track Rewind.
Speaker 2:You don't rewind an 8-track, do you?
Speaker 1:Could you, could you rewind?
Speaker 2:I think there was a rewind?
Speaker 1:No, no, it's been a long time.
Speaker 2:It's been a long time. Yeah, that's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 1:It is a different podcast. When KP and I record, we always have a Google it moment because we talk about old things sometimes and say you know what, Just Google it.
Speaker 1:So somebody needs to Google. Can you rewind an eight track? And um, or maybe you already know, maybe you're listening to an eight track in your car, um, but just put that in, uh, in the comments section on youtube. Just let us know, can you rewind an eight track? But you, you talked about the roi, you talked about the, the costs and things like that, and so we need to keep those things, uh, keep all those things in mind in addition to these six actionable takeaways. So good episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good, if you're out there, well, you are out there listening, because you're hearing my voice right now.
Speaker 1:Um, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, depending on how you consume this. Again. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, depending on how you consume this. Again, we really appreciate your questions, your comments, your suggestions for future topics. It's probably easiest to do that over on YouTube, but subscribe, like, share all of those things that we do with podcasts and YouTube shows. We appreciate you helping us spread the message.
Speaker 1:We think what we're doing here we know what we're doing here from the feedback that we get is impactful here in the industry, and so we want to continue that and continue to ramp it up. So, if you're not aware, these conversations, like the ones that Frank and I have, like the ones that KP and I have, a lot of these types of conversations are happening inside Catalyst, which is our online platform. We're launching Catalyst. You can go to kpreadyco and right there in front of you will be a request to access to Catalyst. You just fill out a couple of forms. You know how that works. There's no cost to it, to our online platform, but we do curate the people that are in there because we want to make sure that it is the most innovative, that it is the most engaged, that it is a group of people that are focused on pushing innovation forward in the built environment and the AEC industry. So what that looks like in reality is you fill that out and then you have a conversation with me. That's how the vetting process goes.
Speaker 1:Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You might need to Google that.
Speaker 2:You should do a podcast, so the interview is podcast style on camera.
Speaker 1:Maybe I will, maybe I'll start doing that. Hey, you've got to. Should do a podcast, so the interview is podcast style on camera. Maybe, maybe I will, maybe I'll start doing that. Hey, you've gotta be on a podcast.
Speaker 2:That's. That's how I'm gonna invent all of our uh, our certified consultants. It's going to be through a podcast.
Speaker 1:I'll let them there you go, if they can. If they can stand the heat, that's right. They can be. Yep, yeah, absolutely so. So go to that, go go to kpreadyco, apply to join Catalyst and join these types of conversations. You know, frank will Frank and I will continue to bring these episodes to you. Certainly, kp and I will, and I'm interviewing more and more people from not only our organization but our mastermind members and others in different versions of this podcast that roll out on a weekly basis. But Catalyst has become the hub for everything that we do. It's where our advisory clients connect.
Speaker 1:They have their own platform, our mastermind groups, our integrated owners forum, our incubator all have their platforms there, but outside of those platforms, this is where Catalyst is, where conversations like this can continue, beyond our conversations here on the podcast, either video or audio. So thank you for listening, thank you in advance for applying to join Catalyst, and we'll be back again next week. So join us then. Frank, as always, great to see you again. Great to see you and hang out and collaborate and do the happy hour thing after the event in Atlanta on Tuesday. So see you again soon and thanks for doing this with me.
Speaker 2:Same here, appreciate it, I enjoy every week.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. My name is Jeff Eccles. I'm the Executive Director of Catalyst here at KP ReadyCo. I am joined by my colleague, Frank Lazzaro, who's a Senior Advisor and the Head of our advisory services here at KP ReadyCo. We're out, but we'll be back next week to talk about more AI for AEC. Thanks everybody, We'll see you next week.