The Cost Of Becoming The Owner with Chris Ehrenfeld

Reece talks with Chris Ehrenfeld of Bold Companies and Bold Construction about the real risk behind growing a construction business, especially when a builder moves from doing the work to leading the company.

Chris shares how he started framing houses to raise capital, built into luxury custom homes, learned from a fixed price contract hit by COVID cost spikes, and changed how he thinks about hiring, systems, and risk.

https://www.chrisehrenfeld.com
https://www.bold-life.com

Show Notes:
00:00 Intro
02:14 Real Estate Advantage
04:55 Framing For Capital
09:34 Artist To Owner
12:22 Finding Better Mentors
16:03 Learning From Mistakes
19:44 Hiring The Right People
24:53 Letting Go
30:31 Fixed Price Risk
33:35 Five Year Vision
35:59 Growth Versus Stability
41:12 The Bold Life

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast  Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

But when you're running your company, that's a different skill set than the skill set of the part you may have been passionate about to begin with, and certainly as you grow a business and start having employees, then the skill set starts to become about leadership and management, and that is a drastically different skill set than being the guy who can frame the tightest corner. Welcome to Builders Budgets and Beers, I'm Reece Barnes, and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes, and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. Alrighty, Chris, mics are hot. We're live. We're rolling. Thanks, thanks so much for jumping on Builders Budgets and Beers, sir. Happy to be here, Reece. Yeah, okay, cool. Well, let's just dive into it here, Chris. As we do, and we open up, I think it's always important for the audience to hear a little about the guest. So, go ahead. I'm always fascinated to hear how you know our guests got into construction, kind of the journey that they took, maybe even like what's really exciting to you these days, what excites you about construction, but just some of the basics. Get the audience a little bit of an understanding of who they're listening to today. Yeah, so my construction journey started when I got out of college. So I got, I went to school and got a business degree from UNC Chapel Hill, and yeah, exactly, go to Targets. Went into the construction business, joined my brother, my brother was the hands-on guy, and I was the business guy, but we, coming out of school, didn't have any capital, so the way we decided to build capital was we actually started framing houses for another builder, so we started off as subcontractors, so just the two of us, and we were laborers, and we were out there bidding, bidden framing jobs, and working as fast, efficient, and long hours as possible in order to make as much money, or you know, get the jobs done as quickly as we could to get on to the next house to frame, and we did that first probably two years in order to raise capital, and then from that we're able to get enough money to build a spec house, get a loan and use that money as a down payment, built that spec house, sold that, and then just continued to evolve and grow the business to now fast forward, I've been in business for for 29 years, I'm actually business partners with my best friend Jason Dell, and the two of us have a high end luxury custom building company, and we build about a dozen multimillion dollar custom homes a year. We also do probably another 10 to 15 renovation projects a year, and those renovations range from a couple 100,000 to a couple of million. Totally, did I see that? You correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a background in real estate, or rather, that came a part of it in your journey, and you guys do commercial, is that right? Yeah, so that, yeah, so in addition to construction early on, I got my real estate license, and back then I got that really initially just for access to information for the building company. Back in the 90s, there was no Zillow or realtor to go see what stuff's selling for, quite honestly, back then you could either go to the Register of Deeds office and pick up a grantor and grantee book, or you could become a realtor and you could dial in, like literally dial in those loud screeching sounds of the modem into the MLS and get access to information, but that gave you a real advantage, because it was really interesting, back then there were literally - you could have two communities, and the one would have lots for $100,000 and the houses were selling for 500,000 and there'd be another community where the lots were$50,000 and the houses were selling for 600,000 And it was like, why would you ever build in the more expensive lot? But the reality was, it was just there wasn't easy access to information, and so builders didn't know, you know, nowadays Zillow and Realtor, and everything else online, you have quick access to the information, so that was the original stimulus to get a real estate license, but then once I did that, I started doing some real estate transactions, I can remember framing jobs by day, and then into the evening, you know, running home, getting a shower, and taking a client out to go see a home, because I'm company put up a website, which in the 90s was ahead of the curve. If you had a simple HTML, that's a big deal. Yeah, and so I started doing real estate on the side, but eventually grew that, and so now I do have a real estate to real estate brokerage companies, a residential as well as a commercial brokerage company. Also do real estate development, that again was just an add on over the years, just that's become something for me personally. I really enjoy real estate development. It's a challenge to try to solve the puzzle, whatever that puzzle piece would be. Down here, a lot of puzzle pieces, access to sewer, interesting. Saying, okay, so I joke that I never, never thought getting into real estate, that I'd learned so much about what happens when you flush a toilet, but apparently is what you do. But yeah, so, so we have a couple different branches of our company. Bold companies is the family, the umbrella of companies, and so that's Bold Construction, which is the custom luxury building company, and then old