CCCT & Johnathan Meade from Meade Engineering Video

 

CCCT with Johnathan Meade, COO from Meade Engineering, a leading engineering firm that specializes in providing innovative and cost-effective solutions for data center builders, cloud providers, and developers of large construction projects. With years of experience, the team of expert engineers, designers, and consultants is dedicated to delivering high-quality, reliable, and sustainable solutions that meet your specific needs. At Meade Engineering, they take pride in their commitment to excellence, efficiency, and superior service. They strive to build long-lasting relationships by understanding your unique requirements and delivering customized solutions that exceed your expectations. Enjoy the conversation.

https://meadeengineering.com

#engineering #datacenters #construction #commercialproperty #sustainable #developers

 

Transcript

Hey there Commercial Construction Coffee Talk fans, thanks for chiming in. My name’s David Corson, I’m your host. I’m also the publisher and editor of Commercial Construction Renovation Magazine. This is what it used to look like, we’re digital now. But let’s see, what year was this? This is July 2021. A lot, Kathy VP president at JLL, and a nice story of a project that we covered in Nashville. It’s always nice holding them in my hands. And let’s see what I got in my publisher… Oh, I’m talking about my parents. There’s my dad and my uncle back in the furniture days. It was in the furniture magazine, and this old chair that my sister fought… We were known for exceptional upholstery manufacturing, not the junk that you see out there. You know, the people get today. This was made in North Carolina, and this chair is probably like 40 years old. They saw it at a client’s house, and they said, “Oh, I got to buy that, you know, my partner’s family’s company or whatever.” But that’s my dad on the left of the black hair, my uncle Le on the right. Anyway, I did my retail training after I got out of school. I did my retail training at Levitz and Scotch guarded a million things, built those little brass tables, lost leaders in the back of the store, and did merchandise and everything. And, you know, so anyway, that’s my retail background. But it’s fun to see the magazine and some old pics and stuff. Normally, I have my picture there, but I put my family picture in there. Oh, listen, today’s Thursday, almost the weekend. Again, it’s kind of nice here, you know, in the ATL. No humidity and, you know, it’s cooling off a little nippy at night, but really nice during the day. And I got my Braves shirt on because the playoffs, looks like we’re playing the filth, the filthy from Philadelphia. I’m from Philly, so I can say that. And it looks like the Dbacks, they’re in it too, right? You know, so they are. So, but it looks like it’s the Twins won and the Dbacks won and the Phillies won and the twins, you know. And so, anyway, may the best team win. Now the real game, now the real fun begins. And I just saw a thing that the Phillies have played the Braves the last whatever in the playoffs and the Braves have lost every time. So hopefully, they’ll get it, they’ll change it and, you know, it’ll get done. But anyway, congrats to all the baseball guys, you know. It’s October and time to elevate and, you know, get into the World Series and see who’s going to bring home the trophy. And, you know, on the women’s side, you know, can’t forget about the women now. You got the WNBA, you know, you got the Las Vegas Aces against the New York Liberty, the two best teams in the league and it should be great. I sat next to a guy that actually worked for the WNBA with sports and news on my way back when I was on the road last week from Detroit to New York. And we were talking about the NBA. Anyway, I just emailed him. I said, “Hey, you know, I want to get you on my podcast. You’d be great to have on there.” And he came back, he goes, “Yeah, let’s do it in November.” So I was like, “Wow, you know, I didn’t think he was going to read my note.” So, with that said, listen, got a gentleman out in the great state of Arizona. His name is Jonathan Me. He’s an engineering firm and, once again, this publicist sent me a PR piece and I like the topic. And that’s how Jonathan got on here. So, Jonathan, say hello to our listeners out there on Commercial Construction Coffee Talk.

Hey, hello, everybody. I’m Jonathan Me. I’m based out of Phoenix, Arizona. I’m the Chief Operating Officer of Me Engineering. We focus on electrical engineering, specifically with other types of engineering in the future. And I’m happy to be here and tell you a little bit about me and my story and this really interesting topic about the 13th floor today with David.

Yeah, well, that was, that actually caught my eye, is that there’s this mysterious stigma about the 13th floor in buildings. Now, I grew up in New York, so I’ve been in plenty of buildings. Our building did not have a 13th floor. It goes 12, 14 on the elevator buttons. Some of them do, some of them don’t. But there’s a whole, you know, there’s a reason why it happened. So I thought, “Wow, I’ve never had this topic.” So we can talk about this, plus, you know, engineering and all that good stuff. So, and I hope you guys will enjoy it because I thought I didn’t really know about it until I read the press release. So I was like, “Okay, we’re going to do this.” So the way this works, Jonathan, is we’re going to do it in three parts. You’re going to tell your story, where you grew up, where you went to school, brothers, sisters, you know, dogs, cats, sons, daughters, whatever, and how you ended up, you know, at Me. And then we’ll talk about the last three years of the roller coaster that we’ve all been on and lessons learned and any cool projects that you might have, you know, in your pipeline. And then you’ll leave your contact info and one positive thought or phrase, and then we’ll close the episode out. So with that said, the floor is yours. Tell us your story.

