The Grit Blueprint
The Playbook for Building Unmistakable Brands in the Built World
You can be the best in your market and still get passed over by a competitor who simply shows up better and more consistently where their customers are looking.
The Grit Blueprint Podcast is where visibility, media, customer experience, and creative brand strategy turn trust into growth in the built world.
Hosted by Stefanie Couch, a lifelong building industry expert born and raised in the business, this show explores how companies in building materials, construction, manufacturing, and distribution position themselves to win before the first conversation even starts.
You’ll hear from executives, operators, and decision-makers who are rethinking how they show up in the market. You’ll also hear from Stefanie and the Grit Blueprint team as they share the systems, strategy, and content that make good brands impossible to ignore.
Every episode turns insight into action. Because in this space, great work alone isn’t enough. You have to be seen, be known, be chosen, and ultimately, become unmistakable.
Produced by Grit Media. Powered by Grit Blueprint.
The Grit Blueprint
Automate or Evaporate: Why the Door & Window Industry Can't Ignore AI Anymore | Paradigm Industry Insider's Podcast Launch
Inefficiency is the biggest challenge facing the window and door industry today, but AI solutions can help companies automate repetitive tasks and respond to customers faster.
The Industry Insiders Podcast, powered by Paradigm, is where leaders across the industry share how they’re navigating change, building stronger businesses, and setting the pace for what’s next.
Hosted by John Wheeler, a 25-year veteran of building materials and software and sales technician at Paradigm, with season 1 guest co-host Stefanie Couch, founder of Grit Blueprint, a lifelong industry insider and growth strategist, the show takes you inside the strategies, tools, and ideas reshaping how windows and doors get sold, delivered, and experienced.
You’ll hear from manufacturers, dealers, and innovators across the supply chain, offering real-world lessons you can apply to your own business.
In this eye-opening conversation and the premiere episode of the Industry Insiders Podcast, we dive into the most pressing challenges facing our industry today.
• Automating repetitive tasks allows valuable veteran employees to focus on what they do best
• Capturing the knowledge of retiring industry veterans is essential for training the next generation
• Companies are 21 times more likely to convert leads when responding within 5 minutes
• Digital transformation works best when tackling one challenge at a time rather than everything at once
• Costly mistakes highlight why automation matters
• The window and door industry has unique complexities that make knowledge transfer challenging
• AI adoption creates a competitive advantage that will be difficult for late adopters to overcome
• Looking forward, the industry must embrace efficiency through technology while preserving human expertise
Watch the Video Version
Catch this episode of The Grit Blueprint Podcast on YouTube:
👉 Stefanie Couch on YouTube
Subscribe to Built to Win
Get exclusive insights, tools, and updates from Grit Blueprint, designed to help you lead and win in the building industry.
👉 Subscribe to Built to Win
Connect with Stefanie Couch & Grit Blueprint
Grit Website: GritBlueprint.com
YouTube: Stefanie Couch
Instagram: @StefanieCouchOfficial
LinkedIn: Stefanie Couch
Stefanie’s Website: StefanieCouch.com
👉 What Is Grit Blueprint?
Grit Blueprint is a media and growth company for the building industry. We help ambitious businesses in the building materials and construction industries grow through visibility, storytelling media, and smart systems.
Inefficiency is the biggest problem, I hear, and it's across the board. There's so many things that you can either automate or turn five buttons into one.
Stefanie Couch:If we have softwares that can help us quote quicker, sell quicker, you're 21 times more likely to convert something. If you respond within five minutes With AI, you can at least send an email or a text saying hey, I got it, I'm working on it.
John Wheeler:They want to do this digital transformation, but they get 10 things from every department. It's impossible for anybody to do that. You teach it just one thing at a time Solve one challenge, identify it, solve it, iterate and repeat the process. If you see or hear a story about somebody that was here where you are and now they're over here, I think that just helps everybody get better. Other people have had these challenges. Here's how they overcame it.
Stefanie Couch:It is amazing, when you start to talk to people, what you find out.