commercial real estate, bold real estate, which is residential, and bold development. Got it. Okay, so it's not as much commercial construction, it's commercial real estate, correct? The only commercial construction we do is we do self-perform on some commercial development projects we do, so we have like some shopping centers and things like that that will develop, get approved, build out, and then lease out the properties and retain those ourselves as investments. Okay, cool. So, quite a, quite a path. I even just like to bring it back to the top. You mentioned, like, you and brother started framing as a subcontractor. Yep, I'm just curious, like, what was that experience like, and did that experience impact and mold how you think about business and getting into construction, like did any of those learnings carry into the philosophy that you've, you know, built around bold? Oh, absolutely. I mean, that that experience was, you know, very hard grinding work, you know, getting out of getting out of school, you know, you have a college degree and other guys are, you know, going to work on Wall Street, and things like that, and I'm, I'm going out, choosing to go, you know, sweat in the Carolina summers, and work from sunup to sundown, doing really hard physical manual labor, but you know, I was just focused on, we needed capital, and that was that was our plan that we came up with, how to get capital in retrospect. If I were smarter back then, I would have probably gone and sought either partners or investors or something in order to get to get to get to the end result faster, and certainly without all the physical manual labor, but it, but I learned a lot. I certainly, you know, from a technical perspective, learned a ton about framing, and so that was obviously helpful in the construction journey, but more just a better appreciation, quite honestly, for subcontractors, and you know how hard they work every day, and I mean, there's guys that have been framers for decades, and so you know I look back and remember that was that was hard work for that that year or two, so I certainly gained an appreciation for them, but all that helped, you know, helped me grow as a person, learn more about the trades, learn more about what it's like to work and work, work hard to make money, and then you know ultimately how to take that money and invest it in myself in order to grow. Okay, and so that it sounds like that was, I mean, you mentioned at the very beginning, right? You got into framing to raise capital, right, but then you're using to like feed other endeavors, other ventures, other things like that. That was just to be clear, that was the plan from the beginning, or was that like, did you, was there like a continuous development and like learning and understanding of okay, we started with framing, and then we went in to build a spec house, and then okay, now we did that. Was there ever like this big aha moment, or was it just kind of carrying the strategy from the very beginning into framing to get capital going? Yeah, sort of. People always think that it had some sort of grand plan to have all the businesses that I have now. The reality is that has evolved drastically over nearly three decades now, the plan was was shortsighted back then. It was, you know, raise capital to get enough money to eventually build a house ourselves to build a spec house, and that worked. And then the spec house was great, because, you know, our plan initially was just to build more spec houses, but the first spec house, the first person, one of the first people that came through the spec house was like, I like this house, but I don't love it. Do you think you could build me a slightly different version of it down the street? And we're like, sure. So all of a sudden we had our first custom client, and so you know that wasn't the plan, but it's what happened. As far as the other businesses, like I said, I did open the real estate company relatively early, and again, that was more for the information for the construction company, but ended up growing on its own, and just created more opportunities, bought another firm that helped us grow even faster along the way, and then the other things just naturally became offshoots or revolutions from growing the businesses, you know, just over time, totally recognizing, like, hey, if we can, if we can control some of the lot inventory and create some communities and pocket communities that our clients can build in, that, that would, that would help the construction company, and we could also make money on the development side, and so that's what got into the development, and then the commercial real estate, I was about spotting opportunities and taking advantage of the market, kind of like I did on the on the residential side, you know, 20 years before, just, you know, being on the inside and having access to information and deals and things like that was beneficial on the commercial side for us, retaining and investing in real estate properties. Totally, it's, it's really hard to win from the sidelines. You guys, you guys were in the game, you saw opportunity, you took advantage of them. I love it. Okay, we'll, we'll dig into this more, but I have been starting to ask this question on the podcast to guests, and we can, you know, dig into this as deep as we want to go, but the question is, in your opinion, from your perspective, what is the one conversation that you think needs to be had that isn't being had enough in construction? That's a great question. You know, I think the so many people, you know, just like my story, you know, I started off in being trade now that that wasn't really my end goal, but you know, so many people get into construction because they have a passion for construction, and so you know, depending on what you're talking about, a builder, or if you're talking about even a subcontractor, you know, chances are they're they started in that trade because they love that trade, and there's a lot of builders out there that you know used to be framers and things like that, and they're passionate about construction, and that's wonderful, but that doesn't necessarily make you successful in the business side, and you know what really makes or breaks the