The Builder's Perspective

In this episode of Torch Talk, Lindsey Chupp sits down with Les Miller, owner of 89 Homes, to talk about building a business, leading a family company, and navigating growth in the homebuilding industry.

Les shares his journey from working in construction to launching his own business during the 2008 housing market downturn before eventually taking ownership of 89 Homes. Along the way, he reflects on the challenges of scaling a company, building the right team, and creating a customer experience centered on transparency and trust.

The conversation also explores working alongside family, handing off responsibility as a business grows, and where Les believes the future of homebuilding is headed from smaller, maintenance-free homes to smarter technology and evolving buyer expectations.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• How Les built a homebuilding business during a difficult market

• What it takes to grow while maintaining quality

• Lessons from working with family every day

• Why delegation is essential for business growth

• The importance of transparency with homeowners

• Where the future of homebuilding is headed

• How 89 Homes approaches the building process

• Why strong relationships matter in construction

This episode offers a practical look at entrepreneurship, leadership, and homebuilding, especially for business owners navigating growth and homeowners considering what it takes to build a custom home.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

What does a week look like for less than that?

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Yeah, so it's it's definitely been a learning curve for me because I've been I like doing things. So managing things and doing things physically was totally different. So that was probably one of the biggest adjustments for me is to manage people. I would much rather manage private people because project you can kind of control people are a little harder.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

They are very hard to control. You have to use influence to guide people in the right direction, which takes a little longer than just doing it. Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we spotlight bold leaders growing businesses and communities with grit and purpose. Today I'm joined by Lex Miller, owner of 89 Homes. Lex has built his business in the home building industry, and today we're going to talk about his journey, what it is really like to build homes, lead a business, and navigate growth in an industry that's constantly evolving. We'll also dive into what it looks like to work closely with family, the lessons that come with that, and where he sees the future of home building heading over the next several years. Welcome to Torchtalk Les.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Thank you. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

So happy that you decided to join us today, even with a little bit of arm twisting.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, it's fine. It's fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

I enjoy a little bit of spotlight. Yes. Okay, well, I don't know very much about the beginning story of 89 Homes and how you ended up where you're at today. So why don't you share a little bit of like how did you end up here? How did you end up in home building? Where was Les? What did Les think that he was going to do when he was a little boy? Like, give me all of the history.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Oh, yeah, that's a that could be a 20-minute conversation. Okay. I'll try to keep it pretty short. Yeah. Growing up, you know, on a dairy farm, um, not having big aspirations. Instead of um, I mean, I did have a, I felt like I had a heart heart to serve people and not knowing what that looked like at all. Uh, you know, getting out of school, um, knowing that, you know, the thing to do was construction. So that's where I started. Uh, moved houses, helped the house mover for a year, and then I was almost 19 years old. And then I started swinging the hammer, building projects, you know, agricultural construction, worked for a company for 17 years. Um, and to say I would just say this going through this, realized how old I am.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

Uh, isn't that a little bit depressing?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

We had to say something that happened 30 years ago, and like we were still not a kid, and I was like, that's just really wild to say out loud.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

It is. And for me to write down that it's been 35 years now is incredible. I did not think it would be that much. I knew it was going to be 30 some years, but I kind of ignored the actual number until I had to write it down. But yeah, 17 years with a local company uh contractor, and we did a bunch of different things. Um, maybe weren't the greatest at everything, but we were able to, whatever people wanted, we were able to do. We built milking parlors, we built lots of agricultural construction, got into some residential stuff as well. Um, but we did our own, a lot of our own groundwork, pouring concrete, you know, excavating, and it really exposed me to just a lot of the different trades in like home building.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

A little it helped you dabble a little bit in everything.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

It did, it did, and that is so valuable today now. Um, but that was um, yeah, so it that went to for 17 years, and then 2008, and during that time I got married as well, which and had our oldest daughter, Emma, who's now 22 working in the company. Um, and then 2008, you know, things were coming to a crash, and I got kind of unrestful, um, got tired of kind of uh being the last guy home, picking up an entire pickup load of people, going to work, enjoyed the relationship um with the company I work for, really had a really good time working for that company. Uh, but I was ready to do something different. So in 2008, I got a wheelbarrow, a pickup, and a trailer.

