The Real ROI: How Smarter Concrete Choices Give You Back Time

"Good concrete isn’t just about strength - it’s about saving you time to live your life, not lose it to your shop." - Brandon Gore

Most of us got into this line of work because we love making things with our hands. The process, the freedom, the satisfaction of seeing something real take shape. But there’s a quiet question that keeps tapping us on the shoulder - what’s it all for if we’re not present to enjoy the life we’re building?

In this episode of The Concrete Podcast, we pull over and take a hard look at the map. It’s not about changing direction. It’s about making sure the road we’re on still leads somewhere we want to go.

You’ll hear a story that may sound like your own - chasing deadlines, pushing orders, grinding late into the night - all while the moments that matter start slipping through your fingers. We’ll talk about how the tools you use, the systems you trust, and the materials you rely on can either steal your time or give it back.

If you’re a maker, artisan, or craftsman, this one’s for you. Because the goal isn’t just to work hard - it’s to work smart so you can live well.

Let’s get into it.

#ConcretePodcast #MakersMindset #CraftsmanCulture #ArtisanJourney #KodiakPro #BuildWithPurpose #SelfDevelopmentPodcast #TimeFreedom #DesignYourLife

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

What's it been, three weeks this time?

That's it been.

We're getting sloppy, man.

Okay.

We're getting sloppy.

We gotta tighten it up.

No, we've just been busy, man, busy.

We have been busy.

We had the demo day here a week ago, pretty much.

Yeah, today's Friday, it's the last weekend.

Demo day, and that was good.

Actually, what we're gonna talk about today, largely, is kind of what came from the demo day, the conversations I had with some of the attendees.

And it was very interesting to talk to them about the products they're using or they have been using, and why they chose those products.

What was the reasoning behind their decision?

And I had some guys here that have been using CementAll, CementAll bros, as I call them.

And I asked them why.

Yeah, I remember a post not a minute ago.

All the CementAll bros come together, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So I asked them why they chose that route and why they chose that material, and it really came down to convenience.

That's why they could get it locally.

And that was really their only reason.

It wasn't, I hear some people like, oh, I can demold it the same day.

Well, very rarely do you ever need to demold something the same day.

Very rarely.

I mean, there's been a couple of times in my life at a project that that was beneficial, but that's few and far between.

Most of the time, by the time you get the mold ready and you mix and you cast and you clean up, you don't want to sit there for six hours and then start demolding and processing.

Typically, most days, you're just like, eh, I'm going to call it a day, man.

I'm going to go to Texas Roadhouse and get a ribeye.

Yeah, that's what I do.

Dude, legit.

Yeah.

I go in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, maybe it's an age thing, but, you know, my times of putting in the eight, 10 hours a day in the shop, if I don't have to, no, I'm just not going to do it.

I got so many other things I'd rather be doing, but yet, you know, I still need an income.

Yeah.

On the average, you want to, you know, you come in, you check your form, you clean your form, you get your materials already, you know, get ice.

I usually go to the gas station, get ice, get everything good, double check everything, triple check everything.

And mix, pour, I hang out for an hour or two, so I can then cover everything properly.

But I get everything cleaned up, get the shop cleaned up, come up front, do some emails, and then go back, cover stuff.

And then, yeah, go to Texas Roadhouse, or go home and have dinner with the family.

But do I want to stay there another four hours beyond that and then start stripping the form?

No, no.

So I guess the point of that was a benefit of CementAll, that you can strip same day.

People will say it, you know, but they very rarely use that, very rarely.

So the real benefit, yeah, the real benefit for him is just convenience.

He can get it locally.

And that's what he said, I can get it down the street.

And so you and I have had this conversation before about the time savings and, you know, for him, cost wasn't the reason.

He's not using it because it's cheaper, but I've heard that from a few people.

You referenced a Facebook post, and that was one of the things is people are saying, you know, they could save money making their own.

And we've tried to point the fallacy in that argument out.

And I used to believe that myself for years and years.

I believed that if I batched it myself, I would save money.

But after enough time, you see it through a different prism of what your time is actually worth.

So I was driving today and I called you and I was telling you about this conversation I had, and I had this weird epiphany of a different way of viewing this issue and the true cost.

And that is, what is the additional time per project?

What is the additional time when you decide, I'm going to use a CementAll, or you're just going to use Portland and Sand and VF, no, what am I thinking, Forton VF774.

Let's say you want to do a super basic, old school GFRC mix, and you're like, I'm going to save all this money, right?

But what's the additional time?

And we had a little conversation, and I'm going to base my perspective on averages, and you're going to base yours on your actual reality of what you do, but you're different than a lot of companies.

But for me, in my experience, and in my conversations with a lot of companies, the average business is probably doing around five projects a month, average.

Sinks, some countertops, maybe tiles and furniture, but around five.