difference is, you know, it's different, the artist, you know, the artist is the guy that likes hammering the nails, and the guy who can, you know, assemble the best cabinets, or whatever his skill set is, and ultimately he makes his way up into running his own company. But when you're running your company, that's a different skill set than the skill set of the part that the part you may have been passionate about to begin with, and the skill set is running a business, and certainly, as you grow a business and start having employees, then the skill set starts to become about leadership and management, and that is a drastically different skill set than being the guy who can, you know, frame the tightest corner type skill to be successful in the long term, and so, you know, I see that with our competition, I see that with our vendors and subcontractors as they grow and evolve over time. You know, the ones that are successful and the ones that continue to do well are the ones that that are able to grow and move into and understand that role as a business person and a leader. Totally, okay. So, I guess you mentioned you mentioned success, you know, whether I'm the finished carpenter, the trim carpenter, right, or I'm the, you know, CEO of a $30 million construction company, right? What do you think, or how would you explain this to people that are either, you know, they think they want to go to being the business owner, the more the savvy, like build a successful business, but they just really love the trade, like, what would you caution them, or what would you explain to them before they embark on from going like trade love the passion true artist to now we're becoming an artist of building a business, right? What would you caution them? What would you talk to them about? Well, I mean, I think first of all, what's great about the artist who does become the business owner, is they have the most important thing to begin with, which is what you said in your description, there's they have the passion for the business, and I am a big proponent on of that, you should do something you're passionate about, it, you know, I talked to high school kids a lot, and that's the number one piece of advice I give them, is you know, I find too many, too many people are considering that are choosing their career based on where they think they're going to make the most money, and I tell them, you know, start with something you're passionate about, and then figure out how to use that passion to fuel, you know, fuel making the money in your other, your other goals you have in your career, but you know, we all spend way too much time working every day, you know. If you look at your, you look at your calendar this past week, you know, you probably worked 40, maybe you worked 50 hours, or whatever it is, you probably slept about the same amount of time. And other than that, there's nothing else you spend as much time doing as you did at work. So, first and foremost, you know, my first piece of advice is, do what you said, which is find something you're passionate about, but then that, which your actual question was, was, you know, on the flip side of that, is how do you transition from that passion of that skill set in order to be successful on the business side, and that, you know, I think certainly has a lot to do with finding the right mentors, and you know, find the right playbook. You don't have to, you don't have to rewrite or come up with an original plan, you know. I think that's, you know, looking back, that's a big mistake that I made. Is I thought I had to sort of reinvent the wheel to figure out everything on my own, and what happens when you're figuring out everything on your own, is you know, inherently, you do something for the first time, the chances of you doing it well is slim, and none, you know, better the second time, you get better the third time, and you learn from your mistakes, and so I grew a lot from learning from my mistakes, I think I could have, I could have learned a lot faster if I had asked others for advice, and you know, or you. And potentially work somewhere else and sort of learn from the best before I went off on my own, you know. Big advantage you have these days in terms of creating the playbook and that kind of stuff is certainly AI can help you, you know, write a business plan and give you advice and coach you and do a lot of stuff for free that certainly wasn't available back when I started my business, but you got to be, you need to understand that you know being successful in business takes, takes a lot more, and that the biggest piece on if you're going to grow a business beyond just you is certainly learning how to lead, you know, lead others and how to, you know, how to manage people and get that, get the most out of them and help them be successful and help them grow and achieve, and which will help you and your company grow and achieve, totally, totally. Okay. Well, and I like, I'm big on mentors asking questions, talking to people, getting advice, right. And, obviously, like, with what AI capabilities are, even if you're just using Google, right, and you start interacting with the AI user interface at Google, right, you can learn a lot, but what's your general take, or maybe like, what are some of the lessons that you think contractors or business owners, for that matter, have to experience on their own instead of just like asking, getting the answers, and I'll preface this even further, or rather provide more context, is like, if it were, if it were so easy, and there's like a playbook, right, like building a business wouldn't be hard, right. And it was like people have had problems, especially in construction companies, you know. So it's like you could hear the biggest war story ever and like talk about the scars and someone's gonna turn around and start their own business and do the same exact thing, you know. So, what do you.. how do you.. how do you explain that balance? How do you explain that balance? And what do you think? Maybe some of the, the battle or the war stories that they have to go through are. