CCCT with Mustafa Moursy, President for Push Analytics Video

CCCT sat down with Moustafa Moursy, President from Push Analytics that is a boutique marketing agency which uses a unique combination of skills and methods to deliver true sustainable growth to your business. They weave together paid media operations with data to offer enriched paid media management that focuses on delivering data driven insights. Furthermore, Moustafa had previously worked for Schneider Electric, one of the largest global electrical manufacturing companies in the construction space and had various roles at the company through which he worked on tens of millions of dollars of complex construction project deals. Through this he is acutely aware of how different businesses in the construction space work & the importance of process there whether it’s contractors, distributors, design consultants, developers and more.  Don’t miss the chance to listen to the experts that can make  your business more efficient every step of the way using all the digital tools at their disposal whether it’s paid media to do that, analytics to improve your operations, a fine tuned CRM to improve your sales process, they are here to help you every step of the way! Enjoy the conversation.

#analytics #crm #media #digitalmarketing #data #technology #marketingagency

Transcription

Hey there Commercial Construction Coffee Talk fans, thanks for chiming in. My name’s David Carson, I’m your host. I’m also the publisher and editor of Commercial Construction Renovation magazine. This is what it used to look like when we used to print it. Breaking out the old, this is March-April 2020. Who did I have on? I had JT Norville, co-founder, magic partner of Midas, and Dave Roberts, so he’s a co-founder too with Midas Hospitality. They’re hoteliers, constructors, they do a bunch of stuff. Anyway, thanks for gracing the cover, you know, the good-looking issue. This one was, let’s see, 148 pages. Oh wow, look at me, check me out, I’m a contractor, I’m redoing my deck right during March of 2020 when everything got put. I had to keep myself busy, so I got my tools out and got my camo on, you know, it’s looking pretty dapper there. Anyway, almost like grabbing the issue, you know, we went 100% digital in August of 2021. We had White Castle BP construction, the largest facility that they built, and that was the last one we printed and haven’t looked back since. Have millions of people hitting our site every month, consuming content. Last year we had about, I don’t know, 29 million people. This year we’re on pace for that same gig, but of course, Google, they changed their algorithms and so now we’ve got to, you know, deal with the new rules and regulations that they do and they don’t tell you these things until you’re gone. But anyway, you gotta roll with the punches, that’s just the way technology is. But we’re still kicking it, you know, I mean, I’ve got my mom pacing another two million plus, you know, again this month. So anyway, it’s been a wild, wild ride. You know, in the last year, I’ve taken three boot camp digital classes and I’m getting my digital agency put together and you guys are going to see a bunch of stuff coming up on my website and all this stuff, it’s gonna be mind-blowing. So enjoy it as I start showing some things that I’ve learned in class. Anyway, I hope everybody’s having a great week. Got the weekend coming up, Labor Day weekend next weekend and here comes fall before you know it, you know, you’re gonna have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Hanukkah, Christmas, and everything else in between and the year’s gonna be over and then we’re gonna have to do it all over again in 2024. So it’ll be here before you know it. I can’t believe it’s almost the end of August, it feels like yesterday it was January 1st, I was starting this crazy year off. Anyway, beautiful day out in Atlanta here, another hot, steamy dog days this summer, not a cloud in the sky, I swear.

A couple of weeks ago it rained every day, now I haven’t seen rain in about a week, you know, but the lake is still full, it’s down at like 1068, we’re only a couple of feet below full pool, but we like to get a little rain because we like to keep the lake full, you know, and I know my wife wants her flowers, you know, kept full so we don’t have to order them like Mother Nature’s doing it. So anyway, quiet, you know, everything’s so quiet now. But sports is coming, NFL is going to start, PLL, professional lacrosse league still cruising right along, I got my old man lacrosse league tournament coming up, I’ve got my little garb on here today, and the Braves are still killing it, still in first place, so lots of stuff going on there, and before you know it, the NHL’s gonna be back on the ice, and the B-ball players back on the hardwood, and it’s anybody’s game, you know, who’s gonna win, you know, the playoffs come, you gotta be healthy and you gotta have momentum and that’s the name of the game. So it doesn’t really matter what your record is, but when the second season starts, you know, everything is notched up a level because there’s pride, bragging rights, and money involved, so to all those teams out there, they’re trying to make the playoffs, you know, whether it’s the World Series or what have you, the PLL Championship, good luck. So with that said, got an awesome gentleman, he’s actually on vacation, on the Outer Banks.