And that's really kind of where I've been for a long time, is around five.

Some months I'm really busy, some months I'm slower, but if you average it out over the course of a couple years, you're probably averaging around five projects a month.

If I look at that five projects a month, and I say, well, if I order Kodiak Pro, it gets delivered to my door.

Palette comes, everything's there, so I have no time in fetching the materials.

And when it comes time to cast, I'm not batching anything.

I cut open the bag, I dump it in.

The only thing I'm going to weigh out is going to be my plasticizer and my water.

That's it.

And pigment?

Well, but pigment's just a given on either one of them.

But yeah, if you're using pigment, then you weigh that out, but that's a given on either.

But as far as like batching, that's all I'm weighing out.

TBP and I'm going to weigh out the water.

And so all that takes all of one minute for me.

If I'm going to do the cement all route or the old school Forton route, I'm going to have to drive down to Home Depot, pick up the materials, maybe go to a different location depending on what I need.

When I was in Phoenix, I had to go to a couple different places to get the sand I need, get the cement I need.

So let's just figure an hour to do that.

And then to batch it out.

In addition, so this is additional time that you're putting in the project going that route.

Let's account for an hour for that.

So you get the bags out and you cut them open and you got your buckets all set up and you're doing this much sand and this much cement.

Maybe you got a pozzolon, you're going to do the pozzolon.

So anyways, let's just factor average in hours.

So we're up to two additional hours.

But the real time savings is going to be in the post-processing.

And so that was the other conversation I had with the guys that were using CementAll in this demo day.

So they told me they've been using it for a long time and they're using it because it's convenient.

I said, well, great, why are you here?

You know, why did you come to the demo day?

What brought you here?

And they said, air holes, bug holes, pin holes.

We have tons of them and we spent so much time slurring them.

You know, we're getting to the point where we just don't want to do that anymore.

Okay.

So, and I was there as well.

I was there as well forever of using Forton and then, you know, the Buddy Rhodes products that had the powdered polymer in them, but air holes and slurry.

I did it on everything, all my classes back in the day, slurring was part of the class because that was just part of the process.

You got to slurry.

So, you know, for me to acid etch it, to open it up or water polish it, and then you open up all those air holes, and you mix up slurry, you apply the slurry, you got to clean the slurry off, then you got to let it cure overnight.

Okay, so that's a couple hours.

Next day, I come in, I open up again.

Well, the second time you open up, you open up more air pockets.

It happened to me every single...

I never slurried one time.

I always slurried two plus times, usually two, sometimes three, but never one.

And your experience is wet processing or dry?

Both, both.

I've done both.

And when I was in Tempe, I did most stuff dry.

And then once I moved to a more advanced mix, moving away from the Fortan, then I went to wet.

So, you know, two hours to go with that process.

And the next day I come in, I do it again.

Well, it's another two hours.

Okay, so that's the time difference.

So if we add all that time up for that one project, that's six hours.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

That doesn't sound like much.

Six hours.

I don't know, what's six hours, Jon?

You know, I can spend six hours on my phone watching TikTok.

So that's not a big deal.

Yeah, that's not a big deal.

But you're doing five projects a month.

So that's 30 hours.

And then you have, you know, 12 in a year.

That's 360 hours.

So 360 hours is, let me do the math here.

360 hours, you're working a 40-hour work week.

That's nine weeks, Jon.

That's over two months of your life you spent to save some money.

Yeah, that's nine weeks.

Yeah, yeah.

You're trading cheap today, paying for it tomorrow.

You're literally paying for it.

We're trading a summer break.

Over two months.

Over two months of your life.

You could just switch to Kodiak Pro and take a two, you could take the whole summer off and make the same amount of money.

Same amount of money you're making right now and take the summer off and lay by the beach all summer, if you chose to.

You could do that.

Or if you're very focused, when I was younger, you know, I didn't have a family and I was much more focused on profitability and making as much money and doing as many projects as I could.

Well, that two months, that's adding two months to your work year to do more projects in, you know.

That's going to open up nine weeks, five projects a month.

That's 45 more projects you could do.

And if your average profit is, let's say, $3,000 on a project, let me do that math real quick.

That's an additional $135,000 you could make if you so choose.

You're trading nine weeks of your life or $135,000 to save a couple bucks or because you could just drive down the street and pick it up.

Yeah, no matter how you look at it.

And again, this is no discredit to anybody using these materials.

Yeah, no, I just don't want anybody to think we're dogging on anybody, but it was a great conversation that you and I had today, too.

Share your perspective, Jon, on your shop, your actual...

This is real world Jon Schuler reality.

This is what you do.

This is your reality.

This isn't hypothetical.

This isn't...

Right.

Yeah.

This is where you and me have these conversations and you're like, yeah, this and that.

And I'm like, well, bro, the only way I know how to do it is, what does this mean to me?

