00:00:13:04 - 00:00:30:13 Unknown Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Your Project Shepherd construction podcast. This is our 101st episode. Hopefully our last episode. Number 100, with my friends Jeremy and Toner and Matt. It's always a great time to hang out with those guys. 00:00:30:13 - 00:00:40:08 Unknown And some of today's topic we touched on a little bit last week, so, I really wanted to dedicate a whole episode to talking about the why of the podcast. 00:00:40:09 - 00:00:59:20 Unknown Like, why are we here? Why do I do this podcast every week? What? Maybe what made me decide to want to start this podcast. And so to answer that question, I have to go back a few years and talk about, why I started Shepherd Construction Advisors. And Shepherd is the company that, you know, runs this podcast. 00:00:59:22 - 00:01:18:21 Unknown I know it gets a little confusing because I do have two separate companies here. I've got Shepherd and then I've got crafted, which is my custom homebuilding company, and there's some overlap there. So, just thought I'd give a little word of explanation about where all this came from. So crafted has been around now for, this is our 21st year. 00:01:18:23 - 00:01:41:07 Unknown And, actually, we started as Curtis Lawson Homes switched, to crafted about seven years ago. But anyway, we've been doing that for about 21 years now. And since we've been around for a long time, we built a really good reputation with, architects and engineers and consultants like toner. And we started getting referred a lot of projects that we're having problems. 00:01:41:09 - 00:02:00:18 Unknown So, if an architect or toner, often would woods would come across a project where a homeowner is struggling, a builder is not doing what they're supposed to do. They would refer those projects to crafted and say, hey, can you step in and take over this project or this guy's house is falling apart two years after they moved in? 00:02:00:18 - 00:02:24:00 Unknown Can you take over this, project and get it fixed for them? And so we were getting a lot of those kind of referrals, and a lot of builders like to stay away from those projects, and I guess I'm just crazy or dumb enough to say yes and deal with it. And so, you know, I, I kept noticing the same problems and trends with all these projects. 00:02:24:02 - 00:02:49:11 Unknown You know, people didn't know how to hire a good builder or architect or designer. They didn't know the right products to be asking for the right things to be specified on their projects. They didn't know how their contracts should be structured, how they should handle payments. And so a lot of times they would get like way ahead of the builder on, on payments, or the brother the builder would get ahead of them or they'd be like way overdrawn out of pocket. 00:02:49:11 - 00:03:26:00 Unknown And so the builder screws something up. Now the builder has their money, or people didn't know what to look for, to know if the builder was screwing things up. You know, if maybe if the architect happened to pop by, they might notice a problem. But a lot of times people would get all the way to the end of a project, have lots of issues and kind of not find out about it until it's too late and I think one of the overarching, issues here, and I touched on this a few episodes back talking about sunk costs, was people took way too much or put away too much trust in that builder. 00:03:26:02 - 00:03:47:16 Unknown And even if they saw the builder making some mistakes, they would just kind of feel like they were stuck in that, you know, like they had to just finish with that builder. So the level of trust was way too high, even though it wasn't being earned. So I had this, this idea to start this whole other consulting company, just to help people with these problems. 00:03:47:18 - 00:04:13:23 Unknown And I have a good friend in Florida named Christopher Caron. He was actually the best man on my wedding, 25 years ago. Chris owns Kosta Custom Homes in Los Angeles, and Chris had been telling me about how he worked with owners reps in Los Angeles. Now Chris builds real high end stuff a lot of times, 20, 30, $50 million projects overlooking a cliff or on a cliff overlooking the ocean in California. 00:04:14:01 - 00:04:33:20 Unknown So he's dealing with a lot of very wealthy people, and a lot of these people have owners reps. And the role of an owner's rep in a residential construction is kind of a foreign concept, at least here in Texas. Some parts of the country, like LA with Chris or Chicago, New York, it's maybe more common on high end homes. 00:04:33:20 - 00:04:56:17 Unknown But here in Houston, even in the high end community, people don't really understand what an owner's rep does. So what it is, is the owner of a project, which is, you know, the homeowner in our case or in a commercial project, it could be, a company, a church, a school, hospital. Those entities don't have the knowledge or the time. 00:04:56:19 - 00:05:20:11 Unknown If someone in that organization doesn't have the knowledge or time to be involved in kind of overseeing the builder. And so those organizations will hire an owner's rep to kind of stand in their place and kind of be their eyes and ears during the project to make sure things go smoothly. And that owner's rep would help them identify and hire the builder, the designer, or the architect, basically help them assemble the team. 00:05:20:13 - 00:05:48:06 Unknown And then then once the project is rolling, they will help manage that, manage that process, make sure that the owner is getting what they're supposed to be getting. Essentially, the owner's rep is the, project manager for for the owner of the, of the of the the property. And even though a high end luxury home can have just as many moving parts as a, as a commercial project, you know, it's just not common. 