Collaborative Innovation in Architecture: Insights with Eric and Mike from TK Design

Discover how effective collaboration and communication can transform the architecture and construction industry in our latest episode featuring Eric and Mike from TK Design. Witness the inspiring journey that began with a chance meeting at the International Builder Show and blossomed into a powerful partnership. Eric opens up about his vision for TK Design, rooted in his experiences during the 2008-2010 recession, where he sought to replace adversarial relationships with cooperative ones. Mike shares his unique entry into the team and highlights how teamwork and humility have been pivotal in their success. Together, they challenge traditional industry norms and emphasize the importance of a shared vision in achieving architectural excellence.

We promise you'll learn how expanding architectural services requires embracing innovative tools and strategic communication. By leveraging 3D mapping and digital sketching, TK Design has effectively bridged geographical distances, making remote collaboration seamless. Eric and Mike discuss the nuances of managing client expectations and offer insights into the art of scrappy marketing techniques. They illustrate how focusing on clear, open communication can enhance the design process and ensure that clients, no matter where they are, feel engaged and understood.

Finally, step into the world of custom home design, where balancing dreams and practicality plays a critical role. Eric and Mike share stories of successful redesigns and cost-saving strategies, demonstrating how minor adjustments can lead to big savings. The conversation highlights the importance of creativity, adaptability, and understanding client needs from the outset. As we look to the future, Eric and Mike express their excitement about expanding their industry presence and the ongoing potential of their partnerships, reinforcing the power of collaboration in shaping the future of architecture and construction.

Chapters

• 0:02 Transformative Collaboration in Architecture and Construction
• 13:50 Effective Communication in Custom Architecture
• 23:36 Designing and Building Custom Homes
• 27:28 Collaborative Home Design Success
• 32:28 Building Future Partnerships in Architecture

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:02

Oh, I love that, I love that.

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey y'all, Welcome back to another episode of Feed Me your Construction Content. I'm Carolyn McMahon.

Speaker 2: 0:10

I am Joshua McMahon.

Speaker 1: 0:11

I have a couple of cool guests on today.

Speaker 2: 0:13

My buddies, my buddies Eric and Mike from TK Design.

Speaker 2: 0:18

This is the coolest thing and I want to tell you the story before we jump in and introduce these guys. We were going to IBS in February the International Builder Show, not the other IBS, that's in April, but listen, we went there with the intention of finding an architect firm to partner with for our custom home building business and probably a little bit of a hope and a prayer that we were going to run into somebody or that this idea would even come to fruition. And wouldn't you know it, on night one I run into Eric at a group gathering and we get introduced and we exchange numbers and from there we have blossomed this incredible relationship of architect and builder. That's been going really strong for the last 10 months and, honestly, it's only getting better. We're just scratching the surface. So with that, eric, mike, it's super awesome to have you guys on and, eric, I'll let you kick us off and maybe just tell us a little bit about the background of TK Design and the vision and how this whole thing came to fruition.

Speaker 4: 1:19

Sure, yeah, Thanks, Josh Carolyn. So I guess our story is a long one and it started off back in remember the recession of 2008, nine and 10. That's kind of where we were born TK design it's TK stands for Todd and Katie Hallett Um, they were originally. They started their company after um they were working for. I was 150 or 250 home of your builder locally here in Michigan and Todd was a designer there and he started wearing a lot of hats. Long story short, I think the 2008, 9 and 10 recession kind of put that company out of business. So Todd and Katie were forced to do their own thing. They started their company out of their basement. They went through a couple, I guess, draftsmen early on. That didn't really work out and then they ended up meeting me through a mutual builder friend. We worked out of their basement for about a year and a half and then, as the recession started kind of easing up, we moved into an office space and started hiring more people.

Speaker 4: 2:17

My goal when I started working with Tom Cady was you know, I was in the industry for a long time early on and I'm a licensed builder. I was in the trades. I got into architecture because I really wanted to learn more about the industry and my goal was to cater to builders and cater to tradesmen rather than make them our enemies. Because I had seen that in the industry a lot, where architects, they had this chip on their shoulder, this ego that, hey, we're better than everybody else, we're the designers, we're going to tell you how to do it and nobody can change that. And I had a goal to change that.

