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Dan Kolbert : Owner, Kolbert Building
17 Plays1 year ago
Dan has worked in the trades since 1986 and moved to Portland, Maine in 1988. Since starting his company there twenty years ago, his focus has honed in on building and renovating a wide variety of homes that are energy efficient and thoughtful in every respect. He has been written about or featured in many articles on construction-related topics and is the co-author of the 2022 Taunton Press Book, Pretty Good House.
Check out Kolbert Building: Kolbert Building
Pretty Good House: Amazon
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
BAM!
Introduction to Dan Colbert and Building Science
00:00:27
Speaker
Dan Colbert is the founder and longtime owner of Colbert Building, which focuses on applying the principles of building science to residential new construction and renovation projects in Portland, Maine.
00:00:40
Speaker
Outside of the track record he's really built within his community by way of these builds, Dan is a co-author of Pretty Good House, which is a why to and not so much how to guide to thinking about critical home construction issues relating to weather protection, air leakage, insulation, and vapor control. This book was the ultimate product of 10 years worth of conversations from a building science discussion group that Colbert and several peers of his have hosted.
00:01:09
Speaker
Overall, it's a major proponent of popularizing this notion of building structures that are only as big as necessary, as high performing and low impact as possible, as well as budget friendly and safe.
Career Path and Early Experiences
00:01:23
Speaker
In this episode, Dan talks about his transition from graduating college to working in the trades, shares his thoughts on how jobs in this sector have evolved over time, opportunity wise,
00:01:33
Speaker
the elements that actually comprise a good house, how to start your career as a builder, and steps you can be taking right now to essentially better establish whether you have a real interest in becoming one. Enjoy the episode. My first question for you is actually how you ended up in Portland, because I see you went to Wesleyan University.
00:01:56
Speaker
Well, I sort of just kept moving north in New England, but I've been here since 1988 now. So the vast majority of my life at this point. So anyway, I just was looking for a place to go, and Portland seemed like a nice place. I was living in rural Connecticut, and I wanted something a little more urban, but not too urban.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. Did you grow up in the country then? No, I grew up in the suburbs of New York City.
00:02:31
Speaker
Wow. Oh, wow. OK. And so when you left college, it seems as though you pretty immediately started your company. How did you not? Yeah, I mean, I guess in retrospect, it was all pretty fast. I mean, I'm not sure. So my, you know, my my progression was I graduated from college in 1986. I got a job in the trades like the summer after I graduated. I had fun.
00:02:57
Speaker
Then I spent some time traveling in Central America. Then I came back, after I came back the second time, I was ready to leave Connecticut and that was 88. So I moved to Portland and I did not start my company then. I mean, I was working for other people in those years.
00:03:20
Speaker
And then I actually taught for a few years in the mid-90s from 95 to 98 for an AmeriCorps program. And then after that, I went back out into the trades and yeah, at that point I really sort of started getting more serious about having a company. Yeah.
00:03:42
Speaker
This transition here is interesting to me because it seems that in the US, you either do one or you do the other, but you graduated from school and then you went to work in the trades.
Challenges and Opportunities in Trades
00:03:52
Speaker
So what was the mentality there? Well, times were different. College was a lot cheaper, so you did not have the same lifetime debt.
00:04:04
Speaker
And life in general was cheaper. I mean, I wouldn't even tell you what I paid for rent when I first moved to Portland because it'll just make you cry. But whatever. It was easier to do things in those days. I feel very bad for younger people today. Both my kids are in their 20s. And it's tough.
00:04:29
Speaker
It's, you know, places where people want to live have all gotten very expensive. So anyway, I think part, but back to the actual question, I think
00:04:39
Speaker
I'd been in, like many people who go to college, I'd been in school for whatever, from age 6 to age 21, 22, whatever. And I just stumbled on this job, but it was really exciting to be doing something concrete, literally concrete sometimes.
00:05:00
Speaker
I just really enjoyed it. And then the more time I spent in the trades, the more I realized, well, you actually do need to be smart and being educated can help. Certainly doing some math and communication skills are important. So yeah. Why did you decide to start your own company? Did that have something to do with everything you saw while traveling? No.
