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KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
When in Miami...
What if the traditional vendor-client dynamic is holding back innovation? Fifty CEOs and C-suite leaders recently came together in Miami at our [KP Reddy] executive briefing to spotlight challenges like the surging energy demands of data centers, the critical need for water management, and the role of building owners in driving strategic change. We'll share firsthand observations on why providing a platform for open dialogue is crucial to overcoming the fear of exploitation and fostering real progress.
As we look to the future of executive briefings, the episode explores the pressing challenges faced by the AEC industry, including unpredictable operational costs and resource scarcity.
To read the original post on LinkedIn and connect with KP, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kpreddy_at-lunch-yesterday-at-my-q4-executive-briefing-activity-7262831314922344448-VL4b/
Ready to level up your strategy and solve shared challenges with industry leaders? Join us for a one-day Mastermind meetup on February 25th in Phoenix, arizona. These quarterly meetups are your chance to collaborate with top minds from AEC and tech industries and explore innovation strategies that can transform your business. Experience firsthand what our Mastermind program is all about connecting with peers, tackling shared challenges and gaining insights you can't get anywhere else. Each meetup is hosted in a new city, bringing fresh perspectives and unmatched networking opportunities. Don't miss out. Visit kpreadyco slash events to learn more and secure your limited spot at a Mastermind meetup. Today you are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? Join KP's exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network, to learn more. Visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network To learn more. Visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is my opportunity to ask KP Ready what he meant or what he was thinking about, or what inspired his latest post. He meant or what he was thinking about, or what inspired his latest post on LinkedIn. My name is Jeff Eccles. I am the head of mastermind groups and the incubator at KP Ready Company and, as always, I am joined by our founder and CEO, kp Ready. Kp, welcome back.
Speaker 3:Hey, jeff, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going well. It's fun to get back into recording these unpacked sessions because you post so much on LinkedIn, you get so much engagement on LinkedIn. The things that you put there in your account, on your page, are thought-provoking, they're challenging. Sometimes they stir the pot, which is, of course, the point, and so it's a lot of fun to come here and ask you what were you thinking when you posted that Now, for this session, we're going to take a little bit. I mean, you've posted about this, but we're going to take a slight tangent to that, or maybe it's an umbrella of several posts and we're going to talk about the executive briefing that we hosted.
Speaker 2:As we record this, it was a couple of weeks ago in Miami, florida, and so to give folks a little bit of background regarding the executive briefing, we teamed up with Schneider Electric and we invited 50 CEOs or C-suite leaders from all across AEC to join us for what we called an executive briefing. So KP in your mind as you came up with this idea for the executive briefing, as it started to formulate, and we made invitation lists and all the things that have to go into creating an event like that. What was the impetus for that event and what was it meant to be? And then, of course, we can unpack what it was.
Speaker 3:I think you know the mission of it was this whole idea that within the AC space there's somebody that's at the table that we don't talk much about, which is the owner, ie everybody's customer. And you know, when it comes to innovation, when it comes to what they're thinking, whether it's popular or not, if you're an architect or an engineer or a contractor and you're dealing with an owner, you are what they call a vendor. So it's very difficult for owners to share strategic viewpoints with the vendor, mostly because a lot of times they feel like it might get exploited. You know it's a relationship, but they have relationships with other firms, so they have to be really careful about how much they share with any given vendor. And I know AAC firms hate to think of themselves as vendors and that they have a vendor number in a procurement system, but guess what
Speaker 3:guys. That's what it is, and so the goal was really to provide a forum for owners to share where they think things are going, what's happening with innovation. In this case, we talked a lot about energy management and energy generation and how it was affecting them, and I think one of the things that is commonly it's no big secret data centers are kind of in a boom market right now lots of data centers. We're also unsure how data centers how we're going to, you know produce enough electricity to feed these data centers, but in the meantime, identifying other markets that are equally energy hungry and really think about you know what we're going to do with those as well. So we have leaders, you leaders, owners from the biotech world, from the cold chain world, from the data center world, and then we talked about energy, we talked about water, we talked about kind of the big topics, and really the hope was to get owners to open up about what's on their mind and what their needs are, and I think that was achieved and really received well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and I don't know if I told you this, but so, for those of you that were not in attendance at the executive briefing, my job is relatively easy. I'm the MC for most of our or maybe all of our live events and also our virtual events, and so all I have to do is get up on stage and introduce new topics and new speakers and things like that, and then I get to go to the back of the room and listen, and so one of the things that I did as I was listening throughout the day, that I did as I was listening throughout the day to KP and others we had panel discussions, we had keynotes, kp hosted several fireside chats. That was sort of the format of the day. But as I stood in the back of the room and listened, I sent a few text messages to some of my friends, especially my background. For those of you that don't know, my background is architecture, so I know a lot of people. My people are in the architectural world, so I sent out some texts.
