Question Everything: How to Innovate Construction Materials and Methods

0:00Eric Anderton: Why are we still doing it this way? It's a question that many people ask about the construction industry and the way we build buildings, but no one ever answers the question or implements that answer in the innovation that they bring to the job site. It's tremendously challenging. You know, we're still building houses the way that we did in 1850 with two by fours and nails. And your great grandfather would recognize the walls of your home. My guest today went from running a tasting menu restaurant in New York to building bulletproof concrete homes that last a thousand years. So he went from chef to contractor, and we're going to trace that journey and why there's so many similarities to what a chef does and what a construction company owner does.

0:51Eric Anderton: But building bulletproof homes that last a thousand years with no mold, no rot, no mouse poop in the walls, eight inches of concrete and steel. That's what Sam Furtick of Carbon Builders focuses on. he's asked and answered the question, why are we still doing it this way? And you're going to want to hear more of his answers in today's show. Let's dive right in. This is Eric Anderton, and you're listening to Construction Genius, a leadership masterclass. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration. If you're a construction leader, you know all about the perspiration, and this show is all about the 1 % inspiration that you can add to your hard work to help you to improve your leadership.

1:50Sam, welcome to Construction Genius. Hi, thanks for having me.

1:53Eric Anderton: You have a very interesting story to tell about how you went from a chef to Culinary Institute of America to running a construction company. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. So I started out, I actually thought I was going to be an architect as a kid, which is like kind of full circle in a lot of ways. And I had a little white drafting board in my bedroom with the strings and the slidey rule thing. And I was really good at drawing rectangles and anything square, right? Like I could never free form anything. And I like to create. And then I got into cooking. And as I got into cooking, I realized that, you know, it's craft.

2:32It's putting things together. It's building, right? It's just you're following a different recipe. And so I'd always done construction projects, woodworking, real estate, like whatever it is over the years. And I had what I like to call my quarter life crisis. And I said, you know what? It's time to do something different. And so I said, I'm going to follow this now. And we bought a building as a family in 2018. I'd closed my catering company for various reasons. I was just tired of it, newly married, like all of the things. And bought this building and my father-in-law looks at me and goes, well, who's going to do the work?

3:11And I was like, what do you, what do you mean? Who's going to do the work? Like I'm going to do the work. It was, it was just like the dumbest question I'd ever been asked in my life, you know? And I proceeded to renovate and restore this building in about 11 months, 11 apartments, five retail units with like a motley crew. I mean, we, we might as well been on a pirate ship. It was that type of crew, but we got the thing done and we got it rented and it's still there. We still own it. It's a great historical building. It was built in like the 1850s. And that kind of set me on the way to be like, this is interesting.

3:42But what really clicked for me were two kind of pivotal moments in that whole journey. One was we were doing an addition on our house in Vermont, my family's house, and we couldn't get a concrete subcontractor to save our lives because they were they were currently building at the time they're building haystacks so it's just like 100 houses every concrete farm board for miles was just there and i said i know there's this thing it's like a lego block and you could stack it and pour the concrete we can do it like how hard could it be and my father-in-law looks at me and goes no absolutely not but we'll find someone to do that right so we did and i learned a bunch and the guy's name is Jason.

4:20And, you know, he starts to teach me about this stuff and whatever. Okay. Fast forward. I'm not doing this building up in Vermont that we bought, renovating it. And I'm ripping open walls that haven't been open since literally like 1850. And I'm like, you know, it's a two by four, but it's a real two by four. We still do this today. Like that's nuts. We all walk around with more computing power in our pocket than what they landed a man on the moon with and we're still building homes the same way almost 200 years later and my brain just like could not compute this so I finished that project and I said there's got to be a better way to build a home and I started researching and then I came back to ICF and then we did a basement for a house for someone with ICF and lo and behold like Jason actually told me he's like you know you could just build like a whole house out of this stuff.

5:13And I was like, what? Like the concept, when you think about this, if you approach someone who's never really thought about it and you say, you could build a house out of concrete. And most people would be like, what? And that's what happened. And I was like, oh, you said ICF.

