Labor cost rarely presents itself as a clear, early warning. By the time it shows up in financials, the underlying issue has already compounded.
For a scaling CEO, this creates a structural blind spot. You are managing one of your largest cost centers through delayed summaries, secondhand reporting, and assumptions about how work is actually happening in the field. The numbers arrive clean. The reality behind them does not.
Albert Bou Fadel’s experience exposes the gap. The problem is not that CEOs ignore labor cost. It’s that the signal they rely on is incomplete, delayed, and often untrustworthy. By the time it becomes visible, the margin damage is already done.
Labor behaves differently from almost every other cost input in a business.
It cannot be stored, standardized, or controlled in the same way as inventory or materials. It is dynamic, human, and context-dependent. In construction, that complexity compounds: distributed job sites, variable supervision, environmental conditions, and shifting crew dynamics.
But the real issue is not complexity alone. It’s distance.
The people responsible for cost accountability are physically and operationally removed from where labor is actually happening. Time is recorded in the field, interpreted by intermediaries, and only later surfaces in financial reporting.
That distance creates a false sense of visibility. As Bou Fadel put it:
“We had information, but we never had insight.”
The data exists. The understanding does not.
Most companies do not lack labor data. They lack decision-grade visibility.
Large datasets—timesheets, payroll logs, job cost reports—create the appearance of control. But they are typically:
This creates a predictable failure pattern.
Executives review reports that appear complete but cannot answer the only questions that matter:
Without those answers, the numbers become descriptive, not actionable.
The result is delayed recognition. Cost drift continues unnoticed until it crosses a threshold that shows up financially—at which point it is too late to correct without absorbing the loss.
Even when CEOs understand that labor is variable, they tend to underestimate how quickly small inefficiencies compound.
The intuition is linear: a few extra hours here and there. The reality is nonlinear.
“Labor costs creeps way faster than you think.”
Overtime accelerates the problem. One additional hour is not one additional unit of cost:
“Every hour you spend more, you're costing me a dollar and a half.”
“You're not adding an hour, you're adding an hour and a half.”
That multiplier effect breaks the margin model entirely:
“There's no margin in the world that will make it up.”
What looks like minor inefficiency at the task level becomes material loss at the project level. By the time it surfaces in aggregate reporting, the underlying drivers have already repeated dozens or hundreds of times.
The failure does not begin in reporting. It begins at the point of data creation.
Bou Fadel’s breaking point illustrates this clearly. A fully staffed job site on paper turned out to be nearly empty in reality. Time had been recorded. Work had not been done.
The issue was not a lack of systems. It was a lack of trustworthy inputs.
“If you keep the vault open, people will take the gold.”
When the process for capturing labor data is loose, the system invites distortion—whether intentional or not. And once that distortion enters the system, everything downstream inherits it: payroll, forecasting, job costing, and ultimately executive decision-making.
At that point, the CEO is not managing labor cost. They are managing a version of it.
The correction is not incremental improvement in reporting. It is a change in the standard of data itself.
Bou Fadel’s requirement was explicit:
“I needed my data to be court ready.”
That standard forces a different operating model.
Anything less leaves room for interpretation—and therefore error.
This is not about technology as a feature. It is about eliminating ambiguity at the point where cost is created.
Most organizations treat labor cost as a reporting problem. The focus is on summarizing what happened.
The shift Bou Fadel describes is to treat it as a signal problem.
A signal is only useful if it is:
Without those conditions, leadership operates on lagging indicators. Decisions become reactive, not corrective.
With them, labor cost becomes something that can be actively managed in execution—not just explained after the fact.
The implication is not that CEOs need more dashboards or more detailed reports. It is that they need to question whether the underlying signal is valid at all.
If the data cannot withstand scrutiny at its source, no amount of aggregation will fix it.
This reframes the role of leadership in cost control:
The difference is timing. One approach reacts to cost after it occurs. The other intervenes while it is being created.
Labor cost does not fail all at once. It drifts.
That drift is visible early—but only if the signal is clear enough to detect it. Most organizations miss it because they rely on systems that were not designed to produce that level of clarity.
Bou Fadel’s experience is not about construction specifically. It is about a broader pattern: when the data behind a core operating cost is delayed, incomplete, or unreliable, leadership loses the ability to act in time.
By the time the numbers look wrong, they are already correct.
The question for a CEO is not whether labor cost is under control. It is whether the signal they are using to judge it can be trusted at all.
Albert Bou Fadel is the Founder and CEO of SmartBarrel, a labor management and efficiency platform built for construction. He developed the system after firsthand experience managing labor cost failures in the field, where unreliable data and delayed visibility made cost control nearly impossible.
Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
00:00 Intro Hook: Labor Costs & “Court-Ready” Data
00:14 Welcome to The Breakout CEO Podcast
01:27 What “Buddy Punching” Really Means in Construction
03:57 The Friday Payroll Fraud That Changed Everything
06:49 Why Labor Theft Happens So Easily on Job Sites
09:49 How Overtime Quietly Destroys Profit Margins
14:24 Construction Culture, Leadership & Crew Dynamics
16:52 From Glazing Contractor to Startup Founder
21:07 What SmartBarrel Actually Does
23:23 Building the First Prototype in a Miami Beach Bedroom
27:44 Turning a DIY Tool Into a Real Business
29:08 Surviving COVID by Reinventing the Product
35:11 Leadership Lessons, Risk-Taking & Building the Future
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Albert Bou Fadel (00:00.11)
Labor costs, it creeps way faster than you think. We had information, but we never had insight. Every hour you spend more, you're costing me a dollar and a half. I'm not adding an hour, I'm adding an hour and a half. There's no margin in the world that would make it up. I needed my data to be court ready.
Jeff Holman (00:14.22)
Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I'm here with Albert Bufidel. Albert, welcome to the show.
Albert Bou Fadel (00:21.294)
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Jeff Holman (00:24.366)
I'm so glad to have you. You Albert was you were asking me at the beginning of the show or before we start before we hit record, you know, why do you do this, Jeff? And I've that a few times. So I don't want to take away time from our conversation, but I want the audience to know that I do this because I'm an entrepreneur at heart and I love hearing the stories of other entrepreneurs. I'm also an attorney and I hear I hear and see things behind closed doors that I know sometimes other CEOs don't get to experience. You CEOs are building businesses and they feel like they're alone.
They feel like nobody else is going through what they're going through when in fact that's not true, CEOs are going down the same journey most of the time. They're experiencing the same problems, solving the same issues. And I see some of that, so this show exists just so we can share that with people. Albert's not a client, so anything we talk about here isn't confidential. so we feel like we can have a free and open conversation. So Albert, thanks for letting me take a minute to just explain that to the audience.
I'm glad you asked me that question before we started recording.
Albert Bou Fadel (01:26.25)
Of course.
Jeff Holman (01:27.586)
So Albert, you're with Smart Barrels. Let me say that again so that I don't mess it up too bad. SmartBarrels.io, right? And you've got an interesting story, but I want to start with something because I think I know where the word Smart Barrels comes from. But before I get to that, I was reading, I think it was maybe on your website, on your About page, maybe one of your blog posts, I can't remember, about what was it called? Buddy Punching.
the buddy punching. I'm like, I have not heard that before. It made me think of my 15 year old son. Well, now 16 year old. He's done a little bit of friendly boxing in the neighbors basements, right? I'm like, get it. Get some headgear. Get some get some gloves. I don't want to use bare knuckle stuff, but he's he enjoyed that for a time. And I'm like, that's not that's not the type of buddy punching that you're talking about, though.
Albert Bou Fadel (02:19.466)
That's very different and I think yours is probably way more interesting and fun. mean, your son's. Mine is on the boring end. So, body punching is actually a technical term for when you have your body punch in or pinch out on your behalf. Okay. So this is basically the polite way of saying time fraud or time theft. Right. So
In construction, it's a very popular concept because you end up working in the form of a crew as a laborer, as a construction worker, you work in a structure of a crew and nature has it that you work with someone for enough hours, enough tasks, it's very physical, they end up becoming good buddies. So the natural way of when you have buddies and you guys like each other, if you have to leave a bit earlier that day for whatever reason,
maybe maliciously or not maliciously and you don't want the two hours cut off on your paycheck, you look to your buddy and you say, hey, you got me, right? You're gonna punch me out. And this is where body punching and the guy says, don't worry, go, I'm gonna sign off your hours. Where a one off here, one off there means nothing to nobody. It's not bankrupting anyone. The problem is that body punching spread very quickly into becoming an epidemic, right?
Most construction timekeeping solutions rely on a lot of manual entry and paper timesheet. And paper timesheet are insanely easy to spoof. So which creates a of a bigger epidemic of body punching issues.
Jeff Holman (03:57.25)
That makes sense. And I think the story on your website was about one day getting a phone call from somebody, a crew that was a few hours away, or not the crew, the supervisor, or somebody on site saying, hey, where's your crew? And they're like, what do mean, where are they? I can see they all punched in. mean, they have FOBs and they all, you know, swipe their FOBs. Everybody's there. He's like, nope, not here. And your story left an image with me because you said you drove. Well, maybe you can tell the story there.
Albert Bou Fadel (04:25.57)
Yeah, no, no, it's, mean, I mean, this is one story that like extracted, but I probably, I have, I mean, way more than dozens of those and everyone in the industry would like, would have just knocked their head as soon as they hear them because it's, it's such a common story. It's not even, it's there's no anomaly in it. And what happened is
So I was working as a glazing contractor, so I'm considered a subcontractor for the GCE. And one of the obligations you have towards a general contractor is a minimum headcount. You commit to a schedule, and by committing to schedules, you commit to deliverables. And part of the delivery, there's a minimum headcount that you have to maintain on the job site. So there's kind of this continuous game between the general contractor, which is in our word, our client and ourself, of how many men do you have, how many men do you have.
And you very quickly start to realize that like 20 people is a lot of people, right? If you have to go count them over like a building of 17 stories and rooms. So it's like, okay, this is lot. And sometimes you have 50 workers, 60 workers, 200, 300, the area depends on it. So this has always been a problem across the industry, but what ends up happening is you try to use those technology solutions to try to mitigate. And in that time I was testing a solution where you had like a fob, like an RFID fob where they would tap it in.
