The Remodeler Digital Playbook Podcast

Designing the Future: AI, Architecture, and Mentorship with David Pollard of Livco

• Rathna Ramakrishnan • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this episode, we welcome David Pollard, an esteemed architect and founder of Livco, as he explores the dynamic world of residential design and remodeling. David discusses the importance of architecture in enhancing client engagement and how feasibility design can streamline the remodeling process.

He also delves into the transformative role of AI in architecture, revealing how it can optimize designs and improve project outcomes. Additionally, David shares his passion for mentorship, highlighting the significance of guiding the next generation of professionals in the industry.

📌 KEY MOMENTS:

- 06:06: Architecture School: Expectations vs. Reality
- 20:56: Design and Build: A Holistic Approach
- 32:59: The Role of AI in Architecture and Design
- 42:01: Lessons Learned and Mentorship
- 51:03: Advice for Aspiring Architects

🌟 What You'll Learn:
- ACTIONABLE TIPS for engaging clients and making an impact.
- INSIGHTS for building confidence in design.

🔨 Essential listening for remodeling contractors seeking to advance their digital marketing strategies.

🎧 Tune in now to transform your approach to digital marketing!

Ready to see real results from fellow General Contractors?

→ Step 1: Join our FREE Digital Dominance Club for Remodeling Contractors

→ Step 2: Follow us on Instagram

→ Step 3: Schedule a 1:1 call with Rathna now!

Let's rock your remodeling journey! 🛠️💰

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:09.598)
David Pollard, welcome. I'm delighted to have you here today.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:17.724)
Excellent. Well, I'm super excited to speak to you because you're my first interview with an architect, builder, designer, the works. And so I'm really excited to learn about your processes, learn about your story, and to share with our Remodeler Digital Playbook podcast audience. So welcome David again. David runs a full service residential design build firm, delivering award winning projects throughout Chicago's suburbs.

Dave Pollard (00:19.394)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:47.688)
with his company called Livco and he has a partner. So let's dig in and hear more about his story. I'm always fascinated with architects. I have an older sister who just used to sketch a lot and art does not very naturally to me and I used to love drawing as well. So I'm just fascinated with brains that can sketch and architects are you know you're you're just sketching things to scale. So tell me a little bit about your childhood. What drove you

Were you born with this passion? Were you always doodling and creating and tinkering when you were growing up?

Dave Pollard (01:29.716)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think it was my, probably my 10th birthday I asked for a drafting board for my birthday present. So people ask me that a lot. I don't think that I'm normal in most architects. I think a lot of them have a passion for making things and things of that nature. I guess I was somewhat lucky in that I kind of knew the whole idea of.

building things and I loved drawing the things that were the instructions to build the thing. So it was something that for sure I was passionate about from an early age. think I have a lot of my old sketchbooks from like second grade where I was drawing my friend's houses and floor plans. So it was definitely something that was, you know, ingrained in me early on. I think I'm the youngest of a large family. And so,

fortunate and my parents traveled a lot more with me than they probably did with some of the older ones and I had had a great aunt and outside of Manhattan that had this really cool house in the woods on the Hudson River Valley so I got exposed to I think a lot of interesting spaces and houses and things of that nature so that that was helpful and then yeah I just

It was easy. Straight into architecture school, become an architect. Didn't have to make too many decisions from there.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (02:48.109)
Amazing. So did you play a bunch with Lego or other things like growing up or did you just put pencil to paper and sketch a lot?

Dave Pollard (03:01.667)
Yeah, I mean, you can probably see behind me, I still play with Legos. Yeah, no, I always love Legos. I mean, our basement, the whole floor was just full of Legos.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:07.666)
And you... you have kids now.

Dave Pollard (03:15.38)
I do and we have a whole Lego room which it kind of started in our old house in Chicago in our basement.

The kids were getting older, so we wanted to have a place for them to kind of sit and play Xbox, play video games, things like that. But I also wanted to make sure that, you know, they didn't, the Legos didn't just go into a closet and you pull them out and you're play, when people are going to play with them. So around the basement, around the couch, we had, you know, built-ins with Legos, shelves with all their stuff out, and then ended up saving all the old Lego boxes and making the wall look like a stack of Lego boxes. So when they're staring at the teep, yeah, and if there's

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:28.49)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:32.061)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:47.024)
Amazing, how fun.

Dave Pollard (03:54.366)
staying at a TV and you know just playing video games and you know melting their brains at least maybe they think maybe I'll get up and you know build something so I think it works you know if if if a piano is in a closet no one's gonna play it if the piano is in a place where people want to be they're gonna sit down and play it right that's kind of how I like to think about it

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:08.682)
Yep, very true.

Amazing. So how was architecture school when you went there? Did it immediately meet what you hoped it would do for you as you know, with your from childhood, you'd been sketching and visualizing spaces. And at what point did you realize that you you're not interested in like designing like the Burj Khalifa or you know, the super tall 200 feet ceilings and you wanted to do like residences because all of it is architecture. And I'm just very curious to know how your

brain knew that you wanted to do residential stuff.

Dave Pollard (04:50.858)
That's a great question. There's a lot in there. I'll kind of start with architecture school. That was not what I expected and I don't think anybody who goes into architecture school realizes what it really is. And I went to Virginia Tech. It's a five-year program kind of based on the Bauhaus School. It was basically, I remember our first year professor.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:51.358)
Yeah.

Dave Pollard (05:16.702)
His job, he told us, was to make sure that we forgot everything that we learned in high school and started over. So it was a very interesting curriculum that changed my way of thinking about the world and about design and problem solving. I think a lot of people showed up with a T-square and a triangle ready to draw floor plans, including myself. And our first project was he put

Rathna Ramakrishnan (05:34.698)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (05:45.88)
We're all sitting around there. all 18 year old kids. It's our first time in college. It's our first studio, which is a four hour time that you spend in architecture school. Your studio time, you have a desk, you have a table, you have projects to work on. Our professor comes in, introduces himself and puts an onion down in the middle of the table and then says, I want each of you to write six pages about this onion. And then he just left.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:06.068)
Great.

