Todd Miller (2): I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer

of specialty metal roofing and other building materials.

Today, my co host is the illustrious, the famous, the infamous Ryan Bell.

How you doing, Ryan?

I'm doing well Todd.

How are you?

Todd Miller (2): You know, I'm doing well too.

I did have an interesting thing come up, so I had to go to the doctor this week.

And so I'm in there with the doctor and all of a sudden the nurse kind

of barges into the room and, and, you know, it's kind of surprised everybody.

And, uh, the doctor looks at the nurse and says, you know, do you need something?

And she says, yeah.

She says, there's a man in the waiting room who thinks, he's invisible.

I don't know what to do about it.

The doctor says, tell him I can't see him today.

Okay.

Okay.

a good one.

That's a good one.

I have one too, actually

What what type of cereal goes to the gym twice a day?

Todd Miller (2): I know what this is.

Am I allowed to say it?

Yeah, you should

Todd Miller (2): Shredded wheat.

Yep, good old shredded wheat joke

Todd Miller (2): Oh my goodness.

Those are good.

Okay.

Well, just to let our audience know, also, we are doing our challenge words once

again, where, each, Ryan and myself and also our guests have a secret, sensitive

word or phrase, we are challenged to work into the conversation, and you,

our audience, can be listening for peculiar things we might say, which

could happen at any moment regardless, but at the end of the show, we will

tell you whether we were successful working in our challenge words or not.

So, Ryan, good to go?

Yes.

Let's get

Todd Miller (2): it.

Okay.

So, you know, just talking to our audience.

I'm just curious as you experience life and you go into different

communities or developments.

Do you ever wonder what goes into making that community or development be cohesive

and assembled in a way that enhances the lives of those who live and work there.

Well, we're going to dig into that today by taking a look at

a thing called Master Planning.

Our guest today is Joshua Sanabria of Go Architect and Engage.

Based in Chicago, the specialty of Josh and his firm is helping, both public

and private organizations figure out how to make the most of their investments

through good planning and design.

Josh, uh, welcome to Construction Disruption.

It's a pleasure to have you here today.

Great, yeah, thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

Todd Miller (2): Well, we're looking forward to learning what your firm

is doing and what this is all about.

So I know I'm just doing a little bit of research that you're a graduate of Andrews

University in Michigan, which I got to confess I had not heard about before.

You have not, you have not heard of my college before though, so I assure you

that as well, so that's quite okay.

But Josh has a bachelor's and a master's degree in architecture,

so I'm kind of curious.

I like to ask architects this.

I'm kind of curious what drew you into this.

this field.

Is this something that hit you at a young age?

You were the kid who was always drawing things around and rearranging the

furniture, or is this something that hit you more as you approached adulthood?

Definitely a thing from childhood.

Stereotypically, I had a ton of Legos and building blocks, things like that.

I was very fortunate to be able to travel with my grandparents and things

like that and go to Europe and Asia and see ancient buildings and just

kind of walk around beautiful places.

I actually considered being a lawyer, but the moment that stands out is I

was in Barnes and Noble and I walked in the door and I immediately went

towards the architecture book section.

And as I was standing there, I thought to myself, why am I trying to do law school

when I actually just like architecture?

I should just do that as a field.

And so I switched my major one year in and was able to, get into

the like five year package that Andrew's University had and did my

master's and completed that in 2014.

Todd Miller (2): That is very cool.

So you're going in a completely different direction.

Just like, why don't I go where my passion is?

I love that.

Hey, I heard the other day that the gentleman who started or at least

kind of strongly developed Barnes and Noble passed away so, we can remember

him, he was in his eighties and we got Barnes and Noble to thank him for.

I don't remember his name.

I don't think it was Barnes or Noble as I recall.

Um, so, you know, as, as I think about you and I look at what you're doing,

I, I kind of think you would probably tell me that good design and good

built environment, good neighborhood development, good community development

is not an accident, but instead it's something that has to be approached

as a process and with intentionality.

Can you reflect a little bit on what that means to you?

Oh, definitely.

You know, things are too expensive, they take too much time to build and plan and

get approved, and you just don't come out of that situation with something that's

of high quality unless you planned ahead.

