Episode 101 - Behind the Beard: Danny Spears' Passion for Building and Family Success
#101 | Danny Spears | Captex Construction | Behind the Beard: Danny Spears' Passion for Building and Family Success
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams hangs out with Danny Spears from Captex Construction, based in Austin. They dive into Danny's love for building not just houses, but also a strong family-centric company culture. Danny dishes out some gems about leading a team, the joys and challenges of construction, and why balancing work and family is super important to him.
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About Danny Spears
Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Danny Spears is one of the top builders in the area, and his model is based on quality, value and speed. His unique and client-driven approach to construction sets him apart from any other custom/luxury home builders in Austin. Danny is highly skilled in complex topographical conditions, managing large crews, facilitating all trades, and has experience in high rise concrete construction.
He works diligently with each client and takes pride in seeing his completed projects and happy clients throughout the greater Austin area. Danny is passionate about his career, team, and clients. At his core, he is a family man and enjoys spending time with his four children. Danny resides in Central Austin, where he enjoys family time, hunting, and fishing.
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Mark D. Williams 00:00
Outside of the podcast, we have the curious collectives. We get small groups no more than 30. You get into tables of nine, and we have set topics of discussion. You can see everything that you want on the website at curious builder podcast.com you can also find it in other cities. So the collective is going into Phoenix. Brad Levitt is going to be hosting a curious collective down in Phoenix, Arizona. We're gonna have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo leading a collective in Atlanta, Georgia, and we're gonna have David and Angela Penske down in San Antonio, also leading a collective. And a few other states are coming online later this year as well, of course, as Minnesota. So if you're interested in getting together with like minded individuals. This collective is kind of somewhere between what we do at the contractor coalition. It's also kind of a hybrid of what you see at builder 20s. So it's a really open format, very much embracing collaboration of competition. If you want to further your education, if you want to increase learning from each other, you definitely want to find out more about these collectives. I'm
Danny Spears 01:01
super passionate about nonprofit stuff. Like, you know, when I'm when I'm done what I'm doing here, and this thing is growing without me, you know, the plan is to build a house or two for, like, Habitat for Humanity, you know, like, we're gonna give this house to a family that's lost everything that that is, like, my calling of what I want to see in the future. And don't get me wrong, I like building ten million houses, but I don't live in a ten million house.
Mark D. Williams 01:34
Today, on the podcast, we had Danny Spears out of Austin, Texas with captex. And fasten your seat belt or your belt buckle, if you will. This is going to be one heck of an episode. If you want passion, you came to the right place. Without further ado, here's Danny spears. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today, I'm joined with Danny spears at Austin, Texas with captex construction. Nice to meet you, Danny. Hey. Nice to meet you guys. How are you? I'm great. I was just giving you crap beforehand because you got a killer ZZ Top beard, and it's supposed to be like negative 15 on Monday, and you would have a ice road trucker of a beard if you were up here, dude, I tell you what, I love a lot of things, but the cold ain't one of them. Nobody likes the cold. We're just better at lying about it. Oh, I hate it. My bones can't take it anymore. It is funny. I'm good friends Mike Weaver from EMS or tile. He's down in Houston. Oh, I had emails exchanges. Oh, sure, he's coming up here. Actually, he just landed. I just talked to him, because I actually called him. I said, Hey, do you know Danny? I'm hopping on in about 10 minutes. I'm actually in Minnesota. I gotta go. So didn't even answer the question. And then he's coming up next week. We have something called sauna camp. So we decided, just because I love fitness and wellness, we're doing this thing. It's cold in January. So when it's hopping a sauna, then hop in the cold water. I got your heat. You can man that. You can man the sauna. Yeah, I did. I did that this morning. I got in the pool and then get in the hot tub. I had, love it. Love it, love it. Usually we do a quick bio, but in the two seconds that we were on before recorded, I think we'll just go in a different way this time. We'll eventually get to your story. But I love to ask people like, what are they most passionate about? And usually the things that drive us. I mean, you've been in business now for 15 years, you know, the things that drive us, whether you're married, whether you have kids, whether it's your business, your craft, or all of it, where we get our energy from, is driven a lot by our passion. And so I'd love to really start this episode a little different than I have some of the others, and just ask you, like, what is your driving force? What is your main passion? I My main goal and passion in life is to be a very successful father. And I think if you can be a very successful father, then you can be a very successful leader. Case in point, I didn't really have a great relationship with my dad, and when I promised myself, what when I get to that point in my life, I'm going to give it 110%
Danny Spears 03:45
and I did that, and you obviously can't see this is my office here at the home, and it's littered with pictures of me and my family and our children and my grand babies, and a lot of my stuff was really put on The outdoors. I'm an avid fisherman, saltwater, avid hunter, but everything I do is predicated on my family, and that's exactly how I run my business. I've had employees, and obviously people can speak on this. A lot of people have a hard time maintaining employees, especially good ones. I always make a joke that there's not another builder in Austin that can take my employees. They won't leave. They'll just laugh you out of the building. It's mandatory that I give my guys off three weeks a year, because I expect them to be good dads, and I expect the ladies to be good mothers. And Christmas time, it's a no go for me. I tell my clients, I love you. We work seven days a week for 355 days, but 10 days, we're going to celebrate Christmas with our families and and that's what it's going to be. And I can tell you that it's a pleasure to work with families like I get to work with because they see the value. That. And quite frankly, nobody's ever questioned me when it came to like, well, how come you guys are not here right now? And so I love that about CAP text, I don't bother my men or the women for 10 days, and I tell them, do not remember my phone number for 10 days, because I'm going to be here with my love, and I'm going to be here with our babies, and that's what we're going to do, and and it's just, you start off the new year fresh, right? And everybody has this level of appreciation, because we don't know what people are going through at Christmas time and the New Years and and so it lets everybody kind of decompress. And
Mark D. Williams 05:36
I love, I love everything you said about that. It reminds me my dad built for 30 years, and he had a project manager that was a workaholic, and he didn't have any other hobbies. And my dad used to always say, if you don't have hobbies as a young man, you won't have hobbies as an old man. And that was never a problem for me. I got too many hobbies. It's gonna force me into retirement. But anyway, the where I was going with this is he told his name was Dean. Super talented guy, nice. I've learned so much from Dean, a really incredible person, but he could not turn it off. And my my dad told him, on a Friday, he gave him $100 back when $100 was actually worth something. And he said, If you don't work the whole weekend, if you don't go to a job site, there was no email back then, but if you don't make a phone call, if you didn't do anything with any jobs, he goes, this $100 is yours. I think he gave it to him. He goes, but if you do, you have to give it back to me Monday morning. And sure, shooting Monday morning, he walked back in and he handed the $100 back to my dad. He couldn't turn it off.
Danny Spears 06:30
I can resonate with that. And the reason I say that is that before you establish a company, it's like you're grinding and you're asking me about the three hours of sleep. That's That's true. I came from a background of hard work, and I also came from I was dad at 21 but 21 years old, and a dad, you know how hard it is to make money at 21 so I really pushed hard, and I worked seven days a week, and I worked 14 hour days, and I built a whole lot of infrastructure for a whole lot of people. And I guess my body just got tuned that way. So I can understand that Dean has it in him to not let it go me. I'm up every morning, three o'clock workout for two hours and intense workouts, and then on the job site, 678, o'clock at night, then obviously, emails. It's just funny, because my daughter works for me now, and she has access, obviously, to everything I've got via text messages or emails or whatever. We have over 100 employees.
