Be the most interested builder.
Welcome to another episode of Builder Nuggets, the show where builders and remodelers discover how to build thriving businesses while working less. I'm Duane Johns and together with Dave Young, we share the elements of success that have helped hundreds of contractors like you build better lives.
(00:20): Our guest today has been imagining, designing and building eco luxury homes. For over 13 years. He has an intuitive understanding of the land, a refined process and strong relationships with his clients. He's an award winning builder in Asheville, North Carolina,
(00:35): Serving on the board of the Asheville home builders association has recent accomplishments include being named in the top 40, under 40 for builder magazine and a finalist for best young green professional from the national home builders association, along with being the 2015 Asheville builder of the year, his homes have been featured on the cover of green home builder magazine, along with winning national and regional awards, such as the national home builders association best in green award for single family, custom home, innovative home award craftsmanship award and North Carolina star award for best energy efficient home in the state. That is a lot of awards to go through. So a whole lot of awards, and I've had the pleasure of getting to know
(01:17): Brandon from red tree builders over the last few years. And I'm proud to call him a friend and colleague. He loves building homes, but he is equally passionate about building a better business and a better industry. So welcome Brandon to the show. Thank you guys. I appreciate that. It sounds like I'm super young and all that intro because that was 40, under 40, all this great stuff before I turned 40 and now I'm just getting old and losing my hair. Well, you've certainly had a lot of success and we were just talking about how busy you are this week and, and especially in, you know, a hot Asheville market. So, you know, why not run for president of the North Carolina home builders association? Tell us about that. Yeah. Why not do that? Right? Yeah. Joining the local home builders association when I did, I didn't didn't really understand what I was joining for, but I was told that's what I was supposed to do.
(02:07): And it was about two years into it that I realized, Hey, being involved, it's just like anything. Once you actually start being involved, join a committee and start entering things. But it was our parade of homes that I just found that be such a huge benefit for me. I remember getting a phone call from the current president and said, Brandon, the Asheville HB has done a lot for you. Don't think it's time to give back. And of course I had to say yes, like I couldn't say no. And I knew where it was happening. But so as I got involved more on the local level, that state level and the national level just kind of started happening. And yeah, so now boss, president Ocala home builders association, which then led, that's pretty neat. Pretty cool. I am now the chair of green sustainability on NHB and we just formed a new committee of healthy homes, healthy communities, and not raise my hand for that one too.
(02:55): So yeah, I'm doing a lot of these virtual calls these days. We love hearing about people getting involved because so many times, you know, when we're working with a builder or asking them about what do they do to collaborate, or what associations are they in or how are they working with other builders? And when sometimes when we talk about home builders, associations, they're talking about what they get from the association in terms of what's my return on investment. Like I'm applying because I want to be able to qualify for the procedure that comes with the awards, or they want to be able to put the logo on their truck or something that gives them credibility. And we find that the most successful builders are the ones who look at what can they do to get involved? How can they shape the industry? What can they bring to the table and who are they going to meet there?
(03:37): So it sounds like that's where you ended up once you started to get involved and probably meeting some of the other people in there and seeing the missions that they're on and what they're trying to achieve, that it motivated you to jump right into. And now you're you know, one of the grand poo boss, there you go, Brandon, you and I have talked at length quite a bit, and we both share a passion around raising the bar in the construction industry. And it's all done through continuous learning and collaboration. I think you share the same beliefs as I do that. There's always a better way, but for a moment, let's just back it up a little bit and let everybody know how you even got started in the business. Yeah. I'll give you guys the short version. I always feel like I, and even when marriage, I've got a short version and then I've got the party version of telling him about how I met my wife and how it all came together.
(04:23): So I'll give you the short version of average. We become, the name came from being in college and my college roommate who oddly enough, is now in the construction industry as well. Both of us had no desire to be anything in construction in college, but it comes from a north Myrtle beach. There's a end called the retreat in, I only visited about four years ago, but about 17 years ago, we that's where the name came from. It became a running joke. So when we started deciding to be a construction company, I was working for the developer. I'd just moved back from Portland, Oregon, selling sports tickets by the phone. I mean, I don't think that they Salesforce tickets by phone, but it was cold calling a hundred people a day trying to sell season tickets, you name it. We were doing it, but decided to get in construction because my father builds bridges.