North Carolina, but his name is Mustafa Morsi, and he’s the president of Push Analytics, which is out of Northeast up in Jersey. Mustafa, thank you for taking time out from the beach and hanging out with your family. Say hello to our audience out there on Commercial Construction. Hi, everybody. Yeah, how’s it going? Hey, we appreciate it. And the reason why I had him stop on it—listen, his publicist reached out. Once again, that’s how you get on here. You send me something, I look at it, I feel interested, and the reason why I had him stop on because, you know, he’s a data guy too, and he takes data and he helps companies manipulate it and, you know, depending on what type of the firm and kind of be able to help them scale their business in the right direction. And scaling, that’s like the big pitch term these days, and making your company more effective, more efficient, more profitable. And with technology at warp speed, and I can say that because everything I’ve learned in the last probably six months with my AI class or, you know, my TikTok or clipping and mind journey and all this stuff, it’s all going to be obsolete because something else is going to come out. But at least I’ll know how to do click push button one-on-one to click, you know, figure out everything out. So, it’s crazy, so that’s why I had to stop on here and that’s what we’re going to talk—we’re going to talk data. I’m a data guy, I’m addicted to it, I can’t get enough of it. So, Mustafa, the way this is going to work, we do our episode, our interviews in three parts. You’re going to tell your story—where you grew up, where you went to school, how you ended up at Push Analytics. Then we’ll talk about the last three years, you know, kind of how you weather the roller coaster, any new products or services that you have coming out. And then you’ll leave one positive thought or phrase and your contact info with our audience out there of Commercial Construction Coffee Talk. So with that said, the floor is yours, tell us your story.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well great, thanks for having me David. I’m really excited to be here today and you know I always feel at home when I’m talking on anything construction-related because that’s where I worked for a long time in the construction industry and it’s near and dear to me. I think it’s a very cool industry, there’s a lot of opportunity in the industry, there’s a lot of potential, and it’s very interesting kind of sitting at this angle. Because, you know, I’m able to look at it from both sides, right? Construction is like a cool, huge industry that if you’re not in construction, you don’t understand anything about construction, which is just something I kind of find out even when I started, you know, in construction, right? At college, up until I started my job, I didn’t even know what I was going to be doing. Even when I was in the first month, I still didn’t know what I was going to be doing. So it’s like a very unique industry. So a lot of times people don’t speak the language of the construction industry and they’re not able to understand that and use some of the stuff from outside in. So me being, you know, running a digital agency where we look at the data, we look at the numbers, we help with odds, we help with process and understanding that, I gotta just say there’s a lot of opportunity done Construction business for a lot of things to be done, improvements on process, improvements on data, improvements on the way more things are marketed that are not quite done yet because nobody’s able to really speak those two languages. So I hope at some point to be able to bridge that. But, you know, so I mean, I mean I have a, that’s like some of the background, I have a lot of B2B experience, a lot of B2B sales experience, like sales leadership experience. And then also I am very interested in data, data and data analytics and just being able to use data and leverage it to be able to drive business decisions and one thing’s with one another. And now, you know, I run a digital agency where we’re doing a lot of that and overstaying current obviously because, like you said, things are changing constantly. So what was advising our clients, helping them stay current, helping them improve their processes know, we know what works, what doesn’t. I know what works, what doesn’t from seeing it on the corporate and seeing it on the small mini business and seeing on different clients we help, and what works and what doesn’t, and how do you get that all lined up. And there’s really two core things in the right process and data, and those two things work hand in hand together to help you kind of, you know, run your business. So that’s a quick intro.

What kind of construction did you do when you got out of school? Were you, you know, were you on a site doing actual construction or what were you doing there? So I worked for a manufacturer, pretty large manufacturer. I mean, you could look me up and you’ll see my resume. But I worked for a manufacturer and you know, I had the pearls. I mean, at some point, I was in, I was in sales for a long period of time, was outside sales with different types of clients. So I did go on job sites and help them. It was actually it was cool because one of the things I knew I studied engineering, one of the things I knew when I was in college was I, I like the engineering, I liked the technical thing, and I always had a knack for the technical but also the business side at the same time. So I was always like my thing, having both. But usually people are one of the other. I just have both the equally so. I liked engineering but I was like I want stuff that I have to think about but at the same time I don’t want to just sit on a desk all day and do AutoCAD or something. So one of the people I looked up to who was like a few years older than me, I was like so what’d you end up doing when you graduated? He’s like I’m a sales engineer. I’m like what is that? He was like well, I’m like this sales person and also an engineer and like we do this and I was like that’s really cool so that’s how I knew that’s what I wanted to do and that’s, you know, I ended up going for like a good program that they had like a training program that really helped you learn basics and like, you know, and I did that for a while amongst other roles. But so I worked for the manufacturer though I had different roles and it was a big part of there’s a lot of technical aspects involved but it’s a very complex sale. You have, you know, you’re working with the contractors, you know, kind of working the job, there’s distributors involved in the middle, you know, then you have the general contractor, you have the designer. I mean, you guys know, right? So there’s a lot of different things involved. So but you know, I did that for a while and have a very, was very, very good at it. You know, and then had different roles kind of across the company and then ended up here.

So how did you come up with the Push Analytics gig? I mean, how did that happen? Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of, a lot of contacts and again, I was really big on the data side and I was very good at that and I have a lot of the B2B and the process experience already and I studied data aspect and then, you know, I have partners that you could say kind of like brought me into this and one thing led to another and it’s a lot of people that I’ve known historically from the past and they, you know, they needed somebody that can do like the process aspect of things and data like, you know, my partner is like really good at like the ads and stuff like that but and but didn’t really know how to like hey like bring things together like a systemic way to have like streamlined processes. Theory will do that. So it was kind of born out of that and then it evolved and then you know initially we weren’t like doing process consulting for others but then evolved we’re doing that, you know, we’re a top tier like CRM implementer, like for example, we work with HubSpot amongst others but with HubSpot we’re in their top 10 like Platinum tier partners so it evolved from there but network. Hey listen, you know when you we it’s always it’s always good to network because always someone needs, you know, it’s like look I’m an athlete so I always like talking to sports guys because you know, it’s all about planning trying to you know, plan for the other team you know what’s going to happen maybe one of their guys gets hurt and your whole your whole plan’s got to get scrapped or they they get a new should be aware of okay well you know a new player on the roster and uh everything you plan went out the window so you got to be flexible but you also have to look at data you look at video you look at stats you look at percentages you look at all of those things and it goes across with business as well.