Speaker 4: 2:54

As we started to grow, we hired more people. I actually interviewed Mike, I don't know. We were, I don't know, a year or so into our new office in South Lyon, Michigan, and we brought Mike on board. Todd was our original designer, but he was wearing all the hats of trying to grow a business. So Mike kind of stepped in, started learning our architecture, learned our CAD, and then we kind of put him in a design position. And Mike, I'll let you take it from there.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Before you jump in Mike, I want to just touch on something, eric your background as a builder, your background I think you said, working in the trades as well. That speaks volumes about what you're doing now. And the thing that I really wanted to ping on and make sure everybody heard was you're transformational. You saw something not working in our industry with the design side and architects having a chip on their shoulder or or they're better than the builders, they're better than the other people and and you said, something's got to change. Yes, I didn't know that much about you, it's just the the transformational side. But now I'm like super excited about having you on and everything you've done, because that's what our industry needs is a transformation.

Speaker 4: 4:05

I I agree. We need to work together as a team, not as enemies, not button heads. So that was my goal. I set out to do that. I set out to take our company in a direction where we collaborated with builders rather than avoiding them or fought with them.

Speaker 2: 4:19

Man. Imagine that concept collaborating with builders and, at the end of the day, we're all here for the customer and the collaboration helps us work that and just to throw the ball to Mike, I mean being a transformational person, eric, and what you and Todd and Katie were trying to build. I imagine that's what you saw in Mike and Mike. What did you see when you were coming to TK Design? What drew you to this business?

Speaker 3: 4:47

Well, you know, it's funny. You say that too and I remember the interview too. As a matter of fact, I found an ad on Craigslist.

Speaker 4: 4:55

Responded to it late at night, maybe at 1 am. We couldn't afford to pay for an ad, so we reported on Craigslist. Yeah, exactly this. So we were putting on Craigslist yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 5:02

This is good. Who knows if that's still even around. But I had an interview with Eric the next day and I lived five nights away. I'm like how is this even the case? There's no way. It's too good to be true. So I showed up here. They've got four people in here, relatively small. I see some sketches in the room on a board like, hey, this is pretty cool, it's creative, it's artistic. I just got to get in the door somewhere, literally. I know I was stepping into tk, this kind of well oiled machine already kind of just kind of humming along, but really it was. It was ready for the next step too.

Speaker 3: 5:39

So so I hire in I think I'm the fifth employee at the time where we've got this big office space five of us in this little cubby like everyone's facing each other, and there's this big old room around us no real like. So I walk in and I'm like it's not really set up to be this like real flashy design studio where it's all about the architect. It looked like down to the nitty gritty, like they're focused on getting stuff done. They look like down to the nitty gritty, like they're focused on getting stuff done. I'm like you know, there was there's part of me. I was like I'm kind of bummed. That's not this real flashy place. But when I get in there and I start realizing like, oh man, these construction drawings, we have to have a certain, a certain protocol to it. They all have to be lined up a certain way. Eric's over here conducting the train too, saying mike, we can't have 164th inch dimension somewhere. We're gonna line that up because that goes this, and the guy on the field's doing that. I'm like I know exactly what he's talking about because, similarly to eric, I grew up my dad was a mechanic, so I was always hands-on.

Speaker 3: 6:41

Uh, after you know, like during school, high school and then college, I started rough framing houses on a crew. We're in Michigan, so it was great Summer job, rough framing a house, get to work on my tan. As soon as winter rolls around I'm like this sucks, I got to get inside of this. So I decided to go to school for architecture, kind of transitioned myself from engineering to architecture. Always been creative mindset too. I thought, hey, I can have a little more flexibility there. I mean, a buddy of mine started her own finished remodeling company during the time, kind of worked full-time, went to school, anyways, got through all that ended up at TK.