SPEAKER_04 4:09

I did not realize you started in 2008. That's pretty wild. Like when the home housing market was probably at its worst in our lifetime. Yes. You decided to start a home building business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

There was, however, uh something that allowed me to launch my company, is because my wife Lori had a great job, um, was able to support us financially, and I was able to get going without having to be like forced to bring home a lot of money right away. Allowed me to kind of create my own uh way through life. And I had a with the company prior, I had a ton of local connections. Uh, a lot of people wanted one, you know, one-person projects done from pouring concrete, stamp patios. Um, it was a lot of work, but I knew that I found out that my wheelbarrow did a great bit of work for me, taking tools from my trailer into projects and stuff. And uh yeah, so 2008 started in like it was actually it'll be June. It was right after Memorial Day when I started. I re-roofed an entire house by myself.

SPEAKER_04 5:13

Oh my gosh. I know.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

I came home that that last day. I was so tired.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

How many days did it take you to do the whole thing by yourself?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

I think most of the week, I think.

SPEAKER_04 5:23

I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, I can't remember for sure, but it was most of the week, but I did it all by myself. Uh, but it was it was great to be able to get my first job, my first job on our way. It was in Apple Creek. Uh not a big home, of course, but I was able to get that one whipped out and then off. Uh, and from there, I had I had about a month worth worth of work. Um, and I've there's only been one time that I didn't have that I didn't know what I was going to do tomorrow or next week. Uh, and it would have been, I forget which year it was, but it was maybe three years later. It was the economy was trying to come back and it was really slow. Um, and I started to enclose like our back patio area into uh like a sunroom. And I got the roof on, posts and beams and roof on, and there it sat in the spring until like the day before Christmas. I finally finished it. But I then allowed our um just to work to drive me, kind of take me wherever I needed to go.

unknown 6:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:25

So when did you really shift and evolve into being very focused on building new homes?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Sure, yeah. So it would have been like the fourth and fifth year. So so like 2008 is when I started my own company, and then in oh, probably in 2010, I was doing a lot of just remodel projects. Um, and then I built my first home for a good friend of mine. Uh, they asked me to come build their home. I built their home. It was a great experience for myself, and I think it was for the client as well. Um, what I found out though in the next couple of years is um starting that way and not having like an office to work out of was really hard. It took an incredible amount of work to pull like samples to from the from my home office to someplace, or it was difficult. I enjoyed it, but it was difficult. And I remember I remember like one of the things that I used to do, and I still do it for therapy, is mowing the yard. And you can reflect, and it's I remember sitting at my like mowing the yard and thinking, what if I could get everything ready and just bring contractors in and build a house, and I don't have to do the grunt work. Um, I felt like I was better at putting things together, creating ideas.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

Um Organizing the project.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

That's what I felt like I would be better at, and then trying because it you can't do both. You can't really do do well with both. And I thought, well, there's nobody would pay a general contractor money and then bring your, you know, other subcrews in to build the, but that's what it's like today now. So fast forward to 2013, I was five years into what was called building improvements LLC. Um, and I thought for sure I would have a name that people would know exactly what I was doing, and that's what I did. Well then 89 Homes had been going since 1979. I knew of the company, I didn't know the people there, I knew where the home where the owner lived. He passed away suddenly, January 2nd of 2013. And then from that, I got a phone call through, you know, suppliers that we had, they had, and and they said I should go check it out. And then the the president there had retired. He came, he was my next door neighbor. He also came to me and said, Hey, this would be a great opportunity for you. And I'm like, Oh man, I don't, that's way too big. That's way over what we're doing. Like, there's no way. Plus, I had this dream of a shop created with an office at home. Um, I was gonna build up that year. Well, the grass is still growing there. So Lori and I transitioned over to 89 homes, and there's another side story that I could talk about.