So, uh, in timing in business is everything and here you are today you know, you know Push and Push Analytics you know with, you know, some large brands and so forth, you know, I went to the site, you know, and you got some big brands that are listed up there that you’re doing work with. So, um, you know, uh, and information is knowledge, you know, but information is power too. So it’s what you do with it and how quickly you can do it and make the right decision with it can streamline a lot of stuff off. I mean, over the last year with my classes that I’ve done I’ve learned so much that I’m just, I’m just blown away of how much I’ve learned about my business. I’ve been a publisher for almost 25 years, you know, enough from a construction family my family’s in demolition since 1888 it’s like this success. Wow, yeah, outside of Philadelphia. So, you know, when I was growing up I grew up in the scrapyard playing on the cranes and I had an erector set and I did all that stuff now my cousins are running the business, you know, we were all born the same same month and um, but everything I learned there, you know, shoveling asbestos, laying railroad tracks, welding sheet metal, I mean, I can go down the whole list of everything that I did there, um, that uh, you know, I’m a manufacturer, I’m actually a constructor, I build this thing every month. I used to do it with paper ink editorial and so forth now I do it digitally, you know.

But I’m still doing the same process but with the data that’s involved, you know, with stats and everything else and uh uh and all the things that I’ve learned it’s just unbelievable what’s going on with technology and you know with AI being the rage right now and listen a lot of people think AI’s just came out AI’s been around for a while just no one really knew and you know at least the people, the pioneers and um uh it’s gonna change the way everything’s done I don’t care if it’s an instruction HR just everything is going to change with AI and you want you know I had a conversation with one of my podcasters a couple months back and I said remember this date uh you know whatever June whatever I said in five years you call me and tell me what restaurants look like you know and uh he laughed but I said hey I’m gonna call you on it you know I’m still going to be around as long as I kept glass I’ll get arthritis I’ll be you know I’ll be doing my magazine so uh anyway it you know it it’s amazing and uh so um let’s talk about uh the last three years through the roller coaster so March 2020 comes around just like my picture you know hey shut down I decided I was going to redo my deck myself and my son and you know I was laughing he goes hey Dad why aren’t you a contractor I’m like I was I came from a constructor family but you know I’m a publisher but I’m a builder still so anyway uh everything got shut down people the thoughts give me a couple weeks you know here we are three years later and uh you know you know it’s still lingering I just I just saw yesterday that they’re making the college students here in Atlanta wear masks I’m like oh my God you know I mean please you know anyway uh it’s still around and uh you know but we’ve weathered the storm if you’re all sitting out there watching this and listening to him you’re still standing congratulations you made it through and uh you know we’re definitely out of the tunnel uh and uh I’m always looking forward.

I can’t change what happened in the past I just know that I learned a lot about my business I learned that there’s more to work than life and that data is King and uh there’s eight billion people on the web and there’s so much so much you can do reaching out to those people making connections and you never know where your next sale is going to come from so talk about how you your firm you know weather the storm over the last three years and any new like services and products that our listeners Out there in commercial construction, Coffee Talk might find value. So yeah, I want to talk about that. That’s a really good segue. I want to talk about kind of, in general, how that roller coaster, that, you know, exposed certain things and showed certain things. So I think, you know, it really showed and exposed a lot of weaknesses and opportunities for a lot of different types of businesses, right? So if you’re in manufacturing, for example, and you had massive supply chain issues, it’s because many manufacturers are like, “We’re gonna build everything out of, like, two factories and then, you know, whatever,” right? And then they don’t have any redundancy. Everything is just-in-time, everything’s whatever, and then all of a sudden you have supply chain issues that have cascaded for years. I mean, you’re in construction, you’re probably still feeling it. Like, there’s certain things that you, even till today, certain things that you get, the lead times are like extraordinarily much longer than they were five years ago, right? So, and that’s, by the way, that’s actually partially a process issue, right? Which is like, you know, how did the process not account for this? Not account for having some level of redundancy?

Not account for, like, you know, how do you get back on your feet when things kind of fall through the cracks, right? So it’s a big process thing. And also, you know, partially, you know, the weight is actually to look, uh, to look at the data, right? To have the data, to have the right data and to have it accessible and available kind of at your fingertips and to be able to, like, run different scenarios on it, right? I mean, I’m sure business leaders kind of came out later and they’re like, “How do we not foresee this?” If somebody had more resilient supply chains than somebody else, for example, a little bit more redundancy, I mean, they could have just become, you know, a complete kingmaker, you know, in the past like three years, right, in the space, right, when everybody else is pushing their lead times out by like months and, you know, you’re not, but everybody had the same issues, right? So nobody was like that. So I think that’s like a huge thing that you can kind of see. That’s quite one aspect of it on the process breakdown. But the other aspect of it that we saw is how important is it for businesses to have and, you know, have a digital presence? And nobody questions it now. I think it’s understood more now after everything that’s happened. But I think, but even up until that point, you know, some people were still kind of questioning whether they should have a visual presence or, yeah, invest in it. I mean, everybody had like a basic digital presence, right, but invest in it and do things digitally. And, you know, and the answer is a resounding yes. I mean, you have to have some sort of digital presence to be able to kind of exist nowadays. And if even if you exist without that, then you’re putting a lot of opportunity, leaving that out on the table that you’re not taking advantage of. And it’s more than just, “Hey, I have a website or a market.”

