Designing The Future: Modular Homes, Custom Millwork, And Walkable Communities with Lew Oliver

Lew Oliver has spent decades doing something most designers never attempt. He does not just draw homes. He plans entire towns. From Seaside to Rosemary Beach to the first expansion of Edinburgh since 1805, his work has shaped some of the most loved communities in the world. In this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I sit down with Lew at his studio in Clarksville, Georgia, to talk about what real community building looks like and why so many developers miss it.

We walk through his philosophy on vernacular architecture, why a home should feel like it belongs to the land, and how the early settlers of the South shaped a building tradition still worth studying today. You’ll learn the principles of new urbanism and walkable community planning, including how a hundred houses can sit on fifteen acres instead of one hundred, and what that does for both people and profit.

We also break down two collections Grit Blueprint helped bring to life. The MOD Modular Home Design Collection is built to make stylish, well planned neighborhoods attainable for teachers, families, and first time buyers. The Lew Oliver Collection with Magbee Contractors Supply is a curated millwork, molding, and door collection that ends the twenty year drought of soulless trim and doors, and brings real detail back into homes.

Lew shares why labor shortages are pushing modular forward, why details create the moments people remember, and what most developers get wrong when they try to manufacture a sense of place. If you are a builder, dealer, designer, or developer in the building industry, this conversation will sharpen your thinking about scale, materiality, and affordable home design.

What you'll take away:

Why vernacular architecture creates homes that feel like they belong on the land and sell faster because of it.

How walkable community planning lets you fit one hundred homes on fifteen acres, raise margins, and preserve land.

Why modular home design is the path to affordable home design without losing style or quality.

How the Lew Oliver Collection with Magbee Contractors Supply ends the era of boring trim and brings detail back into homes.

What most developers get wrong about new urbanism, and what it takes to build communities people refuse to leave.

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Stefanie Couch is the founder of Grit Blueprint and a third-generation building industry professional.

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Transcript

[00:00]  Intentionally Design And Build With Community Top Of Mind

Lew Oliver  00:00

Scale, materiality, and detail that all adds up into something exceptional. And not what most people think are normal. You can't produce emotions without dramatic effects.

Stefanie Couch  00:15

It's really about making moments. Sometimes people think about the big picture and they miss how important those little small things are. I think that's a metaphor also for life. The things that make it are sometimes that little detail.

Lew Oliver  00:28

Take the time to process your ideas, to cultivate creativity, to make a place better. Don't accept convention very readily. Question, what makes this a great place that we want to be in. And then design and build.

[00:49]  Welcome To The Grit Blueprint Podcast

Stefanie Couch  00:49

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Stefanie Couch. This is a spot where leaders talk about the stories, strategies, and systems that win in the building industry. We unpack how leaders and brands build their reputations and become unmistakable.

[01:11]  Live From Clarksville, Georgia With Lew Oliver

Stefanie Couch  01:11

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host Stefanie Couch, and today I'm coming to you live from the Lew Oliver studio, a beautiful setting here in Clarksville, Georgia, which is my hometown area. Lew Oliver, welcome to the show.

Lew Oliver  01:25

Thank you. Glad to be here.

[01:33]  Meet Lew Oliver Of Lew Oliver Inc.

Stefanie Couch  01:33

Well, everyone gets an intro and you have quite the intro, so I'm going to tell everyone a little bit about you. Lew Oliver is a Georgia based urbanist, master planner, and designer who has spent decades doing something that most people would never attempt. He doesn't just build and design beautiful homes. He actually designs towns and communities. From Seaside to Serenbe to Rosemary Beach, his fingerprints are on some of the most celebrated communities in the whole country. He's also worked in over 40 charrettes across four continents and has helped with the first expansion of Edinburgh since 1805. So really change in history here.

