"If we just listened to what our customers wanted, we would have had a faster horse."
Everyone knows the Henry Ford quote, but Lee Mullin actually showed us what it means for construction tech.
In today's episode of Bricks & Bytes, we sat down with Lee from BuildArc. He spent 18 years at Autodesk, and honestly, the conversation completely changed how we think about talking about products.
Here's what stuck with us: we're all making ourselves the hero of the story. We love talking about our amazing AI tools, our productivity gains, our revolutionary features. But Lee said something that hit different - your customer needs to be Luke Skywalker. You're just Yoda, guiding them along.
Tune in to find out about:
✅ Why taking people from "9 to 20" beats incremental improvements from "9 to 10"
✅ The framework Lee used to convince construction crews that iPads weren't "voodoo"
✅ How to tell stories that actually connect (hint: it's about project managers lying awake at night, not your feature list)
✅ Why the best customer stories need tension and conflict (even though corporate hates that)
The reality is, there's so much noise in AEC tech right now. If you can't tell a story that makes people feel understood, you're just another vendor promising productivity.
Watch the full episode now. Link in the comments!
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:48 The Importance of Storytelling in Business
13:32 Navigating the AEC Technology Landscape
21:44 Crafting Compelling Presentations
27:22 Building a Storytelling Framework
31:13 Transforming Customer Stories into Success
37:28 The Human Element in AI
42:11 Understanding Personas in Storytelling
44:26 Frameworks for Effective Storytelling
53:01 Building Conflict and Tension in Stories