I mean, it’s like that. If you’re like a digitally enabled company, can I come to your website and is there a place for me to fill out and request, like, let’s say you’re like a residential contractor, is there a place for me to fill out and request a quote? Can I do that online or do I have to go through, like, five different phone calls and like by the end of it I’m sick of it, I don’t want to do it anymore, I’m used to buying everything on Amazon, right? Can I go to your website, is there an easy way for me to request a quote or get a quote, you know, can I come and easily contact somebody, you have maybe a chat feature on your website that, you know, maybe I can get some basic advice and then transfer me to somebody, for example. I’m not saying you have to have that but it’s just having that digital customer journey enabled is like really key. It’s not a matter of like I have a website and we post on social media. It’s a matter of like it’s more holistic than that. It’s like let’s look at the entire customer journey, especially again with something like construction, it’s a longer journey.

This isn’t I’m not buying a little toy on Amazon where I’m gonna just make an impulse purchase. I mean if you’re even doing something like Changing your roof, you’re gonna shop around, you’re gonna ask for advice, gonna be like a lot of different steps before you get to the point where you buy it. We need to enable them at every single step of the way so they have a buying experience that works with what they’re used to, customers are used to and how they work, and give them a good experience with a good product. So I think that’s a very big thing that came out of that, that, you know, if people know again that they need to be digital, but it’s that deep customer journey that you need to enable every step of the way. And when you do that, by the way, the good thing is if you have that then you have a lot of data points too that then you can use to further improve. So if we start having, you know, a full digital customer experience then we know like, “Hey, we have this many people that requested a quote, we got like 10,000 people requested a quote in the past whatever six months.” But then after that only 5,000 people were able to get on the phone with sales, so 5,000 of them dropped off. So then we kind of know like how do we improve that 5,000 that dropped off? Maybe do we market to them more? Do we send them emails, whatever? And then you go further down the line, we ended up with, you know, 500 installations that we did, and then you see like where people are falling off and you can make improvements throughout. But you have data, if you have it set up right, you have data at your fingertips, you’re able to look and see and drive those improvements. I mean that’s really key, that’s how to truly build something that works really well today.

Hey, listen, I’m loving everything you just said, you know? I mean, I took a 12-week boot camp on funnels, GetResponse, click magic. I mean, I learned all that, you know, build my first online business, but I had a digital magazine forever. I just ignored it. It was like my, you know, it was like my stepchild, it looks having stepchildren is great, okay, nothing against them, but I really, but I had a ton of content. So when the shutdown happened, I kind of had to, you know, I don’t like using the word “pivot” because everybody used it, but, you know, I put out the issue, I was fighting my printer, I’m like half my circulation and constructions furloughed, their offices aren’t open, I’m gonna waste all this money putting this magazine, they’re just gonna get thrown in the trash by the post office. And so we put the issue out and then I had a lot of sleepless nights in April. I was a print face-to-face guy, everything was basically kaput, you couldn’t fly, depending on what state you were in, was going to be depending on how busy we’re gonna be especially if you were in construction. And then we just said, “Hey man, we got all this content and let’s just go digital.” And so we did and we still did a little small press run for people that, you know, had articles, whatever, but then after a year I was like, I don’t even need it. But I never had two million people a month hitting my website, you know, because people weren’t on the web, that they were now as they went over the last three years, you know, being hybrid, working at home, you know, everybody was on the web just like we are right now. Like people say, “Oh, I’m sick of Zoom.” Zoom has changed everything, you know, why would you go and drive three hours to go look at a curb that need to be fixed when you can just do it online or have you can pick and choose where you want to go if you need to do those face-to-face meetings.

And, you know, Zoom’s not going anywhere, Teams or whatever platform that you’re working on. I mean, this has just been unbelievable. I had a project management firm tell me he goes in one day I was in Kuwait, Africa, Canada, South America, ended up in New York doing a couple site visits. If I did that before, you know, 2020, March of 2020, that was taking me like three weeks. I did that all in a day, you know, so businesses, you know, just moving a million miles a second and, you know, construction, you know, especially if you’re in a central business, it didn’t stop. I’m here in Georgia, we were one of the first states that opened up, we weren’t really even closed anyway. I had three or four projects that I was Looking at there was a multi-family going up, there was a Senior Living Center they were building, a new fire station, and I forget what else they were doing down the street but I was watching it all go up, you know, and they put all the protocols in place. But if you were in a state that had more regulations, like if you were doing a bathroom renovation and you had to be close in and they said, “Oh, you know, that was probably gonna go put,” but if you’re out on a Federal Highway project where it was nice and open, you probably got that project done. So it really depended on where you were in the country and how the state regulations were going to affect how you were going to go. Just like this morning before you came on, you know, I don’t watch your news anymore, I watch YouTube, I have my people, my sources that I like to read.

