Marketers Take Flight
Welcome to Marketers Take Flight, the podcast that empowers AEC marketing professionals to elevate their careers and personal lives. Hosted by Lindsay Diven, CPSM, an industry veteran and Full Focus Certified Pro, this show goes beyond traditional marketing tips to cover productivity, mindset, personal development, life planning, and managing people—all tailored for the AEC industry.
If you're ready to transform your approach to work and life, tune in for insights and strategies that address:
*How to boost productivity and achieve work-life balance
*Personal development techniques for AEC marketers
*Life planning and goal setting inspired by Michael Hyatt’s principles
*Effective strategies for managing and leading marketing teams
*Building a growth mindset for career success
*Enhancing personal and professional development in the AEC industry
*Tips for training new AEC marketing coordinators and managers
Join me as we explore holistic strategies to thrive both professionally and personally, helping you take flight in your AEC marketing career.
Marketers Take Flight
147: How this CEO is Modernizing AEC Marketing
Ever been curious about the magic that marketing can bring to an AEC firm? Well, you're in for a treat. Today, we're diving into an incredible story with BJ Kraemer, the go-getter President and CEO of MCFA. BJ's not your everyday leader; his transition from military life to running a standout AEC firm is nothing short of inspiring. And guess what? He's here to spill the beans on why marketing is so darn important in business planning.
In our chat, BJ brings to light the undeniable power of human connections in branding. Plus, he gives us the lowdown on how digital transformation is shaking things up in marketing and the AEC industry. It's all about people, and BJ gets it!
Now, here's where it gets really interesting. BJ breaks down how a CEO and marketing can join forces to create something extraordinary. We're talking visionary yet totally doable marketing strategies. But wait, it's not all about the money. Nope, we're focusing on the real impact of these strategies - the kind that makes you go 'Wow!'.
Hold on, because BJ's got more wisdom to share. We're delving into the tricky but crucial task of aligning marketing with sales goals. And get this – it's not just about short-term wins; we're playing the long game too.
As we peek into the future of AEC marketing in our ever-changing world, BJ reveals his unique approach to keeping his team and clients engaged – think internal emails with a twist. We're lighting up the path of AEC marketing, unpacking the importance of really getting your clients and the power of top-notch leadership.
And because BJ is all about giving back, he shares his passion for his non-profit work. Trust me, you'll leave this conversation not just thinking differently about AEC marketing and leadership, but feeling inspired to make your own mark.
So, let's dive in and turn your AEC marketing strategies upside down – in the best way possible. Ready? Click that play button to get started!
Want more AEC marketing goodness?
- New to proposals? Download my FREE “RFPs for Beginners – The Ultimate Proposal Management Checklist.”
- Stop planning, start creating with my FREE “Ultimate AEC Content Marketing Starter Kit.”
- Follow Lindsay on LinkedIn and Instagram.
- Collaborate with other AEC Marketers in our Facebook Group.
- Purchase bite-sized, on-demand templates and training at the Marketers Place.
- Enroll in online training: The Proposal Pro or Content Marketing Clarity.
Hey there, I'm Lindsay Dibbin and I'm passionate about everything marketing, productivity and career growth. With over 17 years of experience in the architecture, engineering and construction industry, I know firsthand the ins and outs of this exciting field, from my early days as a marketing coordinator to becoming an award-winning marketing professional. In firm principle, I've learned the ropes through countless late nights and challenging deadlines. Now I'm thrilled to bring you the AEC Marketing Strategies Podcast. Here I'll be sharing simple yet powerful, step-by-step marketing strategies that you can implement to achieve the same level of success. Consider me your go-to marketing mentor, someone who truly gets the unique challenges you face in the AEC industry. Whether you're an AEC Marketing Pro or industry newbie, this podcast is your personal coffee date with your marketing bestie. Together, we'll navigate the ever-changing landscape of online marketing and digital trends, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. If you're ready to unlock the marketing secrets they never taught you in college and tailor them specifically to the AEC industry, then you're in the right place. Now let's get started. Welcome back, my friend.
