Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County

E39: Building Dreams from the Ground Up: The Art of Luxury Home Creation with Bradford Homes

• Milli M. & Brad Robinson • Episode 39

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Brad Robinson's journey from mixing paint at Sherwin Williams to creating some of Georgia's most spectacular custom homes reveals the power of perseverance and skill development. As founder of Bradford Custom Homes and Remodeling, he's assembled a team of twenty professionals who transform luxury home concepts into reality from Cartersville to Buckhead.

What separates truly exceptional custom homes from merely adequate ones? According to Robinson, it's understanding that planning is everything. While anyone can reverse-engineer the building process, achieving the highest levels of quality, efficiency, and durability requires professionals who specialize in luxury construction. His team has mastered the delicate balance between creative vision and technical execution.

Robinson passionately dispels industry myths, noting that the construction field is undergoing a revolution led by technology-savvy professionals implementing innovations that ensure exceptional builds and customer satisfaction. His ideal clients appreciate the difference between temporary and permanent – seeking "heirloom quality" in an era of disposable goods. These discerning homeowners understand that true luxury encompasses craftsmanship that maintains value over generations.

The conversation takes a personal turn when Robinson shares how the 2008 recession tested his resilience. With builders going bankrupt and accounts receivable mounting, he put his head down and hustled through adversity, developing the grit that continues to fuel his success today. For listeners contemplating their own custom home journey, Robinson offers a free guidebook on his website outlining his philosophy and process. Ready to explore crafting your forever home? Download the guide or call Bradford Custom Homes – where real human beings answer the phone and are eager to help transform your vision into reality.

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie.

Speaker 2:

M. Hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, millie M. Are you in need of a custom home built from concept to keys? Well, one service might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, brad Robinson of Bradford Custom Homes and Remodeling. Hi, brad, how are you?

Speaker 3:

Hey, millie, I'm great Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us more about Bradford Custom Homes.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we are really a one-stop shop when it comes to crafting your potential forever home. So what we do is we've got a pretty large team. We've got 20 employees, from architects to interior designers to pre-construction managers, all the way through five project managers operating in the field full time. We work from about the Cartersville area of Georgia all the way down into the heart of Buckhead. That's where the majority of our work is is down in those areas. But we do have a healthy presence in the East Cobb market, which is still constantly expanding. So very exciting times.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. How did you get into this business?

Speaker 3:

That's a great question. So I actually started in the trades when I was about 19 years old. I was working at a Sherwin Williams in college mix and paint, and then had an opportunity to go work for a big firm at Alpharetta and cut my teeth, learning how to do residential repaints, working directly with the public, and then started my own business about two years after that and became a turnkey painting and drywall contractor for large custom home builders, mostly down in the Buckhead area, and learning how to manage those very large scale projects. That really just inspired me to want to do more and more. So I picked up new skills along the way, started taking on more services and then started doing large-scale remodels. And all of that really rolled up into learning and accumulating all the skills to be able to go out and build these beautiful and spectacular homes on my own. And so in 2018, we stood up Bradford Custom Homes and started doing mostly high-end luxury residential. It's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

Wow, so a few things that sounds like such a natural progression of a career. You don't look much older than 19 now. I just have to be honest with you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

And I'm seeing your website. Oh my God, the homes are absolutely gorgeous. So what are some of the myths or misconceptions about your industry or what you do in particular?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, building is one of those things that's pretty elusive, right? A lot of folks feel like, and this is one of those unique industries where sometimes people will self-perform their own builds. You hear about self-GC from time to time and people wanting to undertake these large-scale projects, and, hey look, you can certainly reverse, engineer how we do all of this and assemble a team that can get it done, make no bones about it. But to do it at the very highest level, to execute with efficiency and confidence and end up with a product that is truly at the highest end of the spectrum in terms of quality and durability and even from things like how long the home's going to last. That's where the professionals really step in and get these things done. That's one of those things that I think that we do uniquely well. Our team is highly experienced in working in the luxury, high-end part of the marketplace, and so for those very discerning customers that are typically busy themselves, that's where we come in.

Speaker 3:

But just to kind of back into the myth piece of this, you know, I would say that our industry sometimes gets a bad rap because of the nature of certain ways that contractors go about doing their business, and being a custom home builder can be one of the busiest jobs there is. I think the myth is that our industry is filled with bad actors. I think that that's the furthest thing from the truth. I think that the industry was a laggard for a long time in terms of the professionalism and the level of innovation and some of the things that other industries have enjoyed, like the tech industry. We're starting to see a revolution in the building industry around people who are very technology savvy, who are using lots of new innovations to ensure the quality of these builds or the customer satisfaction at the very highest level. So I like to dispel those myths as often as I can, because it's not that way anymore, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's very reassuring to hear, and I can imagine using a second-hand order like yourself, as opposed to a subdivision where it's you know a lot of cookie cutter, a lot of you know fast moving parts of trying to get multiple homes up at once. There would be a definite advantage to working with someone like yourself. So who are your target customers and how do you attract them?