(05:09): It had been part of my life and I was going to find my new path and my own paths from me and my life and as a computer science major. And then so we decided to choose the name red tree builders. The logo is a bonsai tree. So as we spun that company, we in the first two years were just trying to find our legs, figure it out. I can do construction. I knew nothing about the customer experience, all the the accounting part, all that stuff. But I knew I could build a good home and I'd been on job sites before. So, you know, getting a little bit back to the home builders association, that's where I've learned and just by collaborate and learning how to be a business, run a business and having all the aspects. But when I first started, I wanted to find something different because the developer I was working for, we would have an air recliner just about the builders.
(05:58): And I was like, man, I feel like I could do this. Like, we can make this happen. We could create, we could build homes and people wouldn't be mad at us. By the time we got done with it, one of those builders ended up going to jail. Like, you know, there was all sorts of shady stuff going on. So there's gotta be a better little bit better way. But then it was really at the, you know, I wouldn't say it's a pioneer and a Greenbuild and there's been people green buildings since the sixties, seventies, eighties, but it was really started to be a part of the conversation in the mid two thousands. And that's where asking us, being our niche, being a green builder, Karen, about that and the evolution of red tree and even myself from the houses we were building then to now, it's kind of cool to see how that is, but it's kind of just feel like you're kind of pioneering and we're on the cutting edge and being really innovative and it's fun because we really can impact people's lives in ways people didn't even realize building the house would do.
(06:50): So that's where the passion kind of came from. Yeah. And when you and I were talking about having you on as a guest, that's kind of where we went. I mean, I've always been impressed by your approach to building a better home. There's tons of stuff out there. I think there's, you can get overwhelmed as a builder and as a consumer, I think on sustainability and green building and just all those things out there, some of them are in a sense, nothing more than the taglines, but I mean, you you've taken a really, almost like a holistic approach to this to understanding everything from the client to their lifestyle, the process of actually building the home. So, I mean, that's, that's what we talked about and I'd love for you to just dive into that. So we kind of take it, our taglines mindfully built artfully crafted, artfully crafted probably does make sense.
(07:36): And we weren't really wanting to focus on, you know, we're creating art and we're being craftsmen and we're building a one of the con piece here, but before we can do that, we had to do the mindfully built. And B probably what I'm focused on is that mindfully built is that we're trying to build it in our minds ahead of time going through all the questions and really trying to take some of the stress out of the building process. I had always built homes with allowances and just we'll figure it out as we go. And the homes were building are pretty much custom houses. These are pretty complex houses up in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. We may spend three, four months just trying to get a site ready and get everything kind of figured out on a slope and potential rock and the different elevations we have to work with.
(08:23): So it really did kind of think how can we still bring in the green building, which is a word that we try to define what we mean by that, the healthy living and sustainable, but how can we actually look at the piece of land? We get one shot to do this house, right? I like to say the land will tell us what the build here in the mountains. And a lot of times we've got to listen to the land, is that because of the slope where we try and push a house plan or some design that just really doesn't fit for here. And sometimes we have to tell a client this lot is really not the one for you or it's not for what this house that you want to build. So a lot of times we're getting engaged and really early on in the process, if the land comes first, we've got to build to what the land is telling us to build.
(09:08): And is that really the garages for the biggest obstacle is how do we get to there? And we all have cars, so we're going to have to park somewhere and we've got to bring a driveway in and how we manipulate that. And then it really is, is taking that as a resource. So I like to think that someone has spoken about it obvious in 60 and 60 design ideas. It was one that I've heard really good feedback is, is that green doesn't mean ugly. And then we as building homes from a sustainable green building perspective should really focus on design because we can build one beautiful home and we will go to great lengths to take care of homes that are well-designed that become a fabric of our communities. And that's really what we're trying to do is not be too trendy. We're not trying to build a home that man, there was no thought given into that house and that's just ugly house and all that, because once we put all those resources out there, if we can keep it durable and resilient for a hundred years, then I think we've done our job at that.