All right, thanks, David. Yeah, happy to. Happy to. And I’ll go way back to the beginning because my story at Me Engineering starts pretty young in my life. I’m an Arizona native. I grew up in Phoenix, and I went to Horizon High School. For those of you who are in that area, you’re probably familiar with it. It’s a 5A division school. And this company, Me Engineering, is originally founded by my father, Robert Me. And he founded this in 1989, 1990, right around that time frame, and has really been his career and his legacy of building this thing really behind the scenes for the last 30 years. I got a couple of facts about that that you’ll probably find funny later on in my story. But how I got my first experience at Me Engineering is when, in high school, I joined the company, the family business. I started drafting and designing under his project management team, producing construction document packages for a variety of different types of buildings, primarily in the Phoenix area. I’ve touched high-rises, class office space, manufacturing facilities, industrial facilities, and it was all focused on the electrical design of these particular buildings. And I started young, and I worked all through college as well. I went to Arizona State University. However, most people would think that, “Oh, well, you must have went to engineering school.” And the fact is that I didn’t. I started out exploring both the engineering school and the business school, and I just felt more at home in the business school. That’s where I was passionate. That’s where I wanted to focus my time and energy. So I ended up graduating from ASU with a degree in economics, and I worked at Me Engineering the whole time. I mean, truth be told, I stacked all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I worked Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturdays because the company, there’s a lot of work going on. We were doing a lot of stuff. And it was also an interesting time too when some of the IT infrastructure, the data center world was really starting to pick up about that time that I was in college. So that’s where Me Engineering really started to gain some more and more traction. And it’s really been like that for the last 10, 15 years. We thought it was busy then. Well, today’s a whole different story that looks like. And so the interesting part of this story is, a year after college, I left Me Engineering. I decided that it was time for me to go cut my own trail, make a name for myself in an area that at that moment I found to be most interesting. And that was financial services.

I went to school for economics, and I decided I was going to go, I didn’t care who hired me, I just wanted a job somewhere in financial services. I was interested in investments, I was interested in capital, I was interested in the economy, and I really just wanted to get started. I ended up going and working for Charles Schwab here in Phoenix and I went through their whole broker trainee program, became a licensed investment advisor, working directly with clients doing financial plans and helping them pick, you know, build out their portfolios and set themselves up for retirement. It was actually a really enjoyable role. I thought I was going to be there for a couple of years and then go start my own investment firm and that was going to be who I was for the rest of my life. But then I think because I’m a glutton for punishment, I decided to go back to grad school. And I was really excited. I kind of did it on a whim, thinking, you know what, I got done with my investment licenses, that wasn’t enough in terms of education about how everything works in business. And I applied to Pepperdine University. I got into their fully employed MBA program. And for the next two years, that was it. So I wasn’t leaving the Schwab at that point. It was like, I got to hammer this degree out. And I was able to finish that up. Of course, after two years of working with clients directly as an investment advisor, I get done with the MBA, and that changed my whole perception on what I wanted to do with my career. I made the decision to go into corporate finance at Schwab. I moved to San Francisco and was living in downtown San Francisco. In one of the this group that they call Capital Stress Testing. So, we were… I always get funny looks when I say that.

I go, “Yeah, stress test. You want to know if anything happens, that you’re going to have the money that’s going to be there to bail you out.” Exactly, exactly. Yeah, no, that’s… I was literally in the financial control house of Schwab, helping forecast what would happen if we had another 2008, 2009 type scenario. So, I was really enjoying that. And for me, kind of that long-term view of my career being entrepreneurial, I knew that I needed some foundation in corporate finance. Like, I want to get good at reading an income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, all that stuff. And I was able to gain that, thankfully, from Schwab. So then, two years of hammering spreadsheets, I get the opportunity to go into an internal, call it Strategy Consulting team within Schwab. They liked my combination of client-facing experience and the analytical… They’re like, “We think you’d be great working back on our retail business to help grow and scale it.” Ended up doing that for like another five years. A great job. I was happy. I should rewind too. I met my wife in college. You told me to mention my… I’m like, “Oh, career, career, career.” But yeah, I met my wife in college. She was the same major as I am. She works in banking and financial services. So, that was really another thing that kind of kept us… Like, in that together. She moved with San Francisco to San Francisco with me as well. She was able to relocate with her job. And yeah, we really got to enjoy the Bay Area, everything from Napa to Half Moon Bay, Lake Tahoe. It was really just an amazing time in our lives. But fast forward a little bit. And during this whole time, Me Engineering kind of bringing it full circle. Me Engineering is growing like kind of from underneath. And my dad is approaching the time in his life where he’s like, “I’m ready to… I’m ready to enjoy my life.” And he’s worked really, really hard for everything that he has. And I have always kind of… You know, anybody who’s been in, I think, in a family business kind of knows, like, in the back of your head, it’s like, there’s this obligation. Do I do this? Do I just do… You know, what it is that I’m doing now? Or maybe sometimes the relationships between the family members… Isn’t there, and doesn’t that opportunity doesn’t come to fruition.

But fortunately, you know, with my dad knowing my financial background, he trusted me to kind of help talk through potential exit options for Me Engineering. What does that look like? You know, do we sell it? If we do, what’s it going to be worth? Do we… Do we just shut the doors and give everybody, you know, a portion of the proceeds and then have a nice day, you know, be on your way? So, we’re talking and talking. And as we’re going through these… This is like over the course of like a year and a half, like literally. And, you know, right around that 2020, 2021 timeframe is when those conversations started to become more frequent, right? Because Me Engineering does a lot of data center work. And during that timeframe, that area of the economy did not slow down, that only got more intensified. And so, he’s going, “Man, I need an out. I need an out.” And I talked with my wife multiple times. And I said, “Hey, I think I need to approach my dad. I think I need to have a serious conversation with him about leaving my post here in San Francisco, giving up, you know, the career… Not giving up, but trading off for the career that I’ve built here, and helping Me Engineering get back on the track to ride this wave that we’re currently on.” And we both agreed. It was just the right thing to do. It just felt right. The timing was right. Everything that had led up to this point in my life, it truthfully felt like I was prepared for it, right? The corporate experience, the finance experience, the strategy experience, and having actually done this work as a young kid in high school and college. So, I finally approached my father. And he was very thankful for me to approach him and bless his heart.