SPEAKER_04 9:12

So 89 homes had the location already with a model home where you're at now.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Okay, yeah. I did not realize I had been there that long. But isn't it always awesome when God puts somebody in your life that has a bigger vision for what you could possibly do than you do yourself?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Oh my lord, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

You're like, no, no, no, I don't think we can do that. And they're they're like, no, pretty sure this would work out great for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So yeah, there's a couple God stories that I'm not going to share now, but that could be that I could share about how that all came about. But yeah, so they had everything set up, you know, to be able to build homes from you know, from scratch designs and the office, the samples, everything was we fell in love with it after the first visit. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

So that was you guys took over that and you said like 2014?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

13, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Okay, 2013. When did Lori actually join the business full-time then?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

She was about a year prior to that. Okay, is when she started working with my company that I had. And yeah, so she was she was uh very valuable for me. And she'd actually planned to work for another local company when this came about. And then we took a detour to State Route 89 and 30, and that's where we landed. You're still there, we're still there, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

So tell us like what has the evolution been of home building from then till now, and kind of tell us like what the business is like now. What do you specialize in those types of types of things?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, some of the things that of course uh our specialty would be is we can pretty much build whatever people are asking us for as long as it's within a model that we have created. Like it can be a lot of different things. Like if you come to us and you're wanting a home that's going to take us a year to build, we would be interested. But um, we've taken 89 from building eight homes a year through the economy, you know, the recession until now where yeah, it's quite a few more than than eight homes. So and then everything's on paper, of course, as well. You know, going through COVID as just it's just a lot different. The building process, the contracts, everything looks so different now than it did back then.

SPEAKER_04 11:19

Yeah, I would say prior to COVID, the construction construction industry was really not very tech advanced. They were not used to doing things virtually or doing anything online, and it's really shifted and brought people into this entry a lot more quickly in the industry. So whether you want to go or not, kicking or screaming, you got to get on, you know, have everything be digital and like have things accessible. You have to learn how to, you know, use a Zoom call, maybe every now and then.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So it yeah, and I I enjoy those. I do enjoy those. I like the in-person meeting, the yeah, like the relationship end of it is really important. So the in-person meetings are great. However, we do a ton of virtual meetings. Uh, I do them a little different than most people do, but I do a lot of virtual meetings and just being able to have 3D renderings. Uh, everything was we everything we did basically on our schedule with well, uh lead pencil and erasure. So much different. We dreamed of the days where the guys would have these electronic devices in their hands, and we would update things at the office, and somehow it magically would appear. And it's happening now.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

Thank goodness for the cloud.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Oh my word, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

Automatic updates.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:33

Okay, so let's talk a little bit then about your role specifically. Like, what do you do within 89 homes? What's like that's changed a lot since you guys have taken over, then I'm sure you've added staff.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

So, you know, what what does a week look like for last now?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, so it's it's definitely been a learning curve for me because I've been I like doing things. So managing things and doing things physically look totally different. So that was probably one of the biggest adjustments for me is is to manage people. I would much rather manage a project than people because projects you can kind of control.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

People are a little harder to they are very hard to control. You have to use influence to guide people in the right direction, which takes a little longer than just doing it.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

So I used to like if if there was a saying that I used to say, if it doesn't go, just use a bigger hammer. And obviously that doesn't work in the relationship end of it. But yeah, so being the president of a company um is just a little different than what I had anticipated, I think. I I thought I remember saying, like, if I can get up to building 30 homes a year, I'm gonna be done. That's I'm gonna we're gonna develop the model that builds 30 homes a year, um, which is in the past multi- I don't know how many years, probably 10 years ago now. Um not quite that many, but yeah, so um, but it's just going to work every morning and making sure people have things to do. Uh and I found out that I can also get other people to allow them to speak into what other people should be doing. So there's so different like tiers of um like management, but find those people that can help you manage your people that are better at it than you are, and just be like feed into that is kind of what I try to do.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

What does your team look like?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

