Good morning, everyone. It is modern craftsman Monday. It's just Tyler right here right now. I

was out in Indianapolis this week with Ken DeCost from Materia Nix partner in the millwork and

cabinet tree side of their business and Doug our producer partner at Motif. We were out in Indianapolis

so Nick recorded a podcast at home and I recorded this podcast with Ken in our hotel room which made

for a very interesting setup if you had not seen our Instagram posts reflecting that. I've met

Ken a handful of times but I was interested to sit down with him and see what his story was. Every

time that we've met it's been chaotic. They're in the middle of a work day and it's all been surface

level kind of horseshit so I was able to ask him some questions about what his journey looked like

getting to where he is now, how he wound up on the path and with the trajectory that he did,

how he ended up in construction, what his background is where he's from and then dig into what

it looks like now being a partner in a business. Before he was an employee I think he had a lot

more responsibility than your standard employee and it really the shift to being a partner really made

sense and I asked him what changed with that, what that looks like compared to what his day-to-day

operations looked like before and how it's different having some stake in the business and then

we get into some specifics with pricing and machinery and shop setup and what the future looks like

for material and Ken and the rest of the team and we also touch based on some personal stuff he

has going on. He came out with the hive notebook so that's something he talks about. He actually

hooked me up with one which I'm pretty pumped. We were talking about how it's so cool to have a notebook

and be able to write down your to-do list or you know there's so many things that you do on your

phone and I try and keep notes on my phone and it works for certain things but in the middle of

the workday there's there's just something about writing down on a notebook with a pen and paper.

It's this visceral romantic experience that I think is lost on an iPhone or you know today's

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