Speaker 3: 7:23

When I started in TK, you know we've got a very established set of plans and it was tailored, like Eric said, for those builders. We wanted to create a set of drawings that are easy to read in the field, they build efficiently and they save the builder money, all at the same time. Todd phenomenal designer, super quick, very efficient and just really open to listening to teach. So I was just I was his right hand man. I was trying to help him out, trying to smooth our process out a little bit, figure out how can we, how can I make it easier, but how can I make our things look a little more attractive too? So a lot of the design and how our concept packages went together, what is the customer getting, what are the deliverables and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 8:08

So eventually, you know, we've just kept growing and growing and growing because at the time I was able to relieve Todd and he was able to do some more stuff. I started focusing on more of the design and now we've got 35 people in the office, we've got six or eight designers, we're doing stuff all across the country and we're we are that well-oiled machine because we have certain things in play and we want our drawings to look a certain way and we want to create a product, that one everybody talks about. But everyone wants to build from our plans too, and that's where we really want to focus on, of course, design. I want our drawings to be the best fill all the client's needs, be the prettiest exteriors, but, more importantly, when you can hand our drawings to a builder and they're like, I don't want to look at another set of drawings because these are exactly what we need and it's so easy to build a TK plan, that's what's really allowed us to grow.

Speaker 2: 9:05

I want to highlight that. So our project manager was looking at plans that our original draftsman we had in-house was doing for us and he's frustrated because they're out there in the field trying to build the house. They said we don't know what the heck we're doing here. There's missing dimensions. It's confusing. They had a list, a four-page list, of all this stuff that said if this isn't on our building plans, we can't accept it. This has got to be better. I said hey, look, we got TK Design. We're going to get this first set of plans. Take a look at that. I'm glad you got this list. So take the list, look at the plans and then ask them to make the adjustments so you get exactly what you want. It's no problem. He comes back to me after looking at the place that we got everything we need.

Speaker 4: 9:47

where we can build this house I was like damn, are you serious?

Speaker 2: 9:53

It was incredible and it was a great feeling because we get frustrated as builders. Right, I came up in the field building and I'm saying I think it's great that you make this thing look really pretty on paper, but if I can't build it, it really doesn't matter. So you've got to give me something I can build. And you guys really nailed that. I mean the point loads from the roof all the way down to the foundation. Everything is thought through. And that's where I've really appreciated working with you guys.

Speaker 3: 10:21

It's been great too. We've appreciated that too, cause we're always trying to get better at the same at the same time too. So if we can get some positive feedback from builders all over the country or in different areas, that's just going to help us be better for somebody else, which is what what we try to do on every project we work on.

Speaker 4: 10:38

Yeah, we try to detail the plans the way I see it. So if you haven't figured this part out yet, mike's the creative one, right? I'm the nuts and bolts guy. I'm the engineering brain. I draw straight lines, he draws fancy ones right.

Speaker 4: 10:51

I like to say I like to say Mike and the design team make them look pretty and me and the production team make them work Right. But yeah, our goal was to produce a set of plans that could give the builder enough information to get their job done without searching for information, like trying to find details and sections and whatever, making them easy to read but at the same time, not giving them too much information, because a lot of times when you've got a like an architect, that's like you know, they're charging you 15 bucks a square foot for for a custom home and they're putting all this detail in the set of plans. Well then, the builders or the carpenters or whatever, are kind of stuck trying to do exactly what they say on the plans. We try to minimize that a little bit. Give you all the information you need, but not make it so it's difficult to build. We let you use some of your field experience to create the details that we're trying to portray on the planet.

Speaker 4: 11:46

And our team, our production team, our design team, what we like to do in our office is it's not, like you know, mike and I managing a whole bunch of people. We're a team. We have regular meetings. As a matter of fact, we just had what we call a CAD meeting the other day where everybody, as they work day to day, we've got access to a list Everybody. Whenever they come across something that maybe could be better you know, maybe that's something that's been bugging them they want to bring up to the group and maybe we can improve, they put it on this list. And then we have a meeting once a month. We call it our warrior meetings. Everybody in the office gets together and we just go through the list. Okay, hey, Eric made these comments, let's talk about them. What do we think? How do we improve? Blah, blah, blah. So that's how we, as a team, continue to move forward and try to improve our team, improve our deliverables, to give you guys, as builders, the best product we can.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Well, it definitely shows, Eric. So when you guys got started TK Design, how did you break into the market? I can only imagine being an architect firm being relatively unknown, especially during the recession, that had to have been a chore and, Eric, I know you were there pretty early on. What was your strategy and what did you target?