So we have, yeah, so obviously you know that I have a beautiful wife, Lori, that she is she has a business head on her shoulders, like that's so it's her and I own the company, and then our daughter Emma now works for us, who is fantastic on managing people as well, like tasks, like dishing out tasks. But yeah, so we have a we have a sales, full-time salesperson, we have a full-time scheduler that takes care of projects, and then we have a drafting team of a couple people, um, and then we have field managers that like supervise our projects. Um, so we have it's um we have people that are pulling permits for us. Uh everything, everybody has kind of their own little area that they work in. So then we have we have the like we have four field superintendents that would take care of projects, and they are, you know, they're they are an extension from the office. And then all our contractors as well. We are just, we feel like we'd like to say all our contractors, we're just a big family in how we operate.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

But you work very collaboratively and you figured out how to make that seamless and have good communication so things feel smooth for the clients who are building the home. Building a home has to seem like one of the most stressful things to possibly do. Like, I want to do that one day kind of scares me a little bit. I went through that as a kid with my parents, and I just remember the arguing, you know, like when things are not going on track and things, I'm sure Jay and I will just sail through. It'd be easy breezy.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

But a little, it seems like it could be like one of the most stressful things for somebody to go through. So I'm like, it sounds like your team is set up well to take care of the homeowners and give them a good experience.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

That's our goal. And I think just being transparent with them and working for people, like building homes for people that are fit within the model that we've built. And we've we've numerous times we've told people, you know, it's probably not going to work. Like what you're asking for is not going to work because we want to make sure they have a great experience, as good as you can make them. I will say though, when people are building a house, they're usually kind of in a in a kind of a temporary living situation, which doesn't help. Um, if people could stay in their houses while they're, you know, the house that they own potentially are renting, um, if they move in the basement with parents, it gets a little stressful. That is, you know, in a camper, that is stressful.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

That's the worst because you've got to be out before winter.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yes, correct. Yeah. Oh, we've had people live in campers over the winter. Oh, no, thank you. And relationships get a little strained if because and we have to recognize as a builder that some of that stress that they're getting from is not coming from the actual building, it's from the rest of their lives. So we try to recognize that and we try to have those conversations early on.

SPEAKER_04 17:17

Yeah, set up good expectations. Well, you have people. Here's the way to survive a home build.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Exactly. Yeah. And then just sharing everything that you can and trying to meet the expectations. Like, I think even building the home itself, I think we have we have figured out how to do it well. Sometimes planning out how to create, get to the get to starting day is a little harder in meeting expectations of of like creating a floor plan and making sure you stay on track with that. And that's where um I probably that's probably one of my bigger weaknesses is to make sure that I stay on track creating floor plans for people on time.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

On like what does that mean? Creating it on time, like within the time frame you've you've given them, like, hey, this is gonna take us two weeks, we'll have this turned around for you, and then just getting that turned around in time. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's the challenging part with just the scheduling or making sure you get it all done.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Or you really enjoy staying in the creative process, like what part of that is yeah, it's like when I say, like, I'll have I'll have something for you in two weeks, I might have it in two weeks, but it may not be polished, like it may not have a roof on it or a basement on it, and not sharing that okay, this is just going to be a floor plan. We can look at it 3D that way, but it's not gonna really look like a house yet until another you know, week or two go down the road, and just and then staying on track and not allowing because I do not like new things. One of your one of the things that I really enjoy is being creatively with newer things. So I can get distracted pretty easily by allowing the new things to come into play.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

When I've worked on something for a month yet, and we seem like we're at square one.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Oh, I understand. I think that's a very common trait with like business owners, entrepreneurs. We tend to be like visionaries, we like to start something new. It's definitely not in my strength to stay in the details at the end. That's why we have the right people around us to pick us up and finish it for us. So at least that's what I'm trying to do. Like when we're building out the team, do I have people who will help me finish this? Because I know I'm really bad at that part.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, that is definitely one of the things that I've learned not only through this, but other boards and like a church that I'm involved in is when you build a team of people, is to look for those attributes that people have, the strength that people have to be able to build a team that actually has the capacity to make it happen. So, because it can't all be Mr. Miller's.