And there's also a very known phenomena where Friday afternoons are notorious for having a lot of the crew leave right after lunch, like 1, 2 p.m., and do not finish their 3, 4, or 5 p.m. shift. Meanwhile, everyone's logging in a full 8, 9, or 10-hour shift. On paper, you're getting it, but on site, it's empty. So what happened, because we were getting close to an inspection, and inspections are a big deal.
So the client is really counting the head count and make sure we have all the manpower. So it was Friday afternoon. He calls me and he says, you have nobody on site. And I'm like, there's no way we have like close to 30 people on site. like, can't see five. And it goes into back and forth. So I U-turn drive all the way back to job site, show up like a couple of hours later, cause it's very far. And then I have to go count them by hand. And by the way, when I showed up, there was nobody really on site. I had one guy with a lot of like key chains.
Albert Bou Fadel (06:34.094)
And because he knew he knew he could go and wait till like 5 p.m. and talk the whole crew out and they did this on rotation. So that was kind of like the the straw that broke the cameras back and moment for me. And then I'm like, OK, this is it enough.
Jeff Holman (06:49.366)
I can imagine you show up and the one guy there can't get any work done because he's hauling 30 keychains around in a bucket. I think you mentioned in a bucket maybe even like just put them in a bucket and then clock everybody out when you leave.
Albert Bou Fadel (07:01.934)
Yeah, the way it works is, I spent a lot of time dedicated to this problem. I tested a lot of solutions. So we were using paper and I tested a whole bunch of solutions as a client because I was a contractor. I I try to understand why they're failing. then you have to dive a bit deeper in the problem, right? So from a philosophical perspective, it's very easy to sit so far.
out and then be like, this is fraud. This is not right. Time theft is unethical. Yada, yada. Right. So it's very easy to judge. I'd be like, I'm a great man. Let me type myself on show. I would never do that. But then once you're in their shoes, right? Cause I work close enough. mean, it almost feels dumb not doing it. Like it's all, it's so easy to make those extra hours. Like why am I going to be that idiot that's going to like cut themselves off three hours that on that Wednesday for no reason. So once you start really understanding is that it's
The metaphor that I've always used is that if you have a bank and it's stacked with plates of gold, if you keep the front door and the vault always open, fully blasted open, and people start snapping some of those gold, is it the bank's fault or other people's theft? know, like, like it's both are true, but like at some point it's like, man, like when, when, the process is so loose.
And this is people's money. And then there's a disconnect between me, a little employee who's making nobody in my perspective and this giant company that is probably like cushing all the gold, which is never the case, right? Like labor costs, labor costs puts companies down all day, all night. But there's always this kind of like justification. Is it all on nobody? Like they're huge. Look how much millions of dollars they're making. What is two hours going to make? So, so, so there's kind of like a very easy and quick justification to self justify time theft.
That happens in every business, but in construction, the biggest challenge is that the workplace and the office are far apart. The employees are working in harsh environment. There's less supervision. The jobs at the site, like think of your office as a dynamic place. One day it's raining, one day... So it's like the level of control is way more complicated to implement. So you have a very loose, loose, loose setup. The office is very far, which means your manager, your owner.
Jeff Holman (08:49.846)
in every business. every
Albert Bou Fadel (09:17.869)
The payroll admin timekeeper are maybe 40, 50 miles away sometimes. It is really far. So it feels very easy to like scrap something and take it out, right? Versus different than the rest of it where there's cameras or POS system and everyone's working in the same building and HR is in the room behind you. So it just makes theft so much more attainable. And by all means, I'm not trying to justify it here. All I'm saying is that you start to understand it, right? Like 50 % of the
Jeff Holman (09:42.103)
human behavior.
Albert Bou Fadel (09:43.488)
It's very natural human behavior. then for you to be shocked that this is happening, it's almost like absurd.
Jeff Holman (09:49.102)
And if you don't help somebody have a solution, then they will at times, maybe some more than others, default to that human nature and they'll be like, you know, this is just part of, this is just what the role entails. But that has a huge impact on your business, right? Because when you're talking about construction, I've been around the real estate construction industry for a while with some family, you don't necessarily have huge margins on jobs.
8 % profit on a job maybe that's, you know, I don't know what's typical in your industries, but you know, if you're an 8 or 12 % profit, but your labor is 50 or 60 % of your costs and you have some time creep or you know, somebody punching going on that can really quickly eat into your entire market, right? a quick note about our guests. I host the breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses.
As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But client stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible. Now, let's get back to the show.