But the Panama Canal, okay, they have two big reservoirs that put all the water into those locks to get these huge ships in and right now, you know, there’s they’re running out of water and they’ve now they have like 150 ships that they can’t get through the canal and they’re making them unload cargo or they have to go around South, you know, South America to come around and it’s affecting the supply shorts especially if there’s some of those products on some of those containers on the ships, you know, what are you gonna do, you gotta wait for it, you know, and that could slow your project down. So, you know, all these little things and you and you can’t control it you just have to roll with the punches. So you know if you’ve got product on those ships and or in the containers you’re basically it’s out of your control so you have to, you know, be flexible and be able to use data and be able to find maybe someone that can replace that stuff and you know I mean in construction especially like in retail everything is backed up from when the opening of the new location the circulars are printed and then they they back up the you know your scheduling on how you’re going to get that project finished and if you’ve got stuff on ships and it’s getting shipped in or if you have a labor shortage or whatever all those hindrances everybody had to deal with over the last three and a half years but I think people have weathered the storm and they’ve kind of figured out got you know new vendors and their stable and suppliers and so forth that you know it’s actually running fairly smoothly but you’re always going to have hiccups it doesn’t matter you know whether it’s Mother Nature or labor shortage or whatever skilled skill labor it’s all gonna it’s all gonna affect you know the the final outcome but um yeah you know data you know getting back to data you know I I thought I knew a lot but I’ve taken you know three classes and you know I’ve learned everything and now I’m actually you know you know I’m putting everything together and I’m gonna I’m gonna start blowing some people away when they see my site I’m you know they’re like hey how’d you do that how did you do that and uh and listen I’ve left a lot of money on the table because just like you said 5,000 names and then maybe you get 500 and whatever but you can actually take those other clients that you thought you lost they’re called reactivations you can go back and you can pick up some of those people so you know it it’s an amazing thing uh technology and you know manipulating it so you can make your process so much you know uh smoother and just concentrate on actually you know making sales so uh it’s.

I you know I you know when I gave up my magazine it was dicey I was a print face-to-face guy forever and when I made that that switch to digital God it was like the scariest thing that I ever did but I I was like you know what I’m just gonna I’m just gonna go for it roll the dice and uh and here I am and I never I never expected I’ve gone over three million people hitting the site twice in the last year once in November of 2022 and April I had three and a half million and um and we’ve actually put software on our website so we don’t have we got rid of all the Bots that hit your site every day okay you know the minute you put your website up on the web you’re a global company it doesn’t matter if you’re in Muskogee Oklahoma or Hong Kong or in Atlanta Georgia the bottom line is You better put a site on the site; you’re a global company, and the minute you put it on there, there are these guys, these crawlers, these robots, they’re just freaking attacking you and you can’t get rid of them. So when people tell you, “Oh, I’ve got so many hits on stats,” I’m like, “Yeah, but how many robots are there?” It’s kind of like Twitter, how many of those were fake accounts. So we put the security software on there and it knocks it all out, and you’d be amazed at like how many these things are out there in all these different countries. I can look at them all and I blocked them all, but now I know my stats are actually, “Hey, these are real people that are freaking coming to myself site,” and they’re finding me through Google, ninety percent of them. They don’t go to my home page, they find me on Google, they’ll type in a thing, “Hey, I want to learn about concrete repair,” and I’ve got a piece of content on concrete repair on page one and boom, they come through the back end of my site and then they start getting into my house. I call my house, they come through the back door, and then looking through my closets and, “Oh, you got a magazine, oh, you do a podcast, oh, you’ve got events, you do this and that,” and then they become unique users. And then they don’t even have to go; they just come and, you know, I tell people, “You should come to my site once a week or a couple weeks a month and just go through what we’ve posted.

You’ll find leads on there, you know, customers to go after, you know, whatever you’re selling.” And it’s just, you know, it’s just one of those things. So talking to a data guy, it’s awesome because process B2B helping people and then when they scale their business like, “Oh my God, I wish I would have done this years ago.” But you know years ago we didn’t even know really what this was even available, you know, that’s what the whole roller coaster kind of did to a lot of people. But you have to be digital these days. This phone, okay, is the best tool that you can ever have in your hand. Okay, you just got, you have the world right here; eight billion people could be on the web looking for you on there and you, you can get messages, “Oh, I just got a text, I got this, someone just hit my website.” I mean, you know, with the right software that you’re using or the platform, I mean having a phone, and I still listen, I make 10 phone calls a day, you know, I pick up the phone because I don’t want to send emails all day and text. But, you know, it’s always good to have these phone calls with people because, you know, you know, it’s just nice, whether it’s Zoom, but I prefer making the phone call and getting them on there. So use your phone, learn how to use it because it is your best tool that you can have as far as I’m concerned along with your hammer and your, you know, your knife and, you know, whatever whatever else you have in there. So um, so do you have any cool products that you’re, you know, coming out with in your launching? Yeah, I mean, uh, well before that, I actually said a lot of things that I want to comment, yeah, go ahead, yeah, definitely want to comment there. So um, I mean, I think one thing he said too is like, you know, obviously driving all this with technology and I want to really emphasize something is that the best um, the best people who are making the best use of data in their process, they’re actually leveraging technology. But there’s two things, there’s technology and then there’s the human parts of your process as well, which are really important, a lot of people overlook that, right.

