The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 416: Nathan Walters—So You Want to be a Builder

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Oklahoma builder Nathan Walters discusses his unlikely journey to owning his own building business, the virtues and pitfalls of college vs. on-the-job training, and what he's doing in Oklahoma to encourage high schoolers to consider the trades.

So you want to be a builder. That's the title of this episode of The Way I heard it. I'm Mike Roe, joined by the one and only Chuck Klaus Meyer. Good day, Chuck. Good day to you, sir. How are you? I'm pretty good. This guy, this Nathan Walters, who I'm about to introduce the world to,

he's the reason really that I wanted to do this long form version of the podcast. I'd never heard of him. I met him at this event through actually one of our sponsors, Diggs, invited me to Las Vegas a while ago. Diggs are the guys who use AI to somehow streamline the process between builders and buyers. Anyway, this guy is at the National Home Builders Convention, and I got to talking with me. He lives in Oklahoma. He builds luxurious custom homes in Oklahoma. He's got maybe a dozen going on at any given point.

And he was so interesting, just talking about the stuff I talk about all the time, with Microworks. Sure. The challenges he faces in finding skilled labor, but it's actually more than that. The guy's an entrepreneur who came to the building industry in a pretty unique way. And it's such a problem, friends. What's going on in our country right now, it's just becoming increasingly alarming the paucity of skilled labor.

And it's impacting the luxury market, it's impacting the commercial market, it's impacting basic residential homes. It's impacting anything that needs to be built. So I've always looked at these guys as magicians in a way. But it's more than that. And I just thought it might be interesting on the podcast to hear from a guy, he's got a going concern, but he's dealing with a growing problem.

Yeah, he's doing his part to try and help it out. I mean, he does have something that he does every year with kids to try to introduce them to the children. trades, which I think is a very good thing. Yeah. Build your future, it's called. And honestly, that's kind of the other reason I wanted him on. You know, microworks, we can do what we can do. I don't run into a lot of people who are opposed to what we're trying to do.

But more and more, I'm looking for people who are trying to do their version of it, wherever they happen to be. And this guy happens to be in Oklahoma. Yep. He's doing great work. The name of his company is... Masa Rosa. Luxury.

Holmes. Right. We'll learn about what that means as well. It's kind of a fun story. And he's a super smart guy and he's doing really important work and I thought it might be insightful to crawl inside his brain for a bit. His name is Nathan Walters and you're going to meet him right after this. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level. We need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before, with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating

and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider. being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself

and see too how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skillsusa.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, US skills. U.S. Skills USA. It's the first time I've worn the headphones on this podcast ever. So it's a big day for me. It's very exciting.

I heard through the grapevine that that was going to be a conversation that nobody wanted to have. Nobody wants to have that guy. I'll tell you what, man. That was not a pleasant conversation. You had Mary deliver the news. No, she told me. The last thing she said was, I'm going to let you tell him. Okay, yeah.

She was actually laughing when she told me. She literally knows how badly that chaps my ass. He wanted it. She enjoyed it. It was everybody. That's what made it funny. Everybody was like a game of paper scissors rock for who I had to tell my didn't even wear headphones.

You said paper scissors rock instead of rock paper scissors. What's that all about? I don't know. Paper scissors rock is, I guess that's how I learned it. It's how I learned it here in Oklahoma. So I say it that way. Paper scissors rock. Nobody in the history of the world has said paper scissors rock.

It's always rock paper scissors. Yeah, no? I don't know. Maybe we're backwards out here. Well, I'll tell you what, man. Here's the thing about Oklahoma. I feel like there is some kind of weird tractor beam in the middle of that state that has been pulling me there for decades. And somebody has actually cranked it up.

Like it started for me with Dirty Jobs back in 2002. We shot a pilot not far from, I want to say Eufaula maybe. Okay. That's a place? That's a place. Lake Ufala. Yeah, it's a place about two hours outside of the city. It was Lake Ufala.

It was not far from Shawnee. Not far at all. So I check into this pit of despair in Shawnee. This was really like my introduction to Dirty Jobs. There was a refrigerator, like a cooler they had in there, like half a fridge, and the door was hanging off. The TV was cracked. One of the windows had a hole in it, like a rock had been thrown through it. And there was an air conditioner in the window that sounded.

It sounded like a chainsaw. It was called the Cinderella Motor Lodge. And I'm like, this is the craziest. What a mess. And all I knew was the next morning I was going to Lake Eufa to shoot an episode on something called noodling. And I'm like, what is noodling? And my producer's like, it's just fishing.

It's just what- The type of fishing. It's what people in Oklahoma call fishing. I'm like, all right, you know, but this guy's a known liar. So I'm not sure what to think. So I lie down on this thing that I'm only going to call a mattress because it was in the place where you would expect to find one. And I turn on the broken TV.

And there's a local PBS station. And I don't know what the title of this show was called. But based on the content in it, it could have been, for the love of God, please don't noodle. All it was were conversational. with people who were missing fingers, who had giant scars on their face. There were conversations with mothers

and wives and girlfriends who had lost their loved ones. Because they fish with their hands, man. They fish with their hands. They go underwater, put their arm in a hole and hope it's not a beaver in the hole. Hope it's a catfish. I learned all of this the next day

with two dudes. Don and Jerry, incredibly, were their names. Brewer. And my God, man, that was my real introduction to Oklahoma. I've been back many times, but I've never been able to shake that feeling of reaching into a hole underwater, literally praying out loud for a catfish. Please let there be a catfish that bites me so I can pull it out as opposed to a water moccasin or an alligator gar or whatever other demon spawn you guys have down there. Or some kind of beaver, all of it. Yeah, that's what happens. Could a be hiding in a hole like that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. So I guess my first question is, have you noodled? I have not noodled. I grew up in a town about 20 minutes west of Oklahoma City. It's a suburb. I was definitely way more city than noodling. As you know, Lake You Fall is about two hours outside of the city. So I didn't noodle. I didn't fish a lot. My dad wasn't a fisherman. Fishing became more of things. I've gotten older.