Stefanie Couch  02:06

You're currently bringing vision to my hometown area of Northeast Georgia, which I believe is the most beautiful place in the world, but I may be a little biased. We just went and walked one of the communities that you're working on, which we're going to show in Behind the Build called Burton. So I'm excited to have this conversation today. You live in Sautee Nacoochee, which is where I lived for 25 years. And you are currently in your office here in Clarksville, Georgia, where my dad had his lumberyard. So a lot in common and we both have a heart for this area of the world. My team and I had the privilege of working with you on a new project with Magbee Contractors Supply, your millwork collection, and we are also helping you on a modular collection that you're working on. So you've got so much stuff going on. Do you ever sleep?

Lew Oliver  02:54

Well, I sleep in bits and pieces and I mostly obsess. I'm a creative, so my thoughts jump all around. And I'm a little bit of a moody person. But that goes with the terrain of being a creative.

Stefanie Couch  03:12

Well, I love that. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.

[03:13]  The Story Behind Burton And Walking The Land

Stefanie Couch  03:13

I want to dive right in. I want to talk a little bit about Burton because we just went up and walked it. I've been there a few times throughout the last year and a half since you've been working on it, and it's really coming together beautifully. You just finished the community house. Tell me a little bit about when you first walked that land. You told me today, I didn't realize that was 10 years ago when you procured that. So what was the moment that you knew when you walked it that it was a special place, and what was your vision for it 10 years ago?

Lew Oliver  03:41

Well, 10 years ago it was a family farm. The Kassner family has owned this land for about a hundred years, and so the land had a lot of character. Wildcat Creek goes right through the property, and the beautiful thing is it's a basin for all of the water that's pouring out of the national forest. Even up on Tray Mountain, it comes into Wildcat Creek and it feeds Lake Burton. The air is incredibly clean and very crisp. It's purified by the forest, all the trees and the leaves. So my first impression of the site was that it had a pristine, very healthy quality to it. There was a neglected farm on it, so there was some cleanup that needed to happen. But it was a site that immediately appealed to me, and it appealed to the community designing and building side of me because it has terrain challenges, but nothing like the mountains around it. So it had a much gentler topography. And it was very suitable for creating a destination community of the quality that we like to do.

Stefanie Couch  05:08

This area is really a hub for people in several cities. Atlanta, Asheville, Charlotte, Greenville. There are a lot of places close to here that could come retreat on the weekends with only a few hours drive. I know a lot of people from Atlanta love to come here in summer. It's a special place. The start of the Appalachian Trail is right in the backyard. The headwaters of the Chattahoochee River are here. So it's a really beautiful place.

[05:36]  What Vernacular Architecture Really Means

Stefanie Couch  05:36

One of the things that you work on, you taught me a little bit about vernacular. I did not know what that word meant before I started speaking with you last year. It's really about owning something that would feel like it should be there. You're accentuating the beautiful landscape and making a home that feels like it could have been there all along. What are your thoughts about that? How do you design in vernacular, and what does that mean to you?

Lew Oliver  06:01

Well, vernacular is not a style. We could easily say everything here is going to be Greek Revival. It's going to be Victorian or Carpenter Gothic. Those are more or less applied styles, and they were brought into this area in the 19th century. Vernacular is a word that's a lot deeper. It means architecture that is derived from a culture as a response to the climate, the availability of materials, and building tradition. And it implies a certain efficiency and practicality in construction. The early settlers of this area were mostly English, Irish, and Scottish immigrants. They brought with them skills from the old world, and they had a certain way of building. They were also very practical people. They were not moneyed people. They came here for opportunity and because of the productivity of the land. So the name of the game was to establish yourself. Build a house as easily as possible that would withstand the elements.

Lew Oliver  07:30

Simple buildings were constructed that were gable forms. The gables were easy to build. Usually lumber was not so heavy that two people couldn't lift a beam. There were external fireplaces to the building, as opposed to New England, which had internal fireplaces. The external enabled you to cook in the house and keep warm, but at the same time it dissipated the heat during the summer. If it was a central chimney, it would retain the heat. We have these magnificent porches in this area, which are typical of the South. The porches provided outdoor living space and working environments, and they also sheltered the building envelope from the brutal summer sun. All of that speaks to vernacular building tradition. We have an abundance of wood here, and stone that you can pick up. It's no wonder that most of the buildings are framed buildings with simple pine, poplar, and hemlock finishes, and foundations and chimneys made out of fieldstone gathered from the site.