The thing that he was most concerned about was me, feeling if something didn’t work out, that I had somewhere to go back to. He’s like, “I don’t want you to give up what you’ve worked for and be left hanging if something here doesn’t work out.” So, I was like, “Look, dad, Corporate America is going to be here forever. I promise you. Right? This is an opportunity of a lifetime for us. This is an opportunity to create the legacy that you deserve. This is an opportunity to keep this high-performing team intact. Here’s the plan.” And I laid out that game plan for him for multiple years. And I said, “And we’re like, ‘Okay, let’s do this.'” And I rejoined just about 18 months ago. And since then, we have been literally on fire, like, in a good way, from a growth standpoint. I mean, we have refreshed our brand. We have hired lots of new people. We’ve expanded into new markets for talent. And our client… I mean, thankfully, you know, because even our clients were like, “Hey, we’ve been working with you for decades, for years. What’s next? What do we… What are you going to be here kind of thing, right?” And when they finally… And this was really, really important to me and made me feel so good and appreciative of this situation was when I came back, there was this resurgence of confidence in the company to say, “All right, Me Engineering, this team’s going to be here. We can continue to do what we’re doing and invest and grow together and scale.” That’s exactly what we’ve been doing. One little funny thing I’ll add back to the family side of this is, so, two weeks after I agreed to come back to Phoenix, move to Phoenix with my wife, changed jobs, I found out she was pregnant.

Cool. And so we’ve been blessed with a young boy who is happy, healthy, and he is now seven months old. But literally two weeks, I was like, “Man, when it rains, it pours.” Taking the biggest job in my life, moving states and locations, everything’s happened for a reason, you know? I know, I know. And that exactly. And it’s like, we didn’t have any family up in the Bay Area, so two weeks after this happens, I’m moving back to Phoenix where I’m from. And now we’re having a kid. Now you got someone who’ll help you with diapers, you know, you got built-in babysitters, you know, Grandpa and Grandma, right? Yeah, I got the support system around here. And so it all really worked out. And so I’ve got a brother and a sister as well. I didn’t mention that. They both worked in and out of Me Engineering for on and off, but they’re now in doing their own careers and pathways, both entrepreneurial. No surprise, I think it kind of just… Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, yeah, in that sense. And you know, I was going on to say, you and I, listen, I was an economics major too. I was political science. I had a double major. I went to University of Denver, anyway. I did the family gate. My family’s been in demolition recycling since 1888, you know, five, six generations. I was named after my great-grandfather, Daddy Dave Pollock. And my father was in upholstery, my grand… My mother’s side, they were in construction, basically. And I grew up down at the scrapyard and all that stuff. My cousins, and now they’re running the business. And I did my stint and gave up that, and my dad passed away, my mom got remarried, my stepdad was a jeweler, I got GIA certified, I built some jewelry stores, and I decided I didn’t want to do that.

So I gave up all the family businesses. And then here I am, I’m actually still in construction. I’m actually still a builder. I just build… I just, you know, I’m not… I’m not doing steel or whatever. I’m doing paper, ink, but now I do it digitally. But I build this every month. I’m proud of it. I built this. And so it’s amazing all the things that you learn through your, you know, your life. And listen, so many companies that you did, where, like myself, I gave it all up and I just wanted to make my own name. And but the exit strategy, you know, my parents, I’ve been around 25 years as a publisher. And they’ve been… They were bugging me about, “What’s your exit strategy? What are you going to do?” And what happened to my stepdad is he had three, in the jewelry business, he had three, three, two, two daughters and a son. One was an arbitrager on Wall Street, the other one was married to, you know, a doctor, plenty of money. And the other… The other daughter was married, and anyway, no one wanted the business. So after 50 years, he finally just shut the door. And that’s… And that’s what happened. I mean, a lot of companies go through this. They don’t think about the exit strategy and, you know, how am I going to take on the legacy and all of these things, especially in construction? You look at all the contractors, or your plumber, your electrician, they don’t have any kids. What are they going to do? Who are they going to give it to? So, you know, it’s a big issue. And you know, and I see where you’re coming from because I did that same gig. I was like, you know what? I want to go do my own gig. I don’t want to be behind the jewelry corp, you know? I don’t want to be… Move back to Philly. And I know they’re all having a good time running the business, but it just wasn’t my gig. And even when it was my time after I did my time at Levitz with the management training program, it was time for me to go to Hickory, North Carolina, where there was like one restaurant and one hotel. It was in the late ’80s, it was like during the recession where it was 18% interest rates, okay, not 18%, and people weren’t buying sofas or, you know, club chairs. And I was like, “I just don’t think furniture was my bag, you know?” So, you know, I had given it, and their whole plan was my cousin and I were going to run the, you know, only the sons could come in, so they wanted us to run the business.

And so I went through that whole ordeal. It’s like déjà vu. I’ve heard this story where’s oh yeah, it’s me, and… But full circle, all the things that you did at Schwab and all that made your dad’s decision to maintain what he had built and continue his legacy, and now maybe your son, as he grows up, he might go out, but then you can bring him back, like my son. I told him, I said, “Look, I’m not hiring you. You got to go out and work and get fired, make your mistakes or whatever, and then you can come back if you want to be a publisher or whatever. You know, we can talk about it.” But, you know, at the time, I said, “Look, you know, you got to go do your own thing.” You know, he’s a Boeing, he went to F mechanics school trade, and now he’s working on $350 million 787 airplanes and, you know, so he’s doing his own gig. And, but I get that, you know? So, and listen, even though over the last three years of the roller coaster, where so many companies have told me that they have had the best years of growth, from, you know, just growth and revenue and hiring new talent to continue because it’s just been a learning experience for everyone, you know? I’ve learned more about my own business from going to print face-to-face to digital, just like you guys have done. And everybody, if they had more PMs and superintendents, they probably could have done more business, but they just weren’t out there. And, you know, you can’t find them. So, you know, labor’s an issue or finding skilled labor, you know, depending on what you’re doing. So, what a great story. And, you know, I was in… I was in the labor economics. That was, like, kind of my specialty. I wrote my, you know, 50-page paper on, you know, economic… Burma, I think it was.