I've understood it. I liked catching. The fishing portion of it was very miserable for an eight-year-old for me. But now being older, I'm like, oh, I get why they fish. You go out there. You have a couple beers. It's quiet. I'm like, oh, fishing makes sense now.

At eight, I was like, I don't love this. Yeah, I don't like fishing, but I do like drinking on a boat with my friends. Yes, love that part. Sometimes I'm fishing. Sometimes I'm not, but I'm definitely drinking on the boat with my friends. Well, you know, I mean, it's a funny way to transition into something more topical. but it's kind of like building in the sense that when I met you in Vegas, was that months ago or years ago? I have no sense of time.

Months ago, February. So time doesn't mean anything. The lockdowns did something to me. They did something with the business of both compressing and extending time. I'm just not as good at pigeonholing dates as I used to be. But I do still remember vividly conversations. And I ask you if you were having fun as a builder. And you were like, oh, building is amazing.

I love building. But just because I'm a builder doesn't mean I build anything anymore. I have a business now. And now I'm involved in all of these other things. It's not, in other words, the fun of getting a catfish on the end of your arm or a catch on the end of your rod. That great fun moment is not what you experience most of the time. And I guess the same is true in your vocation. Yeah, that's a, that's 100%.

I remember saying that because building the home, being a site supervisor and building the home is, that's the funnest part. It's how you end up owning a business. You know, it's how I end up owning a home building business is I was site supervising for a builder here in Edmund. And I absolutely loved building. And I started a home building business thinking, man, this is going to be amazing. And for a couple of years, I'm doing that. I'm building, I'm doing everything. And then you get 10 years in and you look up and you're running a home building company.

And you're lucky when you get to go out to the job sites and see them. But that satisfaction of getting to build is not the day-to-day basis as much as it is, you know, making sure the marketing's working, making sure you're talking to customers and doing those things. There's definitely been a change once you become a 10-year-old business. Well, every entrepreneur I've ever talked to who has had success, really in virtually, any industry, ultimately comes to the conclusion that the thing they thought, the business they thought they were in is actually the customer service business. That's right. That's all it is.

And that sooner or later, we're all salesmen for whatever it is we love or used to love. And that's really what I want to get into because the other thing you said that I remember with remarkable clarity is I was surprised. to learn that your dad wasn't a builder and that you don't come from a long line of builders. Because most of the people, like who I've met on dirty jobs, most fishermen come from fishermen. Most farmers come from a long line of farmers. You know, soldiers tend to have parents and grandparents who serve. And the same is true of builders, but somehow you like Forrest Gumped your way into this first generation thing. How'd that happen?

You're exactly right. I feel like I fell into it. I sometimes ask myself how I got here. You know, I wake up. I'm like, how exactly is this? Because you're right, my dad was a welder. My dad was a welder that owned an aluminum horse trailer manufacturing plant. So he was still blue collar, very blue collar. But he wanted what's funny, which is where a lot of this stuff is going. He wanted like a lot of blue collar parents wanted. He wanted a different life, right? Hey, you need to go to college. Hey, you need to make good grades. You need to do these things. You don't want to end up. over here, okay, so I go to college because he wanted me to go to college. And I get out of college and it is actually 2010. And if we all remember 2010, now it's very close to 2008. And you know what there's not a lot of in May of 2010 is jobs. So great, I went to college and there weren't a lot of jobs. A really good buddy of mine's dad owned a gutter installation company. And we had a massive hellstorm come through Oklahoma City in May of 2010. Damaged roofs, damaged gutter, and he needed help, and I couldn't get a job, a corporate job, if you will. And he said, hey, do you want to hang gutter? I was like, well, I don't know how to hang gutter. And, you know,

it's the old adage, water runs downhill. Oh, yeah. You know, he's like, trust me, it's easy. As long as the gutter slope in the right direction, you're going to figure it out. So I hung gutter for four or five months. And then ended up getting to know the people, who owned the supply yard that were supplying the gutter material. They did siding and windows, started working for them selling windows and siding after I installed gutter and tried to sell windows to a builder. One day the home builder calls me. I thought I was getting to sell a window job. He's like, hey, come up here. I go to his office. He's like, have you ever thought about building houses? He's like, I don't know anything about building houses. He said, perfect. When can you start?

Perfect. That's what we want. When can you start? And so that was October of 2011. I started working for a home builder. And I'll tell you this. I start on Monday. It was Friday. It was so exhilarating. I knew I came home and my wife will still tell you this. And I said, I'll never do anything else. This is what I will do because I just remember being a site super and being out there. And I remember 10 a.m. getting gas to go to the next job. And thinking about my buddy. that are sitting in a cubicle in a corporate office moving paper around. I'm like, I'm out here getting gas at 10 a.m. going to talk to a framer at the next job side. And then after that, talking to an electrician and watching real things come to life. And the passion really set in one weekend of being like, this is unbelievable that this is what I get to do. Well, that's why you're on this podcast, man. I meet a lot of people and I do get to travel around a lot. And not every day is spent waiting for something in a hole to bite me, right?

