Post Surgical Venting (and building houses)
I hope it’s not just an illusion, but I think I’m experiencing a slight improvement in mobility, a slight decrease in general discomfort, and a slight uptick in hope that I won’t live forever with a John McCain style useless arm and completely distracting pain. My doctor, a well-known NYC physician, should have let me in on the full scope of this recovery - I know next time before I do anything I'm watching YouTube. That's where all the information is. I mean, I consulted my physician 3 times before surgery and never once did he say 'be ready for a life-disrupting experience full of immobility, pain, intense physical therapy where you earn every 1/4" of regained mobility". That's a lot different than "be ready for a few months of PT".
I often compare this stuff to how I operate - I mean, if a client came to me and asked me for a referral for something - say mold removal in a rental property they bought. Sure, I may be able to introduce them to the GOAT (greatest of all time) mold removal people, but maybe I've seen them downplay the disruption narrative in the past, so it's my job to give my client a little color - 'hey, get ready to be lose 4 months of rent, deal with a ton of indirect but associate dust and cleanup, " etc... If I know this to be true, then my job is to give some color. Our process and what we provide our clients is so superior to what I see out there across a broad array of industries I deal with.
Seven weeks in, and with an improved sense of humor last night with my son and his friend, I managed to look back over the last 7 weeks and wonder how the heck I just pulled off what I did - 4 houses under contract, 4 new hires and training, 3 new foundations in, raise a kid, keep the house going, etc… I’ve stood outside myself on many occasions and wonder how the heck this or that was accomplished but this one really takes the cake in terms of brute force willpower. Sitting at home for 6 weeks was a real choice too for many folks undergoing shoulder surgery. Having a useless arm makes every aspect of life complicated.
One of the toughest parts of this business is the ying and yang of clients. Aggressive, gratitude, reasonableness, unreasonableness, fairness, unfairness, politeness, rudeness, predictability, unpredictability - all in equal spoonfuls, all coming at me at the same time. I feel half the time like Jeremiah Johnson in the Robert Redford western where after he inadvertently disturbs an Indian burial ground, they launch continuous surprise attacks on him year after year that he barely fends off.
It's been doubly apparent since as I rebuild the team, I've been closer than normal to some of the nitty gritty of the requests that come our way, and lets be honest, because I know the miracles we perform, the magic we conjure, the mountains we move for our clients, sometimes the endless quest on their end to perfect every square inch gets a little old.
It's nothing new. It's a tough business, with constantly moving goal posts. It's why I ponder and wonder whether it's a business I'd want my son to join - as a way of life, I'm just not sure the aggravation is worth the glory.
I’ve been realizing it’s the nonsense that really annoys me. Give me a real problem to solve, and I get it. Saddle me with some short bus pissing match over $100 that I have to step in and fix, and that really gets to me since I’m not a kindergarten hall monitor.
On any given week, we are attending to at least a half a dozen warranty issues. I take it serious and we are pretty surgical with it and for the most part I take care of things far in excess of any legal standard, mostly because my team of subcontractors helps me defray the cost in many instances. It's difficult to reconcile the effort we make on the behalf our projects, and the inability to accomplish a simple goal of client satisfaction. I think I have it figured out a bit though, and it's not the greatest epiphany, - it's not gratitude I'm searching for anymore for literally providing one of the most value oriented, seamless design/build processes I've seen, - it's really just the hope that at some point the client will leave us alone and stop asking for more, for free!
I deal with literally hundreds of vendors a month, many for my own home, house, car, pool, dog. I have a great perspective on the lack of ‘meeting half way’ mentality of many many of these companies, and I know that’s not us. We go WAY over the top.
And maybe that’s the point - thanks for tagging along with my writing therapy. Maybe the reward for being so dedicated to the success of our clients isn’t gratitude, but rather success - since it’s clear we are and remain successful and by far the dominate company putting out neat homes all over the Catskills. So maybe what’s going on here is my wish for appreciation for what I know is an outstanding effort is better just measured in my own wealth building and lifestyle, and that of my team.
It wasn’t that long ago, I’d say 5 years max, that most of our clients far exceeded me in net worth, but somewhere along the line, that has reversed. I’m sure my accumulated assets of cash, investments, real estate etc… now dwarfs most of our clients, but what will always be true is I’m a pretty grateful person because of it - I’ve seen the effort I’ve made, inch by inch, day by day, year by year to accumulate generational wealth, and I’m appreciative of the people who participated in that journey. Truly, I get their help in it, I appreciate their help in it, I’m grateful for their help. And I know my efforts changed their lives too.