So, like you said earlier, I live in Chicago, you know, one of the

country's, largest cities, one of the older cities that has had the

opportunity to have a master plan and update that master plan literally

over the last hundred plus years.

And you do see the fruit of that planning.

For example, I live near Millennium Park, which has the Bean and a bunch

of other kind of public amenities.

All of those things came to pass because people were willing to plan

ahead and plan decades ahead and put millions of dollars into it.

So, definitely does not happen by accident, definitely takes time.

But when you think about economic benefits, civic, public health.

You know, all of those types of things, it's, it's worth doing in the long run.

Todd Miller (2): Very cool.

A few years ago, my wife and our son and I were in Chicago and took an

architectural tour, just us and a guide.

And that was just fascinating.

So, so I have to ask you, you mentioned it is the bean reopened yet?

Yeah.

The Bean is reopened.

They opened it, I think in June, they did some accessibility improvements

with ramps and stuff like that.

And I guess fixed some of the pavement, but yeah, it's all open now.

Todd Miller (2): cool.

I wasn't sure about that.

I'd read an article, I think must've been very early in the summer.

And there were people had gone to Chicago on vacation.

They were bummed because they were peeking in between cracks and

fences in order to try to see it.

Take pictures and things, but very neat.

Well, tell us a little bit, about the types of developments and projects that,

go architect that your firm works with.

sure.

So we actually work a lot with school districts who are trying to plan

ahead for the next 10, 20 years of what buildings they need to repair,

replace, or build from scratch.

And this can be anything from handling new students, let's say a new suburb is

being developed and you're expecting 500 new elementary kids, well, that's 500

kids is a whole new school, basically.

So, how do you plan ahead?

How do you convince voters that you need the money to make this happen?

All of those kinds of things need to happen years ahead of

actually building anything.

And especially years ahead of when students actually arrive.

And then the flip side is also true.

Some school districts are shrinking because housing is maybe

too expensive in the zip codes that are part of that district.

So how do we resize the facilities or what do we keep open or

close or things like that?

Which is not always an easy conversation.

In fact, it's a rarely an easy conversation.

And so our firm specializes in that facility master planning process, some of

the marketing and finance analysis, and a lot of the small parts that come together

to form that pretty long term plan.

Todd Miller (2): So I'm curious, and this is completely off script for us, but

I'm kind of curious, when you go into a, you know, a school district and they're

looking at this master plan, has there been a trend recently toward not having

multi site locations of public schools and trying to get them more centralized?

Or am I just imagining that and perhaps it's just in some of the places I've been?

You know, I have not noticed anything like that.

I would say that it really depends on where the district is.

For example, you know, here in Chicago, you have Chicago public schools, which

is a very, very large district with literally thousands of structures that

are part of the collection of facilities.

So, at this point, we're more into the replacing and maintaining discussion.

If you are in the desert of California or Texas where nobody lives there yet,

well, yeah, you're just going to build new facilities and you're going to spread

them out in a logical pattern based off of estimated or forecasted development.

So, it's going to be a completely different strategy,

completely different needs.

Thanks.

Of course, weather, you know, things like that.

We don't really build schools here where people exit the

classroom into the outdoors, but in California, that's pretty standard.

Your classroom is the door is the outdoors.

So completely different in every case, every geography.

Todd Miller (2): Yeah, that's very interesting.

And, you know, another thing as you were talking made me think so, I live

in a town of about 20, 000 and a couple of years ago, it was announced that

a Chinese company, automotive related related to electric vehicles, was

going to build a new plant in our town.

They acquired a

I don't know, 1200 acre site, something like that.

And this plant was supposed to be up in a couple of years and employ

1500 people, which, you know, we're living in a community, an area that

has very low unemployment already.

And so I'm like, you know, where are these people going to come from?

Where are they going to live all that?

But, you know, then I did naturally think.

How's the school district going to handle this?

And, I never did hear if they were, were really, prepared for that.

but the interesting thing was, this might interest you.

So they bought this land.

I can't believe they never did any core samples, but they started to do it,

to do excavation and found that the

fairly shallow under the surface is a huge bed of gravel, and they eventually

determined there was no way to fix that, and there's no way that they could get

the solid footing to build on top of, so the whole project is just stalled now

for a couple years, so yeah, interesting.

