REI191: Design Outlaws w/ Marilyn Moedinger

23:39Do you find that much kind of attrition over the years with people that you maybe went to school with? How many of them stick around and end up becoming practicing architects and stay in the industry? There's actually a lot of interesting statistics about this. I mean, for undergrad programs, it's very low because an undergrad degree in architecture is not a professional degree. Mine was a BS, which meant that it was a more technical degree. But with that, you can go do all sorts of other really interesting things. You can go into engineering, you'd go into industrial design, you could go into real estate or construction or whatever.

24:11So a lot of people might be in like sort of allied industries, but they're not practicing architects. Another close route is a lot of people practice as designers, but not as architects. They don't go through that whole thing. So all the licensure stuff. So there are plenty of people and firms are filled with people who are not licensed, but have still had significant training and have a ton of experience. And then I would say that in grad school, for the most part, if you're in grad school to go for your professional degree in architecture, chances are you do know that that is what you want to do because you hopefully work somewhere or have some experience.

24:49It's not the easiest degree in the world. So you don't want to go get it if just for like the heck of it. So, but at that same rate, the gap between people who go through those different stages and who is licensed is pretty large. And in fact, there's a huge gap. It's like 18 to 22 % of practicing architects are women. So the attrition rate for women is way higher because all of this intense studying and all of this intense work and these exams and your internship hours are all taking place like in your mid-20s to mid-30s where women are potentially starting families and it's just a lot harder.

25:28So there's still a huge gap. So architecture school has been 50, 50 men and women for a pretty long time. It was when I was in school, but the number of women architects is still right around 20%. Yeah. I think Antonia made the same point. Something similar to that. It's hard. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened next after you finished your master's degree, you've got the licenses. Did you end up in Boston at that point? I did. Yeah. So it turns out that if you go to a two-year master's program, sometimes recessions last longer than two years. So I graduated into the recession. So at my master's thesis defense, one of the people on my defense panel is an architect with a firm in Boston and he offered me a job.

26:11And I had another opportunity in New Orleans as well. So I was trying to decide between New Orleans and Boston. Both of them were sort of like part-time-ish jobs. They weren't like real jobs. So I had to decide which city to move to for like a half a job. That's hard to do. I mean, I graduated without debt, but I didn't have any money. So I sold my car. I chose Boston and started working at Util, which at the time was like 17 or 18 people. Actually, I didn't even start there. I had to wait a few months. I had to just be in Boston so that when he was like, I'm ready for you, I could go there. So I started teaching to help pay the bills a little bit at that time.

26:48But then, yeah, that's where I got all my multifamily experience was there because they're just multifamily powerhouses at that firm. So that lasted from what, 2000? When did you start? 2010. So yeah, so that's 2010. Things were a little bit on the upswing at that point. How long were you at in Boston at that firm? And then did you know that you wanted to start your own firm at some point? Did you have those entrepreneurial inklings of wanting to do your own shop at some point? So I stayed there for a couple of years and that's also when I did my, so I'd won a fellowship to travel around the world researching vernacular residential architecture.

27:31So I was doing these like trips in between trying to work and keep my job, which was a whole other story. Which I want to get into the whole traveling. Can you explain what vernacular architecture is? Because I think there's a lot of people that may not know what that means. Architecture not done by architects, aka 98 % of the buildings in the world. So let's jump into that. I want to go there. So you got a$50 ,000 grant, I think, to travel the world studying vernacular architecture. Talk to us about that. You did a longitudinal line, it sounded like, of travel, which absolutely sounds fascinating to me.

28:08Share with us some of where you started. I love to travel, so I want to hear some of the adventures you had. I had a few adventures, let's just say. So yeah, so I did a line of longitude. I had studied one of my grad school summers in Jamaica. I did a field school where I was training on historic masonry and carpentry techniques from Jamaican carpenters and masons. And I spent the summer doing that and documenting 18th century buildings in the small town in Jamaica. So that was fascinating. I learned a ton. A bunch of us were in this program, be sitting on the beach after work. And one day I was like, the idea kind of came to me of like, I thought I wanted to apply for this fellowship.

28:48And I thought I had discovered that my hometown and this place were on the same line of longitude. And I was like, that's interesting. Like they're tied together by the sort of arbitrary geographical thing that we made up. But I wonder what else is on that line. That was my thought on the beach. Like what else is on that line? So I went back and like got out a map, I guess, and there was an internet. So I got out a map somewhere and trace it around. And that became the basis of the trip. So I was in Peru and on the other side. So I kind of wiggled off my line because I was traveling with some folks.

29:20And so they had research to do in other places. So I got to go to other places as well. But I was in Beijing. I was in Mongolia, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Australia. That's awesome. And how long was the trip? Well, I broke it into different chunks. I also went to Switzerland as well, which is not on the line of longitude, but I was looking at the origin of the homes in my hometown. All immigrants came from Switzerland. So I went to that exact place in Switzerland where they were from. And I was looking at the architecture that they built then and then the architecture that they built in my hometown to compare and contrast.

