Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome to the clear impact podcast brought to you by PGT university. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Conner and I am your host.
Speaker 2 00:00:20 Our job is to make windows sexy and desirable and build that brand value with these owner developers so that they want our products in there to, uh, to drive up the value of their properties
Speaker 1 00:00:28 And our final episode in our road. So series, we had an amazing conversation with Jack Redden, our commercial market development specialist, jacks up time between sessions that he taught for our team. While in Dania beach, Jack shared a little bit about his role in working with architects and also shared about his big win at a recent poker tournament in Vegas. We're just going to record. So we are in Dania beach. This is day four of training for our team and we have a special guest. The professor is what I've heard you described. So we are sitting with Jack Redden. Thank you, Jack, for jumping in and being part of our training today.
Speaker 2 00:01:05 Oh my pleasure. Thank you. Are we making an ASM or a video? I don't know if you're familiar with those, but it's
Speaker 1 00:01:10 We are not, no, this is just an audio file for our podcast audience. And so I just met you today. I don't know anything about you. Tell me a little bit about you.
Speaker 2 00:01:20 Well, I'm proud father of four daughters, so I'll start with the personal stuff. The good stuff I live locally in Orlando. I've been a Floridian for about 13 years now, originally, uh, an upstate New York still consider myself a new Yorker at heart. I support all the New York teams, but, um, I'm progressing slowly towards, uh, being a flirt in, but yeah, I love my love. My family love my job. I can honestly say I get up every morning enthusiastic about what I do for the company. And, um, yeah, as far as, uh, my actual role with the company, I
Speaker 1 00:01:47 Was just about to get to that. What is that?
Speaker 2 00:01:50 My current job title, which hopefully will keep for awhile is a commercial market development specialist, which is just a fancy way of, um, kind of documenting the migration I I've had with this with PGT. I've been with PGT since, uh, January of 2016. I started out primarily calling on just architects in an architectural development role and, um, had some conversations with my boss at the time about basically expanding that, um, that range of audience types that I, that I interact with, ultimately with the goal of, of trying to close more projects, because I found that I was getting us specified on a pretty consistent basis, but we were, we were losing a lot of projects, uh, through the value engineering process. So I was able to get approval to kind of expand my role and change my job title from just an architectural focus. So I commercial market development specialist that kind of encapsulates basically any project influencer.
Speaker 2 00:02:38 So that could be certainly an architect or a structural engineer on the design side, on the construction side, that more often than not in the commercial world would be a general contractors that I work with. And then, um, what I like to say is, is the money portion, the owner developer, the ultimate client for both the GC and the architect is that owner developer. So I've, uh, fortunate relationships with, with major developers all across the state over the past couple of years, which are paying some, some dividends. Our, our close ratio is going up significantly as a result of having tethers into these different product influencers, not just on the design side, but also on the construction side and on the owner developer side,
Speaker 1 00:03:12 Right? Because by the time they're putting it out for bid, that's kind of too late, right? Because it needs to be specked properly in the design part.
Speaker 2 00:03:20 So, um, we, we do our diligence on the design side to make sure we're, we're recommending the best product for, to meet the performance requirements, um, potentially budgetary requirements and obviously aesthetic requirements, kind of a running joke I have with the marketing team is we want to make windows sexy because, uh, I view our competition not only as other window companies out there, but actually other things like in luxury condos that could be, you know, granite countertops or exotic wood floor, or, you know, stainless steel Sub-Zero appliances, a $5,000 Waterstone fixture. So we're competing for design budget dollars against these interior options that are pretty sexy. So we, our job is to make windows sexy and desirable and build that brand value with these owner developers so that they want our products in there to, uh, to drive up the value of their properties.
Speaker 1 00:04:04 Well, I've been in the I lab a lot because that's where my podcast studio normally lives in, unless we're out on the road, like we are this week,
Speaker 2 00:04:10 You're not going to tell Dean work that I'm calling him QR. I didn't get authored. I didn't get authorization for that. So I'm doing some James Bond references. It's totally meant to be flattering because I love Dean and his creative genius is second to none in the fenestration industry. So he, he is our resident Q at the eyelash,
Speaker 1 00:04:27 Let you break that to him, but I do really want to call him Q now, now Dean's awesome. We did a podcast and it was, it's actually one of our top listened to episodes. He's amazing. And I had no idea. I could have such an interesting conversation with an engineer. I just didn't know that that was a possible, a possible thing.
Speaker 2 00:04:47 That sounds like a loaded question. I'm not going to take the bait. I'm not taking the bait cherry. I'm not going to go to
Speaker 1 00:04:52 Nice. So, um, so we just sat through an aluminum coatings class, which I knew just a tiny, tiny bit about, but I learned a lot today, um, about the Amish standards and liquid versus powder. So that was really fascinating. So you basically are kind of an extension of the university without being part of the university team because you're hosting CPU's and using that as a way of building those relationships. Right?