Albert Bou Fadel (11:10.126)
It eats way faster than you think. It creeps way faster than you think. Labour costs, like I am a bit too obsessed with this problem and probably to a fault, but labour is one of the most complicated assets in the world, right? In every asset class you can have, labour is an insanely complicated asset. First of all, by its nature, right? It's not inventory, it's not merch. can't like...
shelf them, you can't put them in a stock, you can't order them on demand, right? It's humans. So first of all, managing this asset has a demographic component, a religious component, a gender component, a motivation component, and what's happening in that life component, blah, blah, blah. And then you have like hundreds of them, right? They're in the field, right? Number one. Number two, especially in construction, you have those group of workers that are being managed by another
ex-worker that the foreman was technically a worker a few weeks or months back. So now he's their manager. There's all sorts of leadership component that nobody's equipped to do. Right. I like you, Jeff. I was hanging drywall with you. Now I run you. You're your crew. So if you ask for a favor, am I going to be the asshole who says no? I going to say no? I'm going to cheat with you. So like there's a whole, like whole ecosystem of training that people do in their entire career that you're just throwing on people left and right.
Right. And the third one, which everyone underestimates it's probably, I haven't researched enough to know if it's the only one, but I think it's one of the few assets where you have negative economic of scale. Everything else you use off, you get discounts. I buy a hundred doors. It's more expensive than a thousand doors and two thousand doors. Everything you go well, labor hours, the more you consume, the more you go into overtime and double time.
So it's one of the only assets. Yeah. So it's not like, know what, Jeff, I'm going to use 200 of your hours. You're to be like, amazing. You're going to pay me way more than using 40 at regular, right? The more you work, the more you cost me. So now put all this mix together. You have a very complicated asset that I don't know what drives you. Maybe you're money driven, maybe you're theft driven, maybe you're just a bully. Maybe you have a chip on your shoulder. On top of it, I'm throwing a manager who is winging it at best. He doesn't know if he has to be your friend.
Albert Bou Fadel (13:34.03)
or your enemy be strict. All his psychologically complexes are showing up in his leadership skill and like, Oh boy, we have to figure out really quick. Third, I need you to work just enough. need you to take the exact amount of hours to get that door hung and get the fuck out. I'm sorry, because every hour you spend more, you're costing me a dollar and a half to our end too. So going back to the margin, I'm budgeted this margin on 300, 400, 600 hours a month, whatever.
Every hour extra, if it taps into overtime, I'm not adding an hour, I'm adding an hour and a half. And in some cases, two hours extra. So you go from 400 to 600 way faster than you think. You know, like you're not going from a hundred hour to one oh six. You're going to like 50 % more because in dollar value and there's no way, there's no margin in the world that will make it up. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (14:24.642)
And then you put all those factors inside the context of union work and non-union work and different states, geographies, different state rules and federal rules about employment. is, yeah, labor is not easy, not easy in any business, but I would think that a lot of people would say and agree that in the construction industry and some other industries like that, you probably have a lot more dynamic variability, we'll call it, in the personalities.
and attitudes that you're dealing with. it's maybe a little bit more volatile in a lack of stability sense.
Albert Bou Fadel (15:00.994)
Yeah, it's a very, it's a very unique demographic and, they're fantastic. Anyone who's worked like close to construction for a number of years, they struggle going to any other industry, because there's a level of transparency, brute honesty, no bullshit, no politics that rather, once you get used to it, it's like very hard to go back into like in corporate environment. You struggle. You're like, can't.
It's, but also like pros and cons, right? Like this also brutal, honestly, blah, blah. Gives you a whole set of problems. think of construction as the civil version of the army. Right. It's a lot of like outdoors danger. People die on the job. Like one mistake you can kill or kill someone else. Like those happen all day. mean, outside supporters, then she loves even smaller. can slip from the roof. Like you have to be cautious. You show up drunk on the job site. can like injure other people.
There's a certain amount of like life threat and seriousness, but there's also a lot of like camaraderie. You're working with day, night, rain, mud, dust, that are of course not shooting or getting shot at, but it's just one level below. then you go all the way down. Exactly. I mean, equipment, can be pulling back a truck. can like kill three people by mistake. Like it's a lot of heavy equipment, lot of cranes, things going up, going down. So you'd better know what you're doing.
Jeff Holman (16:08.846)
machine
Albert Bou Fadel (16:21.558)
You can see people who work together through 18 months on a project, they're bonded. They will forever remember those days and the stuff they had and whatnot. I think it's an amazing industry, it's an amazing asset. I think it just lacked the tools because a lot of people, what they're trying to do is bring a technology solution from learnings they did in an office, in a shop, in a warehouse, in a restaurant, manufacturing, putting construction, and this was not translatable at all. You don't take this and put it here and expect it to work.
It has to be curated for construction from the ground.
Jeff Holman (16:52.674)
Well, this is probably why the business that you built is working so well. mean, you've come from the inside, right? You clearly have a lot of expertise and experience in the construction industries. Were you looking for a way to transition into becoming your own business owner? how did you go from, I think you said you were a glazer, right, at one point? How did you go from being a glazer into starting this company?
