Join the Club!

While traveling to and from SBCA events, I often find myself striking up conversations with strangers: Uber drivers, fellow airline passengers, even the occasional bartender. The question of why I’m traveling inevitably comes up, and I’ve nearly perfected my response. I inform them I’m traveling due to my work with SBCA. The next question is always “What’s SBCA?” I quickly respond with “The Super Bad Ass Club!” Faces become puzzled as people reconcile the acronym and the name. So I follow with “yeah, we’re not that good with letters, but we’re dang good with numbers.” It’s a great way to break the ice and pique interest as to who we are and what we do as SBCA.

It’s easy to make light of an acronym, but there’s a lot of truth to my joke. What we do, day in and day out, is tough. It’s difficult and demanding, but when you stop to think about it, it’s impressive. What we do every day is unquestionably cool. It is absolutely bad ass. So often we get lost in our day-to-day operations, and we lose sight of what we provide and how we provide it.

SBCA members are an integral part of the American Dream. We provide the skeleton of the structures in which people spend the most important moments of their lives. Our contribution to home construction not only improves the lives of everyday Americans, it does so in an efficient and economical way that extends home ownership to many who might not otherwise achieve it.

Take note of one of your projects this spring or summer, and follow it through from design to move-in. Put aside the numbers we’re always so obsessed with, like gross margin, lumber prices and even delivery dates, and reflect on exactly what we do as component manufacturers: build homes better. Get to know a family living inside one of your truss packages, and remember the real benefit we provide to the marketplace.

And if you’re ready for even more bad ass inspiration, come out and join us at one of our upcoming meetings. We’re having the inaugural CM Executive Leadership Summit in Minneapolis, April 27-29, in conjunction with the MSR Suppliers Council meeting. The next two Open Quarterly Meetings (OQMs) will be in Montana and Rhode Island, in May and August, respectively. 

If those dates and locations don’t work for you, remember that you’re still part of the club. Our goal is to bring these events to you, so watch for further announcements about regional Executive Leadership Summits in the coming months. Think about it: more opportunities to make SBCA services and knowledge-sharing more accessible to more component manufacturers throughout the country. Pretty bad ass, huh?