Speaker 3:

yourself. So who are your target customers and how do you attract them? So we typically like to align with clients who understand the value in terms of what they're looking for in a quality, luxury piece of real estate. They typically understand the fit and the finish, but they also understand things like the nature of high-end custom chef series appliances and why you'd want those understanding what those things truly cost and why they hold their value Even outside of return on investment. These customers are pretty discerning. They look for things that aren't, and I was just having this conversation with an associate of mine the other day.

Speaker 3:

I said our clients are used to and accustomed to the type of things in their life as being lasting and not temporary. We are in an age where we see fast fashion, we see fast food, we see fast everything, right, like. There are people that literally treat their homes like a disposable fork. Our clients are the opposite. They want heirloom quality. They want things that are going, heft and the weight and the feel that you would expect and command out of something that was coined as luxury. So understanding what that means is you wouldn't believe it, but there's a lot of builders who've never put their hands on something like what we build and they just don't understand the quality. They can't. All they think about is the bricks and the sticks of it all. Understand the quality they can't. All they think about is the bricks and the sticks of it all. But there's a very, very cottage industry of very good craftsmen who whittle these things together with very little plans.

Speaker 2:

quite frankly, you don't spend that much money on something, you want to make sure that it's done right. And I think my first introduction to that world was I talked to a contractor and he's like, yeah, I'm working on a kitchen, it's a 200 000 remodel. And I'm like people live in 200 000 homes and they're just putting 200 000 into their kitchen alone. So that was very eye-opening for me as well let's switch gears a little bit outside of work. What do you do for fun?

Speaker 3:

Oh, I love to be on the water.

Speaker 2:

My wife lived in Newport Beach.

Speaker 3:

California for about six years while we were dating, and I've always loved the water and being close to it, and so we lived in town, in Buckhead, for a bunch of years and then we moved up to the lake and got ourselves a boat and now we spend our weekends out there just surfing and foiling and doing things like that, when we're not running to the beach.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's the life right there by the water. So tell me this Can you describe a hardship or life challenge you had to overcome and how it made you stronger?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, goodness, I've got to. I don't want it to be all work related, but I've got to say that a lot of life's tribulations have come from all the different challenges I've faced in my work life. I've got to say, you know, the crash of 2008 in our industry specifically taught me so many things. Crash of 2008 in our industry specifically taught me so many things. It was one of those times in my life where you know you kind of look around and you're like, ok, how am I going to get through this? You know like, quite literally, you have pieces of the puzzle just falling off the table. Builders that you know at that time it was builders that I was working for and they were going belly up and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of AP were just stacking up on my desk.

Speaker 3:

So, having to work through that and make sure that I did right by my vendors and did right by my partners, and how do you take care of those people in those times. And you know that was one of those things where you know I didn't give up. Uh, I was very fortunate we, I think. Like everything in my life, when it gets tough, I always say that sales solves everything. So I just put my nose down and I've just hustled my way through it. Quite frankly, um, so it's, uh, it was really those lessons that give me that grit and that fortitude now, and it also helps me understand perspective of my problems. What seemed to be a big problem in my life at one time is now not so big.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so inspiring to our listeners to know that whatever they're going through, if they just put their head down and really focus, they'll come out of it on the other side even better. So, brad, tell me one thing you would like our listeners to remember about Bradford Custom Homes.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know I love to try to stay as positive as I can be, but this is really one of those types of businesses or one of those endeavors that a client might take, where you want to be as educated as you can be going into this is that planning is the single most important phase of any successful construction project and assembling the right team whether that's the right architect, the right builder, the right interior designer, down to the right civil engineer you need that team and you need an expert who has been through that before, has been through that before. So prioritizing the planning phase is really probably the single again, the single most important piece of it, and if you fail to do it, you're typically going to have an upside down project Understood, so how can our listeners learn more about you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'm out there, I'm not shy. I love to talk about not only our story but our process. Our website is a great starting point for folks. There's a free guidebook that they can download that really talks about our philosophy and how you get started and how you typically engage with a good builder, whether it's us or anyone else. Just make sure that the philosophy aligns and that they're going to do their due diligence for you. You're paying them, it's a professional service and they should not only put you in the best position for success, but they should also protect you from any potential issues that come your way. So start there and then make the phone call. Call us, talk to us. We're real human beings. We answer the phone.

Speaker 2:

We're happy to help thank you so much for joining me. I am just thrilled that I was able to get a chance to talk to you. Best of luck to you and your business moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much, Millie. You have a good one.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpcobCountycom. That's GNPCobbCountycom, or call 470-470-4506.