Speaker 4: 13:00

Well, I can speak on the builder side, the production side no-transcript there. And, you know, once the recession hit and everybody kind of went their separate ways, that company went out of business. I ended up with Todd and Katie, you know, when things started finally coming back and our goal was to latch on to the builders right, and Todd would spend his efforts doing speaking engagements at places like the builder show and that helped us branch out nationally. We started getting more connections that way and and it was I was tasked with working with the builders and and trying to, you know, bring them on board as partners. And because I was good at it I was licensed builder, I worked in the field for many years before I ever got into architecture. I could talk to these guys, I knew their language, I knew their hurdles, so it just made sense. And then, as we started to grow that part of it, then Mike came on.

Speaker 3: 14:15

He started growing the custom stuff and I'll let him talk on that yeah, you know it's uh, you know it's funny you mentioned that too, eric. And when I first joined tk it was, I don't know, 2011 or so, so michigan was just coming out of it. You know we're getting everyone getting their feet planted again, but at the time, you know they were able to establish a good custom builder, um kind of portfolio. You know there's a couple of custom builders around the area that just you know they built a lot of custom builders around the area that just you know. They built a lot of homes. They kept going. They had their good clientele and good references, but we were their guys.

Speaker 3: 14:51

So they'd show up at TK and you know that spread. They had builder 20 groups that you know they'd they'd pass along the word to them about us and that kept us going there, absolutely and and it ultimately, you know we we do it over a kid we put our signs in the ground, we advertise, we put out flyers, we did emails, we were a part of the local HBAs and the NHBs and stuff like that and doing speaking gigs. Where we could, we'd go to real estate agents and have a presentation and you know, say, hey, you got a new client that's looking for a lot. Show them our stuff. We're happy to help them out when they're ready. You know that that kind of stuff, whatever we could do to just put our fingers all over the place, we we were doing it so that we could continue to to bring in and drive clients to our office.

Speaker 2: 15:38

Yeah, and it shows I mean, that's scrappy upbringing. You guys haven't lost that right. I think you just you're a lot more focused on exactly where you want to be and what you want to target, and I mean it's been really fun. And so there's where I want to go with this. You guys are doing architecture out of state. You're in Michigan. How are you able to do architecture out of state?

Speaker 4: 16:04

You want to start with that one, Mike, yeah sure.

Speaker 3: 16:06

I'd love to. I'd love to Eric. We do it every day. It's now a second nature for us and there's so many tools that we have at our fingertips that just make that easier. Obviously, a site plan is definitely helpful. We can see topography and all that. But we'll get on, we'll uh, we'll pull up some imagery, we get into some 3d mapping, we can look at a few things there, but the tools we have to communicate with clients is just it's. It's so easy now. I mean, it's almost as if we're in the same room, just like we're talking now. Um, I can sit in a room here in michigan.

Speaker 3: 16:42

I talked to someone in germ last week. They were, of course, eight hours ahead or so, but they got up early and we sat down and I was sketching in front of them, we were talking, we had this dialogue, but I have my tablet here, I've got my pen and we're sitting down there. They're telling me about all their wants and needs. They're on vacation and they're like oh, this is great, we're sitting on the beach here or wherever. They were in Germany. I'm not sure what you do in Germany, but they were there.

Speaker 3: 17:10

We're sketching this stuff out. So it's these communication tools, but also the deliverables, that just make it that much easier, because it's intimidating building a house. It's even more intimidating designing a house from scratch with a lot of people. They don't know what to do, where to start.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Well, that was my whole thing. Going to Vegas and when Josh's team was working with a local person or someone really in-house, you have that client-facing meeting and I was like, demystify this for me, because I don't see how this is going to work at all.

Speaker 1: 17:45

And I know when Josh had your first meeting, he was like you know, they just sketched it right in front. They were taking notes and they're like, hey, is this something that you want? And he said that you know, you just knocked it out of the park. And I tell you personally, we are struggling with a local architect. You know, we're kind of branching into that custom building stuff and it's tough. I mean, trying to manage a client's expectation is tough If you know. If you are not, you know, kind of a boutique architecture firm and can really, you know, handhold the client, I think that's well, that's the part of anybody's problem and process is managing expectations. But he's been nothing but just, I don't know, he just loves you guys.

Speaker 3: 18:38

Yeah, well, it's great to hear that because it is tricky. But one of the things that I feel that we do really well and that's allowed us to become really good is we communicate. And really we try to communicate before there's an expectation to communicate to. We want to reach out, we want to talk to the client or the potential client ahead of time. We're trying to have a good estimate, to really kind of read their mind on what they're going to say.