Speaker 2 00:05:18 Absolutely. I do consider myself to be an extension of the PGT ICU team out there in the field. My background was in psychology and education. You mentioned the professor title. I, I like that. I think that's going to stick with me, professor Jack like that. I like that. I do love to, uh, to present and educate. So in that regard, I share very common philosophy, obviously with, uh, with you guys at the university, like I said, with the aluminum coatings that we looked out there, there's, there's a lot of information. Sometimes it's hard to make a paint exciting for an hour, but, um, yeah, I think there's some valuable nuggets of information that, that architects tend to take out of that. And ultimately it leads me to, to, to help them with their, their master specification, just to make sure their specifications are update because from a, from a liability standpoint, if they're putting specifications out there in the market that are 20, 30 years out of dates, nothing good is going to happen at that. They're going to get some, uh, attorney, um, that's going to dissect those specs and possibly call them, call them to task on, on some of the, some of the issues potentially that could happen down the road. So it really is in their own best interest to have us do a professional master spec review, just to make sure all the standards and testing and everything that's referenced in those specs is accurate. And up to 2021 standards so
Speaker 1 00:06:30 Quickly approaching 20, 22 standards. Correct. Right. And so you're familiar with all the building codes and all of that. So is that a service that you offer personally to do a master plan review? Is that what you said, master spec,
Speaker 2 00:06:41 The get spec review? Um, every, every farm is different, but most of them still have, um, uh, a master spec that they, that they pull from, which again tends to be sometimes out of date miserably. Uh, you mentioned the FPC, uh, we're about one year through they, they redo that every three years. So we're looking at the, uh, the eighth edition coming up basically two years from January 1st. So we're about one third of the way through this current code cycle for the seventh edition, just a little bit of a teaser, um,
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Speaker 2 00:07:26 I've been meeting with a lot of structural engineers over the past couple of weeks in Southeast Florida, and they did an analysis of the tragedy at Surfside with the Champlain tower collapsed. And they have basically this conglomerate group of professional engineers has put together a list of recommendations that they submitted to the FTC for possibly looking at some significant changes that are going to be coming as it relates to structural certification. Um, not just down here in the HVHC area, but also statewide, possibly looking at putting something in the FPC eighth edition for, uh, basically requirements for, for structural recertification statewide. Wow. It's got some interesting changes potentially coming in the next edition of that building code that you alluded to.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 Well, anything that we can do to prevent tragedies like that from happening in the future is worth doing
Speaker 2 00:08:10 Actually, um, after this podcast and after our next CEO, I'm actually going to tour the, um, the condo that's directly contiguous to the Champlain tower. It's a called Surfside palms. I'm going to be beating the structural engineer, Karen's engineering, and we're going to be doing the initial assessment on that one with, with myself Karen's engineering. And I've invited some of the sales team and, uh, one of our local dealers here at a given installation perspective. So it should be, um, a good opportunity to, to get out in front of that.
Speaker 1 00:08:32 That's great work. That's great work. Um, any, any fun stories you want to share before we get back to it? I know I've put you on the spot.
Speaker 2 00:08:38 Sure. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to share a fun story. It has nothing to do with windows though, if
Speaker 1 00:08:42 That's okay. I like fun stories. All right.
Speaker 2 00:08:44 So this is, um, I mentioned, I moved from New York in 2008 to Florida Orlando. Uh, I had five lifelong friends that I've had up there since grade school and don't really see them anymore. So this is probably may of this year. I'm sitting around half joking, half wine and with my wife that, you know what, I have no friends and she's like, he's was like, you're right. She's like you travel a lot. So you don't really go into an office where you can, you know, Bob, Pettit's a friend Shawn's a for, I have work friends, but I don't see them. I don't spend time with them in a, in a common area. Um, like I had a weekly poker game with my boys up in New York for 25 years. Um, which, which kind of sees the why so long story short, I'll get, I'll cut to the meat of it here.
Speaker 2 00:09:21 She brought me into the world series of poker for my birthday in October. And I have to give a shout out to, to PTI university, Patrick and Jim Heiss, um, for allowing me to achieve that dream because my birthday happened to fall in the middle of the Florida hot topics, which was six presentations that I had committed to doing previously. So Jim Heiss basically, we got approval to have Jim heist do those six events for me that allowed me to fly out to Vegas, to play in the world series of poker, which was a bucket list item of mine. And I'm happy to report that I'm in the $5 million reunion event out of 15,000 players. I came into the top 2% and cast for 2,600 bucks. Wow. At the time of my life. And actually one of my buddies from, from New York flew down and my brother flew down. So actually the three of us, three of the original five guys from, from New York played in the world series of poker. It was kind of cool. Oh, that's awesome. I have the best wife in the world. She's like, she's like, you know what, I'm going to surprise you for your birthday. But she's like, I know that you have some Florida hot topics. I just see if you can get those covered before I buy the tickets.
Speaker 1 00:10:18 I bet Jim Heiss is going to want it on, on a cut of that since he covered
Speaker 2 00:10:21 It was 10%. So yeah, we already squared up
Speaker 1 00:10:25 That doesn't surprise me at all. Uh, that's awesome. Well, it's been a great conversation, Jack. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes and I know you're hustling today and, um, just appreciate everything that you're doing for our team, for the company. And mainly
Speaker 2 00:10:39 Thank you very much, Harry. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate the invite for the podcast. Thank you for
Speaker 1 00:10:42 Thanks. Have a great day. PGT. A university is the customer education team for an entire family of brands. We began with the original, easy breeze, ports and closure lie then became PGT. America's leading brand of impact resistant windows and doors. We then added CGI CGIC WinDoor, Western windows, new south windows and echo windows and doors. We create products built to withstand major storms, keeping people safe, secure, and prepared. Our exceptional brands give you the protection you need without compromising design or functionality. PGT university is here to educate you our listener so that you can be a more informed consumer of window and door products.