00:05:27
Speaker
I mean, first of all, jobs and the trades in those days were terrible. You know, there were no benefits. There was no paid time off. And, you know, most of these companies, at least around here, were pretty bad. So at a certain point, you know, you work for a bunch of companies and you realize, well, I might as well be if these guys are all just going to be screw ups, I might as well be making my own mistakes. So, yeah, it was more just aggravation with the prospects.
00:05:58
Speaker
So you did your own thing. I appreciate that. I did. Not out of any ideological or desire to do it necessarily. If I'd found a fantastic company to work for, I might still be there.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you've created what seems to be a fantastic company. And I'm curious whether you had a real, I guess for lack of better terms, concrete vision for what you wanted it to become back when you started it initially. So were you focusing more on doing home restoration back then, new builds? Did you have any sort of sustainability interest? No, I'm a pretty slow learner. So everything has sort of been a slow accumulation of
00:06:43
Speaker
you know, desires and knowledge. No, when I started out, I was just doing whatever came up, you know, on my own. I was working by myself, you know, mostly doing small renovations. And, you know, at some point a few years into it, I thought, well, you know, I have all these beliefs and I have this, you know, I wasn't really a company at that point, but at least it was something, a trade. And it's like, well, maybe there's some way they could interact with each other.
00:07:11
Speaker
And then when I got busy enough, so that sort of started bringing in some of my environmental concerns. And then when I started getting big enough that I had a crew, I knew I wanted the jobs to be better than the ones I had had.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I also knew that the, you know, the trades were not in very good shape that the labor shortage was already starting to crop up. And so I was like, well, you know, we dug our own grave here. Cause the reason there aren't more, I mean, one of the reasons anyway, there aren't more kids in the trades is because they're really lousy jobs. So that end of your comment there sparks questions in my mind, but I first want to start with how did you start getting interested in sustainability and the environment?
Sustainability and Building Science Principles
00:07:54
Speaker
I didn't think you mentioned what you studied in college. Was that related?
00:07:57
Speaker
No, I was a Latin American history major. Oh, wow. Got it. So first of all, I am very wary of the word sustainability. Sure. Because I don't think that anything I do qualifies. I think, you know, we are, well, whatever, we can get into that later if you want. But anyway,
00:08:22
Speaker
You know, I joke that our company tagline is killing the world slightly slower than the other guys. So I would not make any great claims to sustainability. But in terms of environmental work, you know, I'd always been worried about it. I mean, it's, you know, whatever. It's always been a concern of mine. And and it just seemed like
00:08:48
Speaker
And, you know, once you when you work in the trades, you quickly realize what a wasteful industry it can be. You know, you're throwing away, you know, you just there's just whatever. There's a lot of stuff that ends up in the trash, you know, whatever. It's it's it could be a lot better. You know, people are driving around in trucks that get 10 miles per gallon, all sorts of things. So it just seemed like there was a lot of work to do. Plus, I also, you know, found a community, you know, I found other people
00:09:19
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many of whom were way ahead of me in terms of pursuing this road. One of the nice things about New England is that there is a 50-year-old organization called the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. They are fantastic. Most of my heroes in the industry have all been leaders in this organization, so it's just
00:09:45
Speaker
becoming part of that community of high powered like-minded people is very big. When did you get the idea to start your building science organization or think tank? It's called the building science discussion group and it's very informal thing.
00:10:06
Speaker
We meet once a month. Well, we actually don't anymore. Anyway, we we were meeting every month We would take you know, July and August off And we would just come up with a subject and we just have a conversation whoever showed up. We just talk about it There wasn't any
00:10:21
Speaker
We didn't come up with any conclusions. We didn't publish our results. It's just a community of people in the trades, builders, designers, subcontractors, people with some professional affiliation in the trades that we just talk things through. And we started that. Oh, boy.
00:10:45
Speaker
You know, we did it for, it must have been about 2010, I guess, because we did it for about a decade until COVID hit. And then we stopped. And then we just started. We had one meeting in September for the first time in whatever, two or three years. So we're trying to start it up again. So, but in the meantime, what's really exciting is that one of the people who is a regular here and also a co-author of my book,
00:11:14
Speaker
Mike Mainz, he moved farther north in Maine and he wanted to sort of start a satellite discussion group. And so he had the clever idea of calling it BS and beer. They met at a brewery. And something about that name really clicked. And now if you look, there are BS and beer chapters or whatever.