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely correct that as much as you can use AI and other resources these days to learn more and help you get ahead, there is zero chance you're getting through unscathed, right? You're going into battle, and there's going to be landmines that you know that simply, no matter how hard you look, and you think you're looking in the right direction, you're gonna, you're gonna step on, and so you know that's that's life, that's you know that's that's growing and getting better, but it's it's making sure you know that you have the right attitude, the right mindset, I think is the most important thing, that when you do encounter those, those, those landmines, you're learning from it, so you don't, you don't encounter it again. I'm big on, you know, I make mistakes all the time, but, man, when, if I make the same mistake twice, I get, I get mad at myself, you know, because it's like there's no excuse for that, but you know, we all make mistakes the first time, and you know that's what we try to, we talk about a lot with our team, is, hey, you know, our team, we have about 15 or so people on our team, and we have over something like 300 years of collective experience in construction. Yeah, that's that's our advantage, and we need to, anytime you're doing something, if you're doing it for the first time, I guarantee there's somebody else in the building who's done it before, so talk to them, communicate, ask, so that you don't have to make the mistake, or if you do make a mistake, it's a smaller mistake, you know, of doing it the first time, you know, leverage their experience and expertise in order to get better, you know, so, so that you, you, you understand what the right way is, or that you know, to get to the outcome you desire, but I mean, as business owners, you know, I think the biggest challenges, or the biggest things you have to truly experience, is always that goes back to managing people, and just the interactions of how you know how it is to manage people, because it is, you know, it that does not follow a specific playbook as much as you want it to, you know, the other person is going to, is another person, and they, they're going to be able to do what they want to do, and you need to, you know, help guide them to be successful, and, and follow, follow the direction you're setting, but you, you also want them to be, be independent and creative and helpful, and you want the, you know, one and one to be to equal three type of scenario, but that, that takes a lot of work, and I don't, you know, certainly you can go to trainings and things like that, but, but a lot of that is that's just from experience, quite honestly, it's just like years of being committed to becoming a better manager. Yep, absolutely. Have you? I, this is, I literally just a podcast last week, similarly on this, it was essentially like, how do you connect, you know, vision to numbers, right? It's like, usually, like, vision is leadership, right, numbers is execution, right, outputs. And essentially, the conversation was like that middle gap in construction typically gets missed, which is management, right? Exactly what you're tracking on, right? It's like it's anybody who has seen a movie or heard stories about construction, is it's known that management isn't what construction is great at. They manage a project, right, but humans, it's always like it's hardcore. It's the old guy that's been, you know, heavy equipment for 40 years, and he's gruff, and he's rude, and he's direct, and he's hard to work with, and little. Patience, right? All those different things. Granted, this could be a guy that's driving, you know, like a bulldozer, and he's got zero interest in managing people- that's just how they operate. But my question with all this is, is like, what are some of the examples, maybe early in your journey, or maybe like aha moments, epiphanies that you had as you were building that management muscle that really stood out to you. What were some of the wins, the losses, maybe some things that you could, you could, you know, maybe advise the listeners to consider when they are building that management muscle. Yeah, I mean, there's there's tons of lessons I've learned, and of course, mistakes I've made over over the years. You know, I think the management, you know, the first thing, first and foremost, the most important thing is hiring the right people, and knowing what that means. You know, I can tell you early on, you know, when somebody, when we'd have to fill a position, you know, we, we'd put out there and we do interviews, and we would, you know, we, and we were kind of like, well, we need to fill this position, so if we interviewed five people, we'd go, okay, which one of these five people was the best, best person to five? Okay, great. And we would hire that person, somebody to fill the seat. Well, that person wasn't necessarily the ideal person, they were the best of the five candidates we got in a two week window, right? You know, and so that that bit us, bit us in the butt on more than one occasion, then we realized, you know, that's probably not, not the way we should be hiring, you know, and so, as terrible as that sounds, but that was the reality of the way we were doing it back then. Yeah, but then then we learned, you know, now we take our time to fill a seat, and you know, we map out what we're looking for in the person, and you know, a lot of what we're looking for is is personality, in terms of like mindset and attitude, you know, we certainly ideally want somebody who also has, you know, the as much experience as we're seeking and direct experience and things like that, but if the person has a growth mindset and a in the right attitude and has some experience, we can help them get the rest of the experience. What I, what I can't do is, is retrain their mindset to be a positive one and be one that fits, fits well with our culture. So, you know, our culture is very important, of you know who we are as a team and and what we do and how we represent ourselves as a company, because I want anybody that talks to anybody in our company to be like, you know, hey, I talked to, I talked to Liz on your team, and she's, she's sharp as can be, you know, everybody you have at Bold is fantastic, right? Yeah, Liz is extremely sharp, she's just for the listeners out there, Liz, let's come prepared, she's