So a lot of people just think, “Hey, data,” but then they forgot that there’s a big, especially in a B2B business, it’s a little bit different B2C, but especially in a B2B business, which most construction businesses are or they’re, you know, the I operate similarly even if you’re selling like consumers, it still works like a B2B business. Anyway, especially in the B2B or service-based business, um, there’s a big human element to the process and a big like business process side that doesn’t actually it’s not directly tied to technology, just things that people need to do that need to be laid out in a way that’s organized and efficient. Everybody understands so that you can see success. And again, I’ve seen this across the board, even if you’re a really large organization, they might not have certain deficiencies in the sales process where things fall between the cracks. So if you have a sales process and your salespeople are just maybe they’re they get requests on the website and then they quote people and then it’s like, okay, what did you do like a month later? Like, what happened? I don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? Well, that’s it. I mean, I quoted them and I haven’t heard back. Well, but did you follow up? No. Is there a process for you to follow up? Like, no, there isn’t the process, right? So that’s like a very, for example, small thing that a lot of people don’t get right, right? Like, well, there should be some sort of process for them to follow up. It should be documented. It should be explained. And then whatever tool you’re using CRM or whatever tool you’re using, you have a certain designated place where they can kind of mark, where they can kind of mark and see, okay, I sent this guy a quote. I need to follow up with these 50 guys. And then they can mark that they did follow up or didn’t follow up. And you set up your tools to work with your process, right?

So it’s really you have, you want to have three things working together for kind of like the best results, right? You want to have your process which enables you to get the right data, um, and you know, use that data to drive continuous improvement. But you want your, the right technology which enables you to drive that process, right? So you want all three things working together. I mean, if you have a really, really good process, but you’re not using any technology, it’s going to be really hard to keep up with that process. And you won’t have any data. If you have really good technology, but you don’t have a good process, well then that’s just like having a tool, but you don’t know what to do with the tool, right? I mean, you can have the best toolbox ever, it doesn’t make you a great construction company, right? It’s the fact that you know what to do with the tools and you’re actually doing the things with the tools is what makes you good and the tools really enable you. I mean, you could also be the best construction guy ever and whatever trade and you have no tools, it’s very hard to get anything done right. So you need all three things. And that’s really, really key. And a lot of people overlook this and you see it overlooked even at the large organization they overlook that there’s a human element. So they’re thinking we have all these fancy tools that’s going to take us to the moon, but like it’s not because you’re missing the human part, which is, which is huge, right? And you need to drive, you need to do it in a way that they can understand, that the reps can understand, that whoever’s on the front can understand to use these tools to be able to actually put in the right information. Um, because there’s a big human element in the service-based business or of selling and talking to people. It’s not like Amazon where, you know, what you don’t really care about the person’s phone number or you’re not going to ever call them. I mean, you’re selling a $20 product online or on e-commerce or whatever and you’re never going to talk to them. That, you know, they’ll come in if they have an issue and return the product. And that’s not like that, you know, it’s, you’re talking five, six, seven, ten hundred, twenty, you know, million-dollar deals, whatever type of, you know, business you are, it’s much different.

And you need to account, uh, you need to account for that. And the other thing on data itself, um, this is another big misconception is, uh, people will oftentimes, um, kind of like talk data, data, data, but you have to make sure one thing, you actually have to be looking at the right data in the right context at the right time. And I have seen this happen again a lot, and it happens at the large organization level, uh, actually somewhat frequently, right, where somebody who doesn’t have context but has data is looking at it and then driving decisions. And then, but it’s like if you actually have context, they’re like, what is going on? Like, do you even know that this is happening, you know? Um, it’s like, it’s like imagine you’re looking at a data set a hundred years from now in the future and you look at stuff happening in like, um, March 2020 or April 2020 and you.

start driving all these conclusions on that but you don’t have any context as to like what happened. It’s not going to make sense whatever you’re going to do. It’s not going to make sense. You can come up with all the theories and be like, “Oh, it’s because Apple launched this new iPhone, people didn’t like it, so their sales collapsed.” It’s like, “No, dude, you, what? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not what happened at all. You don’t have any on-the-ground context, right?” So that’s obviously a ridiculous example, but stuff like that happens all the time, right? Where you need to have the on-the-floor context as to like what’s happening and look at the right data to drive the right conclusions because the one thing worse than not looking at data, um, you know, is looking at the wrong data and then driving the wrong conclusions off of that and then just being very confident because you feel like you looked at it like, “Oh, I looked at the data, so my conclusion is that, you know, we’re gonna just stop selling all these things because they’re not profitable.” But then you didn’t know that like, people that walk in, they walk in asking for these things and they buy more profitable stuff. If you cut these things, we lose everything, right? We’re not gonna sell any, right? So, as like an example, but you just looked at data and you’re like, “How can I make the company more profitable? Cut these things.” And then next thing you know, but if you just ask anybody, they would have told you that doesn’t make any sense because every customer walks in asking for item one and then they buy two, three, and four, which are profitable, but they never would have if you don’t have item one. So, you know, that’s just two really important misconceptions that I wanted to talk about on the data and technology side that we see a lot, a lot. Um, and no organism, even from that, you know.