Speaker 2:I am thrilled to bring you a different but refreshing perspective on today's show. I'm talking with BJ Kramer, president and CEO of MCFA, a renowned service disabled veteran-owned small business. But that's not all. Bj is also the voice behind the Inspiring People and Places podcast, and he has a weekly newsletter as well. His insights into the AEC world are not just informative but transformative. But first I want to give a shout out to Matt Handel from helpeverybodyeverydaycom, who connected BJ and me. So thanks, matt, for recommending BJ for the show.
Speaker 2:Okay, so BJ is going to share how he, as the CEO, integrates marketing strategies into his firm, into his firm's overall business planning, why AEC Marketing has a lot to learn from personalities like Chip and Joanna Gaines, and why he sees himself as one of the most important brand advocates for his firm or brand ambassadors for his firm. We also discuss marketing challenges, the impact of digital transformation and emerging trends in both marketing and our industry as a whole. Okay, so now let's get to the interview. Okay, welcome With me today is BJ Kramer. He is the president and CEO of MCFA. So hi, bj, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Lindsay, so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yes. So for those who don't know, you tell us a little bit about yourself, your career path and how you got here and what you're doing today.
Speaker 1:Sure, so I'll go back. I graduated from West Point the United States Military Academy, had a career on active duty as an engineer officer. I did a combat assignment so some operational stuff and then went to grad school, had the opportunity to have a utilization tour with the Army Corps of Engineers and there's a bit of marketing and advocating and self-advocating inside of the Army of how I got the assignment but ended up on a $2 billion military construction project as, like the third person on site, the only uniform on site, and it opened up my eyes to the big AEC world and really, from there the rest is history. But I joined MCFA in 2012. When I got off active duty In 2018, I had a conversation with the owner about acquiring the majority ownership of the company and really laying out a win-win strategy for how to do that and what my vision was for the company.
Speaker 1:So that happened in 2018. We became a service disabled, better known as Small Business, in 2019. And over the last four years we have built a leadership team and we took the company from 17 people to 50 people and growing, and there's a whole bunch of punches in the faces and lessons learned everywhere in between, including marketing, business development sales. So I should say I started out as a professional in the industry, as a project manager, construction manager, but I was a resident engineer on active duty. I got to keep that assignment as a civilian contractor before that project ended and then came to MCFA, interestingly enough, as director of strategy and business development. So I came here on a business development path which I think is maybe somewhat unique for the industry.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:And probably we'll put a lot of flavor to this conversation, so hopefully we can add some value to your audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's definitely rare to Well, you kind of came from the owner side.
Speaker 1:I did Yep.
Speaker 2:I'm going to an Army Corps and then come in as on the business development track and then work your way up, and now you're president and CEO. So I think this is going to be a really fun conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for it.
Speaker 2:So let's get into it. So, as a president and CEO, how? And then, coming up to this business development path, how do you integrate your marketing strategies into your overall business planning and your overall strategic planning?
Speaker 1:I don't have a real concise answer to this, other than it's everything. I think that as a small business, you have to build a brand and you build your brand through your people. So you have to be very intentional about what that brand is. Like I said, we started with 17 people or when I came here we were probably 25, 30 people. We kind of shrunk and then we grew. And I say all the time our people are a brand right, because they're out there representing our firm. But I'm also a big Simon Sinek start with YGuy and I watched that TED Talk a thousand times probably.
Speaker 1:I read the book and when I think about even how I ended up at MCFA, they had a website and the slogan on the website was we're a dedicated team of problem solvers. So I've always been somebody that's been attracted to brand and I think that's the start of marketing strategy is what does your company represent to the marketplace? So our brand is about people. Everything we talk about is about our people, our culture. Everything that we're doing at MCFA is about empowering our people to be brand ambassadors in whatever way they are, because your best marketing is good client service, it's good account management, it's delivering on what you promised. So the hardest or the cheapest customer to keep is the one you have. The hardest customer to get is the one you don't have. So I think we put a lot of emphasis on account management and customer service and how that plays into who we are as a company and what we are. Did I do a good enough job answering that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. All the marketers listening are like yes, yes, we're here. I started with Brian, he started with people, so I know you're getting a lot of like yes.