(10:09): Well, that house being remodeled, the kitchen, something happened and all that updated. Sure. But from the structure of the foundation, the walls, I like to think we get one good shot at it and let's do the best we can today. So then in 20, 30, 50 years, it's still performing the way it should. You said that it was a niche that sort of started your interest in this and seeing an opportunity. And that's grown into a passion where you're learning about it. When you, when you have clients come to you, are they coming already with a similar passion or are they coming with the curiosity or are you having architects that, that are showing up with that passion? Do you get, you must have varying degrees, but from what we've seen on your site, it's, it's coming together beautifully. Walk us through getting started. What the expectations are, how the first conversations around, Hey, we want to do something green.
(11:01): We're interested in it versus somebody who's committed to it. That's a good question. I think, and that's always an evolution too. I will tell you a few years ago, I can geek out and start talking and we can talk for two hours and I would lose you guys on all the technical parts and all that. And that's what I was doing. I was really talking about from a more of a technical, what we could do, how we do it. And I just lost people and I can just lays in over there. And so I had to read, think through how are we going to market? So we don't, I don't say green as much as anymore. We really tried to talk about the customer experience, what we can do for you. What is some health elements that you might have? What are, why are you coming to retreat?
(11:42): What are you interested in trying to really hone in on learning about the person? We'll talk about our certification and why we do certifications. And the reason we do certifications is we to prove to people we're doing what we say we're doing. We've got a third party verify on that. I don't think that you can quite take stuff off the shelf and Dwayne's got a beautiful shelf on their weekend. Just take one book and this kind of building and just say, oh, that works right, because it's all cause and effect. So if we build a tied house, we better have some, some ventilation in there for the indoor air quality. So you can just focus on one aspect of it. And that's why we do certifications kind of coming back to your question though. I think people are coming early on or typically are getting the leads.
(12:25): We have some architects that bring us some clients. We put enough information out there to say, Hey, we're agreeing builder. This is what we're focused on, but also find that people there's so many other reasons while they're building their pick. And so it's just an element of what we do is that we want to really impact your life. We're focused more on the health and wellness aspect. My philosophy is if we focus on indoor air quality and water management, the energy efficiency will come part of that. So I don't really spend a lot of time talking about energy efficiency. We do spend time talking about solar, those kinds of aspects, but I haven't found that saving $50 in your power bill motivates anybody right now. You would think maybe it would, but it didn't drive in factor. But yeah, not when it comes to building a dream home in the mountains, you know, and a lot of your clients would probably second homes too, but back to health and wellness.
(13:17): And the other thing I'd love to hear you share is, you know, the experience you said you're focused more on the experience as well. It sounds like you're seeking to understand the things that are important to the client, what they already know, what they're interested in learning about. And then you bake that into your yes, we do. So we were, we've got an interior design firm kind of within our own building firm, because that was one aspect that we've found that we that's the answers to the keys, that we wanted to know how to build a house for that particular person. So we've got a deep dive that we do with everybody. Once we get to a certain stage of the plans and you know, maybe in 18 months we're sitting in your home, what does it look like? What does it feel like? First thing in the morning, do you want to get up and make a cup of coffee, go out on the deck.
(14:01): We maybe ask them, why are you moving to Asheville? What's the lifestyle that you're looking for here. What's something you've always wanted in a home that you've never had before. Cause we all can have something we wish we had, right? But then we're really dialing into, do we have asthma allergies in really where my passion of indoor air quality came from is my wife has severe asthma allergies, crazy allergies. So we would start going and looking right after the recession looking to go remodel homes. And she could spend about five seconds in each one of those houses and they would shut her down and she would have an asthma attack and she had to leave. And like, you know, I'm walking in and there's nothing wrong in this house. There was nothing, I was smelling anything. There's no issues, but it made me really start thinking like, what's really going on out there.
