Founders Story:Carl
(Unfinished Draft Version 112 : I am always in a work in progress, )
HOME: Discovering the Problem
HOME industry = $40+ trillion.
Home Design & Get Built Industry. = $300-$700 Billion
Depending upon who you ask and what you include. If you add the “under the table” or “cash only” work force it is easily a $1 trillion dollar industry.
Unlimited Options.
No single company holds more than 5% of that market share.
Over 1 million businesses to choose from.
The Brave - DIYers
Facebook, Porch, Angi, Houzz, Bark, Thumbtack, Craigslist, Friends, Neighbors, Next Door, Google, Instagram, Pintrest.
No Fun.
My experience is that early one we teach our kids that being creative and designing and building things is fun. Lacking design and building knowledge homeowners feel overwhelmed and confused as they attempt to navigate how to transform the home. The type of services, costs, quality and the process that all theses choices provide vary greatly from one provider or product to the next. Stories are not hard to find of people who spent more and took longer than original expectations which leads to trust issues all amounting to NO FUN. I hear this quite often;
“I love how it turned out but it was kind of painful and more expensive than i thought to get there”. followed up by. “But, that’s to be expected”. Really?
FUN
However painful there is still great JOY at the end of that PROCESS when a house becomes your HOME, for a moment in time or for a lifetime. We believe that the destination should not be the only place that we find JOY. We should seek it through each moment of every day. All of us at Visual and our partners believe we have the the unique, diverse and skilled experiences that can bring PROCESS resulting in FUN.
How I got here:
STARBUCKS
BEFORE THE LOCK - DESIGN and BUILD at Scale.
At the start of 2020 I was working in a niche in the corporate architecture world in that provides architecture and management services to companies that have hundreds or thousands of locations across North America. I led a large team that provided specialized design and process management services for Starbucks. I created and managed the firms direct relationship with Starbucks from 2014-20 and crafted a process that enabled our team to do over 25,000 projects in almost every store in the United States. I had a talented team that generated the most revenue and profit during that time. Until…..every coffee shop in North America closed. The work came to a halt and over the course of the next several months leadership had me let go of over 80% of my staff and than I was shown the door.
With Starbucks we were the first to implement various types of technology at scale to capture existing conditions at there locations over 25,000 times
HOME
During the periods of having little to no work, my cofounder Frank and I started to discuss and explore how we could adapt some of the efficient methods, processes and technologies we have developed and used for design and construction at scale within other niches of the design and construction world. Residential became the obvious direction and the conceptual ideas of Visual started to take form.
Learn Intentionally
SKATE - PRIORITIES - SOCIAL MEDIA - SKATE VIDEOS
During that time I also had more personal time to evaluate life and shit, learn to skateboard, make skate videos, mediation, a few other things that are works in progress, plus jumping back on social media for a dozen or more years.
Learn from Circumstance
MY FIRST DESIGN COMPANY : GENERAL CONTRACTOR
Now going back 12+ years was the last time I was working in the residential design and construction industry. During that time I was either working for a general contractor that at hired me on to establish themselves as a home design and build firm or I was working for my own home design company, this company was merely out of mere survival as I lost my job with general contractor due to the financial crisis in 2008. During those 3 1/2 years I had the opportunity gain not only working in the field but charged with some of the administrative tasks required to be a general contractor as well as design 3 big renovations that are part of what inspire many of the types of projects we are designing today.
McDonalds
Inspiration is one of the things we ask our clients to provide. It could be a simple image of anything they find on a home improvement site or from a photo they took on vacation. Inspiration can be found in unusual places and one of those for me is McDonalds Canada. I was leading the Architecture team in the states in collaboration with a Canada based Design, Construction and Management teams. The scope varied based on how outdated the store was but a majority of the projects involved major structural alterations and modernize the exterior shape of the building and major gut, and reconfiguration of a portion or all of the interior of the restaurant, some additions and some site work.