00:11:33
Speaker
groups all over the country. I mean, in fact, I think there's one in Australia, there might be, there's one in Canada now too. So that's just been really exciting seeing these building science groups cropping up all over the place. When did you meet Michael? And I mean, transitioning from that, can you tell us a little bit about the Pretty Good House movement?
00:11:54
Speaker
Uh, so, so they're related because pretty good house was, uh, grew out of that discussion group. Um, one month, you know, we always, we pick a topic that we needed a store that sells building supplies in Portland. And so, uh, I'm the moderator and Steve who owns the store is the host. And, you know, usually at the last minute we come up with a topic for that month and send out an email. So one month, you know, we were talking and I said, well,
00:12:22
Speaker
You know, there are all these rating systems, passive houses just getting very big, and they all have great things about them, but not everybody wants to go down those roads. You know, what if you just want to build a pretty good house? And so that was the title of that discussion. And we had a great conversation, and Mike Mains actually wrote it up for a website called Green Building Advisor.
00:12:41
Speaker
And it sparked a whole other round of discussion there. And it just, yeah, it was clear that we sort of struck a nerve and that people sort of intuitively knew what it meant. So that was the genesis of this whole idea. And that was back in like, I don't know, 2014 or something.
00:13:01
Speaker
Sure. Well, so if you had to synthesize, and obviously this is the premise of an entire book, but what does make a pretty good house? Well, I would say what makes a pretty good house is finding the sweet spot between budget and performance and comfort. I'd say we push simplicity
00:13:26
Speaker
simplicity of shape, simplicity of design, because we think those houses are more durable and perform better and are more economical. And we push keeping it small, because most houses are just ridiculously oversized in the US.
00:13:48
Speaker
And, you know, we push, I mean, then we can go to the building science stuff, but, you know, we push some sort of basic building science principles that make the house more durable and comfortable. I'd love to get into those. I mean, yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
I mean, we focus a lot on the shell, meaning the exterior surfaces of the house, because that's kind of where the action is. At some point in the last few years, we started as an industry talking about the four control layers, and it was a much easier way to think about things than talking about your
00:14:23
Speaker
your Tyvek, your rain screen, and all that stuff. Anyway, the four control layers are your weather barrier, which is various things potentially, but mostly it's whatever the membrane you're putting on the house, either Tyvek or one of these newer, better ones.
00:14:41
Speaker
and even your siding count, something that keeps, and your roof is part of that too, something that keeps bulk water, rainwater or groundwater from entering your house because that's, you know, that's step one. If you've got leaks, your house is going to rot no matter what. So first step is keeping bulk water out.
00:14:58
Speaker
The next layer is your air layer, meaning your air sealing. And that, again, can be a lot of different things. But if you don't air seal, your house isn't going to be comfortable. Your insulation isn't going to work very well. And since air carries a lot of moisture with it, it's also going to be very bad for your house.
00:15:19
Speaker
Because if you've got warm, moist air traveling into your wall assemblies and hitting cold, dry surfaces, it's going to condense and cause problems pretty quickly sometimes. Then the next layer is the thermal layer, which is just your insulation, and your windows, the performance of your windows and doors. And then the last layer is your vapor control layer, which is, in some ways, the most complicated.
00:15:49
Speaker
you know, the one with the most variation. I mean, everybody, air sealing is air sealing, but the vapor control layer is very dependent on your local climate. And that's basically the idea being, what are you doing to either keep moisture from entering the wall assemblies or allowing it to exit if it does get in or both? Hopefully. So just that made it a lot. Thinking about these as control layers rather than just sort of having this terminology that
00:16:18
Speaker
all these things were very distinct and disparate. It just made it a lot easier to talk about these things. Yeah. How did you gain such familiarity with building science principles? Because you didn't study this in school. No. You worked in the trades, but how intense were you about those jobs starting off? Oh, starting off not at all. I mean, because I didn't know anything.