(14:46): Right? And you start doing the studies and you start seeing all that. And you start saying, you know, were told to go home last year, right? That was the safest place for us to be, was to go home during COVID when they shut us down. I like to think that the homes that rich rebuilds are safe places for people, the indoor air quality, the quality and that, but the reality is aging housing stock in the us that wasn't the safest place for us to go. Our houses are not healthy and they are filled with mold and mildew, all sorts of other things. There's all sorts of chemicals. We bring home from order on Amazon that we bring into the house. So what we've really been on on trying to do on a small scale is to do what we do. We can only build 10 to 12 houses a year is to really educate clients about as a home builder.
(15:35): I can provide so much more for you. You know, of course we're thinking about shelter. We're thinking about maybe near a school or retirement, but how can I change your life? As opposed to the, you know, joining the jam, the Peloton, the, all the things we're spending money on or the health and the next diet fad, like your home can be, shouldn't be seen as something that can really increase the wellness of your own life. And one of the aspect we've been focused on now, which is kind of just in my mind, something builders have never thought about is paint colors and how as humans, we have connectivity to colors and it's changes by culture, your background, but you can really make a response within people on colors and just how you paint walls and, or staying in wood and bringing wood inside. It's such a cool little aspect of, we deep dive into it.
(16:28): Now, do I go into that with every client to that level? And despite, and then we're going to give you all of this as part of our pre-construction phase, we're kind of just dropping these things in. Here's something else we can work. We should be asked aspect. We can focus on that walls, no matter what. Yeah, the, I think what's clearly coming through and my takeaway nugget so far is that you're clearly interested in the client first and then the jobs second. And so many times we see people getting caught up in the sales process. They're interested in telling the client about what they do. And you mentioned making that mistake previously, but it sounds like you really flipped that to where you're being totally interested in the client. First, getting to know about them, their lifestyle, any issues that they have. And it, it allows you to craft a more customized experience for them and do 10 or 12 houses a year that are bang on for that, for that client.
(17:24): And not necessarily just for you. So that's cool. That's my first takeaway here. Dwayne is like be the most interested builder and that that's huge. I mean, we, we already coach on that a lot, but this is pure evidence of it here, Brandon. Well, and I think also the takeaway for me is as soon as the pandemic started hitting and then change is there's changes in everybody's life and everybody's industry. But specifically to construction said, there's going to be some positive things that come out of this, no matter how this thing falls. And I think what you said, Brandon, this is so true that people had a chance here over this last year to sort of really take a hard look at spending a lot of time in their home. And when you look at it from that lens, that it should be your sanctuary. It should be your safest place. You should know that when you're going back to your home, it is the healthiest place you can be. It's the place that's going to make you feel the most relaxed, happy that that's huge. And I think there's so many elements that can go into that. It's not just green,
(18:23): A quick reminder, that the best way to get the most out of this podcast is to engage with the builder nuggets community, visit our website@buildernuggets.com and follow along on Facebook and Instagram.
(18:37): What kind of things have you seen here that have been really popular or looked at from folks over the last six months or so? Yeah, I think some of the most popular aspect, I mean the indoor outdoor connectivity, of course. And I think that was, that was going anyway. But where I live Asheville, you don't come to the mountains of Western North Carolina without wanting to be outdoors. So we tried to integrate a lot with our house plans is that, you know, we're on typically basement foundations, daylight finished basements, but we're a connection to the inside. The outside of that, that just, isn't just added onto the house plan. It's kind of woven into the plan itself. And I think the indoor air quality has been something, but it's really just kind of, I think the biggest thing to kind of I've seen is people are more willing to listen to what can you do for me?