I mean, I get a chance to rub elbows with some pretty interesting people. You know my agenda. I think your industry just has a huge challenge that's going to impact virtually everyone who shares my addiction to hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing and roofs that don't leak and gutters that work and windows that actually close and all those things. And it was your enthusiasm for the business. It was the fact that there wasn't. a light switch moment. You know, you weren't raised in this thing. But when you saw it, you just

decided and you went for it. And it's rare for an entrepreneur to kind of stumble into it that way. And I'm looking at you here. I assume the house behind you was one that your company built. Was? Yeah. Yeah, this was our very first parade of homes. That's a home show. And when I started my business. This was the very first home I ever built on my own. What year was that? 2015. So I got to circle back to your dad as well. You just glossed over something about horse trailers, which I'm sure is going to be interesting. But the satisfaction of knowing that that was an empty lot, and now it's not. And there's a thing there with a thousand moving parts and the product of 10,000 little decisions that the homeowner had to make, and there you are, guiding them through this

paralyzing my asthma, you know, holding their hand. And I just, if you can just speak to the thrill of seeing a tangible thing in a place that was previously vacant in ways that people can understand, because it's special. That is the thrill, right? You know, you're lining up with everything that made me do this. That's the thrill. You said it. I show a, up out here. This house is on a, behind me, is on a two acre lot, 2.07 acres. And it's nothing but trees and wild weeds and grass on it. This was my very first home that, oddly enough, my sister knew nothing about construction, but she's five years older than me, always extremely creative. And I was like, hey, will you help me pick colors? Because that's the last thing you want me doing, right? It's picking

colors and making stuff go together, like in a pretty way. And she was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. I said, no, you can pick pretty stuff. We sat down in a kitchen table, worked on these plans, worked on this design. It's nothing but concepts and built this. It's funny because looking back, it's even crazier. The original owner of this sold this to another owner. And it's funny that owner reached out.

It was like, hey, do you have any information on what was in this house? And what's funny since that was our first year, no. No, we were out there. No, we didn't do that. We were out there for the love of building and making decisions as we went. And my sister was picking as we went. And no, we didn't store anything. You know, it was about 2017, 2018 by going to the International Builders Show.

I won't use the acronym. I'll call it what it is, the International Builders Show. They can't settle on one. They can't. Going there is when I started learning how to be a business and finding tools such as digs that stored information. But this, the passion you get from me on this is it's, it wasn't business. It was a passion of home building. That's what built this house. It was a passion of building this. In essence, winging it. And not winging the build. I knew how to build, but winging the decisions every day, which was amazing. Well, you're building a plane in mid-flight. Right? I mean, it's just everything. It's just endless decisions. I don't know if there's a specific word for it, but I know a lot of builders and I know a lot of people who had a house built. And at some point, I mean, there's just no justice in building a beautiful house and having an unhappy customer in the end. And I know that happens. It's got nothing to do with the work. But so often, it's a kind of fatigue. It's like a decision.

making fatigue that sets in. And that's when I was talking to the guy that built my house about this the other day. And he was like, look, man, there are days when you are a counselor. There are days when you're a psychologist, a psychiatrist even. And then there are other days when you're a muddy boots architect. What's the most rewarding day? What do you still love most about your gig? I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero

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switch to good ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality not been so exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from Good Ranchers has been straight up delicious, and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable and flexible. In fact, if you start your plan today, you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com.

Free meat for life, $40 off your first order. Good ranchers.com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. You are right. I'll get to that, but we call it selection fatigue.

There it is. What we call it in our office. We call it selection fatigue. You nailed it. It just grinds on people. And we're trying to build a process that is countering that. You know, used to, I would say the end product and the design is what really thrilled me. Circling back to something that you said earlier, which is so true, is somewhere

along the way, Mike, I think probably about a year and a half ago, I woke up and had the realization that you just said, which was, I'm not in the construction business. I'm in the customer service business. And that's a fight coming from being a son of a blue-collar welder in a manufacturing plant, which is the end goal is what is the most important, right? Because it's manufactured in-house. This is manufactured. It's just done outside with a customer watching every step of the way. So I'll tell you the satisfaction that I've been getting is as we have learned that customer

service is what is most important. And we have started trying to implement things and having customers during the process think us, tell us that something was easier than they had expected. We had a customer that told me not just a month ago, man, we were really worried, to the tile store. Like we were really feeling like we were going to be overwhelmed. And the way you guys ran that process actually really made it very enjoyable for us. Hearing that today is what gives me the thrill of knowing that we're trying to make something that can be very difficult to allow people to enjoy it because they should enjoy it. It's hard to enjoy it. I mean, I literally

just got a queasy feeling when you said going to the tile store. It, I mean, I mean, I left bed, bath, and beyond one day years ago and made a solemn vow, which I've kept, to never go back into that place. It's not for a rational reason. It's the same reason I don't go to the cheesecake factory anymore. I got nothing against cheesecake, but when I pick up that menu, it feels like war in peace. It just goes on and on and on. And that's what the tile store is. And that's anybody who's gone through a renovation.

Not anybody. Some people are good at this. Some people like that giant menu. Some people like walking around the IKEA, looking for the meatballs and suddenly, you know, buying a bureau and who knows? I can't stand it. How much handholding do you do?

So we do a lot. We do an absolute lot of handholding, but we've really changed over the years used to. We were Cheesecake Factory. We were like, listen, we are a luxury homebuilder, which means nothing is off the table. And I was just witnessing, again, that selection fatigue setting in with the customers and just the, I don't want to make any more decisions. Can you please just get our house done?

This is this process is just taking so long. And we have much more, we are still handholding everything, but we are also curating a lot more. We are getting ahead of it on the design on the front end using digs and getting these people's inspiration pictures. and then we're actually sending our designers to the tile store to pre-select this tile based off of the pictures that the customer is giving us. And now when the customer walks into the tile store, instead of walking into a 30,000 square foot warehouse where the world is your oyster, it's like, hey, your master bath pictures you've shown us, this is the tile.