[08:48]  Why We Should Build Towns, Not Subdivisions

Stefanie Couch  08:48

Well, we love the idea of building a beautiful home, but you have really branched off into community and town building. We've talked a lot about the importance of community, especially today in the world. We're all so busy. I think we're very disconnected from each other. Especially with technology, relationships and that connection between humans are going to become only more important. So how are you thinking about community, and talk about some of the projects you have going on right now that you're excited about.

Lew Oliver  09:21

Well, community to me is more than a notion. I think a lot of people think of communities as some abstract notion of just a gathering of people. It can be digital, it can be over the phone. But for me, community is way deeper. And what we build that embodies our community matters. When we look at old cities and small towns, we see a whole fabric of human civilization. It's built there to reinforce relationships, commerce, and transport of goods and services. So for me and for those in my company, it matters that we keep towns alive. Instead of designing more suburbs and subdivisions, we actually design towns and walkable environments, because those are the things that really promote human interaction and give it a physical form.

Lew Oliver  10:40

Here in Clarksville, which is a northeast Georgia town, we call it Mayberry behind the scenes. This is a great example of a traditional town. Clarksville fell into decline in the mid 20th century. When we saw this town, we already had a second home in the area, but I thought, I need to be in this town putting my talents to work to help sustain it and bring it back, along with the help of a lot of other people who have the same mission. So we chose to invest in the downtown and rehabilitate the space that we're sitting in last year.

Lew Oliver  11:25

But these kinds of places are very special. It's very important that we give something to the younger generation that may not inherit a place like this. They may live in a suburb along a freeway. This is such a great example of how towns should be. The thing that really spoke to me was three years ago, we were leasing an office, and one of the people in our office, Jennifer, said, let's go set up a booth. There's a big Halloween get-together in Clarksville. And I'm like, I could care less about Halloween, and I'm not going to be dragged down the street to set up a folding table and give out candy. And lo and behold, I was convinced to do that against my will.

Lew Oliver  12:21

And I did exactly that. And there were 3,000 people who descended on this town, and it was such a lively, festive event. It was like, this town means something. And it's relevant. And this is a place of celebration and community. So it really, to me, is the thing that I want to invest my time and energy into.

Stefanie Couch  12:49

I agree. I love it here, and it's so special. Both of us, I haven't been on four continents, Lew, so you got me beat by several continents. But you've worked on four continents, you've done a lot of things all over the world. You could live anywhere. I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things in the US, and I could live anywhere. I've lived several places, but both of us have chosen to come back to this area and build businesses here. I think it's very important to be where you want to be in life and to work where you want to work. We talked about it. It's a hub. There are a lot of places nearby where we could get people to come. We're building a studio in Clayton right now. Same thing. We want to be there, and that's where I want to live and where I want to work. Ben's the same way. There's something special about being able to do that and help the place that you love the most thrive. I'm so excited to see what you continue to do here in Clarksville. And like I said, I love this area because I have ties here. This is where my dad's lumberyard is. So it's so cool to see you doing this. There's a lot going on. It's a bustling street right in front of us. There are a lot of businesses here, and it's exciting.

[13:55]  Architecture Should Be A Blessing, Not A Blight

Stefanie Couch  13:55

Well, I want to talk a little bit more about the architecture piece of it. You have a background in all this design stuff, but you actually say architecture should be a blessing on the landscape, not a blight.

Lew Oliver  14:11

Yes.

Stefanie Couch  14:11

So walk me through that. What are your thoughts on that? How do you make sure it's not a blight on the landscape?