00:16:41
Speaker
you know, you learn pretty quickly. And it also depends on the scope of work you're doing. I mean, I was doing very small renovation projects where some of this stuff, you know, if I'm renovating a bathroom, this stuff is not terribly relevant except maybe trying to insulate the walls if you have them open. But when you get into bigger jobs, I mean,
00:17:00
Speaker
It's been an exciting time the last whatever 20 years. And I think the internet has certainly been a big part of that because it's made data collection and data sharing and research and all these things possible. And it's made it a lot easier for us to read each other's stuff. So again, it was a very slow accumulation of knowledge. You know, NSE, this organization, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, they have a conference every spring in Boston.
00:17:30
Speaker
And I started going to that a long time ago. And certainly at that time, it had a very strong focus on residential building science. So I learned a ton there. And then just there's been a lot of great books that have come out over the years. You just keep plugging away at it. And of course, a lot of it's just screwing up and figuring out what went wrong. If it's building science, it means that we're doing experiments. And some of them fail. And some of them fail, exactly.
00:18:01
Speaker
So you really seem to embrace this term, this field of building science, but are more skeptical of the blanket term of sustainability.
Renovation and Managing Colbert Building
00:18:10
Speaker
Why is that? And I think it also is important for my audience to note or just us to acknowledge that that is such a hot area as of now, right? So should people be wary of buying into it themselves in school or if they're right on it? Sustainability? Yeah. I mean, yes, I think so. And I think that,
00:18:30
Speaker
First of all, I have very little patience for self-delusion. So I think we need to be brutally honest with ourselves. You know, what does sustainability mean? We know we're in deep trouble already that every ounce of carbon that we put into the atmosphere just sinks, makes our hole deeper.
00:18:57
Speaker
You know, the reason I don't like sustainability in my particular industry is that A, I mean, it's just very complicated. First of all, even if there are very few buildings that I would describe as sustainable. I mean, like I've got friends in Vermont who are building low or negative carbon buildings with straw bale.
00:19:18
Speaker
and all sorts of great carbon absorbing materials, but the rest of us are not. Our houses are big carbon sinks in the beginning at least, even if they don't use much to operate, which is certainly our goal. There's certainly a lot of upfront carbon. So, you know, and then it's just the lifestyle that the houses, you know, I built single family detached houses, because that's sort of,
00:19:45
Speaker
whatever, that's where I started. And it's hard to switch gears. And that's what the market wants. There's something particularly sustainable about that model. Even if my houses are wonderful, it's still a supporting a lifestyle that's car dependent, that requires people to make a lot of money. And who knows how they're making their money, probably in ways that aren't great for the planet, mostly. So I just think it's a way for us to
00:20:16
Speaker
pretend we're solving problems, when really at best we're kicking the can down the road. So then what are your criteria for choosing jobs today? I mean, are you very exclusive about the kinds of renovations that you're performing for people or? No, I mean, I think any job can be, you know, you can use building science principles on any job. Yeah.
00:20:40
Speaker
even if it's just, or even if it's not building science, even if it's just your, you know, sort of awareness, you can push for lower carbon or healthier building products, you know, so we don't, I mean, frankly, mostly our criteria is, you know, do we like the people? I mean, we're not that picky about what we do. We do everything from, you know, renovating somebody's bathroom to building a new house. Yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
I want to say, do you like the people? Do you mean like, are they open to the kinds of principles that you would want to apply to their projects or you just like them personally? Well, both. I have to say, you know, I'm, I'm pushing 60 and I've been here for however many years. So I mean, I'm fairly well established and people know, you know, I think my, my clientele is pretty self-selecting at this point. They know, they sort of know what the company is and they're not going to come to me and say, you know,
00:21:35
Speaker
the cheapest, crappiest house you can. But so it's most so that is sort of that. I mean, once in a while people do get in touch and we talk about something that we do. But otherwise, yeah, it's really just is it somebody we want to work with? I mean, especially like on a, you know, on a new house between developing the project and building it, we could be involved with it for two years. So is it somebody we want to spend that much time with?
00:22:02
Speaker
Speaking of the tenure of your profession here, how did you start your company initially? Was it difficult? I've never had a builder on the show, so I'm really curious how one starts out with that. Well, one of the nice things about the trades is that the barriers to entry are quite low.
00:22:22
Speaker
So it's certainly one of the things, I mean, I spend a lot of time, you know, I'm on the advisory committee for various educational programs. I'm always trying to get younger people involved in the trades again, because we have such a huge labor shortage. But anyway, you know, when I started out, I had nothing, you know, I had whatever, maybe $2,000 worth of tools and a cheap pickup truck. You know, some states have contractor licensing, but even that's not much of a hurdle. Maine doesn't have any at all.