So does your firm does go architect do full building design, or are you

strictly focused on the planning and master development side of things?

Yeah.

So we don't really do any, what would you consider architecture construction

documents or anything like that?

I'm not a licensed architect in Illinois, so we wouldn't really even

be pursuing those types of projects.

And even on the master planning or urban design projects, we always come in

with a collection of partners who does things like facility assessments and

other aspects of the job.

So we're never alone and you know a huge part of the business actually

of our business is finding excellent partners to go in on these projects with.

So it's a little bit, you know, pre design, but as part of urban

planning and urban design and campus design, you are designating where a

building should be, how it connects to, you know, other resources.

You could even determine things like the square footage and the size

or the capacity of that building.

So you're, you're planning ahead without necessarily saying, You know, here are

the columns here, the doors, right?

The style is still agnostic at that

point, or the design is still agnostic.

You more just defining where it should go.

And that's pretty common when it comes to urban design.

It's pretty rare.

Even if we did some schematic, you know, here, it looks really cool.

The chances of it looking exactly like that in five years when it's

actually constructed very low.

So we can't get too

attached to the actual designs too much.

Todd Miller (2): Gotcha.

Very interesting.

So, you know, I can't.

Get this idea.

You're involved with other firms doing other disciplines.

And, you know, I, I suppose on some of these, let's take a huge school district.

I mean, you're going to have more than one firm, even working on the master plan.

I would assume.

it's possible.

Yeah.

it's possible.

Actually the very first one I worked on, it was split between four firms.

There's a larger district and we each kind of split it.

Now there are advantages and disadvantages to that.

Now, usually now we are, we'll say the prime on it.

No, it's not split between other firms.

We just have, we are part of this contractors or

subcontractors are also part of it

in that sense, but we're not necessarily splitting everything.

Todd Miller (2): I'm curious in what.

What does that collaboration look like?

Are you regularly getting with the other firms and meeting or do you

become more like a kingdom of wolves all fighting for your own individual places?

Or what does that look like?

you know, I think in our case, we don't really market

ourselves as, let's say, competition to other architecture firms.

Or to the other partners on these, these projects.

We have to work in partnership because we're each involved in a different sector

or a different part of the project.

So for example, we do a lot of community engagement, which is what that software

Engage is that you mentioned in the intro.

So

Engage is a survey software that we created to resolve some of the issues that

we were facing with community engagement.

So, You know, that's an example of we were charged to resolve that issue.

We have the software engineering expertise and energy and all that kind of stuff.

So we resolve that and then we can use that software for many other projects.

So there's not much overlap, everyone basically kind of adds some

valuable item, and then we have to collaborate on the final deliverable.

Which is usually some digital website, digital platform that has things

about, you know, finances and money and staging, like staging out the

progression of projects, things like that.

So we usually work on that also since we're more on the tech side, a

Todd Miller (2): Okay.

So I'm curious, as far as your client's experience, how might they say that their

experience differed or was better, because of your firm being involved and, and

because of the Engage, program as well?

Master plans.

So seems to be going well.

People seem to be responding well to it.

I would say the key difference is that in the end deliverable, we

have spent a lot of a lot of time.

Creating the most dynamic type of master plan.

So in prior years, you might end up with a deliverable where it's a PDF

and it's literally two or 300 pages, and it just has all the information

kind of dumped in one, but it is at the end of the day, a static object.

So.

We have programmed, invented all those kinds of stuff to make that final

deliverable much more interactive.

So now it's, for one, it's always an online platform where the

facility managers or even the public can run different scenarios.

They can see how much things will cost or might cost.

They can view things like the community engagement results and

survey results, and they can see what people wanted to prioritize.

Of course, we can put in things like video and images and, you know, the video can

add a lot of context that really isn't possible with simply an image or text.

So we just are able to add a lot more depth to the whole

pitch, to the whole package.

Because that's also an important thing is that.

You can go out and you can create a new plan for your downtown, you know,

of whatever size city you're in.

But unless you get the voters to agree, or unless you get, you know,

the public private partnership components to agree, all you did was

draw some pretty pictures, right?