If McDonalds is a real estate development company they have few different size and configuration of stock plans they build and each of these stock plans changes every few years. They also flip buildings and convert it from some previous establishment to a McDonalds. We were provided with all the various pieces that we needed to apply to over 200 stores most of which have some unique charstierics. McDonalds had an agressive schedule so the challenge was how do we design, permit and get build semi-custom large scale renovations at scale This was a 3 year project and that first year was rough but we kept at building and developing a process and that process is part of the genesis story of the visual process.
Desert
Looking back through your resume as I have done looking for inspiration for what you are doing now is an intersting thought journey. One of my steps was a year in the desert with the Army National Guard. A lot can be learned both good and bad living in the desert with a bunch of dudes in tents. Nothing really applicable to designing a house but the opposite. When I returned from Kuwait I decided to try different area of architecture.
Mentors - Architects
The first 8 years of my career were single family residential.. I worked for two highly skilled architects One was out in Kitsap county serving middle class homes and families and the other service high end homes in luxary home neighborhoods in the greatter Seattle area. These guys (Tom and Michael) helped provide me with all the essential skills and building blocks and core inspiration of what I am building today.
My HOMEs
Original inspiration it is 2 of the homes I have lived 20 years of my life in. When I was 13 me, my Dad, Grandpa and a really close family friend built our family home in Olalla, Washington on 2 acres. I was the labor and remember carrying every sheet of plywood up on this big steep second story roof. I also have my own home that still had original Avocado green appliances from 1969 when me and my wife Katie bought it 16 years ago. We have endured 4 major renovations and some minor ones and a tree house with a zip line some DIY and some we hired professionals. The most recent renovation was underway as the world locked down so with my family of 5 all going to school and working from home as well as small crew of workers demolishing all of our bathrooms and expanding the footprint of our small rambler.
HOME: Solutions - 4 Steps
STEP 1 - START.
Attention
We understand making the first step in a home project is commiting to spending a lot of money.
Home owners are hoping capture the attention of the right person who can do there job precisely as they envision within there heads. Along with that they have certain expectations on quality and professionalism (loosely defined). And they are just hoping they are getting a good “deal”.
Builders want capture the attention of homeowners who know exactly what they want and are ready to build.
Designers and Architects are hoping to capture the attention of the next “portfolio” project.
Design First
The vast majority of online resources and even a simple google search “remodel my house” points and directs the homeowners attention to Builders. Our competition is not really other designers it the industry and the builders that are demanding the attention. We have have many theories but it is still difficult to understand how the design community allowed builders to dictate a consumers first step.
Ideas
Several ideas from different people and perspectives are gathered as the conversations take place. These ideas produce lists of wants and needs and our process captures each of these ideas as data points along the design journey.
Educate
Ideas are easy as everyone has seen one of numerous HGTV shows. It is the process that most don’t understand of how you get from that idea to built.
Time, No $$
So what we need is to spread the message to Start with Design. So that we can get past the idea and into the process. This is my time
Trust
This is what we must achieve in STEP 2. After we first get there attention and share some ideas while trying to educate them in as little time as possible because not making money till you do.
CRM (Client Relationship Management)
The cycle of initial contact to START is 2 weeks to 18 months. Our CRM tool helps manage our sales cycle but also allows us to capture every single detail. We categorize all of this information and room is a big one.
STEP 2 - VISUALS
Objectives
Traditionally a designer or architecture for home renovation would walks and tours with a homeowner, develops the design and it get’s built by someone. With todays tools designing a house remotely is possible. I am testing out tech, taking photos and meeting with homeowners and my partner Frank is designing from a coffee shop in Ballard. We are actively using a custom process that we build and are refining all the time to so that all the details and objectives are provided to the design team.
Existing Conditions & Contraints
A majority of 20 year and old homes do not have blueprints from the original construction of the home. If they do the house may not be in the same condition or have the same specifications from the original home. There are a variety hardware options to capture the existing conditions of a home
$800 - I-phone
s$1,000. entry level 360 camera
$5,000 high end 360 camera
$20-50,000 Lidar scanners.