Dave Pollard (06:12.59)
And he walked away and like, when are we going to start drawing houses? Right. So then he comes back like five minutes later and he's, and we're all just sitting there. Maybe some people are writing some stuff and he says, has anyone even picked the onion up?

It's like, we didn't know that we could do that. You know, we just thought we're just supposed to stare at the onion and write six pages about it. And then he came back 10 minutes later, he said, did anybody peel the onion? Right? He kind of started with this exercise of we're so conditioned and everything that we learn that we know what we know. Or, you know, we, there's more to the world than just what we think and we have to explore it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:35.082)
Hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:49.363)
Amazing.

Dave Pollard (06:54.156)
So that was Jay Stokle who was an incredible professor. He was my first year professor and then that kind of continues in second year where it's also very conceptual, theoretical. We're not designing buildings. We're taking apart onions, building mousetrap cars, diagramming. I mean, it was really, it's either like it or you change majors because it's an interesting curriculum. So that, what was cool about that, and that's a five-year program and after that you're kind of

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:05.392)
Wow.

Dave Pollard (07:24.18)
You're set up really to do anything as far as I'm concerned because it doesn't necessarily teach you, you know, how to draw a drawing or...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:34.814)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (07:35.074)
build a building, teaches you how to learn how to do that on your own and to create new ways of thinking about the world and how to make things, right? So that was really powerful for me. And then I went and worked for a small architecture firm in Chicago, small like 25, 30 people. And we did some residential work and some commercial. I loved the residential.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:39.85)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (07:58.858)
I just love houses, so I was kind of on that side of things, but we didn't do too much of it. And then I had the opportunity, I got hired by Optima, which is a architect-led developer, and that was doing multifamily, but it was really pretty provocative multifamily, 700-unit buildings in Chicago and Arizona.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:05.033)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:16.511)
Wow.

Dave Pollard (08:22.264)
We controlled the entire process. were the general contractor, the developer, the architect. I learned a lot about systems for design and repetitive pieces to make really interesting buildings that were efficient. I also had the opportunity to work in the field in Arizona. So I worked on a construction site in the job trailer. And then the economy started tanking in the...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:29.354)
you

Dave Pollard (08:48.664)
great financial crisis. So I moved back to Chicago from Arizona and had a job at Catch Partners where we were doing large scale super talls essentially and a lot of projects overseas because I think there's a lot of stuff in the Middle East and China that was going while the US had slowed down. And that is where I learned that I was not good at designing big buildings.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (09:03.316)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (09:12.988)
Yeah, yeah.

Dave Pollard (09:15.544)
to go to the second part of your question. I just.

I couldn't visualize myself in them. didn't really understand how to make them special and good. The scale of it was just too much for me. And so I kind of felt like I was good at my role there and I would probably go definitely more into a technical realm versus being able to kind of be creative and develop ideas and draw and sketch and build things. So from there I left and went to graduate school to try and figure

out how an architect who loves houses can actually be involved in housing in any meaningful way other than just design houses for the super wealthy or work out of your basement. So I did a thesis on that and then I worked for a small-scale developer where I met Russ who

Rathna Ramakrishnan (10:02.622)
your part.

Dave Pollard (10:06.71)
was our director of construction and I was the director of design. And we teamed up a couple of years later and formed the LiveCo and said, maybe we can actually provide good design and quality construction the way that we think it should be done. So there's a lot in there from architecture school to where we are today, but that's how my brain evolved.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (10:22.068)
Yeah, heavy.

incredible to kind of you kind of niche down and hone down that you like the fact that you like building residences and not you know multifamily or humongous buildings and it's great that you have a partner because you know entrepreneurial life is hard enough that finding that match in a partner is so important to be able to like you know pursue your dreams and grow your brand really fast and you guys have a really cool brand I was looking at your website and your branding and so where did it go from there once you decided to start Livco?

and you had a partner, did you just dive in and started marketing yourselves to homeowners? How did that trajectory go?

Dave Pollard (11:10.816)
No, wish, well I don't know that we had the confidence that people wanted really great design and was willing to pay for it because historically the remodeling world as we knew it is pretty unsophisticated and kind of...

very competitively bid. And so all of a sudden, if we came in and started making things more expensive, is that what people would want, right? They're like, I just want my kitchen. Why are you so expensive? So I don't think that we really started marketing it because we didn't know that it would necessarily work. We did more, when we started, we were doing foreclosure rehab work. So we try to figure out efficient ways to be able to,

Remodel and deliver Whole house Renovations really efficiently and inexpensively so I think we first kind of went into it thinking maybe our thinking can Can make construction less expensive? And then kind of found ourselves realizing our value add was actually in our you creative thinking and

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:11.562)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:23.476)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (12:24.97)
an ability to not do that, to come up with solutions that weren't boilerplate, because there you're just competing with everybody else that's just doing the same thing. White shaker cabinets, all this stuff, where's my value at? So we started just by friends and family projects. We had friends in the Chicago suburbs who bought a house and wanted to do some work to it. So we did that. I think we came up with a really neat plan for it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:26.812)
right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:36.106)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (12:53.664)
and then my own house, we put an edition on my house and then we had some work to show and people were intrigued by it and then we just started building on that. Mostly word of mouth. We did invest in our website at that somewhere in that point where I'm like we need a real real website and our first marketing step there was to actually hire

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:08.478)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (13:19.308)
And I've talked about this on some other podcasts. Architects think that they're great graphic designers and great marketing geniuses. They're not, right? Like this isn't what I do. I can make a really cool house, but when it comes to

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:23.274)
Right?

Dave Pollard (13:33.666)
you know, branding and logos and things like that. There's professionals that do this for a living and think outside the box on those things. So we actually hired a really cool Chicago firm called 50,000 feet who does like stuff for BMW and super high end clientele. But I had a family connection to one of the partners there and they, they talked to us and gave us a proposal.