Lew Oliver  14:19

Well, I think too often we drive around to different places, especially through suburbs in a place like Atlanta or Houston or Charlotte. Most people think of progress as a very negative thing. When I go down to 85, I look at the 20 percent of forest that are left, rapidly evaporating. And when you hear about new development coming in, you know that a forest is going to be taken out, leveled, and the freeway littered with billboards. It just becomes something that is production and entirely based on money and market needs. These kinds of places do provide housing for people, but they're never soulful places. The element of nature is almost entirely removed, unless it's something that just cannot be used anyway.

Lew Oliver  15:22

So this is a development pattern that does not have to exist. There's an alternative called traditional neighborhood development. Another word for that is new urbanism. The mission is to create walkable communities with real town centers and significant architecture. These places are more compact, so they encourage walkability, they encourage social interaction, and they stimulate you to want to walk through the town. The nice thing about this kind of compact development is when you take a hundred houses, normally that would take a hundred acres. You can do it in 15 acres. That enables you to create civic spaces, and it enables you to preserve massive amounts of countryside. Whether it's agriculture or woodlands, you can save all of that and have a great sense of community and a great economic model at the same time.

[16:39]  Inside The MOD Modular Home Design Collection

Stefanie Couch  16:39

Well, let's talk a little bit about that, because affordability is at an all time high challenge. It's really hard for young people especially, but a lot of people in their mid forties and fifties can't afford to have homes, or maybe they can't afford the home they want. One of the things that we've worked on together that I'm so excited to see come to fruition is your MOD collection. You have designed some beautiful homes that are modular homes, but not what you think of when you think of modular homes. They are classically well designed. Tell me a little bit about what MOD Collection is, what inspired you to create it, and what's the future of MOD Collection?

Lew Oliver  17:17

Oh, thank you. And to be transparent, Stefanie has helped us with marketing materials for MOD, conceiving of the logo, the graphics, and a lot of the thought that has gone into changing the public perception of modular construction. The public to date thinks of modular construction as a commodity, as something less than. Stefanie's group has helped us reconceive that notion. The name of this is Lew Oliver MOD, short for modular. It can be thought of as superior construction with really high quality, elegant finishes and solid construction. MOD will be something we can use to populate our walkable neighborhood plans.

Lew Oliver  18:23

MOD is also something we are hoping will reduce the cost of construction and reduce the construction cycle, so that communities like Trilith, like Serenbe, like Vickery, which to date are for the most part high end, become more attainable. Even though we have small houses there, they're still high end houses, and they take a certain level of affluence to be a part of. MOD is something that we're hoping will make desirable neighborhoods much more attainable for people like school teachers, which to date have been priced out of these kinds of places.

Lew Oliver  19:09

This is a huge challenge, and for me, it's the thing I'm most passionate about. Do I love doing custom houses? Yes. Do I love expensive finishes? Yes. But what drives me to continue in my career is to make excellent places that are more attainable, environmentally friendly, and incredibly stylish. I want those places to be attainable to most people.

[19:38]  How Modular Homes Can Solve The Construction Labor Shortage

Stefanie Couch  19:38

I love that. One of the things you mentioned is construction. It's not just about affordability on the end user. It's about being able to build in a way that you can scale. We have less labor in the construction market than we've ever had, and more needed labor. This year in 2026, over 400,000 people in the construction industry are needed just to actually do what they think they're going to do this year. And we don't have those people. I do believe that some of the technology like AI is going to make more people look at the trades than have in the past. But in certain places, like where we're building, there may not be people to come build these homes. So if you build them offsite and you build modular, it actually allows people to build more homes in certain areas where there aren't construction trades. How does that work? When you think about what that looks like on site, what are some of the advantages for modular construction that maybe people are not thinking about?

Lew Oliver  20:37

Well, I do believe modular is the future, and it's the future now in some places, and in some places it's yet to emerge. I think areas that have an abundance of labor and skilled labor, MOD will not take root there yet. But in some of the areas that are challenged with constricted labor and especially skilled labor, MOD is going to take off. The very factory process is going to make the whole system more efficient. We can design and execute these building volumes in a factory much more efficiently. Faster, less waste, with much better working conditions, under roof all year long, and much more consistency. All of this is going to add up to efficiency and desirability. When we pair that with reduced cost and a reduced construction cycle, the evolution of modular is going to really start to accelerate.