I forget, way back when. But, you know, people are like, “What are you doing in Econ? What do you become, a lawyer?” Because that’s what people do with their Econ, they become lawyers or, you know. And I was like, “I don’t know. It sounds cool to me. Laughter curve and, you know, supply and demand, you know.” Anyway, uh, so, but it’s, uh, what an exciting story. So, let’s fast forward. So, over, you know, you look back, 2020, January, cranes all over the place, things are just, you know, low unemployment, everybody’s making money. I mean, the country is on fire. And all of a sudden, boom, the shutdown happens. So, talk about how you guys weathered the storm. And, you know, now we’re three and a half years and we’re still kind of talking about it, but there’s still little bumps in the road that, you know, um, talk about lessons learned that some of our listeners out there on Commercial Construction Coffee Talk would find of interest. And maybe they might say, “Déjà vu, yeah, we were thinking the same thing.” So, yeah, no, absolutely. Boy, that moment, it was… It was, I think, well, luckily, the leadership, I think, at Me Engineering was tenured, right? So, that was really, I think, from a stability standpoint, and, hey, we’ve been through 2008, 2009. That this is new, this is gonna obviously be something that we’ve got to contend with. But I think that there is a heavy dose of optimism regardless of the fact of what was in front of us, that we will get through this. So, I think that was one thing that I just want to start with from the get-go, that this team’s been together for a long time, and it was like, “All right, we’re going to figure this out.” But, you know, we let’s do, but we’re an in-office type of… type of place, right?

This wasn’t an office that was already kind of dispersed and remote and people working. So, um, and there really were a lot of… There’s a lot of good in terms of Um, modernization of the way that we work that came out of 2020, some of the things that just needed to go. The amount of printing we were doing on construction plans, the amount of, you know, ink we were buying and using, the lack of utilization of things like Bluebeam and digital signing, like it, that stuff was all there but nothing had forced us to do it, right? And we’re now using things like the Studio Cloud version for simultaneously marking up, you know, construction documents so red lines can be picked up by our drafter and things like, I mean, that might have taken another five years, who knows, right? To push into some of these new, more modern ways of working. Same things with things like being able to prepare ourselves for hiring outside of our home office, right? Again, we’re kind of an old-school company, right? We kind of did things by handshakes and word of mouth and trust. That’s what Me Engineering’s been built on and in that in-person interaction. No, I’ll come to your office and let’s sit down, let’s roll a physical set of plans out, and let’s page turn through it and, you know, when we’re done, we, you know, maybe you go have dinner, have a drink at the bar, whatever, and then talk about the next project. But that’s not how it… We still want to do that today, but that’s not how it always works anymore, right? I’ve got to be able to do this with the video conferencing.

And I think that’s another good thing that came out that kind of pushed us into that capability to make sure we were set up. But then again, on the flip side, some of the challenges were the abruptness of having to all of a sudden go from, “Hey, we’re coming in every day, we’re having this FaceTime, we’re designing together,” to, “Uh, I got to do this from home.” Like, uh, how do we access our files? Like, literally, how do we access our files right on our on-premise server because we weren’t set up on the cloud? Um, how do we, uh, you know, if we do need to come into the office to print something, do I have to come in by myself? Can you be here at the same time? Is it actually safe? And I think all of those things were what really became very challenging, had to be sorted through. But everybody was so cordial, everybody was so understanding of the situation, regardless of what people’s preferences or opinions were on the particular, uh, situation at hand. Um, it was, “Hey, that’s, that’s you, that’s us. We got a common goal here, right? We got clients to serve and we’re going to make sure that that happens. You don’t, you want to be here, come in your off time, you’ve got a key, just do what you need to do, right? And make sure everybody’s aware.” So, I could really attest that, luckily, at our size, at the time, it was just very manageable, I think, um, and understanding of what we needed to do. But the other challenge that I’ll mention on it was we were in our business, it didn’t slow. I mean, I know a lot of businesses got impacted, right? Restaurants shut down. Oh, yeah. Depends what sector you were in, I mean, it really did. Yeah. We were in a situation where it was the… it was the opposite.

I mean, with everything that I just described of going to the cloud, more video conferencing, more electronic transfers of information, pretty much every company pivoted towards that in like a week, right? Right. And we designed the infrastructure to support those things, right? With data centers and we designed the electrical power systems to back all that stuff. So, a week after that, it was like, “Hey, we just accelerated our design timelines and we need to build more,” right? Because the demand just skyrocketed. So now we’re going through this dispersement of the way that we typically work and the changes of our workflow and now piling on additional work, right? And saying, we, we’ve got to do more, we got to build more, we got to build faster. So that’s a blessing and a curse, as I’m sure you know, David. It’s like, happy to have the opportunity, but if you don’t have the right staff you mentioned in place and the right people that you can trust to do that work, it’s almost… almost feels more stressful than just kind of being on a steady sort of growth path that’s manageable. Um, and that’s where coming back in and making sure that we got a nice plan in place and making some changes to support that is, is how this all came together. So, um, I hope that answers your question about what we went through. No, hey, look, once again, déjà vu. You don’t know how many companies that I, that I’ve, you know, listen. When in March of 2020, I went out and bought a microphone. I was going to do these things on construction sites. I was going to go out and do, uh, you know, interviews, PM or whatever. That was my plan. And then all of a sudden, uh, I had my, my 10th anniversary event in Jacksonville in January. I did my first cocktail party. I was doing monthly cocktail receptions around the country and did Coconut Grove in February. I was… I was in Milwaukee looking at hotels for my retreats and then boom, everything shut down. I was fighting with my printer.

