“There is a lot we can offer people if it would be easy enough, intuitive enough, integrated enough into their daily workflows. With this in mind, we built our product to be minimal in tech-savviness yet powerful.”
- Maria Khokhlova, TraceAir
Often, the best innovations are right in front of us. For Maria and the TraceAir team, combining construction and technology felt obvious yet unexplored. Their first thought was to make drone imagery accessible for job sites. As contractors move dirt and erect structures, providing updated data to key people elevates their efforts.
TraceAir is a modern map made with user-friendliness in mind. As a result, it streamlines decision-making and increases efficiency for construction professionals.
Is construction in need of technological developments like TraceAir? Can a solution like this work for your business? Get a behind-the-scenes look at an innovative idea coming to job sites near you.
Topics discussed in this interview:
To learn more visit https://www.traceair.net/ or connect with Maria on LinkedIn
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Maria Khokhlova:
:So there is a problem in the industry and I believe this is one of the root problems. Of course, over the last decades, there were incredible innovations implemented in some niches of construction. But the problem is that the majority of those solutions, they are targeting very, very narrow niche of people specifically.
Todd Miller:
:Welcome to the Construction Disruption podcast, where we uncover the future of building and remodeling. I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building materials. Today, my co-host is Seth Heckaman. How are you doing today Mr. Heckman?
Seth Heckaman:
:Doing well. How are you doing?
Todd Miller:
:Doing well also. So you kind of orchestrated a big announcement here at Isaiah Industries this week. Care to tell us what's going on?
Seth Heckaman:
:We did have a big announcement, so we were, we announced our dates for the 2023 Metal Roofing Summit. So that's the event that our team puts on every spring, bringing together the leading residential metal roofing companies from across the country, along with those companies that are interested in potentially adding metal roofing to their businesses. For a great week, you know, not full week, few days of networking, training, bringing in, you know, just great speakers who are experts in our industry on sales, marketing, leadership. Trying to keep everyone on the leading edge and and bringing everyone together to be more successful. So that is going to be April 25th through the 27th here in Dayton, Ohio. So, very excited about that. We have a great lineup of speakers already established. You are going to be joining us on the agenda to talk about the customer experience along with some other names people will recognize, like Rick McIntyre, Frank Farmer, Jim Johnson, Megan Beatty, and more. So really, really excited. We have great partners and sponsorships as well. It's going to be a great few days.
Todd Miller:
:Well, certainly last year you and Ryan and Ethan and other members of our team put together a great event. So looking forward to pulling it off again and always great to have that opportunity to kind of meet firsthand with a lot of our customers and a lot of new folks who we don't know and introduce them to this great world that we're a part of. So, looking forward to that.
Seth Heckaman:
:Yeah, absolutely. So again, it's going to be April 25th through the 27th and anyone who wants to learn more can go to the metalroofingsummit.com, metalroofingsummit.com.
Todd Miller:
:Great, thank you. Shameless plug. Well, welcome again to Construction Disruption. I'm very excited about our guest today. Today our guest is Maria Khokhlova. Maria is co-founder and chief product officer of TraceAir based in Northern California. Maria has a Ph.D. in laser physics and through TraceAir, they help land developers, home builders, contractors and others with user-friendly software that improves worksite management and process design. TraceAir helps to keep projects on schedule, if not ahead of schedule by allowing 3D topographical scans at any point during a construction project. This facilitates fast decisions as well as better communication among the workforce and also collaboration. Maria, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Maria Khokhlova:
:Sure. Thank you so much for inviting me, I'm excited.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. Well, to get us started, can you share a bit with the audience about your background as well as the need you saw out there that prompted you to start TraceAir?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Right. Well, that's a weird story because my background has nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do with construction. And it's a weird way how we came up with TraceAir. So my background is physics, so I was in academia for a while. I, well after I finished university back in Russia, in Moscow, it's a very strong school and I was fascinated to continue working in science, specifically in laser physics. I had a very strong and enthusiastic laboratory and the team that worked with me. And so I've been in science for some time and then over time, after my Ph.D. was over, I figured out that I am kind of in need of transition to somewhere where I can feel the actual impact of my efforts a little quicker, just a little bit. And that felt very, very naturally that I started to transition into IT entrepreneurship. So basically I had agreed that together with my husband actually, which is funny, the company, the software development company, it's just a traditional studio where basically I was the one, you know, like the manager of the whole team. It was a small team and