Stefanie Couch  21:55

Yes, I can't wait to see it. And these collections actually are modular because you have plans that can be mixed and matched. If something is a one story, a lot of them you can stack a second story on, even a third story. You can add something to the side. So it's modular in the construction method, but they're also modular in the floor plan method, which is really clever. I love what you've drawn, and I can't wait for that to hit the market.

[22:22]  The Lew Oliver Millwork Collection With Magbee Contractors Supply

Stefanie Couch  22:22

Another thing that you've sketched from your beautiful mind is a millwork collection. You told me that you got tired of specking things that you couldn't find. You dreamed up something that could be done for a certain type of home, and then you couldn't find the millwork that went with it. So talk to me a little bit about the Lew Oliver Millwork Collection. You're doing that in partnership with Magbee Contractors Supply, who is actually making those come to life. What are you doing there? What type of moldings are you offering, and what do you want people to know about the collection?

Lew Oliver  22:49

Well, to me, millwork is incredibly important because it provides the rich detailing that both the exterior of buildings and the interiors need. We're coming out of a 20 year drought of millwork, beginning around the turn of the millennium. There were certain looks in the market, and most of it was labeled minimalism. The spare looks became fashionable, and then they just became repeated and repeated and repeated. Your experience of going into a new home was seeing one by four trim on baseboards and cases. White walls.

Stefanie Couch  23:41

White walls.

Lew Oliver  23:41

Gray walls. White, even more white walls. Black granite. Gray and white. More of that. Buildings became generic, and the interiors essentially got killed.

Lew Oliver  23:50

I knew I wanted to do moldings in rooms. As I've been doing for years, I would pick up catalogs and go, well, here's a three inch ground, a four inch ground. Here's a one piece base. Here's a one by six with a 163 base cap. And none of it was good. None of it had any passion or soul. The people who were on the planet prior to the year 2000, you know they're going to look at this standard molding and think, this is boring. There's no soul here at all.

Lew Oliver  24:36

So along came Magbee. I met the principals of Magbee and expressed a desire to do a custom collection of pre-curated molding assemblies. And it clicked. I ended up partnering with Magbee to produce a line of moldings called the Lew Oliver Collection. The collection is groups of moldings that work together. Some are Regency and Hollywood Regency inspired. Some are Greek Revival. Some have more of a French line to them. But they're all pre-curated to work together, and to be bold and gutsy.

Stefanie Couch  25:24

Yes. And you have doors that go with it as well.

Lew Oliver  25:27

Yes.

Stefanie Couch  25:27

One of my favorite categories is interior doors that have some flair to them. Again, you see the same simple things over and over in every home you walk. You've drawn some beautiful ones. My favorite is the Hollywood Regency, surprise Lew. A little glam never hurt anyone, I believe.

[25:43]  Design Anything But Normal: Scale, Materiality, And Detail

Stefanie Couch  25:43

You said something to me earlier today that really struck me. I want to hit on this, because it could also be my personal motto. Anything but normal. That's what you said. Tell me what you think about when you say that. What does that mean to you?

Lew Oliver  25:56

It means that it goes from big to small. When you're walking through a town like Charleston, the streets are incredibly narrow, and the architecture is excellent. There's a lack of normalcy there, because the experience is so dramatic and so exhilarating because of the scale and the level of detail. You can take that from an urban realm and break it down to an individual building. If you have a small building in downtown Clarksville, you want to make the most of that. You can take an 18 foot facade and do pilasters and beautiful sash windows and a custom door and have something that looks like a million bucks. Moldings, scale, materiality, and detail. Moldings come under the detail part. All of that adds up into something exceptional. And not what most people think are normal rooms.