5:30Eric Anderton: Can you explain what ICF is? So ICF stands for insulated concrete forms. And basically what it is, is it's the formwork to poor concrete it's the insulation it's the mounting system for finishes it's all baked into one product and we like to you know kind of call it like it's a lego block because it's got nubs on both sides and you can just click them together now it's not so simple it needs rebar it still needs engineering it's bracing and shoring and there's there's an art to the whole thing but truthfully like i can teach anyone to build a house with this stuff if they're willing to listen now they won't do it because you know because why well the psyche right like you and your uncle can't go to home depot i don't know if you're you know we can't say home depot but whatever you can't go to the local lumberyard and pick up a bunch of this stuff and like build a shed in a weekend you have to know really what you're doing most structures around here slap together and if we looked at the number of nails and screws and how it went together whatever it is the reality is it's probably not that engineered.

6:37How many nails did you put from the stud to the base plate? This guy put three, you put two. Is there actually a code? Of course there is, but is it being followed? Who knows? With what we do a lot of the time, it's a real system. It's very easy to see, hey, I need a rebar every other spot, every 18 inches. I need this mix of concrete. I can pour this many feet per day. It's a math problem. And in a typical construction project, that's not the case. A bunch of guys or girls go and they frame a thing up and it's there. And how much water is in that building now? Right. The wood is exposed for months and months and months.

7:14So like it's less of a science problem and more of an art project. With what we do, we try to make it a science problem. So it's scalable. It's repeatable. We can we can really understand what the building's going to do ahead of time. And that gives us so many different benefits. So let me take you back to cooking because... Please don't take me back to cooking.

7:33Eric Anderton: No, but in this way, this idea of science versus art, right? If you're going to produce in a restaurant quality dishes that are consistent again and again and again... You need a recipe. Yeah. Which is a math problem. Yes. So that's more. So there's art. There's art perhaps to create the initial dish, but science to be able to replicate it. Is that right? Absolutely. And I say this all the time to clients or when people ask me, like, why, you know, how does being a chef relate to construction? Well, I like to create experience. So I'll give you that line for a minute and then I'll get to your question on this.

8:14I like to create experience. When you're a chef, you create a bite and it lasts for a minute or a second. and then it's expensive pee or expensive poop. That's all it is, right? It's food, it's fuel, it's energy, and then it's waste. When you craft something, whether it's I make pottery or I make a building or I make a car, that experience changes, but it lasts and it exists. So it's snowing outside and a deer walks past my office is a much different experience than yesterday. I went outside my office at my house and I threw a golf ball in the grass and I hit a golf ball, right? Because it's a different season.

8:49But that experience and the creation of that, it excites me. That's how the two relate.

8:54Eric Anderton: Let me ask you about that specifically in terms of perhaps one of the reasons why you moved from cooking to construction. Is there any connection between the short lifespan of a eating experience versus the long lifespan of living in a building that you've built? Is there any connection between I want something more permanent, something more lasting? For sure. So like for me, you know, I think and don't quote me, but like I think the NIHB says that like the average American home lasts 30 years. Like that's it. Whether it gets remodeled, damaged, fire, water, mildew, this, whatever. I build houses that last a thousand years.

9:37I don't want you to ever think about the guts of your house again. I want you to think about, you know, blue marble is no longer in style. We might want to change that. Right. But what you're not thinking about is what's in the walls. Have you ever renovated an old house and found out what's in the walls? Right. Typically, not to be too gross, but it's mouse excrement. It's bugs. It's mold. It's mildew. It's wrong. It's all the things. My house. I don't have to worry about that. I got concrete and foam. There's not like nothing's happening. So the last thing this for me is important. Like that is a big piece.

10:16I never have to think about the walls, the structure, the solidity of the home, the health of the home. I walk around my house all the time. We built it about three years ago. We moved in and like, I'll see something and I'll be like, but then I remind myself, it's like, it's so cosmetic that it doesn't matter. Right. The kids scuffed a wall or whatever, because you know what's behind that wall, eight inches of concrete, a bunch of steel and it's bulletproof. So, okay, I'll get a paintbrush, right? Like my anxiety of that goes away instantaneously. I'm in a much happier and healthier environment.

10:53My hair quality is amazing. The sound reduction is amazing. The energy use is amazing. The whole thing is just like, why wouldn't you do this?