Not to somebody else, because I'm sure there's probably people who make anything between a half million dollars a year to maybe as much as $50,000 a year based on how their shops run big or small and what their needs are.

So yeah, when you and I had this conversation, the only thing that helps put this in perspective for me personally is to put it into me personally.

A basic project, as I come up with, I typically use about five bags of material, five bags, five 50 pound bags, and it turns out your cement all comes in 55 pounds bag.

So, okay, great.

Based on the cost, just talking about that right off the bat, that would mean just again, just based on materials, it'd be about $150 in cement all versus $250 in MakerMix.

Now, although I have experience with MakerMix, I could already tell anybody, yeah, that hundred bucks isn't going to mean anything to me.

But let's just, you know, let's not worry about that at the moment.

I ran the numbers that it would take me in time, my personal time, to fill pinholes, to sand, to fill, to sand, you know, clean up the excess.

You figured about five hours a project.

You know, again, whatever, what's five hours, right?

No big deal.

That equates to about 20 hours a month, which again, that doesn't sound too much, right?

Until I take that, which is basically plus or minus three days, and then I equate that into a year, and that's 36 days.

Which that's when it started making sense to me, man.

Like, oh my God, that's seven weeks.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, well, wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Okay.

Now let's run that number at least in what I was doing.

Okay.

And I just put a very, very low number and said a vanity that I typically do is let's say $2,000, right?

Two grand.

That's seven weeks.

That would have been seven projects.

That's $14,000.

Yeah.

That I saved 700 bucks on.

Yep.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

You know what I mean?

Like, like legit.

Now you, you know, me, most people have known me long enough.

I'm not going to pack in seven more projects.

I would rather take that seven weeks like I'm doing right now.

My son's getting ready for nationals trap shooting.

So you know, him and I are going to practices.

Him and I are spending a lot of time together.

And so, you know, I'm not interested in packing more work in.

That's just me, Jon Schuler.

That's where my interest is.

But if I was making $14,000 more to save 700 bucks, the math doesn't matter.

See, I can't even say it without laughing.

That makes, that does not equate.

That's not rational to me.

That makes no sense to me.

The number I'm interested in, Jon, is the use in the cement all added 36 days to the process over the course of a year.

So based on what you saved, how much?

That's an easy one.

Yeah.

So again, let's just say, for instance, so that 36 days, assuming eight hours a day, again, everybody can make whatever, maybe only work six hours a day.

You know, so, you know, if you equate that into my time, that's two bucks an hour.

That's what it boils down to.

I would be paying myself two dollars an hour for that time.

And that, yeah, no.

I mean, you know, I think most of us, if we put those numbers in perspective, we're all gonna say the same thing.

You know, for two bucks an hour, what was any of us willing to do, like, legitimately, unless, you know, it's just something for the family, I guess, but at the end of the day, yeah.

I mean, what are you willing to take on if I hired you for two bucks an hour?

Yeah.

You wouldn't do anything.

You wouldn't even drive for two bucks an hour to the job.

No.

You would lose more in gas money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you really boil it down to that, this, which is enlightening.

I mean, again, thank you for even pointing this to me, because you and I often equate this into, you know, and I think sometimes it loses people when we get into these like, hey, what's your time worth?

Yeah.

And that's still, you know, I still, I talk to quite a few people when I, you know, when I'm, you know, just calling to shoot the breeze with some people or doing tech support, and we still get into those conversations.

And that conversation, believe it or not, and you, I don't know how this comes, sometimes can be a little defensive.

You know what I mean?

When you ask somebody like, hey, have you between your overhead, even if you're working in your, you know, because I think it's super cool.

A lot of people, I think, I don't know.

I just think it, when someone's like, dude, I work out of my garage, I'm like, oh my God, dude, that's a dream.

You know what I mean?

How cool is that?

That you're right there, especially if you have kids and everything, that's so amazing.

Or your shop's on your property versus having to drive, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever.

Not that that's a bad thing.

Again, that's completely amazing, but I'm just kind of, you know, let's say talking about the things that sometimes I notice people get a little, a little bit defensive about.

And that's sometimes one.

And where other people, right?

The grass is greener on the other side.

That sounds amazing to me.

And then two, when I say, hey, if you run these numbers to see, you know, if you, because you truly are your own, your own employee, what do you cost yourself?

Like, what is that number?

And I know you and I have talked about it.

And sometimes that number looks as high as $300 an hour.

And people are like, ah, I'm not $300.

That's ridiculous.

But it's true.

Yeah.

And they'll happily pay.

You know, you hire a lawyer to do something.

He's building $500 an hour.

You know, you go down to a mechanic and they're going to change the fuel filters on your truck.

They spent two hours.

They give you both for $700 bucks.

The parts, the parts were $100.

They charge you $300 an hour.

Yeah.