absolute, she's fantastic. Anyways, keep going. Yeah, so I think that's, you know, that that's one one particular lesson of how to sort of, how to, how to grow that, that management muscle, as you called it. I mean, I think the other thing to understand as a leader is you have to let go of the vine a little bit, and you have to recognize, you know, empower your people to be as successful as possible. You know, give, give them that vision, give them the direction, and then give them some leeway to succeed on their own. You know, when I first, first started hiring, you know, first couple people I hired, I remember, you know, they, I would be just frustrated all the time because they didn't do things exactly the way I would do things. Well, you know, now with 15 employees, the chances of all 15 of them doing exactly what I want them to be doing right now is zero. You know, and so you kind of got to let that go and realize, you know, they're going to do some stuff, and and they're going to make some mistakes. But the flip side of that, though, is also we have very much changed and evolved over the years from input from those people, you know, and they have, they have great ideas, you know. Liz is an example, we were, we were talking about before we got on the air, and just mentioned, yeah, she, she has tons of great ideas, and and she'll, she'll be the first to tell you that, you know, we've incorporated many of those. There's also been other ideas where we said, Liz, we're not incorporating this, and here's why, you know, and she respects, she respects that, but at the same time, she knows the door is always open to come with new ideas, because we certainly recognize one of the ways we're, we're better is through our team and their ideas, you know, as much as I think I'm a good business person, the reality is I thought it was a good business person 10 years ago, and I think I'm a way better business person now than I was then, which tells me 10 years from now I can be a way better business person then than I am now, and so, but that just requires me to continue to grow, continue to have an open mind, continue to learn and learn from, learn from the team, so it's a two-way street, you know, I want to help them grow and get better, but I also want them to help help me grow and get better. Totally, totally, there was a lot of like really good tactical stuff in there, and I think that's like just broadly the transition from artist to owner, and those are some of the really hard, the potentially year-long lessons and exercises of, we'll just talk about like. And go with the vine, right. It's like, though, that it takes time. You can think it all you want. You can hear it on this podcast, in whatever article you read about leadership, right. And it really is like almost this point of I'm wasting my time, and I'm hurting the relationship, and I'm setting the wrong expectation within the business. Like, at that point, you're just like, okay, it's been 18 months, I've gone through three hires, right? It's crazy for me to think that they're going to be absolutely dialed on this step by step by step. And then you start to let go, and you're like, okay, well, the job's still getting done to the level that we want it done at. Maybe I don't need to be as hardcore about making people exactly the same, it's not about that, right? And it's that balance of letting, being, you know, being willing to let go of the vine is sort of the first, first part of them, but then the second part is having some parameters in there, you know, some systems and processes that make sure that they're not going, you know, too far outside the parameters of where we need to go, that they're not going off the rails and, you know, wrecking unnecessarily, you know, so that it's okay if I can go this way and get there, and you go this way, and we both get to the same end result, that's great, but what we don't want to do is, I think we're going this way, and you're going that way, and driving off a cliff, you know, so you gotta, there needs to be the systems and processes are kind of the glue that holds that together, but there is definitely, you know, I think that first step in that evolution is being willing to let go of the vine, letting them have, you know, letting your employees have some leeway, letting them also give feedback on on the parameters, you know, and being a part of that and helping, helping set up those systems, so you can have success. Totally, totally, I love it. This is kind of.. it's definitely so relevant, but it's kind of going back to the initial answer of, you know, like the transition from, you know, being an artist to an owner. Do you think anyone can go from being an artist to an owner, or do you think that there are skills, potentially traits that people have that are going to make them better owners than others. I think the most important trait that's going to help you be successful as an owner is going to be your leadership, right. And so, how well you're going to, how well you can lead others and help help them grow, and give them, but give them the independence to grow. But I think that that whole, you know, that coaching leading mindset is a, is key. And even if you're running us, you know, if you're an HVAC contractor, and you got, you're hiring a couple technicians to work for you, you know. You can, you can know how to fix an HVAC better than anybody out there, but you're never really going to truly grow as a business until you start hiring other people. And then, when you hire those other people, it's how do you lead them, how do you show them, teach them what you know, leverage your experience, but also help grow the business. You know, that's the way, that's the way, over time, you're gonna, you're gonna grow and be more successful as, as a business, as an operation, as opposed to just being, you know, being the guy who's, who's fixing HVAC, you know, 24/7 totally, totally. Well, and I think, like, frankly, like, the reason I asked that question is because construction is, like, is a classic example of this, right? It's like nearly every construction company that started was, to your earlier point, started by someone who loved the trade, right? They loved it. They might have been working for someone, right? They might have been a project manager, they might have been working at a tile subcontractor, right. And they have this moment where they're like, why am I making what I'm making when I could go out and start my own thing, and I could make more. Usually, it's that money part is a part of it. You talked about a little bit with passion, but the reason I was like, "Do you think anyone can do it? Is because I think there's a lot of heartbreak and stress and hardship that comes with people that are just like, "I think I can go from artist to owner, and I'm just going to start by building a business again. Do you think anyone can do that, or would you caution them, or ask them questions on, like, hey, like, before you do this, you take this risk? Like, think about a little bit more broadly, right? Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't start a business, but this is what you should consider. What would you tell them? I mean, I like, as I said earlier, I talk to young people a lot, and you know, I encourage them to start a business. I think it's fantastic. I also recognize that it is not for everybody. There are many more people in this world that don't own their own business than do, and it's because, you know, they.. it's not right for everybody. I mean, when you own a business, there are certainly, there are certainly plenty of rewards, and plenty of reasons that it's rewarding, and why I enjoy it, but the flip side of that is there's a lot of risk, where there's, you know, a lot of pressure, there's a lot of stress, I mean, the reality is, you know, across my companies, I have about 50 employees, so. So you know, those, those 50 people, their paychecks depend on on decision decisions I make every day. You know, I enjoy that. I, you know, I thrive in that environment, but I certainly recognize that many other people don't, don't like that. They don't have the same tolerance for risk that I do, and so, you know, I see the reward and the rewarding side of, like, hey, this is great, that you know all these things that these people are able to do and provide for their families, and all that, all that, you know, I take, you know, a little bit of credit of being a part of that, right, and pride of helping them, but you know, they, they certainly earn, earn everything that they do, but you know, it makes you feel good, or like it makes me feel good that they're able to do that, you know, in working for, for my companies, but there is certainly a lot of, a lot of risk with that, and you know, if you know, if the companies go south, that's that falls on me, you know, they're totally, they can quickly go and get a job somewhere else, you know, versus, you know, could bankrupt me and my family and all that, you know, so that you know, and, and even, you know, mentioned earlier about lessons learned, and sometimes you got to learn the hard way, you know, I'll give you a specific example lesson I learned that, you know, hopefully nobody else has to learn, but you know, I never, I never thought that prices could go up 35% in an 18 month period of time, like they did during Covid. That was unfathomable. It never happened in the history of anything. So, how was it possibly? So, you know, we're a fixed price builder, so that meant we were locking in contracts at a price, and yes, we put in a few percent inflation, you know, typical two or 3% inflation factor, but then when we're getting done with those jobs and they're all of a sudden 35% higher, well, guess what, we're not, we're not making any money on those jobs, we're actually losing money on those jobs, and you know, so that was a lesson we learned the hard way, so now we have some provisions in our contracts that allow for, you know, a crazy once in a lifetime type adjustments that we have a mechanism to go back to clients. We haven't had to use it, and I hope we never have to use it, but if there ever is a COVID situation, we would be able to say, "Hey, listen, we need to, we need to share some of this pain stomach ourselves. But the reality is that's our contract said their fixed price, and we're going to build this house for the price that we said, no matter what. So we weren't going to go back on our word, so we, we did what our contract said, but it was financially a very difficult thing. But you know, did I sleep well or feel great going through that? No. And so, but you know, did my employees have to worry about that? No, you know, that wasn't, you know, didn't really affect them, because same thing I was going to continue to pay them and keep them, because keep the, keep the company rolling. So, there's there are definitely advantages and disadvantages, but beyond that, it's more about, you know, tolerance for risk and just personality of wanting to lead others and that kind of stuff, not everybody, you know, not everybody's cut out to be a business owner, and that's okay, you know, and I can, I can make the case of why it's amazing, and I can also make the case of why it's, you know, the downsides of it, so totally, totally, and that's, I think, like that's perfect, because it generally, like the summary is you've got to think about starting a business and a bigger lens than I'm great at this and I could make more money, right. It's more of like what are you actually assuming from a risk standpoint, and of course, like the money, if you're good or if things go well will come right, but are you going into it with the right intentions, right? Do you actually want to build a team, and that kind of leads me to my next question. Here is, like, what's your five year vision for Bold? Yeah, so for at Bold Construction, we want to, you know, we want to keep, keep growing, you know, we have, we have the way the best team we've ever had, and we want to continue to grow the business in order to help you know give them the opportunity to continue to help us grow and be more successful, so we over the next next five years we basically by 2030 we actually 2030 to say next five years we basically want to grow by about another 50% right? You know, and, and that's just, you know, 10% you know, basically call out, yeah, like 10% growth per year is what we're looking at over the next five years, is what we're, what