Speaker 1:And it's counter to our industry. And I can go, I can bash on our industry. Aec to me stands for archaic, expensive and complicated. There's not a problem, we can't over complicate, and some of that's because of the way we're taught to think. I'm an engineer by education. We tend to think about projects as managing risks, mitigating risks, getting it done right, and marketing is more about pushing the edge and putting yourself out there. It's kind of counter-cultural to our industry. So I joke that I bash on it. But when I speak to marketers I say that your job is to push us forward us being the engineers forward in the industry and in the world, because we are doing a lot of good work as an industry.
Speaker 1:I was at a conference, an M&A conference for our industry, and the punchline was we're solving worlds or humanity's greatest problems or greatest threats. So we're doing all of this good stuff but we can't seem to market because we get so focused on proposals that we forget that marketing principles apply. Understanding how people think, how people buy we get so focused on is the SF 330 writer. Is my proposal coordinated? And did I dot eyes and cross T's because the big buyer in our industry is a public procurement officer in some way, shape or form, so we all rally around their process, but at the end of the day, they're a human too, and marketing is about connecting with human beings and telling them the story of what we do, and I think our industry is doing a bad job telling our story of what we do to anybody other than the public buyer that's competing out the contract that we're chasing. So I might have gone off track on you there, but no, I love it.
Speaker 2:You put into words what our frustrations are and you put it into words so eloquently. We are. I always tell people I've worked with literal rocket scientists we are solving, like you said solving the world's problems, solving the world's threats. And if we can't tell those stories, it's just a shame it is. And when I work with engineers, they're like, oh, that's just my job. And I'm like, well, no, it is, but it's an amazing job and we need to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know why we don't have the really cool commercials like the iPhone commercials and the brand like that.
Speaker 1:So I was just on a podcast talking about why don't we have and I don't volunteer to be Chip Gaines here, but the Chip and Joanna Gaines of HGTV, like I get it residential house flipping is sexy and it's kind of cool and it's something everybody can connect with. But the problems and projects we're executing in our industry in whatever public infrastructure sector to private development our industry does really awesome stuff and we just don't do a good job of telling the story to anybody but ourselves. So yeah.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest challenges that I challenge to your audience is because there's also a selfish part of this is it's also how we attract talent to our industry in the future, and we have a big aging workforce and while a lot of people are talking about how AI and machine learning and all of this is going to maybe reduce the need for the human capital we have in our industry, I'm not quite sure that's going to happen. So we have to be attracting talent to our industry as well, and the way you do that is through marketing.
Speaker 2:You make it exciting and sexy. Exactly yeah. So when you said Chip and Joanna Gaines, that just means we think of like we should have a reality show like flipping streets. The Chip and Joanna Gaines is relatable because it's relatable to the normal person.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:And so if we just talk about, well, how do we time the traffic lights and how do you get your road widened, we should do flipping streets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you get clean water in your house or electric in your house?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was attending a virtual conference and the keynote speaker was talking about like A to B content, social content and not to make it boring and she was citing I forget what water district it was. It was a water district or sewer district in Ohio and they were just having so much fun with their social media and talking about poo and toilet clogs and stuff like that. So it was just she was citing it. It wasn't even like an AEC conference, this was just a general B to B marketing conference, I think what you just said.
Speaker 1:Right, there is what we have to change. We're not a B to B. We can't think B to B, we have to think B to C. Who are the end users? Who are the humans? Because when you market towards a procurement department, you're like selling your company to that agency, but really what we're doing is selling our capabilities to individual buyers who are like they're going to be the people we work with or they're representing the people we're going to work with and, like you, cannot take the relationship or the humanity out of what we do. It's a people driven industry. There's people on the owner side that are trying to solve problems, execute projects, do our taxpayer investments better, and there's people on our side that bring a bunch of different technical expertise to those problem sets. It's a human interaction game. We're in the people business and we got to do a better job of treating those people as consumers to support and help, versus as entities to RFP and propose and interview with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm waiting. Hopefully a listener is listening and maybe they'll start a reality, because now you can just do your own reality show and just put it on YouTube. I want to see flipping streets.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or flipping commercial buildouts or flipping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, flip this infrastructure, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all right. So we talked a little bit about the challenges that we face today. I feel like we've kind of hit that no-transcript With those challenges today and the challenges within our industry. As you're looking through marketing through the lens of a CEO, how important is the CEO role in shaping and driving the marketing vision for a firm?