11:00Eric Anderton: What do you think the impact is of having that perspective of, you said it quite strikingly, I build houses that last a thousand years. Well, I think everyone else is clearly not doing that. I think back to the impact, right? Like, I think that we for too long have said, this is how we do it. This is why we do it. And that's it. And we don't ask the question in this industry. And there's a lot of other industries that we've asked a lot of other questions and came very far. What kind of car do you drive? BMW. Okay, me too, right? came a little bit of a way from like the model t right yes okay but you live in a house that's a a carriage you know pulled by a horse yes right yeah sure why because no one's asked the question and said can we do this better right that is the core question right there in any anything and it's interesting because coming from your background of not being in construction and And yet having a being in a in a industry where there's construction principles, you can ask those why questions, not just sort of as some sort of rando, but someone who understands the basic structure of what it is that you're looking to do in construction, even though it's obviously completely different than cooking a meal.

12:26Eric Anderton: It's the same thing, actually. So here's the point. Yeah. If you're a chef, let me let me walk you through this for a second. You have something called mise en place, the French for everything in its place. Right. So all those little containers of the spices and the peas that are blanched and the steak and whatever. If I asked you to make me pasta carbonara and all of those ingredients were all over the restaurant, you can never do it efficiently and effectively. But if you were going to say, you know, I want to test something. It's not I don't serve anyone. And you have to gather up all the ingredients.

12:59This is back to your creativity versus recipe. bake, you could go do that and then you could put the dish together. But then you're going to say, okay, now I know I need egg yolk and Parmesan cheese and lemon juice and peas and pancetta or guanciale. I'm sorry to my Italian au pair. She's going to kill me that I said pancetta. You now know the ingredients that you need and you can now effectively put them in front of the cooking station. You can repeat that dish night overnight for hundreds and hundreds of hungry customers. No restaurant. I had a tasting restaurant, right? 12 to 20 courses, only 12 people, little bites.

13:35We still had recipes. We didn't change what we were doing as we're cooking for the guests. No successful restaurant changes what they're cooking in the middle of service. That's a nightmare. What do they do? They test it. They change it. Then they come in and they implement it. That's the recipe. The same thing happens in construction. And people don't realize this. The architect or the designer or the client is crafting that creative part. And then it's got to get changed into a recipe. And that's where we come in. We take the recipe, which is the plan set and the models and the information and the spec books and submittals and all that crap.

14:14And we go and we cook it. Right. And in theory, if we follow the recipe, and this is a big in theory, it should come out exactly as the client wanted it to come out. But there's questions or there's flavor differences or tastes change throughout. And so then you have to adjust the recipe. What we do is just put thousands and millions of little parts and pieces together to make the dish. The difference is that ours lasts and other ones don't.

14:45Eric Anderton: All right, quick break to talk about my book, Construction Genius. This is what I want you to do. Go to Amazon, search for the book, read all of the five-star reviews because there's a ton of them, over 50 to be precise. And the reason I want you to read them is because real people wrote those reviews who've actually read the book. And it'll give you an idea of why you should go and buy a copy right now on Amazon. And here's the deal. If you purchase 10 or more copies for your company and then send me an email, ericatconstructiongenius.com, I'll come in via Zoom and do a one-hour Q &A and a bonus training session with your team at no charge.

15:25Eric Anderton: I normally charge$4 ,500 for an hour of my time. And again, for you, I'll do it at no charge if you buy 10 or more copies of my book. And the reason you should buy it is all in the title. It's effective, hands-on, practical, simple, no BS, leadership, strategy, sales, and marketing advice for construction companies. So if you're in the construction industry, this book is for you. so you can get it on Amazon. You can also get it on Audible in the audio version as well, narrated by yours truly. And I know you'll really enjoy it. So go out and get the book. And now back to the interview. So let me ask you this question around, whenever there's an innovation that takes place, there's a risk involved.

16:08Eric Anderton: So if I'm running a restaurant and I innovate what I'm cooking or what I'm offering my clients, the risk I have is that they won't like it and they won't come back. In construction, risk is often framed in a, I think this is one of the reasons why change doesn't happen so much is because if we make this change on this project while we're building and it doesn't go well, it's gonna cost us a bunch of money. And that's one of the reasons why innovation doesn't happen in construction is because of the various risks associated with that. Yep. So how do you as a construction company owner balance the innovation with the risk?

16:50That's a great question. We get involved on pre-construction on probably 90 % of our projects where what happens typically with us is we bid something for someone the first time and whether we win it or lose it or whatever is irrelevant. But that architect or that client or designer, whoever it is, comes back and says, oh, there's something there. And then the next time they say, we just need to bring carbon into the conversation, minute one. So this happened, and I'm not going to say who and what architects, whatever, but a very good friend of ours. We have like six projects going on with this company right now.