I was in charge of finding the clients and then articulating their needs and things to the development team and designer's team to come up with solutions. Back then, I didn't know that this role is has a fancy name, which is a product manager or how you would call it. I didn't know that, but it was new to me. But I realized that it's really fun to really make deep dives into different businesses, understand where really things are, because sometimes people, when they talk about their day to day and their problems, that's not really what they need, right? It's sometimes what they want. And digging into that puzzle and figuring out what they really need and come up with a solution, tech-enabled solution. It was really, really a lot of fun, so I've been doing that for a while and my husband, he is an entrepreneur and he started to look into the drone industry back in 2014/15. And so the drone industry was kind of picking up that time, emerging and there was so many industries where it started to land. So he was curious about what direction they could go and we were pretty much sharing the same office, same resources. So I was merged into this activity and at that time we figured that, well, construction is definitely one of the big industries where drone technology would make a big impact. So it was just apparent that there was a low-hanging fruit there. There is lack of transparency, there is lack of polished processes in many ways, and drones can help. And so he started the company and I quickly joined with the development team together and we kind of merged those businesses and we have three other, two other co-founders; together we have four in TraceAir. And we fall in love with construction very quickly. So we all are engineers, like geeky, nerdy engineers coming from physics or mechanics, things like that. And it became apparent that many of the construction challenges could be, you know, simplified in the sense that you just add technology to that and something becomes significantly easier and smoother. So we just realized we love those things because it's really great to contribute to the basic technology that serves people. It's not like I don't want to kind of make comments here, but for example, making a new iPhone if, well, it's a marginal improvement to people's life. But construction, it is something like we all live in specific structures, right? And physical environments. We as humans, we need that. So that's the basic technology around us. And it's such a bummer that in many cases it's not equipped by technology and things that can improve the process significantly. So it's very exciting and lovely to be a part of construction in general and contribute to this improvement.
Todd Miller:
:Well, that's great to have the back story. As far as how TraceAir came to be, can you give our audience an overview of of what TraceAir does?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Well, high level, TraceAir was founded with the mission to automate construction. Again, reminder, you're talking to geeky nerds who decided, okay, well, construction for some reason doesn't look like we imagine that in our virtual games, right? When you basically click the button and you see the progress bar, how some structure raises, right. And in real life, it's significantly more complicated, a lot of steps. So the whole mission of the company is to automate and accelerate construction in general. So right now, TraceAir provides software and services to help right now to help homebuilders and their contractors accelerate the construction phase. Especially right now, the focus is on the site work, which is basically grading, utilities, pavement, urban land improvements, as well as partially the vertical stage. So as a startup, of course, we have to focus on specific geography, on a specific stage and specific niche. And with the overall mission automating the whole thing. Right now, we're focusing specifically in the U.S., specifically in the homebuilding industry, working specifically with the homeowners, the top ones, which basically build master plan communities across the US and their contractors. And so we work directly with the major homebuilders and we let them share the access to our product with the whole project team. So basically the value can be received not only by our customers who pay us, but also their teams to enable and empower the whole project team on the construction job side. And the big thing about TraceAir is that we provide the turnkey solution, which means it requires the minimal efforts from the customer to integrate that solution into the business, because that's the major challenge for all innovative solutions, right? It's so hard to integrate them, it's expensive. And many people try to do that in-house and they struggle a lot because, well, their day-to-day job site is to build, not to deal with techie stuff, right. So we decided, okay, we take on the service component as well and we handle the service part of the business, not only the software part, but also what you need in order to integrate that into your business, which is specifically the drone work. Right, because our product is dependent on collection of the data with the drone. So what's happening is basically we hire the drone contractors all across the country. They come in every week, let's say. They fly the drone, they collect the data from the construction side, they install everything that's needed for that, and then from there, we process the data. And then the customer, basically, they just get the email notification on their phone that you know, they can log in and start working with with the tools they need. So that's the turnkey solution that really helps our end users to get this value with the minimal efforts on their side.