Mark D. Williams 07:36
And whoa. I had no idea was 100 Oh, wow, yeah,
Danny Spears 07:40
yeah. So I do everything in house. So I do all of my civil work. I do all my structural work. I do all of my I own an MEP company here in Austin. So yeah, every facet of construction on the multi million dollar homes that I build in Austin is done by CAP text and so very few things have subcontractors in them, cabinet trees, sheet rock and paint, but that's about it, everything.
Mark D. Williams 08:06
How common is that in your market? I don't know the Texas market very well. That seems very uncommon here.
Danny Spears 08:12
I don't think it's really common in America anymore, but even in the
Mark D. Williams 08:15
commercial What about commercial settings? Would you rival commercial? Because commercial do they keep a lot of in house, or they sum it up to
Danny Spears 08:21
legality standpoint, commercial, there's no way they would touch it. Yeah, they want everybody to be bonded. They want everybody to have their own insurance policies and so on so forth. And I, obviously, I do that with my other company. It's, I own it and and so it's bonded and insured on its own self, with the MEP, and on the side of me, I have my own framing team. I have my own concrete team. I have everything. I all my red iron equipment, bulldozers, tractors, excavators. It's all owned by me. So when we have a development come in, we do everything by me. Like I'll run operations all day long. I'll sit on the tractor for two months pushing dirt pilings, whatever we got to do. We work here on the lake a lot. We got I'm surprised you
Mark D. Williams 09:03
don't just skip your three to 5am workout, grab a shovel, and there's your pushing. Just push the bulldozer if it needs a jump. That's your leg. That's your leg. Day.
Danny Spears 09:12
I just found that the team works better when the captain's there, right? I always talk about a success of Tom Brady and everybody up there and Bill Belichick, Tom was always he was the leader, but he knew that he didn't win the Super Bowl unless everybody else on that field was doing their job. I
Mark D. Williams 09:30
heard something recently about reps. I can't remember who I was listening to, one of the radio heads, probably, and they were talking about that even on whatever day it was, Tuesday, Wednesday, walkthroughs, he didn't want to give up one rep to the backup quarterback, and he was maniacal about participation and reps and that kind of commitment. It's funny you mentioned that because it's pretty obvious, looking at your website, doing a little research ahead of this is just and obviously there's the photo ops of it too. But you I could tell instantly, you can tell the real McCoy, the guys who. To put their hands on. I'm not. I don't pretend to be like that's not my skill set, not even really my interest, frankly. But from the standpoint of a compliment to you and what you just said about the captain being in the field like all the photos, are you interacting on the job site with the field? And it's not that I don't like to be there. I run a very small operation and I don't have but maybe it's no excuse you have a massive operation and you're still there. So you do both. But it's it's very clear to see that you are at the helm, even in your photography and the website presentation that you have already like
Danny Spears 10:31
they say, you live and die by the sword, right? And my the biggest thing that you can be as an owner, as a captain, you're the fall guy. Nobody on my team is the fall guy. That's my responsibility. It's my responsibility to get kicked in the teeth, not theirs, if something goes wrong, it's my responsibility these I've never solicited business. I don't solicit business. All of the homes that we've been have been built by word of mouth. It's just facts, right? And when you build a business like that, there's a level of expectation that the client gets from you, like I can have. I've got some men that have been in the framing industry for 30 years, incredibly intelligent, and may know more about framing than me, but the homeowner doesn't want to hear from them. They expect the guy that made them a promise, he's the one that answers the phone, he's the one that replies back to a text message, and it's pretty and I'll say this because this is how serious my team take us. Because I got a lot of young guys that are 27 to 31 and you hear about this lackluster performance in people of that age. I brought these people on at a young age, and I showed them respect, and I showed them I'm like you follow and you do what I do for three years, and you can build your own home anywhere. And my expectation from my employees is that if you're still working for me in 10 years, you haven't learned anything. You haven't learned nothing. Why aren't you out building houses on your own. Why aren't you out opening up another small business? Because I'm not guaranteed to be here forever. So if I die tomorrow, what are these men going to do? So my my expectation in these younger generation is like, hey, learn everything you can, get really good at it and make sure you're passionate about it. And the biggest thing, the devil is in the details. Always don't look at the broad picture. That's my job. I'm teaching you to be focused on getting really good at every one of these areas. And everybody knows that when you're building a custom home, the punch is the most necessary of all things, that final product. It is as important as making sure that the foundation is as strong as the sticks that it's holding up. And I understand what that looks like. And I tell my guys and my ladies all the time, hey, you're going to work here. You need to build this house. You're paying for it. And we have team meetings, barbecues, gatherings, this, that and the other. Every two or three weeks we're out. I'm buying lunch for everybody. Or every other month, we're having to get together at the office. We shut it down at noon and get some beers out there, and everybody has a good time. Let everybody take a step back. It's we got two temperatures here in Texas, cold and hot as hell, and that's it. And you just gotta fight the good fight. And and I have a team that has made me successful. I did not make myself successful. I just believed in men and women, and I believed in my family, my children and my my daughters are incredibly intelligent, far more than their father. I'm just going to throw it out there. And they're like me. They just don't take no for an answer. They'll tell you, if my dad said it can be done, it's we're going to have to do it, he's not going to. You're going to. If Danny said you're going, and I will say this as well. In the construction industry, a lot of my clients, they've had nightmarish things happen to him building a house, and we didn't get along with our builder. We were chasing him down. He didn't finish the job. My clients have my phone number, and I only have one. And if I could put 50 people on this talk show right now, they tell you, if I call Danny, he's got somebody sitting in my driveway in 15 minutes, that's how you become successful. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't drive Maseratis and Corvettes. I drive a Ford pickup truck, what usually has a gooseneck trailer on the back. So, you know, it's just like, get dirty, use your hands and every trade that I have, I've done their job. So critiquing something is what I'm meant to be. I'm probably not the best teacher, but I've been doing good enough, but not every day. I'm trying to learn a little bit more and push myself, and with the grace of God and all my employees, I've been able to do that, and they're not. Ways, they're my family.
Mark D. Williams 15:02
One of the questions I have, because you have a really large company, and someone posed this question to me, and I it was, it's been a inspiring light for me for what I want. I've been building for 20 years, and so looking at, God willing, the back 20 what would that look like for me? And the question I'm going to ask you is, if you were removed right now today. What would your company operate without you? Because in some ways, you have a big company. So I assume you have structures and people in place, and 100 people is no joke. That's a pretty it's a massive operation. I can only guess at the right questions to ask for a company that big, but I can, but my question is, you've also put yourself as the captain of the ship, like every road leads to Rome. In this scenario, every road leads to you. If you walked out right now today and went to Nepal, I'll meet you there. We'll go climb we'll go do the Annapurna Circuit for 60 days. What would happen to what would happen to the company?