SPEAKER_04 19:46

They have to be all created with our own unique talents. We are put together for a reason. So okay, so um you and Lori work together. Emma is now working with you as well. So let's talk a little bit about working with family.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

I, you know, I had shared with you, I'm pretty sure Jay and I would not survive if we were working in our business day-to-day together. And you guys seem to do this really well. Um, what do you think the key to success there is and what are you expecting over the next, I don't know, the future now that Emma's there? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, we're I will, I guess we'll find out. I guess we'll find out. It's it's been a it's been a journey, it's been a really good journey. Probably the biggest things that I would say is just finding your roles, like as a family of finding each person's roles within the company and try to try not to get in other people's way. Like sometimes I tend to do things that uh somebody else is supposed to be doing anyway. And um, but I think yeah, there's just this is let me start. I guess I'll say this. I think it's easier to do it with family than it is without family because of the amount of effort and time that it takes to like own a company. In the home building industry for sure, it's not a nine to five job. It's not like you're open at seven o'clock and people come to get coffee, and then at you know, by eight o'clock the night you're done and you're over with. It's and even those places, they have a lot of work that has to happen behind the scenes. But in home building, most of our clients are available after hours. Like they will say, it's pretty common for people to say, Well, I gotta go to work. Like I got I'm working from like six until you know, whenever, and to make ourselves available, and we do through Zoom meetings and other things as well. And it's if the family wasn't involved, they wouldn't understand what you wouldn't have as much grace for each other.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

Yeah, I I can see that side of it too, because there is a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes when you're building something. And you know, I'm working at home in the evenings, and my family doesn't always understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. So I could see the collaborative. Effort of they're like, oh yeah, you understand why the motivation behind the late night phone calls and texts or whatever it is to be there for your customers.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

And even back in 2013, Emma would have been, you know, I don't know, nine years old maybe. And they were with us all the time. We were our office was open on Saturdays. So Lori and I were there every Saturday, you know, for years. And that's our busiest day. So you have to be open on Saturdays. And the girls were always with us. And we were nervous about what that's going to be like. It actually worked to our advantage. Not that I we used it as a sales tool, but it got people got to see who we were. We were very authentic, I think, with the with the girls. Um and there was some crazy stuff that happened. Like our youngest daughter, Haley. If you would have known her, I don't know if you knew her when she was like four or five.

SPEAKER_04 22:54

I did not.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

She would hide underneath the bed at the office and scare people as they were walking through the office. We had to put an end to it. Emma, Emma was, she loved to read. So she would be in a nook somewhere, a reading. And we had to actually put signs up in the different rooms where they were hanging out because we we were busy. You know, we were meeting people, we were on the phone, we didn't know what they were going to be doing, and we wanted them to have a lot of space. We had two homes. Sometimes we're in the in not the one that the office was in, our two-story home. And so we had to put signs up for people to be aware of like kids.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

Children in the home.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, children in the home.

SPEAKER_04 23:28

But it made people feel very at home seeing that we are just we are just a well that definitely makes you feel better than a big national chain that you're building against. You're never going to see something like that in those situations. So I could see how that would make it easier to connect with you. And having the kids around in the business is valuable too. And that's those are memories that you guys will all have forever, and it's a part of it. So that's I love hearing stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Emma being, you know, graduated college here in December, now has a tremendous amount of knowledge about home building because she was out with dad, out with mom. You know, we went to a family. We would trick them into saying we're going on a road trip or taking lunch when we were really going looking at a project.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And they were on to it pretty quick, but they enjoyed it. We had a lot of fun with it. A lot of fun with it. There's obviously times when when it's not, do you know, mom and dad aren't around either. Um, but they're pretty mature girls, they can take care of themselves.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

I know I had a conversation with Emma recently, and she was like, Yeah, I I never thought that I would do this. I went and tried something else, and then I realized, oh, this isn't that bad.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

So she does with what she's learned at college, it's tremendous for us in developing. We've got a kind of association going on, and she's done she's done so well with creating product uh for that, and I trust her. You know, she's it's sometimes when you bring somebody else in and exposing the business to them makes you a little nervous.

