Get Out There And Build The Future - Matt Risinger

0:00 - How do we encourage young people to get in the trades? I can just think of two or three dozen high schools now outputting graduates that are going right into those trades and have nowhere to go but up. There's something about using your brain and your hands to do something that's of value to the world, that is unlike other types of work. It is hard work, don't get me wrong, but you're gonna feel like you actually accomplished something.

0:21 That's good for a lot of America. - Ever since our first apartment back in Hoboken, New Jersey in 2004, my wife and I have been fixer-upper people. Look, that's me, scraping the hopefully-not-lead paint popcorn off the ceiling. My dad and I demoed the kitchen together and saved a fortune. We had the floors sanded while still living in the place with Lisa, eight months pregnant. That work paid off big time when we sold it and moved on to our next home/project two years later.

0:46 Crazily, we repeated this process four more times since then with a lot of inspiration from today's guest, Matt Risinger. Matt's a premium home builder here in Austin, Texas, a construction science geek and a YouTube OG, as the creator and host of the "Build Show," which he launched back in 2008. Whether you're a homeowner looking to up your skills, a handy high schooler considering the very lucrative building trades, or a dad looking for some sage advice from a fellow traveler with four kids, there's a lot you can learn in this episode of "Dad Saves America."

1:17 (upbeat music) Matt Risinger, welcome to "Dad Saves America." - (laughs) Thanks, John, appreciate you having me. - So I'm trying to remember the first time I encountered your videos. I'm pretty sure it was via my wife, Lisa. - Ah, interesting. That's unusual. - (laughs) Well, you know, so we- - That's not my target market, I would tell you. - (laughs) Well, she's atypical.

1:48 You know, so we've built our houses and then, we didn't set out to be live-in flippers, but since moving to Austin in 2011, that has been what it has turned out to be. And pretty quickly, you know, because Lisa is like a research, like, super brain. She just goes, yeah- - [Matt] That's my target audience right there. - And the other thing that she has going for her that would've drawn her to you, is she truly hates insects.

2:17 - [Matt] Okay, there you go. - So how do I build a house that's sealed tight (laughs) so that- - As bug free as possible. - So that those Texas insects- - There's a lot of 'em. - Can't get in? And, you know, looking at how do you build a tight house, it's hard not to eventually find Matt Risinger. - Yeah, if air can leak in, bugs will get in. So I do get a lot of nerdy talk about that, that is for sure.

2:41 - So when was your first encounter with a power tool? - Ooh, my dad was always pretty handy. But my dad was never a craftsman, I would say. He was more of a, "That's good enough, let's get it done," guy, which is good and bad, right? We need both out there. So I was exposed to tools really early, but not necessarily craftsmanship per se. You know, my dad worked for US Steel. I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA.

3:10 - Yeah, I'm from Pennsylvania, too. - Okay. So, you know, we had a lotta power tools. We had a basement workshop growing up in, you know, our Pittsburgh basement, that I got to kind of mess around with. But it probably wasn't until college and late high school, late high school, I would say, that I started using tools more often and realizing that tools were a means to an end that I really liked. - I'm from Philly and then we moved to Allentown, which is, you know, Bethlehem Steel.

3:41 - Oh yeah. Big time. - That went through a downturn and never recovered, right? So how did that impact your family? - Yeah, Pittsburgh in the... So I was born in 1972, so I consider myself an '80s child, you know, I grew up in the '80s. My dad lost his job at US Steel in like '81 or '82 and was outta work for a year and a half, two years, trying to find a job. It was really bad.

4:05 And I remember my mom saying things like, "Don't tell your dad we bought this bag of M&Ms." You know, like, "This is a really big treat for us." So the downturn in Pittsburgh as a kid growing up was really impactful for me, in that I had, my older brothers are 10 and 11 years older than I am. And my dad ended up changing careers going from the steel industry to kind of the high tech world in the '80s, which a lot of Pittsburgh needed to transform.

4:32 We were pretty old rust town and needed some other industries, which was a good thing. - The Rust Belt. - The Rust Belt, for sure. - Very, very insulting name for an area, (laughing) by the way. - (laughing) It is a bit of an insulting name. But, you know, funny enough, back to the tool question, my dad was always handy and could fix things, but wasn't necessarily a craftsman. And didn't work with his hands for a living, per se.

4:54 He was in steel sales growing up. So he was always really good at sales. I always said, "My dad could sell ice to Eskimos." You know, he's great storyteller. He's got a great sense of humor. My grandfather was a great storyteller and had a great sense of humor. So I come from a long line of salesmen and ultimately that's kind of what my YouTube videos are in some respects. I'm a little bit of a salesperson too, 'cause if I'm passionate about something, I want you to be passionate about it as well.

5:23 And so my videos are that. But kind of the roots of me getting into construction and working with tools was, when I was in junior high, my church did this ministry in the inner city of Pittsburgh. And if you're not familiar with Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh was a very wealthy town in the 1800s, even through kind of World War II. A lot of industry. Very old East Coast town that had beautiful old buildings. And then something happened, I don't know what decade it was, but there was this flight from downtown areas to urban areas, white flight, it was often referred to as.

5:58 - Yeah, probably in the '60s with the riots. - Probably '60s. So we had all these beautiful buildings right near town that all the sudden were kind of, you know, no longer this gorgeous, well-maintained house. And fast forward now to the '80s, a couple decades later, most of the time it was inner city residents, often African Americans, who were relatively poor who were living in these houses that were gorgeous houses and actually owned the house, but had a hard time maintaining 'em, especially for a house that maybe hadn't been maintained.

6:31 And so my church got involved with this inner city ministry where they took junior high kids like me and sent 'em down to this inner city neighborhood. And I grew up in a very white suburb. I didn't know any black kids growing up. Go down to this inner city and meet people who don't look like me, don't talk like me. We're from a different socioeconomic class, and we're working on their houses. And I'm finding two things, like number one, wow, some of these people were really fun to talk to.

6:58 And I'd never interacted with an older African American man or woman before, and all the sudden I'm working on their deck for five days, getting to know them, hearing their stories about growing up. - They're bringing you out some tea and- - It was great. I absolutely loved it. But I also really loved working with my hands and realizing, even though I was doing not very interesting things per se, these people were super appreciative of my time and my labor.

7:25 And, you know, I went there and their steps were falling apart and they were, you know, gonna basically fall every time I came in their house. Five days later they had a brand new, you know, wolmanized deck on the front of their house. And we were like, "Wow, I really, I did something that was of value." And it's not just, hearing in church, like helping people, but, like, this is like, I actually literally helped somebody. And I remember one lady in particular that I met who didn't know how to read and was saving up to buy this program that was all over the air in the '80s.

7:57 It was like, "The ABCs of Reading" or something like that. It was advertised on TV, and I remember seeing the ads like, "Only five easy payments of $59.95 and you can get this- - Think I remember these ads. - You can get this program to teach you how to read. And it was intended for adults who didn't know how to read. And, you know, growing up in this nice suburb, I thought, "Well, you know, who doesn't know how to read, right?"

8:17 But yet I met a woman, who probably in her 70s or 80s at the time, who never had learned how to read, and she was saving up to buy this program that was probably $200, right? And it was such an eye-opener for me. And I connected, I think in a very visceral way as a seventh grader, hey, my work, my hands could produce something of value that actually could help somebody. And I really liked that feeling.

8:46 - So my dad is a doctor, but he's a South Philly guy. So my whole family's from South Philly. And when he was growing up, he was working on their house all the time. He's told me so many stories. Maybe one of the most crazy ones was, he was stripping the old lead paint off the exterior of the house. And he had a torch that was basically a bomb. It was like this canister that looked like a watering canister. - Sounds about right.

9:19 - Of, you know, some kind of- - Diesel or something. - Yeah, diesel, some kind of fuel, and something highly explosive that was just like billowing out flames. And he's melting the lead paint. (laughs) - As he's breathing in this lead fumes. - And then when I was little growing up, you know, my dad was in medical school so we had no money, and we were, you know, sort of in the outskirts of Philly, and so I grew up learning how to do stuff, like lay tile with my dad and tear down walls. - That's awesome.

9:48 - So I think that's why I love your channel, 'cause I'm so attracted to doing stuff with my hands. - That's awesome. - Like the physical. What do you think it is about getting to make something with your hands where you see the finished product and it's a physical product in the world? Why do you think that's so satisfying? - You know, John, I think ultimately it's the way we were created, you know? I believe that there's a creator of the universe, you know, a living being that lots of people refer to as God.

10:21 The Judeo Christians know Him in the Bible as Yahweh and God, and He created the universe in seven, I believe seven calendar days, as crazy as that sounds to a modern person, I believe that God created it in the seven days. He took pleasure in that, and on the seventh day He took the day off and was like, "This is awesome. Look what I did." (John laughs) And I think as creative beings, we're created in God's image, we really like creation too, whether it's video creation, whether it's building a house.