we're, we're shooting for, and you know, so it's, we find a growth rate like that in the long term, is phenomenal growth, but you know we're not trying to get, get giant overnight, because you know when you do that, you end up stumbling along the way, so it's kind of, it's easy to, it's easier to incrementally continually grow at a consistent rate versus trying to go from here to here. Or you know, so that that's our goal is to grow that on the on the revenue side, and then you know, obviously want to be profitable and continue to do, you know, we do a lot of things to support local communities, local community, and we want to continue to continue to do those things and continue to be a part, a bigger part of the local, the local fabric, totally well, and the reason I wanted to ask, because I think you know, especially in construction, there's, you know, obviously the massive top 500 GCs in the country, right, billion dollar organizations, right, most of it is made up of your sub $10 million a year guys, right? Do you think that's absolutely necessary to follow, and frankly, you guys are doing it smart at 10% year over year. Or do you think that there's, you know, logic or room to be said of you don't have to grow like you can stay in your lane, you can be a, you can be a five,$10 million a year guy and stay there an entire career. Like, what's your take on growth versus like staying in your lane and not plateauing, that's totally the wrong word, but just like staying where you are. Yeah, there, I don't think there's anything wrong with staying where you are. I mean, it's, it's up to again what you're looking for, but I mean, there's plenty of well-run smaller companies out there that, that you know, do great where they are and don't need or want to experience the growth headaches that that come with continuing to grow, and you know, if that's where you are, and you're financially doing what's, you know, you know, provide for your family, and make makes you happy, and gives you good work-life balance, you know, there's no reason you need to continue to grow, you know, and like I said, I want to grow, but my growth rate again at 10% I think over the long term is tremendous compounding, and, and works out, it will be, you know, very, very strong, but I think what I caution against is businesses that try to grow significantly faster than that, because you're just, you know, it's a recipe for disaster if you, if you grow too fast in too short a period of time, and you know a lot of, a lot of in construction, a lot of construct, a lot of builders experienced that back in near 2008 to 2010 you know, I know I have plenty of friends that they were, they were making tons of money, and they were building hundreds and hundreds of spec homes as small independent builders, 1008 and they were printing money, and you know, flying private jets, and all that stuff, and then they, then you know, it all came, came crashing down, and all of a sudden they lost everything, and then some, and were, you know, negative, negative net worth for many years after some of those, some of those builders, I know they're they're back in business building now, and they're now growing at a more normal pace, and they're fine with it, and they're like, I know we, I know I could go build a ton of homes and do what I did before, but I'm afraid of what happened before happening again. I mean, the reality is everything is cyclical, and you know, it's a matter of, of when, not if, that there's going to be a pullback, so it's like, you know, it's easy to succeed when, when times are going great, then the really good companies are the ones who are able to continue to succeed, even when there is a pullback, totally well, and that kind of like leads me to my next question, is that's kind of a two-part question, the first is, does your five year growth plan scare you? And the second part is, is do you remember a time in your career where you were ever scared of growth? This is like more primarily of like the like the feelings, the emotions that you have as you prepare to go through this, and what do you reflect on having gone through growth? Yeah, it definitely does not scare me. I'm, I'm a, I'm a growth guy. I love everybody on my team knows I love, love the expression progress equals happiness, and I interchange progress and growth. You know, they're synonyms, so you know, I think you know, as you're constantly growing and getting better, that's when you're happiest, and so I, I look forward to growth. You know, what, what drives me crazy is when we have a pullback, you know, and you know, as much as I, as much as I would like to pretend that, you know, we, we've just constantly slowly gone up over, over 29 years we've been in business, it hasn't been, you know, it's been more like, you know, there's ups and downs as you're heading up, and you know, when you're on the down, it doesn't feel nearly as good as when you're on the up, so that's like that growth or progress side, but yeah, no, I'm not scared at all of growth, and I've always been a very much a growth mindset person, and starting from literally having nothing coming out of college to continue to work my way up, but I've always, I've always been, you know, smart, financially smart, or fiscally conservative, you know, never overextend myself too much, and you. Know at times I sit there and I watch other builders, like the example I gave you back 2008 they're doing way better than me, and it's like, man, I could have done that too. I'm just as good, or you're just a good business person as him, and you know, know just as much construction as he does, but then when it comes crashing down, you go, okay, well, maybe I was right to keep the, keep the slow and steady wins the race type of strategy. So, you know, and I always say on on risk, you know, the big thing is in this, it goes back to the risk tolerance factor of where you are, you know, where I am personally, I'm not afraid of a risk or growth, and you know, I like to use, call the pillow test, which is, you know, if you put your head down on the bed at night and you feel good, and you can fall asleep pretty easily, you're in a good place. If you're, if you're sitting there worrying about finances and numbers