$5,000 and under are easy to use and learn for anyone. There is a Learning curve to the higher end models. Both of these can be outsourced. While I managed Starbucks I also managed the team that did thousands of existing surveys for them and other big companies utilizing devices at all of these price points. Each has there pros and cons and we are exploring which of those best applies based on the size and complexity of each project individually.
Matterport is the industry leader in 360 photo tours. All of the agents that I work with locally do this for almost every home they list. Overtime all of this data could be availiable for me to look up and get with no mony.
Function
Is the home meeting the needs
2. Flow
How are we transitioning between spaces.
3. Form
What does it look like, style, aesthetic. The lipstick. Is it simple to build.
Design Tools
AutoCAD and Revit and Sketchup are the most common tools. These are precise drawing tools and are used to create highly complex and intriquet components. We are experts and have used these tools for years. With increased precision decreases our ability to quickly develop conceptual ideas and options.
Home Owner Engagement
Client Dashboard.
Low Medium High
Focused Design Options.
Time
Client Dashboard.
Build Costs Rough.
Thousands off variables attributed to these costs based on who you hire, what level of finishes you select.
STEP 3 - DETAILS
Plans
Builders can’t read
Structure
Limit Innovation
Approvals
Local city government is painful but not a challenge to navigate if you have years of tribal knowledge working with an individual city. I have been waiting months for a pre-application appointment with King County just to ask questions about making sure we are headed in the right direction with drainage.
Things
Quantities, types, fixtures, finishes, plumbing, raw materials. Currently the lowest level of things necessary are provided on plans. Estimating services is an entirely different service provide and contractors also provide that own service. Future Road Map.
Engineers - Consultants
Communicating all the info
Home Owner Engagement
Able to communicate wants and needs.
Time
Build Costs Precise.
The precision you get is the most a contractor is comfortable providing.
STEP 4 - BUILD
Purchase
30% of one persons time who generally is a skilled builder is running around shopping
General Contractors
Sub-Conctractors
Schedule
Time
Records
STEP 5 - Everyone has a HOME, EVERYONE!
What is affordable housing?
Almost 2 billion people in the world do not have adequate housing. Most see this as impossible problem to solve but we understand big problems require numerous solutions.. We believe that if we improve the experience most homeowners endure to renovate and remodel there homes so that they can continue to be a place anyone can be proud to call home for many generations to come. Its a simple idea we tell our kids. “The better you take care of your things the longer they are going to last.
ROUGH NOTES BELOW - NEXT IS HOW ARE WE APPROACHING THE PROBLEM AND WHAT DO WE NEED TO ATTACK THE PROBLEM.
CULTURE
Starbucks word for employee is “Partner” and the team of people I had the opportunity to work with really considered the experience of working together as a partnership. When I was hired Starbucks was not direct client as we were hired indirectly as consultant to the General Contractor. This was a successful relationship for a time but essentially this is a Design Build Relationship and I believe there are many inherit conflicts of interest in that type of relationship when it comes to the way the industry is structured. A plan is what you need to build any complex thing, plans need careful consideration and if you are only thinking about how it get’s built sometimes creativity suffers. (I could go on and on about my experiences of design build and why I think it is extremely difficult to get right)
The biggest thing for me is the ability to scale design and management services is exponentially greater than it is to physically build it. This is why Starbucks chose to hire us directly because they wanted to use is as there single source roll-out program design and process management team to do all projects because one GC could not handle it all.
While working under this arrangement with the general contractor we naturally got to know and build relationships and ultimately the full trust of many amazing people at Starbucks. So a couple of years after I was hired I was able to successfully enter into a direct contract with Starbucks and over the time I worked with them our team physically visited and managed projects for over 25,000 times. We developed and fine tuned a process over the 6 years I was there and is still used by my colleques today that manages not only Starbucks but other national clients that have multiple locations across the country.