Lew Oliver  27:07

When you go in a room, you either need a big, exhilarating experience, or you need a small, cozy experience. You also have transitional experiences. All of those are based on a sequence of spaces, and they produce an experience. You can't produce emotions without dramatic effects called scale, materiality, and detailing.

Stefanie Couch  27:45

Yeah. It's really about making moments that feel special in each moment. We're in your office right now. The front door is a moment. This fireplace area is a moment. You've got a little area here with seating. You have different moments that you walk through.

Stefanie Couch  28:00

I think sometimes people think about the big picture and they miss how important those little small things are. I think that's a metaphor also for life. The things that make it are sometimes that little detail, like on an outfit, or it's the jewelry that you put on, or whatever it is. Home design is the same. That's why I love millwork so much, because it is a way to have that bold moment with just a little addition that doesn't scream at you. But it's definitely there, and I think it's important. We did lose that in the gray and white era of 2000 through 2018, and it's now hopefully coming back to something that's a little bit more refined.

[28:38]  How Small Details Transform A Space

Lew Oliver  28:38

Well, I agree with everything you've said. The details do make the difference. When we were renovating this space last year, Austin Treadwell masterfully did the work. This space, when we gutted it, was a bunch of crumbling walls and kind of a slapped together ceiling. Even being a designer, it amazed me the transformation, because it reinforced what I believed and thought would be the case. The building shell was really a mess. We actually didn't clean it up very much. We left it. You can see pieces of it in the corner. You can see this still dilapidated ceiling. But we paired that with some refined elements like the pilaster capitals and the casings. Then we gave it all a cream whitewash finish. What happens is the level of detailing contrasts with the rustic qualities. They play off each other, and they create electricity together. They're almost two opposite principles. That's what I love about spaces like this. They become magical, just overnight.

Stefanie Couch  30:04

Speaking of electricity together, I love that phrasing. You and your team work together really well. Liz Treadwell, you mentioned Austin Treadwell, who was the builder here. Even something that may seem simple, like the color of this creamy white on the walls, was not simple. It was extremely intentional, very thought out. I know Liz probably had a great hand in that.

[30:04]  Building A Family Team That Works

Stefanie Couch  30:22

Tell me a little bit about your team. You have other members on your team. How important is that when you're working with people? I know you work with a lot of trades, a lot of designers, and your internal team. How important is that team to you? Because I know Lew Oliver is Lew Oliver, and you're a beautiful part of that story, but there's so much more to it. Tell me about your team.

Lew Oliver  30:45

Well, our team functions really well. Everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, without really having it scripted out. We're actually mostly one big family. We have one architect on staff who's not family, but mostly it's family. We know each other really well, and we know each other enough to know what our talent pools are. Half of our family works here, either in writing proposals, doing accounting, doing marketing, color and finish palettes, architecture, design, and construction. We all function together. We know what each other does very well. Do we have conflict? Of course we do. It's a symphony of discord most of the time. Being a family, we know how to firewall that from family events outside of work. So it's both a blessing and it's happy. But it is not a perfect world.

Stefanie Couch  31:56

Well, nothing ever is. I grew up in a family business, and now I am married to my husband, who is also my business partner. Working together and traveling together, it's interesting how you have to separate the personal from the professional. I think you guys do a great job, and I love watching your teamwork. It's been fun over the last year being a part of that as well.

[32:26]  What Most Developers Get Wrong About Community

Stefanie Couch  32:26

Well, I want to ask you one last question, and then we're going to go to the lightning round. Are you excited about the lightning round?

Lew Oliver  32:23

Yeah, sure. Yes, we could do that, Stefanie.

Stefanie Couch  32:26

Okay. The last question is, you've done projects like Serenbe, Trilith, Burton. You're creating communities that people love. They don't want to leave. They want to live there. What is one thing that you think a lot of developers get wrong when they try to build community, and what would it take for them to actually get it right?