10:49 There's something about using your brain and your hands to do something that's of value to the world. That is unlike other types of work. I wouldn't like a career that I couldn't see some amount of tangible creation at the end of the day. Whereas a builder, man, there's no more tangible creation than leaving a job after working there for a year, and you've got a house that's gonna stand maybe for a few decades, maybe for a few hundred years.

11:20 - So you have this experience in middle school, you were saying? - Mm-hm. - What's your path from high school into construction? - Yeah, so the short story is I worked at that ministry through junior high and high school, and then I worked there in college as well, and would kind of coordinate the crews of high school kids and all these churches that would come in. But at the same time, I had no idea there was careers in construction because I didn't know anybody that had a career in construction.

11:48 My dad was in the steel industry. But through that whole time, I'm watching this program called "This Old House." - Yeah, Bob Vila. - Bob Vila. And I thought it was super awesome. And I also remember very specifically in the '80s, in like 1988, they renovated this old barn and turned it into a house. And they had this barn timber framer named Ted Benson on. And in my world, he's a pretty famous guy. Ted Benson runs Bensonwood Homes that still does timber frames to this day.

12:15 And I built two of them down here in Texas. So I'm watching this and and I like this, but I had no idea that was a career. So I go through college and I started engineering and realized pretty quickly the math was not, my brain was not great at that kind of math, so I switched to industrial management, and I really wanted to work for Toyota, 'cause I- - [John] Yeah, why? - Well, I studied the kind of Toyota production system for a few years, and I really liked this Japanese management, this Japanese culture of, hey, we can do better.

12:46 You know, there's something about what we're doing that's either wasteful or isn't perfect, and if we can get rid of the imperfect and get rid of the waste, every widget we make next will be that much better. And learning about that really got my juices flowing. I really, really liked that. So then fast forward a year or two, I get this college degree in industrial management, and I'm on mid '90s, I graduated from college in '95, and I had no idea how to get a job with automaker, but that's really what I wanted to do, I wanted to build cars.

13:19 I've always liked cars too. So my senior year at college, this national home builder comes to recruit and I was like, "Oh, I don't want a job as a builder. You know, I'm an okay carpenter, but I can't frame houses for a living." I didn't know what they were hiring for. And so my buddy says to me, "Hey, you should come to this session with these guys at night where they talk about what they do for a living, then there's interviews the next day."

13:44 And I had not signed up, but I said, "All right, I'll come listen." And so I'm hearing these young project managers talk about their job and how they're building multiple houses and they're managing the crews, and I was like, "This is the same as building cars except for doing it out in the rain. That's the only difference." And so I was like, "You gotta hire me. This sounds awesome." I didn't know there was a career in this.

14:08 And that's how I fell into it. Been doing it ever since. - So did you encounter any mentors along the way that really had a big impact on you? - For sure, and I actually get to work with one of 'em still to this day, which is awesome. So I worked for other builders for 10 years, and then when I was in my early 30s, I moved to Texas and kind of said, "All right, that's it, I'm gonna work for myself."

14:31 I'd always wanted to own my own company. And I worked for other builders and was kind of annoyed by some of our building practices, or even some of the management practices from some of these other companies and said, "I can do this, right?" So I started my company when I moved to Texas in 2005. And shortly after I moved here, I joined our local chapter of the Home Builders Association, and I met in particular, these three builders.

14:57 They're about 15 years older than me. And they kind of took me under their wing as their younger brother and mentored me. I took 'em out to lunch and asked them questions. I'd call 'em and say, "Hey, I got a problem with this and this on the job, or I'm having this issue with a client." And they would always talk me through it. It was that older brother who, you know, was taking the younger kid under their wings.

15:20 And so to this day, I'm still friends with those guys. All three of them are still building, believe it or not. - That's awesome (indistinct). - And one of those three is now my business partner, is a 50/50 owner in my business. - So why did you think, I should start my own business? Or where did that idea come from? It's not an obvious thing for people to necessarily do to say, I'm gonna start my own version of this.

15:46 Most people don't, most people work for somebody else. - Yeah. I think there is a certain subset of America that wants to be their own boss. Not everybody's cut out for it or should do it. I'm not sure that I should have either, and now here I am later and it's worked out. But I had this desire to run my own show and be able to make some high level decisions that I wasn't able to make working for other people.

16:12 And honestly, working at a big corporation made me want to start a company that was different than what I had experienced as an employee. - Was there something specific you can remember? Was it like, you know, this isn't the way I wanna do it, and I wanna give my idea a try? - Well, believe it or not, there's two really minor things that stuck with me working for other people. One was a vacation time. (both laughing) When I worked for a big national builder, they recorded like any minute you were off and it accounted against your vacation time.

16:47 And they were very, very specific about record keeping of that, which kind of bugged me. But then when I worked for a smaller firm, my boss every year would say in our annual meeting, I would say, "Hey, you know, what can we do about this two weeks vacation? I really want three weeks of vacation. I wanna be able to take a week between Christmas off, and a week in the summer and a couple extra days here."

17:09 And he is like, "Well, what are you willing to give up, Matt? And I'd be like, "Well, what do you mean?" And he'd be like, "Well, do you wanna give up your 4% raise this year instead of that you get an extra week?" And I was always like, "Okay, if I have to." So the three years I worked there, I gave up my raise every year at my annual meeting so I could get that three weeks of vacation.

17:30 And it always bugged me. It was one of those like, really? Like I work hard, I'm on salary. Does it really matter if I take Friday off to go see my parents? You know, when I've got my job lined up when you don't have to help me. - Yeah, there's no output that's being impacted. - Exactly. - You can get the job done. - That bugged the heck out of me. And so I said to myself really early, like, I really would like to be the boss someday so that I could say, look, if you wanna take the day off, do it.

18:01 And to this day, I don't. We have 30 some people at work for me now, and we have a no vacation policy. You take off when you wanna take off. And in all the years I've been in business, I've only had to let one person go for violating that. They literally took unlimited vacation and I had to let 'em go. (laughs) - You're like, "Well, you've already not coming to work for a couple months, so I'm just gonna formalize this deal. (laughs) - (laughing) It wasn't that bad.

18:27 But it turned into like almost every Friday they were sick, and it was an office position. It was like, "Come on, are you really sick today? Like, I need you to actually get your work done." I'm like, "Tell me ahead of time that you want to take a Friday off." - I adopted the same thing. So, you know, I worked for Viacom, which is a big company, for a little more than a decade, then we moved to Austin, started Emerging Order.

18:51 And for most of the time we have essentially, like, unlimited PTO. Get your work done. Take time off. If people need to know you're not gonna be here, let 'em know. And I've always thought of it as if we've done our job, we've hired an adult. - [Matt] That's right. - So maybe we should treat you like an adult and then you'll like that as an adult. - Yes. And it makes such a big difference. That was a big one for me.

19:18 The other one that was really big for me was as a 22-year-old, starting with this national builder, I was an assistant superintendent. And after- - So what does that mean? What was that job? - It basically was onsite managing the day-to-day of construction activities of about 20 houses under construction. So a lot of construction. Not very exciting nor detailed houses, but a lot of them. So through a year training program then I got promoted to superintendent.

19:46 And my first boss as a superintendent, I'm like 23, 24, he would come out once a month and meet with me and take me to lunch, and we'd walk the job. And I really felt like Joe cared for me as a person and not just as a cog in the wheel that would get things done for him. And in particular, you know, I'm 23, I'm making, I think my first salary out of college was $24,000 a year in 1995.

20:12 And by the time I paid my truck payment, my apartment, taxes, which you forget about as a college age kid, you know, I have like 200- - Your first encounter with, oh, maybe taxes aren't so awesome. (laughs) - I had $200 a month to live on for food and for entertainment and like, whatever. And so- - The ramen. - Yeah, whatever. And Joe would take me to lunch and buy. And we went to this place called Deli Depot, and it was like a $6 lunch back then.

20:41 You know, it was a hot grilled sandwich of some variety, a bag of chips and a soda. And I love Joe. And I felt like when Joe and I would have lunch, he'd ask me about, you know, whether I was dating someone or what was happening, or, "Hey, did you find a good church locally? You told me you were looking." And just like Joe cared about me as a person. So a year later Joe gets promoted and leaves and the new guy comes.

21:03 And we go to lunch, you know, same kind of format. Was like, "We're going Dutch, right?" I was like, "Dutch? What do you mean Dutch? Joe bought me lunch every other Friday or once a month. We're not going Dutch. You know how much money I have? Like $6 in my account." - Yeah, Dutch means I will bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watch you eat what you order. (laughs) - I mean, it ultimately was like, "I know you can put this on your company card and charge this.