29:55So the whole entire... I had to break it up into chunks because I was teaching and working and I... You know,$50 ,000 is a lot of money, but I didn't want to spend it on like rent. I wanted to spend it on traveling. So the whole thing was probably about five or six months of travel broken into chunks. My biggest chunk was about four months and the Asia trip was all one trip. That's incredible. It had to be life changing. I've got to imagine it had to have been hard to come back to Boston. I would imagine like there had to be some reverse culture shock, like coming back after like studying because you were in Mongolia, I know studying yurts or you pronounce them Gur?

30:31How do you pronounce them? Gur? Gur. That's a Mongolian word. Yeah. Gur. Okay. So that had to be a mind, you know, kind of mess with your mind a little bit to see how all these different people live and have for thousands of years. Talk to us a little bit about the Gur like that. I thought it was interesting what you said on Yona's interview, just about how these structures have been around forever. Yeah. Well, you know, I think there's a tendency and I felt this way at times in my education, certainly feel it just as an American in the world that Western ideas are like the first time anyone has thought about standardizing construction is a Western idea in the 20th century.

31:10That is a thousand percent not true. Or the best masonry examples are like from the UK, from whatever. I mean, there's gorgeous stuff there, but there's many people around the world have amazing construction techniques and have wrestled with the exact things that sort of when you go to school and learn about like a lot of Western, when it's very Western centric, then you sort of think that no one else is doing this or no one else has thought of this. And it turns out everyone has because everyone wants the same things out of a house. Turns out they all want to be, you know, dry from the rain or warm from the cold or, you know, cool from the heat or whatever.

31:49Like these are the things that everybody wants out of a house. So seeing how people solve those problems in ways like in Mongolia, where they're using a ger, which is basically the same. If Genghis Khan showed up, he'd be like, yep, looks like a ger. I know what this is. And they're all standardized parts. And it works. It works in the climate. It works for lifestyle. And they're good to go. Then also seeing how some of these forms have translated over history. So the shop house form, which is all over Southeast Asia. It's all over the world, frankly, but this particular form I was looking at, the Southeast Asian version.

32:23So shops on the first floor, house up above, like pretty common all over the world. But the sort of the way it's laid out is there's this unique situation. So that gets translated into modern cities. That was an urban architectural type in the 17th century in Vietnam or in Malaysia or wherever I was. Those types are translated to modern types, modern shop houses, which are fascinatingly impacted by early zoning laws, which they wouldn't have called them zoning, but it was a combination of sort of zoning and tax law that created the lot shape that created this building type. So when you're thinking about how zoning impacts our cities or how governmental policy in the form of real estate tax impacts our built environment, turns out these are things that people have been doing and thinking about for hundreds or even thousands of years.

33:12And sort of seeing all how people have solved that or engaged with that in different places just makes my tool belt that much more robust and also just sort of takes my focus away from having everything be so Western-centric. Is it something that you can apply then coming back here, like some of the things and the learnings that you took away from that trip? Is it tough to apply some of that stuff or are you able to do it? I absolutely am able to do it, but there's an important distinction here. It's not about copying something. It's not about seeing a form and saying, wow, that's a really cool looking window.

33:48I'm going to paste that on a stick frame house in suburbia. What it is, it's about understanding how people operate their houses or how people interact with the urban environment. Most of the places I was looking at were urban. And finding new prototypes for urban living or residential living or whatever, you have to understand that these types are deeply culturally connected. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about this that you sort of, you're like, well, I like the look of this. So now I'm going to take it and apply it like a paint bucket tool onto a building over here. And then people wonder why it doesn't work.

34:24Well, it's because you're not actually taking the function of it. You're just taking the look of it. You're not really understanding how it works, either technically or culturally. And so I think it's a couple of things. It's construction technique for sure. I mean, I've seen so many things that, you know, I was just designing a porch recently for a project and I was like, oh, right. Like there's this joinery technique that I saw in whatever, whatever, like what if we just used a modified version of that, that would solve this problem. So like sometimes that does happen, but mostly it's about the thinking behind it.

34:53That's most valuable. So I wanted to jump back to you're in Boston, you're at this firm, you've done this huge, amazing trip. Talk to us about getting Runcible Studios started, explain how the name came about And just talk a little bit about making that jump from, I guess, like a W-2 job to starting your own venture, which is a risky, unnerving process for most people. Yeah, so I had a little bit of a stopover in between. So I had about a year and a half after I left UTL that I was a design school administrator. So I was working at the Boston Architectural College in their practice apartment, directing a whole series of sections of the curriculum and also working on pairing groups of students with local nonprofits to do design build projects.