(19:25): What are our stuff? Like, I've heard this, I've heard that like now come to red tree and okay, I've heard that you guys know something about green building and I've heard all these things around here, you know, what can you do? What are you doing? How can we push the envelope? What other innovative things are there out there? What I've come to find out is if we can do all these things and let them be automated so that homeowners don't have to maintain them or dial them in. A lot with our thermostats, I would go back in three to six months. I'm like, man, you remember when I told you that we should not turn off that fan and we shouldn't do these things, I hadn't done this. Or you know how they live in their house. It's something I can't control, but you know, we're looking at now some indoor air quality stuff or ventilation where it detects poor indoor air quality and automatically turns on ventilators and does its thing, which is now something that, you know, automotive and all sorts of other industries that's caught up in way above and beyond instruction.
(20:22): We're so segmented in those components we put together. But I really liked that idea, that automation, that people don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Then I think it's so huge. When you talk about the mindfulness, I'm going to, people are going to start putting these sorts of things into their home. The last thing they want to do is have more stuff to think about that they have to do. Oh, did I do that? Yeah. Making it simple. Simplifying the sustainability green aspect. That's that's what I think you have done because as you said, you've gone from, well, instead of taking the approach of trying to sell people, tickets to sporting events, you know, you, you moved it to the really listening, understanding. You're the geek, you know, how to, how all this stuff works. But th that's not necessarily what they want to hear.
(21:06): They want to hear what are the things that are gonna make their life better. How's it going to be easier for them? You know, you're putting materials on the outside of the house that are going to be low maintenance, that those are the keys for builders that are getting started in this, or curious about learning about it. There's, there's a couple of things I think about one is where do you go to learn more? And how do you, how do you connect to, to educate yourself? And the other one is what are some of the common challenges that you face in dealing with this? And they're, they're likely around cost or design and things like that. But that's two areas that I think that people will be interested in hearing is like, what do I need to learn? And what do I need to overcome two good questions.
(21:46): And so I've tried to reflect back on the progression of 16 years of me building and trying to think of like, how, how has that education came? And I'll bring this kind of this a little bit, Blaine hit on it. And I think it'll help answer this question is for the first time ever, I wrote in a Tesla last year and then got to rent one for two days. Now I'm a geek. And that was super cool car and fast. And it was everything. But like Dwayne said, like, I don't know how it all works. I didn't, I was in Miami, couldn't even lock the door. So I just left it there on the street with the doors unlocked. I couldn't figure out how to lock this stupid car up, but it was super cool, but I needed to know how to operate it and run it.
(22:27): I needed some kind of manual and there's no manual on that thing. You just have to watch videos, which made me start thinking about green building and how people live in home. We need to educate that and that, which I think it is really where the education of green building, sustainable, whatever word we're trying to use, high performance. There's so many words, but just building a better house, right? Like trying to really make a positive impact. And I've found that, you know, obvious has always been one of my best education standpoints. And then it was the high performance zone that the international builders show. So I've always found that that's been good. The other two aspects that I've found is it's just watching people on YouTube. That's got it. And trying to, even on Instagram, I've found a lot of people that just share great content, but there's good dialogue in there of, you know, once you go through some there's people answering it and you can really just start finding that 15 years ago, I was watching ed Begley do, he was an actor just how he was living green.
(23:27): Like it was really wasn't any information out there. There was, you know, there was nothing, no one was sharing that we have a platform to share. I'm not sure, but our industry really started. And I think that's, what's always drawn me to, to the green building community. And we'll just start using the word green since we've been on it. But it's a collaborative community that is builders in general. I've always kind of been more, I'm not going to share that. And I'm going to do that. You know, you guys are proven that this industry will share about the information. And, but I think the green building community is all wanting to raise the bar. So they don't care that, Hey, here's how I put that together. I, at the international builders show, five years ago, I watched one of the best three hour sessions. I'm still crawl spaces.
(24:13): And I flew all the way to Florida to, to learn about silk crawl spaces and walked out of there. And it was a good, he did debate and it was, it was no one that said, Hey, this is the only way to do it. But for our region, do it this way for this reason to do it, me and my construction manager left and said, okay, I don't think we know how we want to do it yet, but like we've got four different ways. And that kind of helped that evolution of getting that information. How do we do a sill cross space? Because no one in this region we're doing so cross spaces and that's just one aspect. Yeah, the collaboration over competition is what we call it. The collaborators will win over the people who just want to compete to people who will share and grow.