Danny Spears 15:54
Same thing would happen if, if I died today, the lights got to stay on. You got to keep on pushing. But who's running it? You're gone. My kids have the capacity to do whatever's needed and and run it like a boss. I'm my daughter is 28 I don't really like telling her what to do, because she scares me sometimes. And so my architect, who is my, my my best friend, and she is a She is the lady that's designed 90% of the stuff you've seen on my website. Her and I have created teams together. And I'm a man who loves to strength. And I'm gonna say this in my guys. She said, hey, when I said, I like, if I could have all women working for me, you guys would be homeless. Ian, list.
Mark D. Williams 16:48
This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. You know, we use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally, as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, where I interview Peter and Ed from Pella Northland about their journey into the Pella ownership. I feel very strongly, and not just because I have a daughter. My mom was an interior designer, and just women are, frankly, just better at most things than men. And you and I will have to do some daddy daughter counseling after this one, I've only got one, and it's, she's a She's amazing. But my point is, like memory and customer service, and at least in my market. But I think about the housing industry as homeowners, most are, sorry, business owners. The majority of businesses, especially in construction, would be predominantly owned by men, and yet, most of our interactions are with women. At least for me, you look at like Instagram, like our in a lot of analytics, don't lie, it's 70% women, 30% men. And when you are talking about, I'm not saying men aren't involved in their home, obviously. But even when I build my own home, I always talk about this on the podcast, like, I don't get a voice in my own home, and I'm the builder. Like, I look at my wife and I say, Hey, honey, I'd really like this. That another thing. And she looks at me, and she's not happening. And then I'll joke, and I'll say, people pay me for my opinion, and she'll say, I'm not paying you. And my point is, we do need more women, and so I love i The more and more people that I interview. That's a common theme. And I actually, I'd be curious to know from your like out of 100 employees, how many are women of your 100 employees? The
Danny Spears 18:37
funny thing is that the ones that are, the ones that are women are project managers and operations directors. So my 28 year old daughter will go tell a 50 year old man, chop chop boy. I'll have time for your BS, it's this is a no go time. It's no fly zone. Go to work and his response better be Yes. Ma'am, yeah. Don't the worst that you could do with me is buck the system with my kids, right? That bad because they know that I hold them to a level and a standard of we are here to support our team and to protect our clients.
Mark D. Williams 19:12
I and if they're anything like you, which I imagine they are, you've already said that, but it's not you respect your people. I often say is I actually like you. They're not direct employees, but I've worked with a lot of my trade partners. I've won that we're third generation on both sides. Fourth on mine. Third on mixing that up. Third on mine, fourth on his. My grandparents worked with his grandparents. My plumber, it's the longest one. And I guess my point is I couldn't build a single thing. And I often joke that these calluses out of my hand are from tennis and lifting weights. If you see me working on the job site like all the PM, I'm ruining your house. Unlike you, where you can do something, I can't. Design wise leading, that's fine, but actual, no, that's not my skill set. But my point in bringing it up is I ask the single most important thing I think any business owner forget construction. I think anyone is ask for help. Because if. You empower your people. It's no different than your family if your wife tells you to do something versus if they ask you. Maybe I don't think it's just me, but I'll certainly hop a lot higher if my wife asked me to do something versus we all do. I think it's somehow ingrained, particularly in men, like most men, don't love being told what to do, but if you ask them, if you invite their help, oh, man, you got yourself a super fan.
Danny Spears 20:22
And I tell you, if you and if you interviewed my team, they would tell you the same thing, Danny doesn't come here. If you see Danny hot, it's because something bad happened. You know, like I conduct myself in a different way, like my crew will tell you, like Danny zero nonsense. He's not going to put up with it. He's not going to tolerate not going to tolerate we're here to work. You want to play grab ass. You can take that somewhere else. I ain't doing it these we're on these people's dime right now. You're not just working with me or for me or beside me. We are working for them. The this family, this husband and this father and these children have allowed us to participate in building their future, which is, for the most part, a home is is your most valuable asset, right? And it's not just because it's the money, it's because where the memories are made, 100% agree, yeah. And so for me, it's I tell my guys, don't disrespect this property. Be mindful. You get done, you clean up like it's your kitchen. Don't leave stuff laying around. Let's show these people the reason they chose captex was not just for me, but for this team, and to be able to see the fruits of your labor. I've only fired three people in 15 years.
Mark D. Williams 21:37
That's impressive, especially with the number of people you have,
Danny Spears 21:42
that's because I only hire who I want, and I'm only going to hire the best, but
Mark D. Williams 21:47
you also empower them. It sounds like you hire them young, and you train them in and if you believe in somebody, it's almost like you're adopting people, adopting puppies, and then
Danny Spears 21:55
threads with you from Christmas. That would be like, just amazed. And one of the people that I fired, it's quite it's actually funny. I fired him because he came a master electrician, and I fired him because I knew that I had taken him as far as I could. I knew that he had something special in him, and that he needed to open his own business. Do you know, every Christmas day since I fired him, there's a card on my front porch and a Yeti cooler or something like that, and a turkey and a bottle of whiskey. This boy and his family come to my house and they drop it off. He came to me as an apprentice, and he was in process of getting his green card and everything else. We helped him get through all of that. We helped him do everything. But he was so intelligent. It's just so smart when it came to electricity. I'm like, I got him through the journey in class, and then he got it, and he was with me for four years. And he's, Hey, boss, I'm going to go take my Masters. I'm like, good. You need to and then he called me the next day. He said, Hey, boss, I got a 90 and I'm like, Hey, come get your severance package because you don't work for me anymore. And he said, What? What did I do wrong? I was like, I have taken you as far as I can. It's time for you to go out and create opportunities for others. And he didn't understand at that time, it took him about six months. I helped him do proposals and bidding and this and that and the other. I helped him get to where he I didn't just throw him out on the street, and he had enough money that I gave him to where he could live, but he had to go hustle. And I've seen him hustle in the field, and I've seen him talk to customers and clients, and he had a presence about him, but more important than that, he had integrity. So if he didn't have integrity, I just stuck him in the back of the pickup truck, and he could have worked because he was 95 years old. But I don't employ people like that and call it. 10 months after he was let go, Christmas rolls around, and he landed two big jobs. His wife made me tamales, and they set the stuff over my Ian, I walk outside. It's Christmas morning. I'm like, What are you doing? I picked the phone. He says, boss, I love you, and every Christmas he calls me two or three times a year, man. Andy, let me take you to lunch. Hey, boss, I miss you. I'm like, You're the boss now, buddy, I'm not the boss. You get to lead like I taught you, and he's he'll he says that to me, and I take more pride in that of understanding like being compassionate to others is great when they're willing to be compassionate. Back to you. So you asked me, what would happen if my if I was gone, my company would still be running, because my employees see how much love and care that I give them, and then obviously, when I do take vacation, they're like, Danny, don't worry about this. Go enjoy your time. We got you boss and like, that's when I first started this thing that did not happen. No, the. Captain is not leaving the ship and hitting an iceberg. It's not going to happen. So after the course of eight, 910, years of just grinding it out and seeing like how each young man or woman was like, reacting to things that need to take place in the field or managerial things, or just like, Whatever it looks like. I started then backing up, not backing up to lead the business, but, man, I'm 48 be 49 in August, and I want to travel, right? I want to I want to experience some life. And that's just what I want to do. But I want to do it with my kids and my grandkids. And I got little grandson and granddaughter, and it's, I'm just incredibly blessed human being. I mean, I say it all the time. I tell my grandmother, only person I got left she's 84 mean, as a rattlesnake, I'm like Manny. I don't know what I did in this world to be so fortunate to have so many wonderful things in my life. And that's how I conduct myself. What was her response? My grandmother is she worked until she was 77 and that's a hard thing for me to see, because my mom, my dad passed, and all of my family's pretty much gone, except for a half brother and my real sister, and she is very stern and very rigid like me. She understands the value of dollar, but she understands how you make that money, and you gotta, you just gotta get it right. And although I just, I've never put a heavy emphasis on money, because if you love what you do, you're always going to be rich in life, always. I love what I do. I love creating opportunities. I'm super passionate about nonprofit stuff. When I'm done what I'm doing here, and this thing is growing without me. The plan is to build a house or two for, like, Habitat for Humanity. Like, we're going to give this house to a family that's lost everything that is like my calling of what I want to see in the future. Don't get me wrong, I like building ten million houses, but, you know, I don't live in a ten million house. It's