Speaker 2:I said you know what this event is not for you right, it was for you know, large, large C-suite leaders at large firms across AEC and owners as well, and so the texts I was sending were to people that who weren't those, they weren't the target audience. But what I did was I sent texts and I said you know, if every architect large, small or otherwise heard what was being discussed here, heard what owners were saying from stage and embraced it, understood it and embraced it and incorporated it into their thinking about their business model, it would change the face of AEC and I stand by that. I think that's absolutely the truth what the owners were saying about what they wanted, what they needed, what they saw as value, coming from the vendor side, from the A&E side and also the C side. I think everybody needs to hear that. So you were up there on stage a lot. What did you think about the conversations?
Speaker 3:you were up there on stage a lot. What did you think about the conversations? No, I think these are the conversations that are very difficult to have in the middle of the throes of getting a project done. You know, when an owner brings in a contractor and asks the question, you know, hey, we're two weeks behind schedule and over budget, by the way. What do you think about innovation? What do you think about where the world's going?
Speaker 3:It's your conversations that I would say. You don't have a great forum on a day-to-day basis to have, and so I think it was definitely owners opening up about what their needs are, and I think the interesting thing was that the people that in attendance in many ways seemed surprised by what the customer needs were, and so I think that's super interesting, right? Not that for us. Maybe we thought some of what they were saying was somewhat obvious because of all the conversations we have with a lot of owners. We have with a lot of owners, but to some of the ENR 500 that were in the room, for them to be surprised by what owners were saying was a bit of a surprise to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say that exact same thing. The surprise was surprising. How do you not understand that this owner who says you know, we built 50 of these facilities this year and, admittedly, that was too much, right, that came straight out of the owner's mouth. We built 50 of these facilities this year and we spend an awful lot of money procuring professional services, the A's and the E's and also the construction management, and we have a good handle. We know what the fees are, we know what you want to charge us, we have a decent handle on what it's going to cost to construct this because we did 50 of these this year, right? But why is it that you and all of your design expertise mechanical engineer, architect, electrical engineer, whoever you are why is it that you can't help me get a handle on what it's going to cost to operate this thing? And I, you know that, that I mean that's that's. You know I, I botched the quote. It's not a direct quote, but but that was straight out of one of the owner's mouths.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, the surprise in the surprise was strong, because I think, as we look across and you know, I spent 20, some odd over 20 years, 25 years or something like that. Working in firms, you know we promoted things like lead, we promoted things like commissioning, and you know building science is always a hot topic. I emceed another conference earlier this year where they had a building scientist as a keynote speaker, which is kind of weird. Why is it that we talk about all these things but yet we have no idea? We don't give an owner the ability to understand what it's going to cost for them to operate that facility. And, like you said, I mean this particular executive briefing was about decarbonization, energy costs you mentioned water, other types of energy and resources but these are real questions, right when we're talking about the value that AEC is supposed to deliver, and these are the questions that the owners are asking. I mean, this ought to be a day of reckoning.
Speaker 3:No, 100%. And I think the other thing that was quite fascinating coming out of the owner's mouth was, you know, there was a point that was made that we design buildings assuming historically, assuming that energy is available right up and get all you want. And really, if it wasn't for the constraints from the utility companies about here's how much power I can deliver to the site, that the thinking cap wouldn't go on. It's gone on because of scarcity, and I say it all the time, innovation is something that is born out of scarcity.
Speaker 3:Innovation is how you take a scarce resource and create abundance of it, and I think you know, in the realm of energy, that's exactly what's going on right now is that we're having to think smarter and actually do some hardcore engineering and run analysis and simulation because of the scarcity. But otherwise, if it was just a kind of infinite tap, I don't think we'd be sharpening our pencil nearly as hard and I think we had, you know, a company talking about water kind of being the next thing, and we kind of, you know, think about how long we run our water to do our dishes and run three loads of clothes a day. Know, like, whatever it is, we just act like water. Just we're going to open up that tap and there will be water there and that might be the next one to drop right, right, yeah, absolutely, you know this.