(24:50): And yeah, it's just it's just part of the the natural evolution of being successful. So that's one example of your, you know, collaborating, we know about your affiliation with the home builders association. What other spots are you going to collaborate with other like-minded builders? Where are you having these conversations? Is it just at IBS or is there a group of you that have formed you see it in build their twenties or anything like that? Or are you starting to see any kind of specialties around this that people can learn from I'm in a builder 20 group? And so some of that aspect is spoken about in there and some collaboration, probably sidebar conversations, just because saying, Hey, I'm working on this detail. What are you doing? Definitely because it's a good perspective regionally. I think the other is social media. So the YouTube or the Instagram that I kind of follow certain people and just like try to pick their brain or, you know, having direct access to people that really are knowledgeable, then that's really where I'm getting my, I wouldn't say that I've reached a pinnacle.
(25:48): I, it would be an exciting time to be Brandon at 28, again, with all the information out there, because I was just figuring it out as a win in the mid two thousands. So like, let's try this, let's try that they were good homes, but I do tell you at times guys, I'm like, Ooh, I really focused a lot in this one aspect. And I didn't really do anything here. I, and in the houses I was built were super energy efficient, but I was doing nothing for indoor air quality. And the awakening moment for me was there was a homeowner, a friend of ours that bought a resale great build home over in Biltmore area of Asheville. It's spent well over a million dollars for the house. And she said, I've lived in this house for three weeks and now I have nothing but a headache the whole entire time.
(26:33): And it was really just a focus on all about energy efficiency. And I think, you know, in the two thousands that's four months at was, we hadn't really thought about how are we going to have balanced ventilation in the house? And there was just bath fans in that house that was just running at a low sound and it's 5,000 square feet. Four bath fans is not going to move all the things she had in the house. So it did buy, I think now there's just so much more information out there through NHB to the healthy homes and healthy communities. What births that there's a green sustainability subcommittee, but this healthy homes, healthy communities was a real need of seeing. There's a little difference between those two. And this is more holistic over here with healthy homes, healthy communities, but there's a real dream in communities to start offering the benefits we're looking for.
(27:22): Not ever person can have a single family house and live in a wonderful place, but how's a multifamily developer able to give some aspects of healthy community and with an aspects, Hey, here's a place to store bikes or here's a walking trail. We've done a little community garden, just even connectivity to humans. I think we've realized over the last year I have, I just need to see people. I need to talk to some people. That's an example. You're, you're mindfully built. You're, you're taking the time to think about these things and in advance from the human aspect, we know that sometimes people are like, don't want to make the investment because of costs or, or they're. They don't have as much design choice on a product or some different types of features. All of that has been shifting rapidly over the last few years. What advice do you have for people around educating clients now about the myriad of choices that are available cost-effectiveness of it savings over long-term because it used to just be like, you talked about, you can save $50 a month on your energy bill, but you're putting up with something ugly.
(28:25): Now it's all coming together. So how do you get yourself to that spot? And what are some of the things that the public still needs to learn? Truly. I think that we could do a better job from area's history of talking about it. And I've done it. I'm guilty for the time I've talked to you guys, I've said the word green more times than I should have ever said it. Right. I'm lucky to where I'm, where I live is that there's a certain mindset that people, you know, they don't balk at the Greenville and they want it right. And it's really thought of the only cost. They won't build a product and not think there's some great production builders that are putting aspects if that end. And I don't see that it has to be this cost barrier. We can all have a piece of it.
(29:04): And I think everyone deserves a better home and one that's healthy for them. Right. it shouldn't be just because I'm successful financially that I get better things, right. I will say that I, you know, traveling around with the home builders and when we were doing Trayvon here, oh no, one's interested in that market. They won't pay for it. My challenge to people when I hear that is are, how are you talking about how you sell on that? How you present something and it's totally different. I am getting ready for a presentation I'm making on green building and how to present it to homeowners because they don't know what they don't know, what we can do is, and it really is focused on health and wellness and the amount of money people will spend on gym memberships that don't go to health, food, diets, all these things that people are focused on and will spend crazy amounts of money for, I don't know.