I never judge but any book by its cover and there are big companies, you think they might be, they might have, you know, whole marketing department and social media and all this stuff and they don’t know what they’re doing and then you go these little guys, they’ve got a very small team and they’re just rock and rolling because they’re looking at the data correctly, they’re applying the right things and they’re making mistakes, but they’re learning from them. That’s the biggest thing. You’re gonna make mistakes. It’s a digital world. You’re gonna make mistakes. You gotta learn from them. You just can’t keep your blinders on and, uh, you know, listen, I make mistakes every day, you know, I mean, it took me forever to learn some of the stuff that I’m doing, but, you know what? They told me, 20% selling, 80% practice, repetition, repetition, and you’ll and you’ll learn, you know? And then once you’ve learned it, it is, I’m telling you, it’s mind-blowing. And because data is just unbelievable, I can’t get enough of it. So if someone was out there on commercial construction coffee talk and they wanted to reach out to you to bounce some data or consulting questions, you know, and a construction absolutely, how would they reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. So, and that’s kind of going into your other thing. If, uh, you know, products and services and stuff like that. I mean, I think the best thing is since, you know, we’re service-based and doing a lot of things and you might, uh, you might need help with a lot of different things here, so I’m going to offer to people on this show, uh, this podcast, like, look, email, email us at hello@pushanalytics.com and just put in the title that you came from commercial construction. So that way the team knows to route it, uh, and we’ll, we’ll get scheduled with you a consultation call to discuss your business and like, hey, we bounce ideas if you want to see like, I need help with process with your CRM, you want to import for the CRM, I think that’s a really big one and you know, we can really help with that.

Um, but you know, you want to use some data that you already have, whatever it is, you want to run ads, give us a shout out. I’ll put in the title again commercial construction consultation and just give us, you know, give us an email and we’ll get, we’ll get a console goal. Okay, so there you go. Hello@pushanalytics. Put in commercial if you want to put CCCT because that’s the name of our show, commercial construction Coffee Talk. They’ll know who it is and we stopping his team, uh, we’ll, you know, we’ll get back to you. Uh, if there’s, uh, someone, uh, out there, uh, you know, uh, that wants to reach out to me, uh, you can reach me at davidc@ccr-mag.com. Listen, the way that, uh, this gentleman got on the thing, his publicist sent me a press release. I looked at it, I was like, “Oh, cool. I’m a data guy, I want to talk to another data guy.” Uh, you know, I have other podcasters in my thing. If you don’t send me something, I can’t… I know you don’t like me when I say this, but it’s like playing the lottery. If you don’t buy a ticket, you can’t win. You don’t send me something, I can’t look at it. I got plenty. It’s very tough getting in the magazine, but I got plenty of platforms that we can put this on. Uh, I just hired a person to take all my posting off because I was just spending way too much time and I want to spend my other time, you know, you know, with integration and all this other stuff. And, uh, but we go back to you, you know, my tat, that’s turnaround time. I know it’s probably about, you know, 48 to 72 hours we get it. You send me something, it could be a charity golf tournament, new product, personal announcement, anniversary, whatever, uh, send it to me. Let me be the judge and we posted, we say in the URL, we ask you to, uh, you know, share it. It’s good for our SEO, which is search engine optimization for those that don’t know what that means, uh, it’s very, very important. SEO if you want to be found, uh, you know, on the web.

And, uh, the bottom line is we like looking at everything, you know, before, before, uh, you know, the roller coaster started, I just put, put construction stuff up on my site. Now I put all sorts of stuff, how to buy a smartphone, what’s the best car insurance, how do you buy the nice grill, uh, how do you buy a hair extensions, half my circulation is female, you know, if you’re a guy, maybe you want to wear hair extensions, I don’t know, all these people are crazy these days, you know, one day they’re a guy, one day they’re a girl. Bottom line is, I put that stuff on there because there’s more to life than just work. And so we put all that stuff out there for you. So send it to us, we’ll look at it, and I’ll actually come back to you, you know. So, uh, absolutely. And go ahead. No, no, I was gonna, I was gonna throw in, I, I made an offer to the audience, you made an operating audience, and I have an offer for you and the audience, dude. So if, um, uh, if anybody, I know we talked broadly here today, um, if anybody wants like, “Hey, we really want to zoom in specifically and talk about like CRMs and how we can use that in construction business,” or “We want to talk about like this concept this occurred to me when you said SEO, but uh, how we can talk about this concept and, you know, uh, we can, we can do something like that, people, you know, kind of express interest like, ‘Hey, focus on this topic that we’d really like to zoom into.’ I’ll be happy to do that as well.” Yeah. So, um, final thoughts, uh, you know, if you have one positive thought or phrase that you wanted to leave with our listeners before we end our episode here, what would it be? No, no, no, you’re good. I mean, I have a lot of positive thoughts and phrases, but what’s the one that I, um, that I really want to share? I mean, I think, uh, I think the important thing is to always be forward-looking. I mean, that’s kind of how I’ve lived my life and ever since I started doing that, that’s been like life-changing, like, right? Always be forward-looking, um, and that doesn’t mean ignoring the past either. So I mean taking the past and learning from it and seeing how you can apply that lesson, uh, you know, looking forward, right? So I mean they always say don’t cry over spilled milk, but that’s kind of like only half of it, right? So, okay, don’t cry, but you also don’t just leave it on the floor and walk away. I mean, you, you clean the milk, you figure out why the milk got spilled, and you say, ‘Hey, what can we do to make sure that the milk doesn’t get spilled next time?’ Right?

So and how can we use this to like drive improvement. So you should be like that with your personal life, but you should also be like that with your business life as well as far as like, okay, you know, wait, well, we weren’t doing this or we weren’t doing this. I mean, we talked a lot about like technology, whatever, maybe you’re watching this, maybe you’re like, ‘Ant Man, I didn’t do any of that in 2020 or 2019,’ and I’m, I’m behind. Don’t, don’t just sit there and you know, look backwards, right? It’s like, okay, like, well, now I know what I didn’t do, now I know what I can be doing, how do I move forward? And I think that’s like really, really important in both personal and professional life.