Mind you, a lot of people I work with - mason, excavators, spray foam installers, tile sales people - are rich, multimillionaires who are experts at their craft and earned every penny. Some of these guys make serious bang - I wouldn't be surprised if my mason makes $3m a year. That's topping most NYC professionals, even in lucrative fields like banking, with much lower cost of living up here. It's weird that the tradesmen are out-earning the clients but that's the case, and also the case for the non-debt non-college route (at least, non-debt college route). You can get a big jump on life if you don't waste 4 or 5 years at a lifestyle college learning how to sit at a desk.
What’s also true is that I’m from a blue collar background so the men and women putting in the work here are not invisible to me - but fully recognized for their efforts, for their talents and for their true dedication. Many of my relationships are hundreds of houses old now, some stemming back 15 years. The problems we have solved together are countless, the seriousness of the problems we have found solutions to are mind-boggling. The bridge my company spans is that of synthesizing the communication talents or lack of with a wide variety of goals from each party, and finding ways to satisfy, engage, compensate to keep this thing rolling. I guess the dirty little secret is my relationships with my large team of professionals and tradesmen, and long tear-filled journey we have walked together, is a lot more important to me than that of my clients - not that my clients aren’t amazing people who have every right to have their expectations met, it’s just that my fellow colleagues in the industry and I have walked in the same shoes and have unspoken appreciation for what we all go through each day.
This isn’t fair the vast majority of our clients, but it’s true enough that I don’t think one of my goals is to have my son enter this highly profitable and enviously positioned organization that he could do quite a bit with - why would I want him to engage a position with so little positive and earned gratitude? I’m actually not blaming anyone - it is what it is- I will continue to recognize and thank the smallest effort made on my behalf, and I think, if I look around, the less I personally get it, the more I give it - and it seems like that is a remedy that works.
It’s a bright sunny Sunday, and in my inbox lies an unending stream of requests, some reasonable some not, each and everyone I know are grenades of varying intensity, never really knowing what explosive result awaits us as we tackle 98% perfectly and can’t do anything about the 2%. I feel like Jeremiah Johnson, with the constant sneak attacks from the natives up in the Montana highlands.
This blog post was written over 2 weeks - in varying degree of pain, with varying degrees of discomfort, with varying degrees of optimism. What is very true, is that it is just a brief moment in time, capturing my perspective for that brief moment, and is probably as much wrong as right. What is also true - what is paramountly true - is our client list is one of the most dynamic, robust, diverse, interesting group of people ever assembled under one brand - that I know to be true. And as I've said many times, my biggest regret of this journey thus far is being too busy to develop deeper more personal relationships with these amazing people
Well, let's be honest - that's only partly true, since every time I try, we end up discussing why the hot water doesn't get the to master bath quick enough, or why the fireplace smokes, or the alignment of the kitchen cabinet, or the size of gaps in between the boards of the wood floor!!!!
I mean, my legacy will dot the Catskills landscape for centuries, and hopefully our aesthetic and style stands the test of time, which I think it will, so 100 years from now, our homes are still admired for their appreciation of modesty, good design, and restraint. 300 homes, across 3 counties, sold the toughest demographic - the NYC professional.
Season transitions
Wow, the weather has sucked, Nearly constant rain, and a lot of it. Hit home hard with the hurricane remnants on Monday, but it's been rainy even without that gut punch. Raining this morning. Little sun. Nothing dries out this time of year. Getting chilly. Would be nice to get a few weeks of moderate temps and sunshine.
Shoulder repair is nearly six weeks on - and the only positive thing I have to say about the whole thing is that luckily time marches on, because the process itself is seemingly interminable. And now while my arm still lies limply at my side, I'm able to start PT. I've done PT in the past for this or that, but never like this, where you are bring a dead stiff limb back to life. It's like a movie PT where the pain is incredible and the progress is baby steps and unfathomably slow. I've been working since the 3rd day after surgery, but it's been a real testament to my forward progress at all costs and over all impediments mentality and makeup- I could easily see staying home for a month and laying low.