The programs we did for Starbucks involving micro-space planning and micro-detailing. So, When Starbucks wants to add new product or feature sometimes that requires new equipment. If you have noticed that the work area behind the counter is pretty jam packed so moving around and adding new things takes a high level of precision and detailing. So sending someone to each store to get that level of precision is mandatory because these all of these thousands of projects of varying scopes are constructed in anywhere from 2-5 nights with a 3-10 man crew. The store can not close so clean up has to happen to the level of health department approval every single day, there is an accepted level of disruption that each store accepts during this time, customers are sometimes less forgiving if coffee production is slower than normal because of disruption.
After one store is completed that crew goes down the street and does the next store and to the next store and some of those crews spent 18 months on the road Starbucks after Starbucks. At this scale getting design right matters, we have to ensure that they have the list of everything they need purchased ahead of time and it is ready to go at site when the arrive to a new Starbucks every day. And since Home Depot is not open at 2:00 am planning is key. If your a builder imagine if you didn’t have to go to Home Depot ever. It was always just there sitting there ready for you to build. How much faster could you build a house? How much $$ could that save a homeowner?
We definitely got some emails at 2:00 am from an unhappy contractor because everything did not go to plan. It was a great pleasure to being the facilitator in building the process that allowed Starbucks to make minor tweaks to 25,000+ projects. It was an awesome group to work worth.
1991-KUWAIT (2004) (Residential Years)
When I was 13 my parents moved from Federal Way to Olalla just past Gig Harbor. Suburbs to Rural. They bought a couple acres and were going to build a house. I remember vaguely seeing blueprints for the first time and being intrigued. My family home was built by my Dad, Grandfather, our Pastor and family friend, and me as the hard labor. I watched how every little detail of that house was put together. And after carrying every single sheet of plywood on the roof I may have realized at that time I wanted to design not build. But that experience gave me an appreciation, understanding of the building process and the people out there doing the building. Building is a craft, it is an artform. I just choose a different medium for my craft and art. In my senior year of highshool the school 1994 a Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) lab was installed and they offered architectural drafting as a class. I quickly caught on and after I graduated I got a job from someone my dad know of a local town architect who was starting to transition from hand drafting to CAD and needed anyone that knew CAD. So with my 4 months of high school architectural CAD training and one house as the hard labor I was hired by an architect Tom Herstad and we learned CAD together while he taught me all the building blocks of residential architecture. I was also taking some CAD classes at the local community college but I skied and partied a bit to much to do much more college as I was learning more on the job and was enjoying it. My CAD skills were rudimentary but there was some early efforts as we learned CAD to figure out some of the power of efficiency it can bring.
I was there for 3 years but I was ready to get out of town and live and be in a different place. I had met my future current and now future wife and moved over to Seattle and worked for an architect that was involved in large high end custom homes for some prominent local Seattlites. He really showed me a skill and ability and art form that is going a bit extinct all of our renderings were hand drawn. He could redesign in realtime with clients with pad and pencil. He had an eye for space planning and I learned to view things from different perspectives to help find new and creative solutions. We were designing dream homes, homes that I could never afford. And than I wast not. I was serving in the Army National Guard for college money that I never used and I was actived in 2004 and sent to Kuwait.
LEARNING CAD.
During those first years 10 years of my career I developed a high level skill of drafting but I had not really figured out how to use the tool with any high level of efficiency with a team of people. CAD was simply a replacement for the pencil so most of my learning was how things are designed and built and not the process in which it is all done together.