21:28 Like, please, I'm 23." (John laughs) - So as a 23-year-old, I said, "If I'm ever the boss, I'm buying lunch." And that's a big thing in my company. We buy lunch a lot, and it's, you know, more usual in the tech world than it is in the construction world. But at least once a month we have, or once a week we have lunch brought into the office. And probably once a week I'm going out to lunch with somebody or multiple people on my team.

21:54 And I never let anybody buy. I'm like, "look, this is a company expense." We're gonna have conversations. And just that little thing from Joe just really made me feel like Joe cared about me as an individual and not just as a worker. - There's a sense in which I think if you really are smart about people, that you invest in them, that there's a two-way relationship. When you hear young people who say like, "Oh, well bosses are all fat cats and just wanna extract the surplus profit."

22:25 In a way, you kind of got to see both sides of that coin. - I see both sides of that coin, for sure. - What's been the hardest thing for you about being a boss? - I mean, where the rubber meets the road for me for many years was I was the one always getting paid last. And there wasn't a lot of money in the 2010 to 2015 range. I made a pretty big business/financial mistake where I built a speculative house before the recession hit here in Austin.

22:53 - I watched that video where you talked about that. This is early in your firm, right? - So I started my company in '05 and I just moved to Texas and was like, "Hey, hire me, Risinger Homes," and they're like, "Who? Like, I don't know who you are, why would I hire you? You've built nothing here." (John laughs) So I got a couple jobs, one or two jobs from, you know, small jobs in town and meanwhile- - So how did you get that first job?

23:17 Like how did that... You don't have a portfolio in town. - My first job I bought basically, right, I did a speculative house. So I found a nice neighborhood in town that was transitioning from older, not so good houses to more expensive houses. And I basically bought a tear down. So I tear this house down and I build a new one. - [John] How do you get the money for that? - I asked an investor to invest in me and said, "Look, I'll give you an X percent return on your money over this two year period that I need it."

23:45 And once you talk an investor into giving you money, then you can talk the bank into giving you money, as long as the bank's the first person who holds the lien and the investor second. So I talked to an investor and said, "Look, you know, the market's killing it in Austin, let's do- - 2005. - Oh, it was crazy in '05. - So it's a two year window, you know, and in that two years. (laughs) - You know exactly where this is going.

24:08 So I finished that one and sold it right before the market went bad. - [John] Okay. - I did a second one that I sold right as the market was absolutely crashing and barely got out of it. They barely bought it for me. But then the third house that I did that was speculative, I just was starting it during the start of the recession. So the recession is getting worse and worse, and here I am going deeper and deeper in this build.

24:31 - So the housing market in that time peaked in '06, at least nationally. I'm not sure what- - It's pretty true here. We were about six months behind. - Yeah, Austin. And Austin didn't have as nearly as bad of a dip as the rest of the country. I mean, there was places like Arizona, Phoenix that just got clobbered. - Yeah, but things are not selling here. I mean, it makes this market look like a killer market right now compared to that.

24:55 It was real bad. - So when are you working on this third spec house? - So I started it in basically the start of '07, right as the economy was going bad, because I thought, "Oh, we're six months behind." And at the time I was thinking, "Oh, we're gonna weather this, no problem, in Austin, right?" - So you're basically, and I felt like this many times in my career, maybe even right now, where you're in the airplane, you're John Cusack in the movie "2012."

25:22 (Matt laughs) And that movie is basically a series of sequences in which John Cusack arrives in the city. - [Matt] That's funny. - And then all the buildings (laughing) start to collapse and he finds a way to get on a plane and tries to swing through (laughing) the collapsing buildings. And it happens like five times and then the movie ends. - (laughing) Oh, that's hilarious. - So you're in that, you're in the plane, the economy is crashing.

25:44 - What can you do besides keep flying? That's what I did. So I finished building that house and I'd put a million dollars into the build hoping to sell it for 1,000,002. And instead I held onto it for two and some years and sold it for about 725. - [John] Oh, so you take a huge loss. - So like a huge loss. And I'd sold it for enough that the bank loan was paid off so I didn't owe anything to the bank, but my investor was at zero at that point.

26:12 And so I went to this individual and was like, "I owe you $300,000 but I don't have a penny to my name, so here's an IOU." And for me, it was hard to go and say, "Hey, I can't pay this right now, but I will." And it was like, "That's my integrity on the line, right? If I told you I'm gonna pay you, I'm gonna do it even if it's painful." And about a year later I was able to start making payments.

26:33 It was $7,000 a month. - Oh my gosh. - I called it Chuck, my employee that was terrible that I couldn't fire. Every month we had to pay Chuck, and we finally fired Chuck in 2015. So I paid it off from 2011 to 2015. - Wow. One of the things about your videos that I have to assume is a big part of why you've been able to build such a big audience is you are a geek.

26:58 - (laughing) Big time. - You have an attention to detail. Where did you get that from? Were you always detail-oriented? Because it's one of these things where in a construction project it makes the difference between good and great. - It does, for sure. You know, that's a good question. I think part of it has come from pain and making mistakes and realizing that not thinking about it doesn't excuse you from the consequences.

27:28 And isn't this true in a lot of parts of life? So here's a quick, for example, when I worked for another builder when I was in Portland, Oregon, 2002 is the time period, there were two big things going on in the building world. One was this fake stucco called EIFS that builders were adopting. And you may have even heard it as a lay person. In 2002, it was like all the rage, it's half the cost of regular stucco, but it adds insulation value, and so builders are like, "Oh, this is great.

27:52 It looks better." - That's right out your alley 'cause you love new materials- - For sure. - And all this kind of stuff. - So the builder I'm working for at the time had built several houses with this system. And the day I started working with 'em, they got handed like three or four lawsuits on this, and then three or four of more came in over the next month. And I ended up handling about 10 lawsuits, for both EIFS, which was a fake stucco that wasn't very waterproof and rotted houses out.

28:20 - Oh God, so basically you had this stucco surface, and what's happening? - So what happened was we would put this fake stucco on and we'd face seal everything, well, like meticulously cog it, and it would look great, but all of a sudden over time that cog would crack a little bit, water would seep in and there was no way for that water to come out. - So just rotting the frame of the house. - It would rot the building out and you just didn't know it, 'cause it would look fine from the outside.

28:46 - Is that one lesson for homeowners is, water is like a demon hiding in the walls. - It is, I mean, 80% of construction defect litigation is water related. So if you're gonna be an expert on one thing as a builder, it should be water management. And so I learned a lot of lessons of like what not to do during that time. But the other big thing that was happening back then was the national mold crisis was happening.

29:11 - Which was also stucco related, wasn't it? - A lot of it was, but it boiled down to homeowner's insurance was still covering mold defects or mold claims. And so people were saying, "Hey, I've got these major mold issues." And Tom Brokaw, remember him back in the day? - [John] Yeah. - Tom Brokaw on the NBC "Nightly News" was talking about mold, and oh, my gosh, this black mold in this house and- - Making people really sick.

29:36 - Yeah, it was making people sick. The problem wasn't necessarily that every house in America was bad, but there was this hysteria that built up. And I think that there is a small percentage of people that are extremely affected, but once you say, oh, there's a problem, everybody in the world found problems that may or may not have been there. - Right. Especially when there's an insurance payout opportunity. - [Matt] Exactly. - They call it moral hazard for a reason.

30:01 - But it was a crisis point in my young builder life. Like, "Oh my gosh, if I don't get the details right, like I could lose my company, I could get sued. I could have clients that are extremely unhappy with the construction work we did." And so I think that was my initial, like, I should really nerd out on the details, 'cause if you don't get the details right, whether you did it intentionally or whether you were just going along with daily life, that still ends up in the same spot, which is not good.

30:34 - But so that's a healthy fear, But then there's also the like obvious joy you take in- - Yeah, I do like that. - In fixtures, and in cool new ways of doing things and building science. And one of the things, I've watched a bunch of your videos about, like can you build a passive house? Something that is so well insulated that it barely needs any energy to keep it warm or cool. - I mean, the Japanese call it Kaizen.

31:02 Have you heard that term before? - Probably on your videos. - It's just continuous improvement, right? Like, all we need to do is just make things 1% better. And if you do things 1% better every day, you'll be 40 times better over the course of two years than where you were today. So, you know, what does that mean for you and I? Maybe that means, you know, for instance, right now I'm calorie tracking so I don't end up with dad bod.

31:27 You know, I wanna make sure that I'm able to play with my grandchildren and I'm still healthy. So if I take my diet seriously, just 1% better, that will lead to really big changes. And that's kind of where I've said on my houses, like, if I can make every house just a little better than the last one, I don't need to build a passive house next. I just need to do a little better. And that's kind of been my philosophy in the 18 years I've been in business, just every house do some detail a little bit better than the last one.