So there's really only three options you need to look at. And we pull the three options for them. So we're still hand holding all the way through. but it is way more curated. And we're just finding the customers enjoying that much more. Even though they think in their head, no, we want endless options. They think that they don't. They don't want it.

So back to Diggs. I mean, full disclosure, I know Ryan, I know the CEO. I've worked with those guys. And it's kind of embarrassing to admit because I always, like, I really like to understand everything I'm involved in. But there's something like magical going on with AI that I think I understand, but I don't really. And it felt like they put a new tool in the toolbox for guys like you. And that does interest me a lot, even if I don't really understand it.

Because I think part of what has to happen to get the next generation of kids interested in your world is they have to see some tech that intrigues them and that feels like it's cutting. edge. So, I mean, I don't want to turn this into a commercial, but I do want to understand what that tool has done for you in Oklahoma. So it's been absolutely unbelievable for us. And what's been unbelievable for us, too, is we are bending it to do something different than what they originally intended. And then now they're seeing, oh, we can still do our original intention and we can add what. Nathan is wanting to do to this. And so we use it on what we call pre-construction, which is also

design, which is where we're drawing your plans and we're doing your initial design. One of the easiest things it's done out of the gate is it has shortened that process. I get shorten that process tremendously because how it used to work is we'd get the big set of plans. We'd have the customer come to the office. We would do the notes on the plans. We would then drive these plans over to the architect, tell him what the changes are. He'd have the He would make the changes. It would take about two weeks, get us back the plans, redo another thing with the customer,

another meeting with the customer, and this went back and forth for months and months and months with that. Now we're uploading the plans directly to Diggs. The customers are able to use their iPads sitting on their couch and make notes on them, attach pictures to them, that instantly myself and the architect get. And then we're able to now do things and turn things around in a week and a half to where usually the turnaround was three weeks. And so that has been unbelievable.

But then with the AI portion of it, what's crazy is how AI learns you, which is scary and crazy. It learns the things that you're doing. And so now when we put certain selections into digs, we can then use ask digs inside of digs and be like, What was the kitchen refrigerator? It pulls it up in one second with the link with all the specs to it. Instantly. So we don't have to go hunt for things and do things anymore. We can literally input our information into digs.

And then instead of us having to remember where we put this information, all we have to do is use ASDigs. And then a nanosecond AI is giving us the information we want. That's just so crazy. I'm like, in the end, who benefits? the most, the builder or the buyer? So the buyer is benefiting on time frame. Both.

The buyer is going to benefit on time frame. We're going to be able to move through that process quicker. Also, information at their fingertips, which makes them feel more comfortable that they know that the builder has the information that they want the builder to have. So I think that puts a buyer at ease. But the builder, this information we're putting in, we can upload our trades into it, the ones that know how to use it, they're getting information. So now instead of having two or three employees inside of our office that are doing nothing but gathering information and then trying

to put it into the correct place and trying to make sure the trades have the right information, now if our plumber wants to see the faucets, he goes into digs, ask digs for the faucet specs, boom, he has them, just like that. So, I mean, how do you, as a, builder because I'm sure you're inundated by companies with a better mouse trap, a new idea, an improvement on some existing tool, or maybe in this case a brand new tool. When I was at that event, when I met those guys, I guess it was a couple of years ago, people who don't go to these industry type events really have no idea how massive they are, how boozy they get.

Like the deals are going on all of the time. Everybody is huddled up and they're all talking about the next big thing. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Well, usually we go with a purpose. So our team goes to the purpose. Okay, this is what we're looking for. Okay, so try to block out the rest, right? Hey, this is what we feel we have a need for.

Let's go to the show. Let's try to do our need. I wasn't looking for Diggs, which is funny. I was not looking for it. And what was hilarious is we're at an event, at a builder event only, but Diggs was a sponsor. And I'm having a full-blown conversation with one of my really good builder friends out of Atlanta, who also is now a Diggs user. And we're having a conversation. And Ty from Diggs interrupts our conversation.

Hey, let me pitch you this thing real quick. And I remember, as you're saying, all this is how. happening all the time. So I'm annoyed. I'm like, I'm annoyed. Hold on, man. I'm middle of a conversation. I'm not, I don't want to hear anything about what you're about to tell me. He's 30 seconds in. Something clicked that he had said that I wasn't listening to but over like just went through my brain and I said, hold on, what? He's like, yeah. And so we ended up talking for 20, 30 minutes, ended up over at their suite a couple days later, the day they launched.

The day they launched, we were in their suite. That's how it all started. So, oddly enough, I usually go with a purpose. I didn't go for this purpose, got interrupted, was annoyed. Now, I love those guys. Well, yeah, I guess it is ironic. On the other hand, you didn't set out to become a builder, right? No, no, I didn't. It's all super interesting, and I want to circle back to that for a minute.

Your dad, he was a welder, but he was also building horse trailers? Yes, so aluminum horse trailers are welded. That's how they're put together. together and he went to Votech in high school. Him and three buddies were such good welders, the Votech teacher, actually got them a job at nights in the evenings at a local horse trailer manufacturing plant. So he ended up welding aluminum horse trailers his entire life. And somewhere during that process, he was like, you know, we could do this as a business.

Him and his right hand man, he was the plant manager. and then he had his right-hand man, and they're like, we could, you know, we could do this. And they went out and started their own called Elite trailers, and they made the best of the best aluminum horse trailers still do, except for my dad retired, his portion of it. He said, he said, I don't need this anymore. And so he was a welder that same thing. I mean, he in essence stumbled into being a business owner too. He really was a welder.