Speaker 1:I think it's a push-pull. So I look at the marketing department. Look, don't get me wrong, you can't change marketing in our industry overnight. So just because I have a podcast and a LinkedIn account and believe in B2C doesn't mean that we stop responding to RFPs, right? Right, because they propose a world. So we have to have the process in place to chase work.
Speaker 1:I look at marketing as the growth engine of the company and I look at myself as the chief brand officer, the chief brand ambassador, the chief growth officer in many ways. So it's a back and forth push and pull between them, trying to help me think outside of the box, think creatively. I certainly produce a ton of content and it's me producing it. I've tried outsourcing this to copywriters and people and I have so much out there that you just I'm not comfortable handing my voice over to somebody. So I go back to the push pull between the CEO and marketing and sales, and I always put marketing and sales together because I want people to remember, at the end of the day, the reason that proposal is going in is because we're trying to sell a client, to bring revenue in the door. We're not being rated on the amount of proposals we get out the door. We're getting rated on the amount of money we bring in the door. So don't separate marketing and sales.
Speaker 1:I think that I set the pace. I am responsible for bringing the enthusiasm, the desire to grow. I don't think anybody can sell anything they don't believe in. So I have to also bring the confidence to the table to make people understand that I am not afraid of growth, I'm not afraid of pushing the boundaries I'm not afraid of. I believe that we have the capability to solve any problem a client brings to us.
Speaker 1:And when I set that as a vision and when I set that as my viewpoint, my perspective, I'm trying to tell people, go out and tell our story to whoever you think needs to hear it. So in my company I probably set 70% of that strategy and then we have a fractional chief marketing officer and a marketing team behind him that they are operationalizing that vision. And then they're tasking me with what parts of it? And we argue about it because we got to tell this story to everybody. And my chief marketing officer is like well, it costs money to get to everybody and we can't win everybody, so we've got to be.
Speaker 1:And so that tension is good because it does challenge me as more of a visionary hey, we can change this entire industry overnight type of person to somebody who's more pragmatic and is like hey, boss, I know we can change the world overnight, but we also have to pay the bills and win work, and you're rating me on the amount of dollars coming in the door, not just the amount of people you're talking to. So, from my view, I'm 100% responsible for making sure we're setting the stage to enable our marketing team to do what they want to do, giving them the creative flexibility to go out there and push boundaries and test things the budget to test things while also being pragmatic that this has to result in something Right. Don't just market for marketing's sake.
Speaker 2:Right. You're not just doing creative ads to do creative ads, or creative things to do creative things. It has a purpose and that purpose is you can potentially position you to win more work.
Speaker 1:Correct. The other thing is you can have long game and short game strategies. So me starting a podcast was a long game strategy Said I don't want to hear any of the data until after four years. It's like, hey, freshman year of high school, I wasn't that good at anything. By senior year, big man on campus. That's going to go on in any initiative we take on. So why distract ourselves by judging ourselves for something we can't really say we're good at? Yet I never recorded a podcast before. So hey, we're taking a budget and we're going to R&D this part. I expect no results out of this. If we get results, great. If there's some brand halo or some halo effect to us doing something different, great. But I'm not going to make a decision whether to continue or stop until after four years. So I think you have to be able to play some long game there and to allocate some budget and time in the marketing department to do that, while doing the day to day blocking and tackling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, because people ask me all the time I teach a lot of content marketing and they're like, well, how fast, if we start a blog campaign and we're doing a blog a week or every other week or a month, when am I going to get the client reached out to me? And I'm like, well, content marketing is a long game. If you have a three to five to seven year strategic plan, the people you want at the end of that strategic plan that's who you're blogging for today. That's the long game, or that's who you're doing a podcast for today to try to attract. So I like your approach of a good mix of long game, short game strategy.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes marketers get in our own way, because I think we put pressure on ourselves to constantly be showing ROI because I know I do for every initiative and some of it is just really brand awareness and really keeping your brand out in front of the right people and you can't really measure that. Whereas some of it is very targeted. You're organizing a campaign. It's very targeted for this particular conference and you want these many people to come to your booth, so it's very specific or number of meetings set up at the conference because you're doing this pre-conference campaign. But I think sometimes we put pressure on ourselves because we've been told oh, you got to show our ROI, you got to show our ROI. And I tell my students and the people that I train I'm like you don't always have ROI or your ROI might not be quantifiable, but you can measure it in other ways.