17:32And a client, one client, we're bidding on this project. We came in late to the game on this because for a bunch of different reasons. And I looked at the client and I said, look, everything you're telling me is that you need a flat roofed house. right like that's what you actually want it's out in the hamptons they've designed you a pitched roof house and because of that you're getting this problem and this problem this budget issue and all of these things they didn't go with us for a variety of reasons nothing major and they changed the entire design to a flat roof house and the architect calls me up and goes you know had they asked me for a flat roof house i would have given them a flat roof house he said of course right but they didn't know at the time and we weren't in on the pre-con on that right we came in late to the game now another client that we have with the same architect they designed a pitch roof house they had seen an icf house the architect had designed a stick framed house with a pitch roof and without me saying a word the client calls up the architect and says i want a concrete house and i want a slat roof i don't like this and this and this and the architect comes back to me and goes, you see, you've cursed me now.

18:46Like now, every pitched roof is going to become flat. Every flat roof is going to become pitched, whatever. I said, you know, the interesting thing is this. Because they're not far along in the process, it's easy. The other people are ready to put a shovel in the ground. And what happened is the architect looked at the client. Now, we had a pre-construction agreement, right? Like we're working together anyway. He looked at the client and he said, I just want you to know what the implication of this is and they said sure they said we're not bidding your project down even though you have the ability to in sam's pre-construction agreement it's like you're giving the project to sam and you have to be okay with carbon doing it i shouldn't say sam it's carbon it's my whole team but you have to be okay that like if we go this route like they're just doing what is and they're like we don't care about the budget we don't care about that like this is what we want because we understand it we're in like so that's a big piece of this whole puzzle but then you get an architect like i was in a meeting yesterday where they said he's the concrete guy and i'm like well no we do all of it but like yeah we do this better than anyone else does it but like i'll build you a stick frame house i'm just gonna ask why right so a lot of this is

20:04Eric Anderton: setting expectations with the clients. Oh yeah. And finding the right clients who are willing to do something innovative or willing to look at it from your perspective. So it's not, it's not that innovative. It's been around for like almost 60, 70, 80 years. It's just not, like I said, it's not go to home Depot, pick up a bunch of this stuff and slap it up in a weekend. So most people don't understand it. And this country has, uh, I forget what the technical term is, but it's like a loop, right? We had cheap lumber, which created cheap labor to use the cheap lumber, a dependency loop, sorry. And it just cycles through generation.

20:41You know, you meet a framer. Hey, what'd your dad do? Oh, he was a framer. Oh, what'd your granddad do? Well, he used to build houses, right? And it's not an incrementally better, but none of them have stopped and said, should we be using wood to do this? Yep. Right. We're using firewood. Stuff's great for heating campfires and roasting marshmallows. Why am I living in it?

21:02Eric Anderton: Yeah. No, it's, yeah, I get it. So one framework that people use to think about folks in businesses, visionary versus implementer, which one are you? Oh God. So I'm in an impossible boat on that one, which is I'm both. It's impossible for me. I'd love to just be visionary and pie in the sky and like off to la la land, but you don't get to do that in small business right so i am bold i think for me the vision is backed mostly by fact and science and and you know methodology when we do an estimate it's cost codes it's broken down very detailed with amounts and quantities and numbers and you change the project we change the excel sheet right like that's easy why do things that are just out into the outer space it doesn't make any sense to me.

21:56So the visionary side is like, Hey, I want to look at this differently. And I want to do fun things. And we've designed and are going to be building some really cool homes, both for clients and for development, but I still have to implement, right? Like I still have to get the team to do it. I still have to put the money together. I still have to get the client, but you know, like I got to, I still have to be a doer and can't, you know, can't just sit back go for it.

22:20Eric Anderton: I'm wondering if that dichotomy that's been created actually does people a disservice because in thinking about some of the most successful businesses that are taking on some of the most difficult challenges, the visionary is also an implementer in that they're willing to go to the source of the biggest problems in the business and do whatever is necessary to fix those. who comes to your mind first because i'm going to tell you who comes to mind i'll even write it down so you don't think of him yeah i i mean the person i'm thinking of is elon me too bingo i was oh my god why because he slept on the factory floor right he doesn't need to do that but he just knows that like the only way it's going to happen is a bath right and i'm guilty of this And my team will tell you too, I'm guilty of not always being enough of an implementer.