35:37So we did a ton of them. It was a really cool experience. But I knew within a few weeks of starting the job that this wasn't for me. Why is that? Explain that to me. Well, I'm not political enough to be a higher ed administrator. later I can play one on TV, but I just can't. I'm like a builder. I'm a doer. Like these meetings where everyone's talking for like three hours and then everyone's like, wow, we got a lot of work done. I'm like, we literally just sat there and talked. So I just, I missed being around people, you know, architects, contractors, developers, people who are building things, who are like making stuff.

36:12So I love teaching. I love curriculum building. I love a ton of the stuff I did, but I was pretty clear it wasn't going to be the right thing. So combine that with like, you know, I don't want to go back and work for a firm. I sort of chafed under not having enough freedom to choose the projects I wanted to do or how I would do it. Also, salaries are just terrible. So I was like, I'm not even being paid a living wage. In academia? In architecture. No, academia is way better. So I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I have three more exams to pass. You know what? I'm just going to quit my job and academia.

36:46I'm going to keep all my teaching. So I negotiated keeping all my teaching. So I got paid for doing my courses. And then I had, you know, I quit on my last day was November 1st, 2013 was the last day I had a W2, but I didn't have a plan. No plan. I quit. And I said, well, I got three weeks paid vacation. So, you know, that'll tide me over. It's good. Then it's going to be Christmas. Like, I don't know. I'll just pass my exams and then I'll, I'll like figure it out. Like I didn't, I did not have a plan. So people heard that I was kind of a free agent and somebody said, Hey, like, can you help on this project?

37:18Like just a few weeks of work, like we'll just pay you or whatever. I was like, sure. So word got around and I was doing some work for people here and there on the side, passed out my exams, became an official architect. And then in April, the following year in 2014, I was like, you know what? I think I just accidentally started a business. I think that's what just happened. So I should probably get a name. I should probably do an LLC. I should probably get some insurance. So I did all that and filed my LLC paperwork on April 15th. So it's very easy for me. My business birthday is also tax day.

37:49So, and I celebrate my business birthday every year on April 15th. But yeah, I had that about six months of like, so I did not do it in a traditional way. I didn't do it in like the super planned out, like, well, first I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that. And here's my strategic plan. It was very organic. And then I worked on my own. Once I decided to make a go of it, then I was like, all right, we're doing this. I got a seat at a coworking space for$300 a month, which felt like the most money I had, like I didn't have any money. I got an additional roommate. I was like piling it in, like every dime I could save, you know, how could I execute?

38:24So the name Runcible comes from the poem, The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear. And it describes a Runcible spoon, which he doesn't really define, but most people like a spork, they think it's a spork. With a sharp edge, right? It's kind of like everything all together, right? Yeah, I have one right here. So it's like a spoon and a fork. So people say later, I mean, it was a nonsense word, but basically using context clues, you can say that it's a word that describes an object that's both beautiful and utilitarian. So I was like, that's cool. That's a cool name. And it was the first book I ever read.

39:01Oh, really? It was your very first book? That's super impactful. Yeah. So I also called it Studios with an S. So the company's called Runcible Studios with an S on the end. And that was because I already knew that I was going to be not only the Runcible Spoon, but the Swiss Army Knife. I wanted to be able to be nimble. And basically, Runcible Studios is a giant experiment and me finding out how to make money at doing things that I love, that I think are important, that are interesting, that fuel me a curiosity, that are good for the community and all that good stuff. So I've done a lot of things under the Runcible Studios umbrella that are not traditional architecture.

39:39Can you talk about some of those? Because I'm curious about, I was checking out your website, which is really well done, by the way. I think you've spent a lot of time on it. But talk to us a little bit about some of the unique projects that you've done that maybe be outside the general scope of what most architects would do. Well, two of the biggest ones happened right around the pandemic when everyone was getting creative about how to keep things going. One of them was I opened up a store. So it's much smaller now because I sold a bunch of stuff and I didn't restart it. But I have a little store and I designed all this stuff.

40:11And someone just placed an order yesterday. It's still going. It's just there in the background. So I started a store. My mom owned a store for many years. So I was raised in the retail environment. I love retail. I love it so much. So I loved every part of it, figuring out how to set up the store, figuring out how the logistics work, how do I do shipping, how do I keep track of stock? Like it was really fun. So I did that under Rensselville's umbrella. And as part of that, I also during the pandemic opened up a mask factory. So in the early days in Boston, it was the outbreak happened early there.

40:48So all of the hospital systems, no one had enough masks. So in like week two of the pandemic, I was making masks and like sending them places. So I imagine like nicely designed masks, right? Not just generic blue ones. Yeah. Yes. I made, I found a fabric store that would deliver because everywhere was clothes. And so they would deliver and leave it on my front porch. And then I would make masks and I would give them away. And in those days, you know, nobody had anything. So my friends would text me and I would be like, yep, they're going to be on the front porch. I'll put your name on a sticky note.