So after 12 months in the desert of Kuwait I got home and decided to try something new. I was hired at an architectural firm that clients were national corporate chains, some of my co-workers were CAD gurus and I learned as much as I could from them and learned how this tool can increase the efficiency of creating blueprints and plans. Working for various corporate and national brands you learn a lot about how they design, build and maintain a large portfolio of physical locations across the country. This portfolio includes buildings of all shapes and sizes that was built yesterday to being built 50+ years ago. So why you may sometimes think every single McDonalds is to much the same the shape of each is quite different and unique but they have figured out how to create common solutions when it comes to renovating those stores. In early 10s was one of the leaders that led the charge to completely renovate and update the look and image of over 200 McDonalds in North America. In many cases we gutted the entire interior of the store and did a entire new layout and entire new skin on the outside. Every single one of these 200+ mcDonals had some common pieces we had to pick from to apply to each location but much of each was a “Custom” design. Some things may look the same but everything underneath it is different.
CUSTOM RENOVATIONS AT SCALE.
In 2007 I was hired buy a custom home builder to provide design as well as help them figure out how to scale. Not much really happened as the CRASH happened so it was a lot of survival but I did learn how to BID a job off a set of plans and call and chase down sub-contractors, suppliers, run and get materials and even spent a good amount of time pounding nails, pouring concrete, cutting down trees and getting my hands dirty.
RENO HOMES
Renovating older homes is the art form I keep falling back to. During all my years of commercial work I did a handful of designs for major renovations for friends in the neighborhood and some of these homes are ones I get to hang out in. Including my own.
MY HOUSE:
Purchased in 2006. 1960s 1600 SF Rambler. Good Bones very dated. All of these problems existed when we moved in the house and listed is the year we fixed them.
THE PROBLEM: Bathroom dated, old and gross
2006 SOLUTION: DIY Remodel
THE PROBLEM: Kitchen is boxed in with pocket doors and dining is dark.
2007 SOLUTION: DIY remove walls and cut in openings
THE PROBLEM: Floors are gross
2007 solutions: DIY install new floors
THE PROBLEM: Back yard is not usable and gets muddy in winter.
2xxx SOLUTION: DIY build a retaining wall and install some drainage measures
THE PROBLEM: Kitchen has original 1960s avocado green applicances and cabinets and falling apart. The house has a small dining area and small breakfast area, neither are really big enough to sit more than 4 people.
2xxxx SOLUTION: DIY plus some help Move the location of the kitchen and salvage kitchen cabinets and applicances from a house that is being tore down.
THE PROBLEM: No finished Laundry Room, 3 kids all need own rooms now and no place for office, need a recroom for kids to play. Our rehab kitchen needs to go.
2018 Solution: Hired a general contractor who had been doing other projects in the neighborhood to do a Major renovations on all of the living spaces of our house, new kitchen, new fireplace, replaced and upgraded all the wiring, new furnace. We took over 12’ of the garage and completely finished laundry room / pantry and home office for Katie. We insulated and heated the garage and turned it into the kids recroom and we replaced all old torch down roof with new plywood and a new metal roof. We moved out for a few weeks and it took a lot of time and effort from both me and Katie to figure out all the details and in the end we both love it.
THE PROBLEM: 3 kids sharing 1 tiny bathroom and primary suite is to small Back concrete patio is falling apart, Yard still gets too muddy in the winter. Need an additional parking spot in driveway.
The Solution: hired same general contractor to do a 400+ SF addition to the home. Completely gut and reconfigure both bathrooms to enlarge. Install new patio, install artificial turf, move retaining wall for new parking spot.
THE PROBLEM: Prior to my purchasing the house the home was converted to a single car garage. New legislation and zoning codes are now making adding an ADU to your property much easier.
FUTURE SOLUTION: Thea area the parking stall that was created in my last renovation is now level and flat for me to expand my garage and turn it back into a 2 car garage at the same time I will add a second story to the expanded garage to create an ADU that I can rent out separately or have a place for my college kids to crash in the summer or after graduation.
THE PANDEMIC
It hit and a team of 20 people quickly became a team of 3, Starbucks wasn’t doing anything as were many of the companies other clients . There was a several week period where I had now work but did have a team of people that I had to do with whatever I wanted to with. So we researched and explored where the skills we had that serviced this specific niche of the design architect and construction world could also by applied and are needed. We kept getting pointed to the residential world but we were not exactly sure how or what.
