Mm.

And if you want two things that are pretty easily solvable but that will really tank your customer satisfaction, it's those two things.

You move into a brand-new home, and you go run your hand across the countertop, or let's say, you know, you're going in, and somehow you look above a cabinet, and there's trash on top of the cabinet, or even the front door's not wiped down.

It's kind of small things.

And it seems like, oh, this is so obvious, and anybody would do that.

But the reality is when you're a construction manager and you're just going, going, going, those things sometimes aren't so obvious.

I remember my friend bought a house from us.

Is that something you guys purposely talk about, when to say yes and when to say no to a customer?

I'm just curious to get your thoughts on the landscape of the industry.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'm a student of home building.

And so like when there's a big deal like that, it excites me.

I love reading about it.

I love getting into the numbers.

I love looking and saying, okay, like what is my experience with either one of these companies? And so we've had some experience with Clayton Properties and Berkshire in the past and have had actually two really good friends of ours that have sold out or that sold to Clayton Properties.

figure out how to get those costs down um and so it's you know but like you said without reducing the quality so you're solving an important problem by doing that but i want to touch on one other thing kind of the construction specific space um you mentioned in a previous podcast or interview that you guys kind of cut your build cycle by 32 days in a year crediting a lot of that to kind of the vp of construction i'm curious walk me through that what does that process look like like What were some of the things you did to get that build time down if you're open to sharing?

So walk us through sort of like, you know, where the business was back then, which you've explained, and then what's happened since then in the last, or in the next 13 years, I guess.

love it that's a great question we're involved with a peer group called builder20 it's through the national association of home builders there's 20 builders and i promise i'm going to land the plane that there's a point for me telling this story there's 20 builders that come together you know twice a year and one of those meetings is about financials and i can distinctly remember going to those meetings and it's kind of like they line you up not based on revenue they somewhat do but really the markers net margin and i can remember going to those those meetings and being kind of like oh my gosh like and like almost like a wake-up call like yeah we're growing our top line but our bottom line is either shrinking or staying the same And Brandon, what I realized really quickly is like every year we always ran out of houses.

There was always a period of the year, may have been April or May or whatever, the spring sowing season where if you walked in and you wanted a home and for us, we're kind of more cyclical on the school calendar.

You know, we're living in a college town.

And so it's really kind of August to August.

And every year somebody says, hey, I got to move in by August.

What do you have? We're like, sorry, like come back next year type deal.

So first of all, what are your thoughts on that? Do you believe, I mean, What are your thoughts on the housing shortage?

[laughing]

Carrier, Carrier didn't invent the very first system to cool an interior structure.

However, his system, uh, was the first truly successful and safe one, and started the science of modern air conditioning.

He and six inter-engineers started Carrier Engineering Corp in nineteen fifteen with only thirty-five thousand dollars.

That's not very much today.

The equivalent today would be six hundred and fifty thousand.

But last year, Carrier sales topped twelve point five billion dollars, and the company employs forty-five thousand employees.

[laughing]