SPEAKER_04 24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

But she knows what we know. Yeah, she's been there from day one. So but it's it's yeah, it's challenging and rewarding at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

So since working with family is challenging and rewarding, what would some advice be you'd give to somebody else who's listening who might be just starting out and they're gonna go into business with family, or they're well into it and maybe they're not surviving it well? Any advice that you'd give?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Sure, that is that is definitely a great question. Man, I there's probably many things to share. It's just learning to understand. I think I go back to the same thing. Like, if they are both like, let's say it's husband and wife, or it's sons, daughters, and they're in the family, is learning your roles. One of the things that I have not done a great job is I shouldn't talk about the negative things, but I'm gonna just say like I haven't done a great job is giving probably some people the respect in the family. And I would treat the rest of the people better than I treat my own family and allow them and they would have to kind of pick up, pick up where I left off. And but I would say value those people and treat them just like you would, if it's your if it's your daughters or sons, treat them just like you treat your employees. They want to be treated the same. They don't want to be favored, they want to be treated the same. And then once you're off of work, and then they can be your kids. I think that's one of the things I've done.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

And you had mentioned before clear roles and responsibilities makes a big difference too. I also have a tendency to just step over those boundaries a little bit, but I think if you know, your husband-wife team, it's a lot easier if you know the lane you're supposed to stay in, to stay in the lane and then respect that of each other than it is if everybody's trying to do everything and you're all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

Your business has grown, you've evolved a lot. What are some of the challenges that you had, you and Lori have had to overcome just with all of that growth, with navigating new things? Any big like if you're now looking back and reflecting and seeing what are the lessons or challenges that you've experienced over the last, you know, I think one of the things that I would say is for myself is handing off responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Because there's only so much time in a day, and being the one that likes to control things, um, and having to oversee basically everything that happens, being okay with dishing out responsibility, allowing other people to bump their heads, make mistakes, and learning from them, because that's sure what I did. Uh I didn't do, and I'm still like working on handing off responsibilities. That is definitely one of the things as you grow, and especially if I just put like the home building aspect of it into it, is how do you bring on the right people, not just within the company, but like with your contractors as well, and communicating that well without the contractor getting upset with you? Like, how do we bring in um so that you can continue to grow and they can continue to grow? Um, because there was times when I kind of bullet my way forward and said, okay, so we'll we'll do as much as we can, and I should have brought more people on instead of working people, like just more hours and pushing people, pushing contractors to get stuff done, is adding people. Uh and yeah, and then also one of the things that you strive to do is to stay connected the same way you were whether you were building 12 homes or you're building 84 homes.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

That's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

That is hard to stay connected with everybody because you bring in, you gotta now maybe you need in home building, it takes about 20, 20 contractors for all the tasks, different contractors. And now you're bringing, you're basically tripling that. Now you're working with, you know, pushing 175 contractors maybe. Um, and it is harder, but that's another one, another something like dishing off responsibility is you put that responsibility on other people to stay connected with them. I don't have to be that person.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Yes. Creating the structure for scaling that growth and putting the people in between and then trusting them to do it the same way that you would do it. Yeah, for sure. I understand that's really hard. I mean, because you've invested a lot into the dream, the time, the energy, everything that goes into it. So it feels scary to hand that over to somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

It does a little, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

A little bit, but they have to learn, like you you said. And really, you're learning then to lead at another level as well when you're trusting them with a new responsibility. So we'd stay stuck if we were just gonna continue to do things the way we can do it. There is, we do actually have a capacity max. Yes, we do, regardless of whether we want to believe it or not. There's only so many hours in the day.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

And I will add just to that yet on on like not only like your contractors, but other like competition, like locally. I think we are blessed with our local competition. Like, I have a lot of friends that are doing pretty much what I am, a little different model. And we bounce ideas off each other.

SPEAKER_04 30:05

It's actually a little bit unique. I know I had mentioned that to you. It's really something to watch the home builders in the Wayne Holmes County area come together and collaborate. I don't think that that's a normal situation.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