I said, “Half my circulation furloughed, the offices are closed, they’re, they’re, they’re not… The issues aren’t going to get delivered.” They’re like, “Dave, you’ve been a publisher forever, you know economies up, scale.” I go, “Yeah, but I’m… it’s a waste of postage, of paper if they’re not going to get them.” So I bit the bullet and, uh, but I had a digital magazine forever that I… that I just kind of ignored but I had it forever. I didn’t even know how much content was on there, I just had it in case someone was on a plane and they wanted to look at it. I was a print guy but literally in April of 2020, I sat back to my wife like, the 4:00 in the morning, I get up and she’s like, “Where are you going?” I’m like, “I gotta think.” And, uh, uh, my editor and my artist were like, “Okay, let’s go digital, we have all this content, blah, blah, blah.” So I said, “Okay.” So, in May, you know, we went… we went monthly and I started doing these podcasts once a week and God, I was awful. I mean, I look back at some of my original ones that I was doing but, uh, then what happened was I actually started getting more traffic on my website, you know? I never had… I never had a million people hit my website when I went over a million, I was like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.” Went over a million and a half, now I get about two, two and a half million people. I had almost 29 million people hit the website last year and, uh, and, and listen. And then, you know, looking at it all when Twitter was getting to get bought and they, they half of, you know, 80% of the people were fake and bots and all that. I went to my web guy and said, “Hey, how many fake people are on our stats? I want to know.” So we bought the software and knocked out all the bots and all that and we, we found out, you know, it’s probably about 20, 25%, but now I don’t have any of that stuff. So now when I tell someone my stats, I got two, two and a half million depending on what it is, um, those are legitimate people.

I’m not gonna say it’s 100%, but these are real people. We, you know, we have a, you know, we have a little code on our site, we can track everybody. And but I didn’t, you know, kind of went from the print face to face to digital and that was a scary proposition for me to not have the magazine. And, uh, like I said, I went through it, you know, these just talking to myself and, uh, and you know, and then my parents, you need an exit strategy. So I, I was getting bombarded by everything, you know, trying to figure things out. But best decision I ever made. I don’t miss the post office, I don’t… I don’t miss the printer, you know? I, you know, I kind of miss having the magazines, we have a print on demand service so if I wanted to get one printed we still lay it out high res so I could get the thing printed but uh, the biggest thing like here, you know, I was doing zooms before but I always talk about this project manager I had, like, in the beginning, one of my episodes he said, you know, construction’s like, you know, your fingertip and then it’s just, you know, property management and facilities and then maybe a refresh but, you know, I can be online, on zoom, and I can be, you know, I could… I could be in Saudi Arabia, uh, Africa, Europe, UK, Caribbean and do a couple walkthroughs in the United States all in one day before that would take me three weeks to do. And now it can, you know, everybody says, “Oh, I’m sick of Zoom.” But you know what? It’s so much easier if you’re, if you’re doing a construction project instead of driving.

An hour and a half to two hours to look at a, you know, a roof curb that you can look at online, you can kind of pick and choose what you want to get done. So, this isn’t going away and it’s not, and I’m sure it’s going to improve whether you do Teams or Zoom or any of the other platforms that are out there. But, even myself over the last year, I’ve taken digital classes. I mean, I’m in the midst of just about ready to launch my digital agency and I’m on this big launch with this, you know, software company and I thought I knew about digital. I didn’t know jack, you know? And, you know, TikTok, listen, TikTok for business is a serious thing and a lot of people don’t do it. And, you know, autoresponders and funnels and I just learned I left a lot of money over the years on the table that, you know, so now I’m scaling my business and, you know, okay, I get two million people, guess what, down the road I’m going to have 10 million people a month that are going to hit me that are going to be able to find me just by using technology and getting things set correctly, you know, from an engineering standpoint, you know, just getting things in the right way. If one little thing doesn’t work, nothing’s gonna talk to each other. And so, you know, I get that and so many companies have said that, you know, whether they were, you know, I look at construction. So many people say, you know what, just, you know, when everything went a, put people that were in construction, they put their masks on, they got on the plane, they went to their projects, you know, they were troopers out there.

I mean, you know, if you were working out of your house, you probably got more done. Some people just can’t do it, they have to be in an office environment. But, you know what? But for the most part, they found out, “Wow, we’re more productive.” And, you know, the biggest challenge is do I bring people back, do I let them be hybrid? I’ve got this big office, no one’s in there, these are, you know, corporate real estate, the occupancy area is down, how they going to fix that? Well, it’s good for construction because they figure out what they’re going to do with extra space, new projects, new brand new signage. It’s a positive. So, you know, these are all the conversations. But you’re right on that, looking at it, you figured out, but you had to, you had to act quick, you know? You really, you know, and the ones that didn’t, those are the ones, those firms probably weren’t as profitable or becoming more efficient that kind of, you know, didn’t change on a dime. Myself, I just had to make the decision and, um, uh, but it’s been a learning experience. Listen, I’m sure people made mistakes. If you’re not making mistakes out there, you’re not learning. You gotta make mistakes. You know, it’s like anything else. Like, got, you know, my lros dicks, hey, I had to throw the ball, you know, to get good to learn how to catch and throw, you know? Running, I could do, you know, but, um, when I look back, it’s a, it’s a blessing in the skies. I mean, it’s a bummer what happened and it’s a bummer, you know? I mean, listen, I just turned 60, I’m giving my age away, all right, sorry, but, you know, I went through the oil boom in 76, I remember standing in line, you know, every other day you had to go buy your license plate. Um, uh, I went to the internet crash, 911, 8, you know, the housing market, the cliff, construction departments got, you know, gutted, you know, Home Depot wasn’t building 140 stores a year.