00:22:51
Speaker
Um, so there's no barrier there. Um, you know, there are license trades, obviously like plumbing and electrical where you actually have to, you know, go through certain steps to actually get licensed, but that is not true typically with carpentry. Um, so anyway, it's, it's very easy just to say, Hey, I'm in, you know, I'm in business. Yeah.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, here's my company. I got an LLC. Or not even. I mean, you don't even have to. I mean, for my first many years, it's just, you know, whatever. I mean, if you're just a single person, I mean, it all seems a nice idea, but it's not, you know, whatever. Yes. Forming an LLC is a good idea, but that's about it. You know, Hey, I'm in business, pay me, I'll come do some stuff. You get some, you know, you need liability insurance, which is pretty cheap and you're on, you know, you're off and running.
00:23:45
Speaker
Um, you know, it's tough to, I mean, I think most people, and I certainly, certainly was true for me, don't appreciate that the kind of liability they're taking on, right? You go into somebody's house, uh, you know, if you screw things up and get ugly really fast. Um, and I think that most young, a lot of young people in the trades don't know what they don't know. Um, so it, it's, um.
00:24:09
Speaker
it's tough. I, you know, again, I was never very happy with the companies I worked for. So I learned some stuff, but but most things I had to teach myself, which is so, you know, it took me a long time to feel like I actually feel like
00:24:26
Speaker
I feel like I've got a good grasp on some stuff and I feel like I've got a sense of the things I don't have a grasp of. Right, which is more important? Yes, it's a tough one to say. Yeah. Do you think that that fear of liability is one of the primary things that stops young people from starting plumbing, electric, carpentry businesses, or is there really something else?
00:24:51
Speaker
I think more, I think it's starting to turn around. I mean, whatever, it's a huge topic. And I spent a lot of time thinking about it, talking about it. It's hard to say. A lot of people blame the school districts, you know, all the shop programs got cut years ago, probably before you were even born, all the schools had dropped them all. I mean, when I was a kid, had, you know, we had, I learned whatever, I had a cooking class, I had a sewing class, I had a shop.
00:25:18
Speaker
We had all sorts of fun stuff. And it introduced kids at a relatively young age, I think this was middle school, to the idea that there are these jobs that involve doing things with tools or cooking or whatever. There are trades that you can learn. So I think that was it then. And then on the other side of that, in addition to getting rid of the shop classes, a lot of school districts started down this college for all path.
00:25:48
Speaker
which isn't necessarily a terrible idea, but it doesn't. There are a lot of kids. The trades are full of dyslexic people with ADD who are very smart and creative, but the classroom is just like the worst possible place for them to be. And so the fact that pushing these poor kids to go to college is not necessarily doing them any favors.
00:26:17
Speaker
So, and or whatever, or just playing people, you know, I was a perfectly good student, but by the end of college, I never wanted to be back in a classroom again. Right. Oh, my gosh, I feel the same way. I would have been happy to have stopped doing it a few years ago in retrospect.
00:26:33
Speaker
But anyway, so I think that that's part of the schools. Culturally, I mean, and again, the jobs really sucked until pretty recently. I mean, it's really only in the last five or 10 years that the trades have turned. Jobs have become actual jobs, right? I mean, as I said, zero benefits. Our boss would take us out for lunch on Christmas Eve and let us take the afternoon off. And that was about it for paid time off.
00:27:02
Speaker
The pay sucked. It was dangerous and cold and blah, blah, blah, and hot in the summer. And there wasn't much to recommend these jobs unless you absolutely loved the work. It was hard to say. It was hard to encourage people to enter the trades in terms of supporting a lifestyle. So that has started to change. And it still has a ways to go. But most companies are offering
00:27:30
Speaker
decent wages, paid time off, you know, whatever, you know, plenty of companies have a whole, you know, whole packet of benefits. I mean, whatever they're trying to, trying to be real job. Nice people. Yeah. Right. And of course, you know, and anyway, so yeah, so I think it's a combination of the trades digging their own hole and, um, and other and societal, you know, societal, uh, biggest pressures. Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah. So on that note, for kids who maybe were not lucky enough to have access to shop classes, but they just despise school or they're not good at it in some sense, but they do know that they would be able to contribute in a different way, like manually, physically, whatever.