Speaker 3: 19:08

And part of that comes with experience, sure, and we do a lot of homes. So I've got a lot of experience and the whole team has a lot of experience of you know what might come next. But also, right from the beginning I outlined what the process looks like for everybody. So I broke it down into individual stepping stones so that they know where they're at, they know what's expected next, what's down the road, how long should this take. And that alone, right there, gets people attentive to what the meeting's about, because they realize that, hey, someone's thought about where I'm at in my chair. You know, it's not the ego of the architect, they're not qualifying me, I'm trying to qualify the architect. So that's the mindset too. That's really helped us focus on hey, this isn't about us, it's about them.

Speaker 4: 20:02

I want to highlight what Mike was saying about that process and I think this is a big part of what helps us communicate and work with custom clients around the country the first initial meeting and, by the way, mike's not he's not shining his halo well enough. He's phenomenal at meeting with these clients, but he'll show him we have what we call our game board. It's kind of a map shows, like, the steps that we take from start, from what we call our discovery meeting, the first meeting, all the way through a design process and through the construction document process and finishing. So we spell out the whole process to the client and it kind of puts them at ease Like oh, okay, all those things that I really had no idea what to expect. They just showed all of them to me and they told me what the timeline was going to be and they told me how my input is going to affect that timeline and they told me when I have, you know, there's payment points, there's deposits and draws and things like that. So there's nothing left to the imagination. He spells it out with them right from the beginning.

Speaker 4: 21:02

And you mentioned, this is the part that Mike doesn't really. He, he, he, how do you put it, he doesn't. He doesn't toot his own horn enough. He'll sit there in front of a client or with his tablet when they're online, and he will literally design them a home as they're talking. They'll give them a few points like square footages, maybe, maybe price range, how many stories they want in their house, how many bedrooms, and he'll be drawing as they're talking. And then all of a sudden he's and, by the way, if they're in front of him, if they're face-to-face, he'll do it upside down and they'll like I don't hang from the ceiling.

Speaker 3: 21:39

I'm drawing upside down.

Speaker 4: 21:41

Thank you. He's painting them, he's drawing the house, so they're facing the house rather than him, right? But by the time he's done with that floor plan sketch, like in the conversation, they're like wow, why would we go anywhere else? They're like where do I sign? Do you want my check now? I mean, it's a fantastic process that he's developed with his custom clients that really, really makes him feel comfortable.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Well, I'm hoping that you have videotaped some of that. Is that part of some of your marketing?

Speaker 3: 22:11

It is. We've done it so many times that usually you know I'm trying to absorb so much information that I've always forget to hit record. But more importantly, recently we've focused on creating some kind of marketing video with that, with those tools, yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Because I think you really that's important. You know, you say it, you're like oh yeah, that's probably. You know they're over, whatever, but you need to show that cause he, he told me that and you know, I just I didn't believe it, so I need to see it.

Speaker 3: 22:41

Yeah, you know, we look forward to showing you as soon as we get one put together.

Speaker 1: 22:45

Yeah, I think that would be really cool. I mean, and you almost have to be a salesperson in so many aspects, right? I mean, yeah, you get the, I want a three bedroom, two bath, whatever, but what else is important to you? I mean, you can you know, like, for josh and I it's about my closet and stupidly it's about my laundry room. Um, but little things like that that mean things to buyers and not everything is important to the same people. So you know what's part of your process and really you know digging into those details to really deliver a special product.

Speaker 3: 23:27

Yeah, and that's. And that's a great point, because during that first meeting I always tell everybody dream big, let me know what, what your, your wants and dreams are. Can some people are starting to say, well, I want his and hers clauses, but I know that's not going to work. Like, no, that's not what I want to hear. I'll make it work. We just got to figure out what else is more important, or what can we compromise with. Or how do we, how do we massage this plan to get it within a certain square footage.

Speaker 3: 23:52

If you don't know the square footage, well, I'm going to talk about why. You know, why is the square footage important? Well, it's. Is it a price per square foot? Is it a budget? Well, this three thousand square foot house is going to cost way different than this 3,000 square foot.

Speaker 3: 24:11

Because of this reason and I'm starting to figure out and figure, figure out with with them what's most important and then from them I can start dialing in these really kind of cool wow moments within the house that that just really gets them excited about it.