Speaker 1:I call it fuzzy ROI, right, and there are certain things that can have fuzzy ROI, and if my team is listening, stop listening. You have to be able to have a conversation about it and argue about what the ROI is, and not everything needs to have a dollar ROI. Everything has to have a result ROI Everything. What is the result we're getting by doing this activity? Our podcast result is over three years, we have 100 podcasts out there, or 120 podcasts out there. That's a result. Now, is it converting to anything? Maybe, maybe not. That's where fuzzy is. But hey, to your point, brand presence. How many other people, how many other AEC firms, have a CEO doing 100 plus podcasts out there on the web being listened to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, forever. It's so shelf stable too. It's not just like a LinkedIn post that it's out of your feed in two days.
Speaker 1:Right. So there's, you've gotta be able to have that push and pull, but you also do need to be talking metrics, right, because when I spend $5,000 for a conference booth, it's like what are we getting there? And I am critical of the conference industry because the conference industry is in business for the conference host.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's that it's a money making venture. It is a for profit conference.
Speaker 1:Totally, and there's a lot of good ones and it's great like consolidating, catching up with the network. Before you and I got on, we talked about how it's hard to even keep up with the people that we've had on our podcast. So we have this one hour intimate conversation and it's like, hey, we're all busy. Like how do we stay on each other's radar? Is it worth staying on each other's radar? Like there's nothing wrong with us having a conversation and wanting to have a genuine relationship over time, but like we all have a limited amount of time to invest in maintaining relationships staying up. So the conferences are a good place to kind of consolidate that networking and connection points. I got off track about ROW. I will shut up.
Speaker 2:That's okay.
Speaker 1:But my challenge to everybody is it's not always a financial ROI, but it does need to have a result, because that's how we can say we went there and we accomplished what we set out to accomplish. When we started the podcast, we didn't say we're gonna get one client a year out of this podcast. We said we're going to build a podcast. So now we have a podcast, all right. As we start to look at data and say how do we enhance this and do we want sponsors? Do we want commercials? Do we want paid listeners? We'll explore that as we go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love it. So, speaking of the podcast, so you do a podcast and you said you do other content. I think that also includes a weekly newsletter, yep, and your podcast the name of the podcast we've been talking about it. Let me plug it for you. So the podcast is called Inspiring People and Places. That's correct, so make sure you go and subscribe to that, please, and listen to that. So you've been doing the podcast now for three plus years. You're writing a weekly newsletter. We talked a little bit about your results and stuff like that, but this is all digital. I call this the digital transformation or, if others have listened to my podcast, like modern marketing or mod marketing strategies. How are you seeing this digital or mod transformation impacting other marketing strategies in our industry?
Speaker 1:So let's go back to the conference. I've got a lot to talk about here. Let me talk about the email. Ok, so the email started in COVID. It started out as an internal email for me to just like put enthusiasm out to our team. Like, hey, the first, there's always a quote in the email and the first quote was perpetual optimism as a force multiplier by Colin Powell, and I just felt like it was all doom and gloom and our team needed to hear something positive. Like, hey, stay engaged, covid, it'll be done in two weeks, right. And then I was like, well, actually, this is kind of a way for me COVID is extending, if we put this out, to a bigger list, like our clients and maybe some conferences we've attended that we've taken their email distribution list. This is a way for me to be doing business development in a time when I can't have coffee with people. So I'm sending this out Friday night or Saturday morning and this is like me having coffee with them on a Saturday morning. And that was the intent and it was all about. I believe that our business is a relationship business and it's a B2C concept. Like, hey, I can't send an email to every person I'd love to stay in touch with, and I can't walk the halls of client buildings anymore and leave my business card when they're not there or catch up for five minutes when they are there. I can't do that right now. So this is a way to scale that activity and do it while we're in this COVID shutdown. So that led to a lot of good, positive feedback. And then that annual training or that annual planning cycle.