Training and Business Development
00:28:12
Speaker
How do they go about gaining experience to test whether that's actually true? Because if I put myself even super theoretically in your shoes, would I want some high schooler coming to spend the summer with me like having no idea what he or she knows about anything? Like what kind of exposure can you really give them? A fair amount. I mean, I think that that's what I would encourage them to do is just get a job.
00:28:37
Speaker
There's a huge, you know, the labor shortage is now a generation old, right? We've missed the whole generation in the trades. So most companies have realized like, all right, we're not, you know, it used to be whatever you, if you needed somebody, you'd put something on Craigslist, you'd hope that somebody with some experienced person, usually another white guy like me would show up on the site and you hire them and they knew what to do and blah, blah, blah, you know. But we know that those people aren't out.
00:29:04
Speaker
they are, they're my age or older. And so I think most companies that I'm in contact with have realized that we're going to have to train people in-house.
00:29:17
Speaker
So, you know, so we're doing it. So we know that we're going to have to hire people with little to no experience. I mean, sometimes you get really lucky and somebody either hates the company they're working for or they're just moved to the area or whatever and you pick up somebody. But mostly you're going to have, you know, we know that the future is luring whoever we can in and training them in the ground. Sure.
00:29:38
Speaker
Well, I think that it's a pretty significant lure. But yeah, the goal is to make that more widespread. Yes. And I would just say that it's a seller's market. I mean, if young people want to enter the trades, it's a really fantastic time because, I mean, first of all, just the enthusiasm that you're going to get from your employers because somebody actually wanting to learn the trades will be higher than it ever has been. And there's a lot of people who
00:30:05
Speaker
There's a lot of knowledge that's getting lost because people don't have anybody to pass it on to. I know people, anyway, whatever. There's a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s who did not have people a generation younger to pass their trades, pass their experience onto because of that big drop. And so whatever, it's just a great opportunity. I think that most
00:30:33
Speaker
There's a lot of very knowledgeable people who are very excited at the prospect of having somebody who wants to learn from them. Sure. It is kind of a shame that apprenticeships aren't as common at all in the US as they are in a place like, say, Germany, where after high school, you can just kind of latch on to somebody and learn everything from them. Right. I mean, I think it's important to
00:30:55
Speaker
Right. I mean, the German system is wonderful in many ways. You know, the downside is that you get tracked at a very young age and it's hard to shift. That's true. So, you know, there's downsides to every system. But certainly, I mean, you know, I've got friends and they're probably all retired by now because it's been so long, who got incredible educations from their trade unions, you know, in-house. They learned in-house the trades. Yeah. And those don't exist so much anymore.
00:31:26
Speaker
commercial unions, but the work that you do in commercial projects tend to be very specialized. Like in carpentry, you're typically doing, if you're a carpenter in a union, it typically means you're doing metal studs and drywall in some big, huge building, and you're not actually rarely touching any wood. Yeah. You're kind of alienated from the historical process of what it would mean to be a carpenter. Right. And it's just, and it's not, I mean, you can learn
00:31:56
Speaker
the skills you need to do those things very quickly. I mean, you get better, and certainly whatever people have been doing it for 20 years are a whole lot better than people have been doing it for whatever, six months. But it may be more perfecting a limited set of skills rather than learning new, learning more things. So that's really a shame. And that's, it's less true in residential, but there's no training in residential. There's no sort of formalized training
00:32:26
Speaker
in residential. So that's the challenge. You are a veteran home builder. You've been in this business for well over 20 years at this point. For someone who's interested in casting themselves in your position right now, could you give a picture of what you tend to do on a day-to-day basis? How involved are you? Is it mostly delegation? And what are you doing? Well, I've done a lot of different things. And I'm sort of in transition, again,
00:32:57
Speaker
So, you know, early on I was solo then. And this is a fairly typical progression.
00:33:05
Speaker
And then I had a helper and we would be together all the time. Then I got, you know, like two guys working for me. And at that point, I could sort of sneak off once in a while. I remember, you know, when laptops first came out, I remember getting a laptop and sneaking off to a coffee shop for a few hours to do some work. And it was like this magical moment. So then you start to grow.