That's what he loved doing. He actually got bored of owning the business and loved going to. into the shop and welding. He's like, man, this part of it's terrible. I want to go into the shop and do the fun part. See, this is the story that really I think the country needs to hear because it's an entrepreneurial story. It's a success story. But it starts with mastering a skill. He starts welding. And like, this doesn't happen in accounting class, right? You're not halfway through your deal. And the instructor says, hey, you know what you should do? You should come over here across the street and add up a column of numbers and dive into the tax code for this company,

right? I hear these stories all the time from people who go through our foundation. There's just nothing like the trades to put you on a path. Now, I don't know where the path will take you, but you are on a path to something. And by the way, elite. No pressure, dude, but when you call your company elite, it better be a damn good horse trailer. They were, and what's crazy is that I started hearing that he would have, you know, jackets and stuff. And when I got older, I wanted to support my dad. I'd wear an elite jacket.

I remember multiple times being in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and going to football games and wearing an elite jacket. And if I heard it once, I heard it a hundred different times of people saying, oh, do you have an elite trailer? No, no, no. I just know someone who works there. They're like, man, that's the. the best trailer, we hope to own one one day. Or people who own it, that's the best trailer. And he

obviously thought they built the best trailer, but man, they did. They stuck to what they did and they did not mess around. I mean, to the finest detail, and this is what I bring into home building is from him, is to the finest detail of a lot of horse trailers have different colored tape on the side of them. Okay, red, green, black, blue. It's what gives it a, so it's not just a big aluminum box running down the road. Well, the majority of horse tire manufacturers will just silicone the seams where it meets. Right. Now, my dad's company, they used the color that the tape was of caulking. So if it was green, it was green. If it was red, it was red. And they used the color, which is minimal, but it's not. It's the little things that build up throughout doing the entire

trailer that stands out and makes it elite. as opposed to subpar trailers or C plus horse transport or Exactly right you know it's like the business of managing expectations Really touches just about every aspect of every business and I love it when a show lives up to its name Dirty jobs well the jobs will be dirty and when they're not the viewer has every right to go hey wait a second Right if the trailer's not elite and I bought an elite trailer it does put the pressure on it. Tell me about your company, how you came up with the name and so forth.

So I loved when I came out. There's something about Italian-style homes that I absolutely love. And so I wanted some kind of Italian something. And we searched provinces and cities and everything that we could kind of search to kind of have an Italian flair to it. And I'm not Italian. I just enjoy Italian architecture, and so I wanted to go that way. And so what we started doing is putting in words that means something to Oklahoma into Google Translate. And so we put thunderstorms and tornadoes, and we let Google Translate spit it back out Italian.

And so red dirt is synonymous in Oklahoma. We have red dirt septic. We have red dirt. Red dirt is a thing because we have red dirt. So we typed in red dirt. And it spit out Maserosa. And I just enjoyed hearing it. It sounded so well.

And so that's how we went. We went with Maserosa that direction. But what's funny is my Hispanic traits, because Spanish is so close to Italian, they say it the way it's supposed to be said. Which is, they rolled the R. Masserosa. Yes. To where if you're from Oklahoma, it's called Masserosa.

is what a lot of people call it. And that's not the name. And then same thing as my dad used elite. We put in luxury in the name on purpose. And the start was a luxury home, was, hey, we want the home to be luxurious. Again, in the last year and a half of learning from this business, we now, what we like to tell people is, hey, yes, the home, we want to be luxurious. We also are talking about the process.

we want the process to be luxurious and it's not just the things that we're supposed to do we want to go above and beyond on some items and be thoughtful to our customer base and so we haven't perfected it yet but man at about a year and a half two years of really really focusing on hey we want the process it's not just the home the home is supposed to be luxurious with the amount of money you're spending let's focus on something else being luxurious and we've been working really hard at that How busy are you right now? How many homes are under construction that Maseroy? So we got during the prime of COVID, when interest rates dropped, we got up to 20 to 22 of these homes that were actively under construction.

During that time is when we realized we needed to make a shift to customer service because we were building the homes and we were doing the homes well. We were not servicing the customer, just like you said, Micah, people being like, man, you know, the house is good, but I didn't enjoy the process. And about two years ago, I set a goal will never do more than 10 to 12 active construction jobs. So we have 12 right now. And I cap it. And we will create a waiting list if people really want it. But I have made a point as the owner that the customers will be served a certain type of way. And the only way to serve the customer is as at a max of 12, 12 homes to be going under construction at one time. Well, are you sick of it yet?

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dot com slash mike that's netseweed dot com see that's a lesson man that is a lesson it's got to do with you know getting over your skis and biting off more than you can chew it's why there's so many metaphors for the same thing my favorite uh you know john rich country music guy oh yeah so john told me something a couple years ago. I was over at his place in Nashville. It was middle of the night and I'd just come out with some whiskey named after my granddad and he's got this whiskey named for his grandmother. Well, it's not named for her, but it was inspired by her. He's got her pictures on it and everything else. Redneck Riviera. Redneck Riviera was not his grandmother's name. I was going to say. But we're just sitting around sipping some of the whiskey and playing and singing

songs for each other. And I asked him if he had any advice, what had he learned from the whiskey business? And he was like, oh, Mike Roe. He calls me Micro. He just, he just, he just, he's just one of those guys. Micro, you know, I'll tell you, I learned something from the whiskey business. Same thing I learned in the music business. You got to service your distribution. I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, look, it's not hard making whiskey. It's not difficult selling whiskey. what's tough is servicing the people who buy it from you and who sell it for you and supporting their efforts and being there. And he just said, just be careful.