Albert Bou Fadel (17:20.013)
A lot of things happen at the same time. One is the company that was working for, that had sponsored me and brought me in was getting acquired by a PE firm. And I wasn't sure if this is going to be like, you know, know how it is. Like there's PE acquisition. I don't know it's going to be like, it's going to be my future plan here. If I'm going to stick with it, not stick with it. So I was like, okay, what is, would be my next move? Should I go like and start my own contracting business? Should I think about it? But then even the slightest idea of me like,
having my own like glazing business, contracting business, whatever, like labor costs would like make me sweat. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (17:56.034)
So you weren't the we the owner when this P firm came in or you're you're just on the team. Okay
Albert Bou Fadel (18:01.71)
I was just on the team. was just like a project manager. was just on the team. But I was very fortunate. I reported to like the VP and the owners direct. So was like smaller kind of like business. mean, it was sizable, I just fortunately I was, I was in a good
Jeff Holman (18:15.822)
And you were, they kept you informed probably as things were moving.
Albert Bou Fadel (18:22.028)
Yeah, no, no, I was very much looked in and what I was thinking, okay, we'll be like smart next step. was like, but the minute I would think of, maybe I could pursue this, just the anxiety outfield from like labor management. like, can't, I can't like, cause what you just said, like I can't run a business where I get, bankrupt any month.
Jeff Holman (18:42.894)
had you had when you were when you were with that company had you been a manager had did you have the did you have to manage other people and so you you saw this from it not just a worker standpoint but also the managerial standpoint.
Albert Bou Fadel (18:54.958)
Yeah, no, no, of course I saw it and I would have like a lot of like financial conversation of like, is this project in red? Why would you labor costs so high? Why did you? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know for many reasons why I don't know. Like I know what it's at, but I don't know. I don't know if it's like because of Jeff specifically, I don't know if it's because of this crew specifically. I don't want to go about this floor. We, the data is very like murky and bulky and high level. Like, so there's not a lot of like insights. So you have information, but you don't have insights.
And there's a big difference between the two. Like I can give you an Excel sheet that has 80 tabs and 200,000 rows. There's a lot of data. There's lot of information, but is there insights? Can I take anything out of it? And we had information, but we never had insight. And then the quality of the information was also questionable. Right. If you saw, say, okay, this is a great Excel Albert you just sent me. Who put this together? This guy began, he just typed it all in. Yup. I'm like, is he credible? guy like, do you trust what you know what I mean? Like,
So this was kind of like the thought process. It's always kind of like, we don't know. Like we think, but we don't know. And that was the starting point behind SmartBear. Like I wanted something that, I mean, solves many, many different problems. But one of them is that no matter how far I go in the chain, the data, I call it court ready. I needed my data to be, I can print it, walk to court, slam it on a desk and be like, stunned. Like I every data point you want.
So there's no need to have a negotiation because labor law is very complicated and then workers sue. So that's an order to do this in order to achieve this. had to win at the worker level. I had to make sure the first data point that is ever created in the system is coming from the field with the worker directly. That's why we built a piece of hardware. That's why we did the whole biometrics facial scanning. That's why we did the excuse free. So you can check in even if you show up with boots, boxers and hard hat. I need nothing from.
Even if you haven't been managed by anyone, even if you're the first one on the job site before even the temp generator is turned on, even if the last one sync till 2 a.m. I needed all this data being captured and then build tons of workflows around it to basically populate and enrich the data to basically keep building this insight.
Jeff Holman (21:07.288)
Well, let's pause there just because I want to make sure because we haven't really explained what your product is. I think you're getting into it and I love it and I have tons of questions, but let's pause and just explain the product as you created it.
Albert Bou Fadel (21:23.49)
Yeah. So, so, so the high, the high level, the high level value proposition is smart better in a nutshell is a labor management and labor efficiency platform for construction. Right. That's, that's what we are. And in order to build this like big, grandiose umbrella, where I can give you all the insight about the workers, we have to zoom in all the way down to the first, to the data collection at its source and the way from, yeah. And the way we build this is we built our own time clocks.
Jeff Holman (21:47.746)
source where it from.
Albert Bou Fadel (21:52.45)
The start point and end point of the worker's day is by clocking in in the morning and clocking out in the afternoon. So we ended up and in order to achieve all the scenarios, I'm inside a building, I'm in a solar farm, I have power, I don't have power, there's internet, there's no internet, yada, yada, yada. We built our own time clock, which is biometrically powered, but has also solar powered, has its own cellular connection built in, 100 % weatherproof, fully magnetic gets being installed.
You can deploy them on any job site and the pitch is you can turn any spot on your job site into a biometric time clock in sub five minutes. Wow. Needs nothing right? No run IT, no run nothing. can throw it through a solar panel and that's it. It stays in the field for 18 months. now the workers.
Jeff Holman (22:40.046)
throw it on a barrel, right? I mean, that's where the word comes from, right? just...
Albert Bou Fadel (22:43.786)
Yeah, so the better so we don't have this anymore That's the funny part is the original version of the device sat on top of orange and white barricade So those orange weren't barrels that you see on the highway, you you're driving on how you see those cones So this was the first version we ever built was a big time clock that was screwed on top of those barrels and then which basically meant that it made the better spark because without just be a plastic dumb bear that was original version, but as technology goes we just
kept iterating and now we have much smaller compact like yet powerful box. But we kept the name just because of the story because the original one was a smart barrel and that's kind of how it all started.
Jeff Holman (23:23.342)
That's a unique name. Had you built something like this before? I I don't think we've made the connection between you being a glazer into going out and designing and building hardware for labor management in the field. is like, what prompted you to do this? This is not a natural path for people.