Uh, I didn’t go down the list, you know? Now this one, the only thing, only problem with this one was no one really knew what was going to happen. Oh, it’s going to be a couple of weeks, maybe, maybe it’s maybe a month, you know? But here we are, we’re still talking, we are here, we are. But we’re in a much better place both of us and, uh, and, uh, like I said, look, you know, you have a baby, bouncy baby boy at home, you know, so who knows if that, you know, that if that would even would have happened, so, uh, you know what a great story. Um, so but congratulations on, you know, figuring all that and being able to keep that momentum and, uh, coming back to the business and making your dad happy and letting him be able to, uh, does he kind of still keep an eye on things or, or, you know, listen, as an entrepreneur, you gotta, you know it, but he brought you back in so he’s probably psyched, right? Yeah, yeah, no, I think he is. I think he’s relieved, I think he’s excited, he tells me that often and, uh, yeah, he, you know, he’s an engineer, he’s an engineer at heart, what does he enjoy doing? Engineering, right? Um, and I joke with him sometimes, I’m like, you sought out to be a great engineer and wound up with a business that you were getting frustrated running with or like didn’t want to pay the attention that it needed and so finding that balance now is nice and so that most of his time is now spent really focusing on what we would consider the highest priority engineering or more of those strategic engineering problems that need to be solved and that’s just what he’s good at, that’s what he’s great at, that’s why he has the reputation that he has and so um, yeah, he’s still involved um, thankfully, like we want him here right for a little bit longer right um but too we are actively trying to make sure that we put the right pieces in place so that he can lean in and lean out at his discretion right that’s the ultimate goal um whatever he wants to do in terms of contributions um I think is our priority as a firm right to to kind of celebrate him and make sure that he he gets that exit that he deserves.

So let’s talk about uh the 13th floor and that miss you know I I want to know about so give me your take on it yeah it’s it’s a really interesting thing when I was talking with my my agency about potential interesting things in this industry this 13th floor myth came up and it seems like since we’ve been talking about it I’ve been staying in hotels like around the country and stuff and I’m like why does it seem like all of these don’t have a 13 floor now that I’ve been talking about this recently which is kind of funny um but it’s it’s it’s a fascinating thing and I can really attribute it simply to the phobia of the number 13 that goes way back I think to the 1800s is some of the first documentation of folks avoiding the word or the number 13 and it has transcended and been a driver of design in some cases in the construction world and it’s really dependent on who’s the owner who’s the developer who’s building this place and do they have that phobia and if they do they will tell their architect and their design team there’s not going to be a 13th floor coming in my building man no way not a chance and I even uh I recently read this quote about this from one of the Marriott Hotel Founders and it the first thing I learned was never go to the floor.

I was just like you know building thousands of hotels around the world it’s just so interesting so like from a from a design standpoint um okay you don’t want to give me the 13th floor let’s say It’s A Renault too and the new owner comes in and there is a 13th floor right like the person before you didn’t care probably didn’t even know that this was a phobia what do we do now right we’ve got this space in the building are there some things that we can do do to make purpose of this versus have an even more creepy empty space on the 13th floor in the middle of a building so typically mechanical systems find a home in these high-rise buildings on the 13th floor you’ve got to stagger them throughout the building anyways right in in a highrise so you wind up slotting them in on that floor and maybe those who need to go and maintain that equipment you know the facilities management team will have a special key in the elevator that’ll take them to that shadow floor on number 13 so that they can still have access, but any, you know, uh, guest or employee that’s utilizing that space wouldn’t have any direct access to that 13th floor. Other things we’ve seen is you just simply rename it, right? You’ve got like, “Oh, this is the mezzanine” or “this is the plaza level” or “this is the pool deck” in that high-rise building just so that number 13 isn’t in people’s face. And what’s even more interesting about it is so we’ve got this phobia, it’s changed the way we’ve designed some buildings in America and around the world. But apparently it also impacts the potential financial situation of these buildings. If you’ve got a luxury condo high-rise, your number 13 condos are going to be in less demand and sell for less money than the rest of the building, right? Buyers are going to want to be, “Hey, I don’t want to be on the 13th floor, man.” You know, on the 13th floor it’s like, “Okay, so now you’ve got a financial incentive for owners and developers to say, ‘Well, I’m not gonna… that could bring down the value of the whole building because the comps on the 13th floor are going to be less, even though they’re the same square footage as 14, 12, 11, and 10.’ So you’ve got that double whammy.