It also is a marketing challenge to get everyone on the same page.

Thank you very much.

And so our value proposition is that we help you make the best pitch

possible for this or even if it's just a requirement, we make the best

pitch possible to help you do that.

So that's why we operate in such a kind of defined niche.

Hopefully it helps us do that service better.

Todd Miller (2): Interesting.

So I'm curious, it sounds like you're pulling a lot from surveys

and needs analysis type things.

Does your company actually run those or are those run by outside

firms and you just try to interpret and put the information to use?

no, a lot of the community engagement and surveying

information that's all gathered.

By us in

some capacity.

So whether that is an in person meeting that let's say the client had maybe

with, you know, investors or with let's say a school district, right?

The school district may have a meeting with teachers or with parents and then

all that data comes to us and we kind of.

Figure out how it's prioritized, or if it's us creating a survey, for

example, using Engage and sending that to thousands of people, and

that is automatically collected.

So that community engagement portion is a pretty substantial part of,

of what ends up in the final result and ends up in the prioritization,

studies and pitches, basically.

Yeah, we're key to

Todd Miller (2): I'm curious, I mean, I realize you guys don't do

the, the actual design work and so forth, but does your final report

ever include any recommendations?

Hey, you know, this seems to be a community that is very interested in

this or very, contemporary, or this seems to be a very traditional community.

Does your report ever include that to give a little bit of advice to the

actual, architecture and, and aesthetics?

Mm hmm.

Oh, definitely.

So I'll be as detailed as I can.

So let's say that you are renovating or changing your downtown, right?

Maybe it's in the Rust Belt and you want to transform it into

more of a, an area for tourism.

So what might happen is let's take a good photo, aerial photo of your downtown.

And we put it into Engage and we do a open ended sticky notes survey.

So Engage can basically make these digital sticky notes where survey takers can click

on the image and leave their note, right?

So we create this survey and we send this to everyone that's

part of your Chamber of Commerce.

Let's say it's a few hundred or a few thousand people.

And everyone is using that link.

To put their sticky notes on this site plan or photo of downtown and since

it's very qualitative data, right?

It's very open ended.

You'll get comments like, oh, we need more parking, or there's nowhere to sit,

or I wish there were more restaurants.

You know, huge variety of comments.

Oh, very open ended, all over the place.

Now, once some time has passed and we get enough, you know, survey responses

and etc, We can do a couple of things.

We can do a word cloud or use AI to create, you know, like word associations

or summaries, we could see where people placed the sticky notes on the image to

say, Oh, you know, this part of downtown has a lot of positive comments, but this

area has a lot of negative comments.

Maybe we prioritize.

The project on this particular site or around this particular site.

So once we have that very qualitative stuff, we usually would sit down with the

Chamber of Commerce or whoever the client is, kind of look through it together

just from a very high level, right?

Now, of course, we have to figure out what's the budget, what's the capacity

for the partners to make the changes.

Obviously, you're not going to be tearing down every single building, you're

not going to be, you know, wiping it, you know, from a clean slate, right?

So you have to kind of be selective.

Is it a matter of street design to maybe increase the likelihood

that restaurants can do outdoor seating, which always creates a more

lively event space kind of thing?

Is it we find incentives to develop a certain Number of plots that has

been vacant for a long time, or, you know, is it something else entirely?

Maybe it's you actually construct nothing.

And our recommendation is actually, you just incentivize

street festivals and, you know,

you you already have the good bones, but maybe you just need

a little bit of programming.

So there's all kinds of levels, right?

Then stage two of community engagement.

Now let's go back to Engage.

Let's create a second survey, but this time instead of it being qualitative,

let's try to do quantitative.

So let's say we've created a rendering of the new downtown and we've included, you

know, a new building on the vacant lot, wider with space for outdoor restaurants,

maybe decorative signing or lighting.

Let's say we've done like five different, you know, recommended projects.

Using Engage, we can put what's called action dots, and essentially that's

the image with a little dot over each of the projects that we're proposing.

So it's almost like a sticky note in reverse.

Because now when a person responds to the survey, They click on the sticky notes,

or they click on the action dot, and they can rate that project from 1 to 5 stars.