John Wheeler:Welcome to the Paradigm Industry Insiders podcast, where real people share real stories about what's happening with doors, windows, millwork and life. I'm John Wheeler and, along with my co-hosts, we sit down with your peers who are moving our industry forward. These are honest conversations packed with practical insights and lessons you can take and bring value to your team. Here's today's conversation.
Stefanie Couch:Welcome to the Paradigm Industry Insiders podcast, where we tell the stories of the people, products and technology in the window and door industry. I'm your guest host, Stephanie Couch, with Grit Blueprint, and I'm excited to be here today for the first episode of this podcast with my friend and we've worked together on many projects. John Wheeler, you are a sales technician at Paradigm. Welcome to the show, Thanks.
John Wheeler:Very excited.
Stefanie Couch:And we are going to be talking with a lot of people over the next few weeks about what's happening in our industry, highlighting them, highlighting their stories, talking about AI, all the cool stuff that's coming out, and we talk a lot about this. We're both really into AI and we work with a lot of people and projects, but historically, our industry has not really been known for being a super innovative place. What do you think about what's happening in AI and technology right now and how people are actually going to adopt it in the window and door space?
John Wheeler:It's an interesting question because we are we're slow to change and adopt things. You know there's lots of Excel. I think everybody runs to Excel first, which is totally fine to help with, like a proof of concept. But if you think about a lot of the jobs that are in the industry you think of, like a production scheduler or a shipping route manager or even some of the sales teams I think starting to automate some of those things that can be automated and let those because there's a a lot of veterans that you know they're key pieces I just named you know some of them. Their role is so essential but they're, you know, doing a lot of remedial tasks and they're doing a lot of day-to-day stuff, and so automating the things that can be and then letting those people be excellent at what they're doing give them more value back.
Stefanie Couch:Yeah, and it's scary to me that so many of those people who are running basically the entire business they're getting close to retirement as well. So how do we capture that information that they have over 20 years, 30 years in the industry and then distribute that, via AI or something else, to the next generation of leaders that come in? I think about that a lot. It keeps me up at night.
John Wheeler:I think that's where you know I did a lot of learning on AI recently and you talk about prompting and you can teach it the things. And the way I like to think about it is, you know, if you hired a new person, let's say they're straight out of college and they want to go into logistics or something they're going to know you, to know the basics of logistics, but you have to teach them. Here's our routes, here's our trucks, here's what they look like, here's what the drivers do, here's our customer list. And you just have to basically teach it the same things and the fundamentals of it and give it that context. Once it has that, that's where it really becomes really cool.
Stefanie Couch:The issue is there's so much context Because if you try to train someone on doors and you were in Georgia when I worked in two-step distribution and then in the dealer channel, I grew up in Georgia I thought I knew a lot about doors I did. Then I moved to Texas and I thought I knew a lot about doors and I didn't, because they do things totally different. No one in Texas has ever heard of a split jam. They don't do that there.
Stefanie Couch:Or California, that's not a thing, but that's what 99% of the doors in Georgia were, so it's really interesting how much there is to train if you were going to build out. You know, ben and I have worked on some tools like that and there's so much detail into it, which is why it is so hard to train someone anyone right now it is. It takes years. I mean, it's taken me so long to know the things I know and to try to teach someone that comes in that hasn't ever sold anything they haven't ever done anything on a job site and you're trying to teach them all of the things at the same time.
John Wheeler:My, my room number is 514. And the first thing I thought of when I saw that was, oh, five and a quarter jams and like to get to the level where like it's just a part of your daily life is almost impossible. But you know, one of the other things you know that I'm a real big fan of is you don't start with I have to teach it everything. You teach it just one, one thing at a time. Or solve one challenge, or maybe two challenges, and if during that process, you actually find a new challenge, you stop the other one and just focus on one thing. I think that you see a lot of people that they want to do this digital transformation, but they get 10 things from every department and it's impossible for anybody to do that.