31:54 And if you make a mistake, obviously you gotta leave forward, whatever that is. I'm like, "Oh, let's not make that again. Let's make sure that everybody in the team knows about it. Maybe even make a YouTube video about it so that people know the mistake I've made." 'Cause I've been through a lot of pain, and if I can avoid that for the next person watching, then my YouTube channel's a success. - One of the things that I've seen you talk about in some other interviews is how you think about hiring, and how do you find great people.

32:23 I can empathize with you guys, 'cause video production's basically like building a house. - Yeah, for sure. - As you know. It's like you've got subcontractors. - You got a plan. - Sometimes you've even got like similar trades. Like you've gotta build sets and you need electricians and you need lighting. - For sure. - Finding subs, subcontractors, people to work with you, for you, that's gotta be most of your work, right? - That's almost 100%. And and you're right- - How do you do it?

32:52 - That philosophy that I learned from that other company, I think translates to not just your employees but your subcontractors, which is treat people how you want to be treated. It's ultimately, it's the golden rule, right? I mean, if you treat people how you wanna be treated, they'll probably treat you back that way. So for instance, when I get hired as a builder, I want my clients to pay me, I want them to treat me well, and ultimately I want to do multiple jobs for them.

33:17 Well, why wouldn't I treat my subcontractors that same way? If I get a bid from a subcontractor and something changes, am I gonna hold them to that bid? Or what if they didn't know something on the job? Do we wanna treat our subcontractors like the employee of the big builder? Or do we want to treat our subcontractors like our employees? Like hey, let's make sure we all learn from this and let's not do this again. And so ultimately I do what's called cost-plus building, which is here's how much it costs to build.

33:47 You get to see that, I get to see that and I add my fee on top of that, and together we'll make sure that we make good decisions. Rather than, hey, here's the price on the house, you sign here. And then everything I'm doing, I'm gonna make sure that I protect my profit margin, right? - Yeah, it's a really interesting incentive because it's like, there's pros and cons, I would think. - There's obviously pros and cons.

34:07 - So what are the pros and cons between hiring a builder who's gonna do cost-plus versus saying, here's the specs, here's the house, it's gonna be $300,000 or $500,000 to build, done? - Yeah, I mean, this is a longer conversation than you have time for. - I'm sure. - I've done hour long podcasts on this topic, but the quick down and dirty is I really like making decisions as if I'm the homeowner, and if I'm gonna build a house for you, I wanna build it as if I'm building it for my daughter, or for my father or for somebody in my family.

34:42 And the best way to do that, I think, is to do it open book where we make good decisions together and we hire talented people to work on your house. And we make sure that those people are cared for so that they'll do a good job on your house, but then also they'll be around for me to do a good job on the next house. And that's how I treat my subcontractors is I say, "Look, we're in this together.

35:04 Let's do a good job together. You give me a fair price and I'll make sure that you do all my work." And I even treat some of my subs in the same time and material basis as my clients pay me. They come to my job, they know they're gonna have continued work for me, they give me their best every day and I make sure that I bring them great projects and I pay them on time. And as a result, I've used the same pool of craftsmen, electricians, plumbers, painters for the last 10 plus years on all my jobs.

35:36 - One of the things that if you've been through the whole process of building a home, or, you know, as a homeowner, you realize pretty quickly, it's pretty complicated. And you can have this architectural plan, but there's all these things between the drawings and being in physical reality to make that thing work that isn't all spelled out in advance. - No, not at all. - So talk to me about that, like the gap that you fill, the role that you play.

36:08 I'm a homeowner; I hired an architect. - I'll give you an example of this. During the recession in 2008/9, I had a client who came to me that I got to know through the interview process, and I thought for sure I was his builder, he was gonna hire me. But as the recession got worse and worse, he got advice from friends, "You can't just get numbers from one guy, you gotta get three bids, right? So he said to me, "Hey Matt, you know, I want you to know that I'm having some other people look at this."

36:37 And of course I was disappointed, but okay, I get it. And he hired a firm in town, very distinguished firm, 50 page set of plans, like legit thick set of plans. A hundred pages on the specs. - So they're an architecture firm? - An architecture firm, and they just do really detailed plans. So you'd think this is very well-documented. Like I knew that this light was gonna be this color temperature and this brand and model number, and that floor was this and this cabinet stain was here, and I knew everything on the house.

37:09 And so I'm one of three people bidding it and I had three weeks to get my numbers back. So I go to all my subs- - [John] Oh my gosh. - You know, we gotta get a hard price on this. Here's the list of fixtures, here's the flooring, here's the whatever. Got all the prices in. And I got some phases, I bid two people, some I send it to like three cabinet makers, let's say, to get different pricings.

37:29 I put it all together, I have this huge packet of information and I give it to the client, and I don't need anything in the back for a week. And a week later he calls me and said, "Matt, you got the job." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, praise God. I need this (laughing) work." I didn't wanna tell him that, but I'm like, "I needed this real bad." So I get to know the guy and like three weeks later I'm in a meeting with him and I say, you know, "Hey, can you tell me like what made you choose me?

37:55 Where did I land compared to the competitors? And who were the other builders that you bid it with?" Well, it turns out one of the other builders that bid it is one of my good friends, a builder that I think of as a great builder. Like really I would build my house with him to this day. And then the other builder, I didn't know him, I had no idea who he was. And the client basically showed me what they gave them.

38:15 And the other builder that was my buddy, same as me, huge packet, lots of information. And then the builder that I did know, like here's five pages, right? And here's my bid price. That builder was like a million dollars in the build. I was 1.2 and my friend was 1.4. So there's a 40% spread. - With all those specs. - With 150 pages of plans. And I bet the client paid, you know, six figures for a set of plans.

38:42 Was very detailed set. And so I'm thinking to myself, "This is crazy. How is a homeowner gonna know?" You know, yes, he met with each one of us, he went through the plans and specs. You know, "Mr. Client, why'd you choose me? He said, "Well, Matt, you're the middle bidder, and what I read on the internet is you should pick the middle guy, 'cause the high guy threw out, the low guy, threw it out, you won." (laughs) - It's such a simple- - I won the job.

39:05 - Such a like simple- - I know, this simple- - Like rubric, like, you're in the middle. - (laughing) You're the middle guy. - Your poor porridge was just right. - (laughing) Exactly. But not only that, I got a chance to look at my buddy's packet that he gave this homeowner. And I'm flipping through and I'm like, yep, same bidder, same guy as me, same guy's... Oh, that's a different sub. I don't know him. There was like four subs that were different and our numbers were all probably within two or 3% except for one bid, which was the cabinet maker.

39:35 - Oh and cabinets can be very expensive. - You know this. Everyone who's bought a piece of furniture knows you can go to Ikea and get a bed for $200 or you can go to Ethan Allen and spend 5,000. They both look the same. They both fit a king mattress. They're both white, right? From 20 feet away, you can't tell if it's an IKEA or a whatever. So he bid the Thomasville furniture cabinets and I bid, not Ikea, but like the middle of the line guy, and between- - [John] Craft made or something.

40:05 - Yeah, whatever it was. I basically had $200,000 less than him. - Oh my gosh. - From a cabinet maker, which was like a hundred some thousand dollars difference furniture grade to more normal, and like four or five subs. And it made me realize like how could you possibly fix price bid it, and how could you possibly fix price bid it when you have a 10 page set of plans and either no specs or five pages of specs.

40:32 There's just no way you can understand what you're getting into. And from that point on, I was like, "This is silly, I'm never gonna do this again." We do cost plus, we do open book, we decide together which cabinet make we're gonna use. Funny enough that client went later with a more expensive cabinet maker, 'cause once I showed him, you know, here's what these look like, here's what those look like. He had the money- - Was it tongue and Groove boxes- - For sure.

40:57 - That was the thing. - That was dovetailed. Everything was pre-finished. I mean they were beautiful cabinets. It's basically the same cabinets I have in my house today that I was like, "I can afford 'em if want it." I don't want IKEA cabinets, right? But if you don't- - [John] The Ikea cabinets are pretty good. - They can be, right? Just make sure no water drips on the cabinets, 'cause then they're gonna blow up. - [John] Yeah.

41:16 - The point is, if we decide together, we can send the budget wherever we want. And the other thing about construction you have to know is it's very similar to car buying, right? If you buy a giant SUV like an Escalade, you pay more than the small two-door Cadillac, even though they both have an engine that's the same size, they both have four wheels, it's just bigger vehicle. And same's true with houses, right? Do you really need the giant house or...

41:44 I built a 3000 square foot house for six humans and a dog. That's all I need. I feel like I live in a palace right now. Whereas a lot of my clients are like, "Oh my gosh, how could I get... I don't think I could scale back this 8,000 square foot house to six. I just don't know how we could do it." You're like, "Really? What do you mean you couldn't do that?" - One of the things that reminds me of is Lisa growing up, my father-in-law was a Burger King franchisee.