Todd Miller:
:So it gives your clients, you know, basically very close to real-time digital imagery and dimensions and elevations and site details on their project that allows them to make better decisions and probably communicate with each other better and and make the project run, I would assume, faster and and smoother.
Maria Khokhlova:
:Absolutely, yeah, you just nailed it. So the idea is that we capture the reality and we capture it and deliver it to the customer quickly overnight. So if the drone captured the job site, let's say in the end of the working day, 4 p.m. on Thursday. Friday, 6 a.m., the team will already get the data available. And the whole product works as follows. We compare the reality as it is, right now, the conditions of the job site right now to the design, how it was designed to be. And it has all the very easy to use, very visual and intuitive tools to compare those two and kind of see what's the next step? Evaluate, measure, assess the volumes, assess the distances, and basically explain things that are usually hard to explain in construction, especially between different stakeholders. Let's say a superintendent, then the manager has to explain why on Earth the budget grew twice for the last month to a finance guy, right? It's like two different universes, which you still have to elaborate, but you need tools for that. So yeah, the product helps, you know, addressing this communication gap a lot because it's visual. You basically see what's happening and you can compare it to the design as well as all the optimization tools. So basically if you have, I don't know, 1 million cubic yards to move from cut to fill in different areas, you have pretty significant terrain on your job site. It's quite challenging to understand what's the most efficient, cheapest and quickest way to move the dirt across the job sites. So our optimization algorithms basically run mass behind and suggest several options for the superintendent showing the basic numbers, okay. These are three options which are mathematically the most optimal for the equipment you have. You choose one, you give it to your operator, you execute on that, and most likely you would be the most efficient using that.
Todd Miller:
:Wow, you all are a bunch of geeks to get this all figured out. I'm impressed, very cool. So one of the statements on your website that just really kind of blew my mind, but yet I can see it, is that labor productivity in construction has actually declined since 1968. And of course, that contrasts so much with other industries where productivity is just constantly getting better and improving. So you've kind of covered a little bit, but just what are some of the ways you think TraceAir can help to bring some productivity improvements to construction?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Yeah, yeah, totally. We were thinking about that tons, tons of time and the root cause that we see, and this is something which we put on show like this is our DNA which we want, which we try to execute on. So there is a problem in the industry and I believe this is one of the root problems being that, well, of course over the last decades there were incredible innovations implemented in some niches of construction. Especially in the engineering part, in the design part, a lot of things happening in project management as well. But the problem is that the majority of those solutions, they are targeting very, very narrow niche of people specifically. Usually, you know, engineers, highly-educated professionals in using software. So you would imagine, you know, highly you need a lot of training and coaching to basically use those solutions, right. And that means that in the majority of cases, if you look at the project team, it's only 10% of this team which is now equipped by tools and data for day-to-day decisions and steps. The rest 90, basically, it's still the same. They have to rely on their expertise and our favorite guesstimations, right? This is how it works right now. And so we were thinking, okay, well, how to address that, how to enable and empower these 90% of people. In many cases not tech savvy people who are not used to use technology in their day-to-day because, well, they are building things with their hands every day. Like what software are you talking about? But still, there is a lot we can offer them. If it would be easy enough, intuitive enough, integrated enough into their daily workflows. With this mind, we were building our product that it has to be like minimal denominator in terms of tech-savviness and it has to be as powerful as many other products could be. But they have to target very, you know, laser-focused targets to specific roles and cover this 90% of the team. So we have to enable and empower people who actually build. Not only people who design, not only people who who can spend hours in front of their powerful computers during the day to come up with a very good, balanced decision. We need to empower the foreman who has to make a decision in 5 minutes, standing in the dust of Californian hills or Colorado hills and figuring out, okay, do I still need three sets of scrapers here or do I need more because I won't fit into my schedule? So we need to target both basically, the whole team holistically. And I think this is where this aspect of visual approach is the key, so. Many solutions in the industry are coming from the aspect of numbers, spreadsheets, you know, nice UI in how the spreadsheets look like. But in fact, many, the most intuitive way for construction people is to look at maps, right? Like we're all used to look at plans and drawings, exhibits and maps, and it's visual because you can actually draw on that to understand like this is what you see in reality and this is how it looks on the map. So based on map you can actually manage your job site; you just need to empower your map. So TraceAir is, basically, it's a system in the sense where you have several informational layers on top of your most recent visual representation of your job side. So you add on to that, you know, your civil drawings, you add on to that your sequencing, you add on to that the ability to draw over that and share that easily with the other stakeholders. And it's not on paper where you basically need to, you know, get together in the trailer to discuss that. But it can be done in any channel you want. It can be done through a text, you can just send the picture or it can be done through a zoom call or or again, you know, pulling up the screen for the giant meeting and showing specifically what you're talking about. So, yeah, buildings are a tool for the people who actually build through visuals. That's how we see we can help.