We've added 50% to our office admin overhead in terms of staffing, and it appears, fingers crossed, I've put humpty dumpty back together again in the post-Amanda phase. I didn't actually put it back together, I completely overhauled our operations, from top to bottom. I think I hypothesised and wrote I was going to do this, or that is was an opportunity to do this, but like the shoulder surgery, talking about it is one thing, the pain and suffering of actually doing it another thing altogether. Not easy at all. Not cheap at all. Honestly, I lost a year of my life, at 53, managing the last 9 months of business. But that's what happens when you kick the can of structural redundancy down the road - at some point, the house of cards needs to be rebuilt properly. Like many important things that happen in business, they are thrust onto your plate at the poorly-timed intervals.
Put a lot of houses into contract recently - 1 in Narrowsburg, 3 in Olivebridge. Have at least 2 in the hopper for our homes your land type of thing.
My 14 nearly 15 year old son has his first homecoming this weekend, and the after-party is at my house. All the parents are calling asking if a parent will be home! The hardest part will be staying up late enough to properly chaperone - had to call in the big guns for help - my 78 year old mom.
Shoulder surgery and Staff Expansion
Blogging, and really all typing, and a host of other things, are being delayed or outright cancelled due to a shoulder surgery I underwent on August 22, nearly 4 weeks ago. I seem to be turning the first corner into recovery here in the last day or two, but prior to that, typing, shaving, brushing my teeth, putting on my seatbelt, strapping on a belt, getting into and out of bed, and a 100 other things were 1 of three things - impossible, nearly impossible, almost impossible.
A slightly torn rotator cuff muscle is literally microscopic, and prevents only 5-20% of motion, and faced with a 3 or 4 month recovery, I can why it should be weighed seriously the pros and cons. It seems like I’m going to be on the ‘getting off easy’ end of the recovery, with only medium pain, no real complications to speak of, and the first sign of improvement as quick as 4 weeks in.
But in terms of running a business, driving around, walking my dog, and responding to the hundreds of emails I get a week, that’s been tough. But judging from the comfy position I’m in right now with my right arm nestled in a strategic pillow at a good typing angle, things are looking up.
Then school started and my 14 yr old brought home a cold for me within a few days, and a cold and a slinged arm, and 24/7 dull pain, and a full workload, - now, that’s getting a little extreme.
But, you wake up, shake off the voices suggesting that the daunting calendar for the day is a bit overloaded (typically the 5-7am emotion), and start the day’s journey with a single step. Same thing for 20 years. When you do a lot of things that suck each week, the degree to which they suck diminishes just because you are used to suck-ass priorities that need to get done. Duck and dodge, procrastinate and kick the can, and those things that suck that you need to do can easily weigh you down.
We put a house in Narrowsburg under contract, and we are looking at our 3rd deal at our Ashokan Acres project, we have a client-owned land going in Copake NY, and 2 in Forestburgh. We just finished our last home at the Crest. We have high hopes of starting another client-owned land project in Olivebridge, and we have leads coming in everyday.
2023 will definitely be remembered as the year of transition in the office. We always have a fair amount of comings and goings out in the field, but now that aspect has been really solid. In the office, however, since Amanda left in January, we’ve kept it rolling without any serious mistakes or delays, but it’s been largely because of my minute to minute effort across every aspect, which 1, is not what I’m here for, 2, tests and at times exceeds my skill set, 3, wears me out. Breanna has been right there with me as we have seen 4 people come and get ushered out, and another 2 or 3 hires that had some complication shortly before they were supposed to start.
But with the hiring of Kathy, my full time executive advisor, we’ve been able to go down a much more methodical hiring path, and lord behold, a professional path leads to professional candidates. HR takes time, and small businesses never have time to spare. So we have 4 new people starting with a month of the first, and this will be the first time in the company’s history we’ve been appropriately staffed with appropriate skill sets in position. The goal of redundancy and cross-department information sharing is almost at hand, and if done right, will position us for an entirely different level of service for our clients.
Now the question will be can we stay busy enough to support the new overhead, and a similar question, how much business have I been letting slip through my fingers because I/we just didn’t have the capacity.
The homes we build -
3 homes we are building for others in the pay as you go process (they own the land). 2 homes we are building on contract where we get paid at the end after a level of collaboration between builder and client (I own the land). And 8 homes being built on spec - meaning, on my dime, with no buyer lined up yet. It’s a pretty good mix, made all the better (meaning low risk) since I’m able to now self-finance these spec homes - since let’s be honest, 10% commercial lending rates would eat up your profits pretty quick, and eat up your cash flow even quicker.
We are building in Olivebridge (4 currently), Narrowsburg (5 currently), North Branch (1), Forestburgh (2), Copake (1).
We have 2 homes finished that will sell next week, and we have another client-owned that will finish up here in a week or two.