We go to some national meetings and we talk with builders from the Carolinas, from Michigan, and they struggle with the things that we are really strong at. Uh and actually, just on the way here, I had, I did I say that I was talking on the phone while I was driving. No, I had a conversation with one of our closest competitions. And I had some questions about, and it has to do with, you know, growing up in our lot very technical, technological like smartness, whatever you want to say, but not knowing if your contractor has equipment that you could help them immensely with what you have, but you don't know how to do it. So I had a conversation with a a company out of Holmes County uh that is that we've been very, we're very comp we're pretty competitive, however, we're very friendly too. And just how do we do that well with because the contractor not only is are we not the smartest, the contractor isn't either, but he has this tool that would allow us to help him immensely. And there's people that are like prominent home builders in in the Wayne County and Holmes County areas, and we, yeah, like you did mention, there's just there's so many, there's so many ways that we can help each other. And we would a lot of our us builders would say, if you have some questions, just give us a call. We are proud of an organization, uh part of an organization, the home build association that we try to help each other through that. It's it's been good. That's one of the things that I was probably surprised the most coming into like looking at our competition is how much there's people that don't like to, but there's some companies that are very open and they won't give all the details, but they're very open to sharing like they'd rather have friends and enemies within the industry. It's easier that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:06

Well, and you have to have an abundance mindset that there's enough out there for everybody, and you're still gonna go do things your way and figure out how to make yourself stand out and be unique, but um that does not happen in the marketing industry. So, and I've been around construction enough to know that that's pretty actually unique in as well, like working with individual services. Some of them are really competitive, and so that's it feels a little scary sometimes to be that friendly. Um, but I think that it's working well, yeah. Like, you know, it gives you an opportunity to learn from each other and and build each other up. Competition makes better clients too. It does. So if you're on the same playing field, then it's a lot easier to know that everybody's charging what they should charge and comparing apples to apples. So it's fun to watch a little bit from the outside.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

And then it's not as painful then, you know, you're you're not gonna you're gonna lose some clients to your friends, and those aren't that that those aren't that painful. Like if you think about, well, I could have gotten that one. But if it's somebody that you're kind of pulling for anyway, it's like you said, there's an abundance of work currently anyway. So help each other out as much as you can.

SPEAKER_04 33:14

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the future of home building. So we talked about how we got where we're at now. What do you see? Obviously, the um the real estate market is pretty challenging. It's there's all kinds of crazy things going on, you know, post-COVID rates skyrocketing, land's not available in our area. It's just like there's all kinds of things. Um, so what are you guys preparing for over the next like three to five years? What do you see happening?

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Sure, that's a good question. I think I think the the more the because of the challenges with real estate, people I think are going to be moving to more of like a condo like type setting where it's smaller footprints, less maintenance, less property like cost per se. And how do we do that well? And kind of combined with like today, we make ourselves so busy. We have two to three kids, they're involved in sports, nobody has time to do anything hardly. If if you especially when it's rainy like this, and you don't have time to mow the yard. So I see that um where people are pushing towards more of a maintenance-free living area. Where I think now for a couple of years, I would I could have said, like, there's so much opportunity for like maintenance contractors. Like, if we build a new home and I could sell a maintenance package with it, you come change your my furnace filter, my water filter, make sure my duct work, my HVC is working properly. People would sign up for that type of service. And then the other thing that I'm kind of excited about is like more efficient um like pieces in our home, like our HVAC, our air conditioners. Like we have some products that are a lot better, more efficient than they were, trying to keep those costs down, spending a little bit more money up front, but then keeping the like the daily costs down. Um and not and you know, and of course, not building these huge homes that have huge property taxes. Uh, but it's very challenging currently in in real estate.

SPEAKER_04 35:17

That's do you see so do you see the the smaller house, smaller footprint trend in Wayne and Holmes County here locally as well? I know that that has been coming like in larger urban areas. What do you see actually translating to like locally in our area?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yeah. One of the challenges that we face locally is is finding property that's you know an acre or two. And and one of the issues has been like the regulations that come with that. And with our new commissioners that we've had over the last couple of years, um, we've had some conversation and they changed some of that where it's a little easier. And I think we we're gonna see, we're gonna see like smaller roads put in, maybe roads connecting new roads connecting other roads, where we're taking some area where, and of course, I like, I mean, nobody wants to see the farmland go away. Some of it is gonna go away because we have more people. And I keep saying, like, if your farmland is going away, what a better way than having little kids growing up in neighborhoods where they can interact. And I think that's where I see Holmes and Wayne County going, is we'll see more like connecting roads, dead-end streets, you know, into Cold-Sax, um, where people are able to like make them a little bit more affordable. Like when you have properties in Holmes County going for upwards of a hundred thousand an acre, it's it's just not within the budget. It's wild. It's not, no. But if you can, if you can get it where it's a little bit more reasonable, break these properties down to like one, two acres apiece, um, and being part of that. That's some of the things that excites me about creating those opportunities, partnering with the right people to create those opportunities. I think that's Homeland County. And then out of from away from that, I think it's it's smaller footprint, you know, having um like almost like HOA set up where people don't like restrictions.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