Seth Heckaman:
:That's such a wise perspective, and obviously your past experience with product coordination and working with clients and going through that needs analysis and really understanding that perspective has carried over well because, you know, we see it all the time too. You know, just a new tool for the sake of having a new tool doesn't necessarily help. And just having more data without a, you know, a means to do anything with it doesn't help too much either. So bringing that holistic perspective, it makes a lot of sense and it's obvious how then it would equate to efficiency and profitability for your clients. But I'm sure they're seeing it as a competitive advantage when going out and procuring their own clients. That's a hard word for me to say, and I'm a native English speaker. Anyway, so procuring new clients themselves with that competitive advantage out in the marketplace, I would think. Is that what you're seeing? And do you have any specific stories along those lines?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Sure, of course. So there were many stories we observed. Well, we started initially to work with contractors, specifically with grading contractors in the US, which this market is very competitive. Right, like they have to struggle for for the bids. Still, they have to keep the margins because, you know, the market overall is getting tighter and tighter for the contractors, right. As many of them can no longer work because margins are too thin. So for contractors and the clients of ours who purchase that, they saw a massive ROI for them and like a competitive advantage in front of the others, is that basically awareness of your risk, which is measurable. The thing is that in construction, everyone who will tell you that we will get rid of your risk or reduce your risks in construction projects, that's nonsense because we all know that the risks, they are sometimes not dependent on the project teams. They are sometimes coming from other directions, which you never know. But knowing about them, you can stop them sometimes, but you can be on top of them, right? So being on top of them and not reacting, but being proactive in terms of them, it's a big deal, especially for a contractor. And so for them, basically what they can get is that they can start building faster with less rework because rework for them is additional costs which they have to absorb on themselves and faster. It means that, well, we usually contractors they own or rent equipment, so the utilization of their equipment is a big deal. So if they can finish up with specific project faster, that means they can put this equipment to another project and get more money there. So, you know, staying too long on the project and reworking and not always getting the change order for them, that's a problem for them, right. So things like moving dirt twice for the grading contractor, it's a big deal, right? For example, they didn't have too much of a clarity of what their scope of grading looks like. But once they have TraceAir on a regular basis, their foreman, basically a superintendent. They can strategize the tactics and strategy on how specifically to feel with this design or an upcoming design and kind of find the shortest routes and coordinate with upcoming utility contractors so that they can know who starts where and set up proper expectations with the owner. So these oral arguments make the grading contractors more competitive because once they basically come to the owner and build their own project, they say, You know, you're not only hiring an expert in the field, you're hiring an expert with radical transparency together. Because here is the solution that makes it easier for you, the owner, to understand what we are doing, how we are doing, what's our plan. You can coordinate your plans easier with that. There's transparency here, right? Less disputes. When we're doing our jobs it's easier to quantify this is how many cubic yards we've moved here and there. And those cubic yards are mathematically optimal because there are some algorithms that help us. Well, that argument is more applicable to hardcore grading jobs like heavy civil, or just where you have a lot of cubic yards to move. But even if it's pretty much straightforward, this radical transparency aspect makes them significantly more competitive in front of the owner's eyes.