42:08 And there was a time when he was doing really, really well and they lived in this giant house. (Matt laughs) And she remembers that when they moved from the small house to the big house, the quality of their family life went down. - [Matt] Oh, big time. - Because now the kids are all off in their separate rooms and like there's all these extra rooms that are in this 7,000 square feet or whatever that's no one's in.

42:31 - And you can't just go, hey guys, time for dinner. - So it was a complete sort of breakdown of the being physically together. And on the flip side of that, Lisa and I had renovated a house and for the year that we were renovating, we lived in the little, it had like this old '80s pool and a little cabana. - Oh cool. - And we lived in the cabana, which was basically, we basically redid this sheet rock, put air conditioning unit in.

43:00 It had a little, I mean, it was ridiculous. It was like- - [Matt] Tiny. - Like an airstream would've been a much bigger space. (Matt laughs) Two single beds with a dresser in the middle and like a tiny standing shower that you had to like get in sideways for a year. And it was a great time. - That was a great year of life, wasn't it? - It actually kind of taught us how much material stuff we don't really need to be happy.

43:21 - Boy, that's for sure, isn't it? - [John] It was kind of a big moment. - Every home builder who builds expensive houses will tell you that their clients are no happier than my clients when I was building a hundred thousand dollars condos. Materialism gives you no happiness. And in fact, I think just like you mentioned about your wife's, it can sometimes be the opposite, is that, you know, sometimes wealth brings more money, more problems.

43:52 - It's... I didn't finish that. We built this house, we're living in this casita. We live in it. It was a renovation, which has its own crazy problems. - (laughs) That you're building a house with a house in the way. - Yeah, and trying to keep parts of it, and the parts you're keeping are all a disaster. So it's like, oh my god, what are these roof lines that are like this? And I don't know what...

44:15 But talk about that, 'cause most people probably in America don't build a new house. They probably buy an existing house. - Certainly. Yeah. - Give a little sample of why renovating can be such a difficult nightmare as a general contractor, as a builder. - Well, there's good and bad about renovating. One nice thing about renovating is that sometimes you're constrained with what you can do and there's a benefit to that, to your budget, as long as you're not thinking you're gonna add on, that is, right?

44:44 If the house generally works for you, well, then you only have so much to work with, and so this is, you know, here's what we're we gotta work with. The hard part comes when, like you mentioned that house has not so great systems that are 30 years old, and you're like, well, this HVAC system's on the edge of its lifespan. Do we keep this? Do we limb along? And also like, what am I gonna find when I renovate this?

45:10 Like my budget doesn't include ripping all the windows out and reflashing everything. But on the other hand, if I pull my sheet rock out and realize I've got water in there, I've got bugs that are getting in whatever, it's really hard to know where to stop that domino effect and where to kind of stop doing that renovation work. So we always say renovating is building a house, but there's a house in the way, and it costs twice as much.

45:35 And that's generally true. You know, if you're gonna build a brand new house on a piece of dirt or tear something down and build new, you can do it for a lot less money. - Per square foot. - Than renovating an old house and trying to make that old house be the same as a new house. - In your work, how often are you renovating versus building new? - I used to say we were 50/50. We're probably a little bit more 70/30 these days on new construction to remodel.

46:02 But I'm at a charmed place in life where I don't have to do kitchen remodels and things like that. And I don't let anyone live in their house while they remodel anymore 'cause it's just way too hard. Expectation management is a huge part of what I do for a living, and it's really hard to make everyone's expectations when you're living in the house and remodeling it. it's like you're living in jail when you're remodeling your house, when, you know, the guys from the demo crew are demoing and you thought they were coming at 9:00, you scheduled a conference call at 4:00 that afternoon.

46:36 Well, they don't show up till 1:00 and they're making a ton of noise for your conference call. And it's not like you can be like, hey, five guys that are demoing my kitchen, I'm on a conference call. Can you keep it down? It's like jail. You know, when you're in jail, they tell you when to get up in the morning and when it's time to eat. And do you really wanna go through that in your renovation?

46:56 No, no, you're much better off moving out- - Or living in a tiny casita. - Leaving all that out. Or living in a casita, whatever, not living in the same house. - Part of why I'm excited to talk to you is that, you know, as a dad, you know, this "Dad Saves America," this is a big thing that parents, adults have to go through, building a house, it's like one of the most stressful things, moving, building. It's very stressful, for sure, - But also, from a career perspective for our kids to think about where they're gonna head, you're an employer in a field that can pay really well and where there's a desperate need.

47:32 - Yeah, for sure. - So how do you figure that out? What are you looking for? Why is critical thinking and logic so important? And how do you know if somebody has it? - Ooh, that's a big question. Critical thinking is vital to being a builder or a remodeler because even though you've got a blueprint, there's no like step one, step two, step three. I just saw a hilarious Instagram video yesterday where the son wrote out the steps to make a peanut butter jelly sandwich and gave it to dad, and dad reads the steps and does 'em.

48:05 But the son doesn't specify like which end of the knife goes in and how do you spread the peanut butter and the sandwich. It just says grab a knife, and he grabs like a, you know, butcher knife. And then put the knife in the peanut butter jar, and, you know, stabs through the peanut butter. You know, it's not detailed enough to know. So, and like, by the way, the 10-year-old or whoever, maybe eight-year-old is freaking out because dad's like not doing what he's expecting, but that's not what he said.

48:32 And dad interpreted it differently. And the whole point was, like, contractor-architect, right? The architect says put your knife in, and dad put it in, but it wasn't what the architect wanted. That's construction. I mean, everything is critical and logical thinking. We have to think through how do we do things. How do I react when a sub tells me they can't come for a week? What do I do when the tile delivery is wrong? All we do is solve problems all day long as a builder.

49:00 And so I need my team, really everyone on the team to be good at solving those problems and being able to think critically through, get rid of the noise, get rid of the emotion. How do I do this task? And I think that's true in a lot of American jobs. I wish I had the answer to how we change America on critical and logical thinking. But I think that sometimes struggle is a good thing in our lives, and taking away struggle from our kids' lives can take away that ability for them to learn that critical and logical thinking.

49:34 You know, if you're saying, well, they don't need any homework, or I'll do their homework for them or whatever, and they don't have to struggle through, oh my gosh, how do I do this? How do I get this done? How do I not stay up 'till 2:00 AM to do this? Those are hard lessons for a kid, but that develops that muscle, which is critical and logical thinking, and it's a little hard to teach. It's not necessarily a class you take.

50:02 - There is a serious deficit in the amount of people out there entering the trade. - For sure. - Everybody's being told they gotta go to college and take nonsense. And meanwhile you can come out and make a really good living being a contributor to the creation of homes and other things. So I hear this in the abstract, what's your boots on the ground experience with the availability of skilled craftsmen and tradespeople?

50:35 And how do you think about that? - Yeah, I mean, it's such a multifaceted issue, but it is a crisis, number one, and it's definitely happening. If you just go to any one of my job sites, the average age of the workforce on my jobs is probably 45, I would suspect, or 50. - These are really physically demanding jobs. - I just turned 50 recently and I can tell you that I'm not able to do a carpentry day job like I used to be able to, you know, on a Saturday for me, let's say, like I could 20 years ago where I could work all weekend long for 10 hours and go back to work on Monday.

51:09 My body is not able to do that. So we've got that issue of that aging population. I think you're right on the college front, you know, through the '90s and 2000s, that's all we told kids, was, you have to go to college. And now that I have kids, I can tell you not every kid fits the college mold. And there's very few, but there are some trade programs that kids can get into high school and get exposed and learn it.

51:36 Unfortunately, a lot of what happens though is the trades become the second choice because they didn't make it in college or they didn't do whatever, and so now they've gotta, you know, figure out how do I make a living? You know, my girlfriend's pregnant, I've gotta make a living 'cause my parents don't want me living there anymore. What job can I get? Incidentally, I actually know some people were in that situation and embraced it and have been incredibly successful 20 years later.

52:05 And oh, by the way, I feel like we've got a little bit of a backlash from starting families late too in America. In fact, someone just recently gave a commencement speech, and in their speech they said, this was a well-known football player, I forget who it was, in his commencements addressed to a college audience, said, "You know, the best thing that I ever did in my life was get married and have kids. And so forget about all these other things.

52:28 If I can tell you any piece of advice, get married and have kids early." You know, he's like 45 and he is got kids that are graduating from high school and moving on to whatever in life. What a great piece of advice for America. I mean, there's something about having a job, and working and having kids that makes you realize, yeah, money and job, that's great and all, but my family is what really matters the most, right?

52:53 And my being a dad, I mean, we're talking about "Dad Saves America" here. There's really no more important job in my life than being a dad. That's not entirely true. Being a husband's actually a little more important 'cause my kids will go away and my wife won't. So I need to maintain that relationship. - (laughing) It's a good way to think about it. They're gonna eventually be their own adults, but- - Yeah, I mean ultimately our priorities, I think should be God first, your wife next, your family next, and then everything else falls behind those.