Meanwhile the 400 SF addition that I had mentioned early was under way but now I was working from home along with my wife and our 3 kids while the hammers and power tools were echoing on the other side of our 1600 SF house. We were lucky and my renovation was just ahead of all the labor and material delay issues. I did witness though what I have come to find is very common practice. Daily trips to Home Depot, delays, lost decisions. I now have this vast experience of doing thousands of projects at scale with a high level of planning and detail and this is not the experience I am having in my my home. Is this just the builder I ended up with or is this a bigger problem? I started asking around and seeing what the World Wide Web says and have come to find out it is a bigger problem.
Is the home design and construction process simple and understandable and fun and cost efficient? The overwhelming response is NO.
CRM
PROBLEM: . TRUST. CONFUSION We have built a custom system that flows into our workflow but it still takes so much time for someone to eim. The challenge to getting someone to START is they are confused if we are even the right person to start with OR. should they even do the project OR conflicts between husband and wife OR lack of vision. IDEAS. They need or want to hear and accept our ideas before starting and this is all me. We have some portfolio of work but doing a better job of defining the 4 step journey to that final IDEA is what we need to push them into the idea over a phone call or site visit.
COSTS TIME. I need to stop giving so much of my time away for free.
SOLUTIONs Lower cost of entry is one solution and we developed $800 service (ADD LINK). Education - We have informally built some education but we need a series on all sorts of topics. Limit how much free time I give away. Require payment for site consults . Stream line development of proposals. This is just spending some hours in Smartsheet to do next upgrade. Preach start with DESIGN..DESIGN FIRST.
CRM TO DESIGN TRANSITION:
Problem: All the building blocks are in place it is just a little clunky.
Solution. Spending more time in smartsheet to upgrade process.
TEAM PROCESS
Problem: We are kind of hijacking the system for a 2 man company. the tools can function with 50 people
Solution: Next updgrade and set standards.
DESIGN
CUSTOMER JOURNEY & INTERACTIONS
CONSULTANT INTERACTIONS
PERMITTING
PURCHASING
Why does the industry point so much of homeowner to the direction of a builder and not a designer?
Why is the expectantions of the level of detail in design low in everyday homes?. Only for the rich and the corporations?
The tools we use are so precise and getting to a final design is a journey. The initial design tools need to be cheers
Is DIY getting shoved down our face to much?
Process:
Guy in a truck: No Excel: Aging workforce not being replaced.
30% of time is spent purchasing and getting materials. Take this away from builders. Conex boxes. Delivered to site
Permitting. Don’t get me started. But if you could create process of designing and building homes that was a proven effective method maybe that helps???
BIG VISION;
Sustainable and Affordable Housing:
STATS AND RESOURCES
Almost 75% of homes in the US are over 30 years old.
588,806 remodeling businesses in the U.S. as of 2023
Home remodeling is a $400 billion+ industry with no single company holding 5% (or more) of the total market share.
Home RENOVATION $363 billion - Whats the differences. There is some overlap in the lists on the links below.
Home remodeling's annual average growth rate is 4.4%.
Home remodeling generated $369 billion in revenue in 2021, a 9% increase over 2020.
I don’t believe any of these numbers account for the numerous options and subcontractors working for cash that may or may not have the required paperwork and “legitimate”.
https://www.rubyhome.com/blog/home-remodeling-stats/#:~:text=Home%20remodeling%20is%20a%20%24400,was%20%2418K%20in%202021.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/reviews/home-improvement/home-renovation-facts-statistics#:~:text=Americans%20spent%20%24363%20billion%20on,spending%20rose%20to%20%24472%20billion.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/cost-to-renovate-a-house#:~:text=For%20a%20more%20detailed%20breakdown,the%20first%20year%20of%20ownership.