So it’s almost like this self-fulfilling prophecy that we won’t be able to get rid of in our society now because of how many people have this phobia of the number 13. And you know, from our side, we engineering side, like, we’re looking to make our customers happy. You don’t want it. You don’t want it. And we’re not gonna say that, “Oh, you ought to have that.” I don’t see… and nobody’s probably looked at this closely enough. I don’t see that because we’re doing this, it’s a dramatic change in design that’s inefficient or unsustainable or less green, you know, because everybody in the construction industry, I think generally, is trying to do their best they can with what we have, right? We don’t waste in construction, doesn’t help anybody, right? And we don’t see so much. But I don’t think anyone’s ever really looked at that closely enough, like, does it really make sense to be putting mechanical and/or electrical systems on the 13th floor of a high-rise building? Like, maybe, but I think about this, it’d be an interesting challenge. You take a design team, Design Team A, and say, ‘You have to put mechanical and electrical systems on the 13th floor.’ Like, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You have to design around it, design the chases, design the conduits, all the electrical, everything has to go there. And then take another Design Team B and say, ‘You could do whatever you want, put it where it makes sense.’ I wonder who’s going to come out with a better design, right? A more sustainable one, a more efficient one. Probably Design Team B, right? Because they’re just going to do, from an engineering standpoint, what makes the most sense, not tying their design back to a phobia of the number 13. And what’s also really interesting too, so America and Europe, I think, are the primary regions that have the number 13 phobia. You go to China and it’s the number four, I learned, and the number four apparently in the Chinese language is very close to the word death the way it’s pronounced. And so in San Francisco, there are often, because of the heavy Asian population in San Francisco, the fourth floor is like a mezzanine or it’s the plaza, or you go to China and the number four has the same kind of thing where that number is avoided in elevator banks and in building design. So it’s just fascinating to see something like that carry through our culture so subtly for so long and with no… Yeah.

But look, like I said, when the… when the publicist sent me the, you know, the press release I was looking at, I was like, “Oh, the 13th floor.” I always had a phobia. I grew up in Manhattan, so our building didn’t have it, but there were other buildings, some of them did, but many of them didn’t. And, you know, you’re looking at the number 12, 14, where’s the other number? Oh, well, that’s Lucky 13. No, no, the unlucky 13, you know? And so I just thought it was a fascinating thing. So for all you out there, are we right? Is that fascinating or what? I mean, why isn’t there… why isn’t there a 13th floor? You know, what are you gonna do with that space? You just can’t leave it empty. So, uh, you know, actually, the dichotomy you just said between Team A and Team B, you know, I’m thinking, uh, you know, even though the engineers, you know, they’re kind of setting their ways, I think Team A, probably even though they had to do it that way, they had to come up with some really cool ideas to what to do with it, you know, even though you had to put it, am I… am I right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That’s where you get the pool decked, right? You probably got the views and stuff, that’s 13, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’ll probably go on forever, you know, but I don’t know if, like, you know, my son’s 24, does he know about, you know, Lucky 13? You know, and, uh… you know, I remember my… my senior, I was captain of the hockey team, my buddy, he was Captain Lacrosse team, and I still talked to him and anyway he wore his number was 13 and, uh, I’m like, “Dude, man, that’s number 13.” I remember talking to him, he goes, “Oh, no, man, I… I love being number 13, you know? It’s like, uh, you know, having number eight on, you know, you’re an eight ball, you know, or, you know, whatever. But 13 definitely has a phobia about it and, uh, listen, I probably would have had you on anyway, but that’s really what was the… the carrot that got me. I was like, “Oh, number 13.” We can talk a whole show about that, you know? So, but I appreciate you giving me the background on that and, uh, and, uh, hopefully some of you out there didn’t know about that and, uh, you’ll start in your buildings maybe you’ll start putting it in there, you know, because there’s nothing wrong with the number, plenty of people wear… wear number 13, you know? It’s just the… it’s just the reality of it. So, yeah, actually, I was actually a cross-player myself.

I… no way. You played LAX, huh? Yeah, I did. Were you… were you a midi or attack? D-pole. I was a defender. All right, all right. Where did you… where did you play? So I played in… in high school, and I chose… I was verbally committed to go to Grand Canyon University and play for their college team, and I decided to work at me engineering and continue my college education at ASU. So I didn’t go play at the collegiate level. Um, I wanted to, but the family business was there, and that’s where, you know, my focus was needed. Hey, listen, there’s not… listen, lacrosse is… is an East Coast gig, you know, and, uh, you know, you talk to someone from Arizona or California now, everybody’s got a lacrosse team. You can be from anywhere in the country, you’re… you can get recruited, but back in the day, I mean, uh, when I was a… when I was a DU, we played everybody in Colorado, and then we’d either go to California to go on tour or we’d go down to Florida and play in a tournament, but before the leagues were all done. But if you mentioned lacrosse, I mean, look at… look at Arizona, you’re in the desert, you got a lacrosse team, you got a hockey team. Uh, you know, ASU now has a hockey team, they’re big rival with DU, I know it gets very chippy between the Pios and the… and the… and the Sundevils. I mean, I went to the little rink that they used to play in ASU before they built the new rank, uh, I forget what it was called, but, you know, really low, you… and it was… it… it was a wild scene there, and, uh… uh… but it… uh… that’s exciting, you’re a LAX man, man, ball, you man, ball. You were a D-pole? I played everything. I still play in the man’s league, so listen, if I have to go in the goal, I’ll go get pelted, but, you know, I’m a… I still run up and down. Look, I’m not as fast as I was when I was 20. My son’s like, “Dad, you’re…”