Stefanie Couch:Yeah, and talking about digital transformations, you know things like ERP integrations and even software integrations, cpqs or customer pricing tool. They can feel like brain surgery, a little bit like a brain transplant. They are scary, they take a lot of resources. They are worth it in the end, but that process to get there is painful. And resources, they are worth it in the end, but that process to get there is painful. And if you don't set it up the right way or with the right partner, I think that is where it can be a really terrible result. But most of the time, if you set it up the right way, it can be a really positive thing for the next generation in your business.
John Wheeler:Yeah, and I think I try to be transparent when you know no matter who I'm talking to, whether it's my personal life or whatever, because the more things you get out on the table and the more you know what's coming the more than you can prepare for it and, you know, just out someone else to do that, yeah, so that you can again, the people that are excellent at their job are going to be excellent at doing those things.
John Wheeler:But help the other people, you know, do the tasks, their daily tasks. Yeah, making sure that you silo that out.
Stefanie Couch:You've worked on a lot of different areas of our industry, so tell me a little bit about I know you started at a location near your hometown, at Big Box.
John Wheeler:Yep.
Stefanie Couch:And then you went to a bigger in the two-step distribution channel, right, yep. And then now you're here at Paradigm. You're selling software in the same industry. What do you think the challenges that you see the most in our industry from the time you started to now? Have they changed or are they still the same challenges, and what are they?
John Wheeler:I think it's the same. Right you think of early 2000s when I'm at the big box place? That's where I got the bug for it and the crazy part. I did the math the other day and that was 25 years ago. Wow, I'm for sure an old person in the industry, which is great. It's great to realize.
Stefanie Couch:You're an old door nerd who thinks about five and a quarter when they see 514? Only an old door guy.
John Wheeler:And I'm starting to be grouchy. You know, if I see a dog on a plane, I'm like ah, dog on a plane.
Stefanie Couch:I'm the opposite. I turn into Snow White and start to squeal because I see a dog on a plane.
John Wheeler:You let the bird land on your finger.
Stefanie Couch:Yeah, I'm seriously like this is the best flight I've ever taken. That happened to me the other day and that's literally what I thought.
John Wheeler:I think the core challenge is the same and the method of doing things has. I think it's changed a bit. The method that you put in a quote or the method that someone gets information from somebody has changed, but getting that information to the right person is still a challenge, whether that's today through your website or previously. You know it was a lot of brochures and order forms and things like that, and then I think you know, just getting the quote fast enough and getting that out, you know, was always a challenge, and then everybody continues to expect things faster and faster and faster. So I think the challenges are the same. They just get, you know, exacerbated as you go move forward with technology becomes faster and Amazon exists, which makes it hard. Well, that's the thing you know Amazon exists, which makes it harder.
Stefanie Couch:Well, that's the thing. There's a lot of statistics out there about converting things and you're 21 times more likely to convert something if you respond within five minutes, even just saying hey, I've got this. I'll give you back the quote, and I don't really know very many people in our industry that could even say that they respond to an email within five minutes most of the time. That's very hard to do.
Stefanie Couch:But, with AI, you can at least send an email within five minutes. Most of the time that's very hard to do, but with AI you can at least send an email or a text or whatever, saying hey, I got it, I'm working on it. But I do think if we have softwares that can help us quote quicker, sell quicker, and if the customer can quote themselves, if we can get people to be more comfortable on those programs, then we can get them to actually not even have to wait on us because they're doing it themselves.
Stefanie Couch:I still see a lot of people that don't feel comfortable doing that. I think it's because millwork is tricky. Specifically, you know, if you sell a bundle of two before eight pre-cuts and they're wrong, like you bring them back, you're going to resell them the next day with a two before eight pre-cut.
Stefanie Couch:Like I'm going to sell that to the next contractor that comes with the framing package. If I try to resell a door order that I screwed up, that's like some really super custom thing I'm going to sit in my graveyard forever until I give it to someone or donate it.
John Wheeler:And it's never just some like 30686 panel, it's always, like you know, a double double with you know pre-finish, and it's got this weird glass and whatever it's painted orange or something.