00:33:32
Speaker
As you grow, the complexity of the jobs increases, the complexity of the business increases. So at a certain point,
00:33:42
Speaker
At a certain point, typically the owner is out of the field, is not working, doing carpentry anymore because there's too many other things to do. And that's tough. And it's also tough because some of us have some business knowledge, but most of us don't. We just got into it because we wanted to be carpenters. And so the only way to keep going at a certain point was to start a business. I'm a terrible businessman. And I still am.
00:34:12
Speaker
So whatever, you have to learn those skills too. And so anyway, for the last however many years I've been, I've sort of been the office person doing estimating and bookkeeping, not so much bookkeeping, but estimating and tracking things and organizing things. But in the last few years, I've been very lucky. I mean, to have somebody who was working on my crew and she said, I'd like to do some of the other things.
00:34:41
Speaker
And so she's taken over a lot of what we call pre-con, the pre-construction stuff, which is like estimating and talking to subs and getting the job ready to go. And she's doing a much better job of it than I was doing, which is very exciting. So that has sort of freed me up. And one of the things I'm trying to do more of is more training. You realize like, I'm whatever, I think at least 20 years older than anybody else on the crew.
00:35:08
Speaker
So you realize, well, there's one person in this company that has 30 years of experience in renovation and new construction. And he's sitting in his office all the time. And people don't have the benefit of the mistakes he's made and the lessons he's learned. So I am trying, while I'm so physically able, to get back in the field and do more like, all right, we're doing this today. Let me show you.
00:35:35
Speaker
what I've learned here that ways I've screwed it up in the past. How have you I'm really curious working right now for an investor who has a difficult time finding contractors and handy people. How have you been finding team members for your own business? It's very hard. I mean, I, you know, you always have to have your ears open.
00:36:01
Speaker
You know, having written this book helped. I think it gave me a slightly higher profile. I've also been teaching some classes in the last couple of years. So I got two employees from this class I taught. Yeah, I think you got to be out there. Or you just have to, you know, if you're, I mean, some of the companies here who work on the very high end stuff, you know, they can pay a lot of money and they do. So, you know, you got, I don't know, but I don't have any great advice because we're all desperate for more help.
00:36:33
Speaker
All of this discussion is in the context of training people who are less senior than you.
Continuing Education and Advice for Students
00:36:39
Speaker
But how about yourself right now? Do you have any mentors in the field? Are you attending conferences or things like that? Yes. Are you doing education? Yeah, I do all of this. I'm in a business peer network. In fact, as soon as I hang up with you, I'm getting on to a Zoom meeting with them. Nice. So yeah, I've been doing that for a while.
00:36:59
Speaker
And then, yeah, I still go to conferences. At this point, I actually presented them sometimes too. But certainly when I'm there, I'm always seeing what other people are doing too. I actually have a consulting company that I work with. I help out on the business side. They help out on a bunch of things. But yeah. And then you just, you know, at a certain point, I mean, it can be certainly a lonely career. So you have to,
00:37:27
Speaker
you know, you have friends and you've talked to them, whether they're local or across the country or whatever, you can check in with them on things if you need to. You mentioned of across the country there, it gets me thinking of something I found on your website, which I find really interesting is that you guys don't take work that is kind of outside of a driving range for your team or? Yeah, yeah, we definitely try. I mean, for a bunch of reasons, we try to stay very close, although it's funny now because we actually have
00:37:55
Speaker
three, I mean, it's still a small area, but we've got three employees who sort of live a little farther north than is typical for my crew. So we've actually started sort of pursuing jobs I didn't take before because I didn't feel like driving. And we're not talking about very far, talking about like a 20 minute drive.
00:38:10
Speaker
But, you know, I'm in Portland, Maine, which is by far the biggest town in Maine, biggest city. And the town immediately north and the town immediately south are the two richest communities in the state. You know, so there's plenty of work within five miles. So it's not, you know, if I lived, right, if I lived in another part of the state, I wouldn't have that choice. Gotcha.