41:22You can get it. I designed the packaging. I designed, I came up with like a couple different versions, like these cool ones that you could put a filter in and all this kind of stuff. And then I sold them on the website and that funded the ones that I was making for healthcare workers in those early days when nobody knew what was going on. And I made them for organizations. A developer actually hired me to make a whole bunch of matching ones for their whole team with their little logo on it. So I did that. So I would work all day trying to save my business during a pandemic. And I was pulling 16 hour days working in the business and then sewing masks.

41:56I love it. I love the hustle. The entrepreneurial spirit is great. Now, at that point, were you in Boston or were you back in Pennsylvania? Because you are kind of in between both places from my understanding. Yeah, I'm between both places. The between both places started as a result of the pandemic. So all my family's in Pennsylvania. And after a year of not seeing all of them or seven months or whatever, I was like, this is not it. This is not what I want. The plan was always to move back to Pennsylvania. So what I did was I was going to open up a branch in Philly. So I got an apartment in Philly and I started networking and I started getting my ducks in a row and I'd have a Boston office and a Philly office.

42:36It was pretty straightforward to adding a city, whatever. And that was going okay. But then very soon after that, I got the opportunity to renovate our family farm house or the house on our family farm, which there's like three houses. This is the oldest one that I renovated. And that opportunity came up and I was like, well, we're close to Philly, but not that close. So maybe I will not do the Philly thing and do Boston and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is where now my other satellite location is. So it's a moving situation and trying to figure out like Boston and Philly, you can do the same thing in both places.

43:12There's subtleties and differences and the cities are different or whatever. Lancaster and Boston are really different. So I'm navigating that. So share with us a little bit more about the family farmhouse. Your family were Mennonites from Switzerland. Is that right? That's right. Yep. Talk to us. They came to Pennsylvania and settled in 17, you tell the story, 17 or early 1700s. Yeah. Early 1711, they came over. So they were on the run in Europe for, I don't know, 100 years or so being kicked out from various places because no one liked the Mennonites. And yeah, so they arrived here in 1711 and built the house that I'm in, that I renovated in 1730.

43:57And they were farmers. My nephew is the 10th generation to be born and raised here. That's amazing. That's so cool. And so you've renovated this farmhouse that has been in the family for generations, right? I mean, that's incredible to me. I mean, talk to us about the process. When was it last renovated? What's the experience been like? Because that's pretty wild. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So the house was built in 1730, renovated extensively in 1810, again in 1910-ish and again in 1950, and then pretty much not after that. So it was really rough. It had been abandoned for a while. There were bats in the attic.

44:37There were animals everywhere, groundhogs in the basement. So when was the last time somebody had lived in the farmhouse? Like 2012, I think. Okay. So it's been a while. Yeah. And my parents had done a bunch of really important work to it. They had repointed the whole exterior and done a bunch of work on the windows. So that was huge. And it's a stone structure, right? It's solid stone. Yeah. So 22 inch thick stone walls. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a little castle. Yeah. Really cool. Yeah. So then I, when I showed up, it was pretty much a blank slate. Which had to be fun for you as an architect, like coming in with like carte blanche.

45:20Yeah. It was really fun. It was the toughest blank slate though, that I've ever encountered because it's a blank slate from the standpoint that, yeah, I need to run all new electrical and plumbing and HAC and all the systems, but it's a solid house. Like even the walls inside are solid. They're solid wood. That's how they built walls back in those days. They just solid wall like planks. So how do you run electrical when all the walls are solid? How do you run HVAC when there's literally logs holding the house up? So it was a phenomenal challenge and one I embraced wholeheartedly. I love that kind of stuff.

45:57So the fun is now when I tell people, you know, cause I've got heat and air conditioning, I've got ducts everywhere. I'm like, find me a duct, tell me where they are. They're really hidden. So they're not exposed at all, huh? They're not exposed. They're definitely, if you can definitely see where they are, if you can read a building, but I got pretty creative about how they're in here. So I worked with a mechanical engineer to size the ducts really carefully. I have a fresh air system and an ERV in here. So I had to run all those ducts as well. And then I also, I built a model of the house and mapped out every single duct, every single plumbing line, everything.

46:37So that when I was working with a contractor and with the subcontractors, I was like, we are not cutting through anything. We are not destroying these walls. And they were all game, right? Like if they're on this project, they're going to be into it, you know? So, so they were into it, but there's a lot of, not many architects do that. We do it for actually all of our projects. We design all the duck work and it makes a huge difference because what the subs will push you into doing is nowhere near as sharp and clean as what you can do if you really dial it in.

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50:27That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash TIP-finance. All right, back to the show. You had a post on Twitter, a thread all about HVAC systems, which was like, maybe it was in your newsletter. I can't remember, but super in-depth and like a standalone lesson on HVAC systems. Yeah, I'm definitely an HVAC nerd. I think I've been looking into different HVAC certifications and things because I would love to, I'm not going to become a mechanical engineer. I don't have six more years of education that I want to get, but I'd love to, I'm like a closet mechanical engineer. so is this something with the farmhouse is it completed or you still work is it like a work in progress so definitely not complete i mean it's eminently livable the bathrooms are all like it's for all intents and purposes and you can see it on my website it's you know it's complete but i always will be a work in progress is always things my roof just failed so i'm getting that repaired like a new roof so you know and that's part of the challenge of running the business is that I don't have the same sort of cash situation that a lot of people might have.