You know, don't get more of it out there than you can manage after the fact. And I'd really never thought of it that way. It's just a bottle of whiskey. You know, it's just a bunch of brick and mortar. It's just a horse trailer. It's just a gutter on the side of the house. But you can screw up any business by leaning into one part of it at the expense of something else. And then you're out of whack and then you're in trouble.

That's right. That's exactly right. And coming from a manufacturing background of my dad, it was product-driven. And they're riding on the wall of, yes, the product matters, but how the customer feels matters too was so foreign to me. It was so foreign and then getting to see how important it is to take care of these customers. He's exactly right. If I service these customers, they will take care of us. Building the house is building the house.

And after doing this since 2011, I can build the house. That part of it is easy. It is servicing the customer that has become so important. But also, I love that you're hanging out with John Rich because oddly enough, my wife and I, his song with Big and Rich Lost in This Moment was our wedding song That's what we dance to No kidding

Yep, that's what we dance to He and I wrote a song for Christmas A couple years ago Called Santa Claus Got a Dirty Job And recorded it And we've been friends ever since But yeah man, it's funny This is one more Oklahoma thing

You know, it's like, go figure So obviously the thing that I'm most passionate about Is what I'm guessing is the biggest problem you face, skilled labor. Yep. How bad is it in Oklahoma? And talk about what was it, Build My Future? Is that the thing you're involved with out there?

Build My Future is what I'm involved in. Yeah, so this year I am the president of our local Home Builders Association. So Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association and this will be our fourth or fifth year as an association that we have put on, Build My Future. And our goal is to get as many kids open to the idea of going into the trades as possible. We're starting with high schoolers. Our goal is to start getting down into middle school and elementary school because, you know, they may be too far gone by high school.

Sure. But we're really introducing this. And you just really nailed it on something a while back ago. The paths that can be taken in the trades. So many kids don't know. They just don't know. And so we put on basically a big show where our vendors and our trades are out at a big facility at our state fairgrounds. So our electrician is there and he's got a board to where kids can make up plugs. Brick layers are there showing them how to lay brick. Concrete companies are there. Showing them how to unload concrete out of a truck, how to do flat work, HVAC work in our local trade. we asked them to do this. And I was standing next to the electrician's booth,

and it was just unbelievable because they put up how much you make an hour starting, and then once you become a journeyman and all of this, right? And it was so informative to these kids, because these kids are like, hold on, I can make $22 bucks an hour if I go to Votech and then come here. And the owner of the electrician company said, no, I'm Votech.

you come work for me for $22 an hour and I teach you how to become an electrician why you're making $22 an hour. And it goes all the way up to their project managers of this electrician company, make six figures a year with health insurance and all of these things. And these kids, watching these kids walk by, their minds were blown. Blown that that's what it takes of, oh, I can just come to work. And so we are really, really pushing this as a homebuilders association. And it is really big for us. And the reason why is you're right, it's bad.

The skilled trade base and the lack thereof is bad. What you're really having is you're having an extremely skilled trade base that's getting older. My tile setters in his 60s. He goes through younger people so quickly because they don't want to show up five days a week. They don't want to be as skilled at laying the title as he does, and he has to let them go. And that's really what we're seeing is we're seeing this age gap that you're starting to get real weary of, of, wait, my good trades are in their 50s and 60s. And this is really hard work.

And you're looking at what's coming down the pipe, Mike, and nothing is what it feels like. It feels like nothing's coming down the pipe. Look, if it were just you, one luxury home builder in the middle of Oklahoma, worried about this thing, you know, you could chalk it up to geography or bad luck or any number of things. It's everywhere, man. I've been to every single state. I've talked to hundreds of people who do what you do, and I can't overstate it. I try not to get on my soapbox about it because I'm just a broken record,

but I feel like at this point, somebody needs to ring an alarm. precisely for the reason you said, the math is just not sustainable. Every year, five retire and two replace them. Although I'm told it's less than that now. It's like 1.5 against five. Okay, so A, when does it go splat? Like, when does it impact your business to the point where you just have to cut back further and further and further?

And how do we fix it? It feels like we're going splat, right? It feels like the demand is out there to do more than 10 or 12 of these units. but the capacity wasn't there. That was the problem. The capacity was not there. It feels like the demand is out there, and the capacity just is not out there for skilled labor.

And I feel like we're hitting that roadblock. And you're right. It's funny because I'm a part of a Builder 20 group, which is a part of the National Association of Home Builders, and you're with like kind builders, but in different parts of the country. Well, in these larger metros, Atlanta, Columbus,

you were seeing this trade shortage well before COVID. Like 2016, 2017, these guys were crying about it pretty much. I call it crying because we didn't have that problem. We're so close to Texas, which is so close to Mexico, that we had a very good Hispanic trade base that we weren't. I was like, no, we're not having that problem. And then kind of like you talked about with COVID on time, COVID came through, things heated up.

And then all of a sudden, you're looking around and now our part of the country is like everybody else. You're just like, wait, where'd everybody go? Where'd they go? And I think that COVID had so many of them, that time frame, had so many of them, maybe not go back to work. Well, you know, we're 60. As I'm telling you, they're already older. We're 60. No reason to go back to work.

And so it's like it put it on a time warp. Like one day you're just short. And it almost feels like even though we've been doing this for five years. as an organization that really the seeds that we're going to sew are years and years away. If we're getting in front of high schoolers now, we're still five, ten years away from these guys making it through apprenticeship and becoming skilled labor. And that's what's scary as an owner of a homebuilding company. I bet it is.