23:18Yeah. Right? That I probably don't want to sleep on the factory floor as much as I probably should. Yes. But I got a bad back and I'm tired. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting.

23:32Eric Anderton: It's really so interesting. Yeah. It's interesting to think through about. I mean, obviously, one of the great things about a business is it can be whatever you want it to be, but your business is what it is because of the choices that you then make regarding some of this visionary implementer dichotomy and how willing you are to sleep on the factory floor, so to speak. So one of the things that, you know, gets me all the time is that like. I was out on site today at a very high end home that we're building and the. Steel progress is going slow. it's very very complicated i mean we've got like cantilever you know literally cantilever rooms with cantilever awnings that are like this thick in steel they come down like a airplane wing yep they've got fabrica pads and the way it all has to sequence and this part's exposed and this one's hit it i mean it's insane and the team has been doing a really great job on you know managing the subcontractor, managing the drawings, doing the whole thing.

24:40But I'm the one with the relationship, right? And it's a father and son. And I'm not going to mention, obviously, they're great friends of mine. And they've been doing this for a long time. And they get almost all of our steel work. And I looked at him square in the face. And I said, you've got to hurry the heck up. I don't know what it is, but you've got to figure it out. because you don't want me here every day asking, right? I know it's complicated. And it takes me personally a while to get to that point to be that sleep on the floor guy, but I know I can do it. Yeah. Yeah.

25:14Eric Anderton: It's really interesting. So the takeaway for the audience here is where is the biggest problem in your business right now? If you're going to use the Elon Musk logic, you as the CEO of the company are going to go to that location and do whatever you can to fix the problem. You know, it's funny because like you asking me this, I ask myself this every day. Like, what is the most important thing for me to work on at this minute? Right. Is it an employee issue? Is it a finance issue? Is it a client? Like whatever it is. And I can't answer it. The most important thing for me to do is to do what we're doing right now.

26:00Have a conversation and broaden my mental, you know, thought, right? Like take a step back and look and say, is that actually the issue? Right? I don't know. because I think too often, especially small business owners or mid-business owners are really good at a part of their business. But they're not good at all of the parts of their business and the worst thing they are at or the worst, I don't know how to say that, but whatever. The thing they're worst at, sorry, is for them to step back and say, which part of this should I stop trying to work on? Because I'm not good at it.

26:43Eric Anderton: yeah and we know some of those parts for me yeah the thing that elon from his own report has done is he's done everything that he can to be really really good at every aspect of the business so like he's he he takes responsibility for engineering to the extent that he can have intelligent conversation with the engineers so that is a great version of this i've done my own geothermal piping layout and everything in my house for my HVAC system. I did structure, I did this, I did that for the exact reason that you're saying is the ability to have an intelligent conversation, have a good basis of knowledge, be a resource for the team, look at drawings and understand them, whatever.

27:31But where I'm not good is I'm not good at doing the daily repetitive management of those things on other projects. So we have a great project management operations and director of construction team and whatever who does that. But when they come to Sam and say, hey, we know that you know a thing about this and now it's a snippet, I could be really, really helpful and dangerous for them. Yes. But if I had to do it all day, every day, it'd be terrible. So that is why I like to say I like to step back and look and say, okay, Should I be focused on operations? Of course. Should I be focused on sales?

28:08Of course. Should I be focused on finance? Of course. There's only one thing that kills small business, in my opinion. And you probably, I think we're getting along on this, but it's sales. If you stop selling, you're out of business.

28:25Eric Anderton: So let's talk about that because I think the counter argument to that could be this. if if i have a kick-ass product or service and i'm able then to execute on the delivery of that product or service the sales will take care of themselves yes except that we in the construction industry especially in custom luxury construction yep done something well no one's done it i'm working on doing it wouldn't surprise you we haven't productized the product here right i'm working on that the spec homes that we're building i say this all the time there's there's random developer spec person who builds a house they build it really cheap they try to make it look really good and it's the same garbage at the end of the day and that's fine okay and there's a buyer for that and there's a developer for that then you have the major national guys like the you know again i don't want to name names but the guys that come and do a thousand townhouses they're two million dollars a townhouse but you feel good because there's this like brand to it right i'm buying a ford i'm buying a chevy whatever fine no one's done the middle that's what i'm doing i'm taking the brand i'm taking the spec i'm putting them together but i'm elevating it to our brand, where when you buy a carbon home that we've specced, go on the Instagram, understand the science, look at the YouTube, go on the website, realize the heart and the science that's been put into this house.