However, if they can pay an X amount and they know that the budget is fixed per month, uh it's a lot easier to predict, it's a little safer for them, and then they don't have to worry as much about the maintenance.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 37:20

I remember this winter when we had a really awful winter talking to somebody who lived in an HOA where their snow was cleaned every single week, and I was like a little bit jealous of that.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

They don't have to worry about like being in the country where your safety or a well is gonna fail, and it just they want the stretch fee part of it.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

Yeah. I mean, I employ a young team here, and just seeing how challenging just getting into homeownership is for a younger generation now. Um, I had a conversation with a homelander recently, and he was talking about how like upper 30s is the average age of a first-time home buyer, which is wild. I mean, you used to be able to do that at a much younger age, but it's just so challenging that it's challenged, challenging to rent. Renting is renting is expensive, but so is buying, so is building. And really comparing renting to buying or building, it really is almost as equally affordable. And I think that's also an area where if people just understood, you know, what do they need to save? What does it look like? My encouragement would be is if you have considered building a house or if you're trying to get in to talk to you guys, because I've talked to some of your clients who have said you guys are really a great team to work with if you, you know, you make the process easy, maybe it's more affordable than what they realize it could be, and you really help guide them through the process.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

So if somebody's listening, yeah, we we do kind of pride ourselves a little bit in that, in trying to be very transparent, right? You know, from day one. Uh, and and we've had numerous people come with, you know, a tight budget and figuring out how to stay within them. But often I mean, there's people that, you know, obviously can't afford it. However, there's a lot of people that can actually afford more than they think they can. It's we pride ourselves in putting the tools in their hands and saying, hey, this is how it works. You if you can like if we can develop a plan together, we might be able to do it. And figure out what what are the fixed plan, fixed pricing that you can't change, like your driveway, all your all your uh property improvements, and then the balance that's left over, let's figure out what what we can build the house for.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

I'll let uh me and Jay be a really fun challenge for you on shop versus house. There you go. Which one's going to win?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

That would be fun.

SPEAKER_04 39:33

Okay, so if somebody is listening and they're thinking about maybe having a conversation regarding building a home, where would they find more information about 89 homes? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah. Well, if you see me going down the road, you can flag me down. No, I'm just kidding. Um a lot of people contact us just through calling us at our phone number. Uh, we have a website that's gonna look a lot nicer. And just a little bit. Yeah. Well, I'm so excited. Lindsay, you have no idea how I'm excited about that one. It's it it felt like it was gonna be an uphill battle and it would never happen. Well, I'm so excited about it. But yeah, so they can find us on, they can call us, you can hit us up on there's a contact us. A lot of people contact us through our website, um, follow us on Facebook or Instagram. We have a good amount of followings. We post most of our projects. Um, we're not the quickest to put like a ton of information out there. We'd rather have people contact us and figure out like kind of what we do. Uh, but yeah, just calling us or hitting us up on what's your phone number? My our phone number is 419-368-4961.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

Okay. So if somebody's thinking about going through the process, just call us or Lori or whoever answers the phone and they'll walk you through the process from start to finish.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

We love talking about our process.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

So thank you very much for being on the show with me today. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about your story. I get to spend some time with you at church, but I don't get to spend a lot of time talking to you about business. So I really enjoyed this. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

I enjoyed being here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 41:09

Thanks for tuning in to Torch Talk. If today's story sparked something for you, share it with a colleague, community leader, or future change maker. Until next time, stay inspired, stay intentional, and keep your fire burning.