And I'm like, how can we, how can we leverage you guys's talent, but really keep it simple and cost effective for us? So we came up with a solution where they essentially just developed a brochure for us. So was like a 10 pager. It was super shiny, really, really beautiful.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:11.603)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:20.542)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (14:20.59)
And they interviewed us and gave us two. They gave us an A and a B. And from choosing one of those, we then had our nickname. We're actually a live companies, but we became Livco then because they're like Livco. We have a font. We have, you know, a color package. We have, kind of a photo library that was curated by them and their eyes. So that was a really efficient way to, you know,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:28.34)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:32.138)
That's cool.

Dave Pollard (14:47.79)
put a brand and an initial marketing impact in place for I think $15,000 at that time. Then we use that piece to give to our website designer to say, now we're gonna trust you to build us a really great SEO based interactive site that is.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:50.024)
Nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:56.158)
Mmm.

Dave Pollard (15:08.576)
you know, partial lead gen partial portfolio and use this as the foundation for it. So everything that we've built marketing wise since then, this logo and everything comes from that piece that 50,000 feet made for us. And so that's, that's how we started the marketing world.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (15:17.63)
Very neat.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (15:21.854)
Yeah, your brand looks great. It presents beautifully online. And so from there on, you started getting projects from using examples of your friends and family and your own editions to market yourselves with the cool brand and the website.

Dave Pollard (15:29.336)
Thank you.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (15:37.564)
Amazing. So today, let's say there's a lead that comes into your universe who's interested in your services. What does that process look like and what kinds of hats do you wear within your organization? Are you speaking to the lead as soon as they come in wanting to work with Livco or do you come along when they've kind of made a decision to work with you and then you're engaged with them through the design process? So walk us through what it would feel for a homeowner that comes in and decides to do business with you.

Dave Pollard (16:13.08)
Sure, yeah. If a lead comes in, which is usually email or phone call, Luanne, who was in our office, our administrative manager, fields that call. If it's a phone call, she'll chat with him a little bit. There's not a whole lot of information we're really asking her to get on that initial call other than...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:18.313)
you

Dave Pollard (16:34.69)
you know, name, address, phone number, email, and what they might be interested in doing. And our main qualifier when they first come in for the most part is geography. We just keep that really simple. And then from there, she will follow up with them and we ask people to go through our website and to set up a video call with me. And so that just goes right through the link into Calendly, links up with my calendar, and they schedule a 30 minute Zoom call with me.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:40.884)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:51.092)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:59.742)
Okay.

Dave Pollard (17:06.198)
That call is I Already have a little bit of information about them. I asked them to do a questionnaire I'm able to look up their house. I'm able to get a whole bunch of information about

they might be trying to do and I listen to them for the first half to two thirds about what they're thinking about and ask them lots of questions. And then I use the last 10 minutes to talk through our process and share a potentially similar project and talk through the process as it relates to that project. And then also, you know, the budgets that we see in that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:28.746)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:40.2)
Right.

Dave Pollard (17:40.65)
So when we talk about budget, we're usually using historic project data or third party data. I don't know how much their project costs. And then at the end of that, you know, our upfront contract is if we just determine if we're a good fit for each other or not. I'm just, you know, don't be afraid to say no. We're not for everybody. And then if they say yes, we follow up. Well, either way, well, if they say yes, we follow up with their typical.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:55.497)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (18:07.648)
Email follow-up, which will have a general summary of what we talked about, and then some other fun stuff on our website in case they haven't seen it, like before and after sliders, all of our feasibility presentation videos, and then a DocuSign link to sign and get on our feasibility list to sign up to get on our schedule so that we field measure.

And they click on that, they sign it, it comes to us, Luanne plugs it into Builder Trend, they make their payment, and then we schedule the field measure and then we take it from there. Now if they say yes, I think that we're a good fit, but they don't convert, then I follow up with them in one week and then two weeks. But I don't have any, it's all very personal. It's not at our scale. There's not a whole lot of automations beyond the lead intake meeting.

We do the exact same thing. If a lead comes in on email, we just correspond and have them go through Zoom to, or Calendly to schedule that Zoom call. So all of our sales calls are 100 % virtual.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:03.476)
So.

Right, but it feels personal because of the video capabilities today. the first preliminary call is complimentary, the time with you for 30 minutes, and then from there on, should they decide to engage with you is when they get input into Build a Trend and then they become a lead that's gonna pay you and get the process started.

So I have a friend who's a wedding videographer and I think she shot some 5,000 weddings or something and she always would joke around and say, when I go to the wedding I know if the couple's gonna make it or not after having been through so many weddings. So similarly when you meet a family,

Dave Pollard (19:30.307)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:45.458)
on a call, you know the vibe? Like, are you able to tell they're a good lead that would, you know, marry well into your processes? Or it's kind of hard to predict because this is a, this is not a minor investment. We're not talking about like a 15 or $30,000 kitchen remodel with design and build. You're probably talking in half a million dollars or more today. And do you have that sense of like homeowners if they're going to be a good fit for your brand and

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:12.531)
Eh.

Dave Pollard (20:15.49)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, that's part of my job on that call. And I have a sheet that I don't always use, but I'm trying to establish why they're doing this, right? What are their pain points? It's not just because they're bored. There must be some need, something that's not right, that is making them want to spend all this money.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:23.751)
Mmm.

You

Dave Pollard (20:39.116)
tear their house apart, be displaced, right? There has to be something like, why are we doing this? And there's six reasons is what we've learned from a sales trainer called Chip, named Chip Doyle. It's epic BS. They're embarrassed to have people over.

They're lacking privacy. They feel isolated. They are cramped and cluttered. They're broken promises and broken promises would be, Hey, we bought this house five years ago, honey. And you said that we're going to remodel and make it nice. And the ceiling's falling down, right? and then there's safety. So, and more often than not, it's multiple factors in this. Like there might be a safety issue, but they also, if they're going to fix all the things that are wrong,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:06.118)
Aww.