30:05It's a product, right? That's a huge difference than most. If it was a product that's an actual product, it's a cup, it's a spoon, it's a whatever. sure i agree with you that like if it's a great product you know and you you deliver it and it happens it'll be fine i do this with my sales guys all the time and i hate to be like jordan belford for a minute yeah here's burtsby's chapstick right what's the product is it the chapstick is it the relief that it gives your lips is it that it's convenient and carryable like you could dissect this a million different ways and so the same thing with us is the product that we're delivering your dream or that we're putting the pieces together or that we're managing the process better.

30:50But like, I don't know. I mean, it could be all of these things in the custom work. Yeah, so it's interesting.

30:58Eric Anderton: It's interesting. I've been thinking about, this guy just wrote a book called The Book of Elon, where he compiled all this stuff and his name's Eric Jorgensen. I'm going to interview him next week. So I've been reading the book. And the three things we've touched on so far is this idea of going to the problem, asking why, and then this idea of really thinking through having a deep understanding of the business. Those three things, a deep understanding of the business, asking why, and then going to the problem. Those are the three things that Elon focuses on that helps him to drive these businesses.

31:37Eric Anderton: And it's interesting for people who are listening to ask you and again you don't have to do it that way but it's interesting to think through where are you perhaps um selling yourself short because you're not willing to do that stuff

31:55so i i was in the city yesterday york city and a couple of architect meetings and met the client and just like bouncing around i had a bunch to do and i don't go down often but like when I do, I try to like stack everything in. Right. Sure.

32:10Eric Anderton: Yeah. And Alyssa, who's my chief of staff and literally like my right hand and I would be, I might as well float out to outer space without her. And I called her in the afternoon. I was like, I really liked today. Right. Like I enjoyed doing what I'm good at, which is schmoozing and taking an architect to lunch and talking about projects and like you know just having having real conversations with people that like what they do like how many people do you run into on a daily basis who are just like you know not thrilled with what they do like most of the time you don't meet an architect who's like you know i really wish i was a mechanic architects want to do one thing and one thing only in my opinion.

32:56So please architects, don't kill me for this. You want to draw pretty things and see them get built. Everything else is just a part of the process. Most of the time they do okay, but they don't turn around and go, you know, I really should have been a doctor or a lawyer or accountant or whatever. Like they just don't, they, they, they do inherently love what they do. And so do we, we love what we do.

33:26Eric Anderton: Think about the last time you promoted someone into a leadership role and it failed. Why did it fail? I can tell you one reason. People know how to build projects, but they don't know how to build and lead teams of people. Construction comes with its challenges that only insiders truly understand. Generic leadership training doesn't cut it. You need a program to train your leaders built specifically for construction professionals led by an industry expert. And my online course, The Shift, is exactly that course. It has five modules. It'll teach your people how to control their calendars and reduce stress and embrace chaos and accomplish their critical tasks.

34:09Eric Anderton: It will teach them the three essential messages they have to communicate every day in order to motivate and lead their team effectively. It'll show them how to build and lead a high-performing team. Give them a framework for running effective meetings so they'll be able to solve problems in less than an hour. And also give them a higher perspective on their leadership that will enable them to work on the business and on their teams and not get stuck in the weeds micromanaging. So go out to my website, theshift.constructiongenius.com, read all about the course, and then enroll yourself and your leaders in the course, and I guarantee that it will transform your leadership.

34:50Eric Anderton: If it does not, you take the whole course and you didn't get benefit from it, you just send me an email, eric.constructiongenius.com, and I will cheerfully refund you 100 % of your money. I'm really confident this course will transform your leadership. So again, go out to the website, theshift.constructiongenius.com. Learn more about the course and start taking it today. So when you're hiring people, how much are you looking in terms of not just their technical ability, but the way they resonate with your business in terms of what it is you're trying to accomplish, whether it's with the ICF or just this, even this one idea of building homes that last for a thousand years.