Albert Bou Fadel (23:41.878)
It's not natural at all. actually, I had identified the problem in the construction. I procured a bunch of technology solutions and they were all like crew time entry where the foreman has to type things into a screen. But you still needed the paper to copy them into the screen. It felt like a leap in digitization, but there was still like all the flaws that I had in the pure data. was just transferring them to a screen.
Jeff Holman (24:08.738)
that you weren't getting it from the source still. Yeah.
Albert Bou Fadel (24:11.234)
those at all. I had like a gatekeeper, but it wasn't fully paper. Now I have favor and the digital. So it feels like artificial, like a leap. Yeah. But at end of the day, the source of the information is still as crappy as it was. and, and I figured I'm just going to build one for me. Yeah. So spent a year literally like every day at night after construction, like watching YouTube. This is pre AI, right? So I wish I wish it was now, but I just watch YouTube and I self taught like
coding and electronics. in my bedroom, I was able to build my own prototype.
Jeff Holman (24:46.188)
Wait, were you like, were you like soldering things together in your...
Albert Bou Fadel (24:50.302)
man, like the running joke is that my bedroom in Miami Beach, if someone had walked in and like shot a video, I'll be on the news. Like I'll be, they'll be like this Middle Eastern guy is up to no good. Like, I know what he's doing in his bedroom. Yeah. So no, I, I, yeah, I had soldering, I had solar panels, I had batteries, I had electronics, had like the typical screens and I'm coding at night. I'm trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was crappy, but it worked enough.
to give me, so what this prototype, so you had mentioned about some moments, pivotal moments. Pivotal moment number one is when I had this prototype and it was really crappy. It was like an electric junction box. had taped orange. I would put it in the field, test it out. I couldn't figure out how to make it connect to modem. So had to hotspot from my phone next to it. But I would get the workers to punch in, punch out and get this data. And then I would polish it. I'm like, oh my God, I can do my time sheets now.
five minutes a week. It just takes me like half the day or sometimes the whole day.
Jeff Holman (25:53.324)
Yeah.
Albert Bou Fadel (25:56.302)
And the biggest moment is when another trade contractor on site comes to me and says, where did you get this? I want one.
Jeff Holman (26:05.9)
despite the fact that it was taped together and he's like literally
Albert Bou Fadel (26:10.06)
I need like a high school, like a, like a middle school project. And, and, and this moment, like I still remember it insanely vividly because two things had happened this moment. One is I couldn't believe that this guy without asking like a lot of questions understood what it does and the value. Like, remember this was like, it's primitive thought and he really understood like, you solve this, my payroll is going to be easy. So it seems this is working. I see on your screen what you're seeing on your iPad. I want this. Wow.
The second thing is that I don't know how to do two of these. It took me a year to build this one. You understand? And I'm like, what do mean to, I don't even know how to like build two of these. Like I don't know how to clone them. Like it's, know, like you're building a house and someone says, can I have one? What do you mean one copy paste? I don't know. I'm going to rebuild a house. And that's when I like remember driving back home and I'm like, I think I need to turn this into a business because like I had a different mindset. It was a tool that I was building for me. Yeah.
Like it was a tool that I wanted for me to make my life better. And then this was a tipping moment when I'm like, I need to figure out like pricing and figure out how to like make 10 of these. Like remember not hundreds of the 10, like how can I make 10 of these? Uh, and this expired like whole process and spent the whole weekend like going on Excel and like, what pricing model should I have? Like what would pay for it? Should I sell it for 10,000 one time fee? Like 1000, like what, know, like it was
Jeff Holman (27:34.648)
single business question that like you're trying to come up with the whole business model for the next 20 years.
Albert Bou Fadel (27:40.522)
In five minutes.
Jeff Holman (27:44.546)
Well, so I mean, that's an amazing moment, right? When someone says, wait a second, I want that. even if you, especially if you hadn't built your device for, you know, showing people and trying to sell to people, it's just like, no, there's a, there's what I, there's what I use. Cause it, cause what I, what's out there didn't work well. And so someone coming up, that's, that's an amazing, amazing moment. how long did it take you to go from that weekend to selling your first unit to him?
Albert Bou Fadel (28:13.132)
Maybe like two months. No, yeah. no, we, yeah, we moved fast. Maybe in two months I had a device with him. It was, but I mean, it was a mess. Like it was, those are like early, early prototypes. this was like, was still a one man band. Like there was nobody else. And then I had to like hire someone to rewrite the whole code. mean, it's chapters and chaps and chapters after that.
Jeff Holman (28:37.166)
So the normal process that people go through. you're not a huge company and you're like, I'm going to come out with a new piece of software, a new piece of hardware, a new consumer product, like it's a messy process. It just is.
Albert Bou Fadel (28:52.13)
The same MSC for sure.
Jeff Holman (28:54.146)
Well, so you started selling these, you know, what would you say has been the biggest pivotal moment since that time when you realized somebody else might want to buy this?