Dave Pollard (21:26.336)
with the electrical in their house, maybe they want to consider a new kitchen that is more open so they don't feel so isolated. And then it would be really nice because right now they're embarrassed to have people over because every time they open their kitchen cabinet, the door falls off, right? So you're trying to dial into those things. And usually if they really don't have any major issues that they really, really need to solve, we're going to be way too robust of a solution for them.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:50.205)
I see.

Dave Pollard (21:54.434)
Cause we're going to have a team of design. It's going to take a long time to get to what the solution is. And if they just say, Hey, we use open this wall up for me. I will send them to some of our friends who do smaller projects like that. Right. So I'm also trying to help solve their issue and it may be us that can solve it for them and it may be somebody else. And I will pass them to another architect. If that direction seems like the way that it needs to go, but I'm mostly trying to identify why they would.

need us and how we might be able to help whether it's our company or somebody else and a lot of times I'll talk to people and I'll say what I'm hearing is I think we're just going to be way too robust if you're just trying to do this little project and then a lot of times I'll kind of swing back and say well there is a whole bunch of other stuff that we want to do this is just the first thing we want to talk about

If we hire you guys, are you going to look at everything for us? I'm like, yes, that's exactly what we do. We want to look at the house holistically, come up with a master plan, and then figure out what's most important. And then it kind of clicks in and ends up being a great fit after we have the conversation, as opposed to someone saying bathroom remodel and me saying we don't do those, right?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (22:49.343)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:05.704)
Right, right. So from that point on where they come in and they decide to do business with you, you invariably, is it a design and a build process or you're okay with just helping them conceptualize, design the space and hand over the design to them and then they can go find another builder or are you, you prefer, I'm sure it's fun to design and build the entire project but.

Do you split your services into two?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:43.05)
you

Dave Pollard (23:43.138)
We do not. We've done that previously and we decided to stop doing that for a couple reasons. Well, I take that back. Yes, clients do not have to build with us, but we want them to want to build with us.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:56.01)
All right.

Dave Pollard (24:00.642)
But after we do design, they can leave because we have two steps. They have multiple steps. The moment they sign on with us, that doesn't mean that they're signing, you know, half a million dollar contract for us to build something. They're hiring us to do step one, which is our feasibility design to come up with the design solutions that could work for them and understand what that might cost. And once we complete that for sure, they could take it to somebody else. can do whatever they can do, build it themselves if they want. But again, in that

initial discovery call I'm trying to make sure that they understand like

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:34.026)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (24:35.79)
we're the best solution to build it as well because we're one team that's integrated and honestly our deliverables out of feasibility design, you can't take those in for permit. You're still gonna have to go through a lot of design steps to get to know what's going to be built. So our goal is 90 % conversion of anyone in design to construction.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:45.098)
Mmm.

Dave Pollard (25:03.214)
And then we're just not big enough to be able to do design only services because we just don't have a big enough design team to do that. And our design team stays consistently busy trying to get stuff ready for the construction team. Because ultimately as a business, we're not an architecture firm or a construction company and we have all the expenses that go with being a construction company. So if I don't have construction going, then.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:03.38)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (25:29.624)
we're not doing very well. that's what we've learned over the years. We need both and we need clients who want to build with us.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:35.316)
Very cool. Some of the terms that you're using are new to me. Feasibility design. How does that differ from what I would just call a sketch plan, I guess, is what somebody draws when they... this, you're looking at the excruciating details of levels and what is a feasibility design?

Dave Pollard (26:02.382)
Yeah, you know what, comes from, the name comes from, back for the first firm I worked for, we did residential work, but we also did developer, commercial developer plans. So I remember that first design step, some people might call it concept design, but when you're working for a commercial developer,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:15.412)
Mmm.

Dave Pollard (26:22.562)
They're basically doing their due diligence. They're looking at a piece of land and they want to see how many parking spots they can get on it. They want to see if they can have, you know, an anchor tenant here and then whatever the island building is. So they're hiring you to do their due diligence feasibility planning. So it's kind of the same idea. Like you guys own this house, you have problems with it. We want to see what's possible and what that could cost.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:33.575)
I see.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:37.662)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:46.076)
I see.

Dave Pollard (26:50.39)
And so, yes, for us it is way more than a sketch because we're using that three dimensional model and presentations for two reasons. One, well really for three reasons. First one is our design team thinks creatively three dimensionally as opposed to just in plan. We want to test it and we might learn from that and come up with something better. Number two,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:02.922)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (27:14.648)
Then our clients who aren't developers, they're homeowners who have regular jobs and take care of their kids, they don't know what a plan sketch is or may or may not. So we want to present to the best of our ability efficiently what the spaces look and feel like. Pictures worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million words, right? So that way, what we're showing them, they can get excited about and then they can also give us feedback.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:19.988)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:27.942)
Wow

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:31.754)
you

Dave Pollard (27:43.52)
And then the third piece of it is the more accurate we are with our feasibility designs and modeling them, we're able to get real, real quantity takeoffs. We're able to get more accurate with budgeting and scope in that early phase as opposed to here's a napkin sketch. It's 400 square feet. That's probably going to be $200,000, right? We have no idea what, accurate that budget really is, but when we dig in and do a more detailed exercise and really plan this thing out,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:59.402)
Mm-mm.

Dave Pollard (28:13.436)
understand how many linear feeded cabinets, how many square feet of countertop tile, which areas are being demoed, then we're able to get more accurate in budgeting early, and then that is a big part of our design program. Does that help?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (28:23.85)
Yep, absolutely. So then you're not just talking about a paper, you're not like a roll of paper that you're bringing and rolling out on a table. If this is 3D, you're able to present it to the homeowner visually using software, I assume on a screen or for them to be able to see the space. Incredible. And I guess pricing out things early on is going to prevent disappointment and surprises. So it's a win-win with the feasibility design then.