Mark D. Williams 27:10
something. It's interesting. So I build about four homes a year in the million and a half to 5 million range. And back in the day, my dad built about 40 homes a year, and we're about the same revenue per year, and he made a comment one time, and I appreciate his guidance. He said, Never lose sight, regardless of how much a home costs, that it's a home, and it is, I think builders across the country, we're not very good at taking compliments, and we're not very good at self adulation or without being prideful, and the ego side of it getting in the way of like, realizing like, we are serving a fundamental need in this country, in this world, forget country, the world outside of farming and hunting, shelter is like one of the first things that happens when Adam and Eve left the garden of Eve, I bet they had to find some food, but you probably had to find some shelter. And like that will always be the case. And so I think it's really important to realize that, and you mentioned it earlier in the podcast, that about the home and the memories. And yes, there's a financial asset, but rich in life is watching your children grow up, or having memories or playing a puzzle on a table. We're sentimental. Everyone's different. Have a different level of sentiment, mentality and of what they value. But when you are with your children, in particular, something about family, that's because a force multiplier you it cements a memory deeper. And I don't know how I do I'm doing a poor job of explaining how a home, but most people, if I asked them, actually, I'll ask you, do you remember the address of the home you grew up in? Yep. Mine is 1355, very insurance drive, and I was the son of a builder. We moved a lot. My point is, everyone pretty much remembers that address, and it's been 30 some years, or however many years it's been since I've lived there. But like, it has a real impact on people. And I think the average American, there's varying stats on this, live in their home between nine and 12 years, and I'm very proud of what we do in the United States, being builders, but we do build differently than they build in other parts of the world, a lot of places, and I'm not the first person to talk about this, but let's say, in Switzerland or in parts of Europe, they do tend to spend more money on their home, triple pain and a lot of energy, stuff that someone might scoff at, but they're looking at multi generationally because they land locked, there's nowhere they can go. And we build homes so fast here, nobody can build a stick frame home faster than we can United States, and that's really probably since World War Two to now. And going back to our earlier comment about women in the workforce, I think it's very well published that there's been a huge education gap, or not gap, that basically, we've pushed children, I think, through federal mandates and through schooling, to go to college. That's the only place you can go to college. Dude, you can make so much money in the trades. Honestly, if I could go back, I would probably be an electrician or a plumber. Forget being a builder. You that's very lucrative careers to be had. And as more and more, I think it's 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. Way, the opportunity is only growing exponentially, and I think two things are going to really be a huge impact for us. One is obviously technology, whether it's AI or panelization or we're going to have to figure out ways to replace bodies. The second is, I think we are all fighting for more women in the workplace, and if the construction industry can win and get more women out of the population into construction, because everyone's competing for this base. And I don't hear a lot of people talking about it. I'm not It's not like this, some new resource that doesn't exist. Everyone knows about it. But I'm saying like, from a market share standpoint, if we could make it more appealing, more attractive and a better place, and construction would be set up to just absolutely explode with talent. I don't know what's your thoughts on that? That
Danny Spears 30:46
is exactly my thoughts. Case in point that both of my son in laws work for me, and both of my daughters work for me, right? And my son, Beau, who's 13, his exact words to me were, dad, and keep in mind, this kid runs a mini excavator and puts in septic tanks for me in the summertime. He understands elevations, he understands dig lines. He understands he's told me, Dad, it's going to be nice when I get to tell you what to do. Yeah, don't wait for that day. With that being said, You're absolutely right. So owning an MVP company, and I talk about this all the time, is that the there is so many opportunities, because the one thing you're going to need outside of shelters, electricity. You got to have plumbing. You it's a necessity. If you live in Texas, you better have an air conditioner. And so all of these things together is like a driving force for me, not just to create the revenue, but to create the opportunity. Because if you create the opportunity, the revenue is going to come, right? And that's the biggest thing. Building houses. I think I built 20 some odd houses last year, $60 million so my average home, three, 4 million. I do some that are 10 or 1214, but I build houses in really weird areas, topography over 40% grade. We're talking big concrete structures. And our motto, and mine has always been like, all I want to do is make your wife cry when she walks in. I give her the keys. Because you know what, dads, all of us, me, you all of us say, give me a room, a bed, a kitchen, a bathroom. Because if it wasn't really for our wives or the women in this world, chances are we'd still be living in caves. I think everybody would probably be like, that's about, right? And so I take a great amount of pride and building a houses. Dads always ask me about price. Moms are like, beautiful, and I'll tell a husband, you and y'all, I'm not a marriage counselor. I'm not working on that. You
Mark D. Williams 32:53
got a part time. Though, anyone that's been building for a while realize that relationship management, unfortunately, whether we want it or not, it is a it is actually an important factor, because it is not easy. And I we just had this conversation the other day with an interior designer, and she was laughing, saying she had an honorary marriage counseling degree, and because it is very stress is variable, and everyone deals with stress differently, it doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of joy in it, like your wife could still cry, hopefully for joy. I've often said that someone will cry. Hopefully we can create the circumstances where it's joy, but sure shooting someone is crying during this build. And my point is, it is stressful. I think it's important for us as the leaders of the ship to realize, okay, it's not going to be smooth sailing from here to Europe. Guys like, we're going to get some rough seas. But are we going to band together, and are we going to see this all the way through? And if we do, they got Band of Brothers approach like, I think you when you work with your employees, or honestly, your design team as well as your client, become your team for a short period of time. And they do leave their impact on the build and on the company, sometimes for the positive, sometimes for the negative, sometimes it's neutral. We
Danny Spears 33:58
we collectively through architect, design and build, we are working hand in hand with the same folks. Every day. I actually pay my architect designer for services rendered from project management, from her, because their job is to do design. Their job is to understand the architectural pieces of it. But those are the also the people that have been working with these clients. So they've been having very white glove service and very Hey, oh, it's Judy. Hey. How you doing? Girl? That kind of stuff. Me. I'm like, meat and potatoes, like the Tasmanian devil. They walk out there. I'm like, I'm probably going to say something that's going to offend you. And if you're easily offended, I'll wait until you leave. And it's funny, because the dads are like, I love that dude, right? And I'm like, when will the house be ready? I told you, six months. I'm sticking that schedule. I'll call you when your keys are ready. You trusted me this far. Let me do my job. I promise you're going to not be disappointed. And I've always. Conducted myself that way, and either people are going to love it or they're going to hate it. And people that don't know anything about building, they love it, the people that think they know just a little bit about building, that is a trend.