35:37Eric Anderton: Do you look for that when you're hiring people or is that just something you bring them on board and they kind of get the vibe? I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, we're a different, we are a different organization than most in a bunch of different ways. My first two employees are still with me to this day, right? Like we've had very low attrition, very low you know turnover from firing or quitting or any of that kind of stuff like i'm nuts i'll be the first to admit that i'm not a bad guy to work for though like you know i may not remember your kids names because like i'm a little you know busy but like i know you have kids and like i'm not gonna micromanage you and all that kind of stuff and so like if you're okay with a little crazy, I'm a good guy to work for or work with.

36:30Right. And, and so when we look at hiring, I look at it as very specific to not only what are we trying to fulfill, but like, how can you be better at something that I can be? And even if you're not going to be better and Danny Meyer used to say this and setting the table, right. going back to the chef world, you want to always be connecting dots, but you also want to try to hire people who are better at something than you are. And I think most CEO type people take that wrong. They think if I'm a genius with numbers, I have to find a super genius with numbers. No, that's where you're wrong. What you need to find is someone who's willing to look at numbers all day long because you're not willing to look at them all day long.

37:21It's a much, much more like broken down version. So that's what I look for. Hired a director of construction. He's incredible. He's got the same knowledge I've got. He could be smarter than me. He could be less smart. It doesn't matter. He's willing to do that role day in and day out. I can't. I got too many things to do.

37:43Eric Anderton: Yeah. You know what? Going back again to the ICF there, how do you sell it to the clients in terms of aesthetics, operations, and cost? Particularly when you're bringing them something to the table where they're not necessarily familiar with it, right? So aesthetics is easy. It can be and look like anything. The only difference is that your window openings and door openings are deeper. And if you do those appropriately, you'll never, ever even think about it ever again. You want it to be a tuner. You want it to be curved. You want it to be hanging upside down. It doesn't matter. We can build anything out of anything.

38:22Great. Cost is all based on design. I have a car. It has four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel. How much do you want to pay for it? Is it an Aston or is it a Prius? I have no idea, right so the cost is really based on what it is that we're building not the materiality the difference with us is like we'll say and we do exposed concrete that's not icf we do light gauge steel homes we do sick frame homes we do everything but what i can tell you is if you give me a set of drawings and say hey i want an icf house i can give you a price like in five minutes because the cost is very, very consistent.

39:03I don't have to think about detailing the same way. There's a bunch of things that add to that. So there are times that the cost is less than a stick frame home and it performs better. It is better. There's just no reason not to do it. Yep.

39:21The third question was the kind of feeling and energy and all of that stuff, right? So the aesthetics, operations, and cost. So the operations, right? Yeah, yeah. I've had clients come into a house under construction where maybe we're standing on the first floor deck. The first floor walls are up. There's no second floor. There's no roof, whatever. But it's ICF. And they tap on the wall, and they feel it. And they go, yeah, that's what I want.

39:48Eric Anderton: That's good. And they're done. They're like, I get it. And it's open to the sky. There's no windows. There's nothing going on. And a lot of the times, there's three things that I always say that the ultra and even not the ultra, but the high net worth individual is thinking about. They're thinking about water quality, air quality, and environment quality. So what does that mean? Well, air quality is pretty easy. I want to make sure I'm breathing healthy air, especially I'm sleeping in that room for 12 hours. I want to know that the CO2 has changed over. I'm They're thinking about water quality.

40:29Am I in the wrong type of plastic? Is it stainless steel? Like whatever it is, because I'm ingesting it, right? And the third is the environment. Is it loud? Is it safe? Is it comfortable? How does it feel, right? How do I feel? And so with our clients, a lot of times they come to my personal house, they walk in and they go, I get it. They step in four steps, close the door, it's quiet. it. They feel the solidity. The air feels great. You don't like they just they get it. They're done. So the operational on this is it's super, super energy efficient because you got to change a huge amount of mass before it affects the inside or the outside.

41:14Right. Thermodynamics is hot goes to cold. It's very, very simple. So we two rules in construction that I think anyone needs to know. hot goes to gold and diesel unfortunately is the driver of all costs if diesel goes up everything goes up if diesel goes down everything goes down you cut a tree in Oregon and you need it in New York it's getting here via diesel the guy with the chainsaw cutting it didn't cost anything different right and that's what people forget and so for me when we do the operation side, it's like, hey, I've got to change all this mass. I've already paid for it to be there. I might as well get the benefit of it.