Speaker 3: 24:18

Because this, this experience, I always remind myself this and I always remind the team too, that not everybody gets this privilege to build a house, let alone design a house. And if they do, usually it's a one-time thing. So we want to make sure it's fun, but we want to make sure we're thinking about everything and it's not our house. So I need to hear from them what their big picture is. But we're going to figure out how can we make it work, and there might be some compromises, but either way we're going to figure out how can we make it work, and there might be some compromises, but either way, we're designing a house for them and we want to make sure, when we're done with it, they can afford to build it too. What they pick on the inside, that's a little bit up to them. If they're importing tile from Italy, that may drive the buttons up a little bit, but we're going to talk about those things throughout the design process. So that's that really helps us dial it in.

Speaker 1: 25:05

That's awesome.

Speaker 4: 25:09

And I want to add to what Mike's saying too. You know, he makes a design look great and and and the the production team makes them work. And I think part of what we as a group at TK design bring to the table is a lot of us actually have field experience, Right, you know, like I mentioned, mentioned before, I was in the field for like 15 years before I got into architecture. Mike's done a lot of building himself. Todd pallett he's, you know, the one of the owners he's got. He's a licensed builder as well.

Speaker 4: 25:32

We've got several people that have been in the trade, um, and, and our goal is always not just to design a good looking home but when, when it's done, we do all our own in-house what we call gravity load engineering. Right, you know, people loads snow, loads, things like that. We design all that in-house because we want to, as we do our construction documents. We will make minor tweaks along the way to start weeding out some costs. Like, for instance, you know you can shift the staircase by one riser and it'll add two, three hundred dollars to your framing around that stair.

Speaker 4: 26:06

Well, if you could just make a minor adjustment, you can eliminate a bunch of beams right and save money. Now we can go single two by ten headers and eliminate cripples and allow the headers to be insulated and not only save money but we save time and then we can offer a better insulated interval. There's a whole bunch of those kind of things that our team is in tune with that. You know, we've got a lot of people that work on the production, architecture and too, so we're very conscious of hey, this house, you know, maybe this particular house is going to be built a hundred times. How do we save them?

Speaker 2: 26:37

20 bucks, right, and we're putting all that into our custom homes as well, no doubt I'll tell you a story, real story, of what happened with TK Design. Two stories. First one, the very first job we used you guys on. I had just recently let our drafts person go and we had a client that was in our funnel and we said we've parted ways with the draftsman and you see their face like fall on the table. It's like don't worry, We've got a great design firm. No clue if these guys were going to be good or not. We didn't know if you guys were going to be the answer, but I told them we got a great design firm. We're really confident these guys are going to wow you that was a hope, and a prayer.

Speaker 2: 27:20

We have the very first discovery meeting and they say where do we sign? And it was like everything started to fall into place. The second example we get a client who we're just about to go to contract on. They design a home with an architect firm in another state Beautiful, beautiful house. And they said we want to use this plan in Virginia. It's not going to work. It's a complete. Everything's different the, the elevation is different, the, the way the structure, the whole thing is different. So what do you think we need to do? Is that you got to start over? So we've, we've spent $35,000 on our set of plans. I said I understand, I empathize with the position you're in. This is the best thing for you. This is, this is what we want to do to help you. They thought about it over the weekend, I think. We sent them your video that's on your website, kind of showing your process with the big airplane, and they said, okay, where do we sign? Let's do the discovery meeting.

Speaker 2: 28:15

And from the discovery on, like you talk about collaboration, the house was designed the way that they wanted it. Their selections were way over the budget they wanted, but they're so collaborative. They said, okay, we can weed this out. We don't really need this and your design, our selections. We're bringing them to the budget that they desire for the home that they want to live in forever. So the same way you guys are thinking about that, we're doing the same thing.

Speaker 2: 28:41

I say I ask them, before you guys are even involved what's your budget, what are your must-haves, what do you need to have? And people say you just want to know my budget so you can spend all my money. I said no, hear me out. I can design you a great $3.5 million house and you tell me your budget's 1.2. It's not beneficial for either of us. I need that information to feed Mike and Eric so they know what type of home we're building, so they can already be thinking about it. And those examples have been why I don't even think about this piece of our business anymore. I'm like, what more can we do now, now that we've got these guys buckled in?