I just looked at that to change the fuel filters.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you'll pay a mechanic $300 an hour and you'll pay a lawyer $500 an hour, but you don't, you the owner of your company.

This is how you support your family.

It's hard.

You're not going to value your time as much as you value some 16 year old kid working at a dealership that's going to climb under your truck and spend two hours, not even two hours, and they're going to bill you, you know, $300 an hour for his time, but your time's not worth that.

Are you crazy?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's hard.

I get it.

Let's say I empathize with everybody because I've certainly been there and hell, I'm still there, right?

Like I just told you, my example of, you know, if I'm going to drive to Starbucks, again, assuming what my time is and, you know, that 30 minutes from there till I get home for a $5 coffee.

Well, Jon, what did that coffee really cost you?

Yeah.

I mean, oh, it's $155 coffee, not a $5 coffee.

But anyway, so I understand, and meaning what sometimes a conversation could get into a very defensive kind of posture when we've historically looked at that.

It's abstract for people because they're not paying themselves a salary.

So they don't value their time as they would an employee that they're paying $25 an hour or $30 an hour.

Or if you're Joe Bates, $50 an hour because he's in Napa, right?

Yeah.

No, it's probably more like $75 or $80, yeah.

But I mean, here in Wichita, I'm $25 to $30 an hour when I've hired people.

So that's kind of the go-in rate.

And so you value their time, but you don't value your time.

And so when we have that...

Yeah, so this conversation has been very difficult to convey to people in a way that it made sense.

But the time factor, which we've talked about the time savings, but we've never looked at it aggregated over the course of a calendar year.

What did it cost you over the course of a year?

And you look at it from that perspective, it is a dramatic difference, massive difference.

Well, eye opening.

Yeah, that's what I said when I called you up.

I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm going to take my Jon Schuler, which is fairly conservative.

And you're like, no, don't do that.

I'm like, no, I have to.

It's the only thing that makes sense to me is this is what I do.

This is what I look at.

And what would that have, and like I said, when I first ran those numbers and I'm like, yeah, whatever.

I mean, come on, man.

I mean, like legit, anybody listening to me right now on this podcast, I guess, if you told me five hours in a week, you know, yeah, you know, come on between driving, do what I do, maybe sweep in the floor.

I mean, what's five hours?

I mean, that comes and goes, you don't think about it too much.

But once you multiply that into a month and into a year, and then I realized I could have taken the whole summer off.

Yeah.

You know, seven weeks, that's huge.

Dude, I can't imagine.

Especially with people who work, yeah, with regular jobs, who maybe only get a two week vacation a year.

You know, seven weeks is massive.

And although I agree with anybody, that seven weeks that you decide what you want to do with it, maybe you could, maybe you are busy enough to pick up more projects.

And if it's not more concrete projects, maybe it's, you know, doing your, you know, home projects, you know, getting your honey dews done or whatever the case may be.

But seven weeks, man.

And again, that's seven weeks based on my time.

That's why I'm so blown away with it.

Yeah, that's crazy.

And the eye opening thing, it's actually less than $2.

I did the math.

It was like $1.66 or $1.80.

I can't remember.

Yeah, no, it was $1.66.

Okay, $1.66.

That is what you're saving per hour.

And we've never looked at it through that lens, you know, of just here's the time and here's the material cost and just divide those two.

And it's $1.66 an hour.

You traded that time for $1.66.

I watched the video.

I was watching TikTok last night.

It was a sad video, but it was eye opening.

It was this girl's father who was passing.

He was dying.

He was in the hospital.

He was in hospice and the nurses had given him some medicine to make him more comfortable.

He was getting ready to pass at that moment, right?

And he woke up.

He'd been in a coma for a little while and are not responsive, but he woke up and he was very clear and talkative, which I hear is really common with people in the last moments of life.

And he woke up and she filmed him giving his advice.

Essentially, he was giving her life advice before he passed away.

And that was really great.

But I was thinking when I was watching that video, and you're going to be there one day, I'm going to be there one day, everybody listening to this is going to be there one day.

We're all going to be in his position one day.

Yeah, one way or another.

It's going to come faster than we think, which I have another thing I heard yesterday as well that plays into this.

But I was thinking, when you're at that spot and you look back on your life, was it worth a dollar sixty six an hour to do that?

Or would you have rather spent the seven weeks at Gulf Shores with your kids?

Would you have rather spent the seven weeks?

That's the other way of looking at it.

Yeah.

Similar to what you just talked about.

I've seen the videos out there before where, right?

Usually it's the dad, but it could be either one.

The mom or dad who works a job, who, at least from the kids' point of view, doesn't get to see their parent often enough, and then they show up one day and, you know, how much is it going to cost me for you to spend this time with me?

And what does that equate to, right?

The dad that's always headed off to work or whatever the case may be.