(29:55): I was pulling some slides it's for that role. I don't know if you guys know her. It looked like a curl bar, but it was shaped. And it was like a combination between shake drink. And it was a curl bar and it was supposed to vibrate and he was supposed to get a workout from him. And they made millions of dollars. People bought when you guys bought one of them, Dave, Scott, Daniel, he got three out of those. You'd you ask people like, if you talk about green and you talked about needing energy, you just don't lose certain people. There's certain amounts. I was just going to cost more. I think if you start talking about how much do you want, you know, if your house is more healthy and all that you start bringing in those aspects, you could thrive in your home. And how much is that worth to you?
(30:33): No, one's going to say I, and that's not really, I don't want that. Yeah. I'm going back to what you talked about earlier in, in getting to know the client, it comes down to asking the right questions and finding out what's already important to them. What do they already know? What have they researched, finding out what sorts of things they want to invest in knowing their family and, and identifying any of these things to see if it's worth. Yeah. Well, it's always worth having the conversation about it as a, as an option, but let them share with you what is already important to them. And then you just become the trusted guide and you educate them around the options and some of those things. But if they want to go down that path, it opens a door up to you. So you're not leading with the, you're not leading with the sales pitch.
(31:17): You're leading with finding out about them and seeing if this is an option worth discovering, it's pretty, it becomes pretty easy, pretty easy conversation to have as a good educated builder. And that's kind of where we want to go here with an empower people is go find out because this is a trend that's coming. You've got guys like Brandon who are building amazing businesses around it. It's totally worth investing some time and energy so that you can be that trusted guide. You can have these conversations. You can, you can find out and make it happen in your market. And you have to take you. You certainly have to put the effort in and there's courses available all sorts of ways that you can go out there and get yourself better educated on what all this stuff is. I think to your point, Brandon, once you get your head around it and you, you become a little bit of a geek on it, you won't necessarily just talk about it.
(32:05): You'll start to be able to convey that message to the client a lot easier. But also, I mean, I encourage from what you said, we're finally to the point where there's communities of very passionate people doing this stuff. Now there's experts out there that you can, you know, you can bring in experts in all aspects of sustainability in green and building and make it a part of your team. So I think as you said, that collaboration factor, getting those other people in the room, they can become part of your sales. Well, for us, they are, I are green writer. I see them as a partner and they help advise us even what we're doing. And as we try to, Hey, we're about to try it this way. What do you think? What do you see from other builders doing, you know, I was even talking there to give another good example.
(32:49): Huber woods started doing crossroads, where they had Peter Yost and Steve basic gone around doing, talking about that, doing conferences. I mean, it's so available out there if you really want it. I think there's a certain amount of people that think, oh, there's so much loud building when I start talking about my house. So we'll do this and that, I do think we can put our arms around it and say, Hey, our house has a better performance, healthier. It's a better home and feel good about at night sleeping and then doing that right? Because we are literally trying to build a house that is 30 years a code built house in 30 years is the house I'm trying to build today. And when we start looking at, when you resell a house, you're comparing a house that, you know, is a code cycle, four or five books behind.
(33:34): There's some pretty cool stuff in here. I think for anybody that has not dabbled in green or sustainability, I think you can certainly learn from what, what brand's been doing and lots of paths out there for you to, to get engaged in this. So for you, and we always ask everybody, I mean, what what's kind of on the horizon for you and what, what kind of things do you want to maybe learn more about what's what's up, what's up next for you? I man, I I'm just trying to make sure I get enough people show up on our job sites to make things happen is so really one of my goals is being state and home builders. President is really focused on workforce development. It may not be for tomorrow, but it is, but someone's got to build the houses tomorrow. So like we got to build America.