Mark D. Williams 35:17
Oh, man, I was going to ask you, this would be a fun segue to what are some red flags, but that's one of them, right? Because we did a design once for a former he did commercial construction on a huge scale, hospitals and things like that. And I can't say, know anything about building commercial, but he doesn't know anything about residential either. And obviously we both could be dangerous in the other person's arena. That being said, they're the hardest client, because they know just a little too much and but, and they're also not very good at just being like, Hey, I'm going to take a back seat. And to your point, the ones that say we hired you to do a great job. We believe in your work. We've seen it. We like what you do. Those are the best. Those are the best. Everyone has a good the team, our team has a good experience. They have a good experience. It just it sets it up for success when they try to drive your ship and you're the captain, that usually doesn't work real well. I
Danny Spears 36:05
have a strict no drive in my company. I've told people before, if you want to build houses, go be a builder. Because for me, not all business is good business. I had somebody tell me one time that price seems too high. I guess when people get hungry, they'll do the job. I'm like, ma'am, you can hire a jackass to pull your trailer. That mean he's going to get there any faster than a horse. So it's whatever you want to do. I
Mark D. Williams 36:32
gotta up. I gotta up my, I gotta up my, my mantra line. So these are amazing I need, clearly, I need more Texans on my podcast, because I'm just there's
Danny Spears 36:41
an active list from Ray who works at AC of like, when we have our big powwows at 3040, guys out there, like, I say some things and they're like, Wow. Like, he's like, this whole shirt of these things that Danny says that are 100% certain would not be on this podcast. There's no crying in construction. Man, they're just not like you guys deal with miserable temperatures up there that could put somebody over the edge. You come to Austin when it's 110 degrees outside and it's 140 in the attic. And so I've simplified my home builds, and by having all of these people in place, it allows you to be well, first of all, the quality control is so much easier. You're setting the schedule predicated on how you built every house. And I'll tell you, and I've said it a million times, a foundation is a foundation and a frame is a frame. Hey, never going to change lumber. Is still lumber, and it doesn't know it's lumber. It's just sticks right. It's like, how precise can we make everything off those plans? And let's do it right. The first time. Have
Mark D. Williams 37:53
you guys gotten into any SIP panels down there for your construction? Or have you looked at that SIP panels just standing in place, panels where you build them off site, and then the framers would just dip them up, but the walls would be pre would be pre assembled.
Danny Spears 38:03
No, I've got 15 framers, and I could frame a house like that, 10,000 square feet. No big deal, because by the time you get past the first story of my houses, I've got electricians putting boxes in already. By the time the floor joists are going in, we're putting in recess cans, wow. I can turn a 10,000 square foot house. MEP, 21 days. Holy smokes. So that's why. But
Mark D. Williams 38:30
what is your build? So your 10,000 square foot from the time you break ground to the time you hand them the keys? How many months? 10 months?
Danny Spears 38:38
Wow, 10 months. And that's the pools, that's the landscape, that'll be civil work, that'll be whatever it looks like. Wow, right? And so you guys can't do that there. It's too cold.
Mark D. Williams 38:49
We can work year round. I think your unique advantage there is two. One, they have a driver, like a with a bull whip on this Captain ship for one. But two, the fact that you have 100 employees, I feel very fortunate. I feel like I've been able to out punch my weight in my career, because I've empowered that even though they're my trade partners and my subs, I only use one per job. I've used the same framer for, sorry, at the same cabinet shop for, let's say 1215, years rich knows he calls me and says, Hey, he almost my people are almost extensions of project managers. So I've been able to go a little light here. My point is, is you have 100 employees. They're used to working each other. They have barbecues together, they spend time off together. They don't need to, they don't need to come to you. If it comes to you, it's probably gotten pretty bad, would be my guess. And and so they're able to self communicate, which it's hard to put a price on it. I don't know how you would actually figure that out, but you would have to say that it's invaluable, and it's priceless, because there's no way you could do a seven or 10,000 square foot house in this example, in 10 months at the quality that you're building without a team that was that lock stepped, but you just simply couldn't
Danny Spears 39:52
do it 20 of them. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 39:55
okay, that's just a whole nother level.
Danny Spears 39:57
I'm running two companies, right? It's. Just but it's the level of want and success. Look, I have a client that I'm working for right now, and I absolutely I respect the heck out of this guy. He's done very well for himself. Obviously, I'm not going to say his name here, but I'd be surprised if people obviously would know him. He came to me and money is not really an object, and I'm like, Look, I told you this was going to cost, x, y, z, and you're making a lot of changes. I like open lines of communication. I don't want you to think I'm getting in your pocket. I am cost plus. So if you know that, every time you buy a million dollars for the stuff you're paying me $300,000 we're golden. He's Danny. He's I really like you. We spend a lot of time today. I can make more money, but I can't make more time. That within itself is just what it means. He cares about his family. He cares about his extended family and the places that he owns and runs. He cherishes his moments. He doesn't care about the money. And I've always said the same thing, and I said it earlier, money does not make you if you love what you do and you're passionate about it and you're good at it, you're gonna be fine. Somebody's gonna need you all the time. And when he said that to me, it just made me realize that I was working for the kind of guy that I wanted to work for, and and I've walked out of some opportunities where I could have made a million bucks. I'm like, I'm good. If I want to go slam my hand in a car door, I'll go do it for free. It's
Mark D. Williams 41:27
interesting. Brad Levitt down in Arizona, so he often says this on his podcast. He's a good friend, and I haven't quoted him now for a year, so I'm overdue for this one. But he often would say that, are you operating out of abundance or scarcity? And I think it can't where I'm to you. It applies both ways. In my opinion. One is you apply you run your business out of abundance, with how you treat your people, with how you treat your family and how you bring them in two, you're looking at clients out of abundance too, because we've all been and I know earlier on in your career, you were there because nobody could ever run a business without knowing what it's like to be hungry and scrappy. And just because you're doing great now doesn't mean that hunger is gone, but you do have the backlog to say no to bad clients everyone. I can speak for myself, I've said yes to not red flags, but orange flags, just I don't know something. I didn't trust my gut. And sometimes we need as men, we need reasons. We need rationality. Maybe as men, we're not as good, or maybe I'm not as good at trusting my gut, but then in hindsight, I'm like, Man, there was something in my there was something in me that said run. And I said, You know what? I can deal with it. And you did, and you got it done, whatever. But like looking back, that's the benefit, of course, hindsight, it's 2020, but I think regardless, that quote works. If we treat our people out of abundance and our clients out of abundances, there won't be scarcity, and we'll certainly have rich moments. But I also think like when we try to attract clients, if when you are desperate, man, you can't get a job, and when you are and when you are just confident and rolling, they're falling out of the sky, you can't stop them. And it's such a funny thing. Do you agree with that 100% and
Danny Spears 42:58
I'll tell you that the scarcity. Part of this is going to hit home when I say this is that when COVID happened, I had I was the only builder in two neighborhoods that was just like we're working. I got 80 mouths to feed, and they've got 10 mouths a piece, depending on me to go to work. So that's the scarcity. The abundance came from that the people that I was working around seeing that I was doing, and they're like, we want that guy to build our house. They weren't shopping me. They weren't asking me questions. Danny, when can you start? We'll start tomorrow. Well, you won't have to wait six months. Or are the permits ready? Yeah, the permits ready. When do you want us to be here. Be here. Monday. Perfect. Be out. I got it. We're tearing the house down.