So let's say I rate the vacant land as 5, and the wide walkways as 4.

I don't really care about

decorative lighting, so that's a 2, right?

So now I have provided quantitative responses to each of the proposed changes.

Now, what that does is it eliminates the struggle of most community development

where the loudest voice always wins.

But because we can send this quantitative survey to the entire

town or the entire email list, we can average all of the scores.

So if everyone is voting one to five stars on each of those five

proposals, We can see where on average people's priorities are.

let's say it's, you know, filled out by 500 people.

And at the end, you know, the vacant lot has an average score of 4.

5.

And the lighting is, you know, 1.

5 and this, but the street improved streetwalks and restaurants.

That's a five out of five, like a whole town voted on that, right?

So now we have the quantitative data to show to the PPP, the

public private partners, right?

We can show them that, hey, most people voted that they want this.

And we can even back that up, right?

So, as part of that survey, we can ask demographic questions.

We can ask, do you live in the town?

Maybe, do you have kids?

Maybe, do you own property?

Yes or no?

Are you a rental?

And so we can kind of stack all these questions together to gather more context.

So, for example, let's say that only tourists voted for

decorative lighting, right?

Well, is that a priority or not?

Or is it maybe that, more of a blend of locals with families

voted to increase sidewalk width?

Now you have a really, really good case.

You can take that.

And put that in a PowerPoint and hand it to the mayor, hand it to somebody, you

know, as who's has the public figure.

And they can say, Hey, I, you know, 75 percent of families with kids

want us to do this to the streets.

Boom, right?

You've already helped them make a pretty dynamic, quantitative, data driven choice.

So, what the actual Wieden Street looks like will be handed to a civil engineer

or somebody else down the road, right?

And we know we'll need to find the, you know, 1.

5 million dollars or whatever it is to take and do that.

But At least we know what we're doing and we know who supports it.

And this is just a very, very long kind of detailed example of what might

happen at a project where you, you know, very little, but you know, at the end

of two, three months, you can have a lot of information that supports any

type of project that you want to do.

Sometimes it's a surprise, most times, most clients already kinda

know, but at least now you have the

Todd Miller (2): Mm.

to support your arguments.

Todd Miller (2): Has to be great information to build them, bring

to private developers, you know, that company that may want to

put a restaurant in or whatever.

So now I love the concept.

So is engage, something that, you have made available to other firms or is it

strictly proprietary to go architect?

no, no, anyone can use

it, engage by go.

com or engage by geo.

com open for anyone to use.

Yeah.

Todd Miller (2): folks, I could see it having uses for things outside

of design and, and, you know, that sort of physical planning.

I, I don't, you know, I haven't been at Zyno exactly what that looks like,

but it just seems like what you've developed could have some really,

far flung applications as well.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

It could be used for all kinds of stuff.

We've used it for marketing

where we ask a open ended question, you know, could even be like, I

don't know, what parts of this car design do you like or not,

Todd Miller (2): Mm hmm.

do you like this outfit or that really?

Can you use it for anything?

And then you can.

On your second question, you can say, ask for a person's email.

So it could be an email capture, you know, lead generation tool.

It really can be used for a lot of different stuff.

We just obviously made it for our own challenges

at first.

So we've used it the most with that.

Todd Miller (2): That's very cool.

Very neat.

So even aside from all this, you're also an author.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Oh yeah.

Just for fun, mostly, wrote a kid's book, a couple of years ago based off

of, one of my friends as, or at least at the time was one of the youngest black

female architects in the United States.

And so I was like, Hey, we should, you know, I'm gonna write a book

and I make you one of the characters and, and in the book she has a son

and he's the, the main character.

So, yeah, just stuff like that.

Photography has some chances to travel to some unique places and take some

photos and do a photography travel book.

you know, it's one of those things back in the day, I thought

GoArchitect would also be a publisher.

So, you know, books are very hard.

You have to sell tens of thousands of copies to make

any money with books.

So quickly moved past that, but an interest of mine.

Todd Miller (2): Very cool.

You're a real renaissance man.

So I'm curious, what, what is a key lesson or two that you have learned

as a, You know, a leader, a manager, a visionary, when it comes to leading

organizations, you know, doing a startup, what, what are, you know, just one or

two key, lessons maybe you've learned.