And, you know, at the end of the day, if we turn this whole conversation around and you were told for $1.66 an hour, you could have a seven-week vacation with your family and da-da-da-da, is that worth it?

And then you'd be like, what?

Well, that's not even a question.

Yeah, man, that's what, less than $10 a day?

Yeah.

That's insane.

That's not even a question.

Nobody would even think twice about that.

It's a ridiculous, ridiculous question.

And knowing, at least I feel like, knowing most of our customer base, I talked to everybody, everybody who's Seth McCray, watching what everybody's doing and raising families, and some are on their own adventures to get in shape and taking on endurances and all these super cool things that we're all doing.

That to look at it from this point of view is, I mean, again, it seems very like, like I'm almost muting it to say, it's very enlightening.

No, man, it's ridiculous.

It's like ridiculous.

Literally ridiculous that I ran these numbers and just said, what?

No, so it makes me go, why?

Like, legit.

And I'm sure people have their reasons, whatever they are.

And you know, and I'm not here to, you know, like, I'm not trying to belittle them or anything like that.

But for me personally, yeah, man, no, that doesn't make sense to me.

No, it doesn't.

Yeah.

The other thing I saw or listened to, I was driving yesterday and I was listening to the news, was on NPR and they were playing a snippet of an interview with Michelle Obama.

Okay.

What they were talking about was when Michelle Obama's mother was passing away, and she'd come to live with them in Hawaii.

And kind of same thing, she had like this clarity at the very end, like the last day, she had this clarity.

And she said that she was ready to die.

She said, you know, she lived a good life, and she wasn't scared of death, but she said, wow, that went really fast.

And Michelle was like, what do you mean?

She's like, life, you know, I'm ready to die, but I don't want to die.

And wow, that went really fast.

So profound, you know, that here's this woman probably, I don't know how old she was, 80, 90 years old, and saying, wow, that went really fast.

You know, I'm 46.

I remember 21 like it was yesterday.

And it had 25 more years, whatever, 71 or whatever.

That's gonna be like that as well.

Yeah, that's gonna be, boom.

It's blink of an eye, and I'll be 71.

And yeah.

It's funny we're talking about this.

So, you know, now we're getting into the personal things besides concrete.

This is a conversation I have with my kids, quite a bit actually.

So in relation to what I didn't do, and because I, and I'm going to blame it on ignorance is I at those ages, just I'll tell anybody, you know, I personally, I'm not going to say it was my goal, but I never thought I would make it first of all, into my 20s or through my 20s with the lifestyle I was living.

Certainly didn't think I was going to see 30s, right?

And then, you know, AIM finally calmed me down and like, okay, so here I am in my 50s.

Like, what?

And my point to that is we're looking at something totally different, meaning my family, Roth IRA.

And I showed them where if you just start putting in $100 a month, based on the average return, by 65, they'll have almost a million dollars.

Okay, that's not something I ever did.

But it did tell me if, damn dude, if in 10 years I had a million dollars waiting on me, two million technically with Amy, that would be something insane.

Meaning these very small incremental things really glow into something.

But my overall point to that isn't the million dollars, it's that statistics tell you you're gonna see 65.

I mean, out of the blankety blank billion people, or just the blankety blank million people in the United States, that's a very low percentage of you being one of the people that doesn't make it to those numbers for one reason or another.

So back to this.

Anybody listening this right now, and my seven week scenario, use those seven weeks to your disposal.

Whatever works for you is awesome.

But the reality is, you know, those seven weeks are yours.

Those are yours.

This is our one shot at this thing, man.

Now, you know, maybe I come back as a cricket or something next time.

I don't know.

A tree, a fish.

I don't know if anybody believes or doesn't believe in those kind of things.

But, you know, these kind of perspectives is what all of us, regardless of what you're doing, you know, I mean, I watch guys do, you know, 75 hearts and all these kinds of things.

A lot of us are doing amazing things for ourselves.

But at the same time, I don't know if we're overlooking it or we just don't want to see it because it seems morbid.

And maybe it does.

I don't know that, you know, there's only so much time we have here time.

And if at the end of the day, that seven weeks for you was worth that $700 that you saved, that's a lot the way you look at it.

$1.66 an hour.

You paid $700 for seven weeks or lost or however you want to look at it.

Yeah, cost you seven weeks.

You're paying $100 a week to take the week off.

That's what you're doing.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Of course you would do that.

Yeah.

That's, yeah.

Even if that was just sitting home watching, you know, the view.

I don't know if I could do it for $100.

They have to pay me to watch the view.

Well, no, you're right, Jon.

And I would say the other thing that's really common, I'm guilty of this, is we all work and think that it's like delayed gratification.

I'm going to work today.

I'm going to work next week.

I'm going to work this year, next year, 10 years.

But at some point, I'm going to actually take time for me, but not this year and not next year.