Getting slow, I’m like, bro, man, I’ve had both my ACLs done. You know what I mean? I’m not 20. You should see me when I was 20. I was, you know, I was a rocket. But I, I look forward to about, you know, X amount of shifts. If I score, great, my glory, you know? But, uh, it’s told Gordie Howe played hockey till he was, you know, 63. So, until I can’t make it up and down the field, the lax screen, I’m gonna be playing, you know, same thing on the fren Pond. I’m gonna keep playing until, you know, my body tells me I can’t, you know? And there’s guys older than me that are out there. So, but, uh, it’s, uh, good for you. Yeah. So, uh, it’s, uh, you know, and those are my old sticks. Those are just from Brine and stick. They came out of aluminum. And listen, I always remember tight shorts, tube socks, and, uh, you know, wooden shafts. That was the way it was. And, uh, yeah. So it’s, uh, that’s excit. Lightweight alloy, like, you know, deep pocket, can’t the ball can’t fall out. So, make sure when as soon as your son can walk, let’s get a depole on his head and his stick and play. Hey, no dinner for you until you go 200 times with both hands on wall ball, okay? Come on, right now, yeah, I love it. Yeah. So, Jonathan, you know, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, you know, and talk about the 13th floor or data centers or whatever, how would they reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. LinkedIn would be a great place to get a hold of me directly. Jonathan me, J-N-A-T-H-N-M-E, you could also email me at John at meetengineering.com, and I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with anybody who would like to talk about the number 13, um, data centers, engineering construction. Uh, but those are the two best ways to get a hold of me. So listen, if you want to talk 13, you want to talk some lacrosse, that didn’t know that or, you know, engineering, there you go, LinkedIn, the best place to be on in my opinion, anyway. You know, if you’re, you know, on the web and you want to do business, uh, or email them. If anybody wants to get in touch with me, you can get me at David C at ccrmmag.com. Listen, like I said, Jonathan’s publicist sent me, you know, a PR piece. I look at everything. Uh, don’t judge the, you know, your content, send it to us. We, you know, very tough to get in the magazine, but we look at everything.

And we’ve got plenty of social media, uh, platforms that we can put it on. We post all day long. Send it to us. We send it back to you, your live URL, you posted. It’s a win-win, help your, the SEO, which is search engine optimization, and, um, uh, you know, it could be a charity, it could be new personnel, it could be an address of your company. Uh, we look at everything, and I’ll come back to you personally. I’m digital specialist Kim. Will you know, but you know, we’ll say, hey, here’s your, here here’s your link share it and, and, and, and we love getting stuff. And like I like I said, I know you know, heard it before for all your listeners out there, but if you don’t buy a ticket for the lottery, you can’t win. If you don’t send me something, I can’t, I can’t publish or I can’t get, you know, if you want to be on the podcast, send me, you know, I’ll get you scheduled. So, you know, it’s all about communication. So, um, as we end this episode, if you wanted to leave our listeners with one positive thought or phrase, what would it be as we go finish up Q4 and end of the year and go into 2024? What would that be? And it can be lacrosse if you want, you know, whatever, you know, hate to put you on the spot, yeah, no, no, gonna say yet. Um, take, no, no, I will say, um, stay motivated and be accountable. Awesome, hey, I listen, I’m right there with the accountability. I don’t care if you’re playing sports business whatever, you know, you got to be accountable for your actions and, uh, um, you know, it, uh, especially like right now, I tell people, finish strong with momentum and stay positive. And, uh, I just saw this thing for my digital agency, I got to put a CT up every day. So, I’m, I’m living in all I, I just do athletes. I just like athlete quotes, you know, but, uh, I just put up one for Wayne Gretzky, and, uh, he said, uh, you’re going to miss, uh, you’re gonna miss a 100, 100% of the shots that you don’t take. So, take as many shots as you can.

And some of them are going to miss the K but the higher percentages you have, especially from lacrosse if you have a higher percentage of hit in the net, you got a much more higher percentage of of shooting. So, if you don’t take the shot, you can’t score a goal. So, the same always like, hey, take as many shots as you can and, uh, you know, uh, and like Nike says, just do it, but do it again, so consistently right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jonathan, you know, pleasure speaking with you. So, a couple things before I sign off here, number one, hit that like button, okay? We want to get this out, you know, about the 13th floor and the phobia and then and me story, okay? So, hit that like button, and, uh, and everybody out there in commercial construction, coffee talk land, hit that like button so, you know, YouTube can be happy in the algorithms and they can find this episode. Number two, if you’re in construction, which hopefully you are because you’re watching this episode, uh, we want you to be safe on the on the construction site, okay? And get home, see your kids, play wall ball, whatever, and be able to catch some Zs and go back and do it again the next day. And even though it’s kind of cooling off in a lot of places in the country, listen, make sure you stay hydrated out on the construction site, all right? Once you get dehydrated, you get headache, that’s when you know, mistakes happen. You know, I just got my water, I’m about to put my electrolytes in there. So, uh, stay safe, make it home, and stay hydrated, so important out there, uh, so, uh, Jonathan, you know, I’m coming out, I’ve got a reception, uh, right the week after, uh, uh, Thanksgiving, I think it’s the 28th, we do a yearly gig, it’s like my last reception in the year, so I’ll make sure that you get the invite, I look forward to meeting it, and listen, uh, I’m gonna bring my stick out, you still have a stick?

Oho yeah yeah, okay, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna throw, man, I don’t care if it’s in the parking lot, you and I, we’re gonna, we, we’ll throw, okay? And I’ll I’ll I’ll carry my stick on or I’ll check it whatever and, uh, we, we’ll we’ll do some LAX throwing, and, um, uh, the uh, as far as uh everybody out there listen, have a great rest of the week, and, uh, you know, enjoy yourself re remember mindsets everything these days, so when you go into the weekend recharge, charge, get some Zs, and get ready, stay positive and get ready to do it all again next week because before you know it, you got Halloween got Thanksgiving you got Hanukkah Christmas Festivus whatever and by the before you know it, it’s going to be the end of the year and you’re going to go into 2024 so and it’s GNA go like that so uh you know with that said Jonathan sign off from Arizona say goodbye to everybody than you everybody appreciate all of you with yeah thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I’m GNA sign off from Sugar Hill about 25 miles north of Atlanta just below the beer Dam on lake laner and uh with that said we will see you next time on another episode of commercial construction Coffee Talk Jonathan I’ll see you in about a couple months all right take care David thank you thank you