Dave Pollard (28:55.266)
Yeah, I mean, as an architect earlier on in my career, when you're just providing services, there's nothing more frustrating than designing something and not getting built. But as a business model as an architecture firm, it's actually very successful because then you're just selling paper with zero liability, right? So I've always felt like that's a weird.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:00.36)
Hmm. I see.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:10.39)
I see.

Dave Pollard (29:18.816)
It just doesn't make any sense. at the end of the day, like I want, I, what I design, I want it to be built and budget is part of that. And the whole idea of an architecture firm being hired and then going through months and months of design and then bidding it out to find out what it costs.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:34.197)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (29:39.734)
And then that pricing comes back and it's way over budget. And then you have two options. You can pay the architect even more money to change it to make it less expensive. But more often than not, the general contractor takes it over and says, okay, I'm going to change all this stuff and get your budget down. And then you just end up with something with no actual, you know, design integrity is part of it. So in my head, the way we do it is the way it should be.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:44.105)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:51.604)
Mo-

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:03.966)
Yeah, I'm sure you're creating beautiful spaces. But on that note, do you ever feel nervous when you've designed something and then it's gonna come to life? Is it like, it's your creation. Do you feel nervous as to what the end product is, the construction is going to look like? Or because of having done this over and over, you're confident and you're able to visualize the spaces and say, this is really going to be perfect.

Dave Pollard (30:33.23)
I would say early on, absolutely. Like with my first house in Chicago, which to your earlier question, when we started doing what we're doing, I said, I didn't necessarily know that there was a market for it. And also I didn't necessarily have the confidence that we were really good at it. Like I might like something, does that mean that it's good? And early on, it was really just the two of us with a couple of people in the field.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:40.682)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:47.368)
Yes, I can imagine.

Dave Pollard (30:59.502)
So that was a lot, a lot on my shoulders. It'd be like, well, if I'm, I don't, maybe I'm a terrible architect. I have no idea. I hope not. So then testing it with my house and I was like, this is actually pretty good. And then yeah, over time you just have a little bit more confidence and experience in knowing what works well and what doesn't. And then, I mean, I would say with the visualization tools that we have and our design team gets together and hops on a Zoom and we're able to review stuff.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:00.788)
Ha ha ha.

Dave Pollard (31:28.328)
and talk about it and get visual feedback really quickly. It gives you more confidence just knowing that like this is what this is going to look and feel like. We feel good about it. And then the reality is, is the built space and what we do and with a couple of firms where I've worked, the actual built product is better than the renderings and the concept.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:33.822)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:42.346)
Cough

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:49.13)
Of course. Yeah.

Dave Pollard (31:56.64)
More often than not, in the design world, you see these incredible renderings, and then the finished product doesn't look like that at all, right? It looks lame. But we're pretty good at what we actually end up building, I would say is better than our early visualization for sure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:00.983)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:10.174)
Amazing. So it's actual. Like you look at the design and then the product is incredible. When you think about all the projects you've done through the years, do you have a favorite either because of the complexity of the project or that the budgeting was complicated? Do you have a story to share of a certain project or a building or a design that you were engaged in that kind of is either close to your heart or you're like, that was so complicated.

Dave Pollard (32:17.944)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:42.568)
Yeah, sure.

Dave Pollard (32:44.716)
Yeah, it's kind of like a favorite child, right? Or at least favorite child.

Dave Pollard (32:52.846)
I mean, we definitely have a lot of them. I'd say, you my house here in North Carolina that we just remodeled and added onto was a pretty, pretty exciting endeavor in making this whole thing work and solving a lot of constraints. And then also doing it in a new city with building out trades. in terms of like,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:59.313)
Nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:13.508)
connections.

Dave Pollard (33:19.436)
feeling good about actually achieving something that one is definitely up there. And then, yeah, I we have, I mean, some of my favorite projects are really a function of the clients and just how excited they have been about their spaces and how they've changed. Cause really that's what it's all about. It's not about me. It's really about, you know, when you see their kids in the spaces. mean, we have one client who told us that, I know this sounds a little bit crazy, but

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:34.516)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:48.908)
how sweet.

Dave Pollard (33:49.134)
you know, the addition that we did to their house has made her a better mom. And what she means by that is while she's able to, you know,

make dinner, the family eats healthier, she's engaging with them, sitting around the island, there's sunlight, she's in a better mood, the kids are in a better mood, like all of a sudden there's certain things that sounds crazy, like a new kitchen's gonna make you a better person. Yeah, it does, you know, I think that there is something to, know, those spaces where you interact with your family and really making those special, maybe even like a little bit inspiring at times adds a lot of

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:10.43)
about a parent. Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:21.897)
Yep.

Dave Pollard (34:30.032)
value to people's lives. any anytime we get moments like that, know, those those projects are definitely up there. We had this was this was early early in live co we had a bungalow that we built a second floor on and they live there with their three kids. And I think like by the end of it, they were living in like 110 by 10 room.

We had another family in the same town with their three kids. We had a big addition on the back and they were basically living in just the one front room using their hot plate every day and just smiling the whole way through. I don't know. The people that we're able to work with can be really fun and very rewarding at the end of the day.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:02.538)
Incredible.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:10.303)
Yeah.