00:05:48:07 - 00:06:21:02 Unknown So, you know, we can have on a, on a big residential project or even a midsize project, we can have, you know, an architect, designer or structural engineer, civil engineer, landscape designer, lighting designer, pool designer, geotechnical testing surveyors, HOA stuff. We have to look out for city permitting. And while some of those players can kind of manage each other, like, for example, oftentimes the architect will kind of handle helping select the engineer or the surveying company or whatever. 00:06:21:04 - 00:06:47:12 Unknown You know, the problem that I often see is there's not really kind of one unified vision of how everything should come together on a project and kind of what the finished, the finished picture of that project looks like. Everyone in the project could have their own agenda. Right? So the architect and the designer, while they may be excellent professionals, they are looking at kind of the the visuals, right? 00:06:47:12 - 00:07:10:10 Unknown They're looking at what that finished project, finished product should look like. And they may not really comprehend the budget aspect of it as much. Or oftentimes people will hire the architect, architects finish their plans, and later they hire the designer, and then they hire the builder. And so all three of these parties don't really have kind of the the owner's unified vision of what this thing's supposed to look like. 00:07:10:16 - 00:07:28:09 Unknown And so you'll have these things that come out looking kind of disjointed because there's not one person really watching out for it. And the the owner themself, this is their first time they've done it and they don't really know how to coordinate those parties. So again, not knocking any of these people at all. Obviously I have a lot of architects, designers on the show. 00:07:28:11 - 00:07:49:07 Unknown They're all, professionals and do a great job, but I think even they will admit that they don't always have the advantage of being able to kind of control that big picture or, again, architectural designers aren't always in tune with the budget side of things. So at the end of the day, it has to be about what the customer wants. 00:07:49:07 - 00:08:12:22 Unknown This isn't the architect or the builder or that the designers home is is the the the homeowners home, the customer's home. Right. And so the job of the owners are to kind of wrap this part of it up is our job is to keep the whole team in alignment with the customer's vision. And that's the design goals, the budget goals, the schedule. 00:08:13:00 - 00:08:35:07 Unknown And also at the end of the day, just to make sure they get the quality that they're expecting to get. So all that to say, I started Shepherd to, be an ownership company, to offer ownership services here in Houston. But even after doing this for a while, I'm still really fighting this uphill battle, because people don't realize they need the service oftentimes until after it's too late. 00:08:35:12 - 00:08:57:06 Unknown So after the project falls apart, and unfortunately, the majority of my work has continued to be, these rescue projects that I mentioned earlier and, only now instead of crafting getting hired on that, it's me getting hired through Shepherd to kind of help people, that clean up and figure out what's going on and get things back on track. 00:08:57:08 - 00:09:23:19 Unknown So I get hired after things have just fallen apart. People are mad at each other. Major problems have to be overcome. And I also do a lot of work with toner on legal cases. So one, two, five, ten years after the house is built, the houses are falling apart. Now, toner and I get hired to step in, evaluate it, to see why the home is not performing, write some reports, support the attorney. 00:09:23:21 - 00:09:43:16 Unknown And so now people are spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal expenses. And that's a whole new level of pain and suffering for the homeowner to go through. So, that's not a place that you want to be. And that's the whole reason I started this, was to kind of prevent people from having to go to that place in the long term. 00:09:43:16 - 00:10:06:17 Unknown But yet here we are. We're still getting hired on that kind of project because, there's lessons that just aren't getting learned. All right. So back to the podcast. The podcast got started, through Shepherd, and it was meant to be, educational arm of Shepherd. If you will. And the real goal here is to teach the right way to undertake a construction project. 00:10:06:19 - 00:10:26:18 Unknown If you've watched this for a while, I know that you've seen this graphic before. We'll pop it on the screen here. I always used to use this, especially in the first couple seasons. I would always show this and give the little spiel. But it's our formula for executing a project the right way. And it's this kind of a simple child's drawing of a house. 00:10:26:18 - 00:10:47:07 Unknown Right? On the bottom there, you get your foundation for, for proper planning. The left walls, your team, the right walls, communication. And the roof is proper execution. You take any one of those components away from that house, and that structure is going to fall down, right? But you have all those components in place and built sturdily, and your project is going to succeed. 00:10:47:08 - 00:11:10:16 Unknown And I love that diagram. It really shows. And we've tried to harp on this that like, these are the things that you have to have in place if you want your home to get built the right way. Not just built the right way, but to have an enjoyable process. Right. So I felt like so many people were just diving headfirst into very complex projects with no guidance, not knowing who to trust. 00:11:10:18 - 00:11:15:19 Unknown And so our whole first season on the podcast was 100% homeowner focused. 