Seth Heckaman:
:Radical transparency. I like that.
Todd Miller:
:You know, it seems like as as I was first thinking about this, I could see the benefit to the property owner or property developer being just speed of project. But as you talk, I see that accuracy of project comes into play as well and making sure that sites are graded and done exactly as the engineer designed and developed for proper runoff and everything that has to be done. So I see a lot of benefits for the property developers. So I'm curious, you know, we talk a lot about the use of TraceAir in terms of site development. Once the building is out of the ground, do you also see a place for your technology or does it kind of, do you kind of go off to the side once the project is is actually being being built?
Maria Khokhlova:
:That's an interesting question. So as of now, while the major product of TraceAir is tailored to the sitework, the major value, of course, is during the sitework. Still, we figured out that when it comes to big, massive masterplan communities being built, when it comes to starting to the homes, many customers organically just stay with us. And at first we were curious like, why? Why do you stay? And the answer is that there are still a lot of questions that can be addressed through the same product during the vertical stage. And they're not about management of internal construction of the houses, but rather the overall logistics of the whole project. The materials, the roofing part, the tracking part, which houses are already roofed or which houses are already landscaped over is ready to sell, of course, is being tracked independently as well. But having this visual overall helps a lot. And what we figured is that the majority of homebuilders, they start to lean towards, it's better to have this visual representation of all of their job sites at the same time, it doesn't matter whether they're in active sitework stage or they are already in the vertical stage, maybe the vertical parts. We don't need those scans, let's say, as frequently. But having that visual like this is how our community looks like right now. There are so many ways they start to use this information for in marketing and sales. So it's not necessarily already in construction, but it's already after how that information is being used. And this is basically what's in the current stage and that's dependent on the sensors that we're using now. The drones that fly over the job site. So drones don't fly into the houses and don't scan it, but nothing stops the tool in general and the product was built sensor agnostic in a sense. So it doesn't really matter what kind of sensor is collecting the data at some point once it's the, I don't know, 360 camera on the helmets of the superintendents going in the houses or different either other LIDARs or any other sensors that come into the field that make economical sense to integrate into the product. That's also possible.
Todd Miller:
:Very interesting. So as I think about this, I think about TraceAir being used with large projects and site work and going beyond that, potentially even into the vertical stage, how are contractors? I mean, it sounds like TraceAir provides kind of a turnkey package. You even go out and do the drone work and everything. Our contractors finding it easy to adapt and use the technology may are they, you know, some technology it seems like we spend so much time learning it that it ends up costing a lot even in that phase versus something that we can immediately use and benefit from. What are some of the comments even that you're hearing from your clients and how easily and quickly are they able to use the data you provide to them?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Mm hmm. Yeah, that is something we're really proud of. This is our, this is the music to our souls. Because, well, answering your question, it is I will give you a couple of examples. So example from the homebuilders industry, right. There are different people working in those companies, right. As I mentioned, there are more, there are people in the fields like land development managers. There are people who are mostly working in their office. There are corporate level people, there are different kinds of personal finance people. So pretty much the same period of the onboarding, which takes about a couple of weeks basically to to start playing with the software up to the level where you already understand the whole capacity and you use all of the tools and people pick it up very quickly. So the big thing here is that we do provide the training. It's part of our we call it white glove service. So every time we get a new customer, we take care of all of them and we create regular training meetings if they need. And the funny thing is that sometimes they don't really need that because it's very intuitive. So they register the software. It's again, these are maps. They're very familiar with maps. They're very particular specific things that are intuitive for them. Ooh, I want to kind of compare this scan to the civil drawing. Well they do it all the time, just in a different way. Either I want to measure the distance here, I want to measure cut fill balance or I want to measure something else. And it's all positioned and labeled in the way that it's very intuitive. So they pick it up very quickly and a lot of comments that we're getting is that, Yeah, that was super easy to use like that. Dead easy to use, they say, and this is one. And the thing here is that you don't need all of the project team to be heavy users of the tool so that as one person would already start to get benefit. You know, like all the project management tools, you really need everyone to stay on top of the tool so that each user would actually get the benefit because alternatively, it won't work. Here in the, in our solution, if only one person starts to use it, he already gets the benefits because it's not dependent on the others. The other example would be from grading contractors. So just as an example, one of our good old customers which we love a lot, one of our first ones, so basically they have 90% of all of their field personnel being active weekly users of TraceAir. So they have around 30 foremen, grading foremen who are weekly using TraceAir on all of their job sites. And this is something we're really proud of because it's just the music to my heart when we ran the interviews with them, like, how do you feel about it and how do you use it? Well, the first thing they mentioned was it was so easy. So I just got an email and started to use it right away and that was mind-blowing to us as well. We tried hard to achieve that level, but this is the threshold basically we want to keep up so that it has to be very easy to use and easy to keep up.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. Very cool.