Mark D. Williams 43:51
This episode is brought to you by adaptive. For over two years now, I've been using adaptive. It's an incredible game changer. It's AI technology based. It helps you with bill pay. And as a builder, there's very few things that anger our subs more than not being paid on time. Well, those days are gone. Not only do you know exactly where you are, but you can pay people through your ACH channels, making draws extremely quick with one click of a button, which used to take hours, my office staff is now able to generate a draw to the bank or to the client in literally seconds. The thing that I appreciate the most about adaptive is their ability to keep changing. We've given them three or four feedbacks on things that we need as builders, and within just a few months those they're rolling those things out. This is saving us hours per week and days per month in terms of our efficiency. If you're looking to upgrade your business, I'd highly recommend adaptive. You can reach out to them@adaptive.com or listen to the curious builder podcast episode 15 or episode 80, where we dive into their origin story. Do you have two or three major breakthrough moments you mentioned there earlier that like this last year, did 60 million in revenue when you first started, it was four of you in a truck trying to solicit one. Work, what we're looking back now in 15 years, where did you see some major breakthroughs in scaling your company to where you are now? I
Danny Spears 45:08
think one was my ability to not quit, because there's no success if you quit, you're just a quitter. And I've never had that in me, so I've always been driven to work, but to do and create something. So that part was one. I think two is when I started having men and women want to follow me, like, we want to work for you. Danny, this was like, This was great for us. It was wonderful experience. I really enjoy what I do. That was two. I think the first one would be, it would be my architect designer, though. So we'll start there. That was 10 years ago, like we did not like each other.
Mark D. Williams 45:46
This is your the one that earlier on in the podcast is that is
Danny Spears 45:48
your best friend and and the love of my life. And so I could tell you right now we like no not happening. And then we started working through a house. It was, it was built in 1920 and so it was historical home. And I, little did I know that the people that she designed the house for was her best friends. So that made it even tension, four knives cutting it up. And so that kind of played itself out. And we finally got to a breaking point where she's like, Oh, I respect how hard he works. And he builds a beautiful home. Oh, my God. Everybody else had been on this house at 18 months. He did it in six everybody else said $450,000 higher, and he was $60,000 less than he'd expected out to be. And so everything was hand work, because it was a historical home. And if you don't know anything about Austin, if you own a tree, don't touch it, because somebody's coming after you. So we had to work around all these parameters of this craziness. And so that job landed into another and then we started talking like back and forth, back and forth. And she'll tell you a funny story is 2015 or something like that. It's Christmas Day. I'm like, where are you at? And she's, what do you mean? It's Christmas? Like, I'm on the job site. Nobody's here, and she's, it's Christmas. I'm like, I don't care. Santa Claus ain't here. Like, we got stuff to do, man. And I think she hung up on me, I'm almost positive. And so we built two or three other houses, and then it started, you know, building, building, building. And I think I had a bad day or something. I don't really remember, but it was a renovation, but it was a studs down row and, but obviously, you've probably done these, but there's never adequate space in the subfloor, and she had this big, gorgeous, glorious home. And I'm like, Well, hey, I love your design where we put in air
Mark D. Williams 47:47
conditioners. Yeah, yeah. Why is that? The HVAC is the last thing that anybody plans for.
Danny Spears 47:52
I'm gonna tell you what, if you ever seen this little lady get fired up. I am an architect. I do not do those type of drawings. And I'm like, All right. And so apparently she was having a bad day too, and she stormed out of the house right like mad. She's my best friend. And so I was like, like, I need this. So I walked outside. It was a Friday, and
Mark D. Williams 48:18
at least that wasn't Christmas.
Danny Spears 48:21
You see, starts, she's so mad at me, so mad. And she was like, window cracked down this and then she gave me the middle one. She's and I'm like, please just, let's back up, relax. And she tried to run me over. And it's hilarious, because the homeowners were standing in the front yard, and John was dying. He's what did you do now, man? I'm like, Dude, I just said that I can't put an air conditioner where there's no I got nothing. If you guys don't want an AC, I'm golden. And he's just dying. And so all weekend long, I was like, send her a text message, Hey, man, I'm sorry, friend. I hope you were giving me no response. Send her an email, no response. And then Monday comes along. She's, you're really a jerk, you know that? And I'm like, I'm super sorry. I apologize. And she's, I love you. Don't let it happen again.
49:14
But yeah, it's
Danny Spears 49:17
just that kind of stuff. And so she holds herself and her company and her firm to the same level as me. She owns a firm that's in LA as well. And obviously we know what's going on there. Yeah, and she would tell you that she probably she's drawn a ton of beautiful things, and I think I've probably built 95% of the stuff that she's drawn in Texas. And it's just been an amazing partnership. So that's probably number three. And then kids coming of age.
Mark D. Williams 49:52
What you said? 18 down to 13, or, I'm sorry, 2820 820-826-2020.
Danny Spears 50:00
1311,
Mark D. Williams 50:01
okay, it's
Danny Spears 50:02
just one of those things. So you the kids come in age, and I worked tremendous amount of hours when my daughters were young, and so I missed out on a lot, and that's unfortunate, but it's life. And so as time has been by and you become more successful with age, you look back on your life and you're like, God, I wish I'd just had more time. I wish I'd have been able to do this, but it wasn't feasible, because you got to send it to college. The guy to eat. Gotta have a home.