Albert Bou Fadel (29:08.086)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot, there's tons of like pivotal moment as like a CEO or as like an entrepreneur in the business. A lot of times we were like very close to being like shut down. For instance, COVID happened and so we have those now devices that people put in their phone number, get their picture taken, like they biometrically checked, yada yada. And then COVID happened and we don't know if the industry is going to stay open and there is no chance in the world where I'm going to have 30, 40 workers.
interact with the same keypad. This is when everything's so contagious. So within like six weeks, had to, literally six weeks, had to spin out a thermometer for head reader, a touchless solution, and blah, blah, blah. Those were like a lot of moments where you go from like zero to hero in like, like no time. Like this was Survivor. This was like if we missed it, because this was, we were just in Florida. We were operating only in Florida at a time. And we had maybe like 20, 25 clients.
We were like a team of six or seven and we wake up one Monday, March 16th, which happens to be a day after my birthday, 2020, and all our devices are offline and I'm getting emails from all my clients saying, hey, how can we return them? I'm not having all my guys exchange the keypad.
Jeff Holman (30:26.23)
return that so not even just we're not using why just want to return it to you.
Albert Bou Fadel (30:30.158)
Because like, how can you have like, think of an ATM machine. How can you have 20 people sneeze and like, if one, they contagious the whole crew, right? This was COVID and contagious and the rest, like we can't use them. So please return them.
Jeff Holman (30:43.17)
And you can't just tell them, use some wipes and wipe them down.
Albert Bou Fadel (30:46.574)
Oh man, I went, I did all of this. bought a barrels of aloe vera gel with alcohol and we were making our own like sanitizer cause they were out of like stock. It was insane. But clients were like, listen, like too much risk. I can deal with it. And we had to build the case of like, but paper is also risky. So we're going to go back to yada yada yada. But anyways, we said, can you hold off give us like two months, don't pay anything. We're figuring something out.
And we went like crazy and we built like a thermometer forehead scanner and we built like an RFID. This is where the RFID came from, like the tag. And we released a touch free so they would ship them to us. We would retrofit them and ship it back. within like three months we were back in business. Like we went to like a pause and then back and then we started growing because we became like a safety tool. So we became like, so people would basically stop hiring security guards. I don't know if you remember security guards with the guns.
So they would have like a security guard on every job site with like mask and a thermometer and then check everyone on their forehead before they can exercise. That was like a CDC to see if they don't have
Jeff Holman (31:56.616)
I didn't run into that, you know, I've experienced that going through some foreign airports. arrive in the country and they take your thermometer, take your temperature as you walk by. So what did you learn from that experience? mean, that's a, you know, an crap moment, clearly. Like, how did your team handle that? Or who was there with you to help you get through that moment?
Albert Bou Fadel (32:02.734)
Yeah, that hit the-
Albert Bou Fadel (32:18.658)
The whole team was fantastic. mean, people were going through their own, I mean, existential crisis, right? This was like, is this big deal? It's not a big deal. It's the end of the world. I remember early days, like nobody knew what that meant and the airports are shutting down. I think, think, I think the, the two decisions that I took at that moment that I think,
I've been really kind of attached to and I replicate them every time that is necessary is, uh, we're all in this together. There's no termination. There's no fighting. If we're cutting salary, we're all going to cut them slowly until we all are our jobs. I remember writing a very big sec message saying like, that's the direction we're taking. Uh, I'm not going to cut costs left and right. Those two people lose, even though we're small, but like, it's going to be all of us together. Um, so nobody had their kind of to protect their back. Uh, it was all like, and I'm like,
I need for the next three months to focus on nothing, but deliver. Like nothing else matters. This is only thing we can control. Let's focus on what we can control. I can control airports. can control an epidemic. I can control if we're going to be dead or not. Like this out of my control. What we can control is the output you can do. So I want every brain cell on that front. So one, I secured kind of like the job security. I'm like, listen, we're all in this together. So
Let's go all in and the second one, let's focus on what we control. And we had a session and the only thing we could control is our piece of hardware and putting sensors in it. And I'm like, that's the only thing that we're going to focus on.
Jeff Holman (33:51.982)
That's really interesting. We talked a little bit before in our icebreaker questions about sailing and how you can't control all those external, so many external factors, right? All you can do is say, hey, where am I trying to go? What equipment do I have? And how do I manage this equipment to try to get to where I'm going? So it sounds like there's some real parallels there.
Albert Bou Fadel (34:10.414)
That's why I agree. And I think that's why probably there's a big, there's a big parallel in being Lincoln sailing a boat because yeah, you have what you have. You have a bit of knowledge, you have a bit of equipment, outside variables you don't control. When the changes like wind can move 90 degrees and like slip off a second tide moves currents move, you go up, you go down. You control nothing, but you still want to go to the destination you want to go to. So it's on you to navigate those resources.
and make it there, right? You can't be like, I'm going to wait till the winter as well. You can wait forever. And I think this has, this mindset has saved me personally and saved the business few different times that just focus on what you can control. Nothing else matters. And you'd be surprised how much outside elements like consume you sometimes. Like you sit on the news and you're trying to think which airport they're going to close. Why does that? You can't control any of this. Just focus on the elements you control.
Maybe it's an escape mechanism, but it works.