Fun sponsored Native magazine article written by my friend Brian Mahoney - Navigating Uncertainty.
Motoring right along, a little too fast for our administrative infrastructure at the moment, but since I built this machine from the ground up, I can stress its parts and know when to throttle up and throttle down, taking it into the red rpm’s and easing out of them. There are a lot of small business who know their business like I do, and then there are a lot who don’t, who have delegated important facets of the business to a new employee and have little idea of what they are doing (mostly in book-keeping). Dangerous. For me, as I spend Saturday morning reviewing profit/loss statements, balances sheets, basis statements, I can spot an errant number or entry without even much effort, just cause it doesn’t make sense at the moment - I make a note, we dig into it the next week, and wallah, most times we find a minor book-keeping mistake where a number is wrong, in the wrong place, etc…
It’s being written about a lot, but I’m starting to feel it first hand, and that is the aging out of the construction professional. A lot of my partners - my cleaner, my kitchen designer, cabinet installer, plumber etc… right on down the line, are getting older. Christ, I’ve been at this 20 years, so partners that were 45 when I got started are mid-60’s. Health issues, slowing down, tech issues, etc… Cancer, knee issues, shoulder issues, you name it. It’s a concern. And there is a deficiency of people coming into the industry - a very well-paid industry, with no need for crippling college debt, will absolutely pay you on the job while you train. Where this leads us - this deficiency of building industry employees - I’m not sure, but it’s not good, since home building and construction is a fundamental part of our economy.
It’s weird, coming from a lower middle class background (and that actually might be an exaggeration) to see some stat the other day - some random figure about retirement savings, or net worth, or something, and see I now fall in the .1% of some of these segments. Not 1%. But .1%. Fascinating since just 16 years ago I would have been in the .1% of people most likely to go bankrupt that week and not have a pot to piss in and half to start over at at age 36 with not a whole lot tangible to show for it.
Somebody's very real first world problem, with the boot on the car - interestingly, the arrogance of the parking was eye-opening, it was clearly NOT a parking spot-
Another thing that is fascinating are all the high-net worth individuals I work with - I don’t mean the clients - I mean the tradesmen. The bluejeans and pickup set - the 12 hour a day, 6 days a week for decades set. The all weather set. The got a problem I got a solution, a lot of times using big machines set. The millionaire next door set. The started from scratch set. The weathered the hard times and kept at it set. The can’t keep them down set. The type that built America set. It’s a privilege and honor to lead this set of hard-working Americans, each day.
You hear a lot about AI taking over the world, but I’m just having a hard time squaring that imminent threat with my phones voice text unable to decipher the most basic patterns of my speech, or pick up on industry jargon, to make basic corrections. Literally the stupidest app in terms of understanding learning - clearly the texting apps (what’s app, facebook, apple text) are not using AI for improving text corrections. I can change the same thing 100 times in a text - say one of our jobs is named A4 - and still the the app can never realized that A4 is not ‘a for’ - happens over and over. Seems like there is a disconnect if AI is so powerful.
The debate over the value of homeownership rages. Owning a home isn’t cheap. And it’s return on investment when you add up the taxes, maintenance, improvement, mortgage interest is not real great. I think what it does however, is force a person to make a monthly and irrevocable contribution to a long term asset, so while the raw appreciation of value may be debatable, the pot of equity/money after 10, 20, 30 years is real. But all in all, as a wealth building tool, it’s not that great, except that otherwise, people would piss away and spend instead of contributing to paying off a large sustainable asset.
High School football season has started, and my QB 9 grader has a passion for the game. I like that he has the talent for the QB spot - he's not a multi-sport gifted athlete, but he has always had a knack for throwing the pigskin, and loves the game. I like that he chose the toughest position on the field - he will have lots of failure, and there is nothing better for anyone than failing - big or small - failure is the key to life, since its where all the lessons come from that you can't shake off real quick. It's where the strength comes from. Most failure you have to work out on your own - no words or condolences really help that much. I still fail 5x a week at something or another - failures a good friend, who keeps me honest, keeps me focused and keeps me from thinking I know too much, which is the most dangerous thing ever in business.
I constantly remind myself that for most part I'm an alien creature to most people around me - I'm very comfortable with life-altering risk and uncertainty inhabiting every corner of my life, and I've experienced failure on a grand and constant basis for 20 years. Walking around with that type of 'life lens' creates a life perspective that is hard to relate to if limiting risk and failure is your main track in life, which for better and worse, is most of us.