Mark D. Williams 50:28
I think too, it's easy. I to be have a little grace with yourself too. Sometimes you know what today. I know what I know today. And none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes, and we learn from those. So you mentioned failure. Failure is the ultimate teacher, whether it's exercise or whether it's business or relationships, and as long as we're learning and trying to get better, honestly, I don't know how you can succeed without failure, and so I think it'd be easy to look at any story and look back and say, I don't sense regret, not that we it's not my place maybe even say that, but even, like listening to your story, thinking about even my own life and thinking, okay, like, I don't have a lot of regrets. Would I do certain things different? Yeah, maybe. But you're at where you're at today with the choices that you made, and like you've made a very conscious decision early on, based on the relationship with your dad, to not have that relationship with your kids, which is extremely commendable, and I've heard many times, not only in business and life, but like we are either we either model after something what we want, or we're inspired by something we don't want. And everyone is motivated. You can be motivated by the carrot or by the whip, but you're shooting, I guess. I hope you're just motivated by something like be passionate about something, show me something. That's how I feel. I don't know it's I'm pretty sure you feel pretty passionate about one of those as well. I reward
Danny Spears 51:46
passion. You know what I'm saying? If I have a guy or a lady that works for me, I don't wait for them to come to me. And I've never hired anybody when they're like, What do you want to be paid? I never say that. What do you need? And then, what do you want? Because if you just need $20 an hour, what does it take to get the most out of you? What do you want? And if what you want is $30 an hour, and you're going to be dedicated to me and this company and to this team and to this family, then okay, I'll give you your 30. Like, don't tell me what you need just to get by, because that never ends well. And I do the same thing with my kids. That's
Mark D. Williams 52:24
the same that goes back to the scarcity, abundance thing. It's the same concept when you
Danny Spears 52:28
come from nothing. I came from nothing. My house, my first house, had holes in the floors. Facts, it did. And you know what? I was happy. I didn't know what money was. I knew that I got to go out and hang out with my friends on a river. I could have been I could have cared less. We didn't have an air conditioner in our car. It didn't matter to me. Didn't have one in the house. Didn't know what it was. And so if you don't know what something is, and then you get it, then there's a level of appreciation. I could care less about the house that I live in or the truck that I drive. I can tell you that when my granddaughter Camila says, Pops, you want to talk about pride, I don't have I don't do social media. I don't even know how to work Instagram. I couldn't tell you I don't do that. Somebody else does that. I could care less about it. I can tell you that when my granddaughter walks in the front door, she comes straight to me. And I can tell you that my kids, Hey, Dad, can we go fishing? If you're waiting on me, you're holding yourself up, son, getting a truck. Let's go this place will either work and run itself, but I'm not going to I'm not going to sacrifice time for the love of my family. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to work if I could spend time with my family. Yeah, I've done enough hard work and pushing this, that and the other for my team. And when my team wants to take off, I'll go to work for them. You guys take your three weeks of PTO. I'll come build a house. And it's actually, it's great then, right? Because, oh, I'm there at the I'm at when we're scratching ground, we're putting concrete in, we start frame. I'm there every day, because that's the meat and potatoes, right? And then the pm comes in my superintendents and project managers, they're doing their thing, and then I'm running the MVP through it, and I'm like, every day checking on a house. Yeah, we're good. We're golden. Move. But it's just like, a level of trust with my whole family. Of you guys now are old enough to do what you've seen your dad doing and just go run it. The
Mark D. Williams 54:22
standard question is, what are you excited for this year? But as you look a little further down the road, three years, five years, like what excites you, you're at a unique place, from where you were to where you are, and as your kids are in the company, taking ownership, or whatever that looks like, ESOP, or however you plan on transitioning out down the road. What does the next three, 510, years look like to you. What are you excited about?
Danny Spears 54:44
I'd be lying to you to tell you if I hadn't. People offer me 10s of millions of dollars for both of my companies, because it's happened, and my response to them is I'll never stop working. I watched my dad. When my dad stopped, my dad was gone. I am motivated by i. Love to work out. I love to push my body to the limits. I love to push my mind to the limits. I love to see how far a human can push their selves to be successful. And it doesn't always equate to money and riches, but like, how far can you push yourself? And I can sell these companies and make a lot of money, but what am I going to do in my family? I don't mean my kids. Captex is a family. I've brought these people along, and they've entrusted to me like I've entrusted in them. So if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Whoever's standing in line in cap text decides they want to stand up and change the game and help bring in revenue and become a CFO or a CEO, okay, but selling it, and looking at next four or five years, I just want to see my kids do well, man, like I want to see them. I want to see them all graduate from high school. I want to put them all through college if they decide to go. My sons, I ain't going to college. I'm building houses. I'm like, son, school ain't for everybody, son, but that's my thing. And then see my grandkids get raised and take them fishing and take them hunting, and come home and work my five days a week here doing what I've got to do, and just making sure that everything is copacetic and go love my family.
Mark D. Williams 56:20
What you had mentioned about pushing in. I could talk to you about hours about this, but maybe give you the highlights. I've got a few other guys that I train with that I'm more of a runner and ultra stuff. Just started to do strength stuff. Now, because of some stuff I've signed up for, I got to get into the weights just to have the strength to do what I want to do. You mentioned your three to 5am is strength stuff. You're pushing your body. I'd love to hear just kind of the short form, like, what, what you're into, what drives you from the physical side. And then you mentioned mental side, you like to challenge yourself if you could talk about that a little bit.
Danny Spears 56:50
So on, on the side of, on the side of training. So 1500 push ups, 500 pull ups, 500 dips daily, really, that's it, really. And then I wear weighted 40 pound vest rucking, if I want to, but mostly calisthenics, of using weighted vest, a workout with a trainer. He's 27 and he likes to give me a whole lot of message. I don't He said, You're insane. You're insane. And he tells me I'm insane, just because he's mad. I got he's I got guys that are 35 they're in the gym because it's a status thing. He said, You're in your gym, and I'm asking you for five, and you're giving me 10. I'm like, if I'm going to pay you, I'm getting it all out of here. And at my age, I used to be 360 pounds, and so I lost 180 pounds over the course of nine years. Did it on my own. And it was super important to me. And I took my lifting, is a very strong thing, because I was boxing, MMA, fighting, all of these things, and so super important to me. And eat like an animal, 1015, 20 eggs a day. That's just because I work out crazy and and then on the side of mind, I got, I'm always just trying to challenge myself with a multitude of things, right, whether it be via politics or looking at mathematic equations, like, I'll lock myself up and I can. I'm probably one of the only builders I know still, all of my bids are done on blueprints in my office with my lights on a drafting table on a legal notepad. Every I measure, everything I do, do not use a computer, because my mind allows me to. I remember every dimension, and so by the time I get to the job site, I'm just I'm not picking up a line top. I
Mark D. Williams 58:44
knew a I knew a Project Manager. Once that he said he would take the plans home and he would, he said, I'll come back Monday and I'll tell you anything you want to know. He had to memorize the plans. That was his method. Do you on a company of 100 people? You don't have estimators? Are you? Are you solely responsible for all the bidding yourself?