and things like that, when you're trying to go to bed, well, you're doing something wrong, and that has to do with, with being, being smart, and not, not growing beyond, you know what you're, what you're willing to risk, you're willing to tolerate, totally, totally. Well, and this is a good little segue, just to kind of wrap up the episode. But speaking of growth, you have a, you have a pretty good little, pretty cool journey going on with that, with a new, new division of Bolt. Tell, tell the audience about what you're doing with that. You said Bolt Growth, right? The bold life, bold life. Excuse me, excuse me. Go ahead, the bold life. So, yeah, so it's coming up on this fall last year. I started writing a newsletter, it's called The Bold Life. You can subscribe at Bold life.com but it was an outgrowth of, you know, speaking to kids and doing things, so, so we have a foundation that, that does stuff, where we, we do a bunch of different events and projects in order to support, support kids, basically get, give local kids the opportunity to learn, grow, and you know, if they, if they have the initiative to be successful in life, and so, whether that's providing educational opportunities, or, you know, helping them just, you know, provide them different thoughts, you know, and speaking to them about mindset, and about finances, and things like that. So, from doing that, that kind of has evolved to I started writing this newsletter, and the newsletter, you know, started off was more, more about money, you know, sort of about like thinking about using money in order to fuel the things in your life that really matter, you know, say minor and minor in money, major in life, you know, tagline I use for it, and that has just continued to evolve, and it started off as just something sort of as I was doing on the side, but continue to do that, but it's really opened a lot of doors, and I've gotten so much positive feedback from that, and have been asked to speak to quite a few different groups, and things like that, so it's just been, it's been wonderful from an impact perspective of being able to spread my knowledge, and you know, give, give people insight into, you know, what being being smart with your money, how you can enhance your life, how you can, you know, fuel the values that truly matter in your life. And so I've really enjoyed that, and it will continue, you know, it's already opening more doors, and will continue to open more doors of opportunity to lead and help others, and that's just a, you know, I talk about on there that the wheel of life is one of the things I'm big on, and you know it's that you have all these different spokes that are important in your life, and you know each of the spokes, your wheel rolls the best when each of those spokes are of equal length, and so people get fixated on money, and the reality is there's so much more to life, whether it's relationships and family and intimate relationships, and your career is certainly in there as well, but things like, like learning and growing and helping others are all also important things, and so as I move further along in my, my, my career and life journey, helping others piece becomes more and more important, and so this was an avenue that I thought would be a good one to share, to share my life lessons and share, you know, how look at things from a different perspective, and really try to spread positive, positive messages about, you know, living a fulfilling life and living a life aligned with your values, and it's the feedback I've gotten from readers and things like that's been wonderful. I mean, every time I, every week, when I send, send it out, I get, you know, I get all kinds of text messages and emails of people, like, "Oh my gosh, this, you know, positive, this impacted me, or"this changed my perspective on this, or "this was wonderful and made me feel so good, or, you know, all that stuff. You know, although it doesn't make me any money, but it checks that, checks the fulfillment, but. Bucks, which I'm big on. I'm big on helping others and teaching others and helping others learn from me. So, I've really enjoyed that. That's awesome. Again, guys, that is Bold Dash life.com And I think there's like, there's such a huge need for that, Chris, and construction, right? There's some entrepreneur-rich, right? It's a really hard business to run and build and grow, participate in, right. And that's for the, you know, sub$50 million a year residential guys. It's just the same as it is for the guys that are doing billions of dollars in revenue. So I think I think you're doing a great job. I think that's definitely needed in the, in the space. Aside from that, how do.. how do people find you, Chris, if they listen to this and they were, you know, compelled to follow or get involved with your newsletter, follow on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever? How do they find you? Yeah, so you know, pretty much other than Bold Life, you can also.. there's.. I have a personal website, Chris ehrenfeld.com so that C H R S E H R E N F E L d.com or you can go to Bold N c.com which will link you to all my Bold companies, but pretty much Google, Google anything, Chris Ehrenfeld, Bold, anything Bold, Bold Life, Chapel Hill, you'll, you'll find, you know, there's, there's plenty of, plenty of websites, plenty of content, plenty of information out there on me, so just, if just if you can remember bold, you can bold in Chapel Hill is probably the easier thing, just so you're not getting bold somewhere else. With Bold and Chapel Hill, you can find plenty of stuff out there, and certainly find me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all those. You know, I'd love to connect with you. I post a lot of my content on LinkedIn, so that's that's a great way to connect, so if you do want to connect with me, just put a little note that says, "Hey, I heard you on the on the podcast, and you know, be happy to connect with you. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Chris, it was an absolute pleasure. This was a fantastic conversation. I appreciate you, and I look forward to staying in touch with you, man. Following you along, this is going to be great. Yeah, you as well, Reece. This is great.