51:38Like this house is not an investment. Right. So you're not going to Airbnb it or anything like that, like the other structure? No, and I'm not going to sell it. So there's no, I mean, did I add a metric ton of value here? Yes, but it's not value that I can realize. Yeah. It's not going to leave the family, right? You're not going to. No, it's kind of a, and to have that as a financial responsibility, the farm and all the buildings and all that kind of stuff. I mean, there's family, it's not just me, but it's still a real responsibility. And it impacts how I think about how I run my business and how I invest in other things.

52:17Which I want to get into your investments. There's mostly real estate investors for our podcast. Talk to us a little bit about some of your early investments that you've done. I know on your pinned Twitter thread, but it said it looked like you were looking for your next real estate investment project. Talk to us a little bit. Let's start with the first one that you did and just what your thought process is in terms of what you're interested in pursuing going forward. Yeah. So my first one was a condo in Charlottesville, Virginia, when I was living down there, when I was contracting and all that kind of stuff.

52:50And I bought in, what, 2006? Great. great time to buy a condo. That's great. And I think interest only 7.5%, whatever. What did I know? I didn't know anything. So... Yeah. Seemed like a good idea. Yeah. This is what everyone is doing, right? This is what you're supposed to do. So I'll just refinance later, no biggie. So I had that. And then by the time I was ready to move to Boston, I couldn't sell it. Recession, no one was going to buy it for what I'd paid for it. But so I was like, well, I guess I'll just rent it out to my friends who are finishing out grad school. Fine. So I did that. Then eventually ran out of people I knew to rent to.

53:30So I was like, well, I guess I have to figure out how to rent to people I don't know. And by the way, I'm in Boston still. So I have to figure that out. And maintenance stuff comes up. But luckily, I was a contractor. So I know tons of people who can fix stuff for me in town. So I cobbled it together. And pretty soon I was like running an out of state property as a landlord in a condo with a homeowners association that I had to like keep happy and all that. So I was like, I can do this. Like this is fine. So I said, but you know what? I really want to own a place in Boston. The problem is that I was saving up my nickels and dimes, but there was no way I was ever going to be able to buy anything that costs.

54:05I just didn't have the money. So I would have had to sell the place, which I still couldn't sell yet. So I said, okay, well, where could I buy something with my pile of nickels and dimes while in my hometown. So I bought a two family in Lancaster sight unseen, which now I can do that. What'd you do like a zoom call or what, how did you even find out about the property? A zoom call. Yeah. So the realtor that I work with, he's been a family friend for a really long time. So I trust him. And I, at this point, he knows I'm going to look at something later with him today, actually. So he knew what I was looking for and he knew the neighborhood.

54:41He's like, this is a great neighborhood. This is before I knew anything about any of that stuff. But I was like, yeah, it is a good neighborhood. But I learned a few things. I have now a list, as a good investor should, of things that if the property doesn't have these things, I'm probably going to pass. Just saying it was a duplex? Yeah, it's a two-family. So it was a single family that was converted. Actually, it was an old hair salon with an apartment above that someone made the hair salon into an apartment. So it's definitely a weirdo building. Definitely. So what are some of the top two or three things you would avoid in the future?

55:16One of them is I need to have access to the utilities without going through a tenant space. So I learned that the hard way because that building doesn't have that. And I have to check with the tenant and the tenant gets annoyed and I don't want annoyed tenants. I don't want that in my house, people trucking through all the time. And then other things like you know, just knowing that no matter what state the furnace is in, no matter what, no matter if it's brand new or 30 years old, I will have to replace it. Like it will fail. I will have to deal with it. I don't know whether I just have like bad furnace luck or what, but like, I just, so now I just factor that in.

55:55I'm like, okay. I mean, I'm being a little bit silly, but not, you know? And then some other things that are big pain is that this property has nowhere for the trash cans to sit. And the city has certain regulations about where trash cans can and can't be. And I basically can't follow those regulations because of the way the building is laid out. And so I'm constantly having to deal with all of that, like annoyance, where the city is like, you need to do this. And I'm like, I literally can't. And then I'm like, I can't ask my tenants to keep the rolly trash cans like in their house. So stuff like that, it's like little stuff, but it's that stuff that like every two or three months, there's like a little thing I have to deal with because the trash is on the street, you know?