It's going to be a while, right?

My grandfather was like this.

Yeah, my grandfather, and you're saying, you know, the statistic is you'll make it past 65.

He didn't.

He didn't make it past 65.

He died at 63.

And he had all these things he wanted to do.

They owned a farm and, you know, they farmed year round, but he always had these ideas of when they were done with that, like the things he wanted to do.

And he never did any of those things because he died at 63.

Had he had the seven weeks a year, you know, for a small business, take seven weeks off to do what he wanted to do, that would have been incredible.

A shift in perspective.

I think before we were so micro on everything, we were so focused on just what one project cost you.

But from a macro perspective, it cost you more than you realized.

And we should have looked at it from a much bigger perspective from the beginning, instead of just the one project scenario.

And then, yeah, you're right.

We spent so much time trying to convey to people the value of their time, and what's that cost of dollars and cents.

And an hourly rate, yeah.

But that's a conceptual thing that differs for every person.

So that didn't really resonate with a lot of people.

But I think the seven weeks, if you look at it from that perspective, a lot of people will see it differently.

Again, as you know, I use the word funny just to say, irony of this situation is, anybody who's known me long enough, know there's two, twice a year that I, well, one that I mostly shut down, but one time of the year, I completely shut my shop down completely.

And that's during the holiday season, because I spent it with my family.

And then I'll go focus on sealer, but also summer, especially for the last, well, what's it been?

Three years now that Jay's been doing trap shooting.

And like I said, this is the time he's getting ready for national.

So I literally shut things down for him so that we can go practice and get on his squad.

And again, I mean, if anything, I want to try to best, which I didn't have is be the guy championing his championship.

You know what I mean?

Encouraging, but not being over.

You know, I got to learn not to smack him upside the head when he misses one, but you know what I mean?

You missed it!

You're that dad.

You missed it, I can't believe.

But you know, when I've had this conversation with people sometimes, it doesn't equate.

It hasn't equated.

And quite frankly, it didn't really equate with me either, other than I know how I balance things.

But at the end of the day, now that we've ran this numbers way of looking at it, well, no wonder I have the time to take off.

I've basically earned it.

I've earned the time in what I do, the materials that I use, how I use them, the projects that they go into, and how that gives me the time.

In this case, I'm going to use the word that I earned at my buck sixty-six an hour that I spent time with my son, and then I spent time with my family through the holiday season.

Yeah, you cash it in to spend time with your kids.

Fucking crazy, right?

I mean, that's freaking crazy.

Did you ever read the book, Let My People Go Surfing by Eve Sherrard?

No.

So it's the founder of Patagonia.

Awesome book.

Let My People Go Surfing.

I would highly recommend to read the book or listen to the audiobook.

I've done both.

I love it.

I love it.

But one of the things that he was always big on from the very beginning, he had a climbing accessory company or equipment company called Black Diamond originally, where they would forge, hand forge, you know, all this climbing gear.

And this was in the 70s and I want to say the 80s, but it was mail order only.

They advertise in the back of magazines and you would write in and mail a check.

And but they said in their catalog thing closed from this month to this month.

They closed for the summer because they were out climbing.

The entire company had, I don't know, 10 employees.

They took off, all of them, for three months.

And they just all went their separate ways for three months ago, climbing and enjoy the outdoors because that was what was important to them.

Well, and invigorates you, right?

Inspires you again, brings out your creativity when you're not just drudging.

Yeah, man, I get it.

Trust me, I get it.

Yeah, well, the other thing I wanted to hit on, Jon, is so if anything gets through with this message, let it be that the cement all mix or the Fortan VF74, anything that you're batching out and you're going to get materials, it's costing you more than you realize.

You're paying, you're saving money today, but you're paying for it in the future.

So that's that's number one.

So I would move to a bagged mix, and I wish I would have had this epiphany 21 years ago, whether it's our bagged mix or another bagged mix, it'll save you a tremendous amount of time.

Number two, the other part of this is, well, okay, great, I'm going to switch to a bagged mix.

All right, why use maker mix?

Now, I could argue all day long about the surface quality, that it's far superior to anything that's out there, but that's going to be a frame of reference thing.

You're going to have to see one to understand it.

You know, you were talking to Caleb Lawson yesterday about the flowability, and he said-

Yeah, I wasn't going to out him.

I was just going to say, Yeah, I was just talking to someone else, and we literally laughed because he did something.

He's like, Oh my God, man, because he hasn't been using it in a while.

Again, he's been using some, and he's just like, just nothing flows like this.

It's ridiculous.

But anyway, that's a frame of reference.

You have to see it to understand it.

But what is not a frame of reference is that we're the first and the only silica-free high-performance concrete.

And back to time, you know, let's say you save all this time using a bag mix, but the mix you're using is slowly killing you.

Crystal and silica is slowly killing you.