Speaker 2:This wasn't talked about at this particular executive briefing, but I were. I am here in indiana. Um, I hear stories all the time of somebody that that wants to build a distribution plant or whatever it is. You know, in in a rural area. They're buying up all the farm fields around here for distributions centers, but, um, the and then they submit their plans for permitting and the electrical load required is more than is currently being consumed by the entire county where they want to build this distribution center. Right, so you know, these are real world things, and I think the point about water is a good one too. Maybe we take that for granted here in the Midwest, but if you're in the Southwest, um, certainly that's on your radar.
Speaker 2:So, as we think about so, this was a great event. I mean, it was in Miami. There were, there were 50, uh, 50 leaders in the room. Uh, we spent a spent a day in all of these discussions and you know we had receptions and all the sort of ancillary things that happen at these types of events. It was a fantastic event. The feedback was fantastic. We have four more planned for 2025. So at this point and there may may be, we may plan more, but what do we, as we look out towards 2025 and executive briefings, what topics do you expect us to cover next year?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think, um, it's kind of top of mind. I think the point too is that, uh, most of these land kind of on mission for what, what's important to me and what we're doing, and I think when we look at that, I think affordable housing kind of on the list. I think some of the topics around energy transition you know we talked really about energy generation, but I think a little bit. You know we were mostly talking about decarbonization. So I think, as we talk about energy transition, I think that's going to be another fun topic to talk about. I'm really interested in having more conversations around our ailing infrastructure, whether it's roads, bridges, et cetera. But I think that's a big one and I think, you know, I think we need to have something around with all this kind of the climate impact stuff, whether it's the coastlines rising, whether it's you know, basically, you're slightly uninsurable these days in Florida. We know that there's a lot more weather events happening and how we think about preparedness. So those are some of the ideas that I have, but, you know, for us, you know, I kind of pitch my ideas to these corporate partners who either believe in our mission and what we're trying to do and they support us, like Schneider does.
Speaker 3:Schneider was very supportive of this one and we kind of debated the topics and finally came up with the topics and what we wanted to hear in terms of speakers, topics and what we wanted to hear in terms of speakers and you know me, you know my job's more like let's, let's figure out what we, what we think is important to the people in the room and then I run off and try to curate the topics and get the right people to talk on the topics. Um, you know, I think a lot of it is just, uh, you know, how we get to the right topics? Is is highly driven by some of our mission-oriented partners, you know, like schne, like Schneider, that say, hey, this is what's important, this is what we think is important, let's put something together and we'll support you guys in that effort.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to me it's a great system right, because we are one of the things that we do in our incubator. Really, the main focus of our incubator is around customer discovery and that's kind of what's happening here. It's what's important and what do people want to hear about, and so we shape these events around that. So as you look out, you, the listener, look out towards 2025, keep these things on your radar because they're coming. We'll make announcements about topics and timing. You can imagine that if we're planning four of them, they might pop up quarterly. That might be. You might've figured that out by now, but we will announce the first quarter executive briefing topic and location here very soon. So, kp, what's the? What's the best way for somebody to stay, to keep, to keep executive briefings on their radar?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the one thing is register with us. You know, come contact us, hit us on our website and contact us, because we actually it is invite only, and people ask me all the time like what's the criteria? I was like it depends on the topic, right? If I, you know, we're talking about 50 people. We're not talking about thousands of people. So I literally go through our list of pre-qualified people in our system and say, okay, I think this person can contribute to an affordable housing discussion. If you design nuclear power plants, I'm probably not inviting you to the affordable housing discussion. So, while there's some pre-qualification things that are important in terms of your role in the company or kind of a leadership position, it's really more like how can you contribute to the conversation based on the topics at hand? If you're affordable housing and you're a CEO of a large home builder, you're probably getting an invite. So those are the type of topics. That's how we align, kind of the topics with the audience. So come to our website and just fill out a contact us form for now and somebody will vet you and let you know if there's something that comes up.
Speaker 3:Now I will say one of the things that's super interesting in doing these is that we get. You know, we have some executives from ENR 50 in the room, executives from ENR 50 in the room, and someone asked the question like, well, why would they come to that event and not come to different events? And you know my point was like we're not doing product demos. There is no sales pitch, there was no sales pitches, there's nothing to sell. This is literally just kind of think tank conversations and for a lot of them I asked them. I was like, hey, you know, thanks for coming, but let me ask you like, why'd you come?