Stefanie Couch:What's the biggest screw-up you ever had when you were in a door orders?
John Wheeler:Oh man, this is the one that got me invited to not do multifamily jobs anymore.
Stefanie Couch:That's a multifamily story too.
John Wheeler:There was two apartment jobs.
Stefanie Couch:I like that, got you invited to not ever do this again. They invited me to not Please never come to this party again.
John Wheeler:Yeah don't do that anymore. I was doing mirrored slider doors like the easiest thing to quote out, and I forget what I. What specifically? I messed up. But I basically did stock sizes because I thought it was going to fit, but the I don't know, I don't know how I got the math wrong, but like the overlap was like a foot. The two doors were overlapping and they installed the first one. You know, and they had like 700 of them sitting in these containers and they installed the first one. They're like it overlaps like a foot and I'm like that's fine, like yeah, but when I close it it's also covering up like 18 inches of the thing. And we had to bring those back and of course they were not like I think they were not stock sizes, that's what it was. They had to like cut the mirror and redo the frame and everything like that. That was my biggest one that I can remember, but I like telling that story there's no worse feeling.
John Wheeler:No, tell me yours.
Stefanie Couch:So it was also a multifamily job. The worry about multifamily is you don't just screw up once. You know it's always like 237 times at once. This actually was not exactly my fault, but you know it was my order so it all went wrong. But it was a large multifamily job with peep sites. It had ADA peep sites.
Stefanie Couch:So for those that are listening to this that maybe aren't super door nerds, that means there are peep sites like you see, in a hotel. They are lower. There's two different ones, so someone that's in a wheelchair can look through. And so we had a big conversation about where they were going to be get it from the customer big, you know, conversation about where they were going to be get it from the customer and they say it's 52 inches as the bottom one from, you know, top of the door or whatever it was. I verified it like three times, put in the order get them in shops, building them. It just so happened to be August, the hottest time in Georgia. I'll give that little color to the story. I walk out and my guy came in, got me and said hey, I need you to come to the shop. That's never a good sign.
John Wheeler:John, not good, not when they invite you.
Stefanie Couch:And so I go out and I stepped up to the door and the peep site was like this, far apart from the two you know.
John Wheeler:And when you said 52, I was like that's not far away.
Stefanie Couch:They did it at five foot two All 237 of them, so thankfully they were still doors and I had only been working there maybe like a year at the time I mean, I was still a rookie and so all of my management team like every single person, including the branch manager, the manager, everybody spent the next week bondoing all 237 of those peep sites and then redrilling them sweating. I mean I felt so bad and uh, I tried they. They were like you're not.
Stefanie Couch:You're invited to not help us ever do this but it, uh, it turned out being a good learning lesson because we ended up putting in a bunch of protocols for things like that. And what had happened was someone just fat fingered it, they put the little dash in the wrong, they forgot the dash in the middle, that's one dash and only put the dash at the end or whatever. And it was, it was all wrong.
John Wheeler:That's the you know. You talked about the challenges and things, and when you have to re-key something, that's where something like AI can just or getting just two systems integrated, even if it's brute force. But integrating those things together, where I have the chubby little sausage fingers that I'll push five keys. When I try to push one, and, yeah, you just send in the wrong one one, especially if the keys are right next to each other, especially on the measurements like that that you're going to catch because nobody's going to make a 20 foot wide door. You're like that's clearly wrong. But if you know, you put three, six when you meant three, oh yeah, and then what are you gonna do with 42 inch doors?
Stefanie Couch:a lot of times it is the expensive things that get screwed up too.
Stefanie Couch:Never the easy one no, I've, I messed up some decorative. It's always the most expensive one. But the thing is, once you screw something like that up, you don't do it again because you remember that pain so much. And I think that's one of the things I want people to take away, especially new people in the industry is like you are going to screw things up. You know, I own my own business now and every single day we learn something my team and I, my husband and I he's my co-founder and there are a lot of lessons that have been learned. But usually if you learn it that way, you can solve the problem easier the next time and you definitely feel the sting of that hot stove. So you don't have to go into it thinking you're not going to screw up. You just got to go into it thinking you're going to figure out how to not do it again.