It's such a personal business remodeling, right? You're transforming lives and getting into people's homes and spaces that they're just going to make memories and raise children and have birthdays and weddings and incredible. What is your take on AI? Do you use AI in your work? I work with remodeling contractors and some of them get worried saying, AI is going to take over the world. And if there is one industry that I think AI cannot really reap

any of the jobs it's remodeling. But what is your personal philosophy when you look at AI and do you use it in your day to day or do your teams use it to either simplify, enhance customer experiences? Where do you use AI today and do you have a favorite tool that you default to?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:04.234)
you

Dave Pollard (36:07.31)
Yeah, I mean, think it's been a part of our, AI has been a part of what we've done for years now. It's just, you know, kind of the chat GPT interface of it just feels a little bit different. I actually wrote an article on it in JLC, I think about a year and a half ago when...

they first released chat GPT and kind of macro what I was trying to get towards is like, don't run away from this technology in our industry, engage it and help shape it and what it can do for our industry. Otherwise somebody else is going to create a way that we're going to have to use their AI in our industry. Kind of the same thing in the architecture world, right?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:43.463)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (36:53.038)
It's like, you guys can just ignore this thing, be freaked out by it, or actually engage in it and find ways to make your lives more efficient. And just like you used to have eight people dig in a hole, then they invented a backhoe.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:02.954)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (37:07.808)
And you don't need eight people building up, digging a hole, but you need people that know how to maintain backhoes and you need people that know how to drive backhoes and you need people to manufacture the parts for backhoes. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's an industry shift. where yes, in the field, we're not going to really see any massive shifts, I think as a result of AI, the places where I hope it can benefit us.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:15.274)
afraid.

Dave Pollard (37:35.63)
at the field and vendor level is more accurate information for the field. If there is a way where AI can quadruple check all the stuff that we're trying to get to the field to make sure that they have the accurate information and always stay on top of that stuff for us, because nothing hurts us more than discrepancies of information.

You know, same thing with the vendors being able to get stuff to us, make installations of specialty materials simpler and more consistent. I there's a lot of places where it can make labor more efficient, kind of on the...

on the front end of the products and the information that's delivered. I don't use it a whole lot. ChatGPT, I use sometimes to check stuff for me and I use like their image checker too to be like, hey, I'm doing a graphic or something. What do they think about this and give us some ideas. But I'm not in terms of...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:28.273)
Yeah, it's fun.

Dave Pollard (38:44.29)
You know, the chat GPT stuff, it doesn't do a whole lot for me other than maybe generate some ideas if I'm having a writer's block. I feel like where I'm starting to see it come into play more a little bit as we use Canada for a lot of marketing stuff, like a lot. there's just so much out there. Right. So the AI is able to kind of narrow.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:59.006)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (39:06.708)
stuff for you. So if I'm trying to come up with something I can be like well I need to make this you know a little bit more professional looking and I'll offer up different font sets and things like that. That's where I think it can be pretty fun. It just makes it so I don't feel like I'm always having to start something from scratch.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:20.628)
Yep, and you're so right, embracing it is important that we just have to embrace it and hit the road running, use it and see how it can serve us.

Dave Pollard (39:36.044)
Yeah, I would love it if they could take every project that we've ever done and just comb through the project folders and just found patterns, consistency was able to help us build out reputable systems. You know, I'd love it to be able to basically just go through our entire workflow and tell us where we can improve. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:41.066)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:52.69)
I think it's coming. I think it has the potential. It's just a matter of time. What is your source of lead generation today to find new homeowners that would be a good fit for you? Is it word of mouth? Is it referrals? What is your lead generation strategy to keep your business, you know, beating or meeting those revenue goals?

Dave Pollard (40:19.694)
Yeah, I mean, we're kind of what we're like in the seven touch point rule type of thing, right? What is it you need? You need to hear about us from seven different places in order. I don't remember if the number seven, but so yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think that that's that's what we holistically are always trying to do.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:22.346)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:27.407)
Omnipresence, yep.

Dave Pollard (40:41.418)
So Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn is kind of our daily that's going on. Obviously website updates, Google My Business continues to be kind of growing. So we paid for some increased services there to build GMB a little bit more. We paid for SEO services to make sure that we're staying relevant.

Blog content is going is happening. That's kind of what we have going on on the digital side. We've done We tried some paid ads for Google last year with pretty Not great results. So we canned that and we switched to display ads, which I think we're not spending a whole lot like maybe Five six hundred bucks a month or something. It seems like the display has a little bit more for us

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:27.274)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (41:36.61)
But I would say then we did some print advertising in local community magazines. We tried that for a couple years. Again, like I don't know if I can attribute anything directly to it. But then we just get a lot, a lot of calls off of seeing our van drive around, project signs.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:45.14)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:55.677)
Yeah.

Dave Pollard (41:56.192)
referrals and repeat are starting because we're only 12 years old. So that referral tree grows. The repeat tree is starting to be a thing. So it's a little bit of everything. We sponsor a lot of events, like local events. You know, summer festivals, little league teams, all that stuff.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:01.576)
Nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:07.677)
locally.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:14.398)
Yeah. Nice. You of course have several five star reviews on your Google business profile. Do you have a review collection strategy or does it just happen organically when there is a super pleased homeowner that goes and toots your horn? Or do you have a concerted plan where you're saying, okay, we need to collect reviews for that social proof. What is your strategy today?

Dave Pollard (42:43.5)
Yeah, I would say that has changed a little bit. It used to be a lot easier. It used to be after the project's done, we do a professional photo shoot and we schedule that with them. And then after that, we would give them a gift and then I would send them the photos and then ask for a Google review just through email with a link. And it was pretty easy peasy. What we found is people just aren't as urgently

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:10.168)
Yeah.

Dave Pollard (43:13.526)
Submitting them and I don't know if it's just because we've grown and maybe we're not as personal as as we used to be and that was just a couple people I don't know if it's because people feel weird how they have to log in to Google and now their names attached to a review So we shifted a little bit where we're trying to get the folks because I'm not as involved in projects as I used to be either we're trying to get the folks that are involved in it to

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:13.961)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:23.178)
Mm.

Dave Pollard (43:41.09)
follow up and push for reviews. So that would be someone from the design team who's going out there for project photos or even the project manager. So they do, have cards with a QR code on it. So if our PM, you know, gets them to scan and do a Google review, we'll give a bonus for that. So we're trying to just define other ways to do it without feeling like we're over pressuring clients to do it. But yeah, it's.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:46.89)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:54.378)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:04.394)
But I think in today's world, you need social proof. think everybody's brain is wired for that feedback loop of, even if you're buying a pair of socks on Amazon, you're looking at the rating and then making a decision. So I think our brains are wired for that. So yeah, it's something that you can't ignore because people want to read those words of another customer that's had a fantastic experience with you.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:34.12)
When you think about your entire journey, I think this is kind of a dream for any architect to have a design, build firm, create these beautiful spaces and transform lives. What do you think was kind of a, did you have a mentor? Did you have a epiphany? Like what is it that put you down this path of where you are today? And it seems like you're having a great time doing what you're doing.