Speaker 3:And you know, many of them said this is our job as leaders to come to events like this, learn what the markets are thinking, what the markets are saying, what our peers are saying, and then, you know, go back to the main office and send out an email to those that it matters to about what I learned here. And I think they thought it was very refreshing that there was no pitch. There was not a single software demo, actually very few slides, very few slides. It was mostly just conversations. And I think people gave me a hard time because I had like a list of questions printed out on a note card. I was mostly just like sitting on the note card the whole time and kind of saying, hey, I'll get to those questions eventually. But you know, my view is, if you're going to get on stage with if you haven't done your homework on me and you're going to show up on stage and think we're going to follow a script, you you didn't do your homework and that's shame on you.
Speaker 2:So, um, so I think the conversations were fantastic yeah, and that's that's an important point think tank style conversations, right, when you have, when you have an event of where the audience is as uh as I guess, as the focus of this audience, right, Very, very focused, very, very targeted audience. It is all about the engagement and that's what this event was completely no booze, no product demos, no pitches, no, nothing. It's about what do we see. They're nothing. It's about what do we see. You know, what are owners asking for? What do owners see? What do executives in engineering firms, construction firms, architecture firms, what do they see? And let's have that conversation.
Speaker 2:There were a handful of our members from our innovation leaders mastermind group in attendance for this particular one. It doesn't mean they will be at the next, Like KP said, it depends on the fit right, but but it's all about that level of engagement and those types of conversations, because these are move the needle kind of events. They're not hey, let's, let's show up and do the golf outing or let's show up and, and you know, stroll the the trade show floor or something like that. This, this is a, this is a different animal and uh, I think, I think uh, very successful and um, very informative for the people that were there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think what's really different, um because, um, you know, it's the no pitch zone, so to speak. There's no sponsors coming up and being on panels. A couple of my startups were on panels, but they were barely allowed to say their company name. They were really only there for their expertise around AI or robotics or whatnot, to really educate and inform people on what was going on. So, unlike most conferences, et cetera, my hope was that zero transactions happened at the conference. Yeah that's an unusual goal right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want you guys to get to know each other as people, as humans and as also like peers and, you know, a network of expertise, and that you walk away a little bit with your head hurting and having learned something. And I think that's always going to be the goal for our events. And unfortunately, we live in a world right now where so many of these events are just so sponsor driven and pay to play driven. And you know, you got to sit through all that. Um, it was kind of funny.
Speaker 3:We did have, um, some of our friends at schneider, some of the executive leadership in attendance and, um, they were kind of relieved that they didn't, they weren't allowed to sell like, oh we, actually, just because we get to engage with people, I don't have to like, work the room and collect business like absolutely not, you're not allowed to. So I'm not sure what your boss told you, but you're not allowed to. So just go out there and have great conversations and engage with people and walk away having, you know, learn something yeah, yeah, that that is true, as we were having the planning meetings.
Speaker 2:No, you, you don't get to go out and pitch people.
Speaker 2:That's not the way this works. And, to your point, yeah, as you said, that I was thinking that we had two startups on the stage. I believe, if I remember correctly, that, um, their, their startup, their company was, was plugged. Was me doing the intro for those? Uh, for those folks, for those founders? So, um, yeah, um, few to no slides, all about conversations, all about shaping the future of the aec industry and the built environment. So a really great event. And, like we said, I mean we've got four planned for next year quarterly. And if you want to, if you're interested, if you want to get on the list to see if there's a match for you and your role and your focus, go to kpreadyco and you can. You can find out on the contact us, you can find out how to sign up, basically get more information about those KP. Thanks for joining me for this conversation.
Speaker 2:A little bit different KP Unpacked this time. Like I said at the very beginning, you posted several times and many of us across the KP ReadyCo team and the Schneider team have posted on LinkedIn about the executive briefing from a couple of weeks ago in Miami. So we're, you know, maybe unpacking at a 30,000 foot view in this particular episode, but thanks for joining me and for all of those who are listening. We'll be back. We do this every week. Kp and I sit down and unpack his LinkedIn post, so we'll be back here in another week with the next KP Ready, unpacked. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for listening to another episode of KP Unpacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco, that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Y dot co. And additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I-N slash KP Ready Until next time.