56:35So that's another one. Yeah. Just little festering problems that you just don't want to deal with. So what's next? What are your, you said you're going to go look at a place today. What's kind of next on your agenda? Yeah. So I did eventually sell my condo, learned about 1031s. So real quick, kind of explain a quick for people that don't know what a 1031 is. So a 1031, which I learned about on the fly, is when you sell a property and you have to give the money to someone else who can't touch it, put it in an escrow account, lawyer or somebody holds it, and then you don't get taxed on it. You then take that money and buy a like property.

57:12So you can't sell your condo and then buy a vacation home or whatever. Those are the rules. So you did the 1031 on the condo or? On the condo. Yeah. Okay. So you've got this money in escrow. Is that right? That is now ready to be, you've got what, 180 days to buy something? No. So I, that was years ago. So I already bought two properties with that. So I 1031 that into another two family and a single family, which I renovated and sold. And now the coffers have built back up. So that was right. That was right at the beginning of COVID. Like I sold that single family. I was like, Oh, I better sell this.

57:50I was thinking of selling it. I should do this now before things get crazy in COVID. So of course I missed the biggest run up in like the history of. Yeah, that timing is hard to. Yeah, I just, I like, I don't, Zillow still sends me those little updates like this is your property. And I'm like, I don't want to know. Like, great, thank you. Yeah, thanks. That's a nice reminder. So yeah, so I have, you know, was able to carve out some savings. But you still did well, right? Just not as well as you could have. Yeah, I did fine. I did just fine. And the amount of learning that I had on it was, you know, it's like getting paid to learn if you do it right.

58:28Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's how I view it. And so you were your own GC, I presume, right? You managed the whole project. I did manage the whole project, but it was like, I guess it was right before COVID. And I sort of managed it with a team. So I was still in Boston. So I was managing this from afar. I bought that site unseen, ran the entire job site unseen. People shouldn't do that. No, that's rough. They should not do that. So I did it because my cousin's a general contractor and he was on the job. I can trust him. It was a straightforward project, more or less. And I have a lot of experience.

59:03So I knew the decisions I needed to make. And if someone's like, we just opened up this wall and found X, Y, and Z, I'm like, that's my day job. So I'm like, do A, B, and C. I'm fine. But if you're not seasoned, well, you shouldn't do it anyway, but if you're not seasoned, you really shouldn't do it. So you're not going to do that again, something out of state and manage it? No. I mean, now that I'm more focused in Lancaster, I can check on my properties more often. I can go see stuff. Highly recommend going to see things in person that you're planning to buy. Highly recommend that. Yeah. I don't get the whole out of state.

59:36It's like a thing, but I don't get it. I want to see what I own. Yeah, I do too. And I think it's responsible. When things go wrong, and I self-manage my properties, which I know is a whole other topic that people have strong opinions on in both directions, but I self-manage. No one does it as well as I do and nobody will. I tried management. It didn't work at all. I had angry tenants and a whole bunch of mess and whatever. Not saying I won't do it in the future, but probably that'll be an arm of Rensable Studios, right? Property management. Yeah. Who knows, right? You're nimble. Yeah. It definitely sounds like it's a whole Mennonite thing in a way, like super entrepreneurial.

1:00:16and I've always admired that. I live in Ohio and there's like a big Amish community here and they're just like very admirable people, I think. So it's gotta be in your DNA. Yeah, I mean, I think so. I also, I just, both my branches of my family are very entrepreneurial. And I recently learned actually that my grandmother owned real estate on her own in Lancaster, like back in the day, like in the thirties. I was like, she bought it on her own as a young single woman and worked outside the home, and did all this stuff and she was moving and shaking in the 30s. And all my other grandmothers did really cool stuff.

1:00:51So I think it was inevitable that I would do all sorts of business things. Yeah, that's really cool. I wanted to ask real quick on the property, you had your experience in Mongolia. Are you going to build any kind of alternative structures on the farm or is that not part of the plan? Yes, it's definitely part of the plan. So I want to build some experiments. I have a few ideas for experiments. I want to do things like using straw that we create here on the property to build a small building. I want to try to build something that is like the houses that are here. These stones for this house, the logs for this house, we're all within yards of where the house is.

1:01:32So what would be the modern equivalent? How could I do that? There's a brick house, a log house, and a stone house. So I'll make the straw house. We're going to keep the the three little pigs kind of going. So I want to make a straw building with straw that we create here on the farm. I've been really getting into learning more about gardening and farming. So I've got a whole bunch of ideas about different regenerative processes that whether it's for the land or also for buildings and greenhouses that use earth cooling and warming and this kind of stuff. So basically, yeah, I just, I would love to do a whole series of experiments here on the land and see what happens.

1:02:09And yeah, the nice thing about your situation is like you've got the canvas to do that. It sounds like you're really fortunate in a lot of ways to be able to have the land, to have the structures and to do these experiments, which it's fun stuff. Yeah, for sure. That book that I had mentioned earlier before we started called Design Outlaws on the Ecological Frontier, it's got all kinds of stuff like that, like straw bale construction and earth ships and geodesic domes and all kinds of, you know, stuff that's pretty alternative, but very cool. Yeah. I think there's a lot to be learned from it. I want to try to figure out how to do composting toilets and all this kind of stuff in a way that isn't stinky and gross.

