ALEX
Did you have to have a tutorial for all this?

MICHAEL
That's the same thing Harvey said to me.

ALEX
These are two separate lines on there. I can play them all perfectly. So, first things first. Did you have to have a tutorial?

MICHAEL
Lots of YouTube. Lots and lots of YouTube.

ALEX
Well, are you impressed, or are you wondering what the heck you're doing there?

MICHAEL
Overly impressed. And wondering what the heck I'm doing. All of the above.

ALEX
If it makes you feel any better, I felt like a fish out of water on every one of these. The first time I did it was with a guy who actually does host a podcast, and I was supposed to be interviewing him. About 12 minutes in, I realized that I'm talking the whole time because he switched it around on me. But the main reason I wanted to record this with you is because I'm incredibly excited to have you part of the team.

MICHAEL
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

ALEX
And accordingly, I'm excited to introduce you to everyone and have people know a little bit about you and learn what you offer moving forward. Everyone, this is Michael Bettin, and I will let you tell us who you are from there.

MICHAEL
From the contracting side, or...?

ALEX
I think it's probably in our brand to start with just who you are as a person first.

MICHAEL
Well, I am a husband of 41 years to a beautiful woman, and a dad to two special girls. I think that's who I am. All this other stuff is just to pay the bills and get through the day.

ALEX
I thought you just wanted to hang out with me.

MICHAEL
And hang out with you. But since we have to pay the bills and we have to fill our time, you might as well be with something you trust and enjoy and care deeply about, and that's what I have chosen, and I've done it now for over 40 years. I used to tell people, you know, it was an honor being able to bid this for you, and thank you for the project. And if the truth be told, tomorrow morning I want to wake up and want to build something, so I might as well build this.

And then over the years, it became more and more important to build with the right people. And quite frankly, that's how we got our friendship started. It was based on the right people, and we were at the right place at the right time, and we found two non-egoic characters that are contractors, which is very hard to find, too.

ALEX
Or let's call it healthy egos.

MICHAEL
All right. Healthy. I'll take that. And here we are.

ALEX
Well, I do want to dig into the story of how we met, because I think it's just too serendipitous not to share. But tell us maybe first your career trajectory, because I have so much respect for it and such an appreciation for all the things that it brings.

MICHAEL
Out of high school, I went to Wyoming Technical Institute, because at that point it was just all about high-performance mechanics. I finished school in Wyoming Tech and ended up in Hollywood, California, that's another whole long story, at a high-performance speed shop. So I kind of satisfied a dream very quickly. By the time that specialty shop in Hollywood had to close, because of cars all going computerized and everything else, the industry virtually falling in on itself, I didn't want to become the tracked mechanic of the mechanic society.

So I ended up finding a general contracting company in Pacific Palisades, before it all burned down, and got with them and started from absolute scratch. I was literally a laborer. I ran a crew after that for demolition and became a carpenter, a self-taught carpenter, and then that just turned into more and more opportunities, and I started framing. I met Donna in Malibu, when she was from Dallas, and she was still in school for physical therapy. We could either keep our relationship long distance, or I could move and frame in Dallas. So I moved and framed in Dallas. We got married out there, came back to California, and I stayed in construction.

I started my own company out there. Had it for five and a half years. Then came the horrible earthquake of '94, Northridge, which made us upend. You've met Hailey. She was one month old during the earthquake, and we got everybody out. That moved me from hillside work, high-end hillside work, which I found really exciting, to Dallas, which was very flat, but I got into some very high-end, in fact ridiculously high-end, work. So I've been witness to a lot of remarkable opportunities and projects and exposure.

ALEX
Yeah. Just in the time that you and I have discussed drawings and concepts and things like that, it's been such a healthy progression for me personally. You know this, that I'm all about, hey, if we have the right systems and right approach, I can figure out anything. But when you then add into that equation such a vast wealth of experience, what that does to the machine, I think I can say this for both of us, it's really exciting, and I'm really, really appreciative of it.

I think that brings us to how we met. A theme, or something I've said on multiple occasions doing this podcast so far, is this idea of collaboration over competition, and how important that is for the industry as a whole to move forward, but also for the people within it to grow and make it more sustainable. We had both gone to an architect event, an open house type thing, and I was there with my wife, who was very, very, very pregnant.

MICHAEL
Very pregnant.

ALEX
Yes. You were there with your lovely daughter, and it was a group of people that I don't think either of us really knew that well. I think you had more of a relationship with any of them than I did.

MICHAEL
There was a client there that didn't choose me for her project. So that was interesting.

ALEX
Yeah. Those moments are inevitable, but always fun. But we ended up talking, shooting the shit for hours there, I want to say.

MICHAEL
It was definitely something. And I can easily say, just that one visit was more time than I've ever sat down with another GC. And it's normally because of the egos and the competition, which is ludicrous, because other businesses associate with themselves and get along just fine. I don't know why we can't.

ALEX
Especially in Boulder County. There's more than enough work to go around, and the better I am at doing my job makes it easier for you to be better at doing your job, and vice versa.

I want to say it was maybe after the birth of my daughter, saying to my wife that I just missed having a community that I kind of had with other builders, other tradespeople in Ohio, and that I wanted to reach out to Michael, the nice guy that we met at the gathering. And she was just like, oh, you definitely should, he's so nice. And then I got your email from that architect, and we went and got a coffee or beer or whatever it was.