(34:16): We need to have people understand. I know you guys have had some really good podcasts about initiatives with the schools or elementary schools, and really trying to show how great a career I I'm a computer science major that thought in the early two thousands, I was going to go to the west coast and make six figures. And somebody is going to give us 10,000 signing bonus. They're not real eight hours in a cubicle stocks. For me, wasn't very mindful either. It's just a bunch of code and you've got to figure out where that problem is. But I enjoy creating something and seeing how you can make such an impact in someone's life. This industry who have chosen, I don't know, it isn't seen as the same way as doctors or professions of that nature, but really, I don't think that there's a, another industry that we could create something and have a bigger impact on people's lives than construction, because your biggest single investment they make, it's where they spend most of their time, their memories.
(35:13): There's so much connectivity to that. Really. It's kind of a, it's a cool thing. And for somehow we lost that cool factor. I don't know why we lost that cool factor, but working with your hands and getting dirty was not cool. I, it makes me think of episode one of early episodes with Nick Schiffer, I think called the novel builder. And it's, you know, there was a, there used to be a nobility around building it's somehow got lost. You talked about the cool factor. And we also talk about, you know, the, the industry problem attracting the younger audience here in, in, you mentioned we've had other guests come on and talk about that. And workforce development. We could have every single guest come on here and talk about workforce development and it still wouldn't be wouldn't be enough, but you got me thinking Brandon, that some of this green stuff with the interest in the young people and being more environmentally conscious there's a real opportunity here to tie that, to gain an interest for people who are passionate about conservation, the aspects of this type of building that the do reduce the carbon footprint or do do, you know, have health benefits and other things.
(36:18): So there is a magnet here that you can use to attract young people and yeah, look forward to collaborating with you on ways to build that magnet and to continue to, to develop that because you're in a good spot for it. You're living it. You're clearly interested in making a difference in people's lives. And thank you. You're going to be quick to leader or you already are quite the leader in this space. So thanks for joining us here. I also wanted to ask you quick before we wrap up here, Brandon, if for some of the folks that maybe are thinking about getting more into some of this stuff, what, on the more on the national level, I mean, there's tons of local resources. You're you guys are fortunate. You have some pretty, pretty strong, you know, green groups, right. In Asheville, but maybe on a, on a broader scale kind of nationwide here, what avenues do people have?
(37:04): What do you know of some groups or organizations that maybe they should connect or think about places they can go to get some, some training or to learn more? Yeah, there's several. And I I'll try not to look down at the phone, but I've tried to just go off my head. You know, there's construction instruction is in Harrison and of course I'm going to say builder show, which will be in Orlando and hopefully we'll be in-person there's a ton of black lab demos and stuff of that nature on that. And then you know, some of those little crossroad events that are coming around and a lot of them are virtual now through Huber and some other, but I've found that a lot of product manufacturers are putting on some stuff and bringing in professionals same thing from Panasonic. So I think the part about green building is that it's sort of, hands-on learning and there's some technical spots to it, but it, and learning that way.
(37:54): So I, I, the things we're doing in NHV with the green sustainability there's, if you're a member, all that's free resources, that's on HBS website. They finally had a new website. They did two years ago. So you can find things on that website. So good for them, for the folks listening out there for anybody that might want to learn more about you get in touch with you. How can they us or company names, red tree builders. Of course, we have a website, red tree builders.com. They're on Instagram. I'm the one that will answer and respond to all of that. If you can call retreat. So rings to my cell phone. So I want to be that first point of contact. So, oh, pretty doing some YouTube videos. And we did it purely out of trying to educate people about healthy living and how to live and have performance zones because we've, couldn't figure it out. People didn't I live in, I'm just like, I didn't know how to drive a Tesla. I've watched several of those good stuff too. So that'll be very valuable for other folks to see. So Brandon, thanks again for taking the time, man. Appreciate it. Always enjoy a conversation with you. Appreciate it guys. Yeah. And just remember that you got to train your clients how to lock their house so they don't end up like you did in the Tesla. That's one aspect we need to make sure we're doing.
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