Dave Pollard (44:36.748)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Pollard (45:06.924)
Yeah, I mean, I've had a number of mentors throughout from all kinds of different industries. I would say David Hovait often was always a huge inspiration for me as an architect developer. Tom Rozak is another one, architect developer. I'd speak to him occasionally for feedback. And those are guys that...

You know, went to architecture school, worked for firms and then just went out and did it. So whenever I get kind of like, you know, hung up on stuff a little bit, I'm like, these guys are just, you just have to go do it. Right. You and so, so many, and not just architects, but you know, it's, it's a different mentality to be an entrepreneur. Like you have to do it. There's a level of ignorance is bliss. and there are no matter what going to be, you know, bad times.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:38.014)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:46.206)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (46:00.43)
So you can talk to David Hovian, Tom Rosak about that, Multiple, you know, housing crises and things like this, and they're both residential builders. So, you know, that's just kind of part of it. And just understand in the greater scheme of things, you're, you're able to, you know, create things that you want to create, bring them to the world and have some fun doing it. But the first step is just to, just to do it. And you're going to fail a bunch of times.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:04.072)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:18.472)
Nice.

Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:24.89)
So you were a pretty young company that survived the COVID-19 pandemic. What were some of the issues that you had to encounter to keep your business going through the pandemic? And there's been labor issues, so many things that are just a byproduct of a worldwide pandemic. So did you switch your business model? How did you guys survive the pandemic?

Dave Pollard (46:54.68)
Great question. I think that's the first time anyone has ever asked that, but we had, what a crazy time. So we had a couple projects that were under construction at the time. And we knew that obviously for our business and also for those clients whose houses were under construction, the most important thing was to finish those projects.

number one on the construction side. So if we had a full shutdown in Chicago, we were considered essential. So I mean, we'd have to figure out ways to do it safely, but we needed to get people their kitchens back. They're going to be locked down for all this time. So that was a big piece of it. Then there was not a whole lot of design. There weren't a whole lot of people calling up to say, hey, let's design an addition for my house. So

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:22.398)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:28.09)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:37.478)
Right.

Dave Pollard (47:46.508)
The design team's energy shifted towards my energy shifted to just grassroots having fun marketing. So did a lot of videos, just have fun doing stuff. We created zoom backgrounds, you know, cause everyone, so we just, wherever we had like a place we could help or like maybe make people smile a little bit. We were trying to do it. We make coloring books for kids that we could drop off. had,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:49.329)
Mm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:59.135)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:06.686)
Alright.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:11.464)
sweet.

Dave Pollard (48:17.47)
We had a couple different things. If people wanted a Livco hat, we ordered a bunch of Livco hats. It's like just message us and we'll drop one off on your front porch, right? So we just pushed a lot of stuff out that I think was authentic and we were just doing the best we could. And then another kind of big shift that we did in our business model is we raised our design fees, which seems backwards, right?

The reality was we needed money. And if someone paid us $1,000 to do design, that didn't help us at all. So instead of looking at design as a loss leader, we looked at it as an actual functioning piece of our business that cost money to produce, and we needed to make money doing it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:45.852)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:05.066)
So were you designing for free earlier or you had a very low price point and then what was it?

Dave Pollard (49:13.614)
It's a low point of entry. Yeah. We started with $750, then we went to $1,500 to $2,500 and now we're $6,500 to $10,500. And then our detailed design fee is an additional 10 % of the project budget. So our full design fees are about 12 to 13%, which is honestly what it takes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:19.655)
Nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:27.082)
So what brought you to that realization during the pandemic? Did you just have the downtime to run the numbers and say, hey, this design stuff is time intense and we should be charging more or?

Dave Pollard (49:46.176)
A little bit. It was kind of like we had, it was kind like an all or nothing kind of thing, right? So if, look, if, I know how to describe it a little bit more. Yes. mean, functionally we needed to make more money doing it, but is it designed to build business? We don't have things that we can sell or just put on sale, right? So if I have no revenue coming in,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:06.302)
Right.

Dave Pollard (50:14.446)
I can't just all of a sudden go and sell kitchen cabinets. There's a whole front end that goes to it. The only thing that I can sell and get money for tomorrow is design in the way that we're set up. So we took a deep look into what we can sell in terms of services.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:15.658)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:20.767)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:29.727)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (50:36.974)
we kind of have our feasibility and detailed design phase, but we've always looked at opportunities for maybe a lighter version of that, right? Maybe there is something we can do for $500, or maybe there's something we can do for $2,500, or is there a way to get it to construction faster? So it's really just kind of testing out certain things. And I think our core feasibility to detailed design process with total design fees of 12 to 13%,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:03.091)
Nice.

Dave Pollard (51:04.046)
seems to be the best process for our clientele and should work financially. those are some of the big shifts that we did. then dealing with labor after the fact, mean, it was hard. It's still hard because it's still going like this, right? So as my partner Russ would always say, we just manage through it, try and do the best we can and get the work done and do the best we can.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:14.258)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:22.686)
Hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:28.426)
So you've kind of productized your service then, your design services and came up with like buckets and realized that you had the opportunity to price it more, to want to put money in the bank and to also be compensated fairly for the amount of time and effort that it takes for you to do those designs.

Do you have a favorite book? Movie? I know favorite one book is hard. Are you a published author yourself?

Dave Pollard (51:48.888)
Sure. Yep.

Dave Pollard (51:54.94)
jeez.

Let's see.