And as a guy who lives in a home, it's scary for me because, right, it's like food, clothing, shelter. The essentials, the essentials are being. directly impacted by what feels like a paucity of work ethic, but also a real lack of enthusiasm for the opportunities. And I'll tell you the one that worries me more. You guys are neck and neck, but it's the energy industry. Oh, yeah. Right? And so back to Oklahoma. I've been working with Continental Energy in Oklahoma and OERB now for the last, I don't know, three years or so. And this year, their whole campaign is really just designed to tap Oklahomans on the shoulder and say, hey, we got a lot to be proud of here.

I think we're the fourth largest provider of energy in the country. And so much of our health care, so much of our educational system is paid for by this industry. That's right. Well, this year, we're doing that in conjunction with Microwworks and the trades because, man, everybody's hiring. in the energy industry in Oklahoma. And it feels almost as desperate as your industry. So, you know, I just filmed at Central Tech. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

I'm drawing a blank on the name of the town. It's right in the middle of the state. But they're doing so many things right. And it's all focused on jobs in energy, not entirely, but so much of it. And I just wonder if there's a solution like that that's more focused on the building trades, specifically. Yeah. I mean, and that's basically what we're doing with Build My Future, which is how you and I really connected. Yeah, we connected talking about digs and through digs. But when we were talking after, you were talking about MicroWorks and we were talking about Build My Future. And you're right, it's the enthusiasm that's lacking because I could be wrong, but I feel like it really started in the 80s. Maybe it was a little bit of the 70s, but definitely the 80s, the push of you have to go to college. You have to go to college. You have to go to college.

You have to go to college and it really started pushing. No, you can't, don't go be a welder, don't go be an electrician. You need to go to college. And there is nothing wrong with college. I went to college. But I don't believe that everybody needs to go to college. And we're pushing so many kids to go to college and we're more or less also telling them, no, you have to go to college.

And the trades are beneath college is what it feels like we have been pushing out into schools and things of that nature. just not true. It's not true. The trades can give you an extremely good lifestyle. It allows you to do stuff with your hands. It allows you to look at work that you've completed. And there's just a lack of enthusiasm that feels like of like, no, this is, you're really accomplishing something. And you can, for 20 years, if you're a framer, drive by houses and say, I helped build that. I framed that house. I was a framer and look at that. And I mean, heck, I'll tell you, what, I would much rather do that than when you get into some of these businesses, you realize on the white collar side of jobs, you're a glorified emailer. You email, you email and do Zoom calls

all day. I don't know if there's any enthusiasm, at least from me, for that, to where if I can go out to a job site and be a part of creating something, and I just feel like there needs to be a push nationally of, no, the trades are not beneath. It is not for a lesser than. It is something that you can do something with your hands and you can always go by and be like, I helped build that. It was a lot, and I was a part of making it that. I was just about to say it. You're sitting right in front of the most compelling evidence there is. And really, you know, it's the answer I typically give when people say,

what did you really learn from 350 dirty jobs? What does that group of workers know that the rest of us have either forgotten or just don't get exposed to? And that's my answer. What you just said, it's the satisfaction of finishing something. And it's the visual cue that you get every single day in the form of feedback that always lets you know how you're doing. This desk looks pretty much the same at five in the afternoon at five in the morning. I look around, you know, it's always 2 a.m. in the studio. You never really know how things are going until the producer starts waving at you.

He's like, wrap it up, man. You've been talking two hours. But with so many dirty jobs and with every skilled trade, I know, you don't really need somebody over your shoulder telling you how you're doing. You know exactly how you're doing all of the time for better or worse. And that's the other thing that the kids don't know. They don't know you can make $150,000 a year welding, and they don't know what it feels like to truly finish a thing.

and then take some level of pride in that. Final point, too. It's not just that they don't know it, and I don't want to make this political, but you'll remember a few years ago when that whole, no, you didn't build that, was in the headlines. I guess it was Obama,

who was kind of responding to the idea that, no, no, you didn't do it. It's always a team effort. It's never just you. And, you know, a lot of people bristled at that. I wonder why. Were you offended by it, that idea that, no, you didn't build that house behind you. That happened as a result of some sort of amalgam, some sort of something else, not you.

It's a real narrow road to walk. Yeah, I mean, here's the deal. It's a team of trades that helped me. I didn't shingle the house. But yeah, I mean, the way. way I feel is I built that. I was at this house seven days a week calling these guys, making sure they were doing it correctly, making sure that when things were wrong, we were getting it fixed. It didn't just happen. I didn't call the footing contractor on a cell phone from my house,

and then the footing got installed miraculously the way I wanted it to. Yeah. And so, yeah, I do remember that of you didn't build that business and you didn't build that and they yeah that's a bristling thing when you're on the side of entrepreneurship and there are so many things that I love about entrepreneurship and it is like everything else in the world it's a given a take it's a full-blown given a take somewhere in this cluttered mess of an office uh I have a a pipe that I held on to it was sent to me by a woman who's welding certification we paid for and uh and it's It's really just like a tea.

It's beautifully welded. It's like textbook welded. And it came with a couple of pictures of her doing the work. And a little note that said, look what I did. You know, right? And I just loved it. Look what I did. Of course, somebody galvanized the pipe.

Of course, somebody shipped it. Of course, of course, of course. Of course. We all know that. But to be able to revel in the satisfaction, whether it's a simple weld or a better way to make a horse trailer or a better way to build a house or any of that, it's so important to elevate it and celebrate it and not just sand all the edges off. Same, same. Everybody's the same. It just, it makes me tired to think of life that way.

It does. It does. We're different. We're all different. I keep something still. It's out in a pot of ours. and I keep it because when I started this, when I was building that house, I was officing out of the home office and we didn't even have an office chair. I sat on this wick, kind of cross-wicked, almost like an end table. It was hollow inside.