Seth Heckaman:
:Obviously easy to see what type of solution, you know, TraceAir can be for folks in our industry, being more efficient and more profitable always ends up working out well for everybody. So it's just neat hearing your stories coming into our industry, getting it obviously incredibly passionate about using your skill set and expertise to to make us better. I'm curious, what have you learned over that process of diving into construction and what advice would you have for someone, whether young or not, entering our industry fresh? And why should they choose to invest and get involved in construction?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Well, I can only say from my perspective, which may not always be relevant for the professionals who finish schools with the focus on construction. I didn't do that, but when I came to construction with fresh look, with fresh view, I think one of the most important key factors was, well, don't be scared to challenge everything, because people in this industry are very big experts. They know a lot and they can share a lot. Though the high-level approaches and the way things are being done, it's not necessarily set in stone, and it's easier when you come with a fresh look to kind of like, Why are you doing that? Be surprised, right. But I think if you come from the perspective where you've been studying that for six years in a row, and you are kind of adopting that as the statement of fact. It's harder to challenge things like why are schedules build this way? Why are we executing that this way? Why do we build our relationships? For example, why owners build relationships with contractors this way, not the other way? Why do we use these contracts instead of the others? Like asking those questions with open minds and not really sticking to something that is really not set? And. If you see that something can be improved. I think challenging things is quite helpful.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. I'm curious if there are folks out there listening to this and they're thinking, goodness, how can I learn more? Or how can I possibly learn more and then bring this back information back to my employer or something? What can they find on your website or what's the best way for them just to get some basic understanding that they can then bring back to others to hopefully develop more clients for you folks?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Yeah, sure. Yeah, well, we do our best to kind of share our insights and share the great practices that our customers develop themselves and then share with us. So we really do our best in keeping up our blog on our website. So traceair.net/blog, obviously you can find it there. We really try to share as much as possible there as well as we run webinars frequently where we basically invite our lovely customers to share what they achieve. It's not necessarily about TraceAir, it's about their problems and how they tackle it with different combinations of tools and approaches, sometimes including TraceAir, usually, sometimes not. So we find it extremely helpful to invest into this sharing piece. So yes, please refer to our blogs and webinars and also we will be happy to run the demo for you. It's the things that with anything that is visual, it's always easier to see it once rather than to kinda read about it or listen to it, right? So feel free to book the demos with us. There is a link on the website where our people will be happy to run the demo for you and really show how the product works and how how they can help.
Todd Miller:
:And that website is TraceAir, T-R-A-C-E A-I-R dot com, correct?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Dot net.
Todd Miller:
:Traceair.net. I love what you said about those webinars and letting your customers tell the story. That is fascinating. And yeah, I want to tune in to one of those, that'll be neat.
Maria Khokhlova:
:I will invite you for sure.
Todd Miller:
:Thank you so much for your time. We're getting close to wrapping up what we call the business end of things, and then we have our a little bit of a fun period after this. But I really enjoyed talking with you and learning. Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you'd like to share with our audience?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Nothing specific. I appreciate the opportunity talking here and discussing that with you guys. Happy to share whatever comes up next. So I'm excited. Thank you.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. Well, before we close out, we do a little something here on Construction Disruption called our rapid-fire questions. And these are seven questions that we would ask that might range from serious to silly. All you have to do is provide an answer that comes to mind. And if you're up to the challenge, our audience understands that if Maria agrees to this, she knows she doesn't have a clue what we're going to ask. So I'm curious, are you up to the challenge of rapid-fire?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Of course.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. I'm glad to hear that. So Seth and I will alternate. Do you want to go first, Seth?