Danny Spears 59:00
If I fail, it's on me, not them. So then how are you going to
Mark D. Williams 59:03
transfer, how are you going to transfer that knowledge to the next generation, if they're not in there with you,
Danny Spears 59:07
my daughters and my I'm teaching my daughters how to do that, right? Because now they're running like directive operations, right? She sets down and she sees because if you own everything, essentially it's cost, plus it's going to cost in man hours and labor to do stucco, to do stonework, to do this, then your only thing you change. If the labor rate is what the labor rate is, then you're only talking about the supply, right? And then the supply is whatever it is per square foot. And so that becomes very easy for me. I don't need estimators only because if an estimator screws up, what's he gonna say? Man, I'm sorry, I just cost you three. Right, right? I don't need to do that, so I it's just easy for me. It lets me get lost in the project a little bit. I could turn I can just set my office and have a glass of whiskey and get after it, and I can spend two days and have everything done. And it's funny. Because when we have our pm meetings, there'll be 25 or 30 of us, and we'll, I'll take all the brass and put them in one place, and I'll let each and every one of them talk about how their project is going. What does the schedule look like? Where are we at? What's lacking? What do you need my help with? Who do I need to go scream at those kind of things? Because I've got to let them have ownership, because then they have the pride, right? And so I'll tell them, if it looks like it's going over budget, I need to know, why is it going over budget? What was it captured on my end so I can fix it, and I've probably lost five or $600,000 over the course of the years because you just missed something. We're just human beings. But if I had an estimator, I might have lost 2 million, right? And if I and if I lost it on my own. I only got myself to blame, but the PMs at the
Mark D. Williams 1:00:44
end of the day, your earlier comment comes back regardless. You're blaming you. It doesn't matter if you have an estimator. Are you blaming you? If you lose it, you blame you. At the end the day was that heavy? Heavy is the head that wears the crown. It doesn't matter at the end, it all comes back to the leadership portal. Sometimes, yeah, go ahead. No,
Danny Spears 1:01:00
you're absolutely right. It's about the leadership, but I have to let my team lead their own projects. And it's funny because a lot of the guys, they'll tell me, we'll have our pm meeting. And it's funny because Alice will be like, oh shit, here it comes. And I'm just sitting there and Alice is Danny fixing to chime in, and I'll go over the 15 projects that I just heard about. I don't have a pen, I don't have a notepad, I don't have my camera out. And I'll talk to this guy. I'm like, I was there two days ago, and this ain't right. And we'll walk into projects. And occasionally one of the guys, his name was Paul Swick, and smart kid. He's dude. How do you do that? He's, I haven't seen you all week, and you just pick this house apart in 15 minutes. I'm, like, it's because I am so involved, not only through the side of the architectural design and understanding what goes into it. I'm facilitating purchases and land construction loans, interest rates. This. I'm I am so down the rabbit hole with everything these clients are depending on me to help facilitate everything. We facilitate all the construction loans. We talk to all the banks. We understand what the market looks like. We do all the draws. We it's everything is done through the management, but it's mostly just two brains, mine and hers, and so that's what it looks like.
Mark D. Williams 1:02:24
Where do you I didn't ask you this before, and we're running out of time. I want to respect your time, so maybe just these last two questions, did you out of curiosity? Were you ever in
Danny Spears 1:02:32
the military? So this is a true story. I had a I had a ride to go to the Naval Academy, and my dad was injured in a car wreck. I stayed home, and so I did not go to the military. You just
Mark D. Williams 1:02:44
a lot of the principles that and I have not been in the military either. I have some cousins that are in the Air Force and Navy, but a lot of your principles just the Extreme Ownership. Jocko Willick wrote that book. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but essentially it's a huge core of who you are, just listening to you talk. So that's why I asked that question, because where did we didn't talk about it, but you basically started in 2015 Where did you spend 2000 to those 15 years, the last years? Where were you working to get the experience? Or
Danny Spears 1:03:11
what? Just commercial mix used to bottleneck, and I truly watched good developers lose money because of greed, right? Of mismanagement, right? And they taught me what not to do. And the biggest thing that I seen in them is that there was no accountability. It's got to be such and such as fault. It's it's got to be the it's got to be the bank. What do you mean? The economy's tanking in 2007 Why weren't you forecasting this? Why didn't you know? Why would you dragging your feet? Why were you jet setting around the world, spending company money, and now we're not finishing houses. It's just like, it's that lackadaisical. Oh, I've made it big time. Now I get to be a no show Jones, and I just don't believe in that, because at the end of the day, if I don't do what's right, everybody suffers, and that's facts. And I don't want my kids or these men or these women that work for me to have to go home to their wives or their husband and say, Wow, I don't have a job anymore. And that that that's probably one thing that my father taught me, and it was probably the only thing, because he didn't really say to me words to me, if you're going to do it right. And I'm like, Alright, my grandfather was an engineer in the Danville coal mines. I bet he didn't say five words to me my entire life and everything. He said, If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough.
Mark D. Williams 1:04:41
Oh, man. Now that one, I've heard we had a cabin Montana. That was a very popular saying in western Montana, one of my favorites. That's a good
Danny Spears 1:04:47
one, yeah, and he did, and that's my family was incredibly rigid. All of my family's military, my brother, military, right? My other brother, who APD, 25 years he was in the military like. There was a hold yourself accountable, because if you do that, there's honor in that, even if you lose money, if you do it with honor, people can respect that right, because we live in a we live in a in a world now where nobody has integrity, right, and if they do, I don't see them. I talk to a lot of great men and women all the time. They're like, wow, that's a very strong, passionate person with a lot of integrity, but like in my experiences over my life, I just didn't see people wanting to like conduct themselves that way, especially in home building, thinking about some GCS that were good. And I tell everybody like, you're gonna be our GC. No, ma'am, I'm not a GC. I'm a home builder. I swing a hammer. I don't drive around in a Tesla with a rake in the back. Like, I don't do that. And so they they're like, wow, like you're going to be there. I'm like, many times I fell off a roof, broken ribs, broken arms, too many times to count. But says something when the homeowners pull up and they see you sweating out there, besides your men and women, they love it, and I take great pride in that. So I think that's the best thing for me. I love everything
Mark D. Williams 1:06:07
about it. Love everything we heard. I appreciate your time on respect it. And for anyone that wants to see more about your company, we'll have everything in the show notes. And it sounds like you don't manage your Instagram, so we'll monitor what your daughters are putting out there. We're actually, I might actually run into you. We're starting. We have something up here called the cures builder collectives, and we're going into Atlanta, Georgia this next year. But actually San Antonio and as well as Phoenix, Arizona, Brad Levitt leading a group down there. But do you know Angela and David Penske from Penske homes? They're anyway, we're near enough to Austin that we've considered maybe even doing some events there. So if I'm up that way, I'll look you up, and I'd love to come stop in your office and introduce myself to your personal barbecue. Will you? I love that. Oh, that, man, I might have to come down anyway just to see what one of these things is all about. What are you? Okay, red fish. All right, I'm not much of a fisher. I need to move like I remember a lot of my guys hunt, and I love the mountains, but I'm more of a I like the mountaineering aspect and hiking and that kind of thing, physical torture. I'm very on board with you, but the fishing, and, like, my joke with fishing is, unless I need a paddle and I have to hit the fish out of the boat, like I'm just not in now, fly fishing is cool, because I'm constantly doing something I hear tarpon fishing is great. Or, like stalking, like some of the guys, my brother in law builds long range rifles out in Wyoming and in Colorado, and I love stocking like that. I think elk hunting might be interesting to me, or antelope just to get out and move like they put me in Minnesota, deer hunting is a big thing. And I deer hunted once in my life, and you can probably tell I have ADHD to the max. And so I'm sitting in this deer stand at 5am the morning, and I'm just out cold. There's nothing to do. I just was completely I'm like, it's dark. Nothing's happening. It's quieter than I knew life could even be. And I was like, Yeah, I don't know what the point of sitting in this uncomfortable stand to sleep is. I'd rather sleep anywhere else, but up here anyway, that's my that's my affinity to hunting, although I do like it. If I could just move
Danny Spears 1:07:55
when you come to when you come to Texas, look us up. Man. We gotta do a lot of fun stuff here in a super cool town. All right,
Mark D. Williams 1:08:02
I will look forward to it. I'll take you up on that, and we'll be in touch with your team when we aired out. Appreciate your time. Good man, thank you. We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room, and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes. You get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there, you'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well for our second annual collective. So if you're interested in collaborating with other builders, if you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com, thanks for tuning in. The curious builder podcast. If you liked this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in you.
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