Oh,

Yeah.

You know, it's, I think you always have to be curious.

I think that's number one.

Always curious, keep your eyes open, listen, you know, we deal with

organizations that, you know, not, you know, typically think of a civic

government or a school district as huge sources of innovation, but,

you know, You know, there are all of these components that are just under

the surface and you know, if you just Brush off a little bit, right?

You'll notice all kinds of opportunities and all kind of business opportunities

So I think you only notice that if you're if you're curious, I think

too you have to You have to give it some time like We started in 2018.

I was very fortunate to have some of the previous people that I used

to work for came on as my clients.

So it was not, when I started, we weren't necessarily at zero.

But it took a long time.

It took, you know, two to three years to really get going and get the engines going

and build up a list of projects and make the website look better than just like

the one project that we had completed.

You know, so you really do need, you need investors in a way.

They don't always have to be financial investors.

They can be a client, you know, a previous boss that becomes a client.

It could be a spouse that helps support you or your family

while you build that business.

And maybe, you know, you, you're a single income household or

something or family member.

And I think that's a huge barrier for a lot of people, you know, it's like, it

really does take two to three years to really figure stuff out most of the time.

And even then that's not a guarantee.

You may not figure it out even after two or three years.

So patience is a huge part of it.

and having good partners or good investors is another part of it.

Todd Miller (2): that's good stuff.

I'm, I'm kind of curious.

So we're always kind of trying to look at the future of design

and construction and all that.

But any particular trends that you're seeing out there right now, maybe in

terms of master planning, or, you know, maybe in terms of design, even that.

it would be good for our, our listeners to have on their radar screen.

You know, I think in a way, the only trend that I

see is obvious is that people.

Expect more, you know, let's say you go back to, let's say you go way back

to post World War II, and the focus was just on building houses, responding

to, you know, men coming back from Europe, of course, the baby boom.

And we were, it was a severe shortage of housing.

And of course there were so many, so like way more than we can fit into this podcast

right now of social issues of, you know, housing policies, unfairly discriminating.

So there was just so much to be done and some decisions

were not being made properly.

And so now here we are.

You know, 70, 80 years later, and people really do expect a lot more.

They expect their downtowns to be accessible, to be friendly, to be

economically self supporting, or even beyond self supporting, you know,

they expect it to add to the place.

And that I think is a relatively, relatively, of course,

let's say it's 30, 40 year.

where people know generally what a nice place looks like or feels like, you

know, we see enough things on Instagram.

to know what beautiful spaces or at least what people perceive as beautiful spaces.

So, I think in general, there's a higher level quality of care.

There's a higher level of professional care.

Of course, the requirements around community engagement have changed.

Dramatically changed.

you don't have to go far back to there's a pretty famous figure in New York City.

you know, housing development, Robert Moses, where he just like

built stuff randomly, you know, with real no community engagement.

And there was of course, backlash to that.

it's it's expected.

It's sometimes legally required or contractually required.

So I think the trend is only going to increase where people expect more.

and you have to be dynamic in how you respond to that.

You have to back up what you do with data.

qualitative and quantitative data because each have their,

you know, their own value.

so I guess, I guess my piece of advice would be to, make sure that

you're actually improving, you know, you're not living in the past.

Todd Miller (2): You know, I think that's really interesting because one of the

things that, I often talk to our team here in manufacturing is, you know, I think the

trend is consumers are, you know, there are suddenly a couple of years ago, this

word called bespoke started being used.

You know, going around, everything was custom and, you know, typically

manufacturers don't think that way.

but I think the reality is consumers are going to start to expect it.

And, you know, someone's going to jump the shark and, and someone's got

to start to do that bespoke thing.

And suddenly everyone's going to have to, cause everyone will expect it.

So that's, that's a good advice there.

I love it.

Yeah.

Todd Miller (2): Well, this has been a great time talking to you, Josh.

very interesting.

So we're, we're close to wrapping up.

We call the business end of things.

is there anything we haven't covered yet today that you wanted to be

sure to share with our audience?

No, it's been nice to talk about things and I

guess, you know, partying pieces that Engage is free to use.