Seth Heckaman:
:Sure, alright. Question number one what is a favorite good childhood memory?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Oh, a mandarin. Oh, it's called tangerine on the Christmas tree.
Todd Miller:
:Uh, very neat. Very cool. I'm tasting it already. Next question, what is your favorite meal?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Hmm. I think mashed potatoes with a meatball. It's just so simple, but it's truly my favorite one.
Todd Miller:
:Sounds good.
Seth Heckaman:
:Question number three, place you'd like to visit someday?
Maria Khokhlova:
:I really want to visit Japan. I've never been more to the east then Irkutsk, which is the Baikal Lake in Russia. So I've never been anywhere more east than there, so I want to be in Japan.
Todd Miller:
:Very neat. Seth and I had the opportunity several years ago to visit Japan together, and we do some business there and have some customers there, and I'm anxious. Really want to go back someday. It's a beautiful country, wonderful people. And I'd love to go back someday. So I wish you luck on that.
Maria Khokhlova:
:Thank you. I will try my best.
Todd Miller:
:My next question, what would you like to be remembered for at the end of your days? And you have lots of days ahead of you, but what would you like to be remembered for?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Kindness.
Todd Miller:
:Oh, I love that. We should all, we should all be right there, that's for sure.
Seth Heckaman:
:Fantastic. Next question. If you had to be a dog or a cat, which would you be?
Maria Khokhlova:
:A dog, or a dog, no-brainer. That was that was the easiest. Come on, guys.
Seth Heckaman:
:That is the overwhelming answer. There's been a few cats in there.
Todd Miller:
:Mostly dogs. Okay, next to last question. Is there any crazy or risky activity you'd like to try someday? Maybe jumping out of a plane or something. Anything you'd like to do?
Maria Khokhlova:
:It's hard because I tried so many.
Todd Miller:
:Have you really? Wow.
Maria Khokhlova:
:I flew paragliding, I drive motorcycles. So, yeah, it's well, probably bungee jumping is something I never tried. Not necessarily I want to.
Todd Miller:
:Bungee jumping in Japan. Maybe you can try that.
Maria Khokhlova:
:Yeah, well, in that combo, I would probably agree, yes.
Seth Heckaman:
:Very good. Last question, what is your favorite type of music?
Maria Khokhlova:
:I think I like rock the most. Yeah, but I appreciate different, different kinds of music and I really appreciate when people educate me on that because I really don't have time to learn more about it. So, good advice is really much appreciated.
Todd Miller:
:I hear you. Well, Maria, thank you so much. You survived rapid-fire, so congratulations. Survived with flying colors. This has been a pleasure. I'm really fascinated by what TraceAir is doing. I had no idea that this technology was being developed, and it just seems so beneficial. So I'm fascinated and want to learn more as well. So for folks in our audience who would like to learn more or maybe want to get in touch with you, I know you're on LinkedIn, but how can they best reach you?
Maria Khokhlova:
:Yeah, well, LinkedIn probably is the easiest one. I'm now based in Seattle, so we moved from Southern California. I'm now in Seattle, but so yeah. If you guys are in Seattle, let's meet for coffee. Seattle is very good about coffee compared to Northern California. So, yeah, please feel free to reach me out on LinkedIn of course. And yeah, again, if you want to know more about our product, I think even better if you just book the demo and we will be really happy to share what we can help with.
Maria Khokhlova:
:Todd Miller: Sounds good. Traceair.net. Very good. Well, thank you again, Maria. This has been a pleasure and I thank our audience for tuning in to this episode of Construction Disruption with Maria Khokhlova with TraceAir. Please watch for future episodes of our podcast. We always have great guests here on the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Until the next episode, change the world for someone, make them smile, be kind, be nice, encourage others. Powerful things we can do to change the world one interaction at a time. God bless, take care. This is Isaiah Industries signing off until the next episode of Construction Disruption.