John Wheeler:I read, I didn't read. I won't pretend that I read stuff. I listened to something about Elon the other day. He said a couple things, and one of them was if your hand's on the stove, you're going to make a change really, really fast.
Stefanie Couch:Was this the Founders Podcast?
John Wheeler:Yeah, it was, we listened to it.
Stefanie Couch:the other day. If it's somebody else's hand on there, you're gonna you're gonna respond still, but you're gonna be slower to respond.
John Wheeler:I always thought that was interesting because I learned faster. So true, oh, it's, it's the best. And then the. When you talk about automating things, he uh in that that same thing we talked about like automate at the end, because he and he admits that he devalued, like humans in the in the loop, and yeah you know, automated over, automated it and was going way too slow well, and even.
Stefanie Couch:Even if you automate something if it doesn't need to even be done in the first place, you just wasted all your time, money, trying to automate a process that should have been deleted, and that's that's one of the things that I admire about him the most. I mean, you know, people love or hate him and whatever, but he is the richest man in the world. He's a genius. He is super hardcore, self-admittedly, and he has very contrarian views on a lot of things, but when he has a problem, he digs in fast and he tries to fix it himself with his team, and I think there's so much respect that I have for that because it's like, hey, he is the richest man in the world and he is still going to the Tesla floor or the SpaceX floor.
John Wheeler:They're sleeping in the hangar.
Stefanie Couch:To fix something that he could just let other people figure out, and I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not. The fact that he's one of the most successful people that's ever lived probably leads me to believe that he's got something right. But I think that having that spirit of ingenuity and being able to embrace failure and admit failure and say, yeah, I screwed that up big time and I won't do it again, or I'm going to try to do better in the first place.
John Wheeler:And I think it's one of the things that makes this industry special, I think is when I first got to the distributor that I worked for, I was walking around the shop floor with the guy that owned it we were eight locations and this huge thing and we were walking by and there was like a piece of paper, like a label on the floor and like he was the one that bent over, picked it up and threw it away and you know, leading by example and being willing to put in the work. At that point, you see that throughout and nobody's cooler than anybody else and they just lead by example.
Stefanie Couch:That's really why I think I named my business the Grit Blueprint, because the grit of this industry is what I love about it so much and also the approachability Like, if you're not like what you just described, you probably aren't going to last very long in this industry. You're going to get run out.
John Wheeler:You are. You're going to be the annoying person in the room.
Stefanie Couch:Yeah.
John Wheeler:Yeah, but people also. You know you mentioned mistakes, I didn't. You know I didn't get written up when I screwed my thing up and you know they're just like, yeah, you're going to screw this up, like I've screwed up plenty.
Stefanie Couch:The shame of walking in and watching them sweat and, like all my bosses, walking by Like Grinch. The shame was more than any write-up could have been for me.
John Wheeler:I always appreciate it too, because I guarantee if you saw those people you know at WMA or something one of them is going to mention it?
Stefanie Couch:Oh, 100%. Ordered any peep sites lately? Yeah, nope, I sure haven't, my friend. Thank you.
John Wheeler:I think I'm the butt of most jokes everywhere. I've been here at Paradigm and in my previous places but I always think they're not going to make fun of somebody that they're going to let go. So if you're the butt of the jokes, I guess it's a good thing they got to keep you around to make fun of you. Yeah.
Stefanie Couch:I love that. Well, we're doing something new and we're recording this podcast. Today is actually annual conference, which is an exciting time at Paradigm. This is my third year attending and you're going to have?
John Wheeler:how many people are going to be here this year?
Stefanie Couch:107. 107 people that are all fellow door and window nerds just like us A bunch of dorks. It's going to be a really cool time and you guys have a great culture here. Wonderful snack bar. You have an actual bar Dog friendly.
John Wheeler:The chew toys and whatever just out there.