Speaker 3: 29:19

Yeah, it's cool. And sorry, let me let me say something real quick, eric, if you don't mind cool. Hey, sorry, let me let me say something real quick, eric. You don't mind it? Josh, that first meeting we had together eric, so it's funny. You guys met the builder show.

Speaker 3: 29:31

I showed up a few days later to see eric uh, you know, give his presentation and to meet some people as well. I I didn't get a chance to meet you, but eric mentioned you, you a few times to me and I said, okay, we'll see if they. We'll see if they reach out or not. I hope so Sounds cool. And he did so. Obviously that's great. But that first meeting we set up virtually One. We asked you to use our platform to meet on, which was different already, just because it made it easier for me to sketch a few things, and that meeting started.

Speaker 3: 30:05

I could tell there was a tension between that client and the team already. So one of the things I learned, because I've done a lot of visits across a lot of production builders all across the country to help figure out how do they save money, how do they make their product better, how can we design a few things better. But I had this trip once, who? And this guy I was with was also like an improv teacher. He did that on the side. He's taught a ton of improv guys and one of the things he told me is his first rule of improv is to make the other person look better. So I go into all the meetings trying to make everybody else look better than me. Hopefully that's returned and it usually is.

Speaker 3: 30:45

But I'm in that meeting. I feel the tension. I hear them talking, so I'm like I know they're going to be talking about a few things. I hear what they're saying. I just started sketching in front of it. And then they get done. They turn to me in the meeting. They're like well, we're not really sure. Well, you guys were talking. Let me show you what I came up with and this was all on the screen and then I showed it to them and we walked through and their mood completely changed and they got engaged and right from that moment I could tell how excited they were.

Speaker 1: 31:17

It made me feel good, oh, you knew, you had them, you knew it.

Speaker 2: 31:20

Oh yeah yeah, you know you say that about making the other people look good. It comes through. I mean, you have a lot of humility for a designer at the skill set that you are and what you bring to the table. You're an extremely humble individual and you make it a lot of fun to do this job right Building homes. If you've been in this business long enough, you become very cynical. It's not fun anymore because everything is so adversarial, and when you can bring people together that have the same vision and the same goals, this is really freaking fun.

Speaker 4: 31:57

Yeah, we have a saying in our office. It's disrupting standards. We aim to change industry expectations and that really is all about that collaboration with builders and with tradespeople and everybody involved in the process. It's not just us, with the people spending their money. We want to collaborate with everybody and work together with everybody to make this process enjoyable.

Speaker 2: 32:22

It shines through. Eric and Mike, I mean this is a. This has been a. Truly. It's been an honor having you guys on our podcast. We've been talking about this for a while and this was exactly the right time to do it. It's an honor to work with the both of you. I mean, we've got so much more business in front of us in 2025 and beyond. It's. It's exciting, like I'm.

Speaker 3: 32:44

I'm really looking forward to it we're excited too and I know we just make things better all around the industry if we can dial in this year and just continue to let other people know about it and just, you know, meet up at events like that international builder show and, you know, see what we can do from there, because I love this relationship we have already and I think it's going to continue to grow yeah, hopefully we'll see you next year we'll see you in february, right, you guys going yeah, eric's going.

Speaker 3: 33:09

I'm not sure I'm gonna make it or not, yet I'm gonna. I'm gonna try, we'll see.

Speaker 4: 33:12

I might show up late, like I did last time I will be there and kelly, our marketing coordinator, will be there with me. Um, you'll get to meet her. I'm not sure if you've met her or not. Um, then hopefully we can get mike to make it too, but it's it's hard to take him out of the office because he's got a lot of clients he's working with, so it's tough yeah, but as I understand it, you can do it virtually, so what's the difference?

Speaker 2: 33:34

vegas or michigan?

Speaker 3: 33:37

right. It's a little harder to stay focused in vegas, though good point.

Speaker 2: 33:44

Well, guys, thanks again for uh for joining us this week on the show. We'll put your contact information in the show notes and get this out to our network.

Speaker 3: 33:56

It's our pleasure. We're happy to be here.

Speaker 4: 33:58

Awesome, definitely we appreciate you having us.

Speaker 1: 34:00

Excellent. Thank you guys.