1:02:50I want to do this for people, sort of normal people who are not into these things or like, ew, I don't want that. Or I'm not interested in alternative stuff or that's too hippy dippy for me or whatever. And I'm like, no, actually this makes a lot of financial sense as well. I'm looking at renovating one of our barns into a potential Airbnb or guest house or something. And in order to do that, I would need to put in a septic field, which would mean taking a quarter of an acre out of cultivation. And it would have to be like a six foot tall sand mound because the soil isn't parked around here because it's so wet.

1:03:22And it would be$100 ,000 to$200 ,000 by the time I'm all done with it. What if I got a composting toilet that actually works and is cool and isn't stinky and doesn't look stupid or designed one or figured out one. I mean, that's a financial thing. It's not just like good for the land and the earth. It is that. And also it will be the thing that makes a project pencil, right? Yeah. This is totally random, but there's one called the Clivus Maltrum, which I just love the name. It's called the Clivus Maltrum and it's just like exactly what you need for the, you know, so you don't have to build a septic system.

1:03:56Yeah. I've kind of gone down that rabbit hole myself. So it's fun stuff. We've kind of, we're approaching like a little past an hour here. Do you have time for a quick fire round? Yeah, sure. Cool. So I know you're a huge reader and I wanted to hear what book you think I should read. What's been a super impactful book in the last year or so, maybe over COVID that you read that really made a big impact on your life? Wow. I usually like to have more time to think about a question like that because I always blank when someone asks me that. So I mean, I read a lot of things that are not related to business or architecture.

1:04:31And that is on purpose. I read a lot of things I've been on. Like I mentioned, I'm reading a ton right now about organic farming and small scale organic farming right now. I mean, I've read like 20 books in the last 10 days. So like that kind of stuff. But I was also on a pretty big and have been on a pretty big kick reading books about 1960s Apollo program and Gemini program and all that kind of stuff. So space race stuff. I think some of that stuff to me is so fascinating because it's describing a fascinating decade in American history where we said, well, we haven't even sent, we just sort of sent someone up, you know, Alan Shepard like up for 15 minutes and he landed and like that was it.

1:05:11And then Kennedy says, P.S., we're going to send someone to the moon and bring him back safely. And then that became like a thing that everyone put on a piece of paper and posted above their desk at NASA. And like 400 ,000 people worked on that program at its height. And I think the number of lessons that I've learned about management, communication, tracking progress, you can't mess up in space. Like you can't, you can mess up in construction all the time, but you cannot mess up in space. There's no room for error. So reading a series of these books, actually, where they're talking through exactly how they made this happen.

1:05:52I mean, it's fun to read about the astronauts and like they're cool guys and like that's really fun and the stories. but actually the nuts and bolts of how they made a project like this happen and brought all of those people together to actually make it hundreds of subcontractors. You know, this is the person who made the spacesuit. This is the person who made the valves on the thing that connects the other thing. How did they orchestrate that in the 60s with no email? And, you know, it's so sort of management, communication, quality control, creativity, engineering. It's been profoundly impactful to me to read that kind of stuff.

1:06:28And manifesting a vision, you know, like John F. Kennedy, you know, like that. That's right. It's fascinating. So much that goes into it. Were you into science fiction, like as a younger kid? Not really science fiction that much, but I've always loved sort of the space program and that kind of stuff. One of my many nerdy interests. There's my Saturn V in the background. Do you see them? Oh yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. The scale model. Yep. That's very cool. Yeah. So, I mean, some of the great books, there. Andrew Chaykin wrote an amazing book about just, that's what I would start with if people are interested in learning more about how it all works.

1:07:04How do you spell his last name? C-H-A-I-K-I-N, I believe. And he wrote a book that goes through the Apollo program and just describes how it happened. It's very readable. And then my other favorite space book is Mike Collins' book, Carrying the Fire. So he was the command module pilot on Apollo 11. So he famously got the closest to the moon, but like didn't get to, you know, Buzz and Neil are like down on the moon and he has to circle above. So he's a fantastic writer. He's a really, really good writer. He's funny and engaging. And I've read a lot of the astronauts books and they're like engineers and test pilots, but Mike Collins is a real writer.

1:07:46So anyway, those are two good ones. I'll put it in the show notes. So next one, you've done a ton of traveling. Where's one place our listeners, you would say they've got to go? Oh my gosh. Which is a hard question, but like on your journey, what was one place that was like, I really want to get back there? Basically, I would say that it's not the best metric to say, where would I want to go back? Because some of the places I went, I would never want to go back. It was very difficult to travel there, but I am so glad I did. Like being in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that was really rough.