00:38:36
Speaker
So my last kind of branch of questions here pertains directly to people who are either going to start college or who are in college. What do you suggest that they seek out experience wise, classes wise? Should they weave all together and then just kind of look for an internship situation or what kind of insights do you have on that front for them? Oh boy, that's a good one. You know, I don't think that college is the sort of unalloyed
00:39:06
Speaker
could that we all thought it was. I mean, I think if it was still something that didn't sink you into debt, then maybe it would be hard. But I think that college is so expensive that you need to really think about why you're there. And that's tough when you're 18 years old.
00:39:23
Speaker
So it could even be just delaying college for a year and try and get a job in the trades if you think it's something you might be interested in and see what you think. You might decide you hate it and it'll send you driving back to college. But one of the nice things about the trades is you don't need a college education. There aren't that many jobs that pay reasonably well where that's true anymore. So that's one thing. If you're in college, I mean, I don't know.
00:39:52
Speaker
In retrospect, I might not have done four years of college, but I can't really make a recommendation on that one. But if you think you have an interest in the trades, you've got long summer vacations, see if you can get a job. If your college offers anything, see what they have. If they offer design or an architecture class or even just learning how to draw is a good skill. A lot of colleges have
00:40:19
Speaker
you know, my kids both when they were in school, you know, their colleges had like maker spaces. And that can be a lot of goofy stuff, but it's also got typically got like woodwork machinery. And so play with that and see if messing with tools is something you enjoy doing. And, you know, and like when I was in college, I got to be friends with the maintenance crew because they had a shop. And, you know, I could go in there and bang out, you know, make a crappy bed for myself. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.
00:40:49
Speaker
of the people that you interact with at these conferences and among your own peers, what are the demographics of their education? Like are most of them kind of straight out of the trades or do you see like a really nice diversity of background? I mean, I would say that in the, in that Nessie world, I would say probably most of them are college educated, which is a little bit odd, but certainly not universally. Like one of the people, you know, one of my real mentors
00:41:17
Speaker
He actually did a year at the same college I went to and dropped out after a year. So it's a pretty big variety, I guess. I guess I'm making kind of an assumption. I actually don't. It's not a question I typically ask. I mean, on my crew, there's definitely a variety of experiences. I think I've got six employees, and I think half of them went to college, and half of them didn't right now. Yeah, OK. Actually, I'm not even positive about that.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, whatever. And you know, I certainly if you can go to college in a way that doesn't like screw up your life.
00:41:58
Speaker
It's great. I learned a huge amount. And it's great. Those four years are irreplaceable and incredible. And to have the time to sit and think and read and really dive into a subject is just magical. I don't want to dissuade anyone from pursuing a college education. But I think that things have changed. I mean, I'm not happy about it.
00:42:26
Speaker
whatever, I think college should be free. And I think that the US system is terrible in that way. But it is terrible and expensive. And so I think that young people need to give it a good thing. Way the options, yeah. Absolutely. Now, for people who are interested in taking one or all of your classes, could you give a short synopsis on what and how you teach?
00:42:54
Speaker
OK, I mean, I am teaching the class that I'm currently teaching is very occasional. There's a group there's a group called Passive House Maine. Yeah. And they're an educational nonprofit, you know, pushing passive house principles and better building in general. And they came up with this great class on the new building code and the new energy code, which are actually quite good and sort of teaching people how to meet the energy code in a way that
00:43:24
Speaker
is safe and good and teaching them some building science principles. So in some ways it's very easy because they came up with the curriculum and then they just approached people around the state and said, hey, can you teach this class? So Maine is a reasonably big state and we're pretty spread out and sparsely populated. So anyway, once every few months I teach this class.
00:43:52
Speaker
you know, I try to focus, but you know, I try to focus, I guess I try to focus on very basic material. Would it be welcome for somebody to just kind of show up to one of these like a younger person or because I think that goes down and discourages college kids right out of it to actually go learn is because they don't want to be the odd man out or embarrassed for lack of knowledge. Right. Yeah. I mean, certainly my class I think would be appropriate. Yeah. I mean, it might be a little bit
00:44:20
Speaker
I mean, you know, it is sort of specialized in summertime. So it might not be that approach. If you're young and you want to seek out educational opportunities, I don't have a great answer to that. I mean, vocational education tends to be like, all right, here's how you do something. Okay, I'm also anything else that I had that's great.