You're breathing in this dust every day.

And so you might be saving time.

You have more time with your family, but your life is cut short because you've been using something that is just very slowly, it's insidious, is going to kill you.

And so if we're focused on time and we're focused on having quality time doing the things we want to do, maybe you don't have a family, but you love to mountain bike or you love to travel the world and go to different countries.

If you want to do that, then you want to do that in all ways possible, meaning you save time on the materials, but you also save time with your health.

Because I don't know what the Chinese proverb is, I read it a while back.

When you're healthy, you have a thousand problems.

When you're sick, you have one.

That's true, huh?

That's crazy.

And so everybody, we're all living our lives and we have bills and property tax and kids got this and we got to do that and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then you get cancer.

I think of Mark Haun, Hone, however you say it last name, Mark Hone.

Oh yeah, Mark.

Dude, I loved the guy.

He came to classes.

He was a concrete dude.

And then he got sick.

And then his whole life from that point forward was fighting cancer for years.

For years.

That was your only focus.

Your only thing that mattered at that point is fighting cancer.

And so if you're focused on the quality of your life and you're focused on spending quality time with the people you love, doing the things you love, then the materials you choose play into that.

It's not just the time savings of the actual materials, but also the time savings of your life with using something healthy.

And so that's my number one reason to use Kodiak Pro.

Yes, in my opinion, based on my perspective of seeing all the other materials out there, this is far superior, but that's subjective.

You might think differently, whatever.

Yeah.

But what's not subjective is the health aspect.

We're the only company selling this completely non-toxic sealer.

And there's so much snake oil in the industry of people saying, oh, no, it's food safe.

No, it's not.

Yeah, that one's always been a joke to me.

Or, you know, I had a buddy that went to World of Concrete, and he was asking some companies about their bagged mix and how does it compare to make or mix.

Like, oh, they're all pretty much the same thing, you know.

They're all this.

No, they're not.

No, they're not.

But there's a lot of snake oil like that.

We're truly the only company focused on the health aspect of our products.

We're not relabeling.

We're not downpacking.

We're not making a product that's been around for 50 years.

We're just calling it something different, put in a different bag.

That's what most people do.

We're not downpacking toxic sealers, isothionates and all these toxic ingredients in them.

We're focused on the health because your health is important.

My health is important.

My kids' health is important.

So let that be the number one reason why you make the switch.

And then the time savings is number two.

So you have actual quality time to spend it through.

Yeah, that's just icing on the cake, yeah.

Because you have seven weeks a year, but you're hooked up to a ventilator in the hospital.

What good is that?

Yeah, right.

You know?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Right on.

Yeah.

Anyways, yeah.

This is a conversation we haven't had in years.

In the beginning, we talked about this all the time, but we looked at it from...

Yeah, we just pounded it, yeah, based on an hourly rate, and then what's your value, and what's your time, and yada, yada, yada.

And I don't care who you are.

I mean, I think quite a few people get it, especially when they end up running the numbers.

But still, at the end of the day, using my simple going to Starbucks for a coffee, yeah, man, that, you know, I don't look at that 30 minutes for my $5 cup of coffee.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Again, I get it.

So, hey, we've got a second for me to throw a couple announcements, and we'll kind of expand on them.

Well, we got 10 minutes left, so make it snappy, homie.

Make it quick, Jon.

So, a minute ago, I posted about an enhancer, or ability to enhance the concrete along with your ceiling steps.

So, we're going to hear from Brandon and I pretty quickly, that we're going to be releasing, like fully releasing, and made some modifications to boost, which definitely makes, well, a bunch of different things, but definitely can be used as enhancing of the color based on your cure and the concrete itself.

That's what I'm very big on.

And then also an additive to use during the ceiling steps.

But here's the deal, and I want everybody to listen to this.

We are going to open this up for samples.

And we're going to pilot program just to see how this is going to work.

And I'm going to put it out there.

10 people, the first 10 people to sign up.

You're actually going to pay for the sample.

I haven't put the costs together yet, but both of these aren't going to be extreme.

And what we're going to ask is what I always ask.

I want feedback.

If you're willing to give the feedback, and I'm going to give a nice open window to this ability, maybe two weeks, three weeks, whatever the case may be.

Maybe a social media post on the forums.

Talk about, like it, hate it, whatever.

Amazingly successful or, oh my god, Jon, you're an idiot.

I'm open to it all, but I really want the feedback.

If you give the feedback and you hate it, we will refund you the cost of the material.

If you give the feedback and, dang right, I'm going to start using this, then I will apply those early sample costs to your next order.

So effectively, the sample is worth your time and your energy.

I'm not going to use the word free because there's no free lunches, but it'll be worth your time and your energy.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Ron.

But what I was going to say is we'll formally post, I'm going to write something up and post it on the forums and maybe even, what we should do is an order page.