1:08:22Like that was on another trip. That was really rough. That was, I wouldn't, I don't particularly have an interest in repeating, you know, that experience, getting in a knife fight, like losing all my bags, walking across the border on foot. But that experience, putting yourself in a position within bounds where you are deeply uncomfortable, it's the difference between traveling and vacationing, right? That's not a vacation. No, that's not. I don't even know if that's traveling. Like there's, there's another word for it, but there's a little bit of surviving. Yeah. Yeah. But that trip, you know, was absolutely life-changing.

1:08:59I mean, just life-changing. You know, I was in Tanzania, Rwanda and Congo, and I had friends in Rwanda who I was staying with and And experiencing things from the standpoint of people who live somewhere, I think is really, really great. So whatever you can do to go somewhere and either stay with someone who lives there or get connected to people who are actually living there, then you get to see a side of the place. And that goes for places that are easy to travel. I mean, I've been to Italy like seven times. I studied there a bunch of times. And I'm going back this October. Like Italy is so easy to travel and it's so fun.

1:09:34It's so great. And so I've been back there the most number of times, but I also some of the places that I've been, I don't wouldn't choose to go back, but I'm so, so, so glad that I went. Yeah, that's awesome. Great adventures that you've had. I really have loved hearing about it for our listeners that want to reach out to you, learn more about you. We didn't mention your newsletter. I wanted to ask about that a little bit. Can you talk real quickly about the newsletter if you would? Yeah. So it's called Building Knowledge and it's on Substack. And I just try to collect in longer form a lot of the thoughts that I have.

1:10:11Some of it comes from Twitter feeds that I expand on or I have a list of topics I'm just working through. Or sometimes people will ask me, hey, can you write about X and Y or I have a question about this or that? And the idea is it covers all parts of what I know about building. So for an audience of people who want to build or who are building. And that could be owners, developers, contractors, architects, people who are interested in all this kind of stuff. I try to keep the content more intro level because I think that there's a lot of people who, especially in real estate, who don't have a lot of construction experience.

1:10:44And it's sort of become one of my recent passions in the last year or two to help developers understand more about construction. Well, I saw you post something about that, like maybe offering a course on that to developers, real estate people that don't have the basic construction knowledge that I think you need, frankly, but a lot of people don't have it. So is that something that's in the works? Yeah. I already do consulting with developers where I work with them one-on-one to help them through processes like this. But yeah, I'm looking into probably more like a seminar and less of a course.

1:11:20I've taught many courses over my time of being an adjunct professor, but none of them would sort of easily translate to what developers might want to know. So it'd be quite a lot of work to make like a full course. So I'd probably, probably interested in doing more like seminars and keeping it more, keeping it a little looser. So, but yes, I would love to do that. Cool. I definitely want to find out more about that. I wanted to hear how has Twitter impacted your career, your life? Like how, what's your experience been with it? So Twitter, it's sort of changed my life, honestly. Like I know so many interesting people and I've learned so much from everyone on Twitter.

1:11:59It's just it's kind of blowing my mind how the connections that I've made and the people that I know and can get their counsel on certain things or be inspired by their work. And I like, you know, there aren't too many architects on Twitter. And I like being at the table where decisions are getting made, you know, like or among people where decisions are getting made, you know, developers. So I like participating in those conversations. So yeah, I've gotten plenty of work off Twitter, some wonderful friends, business relationships, all kinds of things. Yeah. Well, you've been an important voice on there.

1:12:34I mean, I really think you've contributed a ton to the community. I tell every young person, and I don't know that people really understand it. Like you've got to get on real estate Twitter. Like really, like go do it right now. Like it's such a wealth of information that it's like huge. Well, and I also think it gives me a chance to dispel a lot of the myths about what architects do and why they're important to the process. And I think that's also very important to me personally, but also to our industry. There's a sense that developers and architects butt heads or contractors and architects butt heads or developers and contractors butt heads.

1:13:07And the reality is that, sure, that happens. It's a tough industry. But when we understand more about what everybody has to do and what the problems are that they're facing and the challenges, then we can work together to make buildings. That's why we're all there. We're there to make buildings together so we should understand each other's role and support each other to make it happen. So talking about Twitter, what's the best way for people to reach out to you? Is it through Twitter or there are other ways? Talk to us about a couple of ways people can find out more about you. Yeah, so Twitter is the easiest.

1:13:39So at MW Modinger, and you can DM. DMs are open. You know, I try to answer as many as I can. And my business through my website is runcibelstudios.com. If you fill out a form there, it goes right to my inbox. So it's me usually answering. You can learn all about our services and what we do. And then also our Instagram, which is at runcibelstudios. I just can't get it to grow like Twitter. So I'm always looking for people to follow me there too. That's where all the pretty pictures are. Yeah, right. You've got, what, at least 20 ,000 followers on Twitter, right? Almost. It's like 19.8. Let's get, well, hopefully this episode will push you over the edge.

1:14:23Marilyn, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for spending some time with us today. Yeah, of course. It was an absolute pleasure. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only.

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