Stefanie Couch:And you also have a real culture of innovation and trying to figure out what's next. What are some of the most exciting things that you are presenting or talking about at annual conference this year?
John Wheeler:I'm partial to the data and AI one because that's the one that I'm doing, but I think we have a lot of good products that people can use and tools and things around that. But I think, you know, there's a leadership change also from the very tip top and I think that's going to bring a lot of just excitement and you know, kind of eating our own medicine type of deal, where you know if we want to be better for our customers, we have to be better ourselves and really looking internally, rather than let's go build the next tool, let's get bigger, faster, stronger for our customers and in turn that's going to generate more cooler stuff and we can do that at a faster clip because nothing's ever getting slower. I think the kind of the underlying theme that I've seen from all the presentations is just getting better at what we do. No-transcript.
Stefanie Couch:What do you think the biggest problem that you solve here at Paradigm is?
John Wheeler:That is a good question. I think inefficiency is the biggest problem. I hear, and it's across the board, you know whether it's on the sales or the operations, or you know marketing or whatever. I think that we brute force everything and I just see there's so many things that you can either automate or turn five buttons into one or integrating systems and doing things. I just think, generally speaking, efficiency.
Stefanie Couch:What actually excites you the most about doing this podcast and why do you think branding and visibility is important in an industry that hasn't necessarily decided to shine bright like a diamond?
John Wheeler:That is also a great question. I'll start with the personal side of it, and what I heard from a lot of the guests that we invited was it's new and scary, and bright lights and all of this, and anytime that I feel scared of something, that usually means that I'm on the right track because I care about it and it's something that's going to make me personally better. So that part's good, I think. The other part is until I worked at Paradigm, I didn't know that there were so many different challenges and stories and things like that that were out there to be heard. And there's a lot of the same challenges, but there's also a lot of different ones, and I think that people are going to especially the format that we're doing, where it's storytelling and it's innovation type stuff, and here's how we were struggling that we talked about us screwing stuff up. Having people hear those challenges and how they overcame it, I think is going to be the biggest benefit. So you think about the Elon story. I'm never going to start a company that's going to colonize Mars.
Stefanie Couch:Don't underestimate yourself, john, come on. I don't want to go to Mars, you could sell all the doors to Elon's Mars homes. We could take Pera down to Mars. No, I'm all right. I thought you dreamed bigger than this, John. I'm a little disappointed.
John Wheeler:Maybe the moon, because I can see it, mars looks like a star to me. But yeah, I think just people hearing the stories and like, oh, other people have had these challenges, here's how they overcame it. Or seeing other people do it right Whether it's riding dirt bikes or it's recording music or any of the other things that I'm into If you see or hear a story about somebody that was here where you are and now they're over here, I think that just helps everybody get better right, and it doesn't matter what tool they're using or how they did it or who they partnered with.
Stefanie Couch:You know the story is the key and, like I can do this, yeah, everyone has their own unique story and I think we do forget that sometimes because we talk so much about business. So I'll tell you a little story from yesterday that happened and then I'm going to tie it back to you and put you on the spot. So warning, but I was at the Do it Best Market yesterday in Indianapolis and I was sitting down at a table speaking to one of the vendors there and this man walked up to me. He was looking for me. He had a brochure. He wanted to talk to me about some stuff to put behind my podcast booth, which is that acoustic paneling, which is super cool, inexpensive it is, it's beautiful, though, walnut.
Stefanie Couch:So we start talking. I was like, absolutely, I would love to do that. And then I said do you podcast? Cause you have this really great bass timbre in your voice? And he said I don't podcast, but I'm a singer. I said what kind of singer? And he said, oh well, like a classically trained singer. I said, really, tell me more. And he said yeah, actually we're doing a symphony in Grand Rapids, where I live. I'm going tomorrow to the last practice. It's Ode to Joy, beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And so I said and he started singing in German with me, really, and we sang the fourth movement of Beethoven's.
Stefanie Couch:Ninth Symphony right there on the Do it Best floor in German, and I turned around and looked at the guys that were sitting there and they were like what is happening right now? What was?