Speaker 1:I had always kicked around this idea of a podcast for our industry, because I was looking for something that I wanted which was something that was like talking about different projects and different people in the industry, highlighting success stories and innovation and career paths and all this stuff that Tim Ferriss talks about it with every technology success story that you've ever heard of, or Silicon Valley entrepreneur that everybody hears about. We don't hear about that in our industry. What if we did this? That's kind of how it started, and I guess I'm a believer in the long game that if we can be a first mover to it, our industry is behind in it. Maybe we start setting a standard and maybe by setting a standard, we're at the table. So that's did I answer your question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I love that you started it as an internal message or email and then you're like well, shouldn't I say the same thing to our clients?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I love that approach because a lot of people wouldn't think to that. They think they have to talk differently to clients than they do to employees. And back to your like B2C, like we were all collectively, especially at that time, we were all collectively going through the same thing. What better time to have the same message to everybody and so I talk a lot about our company, our culture.
Speaker 1:I'm putting out my view of the world and to some degree that may turn some people off, and great, let's turn them off before we're their clients, because we're not changing and like we don't have a cult of me behind me. Right, we have a very diverse workforce, very different views, but like I think what kind of pulls us all together is these core values around which we talk and how we build our culture, and to me, that is what's going to either connect us to a client or drive a client away, and that's a group like that's back to people. By what does Simon Sennig say? People? By why you do not what you do so they buy your. Why not your what? And if we're constantly talking about that, which?
Speaker 1:Back to the title of the podcast inspiring people in places. Our why is to inspire people. Those people are our clients, our partners and our employees and places, which are the built environment in which we work. My job is to build a company that allows and empowers our people to have fulfilling careers and to go serve clients and execute their projects well, so that our clients are rating fans of us. And I have that on our flywheel. It's all I talk about. So our why is what we're talking about all of the time inside of our marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I like that you are very crystal clear on your why. I know sometimes previous firms I worked at or people I talked to and firms that they work at there's no real clear why. It's like we do all the things for all the people, but that's to what right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the services on the outside. So if anybody hasn't watched the Simon Sinek, watch it.
Speaker 2:I'll make sure I link it up. I've watched it like a gazillion times so, but I love it. Go listen again. Go listen to the podcast. It's called inspiring people and places and be inspired. So we've talked about what you've done. Let's look at the future and look out. There's probably still going to be. I mean, we're kind of out of COVID, but now there's still like radical transformation happening with AI and with. Maybe there's going to be a recession, maybe there's not. We've been hearing now for like three years there's going to be a recession. So, looking towards the future, with all this stuff going on, what runs, what is emerging that you are seeing in marketing, in particular for the AEC industry? We're just marketing in particular, that should be in the AEC industry.
Speaker 1:I go back to. So there's an interview between Gary Vaynerchuk and Ryan Holiday and I want to say it's December of 21 that this came out and they get into a conversation about agency people having autonomy and agency in their careers. And I think two things. One, I think the future looks a lot more like Uber than it looks like the AEC industry, meaning people are going to have ways to be side hustling and being entrepreneurial without feeling the risk of being an entrepreneur. I believe that to be true and I've used the phrase Uber for engineers, where you've got this portal where people can go sign up for the projects they want to and kind of work on the stuff that gets them excited or is geographically advantageous to them. So like, no longer is the industry controlled by three, six, 10 mega corporations, but there's a lot more autonomy and agency to the employee.