53:21 But back to this, how do we encourage young people to get in the trades. I'm seeing more and more evidence of that happening. I can just think of two or three dozen high schools now that have amazing trade programs that are exposing ninth graders to electrical trades, to plumbing trades, to carpentry trades, and they're outputting graduates that are going right into those trades. And as an 18-year-old are making 25 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour and have nowhere to go but up from there.

53:52 And so to have no debt to go into a job that you like, that is hard work, don't get me wrong, you're gonna come home sweaty and dirty, but you're gonna feel like you actually accomplish something, that's good for a lot of America. And the one thing that I don't see yet that I wanna see more of that they've been doing in Europe for years is there's a real culture of respecting trades in craftsmanship in Europe that we're missing here.

54:17 And I think that we could foster that more and more. But as a quick example, I went to the BAU show a couple years ago in Munich. And it's really like the international building show where there's people from literally all over the world coming to the show. And in Germany where it was held, you saw these groups of men and women all ages and they'd walk around and they'd all be in like a green jumpsuit. They look like an Audi pit crew that you'd see on an F1 race.

54:42 And then you'd get up close and it'd be like, Hans, and it'd be like, you know, Klein Snicker Painting. And it's a group of painters that were wearing a clean, crisp mascot brand uniform with their name on it and they're all walking around the show together. And you saw that with plumbing companies, HVAC companies, painters, I mean, like all these different trades. And they were really proud to be at the show and wear their uniform. And it made me excited to come home.

55:12 And honestly that's one thing that my company does. I only have five people that work for me that are actually in the field doing work. We call it self-perform work, but we all wear the same logo. Whether you're a builder, a manager, whether you work for my video production company, we all wear the same Build logo. And I make sure that everyone has a uniform. I call it my Jiffy Luve uniform. I wear it with pride.

55:34 I look the same today as you've seen me on my videos, right? - That's right. That's right. - I wear the same hat with the same logo, and we all wear the same thing every day. And we take pride in what we do. I don't need to wear a suit just 'cause I own the company. - Has there been things that give you hope for the face of tradecraft in the United States? You said there's, you know, you're seeing some schools that are now helping people, at least that's probably locally.

56:01 - There is a few programs locally, which are pretty awesome in effect. One of my electricians is a graduate from the Cedar Park Trade Program where he started going to electrical trade classes in ninth grader. When he graduated, he got hired by a local electrical company. And about seven years later, as a 25-year-old, he's married and has two kids and owns his own company and he has two guys on the crew. So the three of them are running an electrical company.

56:27 And what an amazing thing that in America you could graduate with a high school degree. He was a master electrician before he was even 25. Once he got his master's license, he could start his own firm. And, you know, he's making good money, has a great family, and he's had that much success. He's not even 30 yet. That's crazy to me. - Yeah, that's amazing. - That's so cool, isn't it? So there are more and more stories of that.

56:52 And I think that you'll see more of the "Built Show" talking about that. For instance, next month I'm going out to film a brand new series called "Talking Trades," and we're gonna interview six different tradespeople in different trades, including a female tradesperson up in Minnesota who shoots videos with us, talking about how'd you get into it? What do you like about it? What do you not like about it? Mike Rose done a bunch for this cause too.

57:16 "Dirty Jobs" is an awesome show. - There's the Skills USA organization. - Skills USA is amazing. They're in high schools all over the nation. Mike Holmes has done a bunch on this topic too. It's a really big need and more and more people are talking about it. So I'm hopeful that within the next decade we're gonna see a big change and a big switch away from, "Hey, you gotta go to college and get any degree," to, "Hey, let's think about a career in the trades."

57:42 'cause you could start it right now, right after you graduate from high school and you could be a huge leg up on your peers when they're 23 and 24 and have a hundred thousand dollars in debt. And they're still struggling, frankly, to find out what their career path and what their life looks like. - How do you think about that as a dad? You know, what's your way of approaching your role as a dad? - Well, for me, a lot of it comes back to my faith, to be honest.

58:15 You know, I'm a believer that Jesus died on the cross to save our sins and that He's God's son. And I believe that the Bible is inherently true. And so, you know, I have to say with my limited amount of breath that I've got on this life, am I gonna do things to serve myself, or am I gonna do things that God has said, "Hey, these are really good priorities for you," right? And those are inherently wise things that I think if you generally look at society and the world, you go, hey, if you follow those principles, life actually goes pretty well for you.

58:52 And so there's some inherent, whether you believe the Bible's true or not, there is some inherent wisdom to be had to living a life with those principles in mind. And part of that is really being serious about your role as a dad. And if you look at stories of the Bible where people didn't take that role seriously, bad things happen in the kids' lives. And we can see that happening all around us in our culture, can't we?

59:17 And so we gotta instill those same values in our kids. We need to instill that value of selflessness and not living for yourself, but living for others. And funny enough, when you do that, you find life's full of joy. And I think that's true with families too, right? I think as a single 25-year-old, all we can think of is what we're gonna do that weekend and our selfishness. And as a 50-year-old now, 25 years later, I find a lot of joy in my family and time with my wife.

59:51 And ultimately on my deathbed, it's not gonna matter how many mountain bike rides I went on with my buddies or whatever else I would rather be doing. - How many sports cars you bought. - Exactly. You know, as a dad, your biggest number one hobby should be your kids. And I think honestly, as a dad over some period of time, you know, my oldest is 17, my youngest is 11, I sometimes think of my kids getting in the way of my hobbies.

60:17 Like, I can't wait for Saturday to come so I can work in the garage or do whatever. And I think it's only been the last couple years. Now, don't get me wrong, you know, I do spend time with my kids, but I think it's only been the last year or two that this has really been top of my mind. Like when someone asks me what my hobbies are, do I say hunting? Do I say, you know, hobbies?

60:38 Do I say whatever? Or do I say, you know, my hobbies are my kids. I really love spending time with my kids? And so, you know, I wanna spend time with 'em and do things with them. I think that's the mind shift we need more and more dads to take. Just like me to say, you know, I have such a limited amount of time with these kids while they're in my house and while there's influence. And also now that I've got, I have boys that are 11, 13, 15 and then a daughter who's 17.

61:06 My daughter might as well be in college. I mean, she doesn't want to spend six minutes with me, let alone six hours. - She's breaking your heart. (laughs) - I mean, I get it. I know she'll come back around. I was pretty similar at her age. Whereas my 11-year-old would love to spend all day with me. But I have to really think every day, what are my priorities? What'll be most important? And will I remember on my deathbed to how I did that hobby on Saturday or how I organized my garage?

61:35 What matters more is those things that brought me great joy. And that's my family and my wife, my kids, being a good dad and seeing them find their place in the world. And making sure that they don't think too, that winning in life is a sports car or is a big house or whatever, 'cause we know that those things don't bring satisfaction. - One of the things that I experienced, and I think I've talked about it elsewhere on the show, is when my son was born, I was super ambitious.

62:04 I was working in New York City in television. I wanted to be Steven Spielberg. (Matt laughs) And so when you're super ambitious, one of the things you at least can do, I certainly did, is you're judging yourself all the time against some external thing. And what I experienced when he was born, when my son was born, was this reordering, it was almost instantaneous. And it left six months after his birth. I actually struggled to find like flavor in my work.

62:33 - Interesting. - And then it came back, but it came back reprioritized and I actually ended up being more open to risk, and more open to entrepreneurship, and more open to doing things that people don't tell you will happen when you become a dad or when you have kids. They say, "Oh, now you got all these responsibilities, now you got mouths to feed." (Matt laughs) But you're a serial entrepreneur, you've got multiple businesses, you've kind of built your own HGTV.

63:05 It's like how has your life as a family man and as a husband and a father, how do these things play against each other? When are the intention? How do you balance it? - Well, first I would say, based on what you said, I need to always remind myself that comparison is a thief of joy. And I think this is true for 16-year-olds on Instagram as it is for 50-year-olds. 'Cause you think, oh, I'm not as successful as this client of mine who's the same age or whatever.

63:34 For me, when I had kids, I was very much in the throes of trying to just pay off this huge debt when my kids were young. - That's very stressful. - It was very stressful. But honestly it was really a good time in my life, 'cause prior to that I had struggled a lot, and I still do, with materialism, in thinking that the scorecard for life was my garage. You know, let's say whatever car was parked there or what was in my bank account.

64:02 And so having that stripped away from me and realizing that just 'cause you're in business doesn't mean you're gonna be successful. In fact, I made negative money the first four or five years I was in business. Helped me to really reprioritize, like you mentioned, when your son was born. 'Cause I've always said, all right, you know, Lord, I'm gonna give this business up to you. I'm gonna do what I should, and I'm gonna let you make the decision about whether I win or lose.