John Wheeler:that.
Stefanie Couch:What just happened. But it's so cool because I mean, if you looked at this guy, you would never be like. This guy is going tomorrow night to practice Beethoven in a really good choir and they're singing at Carnegie next month. That's crazy. Like they were invited. They didn't pay to sing at Carnegie, they're invited to go sing. And I was just like, wow, it is amazing, when you start to talk to people, what you find out and that segues me to you, because you were actually a musician too.
John Wheeler:I try to be.
Stefanie Couch:Do you think that there's some sort of weird reason why people who are musicians pay attention to details and come into this profession of millwork specifically?
John Wheeler:I do. I think that there's an obsession, almost like an obsessive thing about it and the more you learn, the more exciting it gets and the harder it gets and the more things, the more things you learn, the more things that you'll get asked to do, and I think that translates directly into music. So if your fingers can't do the things that you need them to do, you're going to figure out because, like, I need the part to sound like this or, for me personally, I can't make my voice do this certain thing, or I can't make the equipment do this certain thing, and I think that it's the same thing in the industry. Or you know, so-and-so business is doing X. Like how do I do that?
John Wheeler:And so you just obsessively think about those details.
Stefanie Couch:And it may be a certain part of your brain that musicians have a different way, that they kind of think about things in general, but I think your brain does function a little different. So maybe that's because I've always said that millwork people are a little weird like including myself and I think that's true in the best way and musicians are kind of that way too Always. So we're just double weird.
John Wheeler:In the best way.
Stefanie Couch:Well, that's amazing. All right, last question what do you hope if we sat down in five years and talked is true for our industry?
John Wheeler:I hope that when I talk to somebody, we'll pretend that I'm still allowed to sell stuff to people, that when I talk to somebody there's less inefficiency. I know that sounds like the most boring answer ever, but I hope that somebody woke up one day at every single company and said, oh, I hate grabbing this paper and this paper, putting together and stapling it, or I hate reentering these, these orders, and people actually make, you know, real changes because it that journey could take five years. But somebody wakes up tomorrow and says we have to start doing this. I'm going to do it one challenge at a time, and five years from now, I would love if the whole industry but specifically you know, our, our partners that we have took that journey and five years from now they're at the level they want to be at.
Stefanie Couch:Does AI accelerate that timeline it has?
John Wheeler:to. I feel like that's the only way.
Stefanie Couch:18 to 24 months.
John Wheeler:Yeah, I think that's the only way you know. Like I said earlier, nothing gets slower, and the expectations included. So your customer's expectations to get information and you have to automate those processes and it's so repeatable and you're going to get thousands of people through your website and you're going to do thousands of orders. You're going to build thousands of doors or windows or whatever it is, and you have to make that better and more efficient. That's amazing.
Stefanie Couch:I'm excited about what's coming, a little scared also that people won't be able to catch up because there is a real arbitrage moment I think of. People are either going to be able to get on the train now or it's going to be almost too far.
John Wheeler:And that's kind of where I was going. Right, you got just that first thing that you do solve one challenge, identify it, solve it, iterate and repeat the process.
John Wheeler:And you look at JPMorgan Chase. I was at the Databricks Summit and 10 years ago they started on their AI journey and their budget today is $2 billion just for AI and that's crazy when you think about what they're doing with the fraud detection and things like that. But yeah, there's no way, with the how accelerated things like that get that. They would have been able to hire any amount of people that do that. So, yeah, I hope that are. That's what I hope is the industry realizes it and just solves one challenge at a time.
Stefanie Couch:Well, I'm excited for this podcast and you're going to be hosting this most of the time. I'm going to be guest hosting some, but we are going to be here all week just recording and telling the stories of the industry. So thank you for joining us on the first episode of the Paradigm Industry Insiders podcast and we will see you on the next episode.
John Wheeler:Thanks for joining us on the Paradigm Industry Insiders podcast. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms and follow Paradigm on LinkedIn and YouTube to catch more stories, insights and ideas from your peers across our industry. See y'all.