Speaker 1:So I am trying to build a company that accepts that and empowers it, doesn't shy away from it, and even around the thought leadership. It's like I started doing thought leadership or content marketing or podcasting and emailing because I thought it was the best way to talk about what we do and I'm not really good at talking about me, so I try to talk about my team and what they do and the projects that they're on and how smart they are, because that's who our company is. So I wanted to demonstrate that to our team and then hopefully, at some point in time, the platform is powerful enough that when I'm hosting our own team members on that podcast or one of our team members is doing a quote lunch and learn as a podcast, now that message is getting out to a much wider audience. We used to have to go to conferences to speak and maybe be looked at as an industry expert. If I know, I have industry experts in my company and I can give them a platform and I'm giving them the autonomy to go do some cool work and find the clients. So that's why I have this B2C vision of the future of our industry is, at some point in time, autonomy and agency is going to go to the professional and there's going to be some level of disruption in the quote corporate side of that.
Speaker 1:Then I get into AI and machine learning and where is that going to take our industry? And you've got robotic building construction going on and all that. The other part of my company is that we're building project leaders and leadership can't be replaced by technology. So they're going to be technical professionals, they're going to have technical depth in certain areas and, like I started, engineering background is a really good place to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to solve problems, and all of the algorithms in the world I don't think are going to be able to have the EQ to connect with clients, understand their actual problems, engage a group of stakeholders, solve problems and then tell AI and ML what needs to be built. So that's my take on it. There's hey, siri, build my building. It's not going to be that easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now, hey, siri, convert, or hey, chat GPT, convert the project from 1999 specs to 2020 or 2029 standards. Hey, chat GPT might be able to do that and give you the 90% solution. And that will be disruptive to and I won't go on this rabbit hole because it's a marketing podcast, not an operations but the time and material market. I think we may start to look at a value based market and we are the lowest paid profession in the time and material world. Accounting has figured it out, finance has figured out, legal has figured out. For some reason, engineers, the engineering or AEC industry, from a professional standpoint, is still the lowest paid profession from a average hourly rate standpoint. And I should asterisk that with AEC advisors talked about that at that conference I was at a couple of weeks ago, so I'm pulling that statistic from them, not out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and it's been like that for a long time. I know a couple of firms ago, when I was a director of marketing and I sat on the board of directors for that firm we were talking about, because we had a lot of time and materials contracts and the salaries were rising but the hourly rates weren't keeping up and so we had to constantly keep. And this was six, seven, eight years ago and we were already trying to figure out different ways to do those time and materials. That firm was back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love your take on the Uber for engineers. I feel like firms are starting to do it in other areas like marketing. You said you have a fractional CMO Yep Marketing. We've always outsourced, like graphics or editing or we call it outsourcing, but it's really like kind of this for hire and accounting. Does that? The firm I work for now? We provide outsourced accounting services and so I think it's just going to spread to like what you're saying to the professional and I think in construction they have it a little bit. I know there's like roaming superintendents that will just pick up jobs or crews like roofing crews that will just go like pick up jobs in some of the trades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that the interesting part there is, like All marketers will understand this. An owner wants to know that the team has worked together before. That gives somebody safety. Like, oh, these people have, these two companies have worked together before, so I'm not going to run into problems there. This team has worked together before. Oh, all of these people on this proposal have worked on similar projects together.
Speaker 1:So my encouragement to industry professionals is get a lot of reps out there with a lot of different teams, because you want to be able to show, when we become this higher agency, more autonomy workforce. You want to be able to show that you've been able to work in a bunch of different environments with a bunch of different project types, with a bunch of different owner types, with a bunch of different stakeholders, that you are a flexible professional. Or accept that you're not a flexible professional and try to get the full-time job inside on the owner side. Or maybe you have two owners and you're the fractional facility engineer or the capital project executive or whatever. I think that that is coming. You heard it here first.
Speaker 2:Breaking news on the AEC Marketing podcast. Okay Well, we're almost out of time, but before we finish today, I have my rapid-fire questions. Are you ready for them?
Speaker 1:I'm ready, buckle up.
Speaker 2:Okay, Number one what is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to the AEC industry?
Speaker 1:Number one is get on site or get in meetings with clients, because you cannot understand what you're marketing and selling to owners without understanding what owners' problems they're dealing with and what they care about. You can't get that in an RFP. You have to have human interaction. Leave the computer and join somebody out on site in a project meeting and get some reps and from clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was very fortunate early in my career. My office manager that I worked for I mean I was like this fresh young thing right out of college and he's taken me along to meet with these directors and secretaries of transportation. I learned so much during those meetings.