Stopping his team. We’ll, you know, we’ll get back to you. If there’s someone out there, you know, that wants to reach out to me, you can reach me at davidc@ccr-mag.com. Listen, the way that this gentleman got on the thing, his publicist sent me a press release. I looked at it, I was like, “Oh, cool, I’m a data guy, I want to talk to another data guy.” You know, I have other podcasters in my thing, if you don’t send me something, I can’t, I know you don’t like me when I say this, but it’s like playing the lottery, if you don’t buy a ticket, you can’t win. You don’t send me something, I can’t look at it, I got plenty. It’s very tough getting in the magazine, but I got plenty of platforms that we can put this on. I just hired a person to take all my posting off because I was just spending way too much time and I want to spend my other time, you know, with integration and all this other stuff. But we go back to you, you know, my tat that’s turnaround time, I know it’s probably about, you know, 48 to 72 hours. We get it, you send me something, it could be a charity golf tournament, new product, personal announcement, anniversary, whatever, uh, send it to me, let me be the judge, and we’ll post it, we say in the URL, we ask you to, you know, share it, it’s good for our SEO, which is search engine optimization, for those that you don’t know what that means, uh, it’s very, very important. SEO if you want to be found, you know, on the web. And, uh, the bottom line is, we like looking at everything, you know, before the roller coaster started, I just put construction stuff up on my site, now I put all sorts of stuff, how to buy a smartphone, what’s the best car insurance, how do you buy the nice grill, uh, how do you buy hair extensions, half my circulation is female, you know, if you’re a guy, maybe you want to wear hair extensions, I don’t know, all these people are crazy these days, you know, one day they’re a guy, one day they’re a girl, bottom line is, I put that stuff on there because there’s more to life than just work, and so we put all that stuff out.

Final thoughts: I tell this to my family, I talk to my friends or tell us to whoever, and it’s helped me a lot since I started doing that a while back, but helped me a lot since I started doing that tremendously. You know, I’m gonna preach on this, you know, if I was gonna come, I’m gonna bridge on Mustafa’s point there, is that, you know, it’s never too late to do something, and if you start it a year later, you’re gonna be glad you did. Also, it’s not what you don’t have, it’s what you do with what you have, and that’s, and that goes with anything. So, you know, make the plunge, learn, and you look, and you can look back and, “God, I’m glad I did that,” versus saying, “I wish I would have done that,” you know, action, you know, call to action, do it, you know, decide, succeed, repeat, all right, so, you know, that’s where I’m coming from. As we close out here, a couple things, first of all, hit the like button so we could get, you know, our conversation out there on the web so people can find out about push analytics, you know, we’re trying to, you know, you gotta deal with the algorithms on YouTube and stuff, uh, and if you’re on a construction site out there, number one, be safe, okay, we want you to get home and be able to do it all over again the following day, and listen, it’s still really hot, okay, even though the fall season’s coming, it’s almost the end of the year, it’s still really hot out there, so if you’re on the construction site, drink lots of water, put some of those electrolytes in your water bottle, okay, we don’t want you getting dehydrated, you know, you get headaches and that’s one accident that’s happened, so once you get home at night to your family and your kids so you can get up and do it the next day, and stay hydrated, very, very important.

So, Mustafa, enjoy the Outer Banks in North Carolina, you know, for your, you know, the last couple days at the Airbnb there, and I’m sure it’s beautiful, and, and, uh, you know, like I said, I knew Wilmington, Rachel Beach and all that, so, uh, it’s a, and if maybe I’ve gotten down there to the Outer Banks or Wilmington or the, or the beaches in North Carolina, they are, they are beautiful, okay, you know, it’s, it’s an awesome place to go, really nice people, and, uh, you know, you’re just kind of getting into the South and the hospitality, so, uh, if it’s on a bucket list thing, check it out, man, I like Wrightsville Beach, but, uh, there’s plenty of other ones that are out there, so, uh, Mustafa, say goodbye from the Outer Banks, see you guys later, I’ll see you at the beach if you’re there, yeah, and I’m gonna sign off from Sugar Hill, just below the Beaufort Dam on Lake Lanier, it’s got about 600 miles of coastline, and, uh, I think it’s almost time to get out in the boat here tonight and, uh, you know, take a ride, so, uh, anyway, to all you out there, tomorrow’s TGIF, enjoy the weekend, recharge your battery, clear your mindset, stay positive, get rid of all those, don’t have negativity, it’s not worth it, get rid of it, hang around, surround yourself with positive people, man, you’re going to make your life so much happier, you know, and smile, have fun, if you don’t like what you’re doing, go do something else, there’s plenty of things going out there that you can do, okay, because life is short, gotta make the best of it, so with that said, uh, Mustafa, I look forward to uh, seeing you in person, uh, no fist pumps, I’m gonna shake your hand, and, uh, I got my event coming up in New York on September 28th, uh, in the city, it’s our facilities construction meet and greet, noon to four at Penthouse 45, and, uh, actually, I’ve got my project management software gig coming up in my next issue, so I’ll send you an email with that link so you can get your company listed, it’s free editorially, just all you have to do is fill out the form and I’ll confirm receiving, I’ll get you in the magazine, so with that said, we will see you all next time on another episode of Commercial Construction Coffee Talk, and, uh, like I said, be safe out there, Mustafa, thank you so much for finding the time, you’re the man, all right, yeah, you got it, bye-bye, my man, ciao.