Lew Oliver  32:44

Well, I would say 5 percent of developers are concerned with doing walkable communities. We're trying to change that by illustrating that they can be more profitable doing the right thing. According to us. We do think it's more profitable doing walkable communities, because they're a lot more resource efficient in every respect. Take the time to process your ideas, to cultivate creativity, to make a place better. Don't accept convention very readily, because convention has largely led to the world that we see today, which is not very good. It's not as good as it was a hundred years ago. Really think through the details that make pedestrian environments wonderful. Travel. Record. Pace. Walk across the street and pace how wide the lanes are. Pace how wide sidewalks are. Photograph. Look at detailing. Question, what makes this a great place that we want to be in. And then design and build. But don't just start building based on an engineered set of plans that really isn't about people, and it's not about experience.

Stefanie Couch  34:17

Love that answer.

[34:20]  Lightning Round: The Best Book Lew Has Ever Read

Stefanie Couch  34:20

All right. First lightning round question. What's the best book you've ever read, whether it's design related or not? What's a book you love?

Lew Oliver  34:30

I love Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. My sister gave me that book. I did not even know who Christopher Alexander was. Anne-Marie gave me that for a Christmas present one year. Christopher Alexander wrote an entire bible on walkable cities and how to make them, and observations. I was already onto new urbanism, but this just reinforced a lot of things that were becoming clear to me and made me think about things that I should be thinking about. For instance, the idea that children should be able to live in a neighborhood and walk into the town safely without interfering with cars. That very notion struck me as being so truthful. When we were kids, we would walk from our house into the center of town in Cairo, Georgia. We could go talk to my granddad, who owned a store downtown. We could buy candy. We could hang out downtown in relative safety. That became our entire premise when we created the master plan for Trilith, and we created the master plan for Hartness in Greenville. The simple idea was something called a Green Street, which was a street without cars, that kids could walk to the town. So at Trilith, every other street is a Green Street. And at Hartness, every other street is a Green Street.

Stefanie Couch  36:06

That's awesome. That one book and that town turned out so great. I'm going to have to check that book out. I've never heard of that one before, so I'm going to check that one out.

[36:07]  A Surprising Fun Fact About Lew Oliver

Stefanie Couch  36:07

Next question. What is something about you that people would be surprised to know? Does it have to have anything to do with design? What's a fun Lew fact?

Lew Oliver  36:22

A fun Lew fact was, Lew was a skinny little guy from South Georgia who became a preacher's kid, and was a total misfit in society. At least that's the way I saw it. I tried desperately to be popular. Achieved it some. But I went on to really do something I thought I'd never be doing, which is planning towns and cities. And I'm very proud of that at this point.

Stefanie Couch  36:53

Well, look at you now. Now you're very popular, world renowned for what you do. Who showed who? All us weird kids just doing it every day.

[37:00]  What Lew Would Do If He Was Not Designing Towns

Stefanie Couch  37:00

All right. If you weren't doing this every day, what would you be doing?

Lew Oliver  37:08

I would be outdoors, gardening and hiking and building things, and just be outdoors all the time.

Stefanie Couch  37:19

You live in a beautiful place to do it.

[37:19]  Grit Is Creative And Energetic Marketing

Stefanie Couch  37:19

All right, last question. Fill in the blank. Grit is blank. What does grit mean to you?

Lew Oliver  37:28

Grit is creative and energetic marketing that brings to the surface clarity and purpose.

Stefanie Couch  37:40

I love that. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for sitting down with me today.

Lew Oliver  37:44

Thank you, Stefanie.

Stefanie Couch  37:45

You know, I love collaborating with you. I always feel fired up when I leave. It's like being around other creative people. It just does something to another creative person that you can't really mimic in the regular world, we'll call it. So thank you so much, and I'm excited to collaborate together. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Grit Blueprint, and we will see you next time.

Stefanie Couch  38:00

Thank you for listening to the Grit Blueprint Podcast. If this episode helped you think a little differently about how to show up, share it with someone in your building world who needs it. If you are ready to turn visibility into growth, then head to gritblueprint.com to learn more and book a call to talk to us about your growth strategy. Until next time, stay unmistakable.

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