So I'm always curious to see how people use it.

They can go to the website and check it out.

Todd Miller (2): Remind me of the website again.

Engage by go.

com.

So engage B Y G O.

com.

Todd Miller (2): I have not checked it out yet.

I'm sorry to say, but I will now.

very, very fascinating.

So before we close out, we have a little something we like to do

called our rapid fire questions.

These are seven questions.

you up to the challenge of rapid fire?

let's do it.

Todd Miller (2): Okay.

Ryan, let's alternate.

You want to ask the first one?

I would love to.

Question number one, what is a product or service you've recently acquired that

was kind of a real game changer for you?

And you can't say engage on this one.

That'd be cheating.

you know, huge shout out to my project management software.

So it's very small company.

It's called Sun Sama.

S U N S A M A.

So it's a kind of task list, but it's based off of days instead of just like

projects and it's kind of, so it's like a calendar and task list combined.

Anyway, I found it and I loved it.

small team, like two person team, not a famous software

by any means, but very useful.

Todd Miller (2): Very cool.

Sun sama.

Yeah, I want to check that out.

Me

too.

Todd Miller (2): number two.

at the end of your days, what would you like to be remembered for?

At the end, at the end, and

Todd Miller (2): Way, way down the road.

yeah, way down the road.

you know, I think both in my profession, but also just in personal life, I

really do like to improve communities.

So I, you know, I'm part of a, Church community here in Chicago.

I volunteer as an art non profit.

I even am part of a rollerblading You know group that goes around on

Friday afternoons and rollerblades in the city Of course, my work is

basically mostly about community.

So I would hope in some capacity I'm remembered as somebody who Brought value

to the communities that I was part of.

Todd Miller (2): Beautiful.

Love it.

We didn't make you miss your Friday afternoon

Todd Miller (2): I thought about

no.

no.

I

mean, it's only one o'clock,

Oh, okay.

All right.

It's

a little later.

Okay, good.

Question number three, what is your biggest pet peeve?

Oh, oh man.

you know, my biggest pet peeve right now is, is the abundance of

random and not that useful AI tools.

I feel like I go onto all these tech websites and it's always,

you know, Oh, I made this AI tool to do, you know, X, Y, Z thing.

And I look at it, I'm like, well, why?

Like, did I really, did anyone really need this?

I don't, I think it's a very general AI annoyance that I'm

facing at this exact moment.

Todd Miller (2): That is good.

Although I was afraid you were going to say that your biggest pet

peeve was a random and not that useful podcasts that are out there.

But so I was glad we didn't end up there.

you know, I discovered earlier today on my lunch, I was

scrolling through Instagram while I was eating that I have a pet peeve of

people touching their computer screens.

And I don't think I've ever realized it before, but this guy was pointing

something out and he was poking his screen and it just drove me nuts.

not a touch

Drove me nuts.

Yes.

Todd Miller (2): So, so honestly, Ryan, did that drive you nuts or the potential

for fingerprints being left on his screen?

of the fingerprints that get left on it.

Todd Miller (2): I, I know you too well.

I like it.

Todd Miller (2): next question.

What is a cause that you're passionate about?

Well, I volunteer at a art nonprofit here in

town called Epic Art House.

So we have free classes for kids.

We have pottery classes, drawing, block printing, all kinds of stuff.

So I, I teach a couple of classes.

I volunteer to help find new teachers, things like that.

So Yeah, Epic Art House in Chicago is something I'm involved with a lot.

Todd Miller (2): You're giving me all kinds of things I got to look up now.

Okay.

Next question.

and maybe you've already crossed this off, but what is your bucket list vacation?

You still have one?

Oh, Bucket List vacation.

You know, I'm very fortunate, my wife and I get to travel a lot.

We just got back from Iceland, like, five days ago.

Iceland's definitely on, should be on everyone's bucket list.

It's a beautiful, beautiful country.

Cold, unsurprisingly, but there's waterfalls everywhere and sheep

and just wilderness and glaciers.

So definitely top five.

maybe it's a little bit, well, maybe not stereotypical, but it's literally ancient.

I have still not gone to Egypt and I really would like to sail down

the Nile and do that whole thing.

So.