00:11:15:19 - 00:11:34:10 Unknown And I wrote this, this fictitious story. If you want to go back and watch it, I encourage you to obviously. But I made this whole fictitious story about this couple who wanted to build a house, and they made, like, every single mistake that you could possibly make in, buying a lot, picking a builder, designing it. 00:11:34:10 - 00:11:51:23 Unknown And, the builder kind of, fell apart. And the whole project, the whole project kind of went to crap. And so, my guest and I, during that first season would talk about, you know, what happened in the story, the mistakes that they made, and then how to fix it or the right way to do it. 00:11:52:01 - 00:12:19:08 Unknown So after that first season, though, I realized that a lot of my, viewers, listeners were more industry people, you know, builders, architects, designers, people like that. And I realized the the educational opportunities are really for both sides of the spectrum. You know, the homeowners want and need to know how to do things the right way. But then also on the contractor side, you know, they're the ones who were often making these mistakes. 00:12:19:10 - 00:12:41:08 Unknown And it's not always intentional. I don't think anyone goes into this wanting to screw things up or wanting to get sued or have problems. I think we all have good, intentions. Right. But it's just educate is, you know, now I want to educate builders, designers, architects, that team on how to run a project the right way, because it protects them, too. 00:12:41:14 - 00:13:05:03 Unknown So now we're trying to kind of go both ways and offer some content to both homeowners and industry people, give both of them some real value. So, we've done a 100 episodes now, as I mentioned, this is 101 counting this one. And our goal here really remains the same as it did at the beginning. The core of it is the same. 00:13:05:05 - 00:13:27:20 Unknown Number one, I don't want to see people get hurt. Number two, I don't want to see them throw their money away. Number three, I don't want to see houses get built that have major performance issues, whether that's a safety issue, a health issue for the occupants. You know, we want to we want to build, sustainable, resilient homes that that people are going to enjoy for years and years to come. 00:13:27:22 - 00:13:47:10 Unknown And the whole process of building a house should be fun. It has the opportunity to be a memorable time. And that's a memorable memorable for the right reasons, not because it's falling apart, for your family. So if you follow the advice that you hear on this podcast, I promise you that that process is going to go smoother. 00:13:47:12 - 00:14:09:06 Unknown Is it going to get perfect? No, no, no home construction project, whether it's a remodel or a new construction, is ever going to get perfect. There's always going to be mistakes. But hopefully we, we, we learn how to to plan better for fewer mistakes. And then when we have those mistakes, how we're going to overcome those, how we're going to keep things on track and how we're going to maintain those relationships. 00:14:09:08 - 00:14:40:00 Unknown You know, between homeowner design team, builder, how everyone kind of gets along and we reach that end goal of delivering a beautiful home and having happy customers. So as we as we head into these, hopefully next 100 episodes, we're going to continue on with these. The same mission, these same goals. And I'm going to continue to continue to try to find, some, some great new guests, some fun and interesting content to bring to you some new products that I see. 00:14:40:00 - 00:14:58:19 Unknown Every year when I go to the builder show and, and, Las Vegas, we always see some cool new products, learn about some cool to some cool new technology. Kind of like the riot episode that we did a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago. Now, there's always something, new that's can help improve the process. 00:14:58:21 - 00:15:16:22 Unknown Make things go smoother. So we're going to continue to seek out those opportunities and bring them to you, and just kind of try to add value to the homes that we're building and, and improving the process of building. So if you have any ideas for future episodes or for a guest that you think would be fun, I would love to hear from you. 00:15:16:22 - 00:15:45:14 Unknown Please shoot me an email add podcast at your project shepherd.com. I would love to to consider those and and check out some new some new opportunities for content. Or send us a message on social media. We do monitor those messages on, your project Shepherd Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. Or if you're in the Houston area and you want to talk about, us helping you with your project, I would love to talk to you about that. 00:15:45:14 - 00:16:00:10 Unknown And, I'd love to, to be your owner's rep. Or if you're having an issue, be your consultant and kind of help you get those things back on track. That's why I'm here. Or if you want to work with crafted, I'd also love to talk to you about that. I think that we have a great team at crafted. 00:16:00:11 - 00:16:21:16 Unknown We have a great process of building homes. So I would love to talk to you about building your next home and getting you plugged into the crafted process. So if you want to check out crafted where crafted home.com. Also, Crafted Home Houston on the social medias. So either way, I would be honored to assist you and your family for planning your next project or getting things back on track for you. 00:16:21:18 - 00:16:44:21 Unknown So that's all I have for today. Hopefully this this episode kind of gave you, some background about the why, about why we're doing this and kind of what my passion is for, for helping people, and making sure things stay on track. So please stick with us. Tune in for the next few episodes. Hopefully the next hundred plus episodes of the Your Project Shepherd podcast, and I look forward to seeing you again. 00:16:44:23 - 00:16:45:15 Unknown Thanks.