64:32 And every time I've done that, I've ended up winning. And that's kind of where I am in life now, where I'm looking back and going, gosh, even through all the hard times when I had a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt and no vision of what the future might look like, I was faithful in what God gave me, and my family and my kids. And God's honored that. And as a result I really feel like, gosh, I'm at an incredible place in life where I'm very, very blessed to have this company, to have these amazing kids, to still be married after 24 years.

65:09 - Yeah. Bravo. - And have a great marriage. I think if you prioritize the correct things in your life, good things will happen. - So, okay, I've got Matt Risinger here with me, (Matt laughs) and I can't not ask a couple questions that are super brass tacks. - Hello, let's do it. - So I guess the first one would be, what should I do as someone that's looking to hire a contractor? How should I judge? I know there's a long answer, but give me the short answer.

65:40 - The litmus test ultimately for a good builder is what they do with treating water. So I would look at a builder's houses under construction and see what they're doing for installing windows, for flashings, for all those systems that keep water out of a house, how seriously are they taking that. The more seriously they take that, probably the better builder they are. And for me, those are all the things that you can't see later, you know, when you buy a house that's complete, you really have no idea until you live there.

66:12 And most of the time houses, because they're made outta wood, have a certain amount of forgiveness in them before they get that tipping point of problems. And so, you know, you might easily live in a brand new house that has problems for five years and not know it. But another great place to find a builder is through a rating agency. There's this group of basically building inspectors called the Building Performance Institute, bpi.org. And they certify people that do let's say energy star audits on houses or other types of inspections that are not standard home inspector, but are more like energy audit inspections.

66:50 The people that do those tests usually have a pretty good gauge on who's building good things in their town. So those are some of my favorite people to ask. - Yeah, that's really interesting. Okay, I found somebody, I think they're great, I've signed the contract, how can I as a buyer, as customer who's got a lot of things going on and will make changes along the way and will not understand parts of the process, but I'm still the customer, how can I be a good customer for a good builder to set up a successful experience?

67:31 Because this thing is so stressful. And it's me and my spouse and we might have differing opinions on certain parts. So what's your advice to navigate what can be 12 months of incredible stress and expense? - Oof. Man, that's a hard question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before, John. - I've been through it enough times. And for whatever reason, my wife and I are sort of purpose built to do projects together, so when the stress is done- - That's awesome.

67:59 - We kind of miss it and we create new projects. But yeah. - I think something I've never said before on camera, but it would be a good thing to do would be get some good marriage counseling prior to doing a project. Make sure your marriage is on solid footings. 'Cause if you're not doing great in your marriage, taking on a project's not gonna help your marriage typically. - [John] Yeah, that's probably true. - And also ultimately, just like anything, it's about setting good expectations.

68:27 You know, make sure your contractor sets good expectations with you, and you should tell them what your expectations are as much as possible ahead of time so that you can make sure that they're able and willing to meet those expectations. And I think that's true with spouses as it is with contractors. You know, set good expectations; figure out what you and your wife are looking for; talk about those before you ever sign the contract, you know, what you're hoping for, for the house, for the contract, for the process; and make sure that you get with somebody who's willing to tell you hard things.

69:00 You know, we have a saying in our company, which is "Bad news first." We wanna get it all on the table and have you hear all the bad news before you sign a contract. We don't want there to be anything that we hold back on. And the same's true once you get into construction, because there's always gonna be some amount of bad news. Bad news doesn't get better if you wait a week to tell it. - Yeah, it festers like a leak inside the walls, doesn't it? - Exactly right.

69:24 - In a related note, the process involves a lot of steps. Are there particular steps where paying close attention as the home buyer or as the, whether this could be for a new house or for a remodel, but let's just stick with new, where it really matters to pay attention? One thing that comes to my mind is before the walls get closed up. So you can see the skeleton, you can see the systems. - [Matt] That's right.

69:51 - Something I've always done, 'cause I'm a nerd and I've taken it to crazy limits where now like my last two houses, I brought like a 360 camera around. - Ooh, that's awesome. - So after the fact I can look and be like, oh yeah, now I can't hang there because there's power there. - [Matt] That's fantastic. - So my piece of advice is take pictures of it while the guts are exposed. So are there any other steps that you think are, you know, if there was two other parts of the process where extra time scrutiny, really make sure you're sure it is what you need it or want it to be before you move on to the next step?

70:26 - Yeah, I mean, for me I would always recommend a consultant at a couple key phases. - [John] So an outside person? - Yeah, an outside person can be really, really helpful. And sometimes that could be, it could be a home inspector, although not a lot of home inspectors are trained in new construction best practices. There are a few that specialize in that. The more exposed the house though, the more I'm worried about it. Meaning if you're doing modern architecture, it's a particularly vulnerable type of construction.

70:56 And so- - And we have that. Our house is basically looks like a bunch of blocks. It's very Scandinavian modern. There's not a lot of overhangs so when it rains, it hits the windows hard. - It's a more exposed house. And it just means that you're in a higher risk category, that you make a smaller mistake, you're gonna pay for it. Whereas an older house that has big overhangs, think about a, you know, an old house with a big umbrella over it.

71:20 If I have a big umbrella up, it doesn't matter what kind of trench coat I have, take away that umbrella. I better put a really good Patagonia jacket on and I better make sure it zipped up all the way, that my hood's on, and I don't have any holes in my jacket 'cause now I'm getting wet down my whole face every time it rains. So we have to be really cautious about modern architecture and making sure that we're really getting the details nailed.

71:46 - If I'm buying a house that already exists, is there stuff I should pay extra close attention to? It's really hard because it's closed up. - Yeah, it's hard. - I love the house. - It's hard to see. - It's hard to sell. - And there's some really weird incentives. The seller, you know, they do their disclosure but- - [Matt] Eh. - How good is that? - The hard part with resale houses too is that people have often cleaned up the telltale signs of a problem.

72:13 So for instance, you know, anytime you see green brick, or green stucco or green rock, usually means that there's a problem back there. And sometimes before a sale they've power washed it off and you don't see it. But one thing to look for is like, is there a place that water's splashing back against the house? You know, think about that rain's washing off the roof, where is it going? And houses that don't have gutters, usually wherever that water hits, whether it's on a roof line or whether it's on the ground, it's splashing back.

72:44 And that's where the green happens. And when we pull those houses apart in remodels, if there's green anything in the front, there's almost always some amount of rot happening behind the scenes, 'cause it's overwhelming the amount of moisture that that rock can absorb. And when it goes the dry, some of it's drying to the backside and some of it's drying to the front side. And that moss is happening because there's water there. - Everybody's got a different level of being handy.

73:10 And I will admit, I'm a little judgmental when someone can't pick up a tool. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. (Matt laughs) Maybe it's a kind of chauvinism that I don't feel like you're a man if you don't know how to use tools (laughing). - [Matt] I tend to agree. - [John] (laughing) It's like, it's not fair. It's not right, but- - There's some truth in that. There's always a truth there. - But no matter where you fit in the handy spectrum, is there a set of say three or four things as a homeowner that you should be able to do yourself or you should know to maintain so that you don't end up in a disaster 'cause you haven't- - Yeah, I mean you should be able to do whatever annual maintenance is required on your house yourself.

73:50 I mean, if you have a tankless water heater, go watch my videos and learn how to flush your own tankless water heater. It's super easy. It doesn't require much skill. It requires maybe $150 in tools that you can buy easily. And you gotta do it once a year, and now you got a water heater that's maintained. It's super easy and anybody can do it. It's honestly made, my YouTube channel has been flush your water heater videos.

74:13 If you obviously are gonna have a HVAC system, know how to change the filters on that. Some need changed every 30 days, some every six months and some every year. It's not that hard. And if you forget, it's gonna reduce the amount of airflow through your machine and it's gonna ice up on you. And everyone's had an iced over coil at some point. Most of the time that's because they weren't changing their filters regularly. So there's a certain amount of maintenance that hardly requires any tools at all, but just needs to be done on every house.

74:43 And I think really anybody, even the non-handy can do that themselves. - If you're handy but handy enough to be dangerous, where should you stop and hire a professional? - (laughs) That's a good question. - Steer clear the electrical so you don't kill yourself. - I personally steer clear of electrical. If it involves anything more than, like, flipping a breaker, I'm out. Like, I don't mess with electrical. I've been shocked enough that I don't like it.

75:10 And I know that I don't know. But there's, you know, I got some buddies that are like, "You know, I really love electrical. I'm watching YouTube videos all the time about how to do X, Y, and Z," and they do it themselves. As long as you flip the breaker off, you can't really hurt yourself. You can learn so much on the YouTubes these days. (John laughs) I think probably mechanical is the line, I would say. I've heard too many stories of people that have- - What do you mean by mechanical?