I guess Egypt is my next one.

Todd Miller (2): Very cool.

If you could time travel to any period in time, what time period would you choose?

probably, you know, probably somewhere, ancient

Roman empire, somewhere in there.

I, you know, there's so many influences that the Romans and

Greeks had on almost everything.

Our governments are certainly architecture, design,

urban planning, social items, sports.

I mean, you name it.

So it'd be fun to kind of go back and See if it's anything like we have imagined

in movies, or just in my own mind.

Todd Miller (2): Very good.

final question.

What is your favorite book or a book that you've read recently

that you really enjoyed?

Okay, favorite book.

favorite book.

So, actually one of my favorite books, which I kind of disagree with on a

fundamental level, but it still is one of my favorites, is Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Todd Miller (2): Galaxy.

So, the premise of the book, of course, is, is that, Well, the

underlying theme is that all life is kind of random and a little bit meaningless.

And the author was, he was Douglas Adams.

He was kind of, I would go beyond atheist.

He was more, well, I don't know the term for it, but basically

he was like everything in life is kind of random and meaningless.

So we should just, you know, enjoy it.

And people travel through the universe in this book and they discover, right?

And it, it, the stereotype or the kind of famous part is

that the answer to life is 42.

And it's like, well, what does that mean?

And then farther down the series, they discover it's just 6 times 7.

So it's like, it has no actual deeper meaning.

So I read this book.

It's hilarious.

But then it also, ironically, it, Was I came out of that book

with the opposite perspective.

I was like, wait a minute.

Everything is meaningful like

So the book had the complete opposite effect on me.

It was maybe The author intended so I would put that out when it out there as

one of the more impactful books in my life

Todd Miller (2): Very cool.

Very neat.

I had to read that in college and, yeah, it was just,

psychology or philosophies class.

Todd Miller (2): yeah, it was just an assignment to me, unfortunately.

well, this

an absurd

Todd Miller (2): Well,

it has the themes.

Todd Miller (2): this has been great.

Thank you again, Josh, for joining us.

For folks who want to get in touch with you or learn more about Go

Architect or Engage, remind us again some ways they can do that.

Sure.

So they can go to engage by go.

com.

So engage B Y G O.

com.

If they want to sign up and use engage for free, they're interested more on

the urban planning and design side.

Go architect.

Todd Miller (2): Very good.

And we will put those in the show notes as well.

So we have to recap our challenge words.

Ryan, you worked yours in right off the, right off the bat.

I did.

I wasn't sure there was any way I was going to get it in if it wasn't

right at the beginning with the joke.

So, shredded wheat was my phrase, but you used it first, but then I

repeated it, so I think that counts.

Todd Miller (2): I

know it was funny when I, when I heard the setup, I'm thinking, Oh gosh.

And I don't remember if that was your word or my word.

So I thought, is he being nice to me?

So I wasn't sure what I should do.

boy.

Heh

Todd Miller (2): My phrase, which, Ryan had thrown out there, Josh had thrown out

there, I apologize, was kingdom of wolves.

I kind of worked it a little bit weird way, but

You did.

Todd Miller (2): oh gosh, Josh, did you get your, you

didn't get yours in, is that?

didn't.

Mine was run forest run.

I, I really was trying to think about, about everything with Forrest

Gump and I couldn't figure out how to like, get the word run in there.

I almost said forest

like five times, but then I was like, it's not gonna count.

Todd Miller (2): Oh, good time.

Well, thank you.

Well, thank you again.

This has been a real, I I've really enjoyed this Good time.

Yeah.

Thank you both.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

Todd Miller (2): And thank you to our audience for tuning into this

very special episode of Construction Dis Disruption with Joshua Sanabria

of Go Architect and Engage.

Check out what he's doing.

Great work.

please watch for future episodes of our podcast.

We always have great guests.

Don't forget to leave a review on.

Podcasts or thumbs up on YouTube.

until the next time we're together, though, keep on disrupting and

challenging folks, keep on looking for better ways of doing things.

And by all means have a positive impact on everyone you encounter, make them

smile, encourage them simple things we can do that really do change the world.

so God bless and take care of this is Isaiah industry signing off until the

next episode of construction disruption.