41:58And so our homes are typically significantly more energy efficient, significantly quieter and healthier and stronger, bulletproof, like legitimately bulletproof. It's been tested. We've tested it ourselves a little bit. We import a lot of our glass from Eastern Europe directly. Say if clients can deliver a better product, we've tested it. That's all I'm going to say. And like, we can deliver very, very high levels of safety. And they get it. They just get it. It's a feeling. It's hard to convey, especially, I mean, it's hard to convey on a video, let alone a podcast or anything else.

42:36Eric Anderton: It's cool though. You can take them into your own home and they can experience it from something that you've built for yourself. My wife has gotten used to the parade of like, just, you know, oh, hi, like not knowing and you know, whatever, but that's cool. So where do you want your business to be in 10 years? Oh, I want to be retired. Come on. No, no, I'm just kidding. Where do I want to be in 10 years? I really enjoy developing properties where we get to deliver that product at that level that we want, right? Like the same level as if the client was there down our neck. I like that because I feel like that's missing from the market.

43:17We have a couple of sayings here. One of them is no center hall colonials, right? We don't want to be doing modern farmhouses and center hall colonials. It's, you know, just not for us. And that's what we have, right? Like we've turned down cool projects because we're like, it's not what we do. And that's okay. we just like to build cool shit for cool people with cool people right like we're doing something in Aspen coming up on Red Mountain and like clients amazing and he doesn't care that we're based here he lives in Grimmage he's got a house there and he knows that like this is what he's going to get and it's thrilling for him we just want to keep doing cool stuff we love doing things that other builders or architects or clients look at and go, is that possible?

44:10How are you going to do that? How do you, like, that's fun for us. We're building a floating concrete home on a mountain in North Salem coming up. The entire first floor is floating concrete. Out of the rock, there's cores, there's support, obviously, but like, it's an 8 ,000 square foot slab floating 15 feet off the ground. That's not a center hall colonial in Southern New York. Like, it's something wild. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Where do I want to be? I want to keep doing more of that.

44:40Eric Anderton: I want to do it everywhere. That's cool. That's cool. Well, I tell you, Sam, I really enjoyed this conversation. Oh, me too. Thank you. One last question. Being a New York restaurant guy, what's the one restaurant someone should hit in New York if they're visiting? But see, I told you this off the record before. Now you're putting me on the record. I know. But so just for the audience to know, we're recording this two weeks before I go to New York with some family. So I asked Sam in advance. But you don't have to use that answer. You can use a different one if you want. See, that's the problem.

45:17That is the answer.

45:18Eric Anderton: So you got to tell us what's the answer. Every single one of my restaurant friends is going to be like, dude, you didn't you didn't call me out. You didn't, you know. Oh, God. All right. It's Wolfgang Steakhouse on 33rd and Park. it's got an amazing um original ceiling from oh my god i'm drawing the blank do you do you remember that um it's got the curved tiled ceiling gustavino a gustavino ceiling i should have known that faster it is such a great traditional i've been going there for literally 20 years the same servers the same managers i was there last night i literally called danny the manager i was like i'm coming with three people i need a table he's like no problem for you no problem walk in seven different servers are giving me hugs they haven't seen me in four months like it is just a it is a quint to me is a quintessential new york steakhouse experience it's not branded it's not flashy the food's fantastic they probably haven't cleaned the grill in 73 years because that's what gives it the flavor you know like it's just fantastic so so that's that's on park avenue because they have multiple locations but you're saying specific I'll go to the other locations.

46:29That's for tourists.

46:31Eric Anderton: Okay, great. Awesome. Awesome. We've got that. There will be a link in the show notes to that location. And Sam, I appreciate you coming on Construction Genius. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to today's episode with Sam. Here's what I'm sitting on. Sam asked one question. Why are we still building it this way? And he reorganized his entire business around it. Concrete instead of firewood. a recipe instead of an art project, a thousand years instead of 30. So what's the question you're not asking in your business? What's the dependency loop you inherited from the generation before you and never stopped to challenge?

47:12Eric Anderton: If this episode hit, do me a favor, share it with one person in your network who builds, designs, or develops. This is how this show grows. And then also give us a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to Construction Genius.

47:57Eric Anderton: that gets their people collaborating, taps into their creativity. And to get yourself a free copy of the Kick-Ass Meeting report, go to www.ericanderton.com slash kickassmeetings. Grab yourself that free report, read it, use it in your business. You'll find it extremely useful. And thanks again for listening.

48:26Thank you.