Jeff Holman (35:11.39)
Well, I mean, if you can't control, I will admit, and I do this in work and in family to some degree, if you can't control it, worrying about it isn't necessarily a healthy thing for you, right? There are other healthier activities that you can engage in that actually have positive benefit than worrying about something that you can't control whatsoever. So, well, I'm curious from this experience, what would you tell somebody else who's...
you know, a CEO in a new company, whether they've built their own product or doing something else, who runs into these issues? Is it just simply, hey, you know, recognize that you can't control everything? Or are there a couple things that you would tell them? You know what, I've been there. Let me share some insights with you.
Albert Bou Fadel (35:55.82)
Yeah, it's way easier said than done for sure. And then being an outside, like you're not like drowning in those emotions. But from an outsider, it's way worse in your head than what it is. And I learned this and the first time I really saw this in real life, like vividly is when I went for the first time skydiving. Yeah. And I remember for like
four hours before the sky dies, my anxiety kept going worse and worse and worse. And I'm playing all sorts of scenarios and we're taking off and now we're in the plane. And I'm really, my anxiety is like, what if this, what if that they opening the door and I have jumped and then you really like, like, like for miserable hours, miserable hours. I'm really like, not in my mind. I'm freaking out. And then the whole jump was sub a minute, sub a minute. So let's assume it would have been a negative outcome, right?
Like the whole jump was sub a minute and I was freaking out for like four hours. Even with the worst case scenario, I lost those four hours for no reason. It was like such a moment when I, when I touched the ground, I'm like, that was so dumb. Like it was sub, it was sub a minute. The whole thing was like, I'm like, that's it. like, yup. I'm like, you know, I just wasted like four hours. I couldn't speak to a human. was like in my mind and I think in business, same thing. Sometimes you have a decision, you have an incident and you overstress it over months.
That is probably way worse than the whole impact itself. it just like, you know what mean? So, it's way easier said than done all day, all night. But I think I try to kind of put myself in this mindset. So when I went through this COVID, yeah, when I said like three months, we don't have a business, don't have a business. But let's give it our all. Let's be smart about it. And let's, let's focus on what we can control. Like I don't want to lose the business. And because I focus on the news or on the hospital statistics or
Jeff Holman (37:29.698)
Yeah.
Albert Bou Fadel (37:46.336)
or on, you know what mean? Like let's focus on what we control and like have this focused vision. Then you're okay with the output. I think this is the problem. Regret is what eats people alive.
Jeff Holman (37:56.674)
love that. And I think sometimes also just, I mean, the impact can be short lived, but implementing the solution can be a lot quicker than worrying about it too sometimes. You just feel like we worry about it for weeks and then we're like, why didn't I just take three hours and get this thing done? So.
Albert Bou Fadel (38:10.05)
Yeah, we had a very small incident years later where our entire business was built around this box and this hardware piece. for whatever reason, the Wotify internal team comes to me and says, what if someone builds like a mobile app that does a lot of what this hardware place does? Right? So now we're going to have like a big competitor that technically can kill our business overnight. So we decided to build our own competitive product.
So we decided to build a mobile app that technically will kill our hardware business. And the whole thought process behind it was if anyone's going to kill our business, better be us. And we literally spent like 30 days, we built a whole mobile app that was like fantastic, blah, blah, blah. And we deployed it and we're like, if this is going to kill our business, then we'll know that the hardware was short-lived.
And actually ended up boosting our business. Now we have two products that are exceptionally powerful and they complement each other and we built a whole network between them, yada yada. But that was also an experiment where we're like, we could have always thought the idea for years. What if, what if, I was like, fuck, let's just do it. And whatever it is, what is, we'll deal with the consequences. the box cannot hold itself, the value of piece of hardware can be substituted by an iPad, then iPad it is. Then we go that route and we figure out.
But it was a big huge bet at the moment and it panned out nothing like we had expected. We thought we were going to left or right, we ended up going in the middle. So just do it.
Jeff Holman (39:41.71)
And you don't know that till you're halfway down the path.
Albert Bou Fadel (39:45.653)
Even way past it. It's like you the dots always looking backwards. So it was looking backwards like, oh wow, that was actually brilliant. that. It's like genius in hindsight. Yeah, genius in hindsight.
Jeff Holman (39:57.13)
I love that. Well, Albert, this has been fantastic. I hate to even cut the conversation off, but I love that you've come on and shared some insights and that you've found success in your business and that you're willing to share not just the insights, but the moments, right, that you've been through. Because as we talked at the beginning, a lot of people go through these moments and they can learn from your moment, but they can also maybe just be comforted sometimes in the fact that even the most successful businesses go through these moments and have to.
have to come out in end, no shortcuts. So thank you for coming on the show today.
Albert Bou Fadel (40:31.32)
Thank you for having me and it was a lot of fun and yeah, always love hearing those podcasts on the other side of it. So I'm glad, I'm glad to be here for sure.
Jeff Holman (40:39.928)
Love it. And thanks to our audience for joining us also on The Breakout CEO today. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.
Albert Bou Fadel (40:53.752)
Bye.
Jeff Holman (41:07.736)
Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.