We can build an order page in Shopify on the back end.

We can limit it to 10 people, and I'll just have the terms there, and people can just go place an order and the shipping will calculate, right?

And that'd be the easiest way, so you're not dealing with it.

But anyways, but I'm going to align terms, but the terms would essentially be that you need to make social media posts on Facebook and Instagram.

You need to send us photos and videos and your feedback.

And we're not asking for positive.

We're not saying like we want to you have to give a rah rah, just your honest feedback on stuff, but share it.

That's the thing.

I do this like a double blind test.

Some people are going to get a placebo.

Some people actually get the real medication.

That would be terrible, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, so I was going to post something on the ICT page here.

I'm updating it here just kind of live as we're talking about it.

I have the raw materials ordered.

They'll probably be here next week.

I will start blending.

And that's when I'm going to start, or we are going to start making this available under this whatever test program or whatever we're going to call it.

So yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm pretty sorry.

I'm pretty psyched about it.

What I'm seeing is again, one more step in a in a direction that been trying to achieve.

I love ICT, you know, for what it does.

But, you know, you're never going to get the deep color enhancement which was ultimately leaves.

And those people know who they are in situations where they're using, let's say some sealers are not exactly fond of using, but they feel like they need to use it to accomplish the goal.

I get it.

I totally understand.

So anyway, I'm totally pumped about moving this forward, you know, one more, one more, whatever leap in the right direction.

100%.

What's your second thing?

That was it.

Well, it was technically Boost, which I'll get into more about Boost, but you know, and what all the other things that it does.

Joe Bates, if anybody's interested, give Joe Bates a call.

He's been using it now for I don't know how long.

He'll tell you it's at least been what?

Probably three months, four months that through a very large project.

And but yeah, I'll talk about that later.

But one of the keys that I like about it is, and I'll also have a post a picture.

I literally it's so obvious, man.

I mixed a mix, both the same amount of pigment, same water, same, same, same, same.

Put boost in one non scooping each, ported into a sample.

So, you know, the mean like they just the two SECs kind of create a and merge down the center.

And it's ridiculous.

The difference in color.

Yeah, ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, SEC.

So, the other thing is the demo day.

Some of the people are spraying still, spraying a face coat and hand packing.

And, you know, I told them everything in my shop is SEC direct cast fibers in it.

No vibration.

Everything.

So the coffee table class made, the side tables are class made, a sink the class made, window lentils are class made.

There's so much stuff.

The conference table upstairs.

I made that, but it's just SEC poured into the form.

And so I shown everybody like this is the quality we get.

This is out of the form.

Acid etched, you know?

And they're saying, well, normally we have such, we've been up tons of air.

Yeah.

Well, there's no air to open up on these.

So acid etch them in.

They're still dead solid.

But we cast, I cast two countertops before the demo day.

One a couple of days before, one the day before.

And then in the demo day, we actually cast a large coffee table, for lack of a better term, it's six feet long, but a large coffee table that has a return on each end.

So it's a waterfall leg.

So, you know, it's, it's like a inverted U shape when it's, when it's done.

And it's only one inch thick.

So pour down this one inch leg.

It goes all the way through and then up the other side.

And it poured beautifully.

And so unfortunately, because it was just a half day demo day, we poured it and they weren't able to see it demolded, but I came in and demolded the next day.

Dude, I haven't processed it yet.

It's just still sitting there.

I flipped it on a table.

I need to get Casecom to help me lift it off, but it is perfect.

It is perfect.

It is incredible.

Incredible.

So I can't wait to process it and seal it and take some photos of it, because it's absolutely breathtaking.

We didn't, we weren't careful in how we're pouring it.

We weren't just pouring right.

I mean, they're just dumping it in the legs, right?

And it's running down the sides.

And traditionally it traps tons of air and discoloration and becomes a big mess.

It came out phenomenal, phenomenal.

So anyways, there's that.

Two things I want to hit real quick, Jon, at the very end here.

I've scheduled two upcoming workshops.

We have a basics class, the fundamental concrete workshop.

That's going to be September 20th and 21st.

Go to Concrete Design School.

This is the stepping stone, the first step in your concrete journey workshop.

And the second one's going to be a Ramcrete workshop, October 18th and 19th.

This is for that rammed earth aesthetic.

You want to do thin section rammed earth pieces, or rammed earth looking pieces, so things like planters, tables, cladding.

You know, I think of Sir Ho doing a sink, an apron sink doing Ramcrete.

Yeah.

There's so many uses for it.

So that's going to be October 18th and 19th.

And that is concretedesignschool.com.

You can go to the website and read more about each and register.

So there's that.

Anything before we wrap this up?

No, man, that's it for me.

All right.

Well, two more weeks.

Let's stay on schedule this time, huh?

Sounds good.

All right, buddy.

Adios, amigo.

Adios.