MICHAEL
It was a beer. You had me at a beer.

ALEX
Yeah. I think I've still got you at a beer. And then I think we've gotten together for a beer very regularly ever since. What, a year and a half?

MICHAEL
A year and a half, yeah.

ALEX
And most of that has been either commiserating or celebrating or trying to discuss anything but building.

MICHAEL
Yeah. A bit of both. And you had your baby like two, three weeks after that party.

ALEX
Yeah, well, she came early. And then you graciously invited me over with my family, or Donna at least, my wife, for her first birthday, so that was lovely. All the big stuff. But now here we are, with the Fernhill logo, after much groveling on my part trying to get you here. I'll just say I'm very, very grateful and very excited to have you here.

Trust is such a big thing that always comes up, between clients, between tradespeople. You and I both know this better than most: when you've invested so much of who you are into something, having somebody else come on board and be a part of that is not always the easiest thing to do.

MICHAEL
No. It's a lot to share.

ALEX
And also for you. I can't stress enough how grateful I am, how grateful my family is, and how excited I am for everything moving forward. But that's from my side of things. I kind of want to know what you're excited for.

MICHAEL
Well, after so many years of doing it the same way, or evolving as much as I did, because you had to. None of us were businessmen or business people, and you had to become one to an extent in order to be successful. The thing that we have that keeps this different from any other way it could have come about is that we had that year and a half of just innocent bitch, cry, laugh about anything we want. So we've got a heck of a foundation of a friendship and a business respect.

Because I wouldn't have come with you if I didn't like what you were doing. You wouldn't have asked me. We wouldn't have the friendship we have now if we didn't trust each other, or if we didn't appreciate the way we both do things, even though we do them differently, which is really interesting. Because look at this. My God, I don't even know what half this stuff is, but it's a way to work in a way that I would never have done. I wouldn't even have thought of it. Cold calling and business cards was the old way. So with you bringing that to the table, and me phasing my career, hopefully, towards the big retirement word, whatever that means anymore, it's going to be a neat way to move forward.

ALEX
Careful what you say. You might be in for the long haul here.

Admittedly, and I've told you this, when I moved to New Zealand, my last company was successful enough that I was able to move on from it in a way that was profitable. And then I got to New Zealand and went to work for somebody else, and got told, hey, no, you're wrong about everything. That was a really, really hard thing. I actually don't think that individual was wrong. But for me personally, as a person that cares and takes pride in what he does, that was hard.

And so I thought about us. So much of my approach to residential construction is, hey, we're going to bring commercial methods in here with technology, try to manage overhead as a result of it, manage risk exposure, but then we're going to do it at the same time with an emotional touch and awareness. That's different, kind of by design. And I was like, well, if I was Michael, and I've been doing it successfully for so long, would I be willing to see if I can buy into that a little bit or not?

And then you and I talked, and one thing that I actually loved that you said to me was, okay, one of my conditions: I want to print out my drawings with my highlighters. I don't care what technology you need from me here or there, but I just need my prints with my highlighters. And my emphatic response was, we will get you all the highlighters in every single color you ever need, so long as you upload a daily log.

MICHAEL
I can do that. And we'll see. You may change that part of me as well.

ALEX
You know what, though? That's so low down the totem pole of all the things that we have. If anything, I want to celebrate it. Because at the end of the day, looking at a set of prints and building based off them and vetting them, understanding what's good building practice, what's good for the project, what's good for the client, the technology is just a tool. If it makes us better at doing that, sure. But the way that we do that is not different. And that is something that you and I do not differ on at all.

MICHAEL
Correct.

ALEX
Which just makes me feel incredibly confident and incredibly excited, to the point where I want people to know. We're out there. This is what we're doing.

MICHAEL
It is, now that you mention it, pretty remarkable that the two of us shared parallels with what the end product needs to be and how to get there overall. Then you have your new ideas with this and the technology, and I'm open to that. But literally, just like we said, if I can't get comfortable, if I can't get the feeling out of working with a computer that I can with highlighters and plans, there's no reason to change.

ALEX
Defeats the purpose of the tool, right. And so that's where I come in, to make sure the tools are being used in a way that supports the assets that you have, which are the reason you're here.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, because I've always been lucky enough to have great mentors in my life, people that knew that I wanted to always be challenged. And I think it's caused me to actually want that out of people. I don't want to be surrounded by somebody that's just going to say, yes, this is the way you're doing it, yes. So much of what I've learned is, when you're growing something, bring to the table things that are not your forte. Seek that out, and be open to it, to learn, to be humble, to become better as a result of it. It's no secret that I'm young, especially within this market.

MICHAEL
We're not the same age?

ALEX
Your looks have got everyone guessing. But to take that in and look at it as an asset is such an exciting thing, and frankly, it makes me feel a little bit more at home, relating to the things I had before. So I look at it as a definite win, the fact that you are here, agreeing to do this with fancy lights on.

MICHAEL
For both sides.

ALEX
And I'm excited for what's to come.

MICHAEL
I'm ready.

ALEX
There we go. That wasn't so bad, was it?

MICHAEL
Close.