Speaker 1:The most important part is everybody loves the young people. There's an energy and they get to talk to you and they just feel more open and honest with you and you don't have to know anything. Yeah, they've accepted that you're new. Yeah, you don't have to prove anything to anybody, it's just to ask questions and be curious. Love that.
Speaker 2:Question number two what has been your favorite or most memorable win?
Speaker 1:GSA Region 5, we went after this proposal. It was a construction management proposal, construction managers' agent. I tried getting on four big teams. All of them denied me. So then I convinced the owners at the time this is 2013, labor Day Weekend, 2013, convinced the owners to give me the go ahead to go at it alone. They said are you sure? And shout out to Steve Weber. He and I wrote the proposal over Labor Day weekend and October 1st 2013,. We got a call. I was on the golf course at a golf outing with our owner and said you're not going to believe this. We just won and it was the biggest fee in the company's history. So I was newer to the company. I felt like I was in a must win scenario, like bring in work or be gone, and I threw our hat in the ring for something competitive and we won.
Speaker 2:Nice, I love winning.
Speaker 1:So do.
Speaker 2:I Especially those ones that you're feeling the pressure. Okay, and then question number three is what are you excited about?
Speaker 1:I'm excited about a lot of things. I'm pretty easily excited. I've got a young family, so I'm very excited about them. But if we're talking in the works scene, I have a project going on. We have a foundation. It's called the Friendly Strife Foundation. It's a nonprofit that has kind of a dual focus.
Speaker 1:Mission One is to give back to veterans initiatives that include housing, ptsd and kind of transition and finding. The next mission and then there's the other side of it is teaching leadership through youth athletics and we're doing a pilot program right now with a high school in the area developing a curriculum to help coaches use their platform to teach leadership character and resiliency, which is really an overall mental health and initiative. So that is very exciting to me. Outside of work it gets me and sometimes during work it gets me excited. I think we all have an obligation to give back time, talent and treasure in some way, shape or form, and that is giving back to two communities that I think raised me to have the success, coming from both youth sports and the veteran community. So give back to those communities that gave to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I love it. And then my last thing for you today if anybody wants to get in touch with you or learn more about you or your firm, where should they go?
Speaker 1:LinkedIn I am regular. I won't say I'm consistent enough. It's one of the things I'm working on. But LinkedIn, I'm out there. Connect with me on website or email. I'm not the best, but my assistant is very good at making sure emails get to me.
Speaker 2:And listen to the podcast inspiring people in places inspiring people in places, and I'll put a link to the podcast in the show notes too, for everyone. Awesome, all right. Well, this has been just a complete joy to talk with you today, so thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1:Thank you, lindsay, and thank you to your audience for everything they're doing for our industry.
Speaker 2:And that, my friend, brings us to the end of another insightful episode of AEC Marketing Strategies. A huge thank you to BJ Kramer for joining us today and sharing such valuable insights. Bj, your experience and perspectives have really truly illuminated the intricacies of marketing in our industry and has really given me a lot of hope and inspiration that there are leaders like you leading firms, and I hope today's conversation with BJ has given you a deeper understanding of the role of leadership when it comes to marketing, the challenges and the transformations currently happening or needs to happen in AEC marketing in a glimpse into the possible future of our industry. Remember, like BJ emphasized, marketing in our field is not just about promotion. It's about four proposals. It's about storytelling, authenticity, building a brand, knowing your why. That's what resonates with people, and people are who buy our services, and so I am challenging you.
Speaker 2:I want to see who the first firm is that develops my flipping streets reality show to become the next ship in Joanna Gaines. Let me know, tag me when that goes live. And then don't forget to check out BJ's inspiring people and places podcast and sign up to get his weekly newsletter to just get more of his insights. If you enjoyed today's episode. Please leave me a review and share it with your colleagues and your friends in the AEC industry. Your feedback really helps me to grow and improve the show. So until next time. Bye for now.