Dave Pollard (52:04.11)
I just I write for JLC Romali magazine program modeler, and then I just I have my thesis, but I haven't haven't written the book book Yeah, I would say why can't I remember the name of it my favorite my favorite book is

Dave Pollard (52:23.27)
It's a good life-changing one. But I'll put Power of Now out there. Power of Now is another great one. They're all kind of in the similar light of, you know, your brain getting in the way kind of thing. But it's a Hiram Smith book. But yeah, any book that's kind of focused on life,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:23.592)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:35.725)
Chatter.

Dave Pollard (52:52.163)
structure and passion and using the brain as a tool is usually something that I kind of appreciate but you know I mean behind me you'll see everything from architecture to ceramics books to good to great to all that stuff.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:52.938)
Hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:04.882)
Nice, very cool. What do you do for fun when you're not working and sketching? And I'm sure your brain must be such a systematic brain with the ability to sketch things. What do you do for fun when you're not working?

Dave Pollard (53:24.856)
So I'll, me personally, I like building stuff and working in the yard, building, you know, whatever I can do to just build stuff and work outside. I enjoy doing. And then, you know, as a family, all three of my kids play hockey. So that's kind of our extra curricular is traveling around to their different hockey tournaments and having a good time with that. So yeah, ice hockey. Yeah. yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:41.428)
hockey as in ice? Ice hockey? wow, nice. And they just fell into playing ice hockey or was that something that you did as a child and you transfer?

Dave Pollard (53:59.572)
I never, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, so I didn't even know what hockey was, but living in Chicago was a pretty easy thing to get into and we love it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:03.092)
There's tournaments and you drive them around and stuff like that. Very cool. So you must have a lot of equipment in your house then. The kids stuff.

Dave Pollard (54:11.209)
yeah, lots of hockey.

Dave Pollard (54:17.346)
Yes, and it all smells terrible. It stays in the garage.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:17.723)
You haven't designed a really cool space to aerate the stinky stuff. I have a kid that's just obsessed with sock.

Dave Pollard (54:28.48)
It's in my head. The garage renovation is on the list. I'll get to that probably in five or six years.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:31.883)
Five or six years, cool. Well, if there is an architect, young architect that's listening to this podcast and wants to kind of follow your path, what would be like, you know, one tidbit of advice that you would give them?

Dave Pollard (54:52.844)
Yeah, I mean, for any architect, I think you just figure out what you really love about design and then just build out a business around that. You know, I was fortunate that I kind of fell into residential remodeling, but loved doing it, right? So I didn't 12 years ago, or I guess when I graduated college 22 years ago, I didn't say, hey, I want to have a residential design build remodeling company.

I just kind of learned over time what I enjoy doing and what I think I was good at bringing to the world and then just built a company around it. But then the other most important piece of that is I think a lot of architects when they have these ideas and want to go do something, they feel like they're the only one that's ever done that and they try and reinvent the wheel.

It took me a couple years to realize that there's a pretty incredible community of design, build, remodeling companies, many of them architecture-led or with a heavy layer of architecture in that, which has been invaluable. So like what we do really isn't that novel. There's great companies, small businesses up to 60 people that are doing this very similar thing throughout the country doing really, really cool work.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (55:46.804)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (56:04.994)
So I noticed you're a member of the National Association of Remodelers. Do you like going to their events? Do you go to conferences? Do you have favorite conferences that you like to hit up every year?

Dave Pollard (56:20.78)
Yeah, so I'm on the board. believe I'm likely going to be the incoming president for Nary Chicago this coming year. Yeah, we're trying to get a sense of what our members would like to see more of. And I think a lot of it is essentially just networking with other people in the industry. Similar with the Home Builder Association does and getting to know each other and.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (56:24.426)
Peace.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (56:35.764)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Pollard (56:46.326)
and working with each other. So we're going to be continually building out more and more events, possible home shows, parade of homes, types of things. We're looking into a lot of ways to do that, as well as speakers from Federal Reserve, things like that. So from a conference standpoint, I do, enjoy, I've done the Penetral Experience, I've done the...

summit I always enjoy going to those and getting the level of motivational speak as well as deep business talk as well as dialing into the numbers and market conditions. Two weeks ago I was at the HIRI conference which I HIRI summit which is the Home Improvement Research Institute which was really great. It was a lot of data points from different speakers talking about different generations and different patterns and

Rathna Ramakrishnan (57:18.25)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (57:27.08)
I see.

Dave Pollard (57:39.918)
all the way there to what's going on in the Harvard joint housing studies, things like that. So I like, if I'm going to go to conference, I like it to be pretty well-rounded.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (57:43.178)
Fantastic.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (57:47.548)
Right, excellent. Well, I really appreciate your time. It was a delight to hang out with you and get to know about your story as well as your passion for design and build. So thank you again.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (58:06.698)
Very cool. Well, I have one last question. If I reach out to lot of architects, general contractors to be on the podcast, if you were to, why should somebody come on this podcast? Did you enjoy the cadence of the questioning? How was your experience chatting with me?

Dave Pollard (58:06.772)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the conversation.

Dave Pollard (58:31.01)
Yeah. No, I think it's great. know, so many of these are only 30 minutes. So I feel like you have to cut it off sometimes. You're able to kind of go in a little bit deeper, which I think is, which I think is fun. you know, kind of like when like the business of architecture, I think his is an hour and we actually broke it into two segments because there's just so much to talk about in this world. But, I think it's fun to be able to.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (58:50.58)
was right.

Dave Pollard (58:59.742)
reach out and talk to, like what you're saying, reach out and talk to other architects who are like, hmm, I wonder about this industry or, you know, other remodeling companies who might want to bring in a side of design, right? That might be something to differentiate them. That's great.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (59:09.076)
Very cool. Well, thank you for your time.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (59:16.87)
Excellent. So I've stopped recording and it's uploading. So I do have a digital marketing agency where I work exclusively with remodeling contractors. And one of my passions is being found online, particularly with the Google business profile. And so I was curious if you'd be open.

Dave Pollard (59:18.155)
Absolutely, Roth, I appreciate it.

Dave Pollard (59:24.908)
Okay.