I sat on that for two years at my desk, where when I would go and I'd have to do bills and do stuff that I was learning from. And you're exactly right of like her sending you that pipe. Like, I remember where this started. And I remember the effort that it took to get to where we are now, which is I don't have to sit on a Wic Hollow thing. But it didn't just happen miraculously. Now there were definitely breaks along the way, but there's a lot of sacrifices of kids, you know, basketball practice.

It starts at 5 p.m. that you can't get to when you're out here and you're building something. Speaking of basketball, did you play? As I recall, you must be like 6'5 or something. 6'5, I did. basketball was my sport of choice. It was, yep. Played through high school, signed a letter of intent to play at an NAA college in Oklahoma. It was a smaller basketball school, but NAA basketball is very competitive, showed up for the summer, played against these guys, and said,

I was not meant to be here. These guys, these guys are, you know, in high school, you can be good by pure. effort, right? You can be good by pure effort, and I gave a lot of effort, and you show up to college, and there has to be effort and athleticism and skill, and I was looking at this. I was like, oh, no, no, no, these guys are different. I learned real quick that I better just get an education rather than full around and try to ride the bench. It's funny, too, you know, you go through your life, you're 6'5, you're typically the tallest guy in the room, and then you're not. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. by a long shot. And what's crazy now is at my height, you know, if I wanted to be an NBA player,

I'd be a point guard at 6-5. It's wild. But yeah, basketball was my, basketball was my sport of choice to play, but football was my sport of choice to watch. I enjoy watching football. I enjoy the most playing basketball. But I think we're going to agree that fishing is still quite a thrill when the fish are biting, but very different when they're not. That's right. By the way, your wife is. in this business with you too, right? She is? That's kind of mandatory. If you're a, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, it certainly helps, I would think, to

have it a family affair. But she's on the real estate side? She's on the real estate side, which is perfect for us because we are both extremely type A, type A personalities. I think if she actually worked here in the office every day, we might have a little bit of a problem, but her being on the real estate side, we don't. have to co-mingle every day but when we do work together we're great and she is obviously much more put together than I am in all facets looks verbally brain-wise

and she has helped me a ton because when I get offers or somebody says something I will then fire back something that comes out of a construction worker's mouth she will then put that into an email that is much more polite still saying what I said but in a much more polite version, and that has helped me tremendously. Emily, right? Emily, that's right. Former, was it Miss Oklahoma? She was Miss Oklahoma 2010. Look at you. You're 6'5. Former Miss Oklahoma, building 12 houses at any given time, didn't know what you wanted to do. Your old man built elite trailers, and now here you are. You know, I mean, final point, this whole American dream

thing, I don't know if we talked about it in Vegas, but so much of what an American dream dream is, is owning your own home. And 64, 65% of people today say it's dead. The American dream's dead or it doesn't apply to them. I worry a lot about that. And I only bring it up because you're not only building it, you're living it, man. You're just such a great example, I think, of getting into this space in such a unique way. It just gives me hope that, you know, other people can hear your story and say, why not, man? Why not get into this world? It's out there. It's out there to be had. And I don't know, because, you know, I feel like every generation bust on the generation below them of not having the same work ethic. And so I know that that goes around. But it is a, the dream is out there.

The dream even for the generations before us, it wasn't given to you guys. You guys still had to go work for the American dream. And it's it, I hate that people feel like the American dream is dead because it's not dead if you want to go take it. Go take it. And that's what I would tell people, and you don't have to know what you want to do. That's the, I'm a, I'm a prime example of that. I never grew up saying I want to be a home builder. That was never my, that was never once a dream of mine, not once. And I did know that I enjoyed business ownership because my dad was a business owner, but I didn't know what that was going to be. It could have been anything. And you're right. I just, I don't like that. I did not know that 64, 65% of people felt that the American dream

was dead. That's a, that's kind of heartbreaking to hear, honestly. Well, somehow or another, it must be connected to the lack of enthusiasm in the trades. And somehow that's connected just to stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions and people just, just not knowing. So, look, I love what you're doing out there with the build my future thing. I think we share a lot of space on the old Venn diagram with microworks. And if history is any indicator, I'm going to be in Oklahoma again sometime in the next couple of months, reaching in the sun godforsaken hole praying that nothing in there is going to bite me. But I'd love to do this in person next time. I would too. I would love to do it and hopefully we can meet up in Oklahoma when you're here. I know we've tried once.

Well, with your team, we tried once and you were in and out. And I would love to meet up because it is. It's such a, you're right. It is a state with a pool to it. It has a magnetic pull and there's a lot of people that don't know it. But I mean, I was very good friends with a buddy that's from Canada and we have a minor league hockey team and he ended up here and guess what he lives here. And that's the way it is. You end up in Oklahoma once and you have, you think about it a certain type of way, then you end up here a couple of times, and you're like, man, I'm kind of intrigued by this place. I assume there's a beautiful website filled with your handiwork somewhere.

People could go if by chance they decide, you know what? Mike made Oklahoma sound pretty good, and those homes are beautiful. Maybe we'll just move there and see if Nathan can't build us a place. There is. It's macarosa.com. Better spell it. So the M-A-S-S-S-A-R-O-S-S-A.com. And my marketing degree came out.

out on the second S of the S, Maserosa. The Rosa is only supposed to have one S, but it looked in balance, so I added a second S so that it was balanced and nobody knows the difference. That's the perfect place to land the plane. Keep doing what you're doing, Nathan Walters. It's beautiful work, and your story's terrific. I appreciate you sharing it. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Anytime. See you. All right, guys. If you dig the podcast that we do, won't you leave a quick five-star review? to ask much more of you but please subscribe

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