75:37 Just to- - I'm usually thinking HVAC systems. - Okay. Yeah. - Sometimes changing out a water heater, things like that, I mean, a pretty handy person can do all those things, but you have to know your level of skill ahead of time and your ability to handle a problem if it comes up, and it's non-standard. Right, 'cause if everything goes perfectly, most people can do it. And there's a video about that. But if you have a problem while you're doing it, that's where it's like, oh okay.

76:07 And professionals that come in after you, may or may not wanna help if you've tried to do too much yourself. You know what I mean? - Right, and so you've made my job harder and you don't understand how you've compromised what I'm gonna deliver to you, so now you're gonna blame me for the thing you caused. - Right. Or you thought you knew how to do it on YouTube and now you're calling me in 'cause you realize you didn't, but you should only charge me an hour of your time 'cause I did all the other stuff, right?

76:34 - Oh right. That's always the best. The, "Isn't this easy? What's wrong with you? It's like, "Well, why don't you do it? It's like, "Well, screwed it up. - Yeah, 'cause I don't know. - So you have a YouTube empire. You have a million subs on your main channel. You've got a Build Network with a bunch of other contributors. So how do you think about where that limit is? 'Cause in some ways you're encouraging all of us crazy people to get on the YouTube and figure it out. - Well, not exactly.

77:03 I mean, my YouTube has always been built upon me talking to other pros. And buildshownetwork.com is other pros talking to other pros for the most part. Occasionally we'll talk to a more consumer, but for the most part, we're really like contractor to contractor. And whenever I shoot a video and generally whenever my people that are publishing videos to buildshownetwork.com or shooting videos, they're thinking, well, what would Matt Risinger from 10 years ago wanna know about this?

77:34 That's what I'm always thinking. - [John] So that's your primary audience. - That's my primary audience. Now, you happen to be watching or your wife's watching, but I'm not thinking of you when I make the video, let's put it that way. And so as a result, I think that we'll continue to grow, not because necessarily there's 5 million contractors in America. There's a limit. But there's people like you who wanna know what the contractors are saying and wanna sound educated, and not just sound it, but actually be educated.

78:04 That's where the growth is, I think continued to fuel. - You're an OG when it comes to YouTube. - 2008. I've been on a long time. I only have 1300 videos for you to watch, John. (John laughs) I'm sure you could just go and watch every one of those and you'd be fine. - So that's really pretty amazing. What's been the biggest surprise? Just this explosion of the channel. I mean, how has this been to go from being a builder to basically running a little TV network?

78:32 - Yeah, it's fun. I really like it. I mean, ultimately I wanna change the way people build houses, and I wanna change our standards. You know, we have a pretty historically low standard for houses in America, and I wanna change that. And I feel like incidentally we are changing that through buildshownetwork.com. And every video I make, my goal is ultimately to encourage people to build a better house, to be more durable, to be more comfortable, to be healthy.

78:58 And that's the legacy I want my kids to inherit. I want my kids to come back and remodel a house that I built 40 years later and, you know, change the kitchen cabinets out and be like, oh, the rest of this looks amazing. How cool would that be? That'd be awesome. - It is an American thing 'cause we're a young country that you go around this country and you don't see a lot of old stuff. You don't see antiquity.

79:25 You sometimes talk about building 100 year, 200 year houses. Is that possible today? - It it absolutely is. Yeah, I mean, there's a really famous building scientist in America named Joe Lstiburek. He's kind of the godfather of building science. And he wrote this paper years ago on how to build a house that would last 500 years. And I've built three or four houses with that same building style. I call it monopoly framing. And they should last 500 years.

79:53 There's no reason why they wouldn't. - And is that with wood? So you're talking about you can build a 500-year surviving home with a wood frame. - That's right. - Not out of stone and mortar. - Nope. Now, we can do it outta that too. It's gonna change a few things. But in America we have incredible natural resources, including wood. I mean, the wood for the houses that I build is mostly grown in east Texas and trucked over on a train.

80:20 And so it's pretty local. And those trees are at most 15 or 20 years old and they cut 'em down and then plant some more and 20 years later they harvest them. That's pretty incredible. And oh, by the way, if you're into green building, or carbon sequestering or whatever the latest phase is in Washington that we wanna talk about, there's really no better building material than wood, 'cause as it grows, it pulls carbon dioxide outta the atmosphere and locks it into that wood.

80:49 - Yeah, that's true. - And it also is able to absorb and give off moisture without degrading over time. So it gives some forgiveness. It's also a really healthy material. I mean, you can rub a piece of wood on your face all day long and you're not gonna have allergies, you're not gonna have issues. That wood is a natural material. There's no chemicals, there's no plasticizers, there's no issues. Plus if you decide that wood isn't valuable to you anymore, you can throw it in the landfill, and 10 years later it'll be gone.

81:21 So it's a pretty amazing building material that God gave us when it comes to trees out there in the forest. - So what's the future hold for Matt Risinger and Risinger Build Network? - Yeah, good question. I mean, one of the things that we've done is we've realized that people like series content, and I have three of them now that are just about finished where we follow a house, the entire process from breaking ground to move in, including the design phase often.

81:48 And we have been putting those up on our website as progress continues. In the future, we might end up dropping those as one season. So that's one thing. We have a trade show in the works for next year, "The Build Show Show" I think is what we're gonna call it. - Oh, like a physical, like come to the event. - [Matt] Mm-hm. - Is it gonna be here in Texas? In Austin? - It's gonna be in Texas.

82:08 We're figuring out if it's Austin, Houston or Dallas right now, but it'll be fall of 2024. And then we'll be on Connected TV next year as well. That's another big one for us. I'd love for you to be able to go to your Roku, to your Samsung, to your Sony, to your- - [John] Your Apple. - Apple, and click on the Build Show Network logo and watch our content in that fashion. So that's coming for us in the coming year as well.

82:33 - Well, I have one more question and that is, I ask this of every guest, you know, where "Dad Saves America," I believe that dads play this heroic role in our families, our communities in our country. - [Matt] Amen. - How do you think about your role in the American story? - You know, my dad was super influential in my childhood, and still is to this day. He is almost 90. - Wow. - Still doing great.

82:56 I'm gonna see him in two weeks for my nephew's wedding. I can't wait to see him. And my grandfather I knew fairly well before he passed, one of my grandfathers. My other grandfather was an immigrant who worked in the steel industry and passed away before I was born. I never knew John Chima was his name. I wish I would've known him. He sounds like he was an amazing man. Had seven daughters with his immigrant wife. Never a son.

83:20 (John laughs) Had a victory garden that he was really proud of, that he grew starting in the war and then really liked it so kept growing. Was a barber on the weekends to help pay the extra bills, and worked in a tube mill his whole life building tube steel. And those are the men that built America. And was a certain pride in that generation for being an American, for being a man, for being a dad and for handling the load that was given to them.

83:55 And I remember my dad at some point telling me a story that, "You know, son, trucks always are better when there's a load in the bed." And what he meant by that was, you know, it's okay to take on responsibility. It's a good thing. You know, 23 and single, that's a fine time in life, but when you got a load in the bed, the truck actually runs a little better. And I got a pretty good size load in my bed and my bed's gotten bigger with employees and companies.

84:21 But I think that's good for us. And, you know, as dads we need to teach our kids to handle responsibility, to act with integrity, to try and figure out what their place in the world is, and to act justly and to do rightly. You know, our kids are going to be our legacy and hopefully we'll pass on those same values, which have been historically American values have been Judeo-Christian values, but are also values that have worked really well for the last many generations.

84:56 And I'm excited to see my kids pass that on to their kids someday. - Matt, thanks for being part of "Dad Saves America." As a fan, it's been an honor, and it's been- - It's been really fun to be here, John. Thank you for having me. - All right. (screen whooshing) I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Matt Risinger. Make sure to check out his YouTube channel, the "Build Show." We'll put link down below. My main takeaway from Matt is that you can have an incredible career getting out there and actually working with your hands.

85:22 We have a huge skill gap in this country. And if you can break yourself out of the, everyone must go to College trap, you might just end up being happier and making more money than all of your would-be college professors. You'll also contribute more to the lives of others and leave a physical legacy in the process. If you enjoyed this video, please, share it with your friends and family, and be sure to like, subscribe and hit that notification bell.

85:45 At "Dad Saves America." We believe that dads are heroes that play an essential role in overcoming the challenges we all face together. And now I leave you with a dad that really nails it. - [Dad] Use the screwdriver. - I don't. - [Dad] Not the hammer. Use the screwdriver. Okay, there you go. Now use the screwdriver. Use the other, no, no, no, not that one, use the other one. (hammer bangs) - [Dad] Oh, I think this is the best toy he's ever gotten.

86:15 (hammer bangs) - There. It works. (logo whooshing) That works. (logo whooshing)