ALEX
Jason Ragan.

JASON
Hello.

ALEX
It's Ragan Design Studio, right? Jason Ragan Design Studio. That's where we're at right now. Cool, man. Well, thank you for coming. Are you adequately caffeinated yet?

JASON
I'm getting there. This one that you made will help me, for sure. Thank you.

ALEX
Admittedly, I think I make them a little bit strong, so it should help. Well anyway, I'm actually really excited to have this conversation, because one, it's exciting to talk about your new endeavor here. Number two, we have somewhat similar trajectories, coming from commercial, you more so than me, and now we both exist in the residential space. Talking about where those things overlap, where they diverge, and what each could learn from the other, I think that's a really important, fun conversation. Well, fun for me at least.

JASON
No, that's cool. I agree.

ALEX
Tell me a little bit. I know we talked last time you were here about what led to this, you going off on your own, what you're excited about.

JASON
I thought about that a little after we chatted, because it wasn't ever really something where I was consciously like, why am I going to do this? I circled around to thinking about past experiences and what led to this. Leadership positions I'd had before that maybe make sense for starting your own thing. There are probably a lot of avenues that led here, but what I really came to is super simple. I had some people asking me if I could help them with projects, and those projects, right or wrong, didn't feel like they were a fit for the firm I was at, or that business structure. I looked at those opportunities and was like, yeah, I would love to help you. I had put myself in the position where people were interested in asking me for help. Having those inquiries from friends, family, people like that, I don't want to say it forced me, because I could have said no, but it was kind of natural. Let's start Jason Ragan Design Studio and work on these projects, help these people get their vision out there. That's where I landed on why this became a thing in the last year.

ALEX
I'd have to imagine it's a little bit of a comforting thing, to know the demand is there as you're entering uncharted territory.

JASON
Definitely. Having people that trust you to help them is kind of a requirement, and having that was motivating, to think we could do it. We talked a little about why it seems like some of the people I look up to, mentors that started their own things: why do you start when you have a one-year-old and a three-year-old? I think it's not that you have a one- and three-year-old; it's just that part of your life. You've developed these skills and experiences over the previous 15 years working in an industry, and the opportunity presents itself at this point. There's definitely a little motivation, having a family, to do good work and keep work coming in. And I feel super lucky, I'm in a position where my wife supports me.

ALEX
I think every man entering the world of fatherhood has some stress and anxiety about what that means professionally, especially with your own business. And the most surprising thing to me has been: I am such a better businessperson, a better business owner, a better builder as a result of it, and not quite in ways I would've expected. I'm way better at drawing healthy boundaries, both in ways that advocate for my client and in ways that just separate my work-life balance.

JASON
I definitely see that as well. I came from architecture school, where you learn that you can work all night, multiple days in a row, towards a deadline. The people that can do that excel in school. There's something there, but the boundaries you maybe previously had, or just hadn't developed yet, go out the window. And you can carry that into the professional world as you get started, where you just do the work no matter what it takes, however it affects your personal life. Having kids and a family has definitely provided some boundaries. And it also forces you to not circle around something so long. That comes with experience too, figuring out how to come to a solution. An intern might take three days to lay out a bathroom, whereas the experience you've gained in a career helps you figure out the process to lay out that bathroom. So there are a couple of things working for us at this stage of our careers: you've got that experience, and you're able to come to solutions faster without missing things as much.

ALEX
Even for myself, there was a recent experience with a client where we were talking about a project and some of the emotions they feel throughout it, and I left the conversation realizing I understood him so differently being a parent as well. Most of my clients are family people. Their kids might still be in the home, or out of the home, but family is first for them. And recognizing that my role as a family man myself is something I should be connecting with clients on, because it lets me understand the problems they need me to solve, as opposed to it being just another thing on my plate. Which is also fun, and something cool to share.

JASON
It's a cool perspective to have. All of our experiences accumulate, and the more perspective you can bring, the better. The blessing of kids and a family is just more perspective, more insight into the way things work, and it helps you become a better designer, builder, person in general. It's weird to say that putting limits on things helps the process, but oftentimes it does. The work-life balance required of you when you've got a young family is helpful in that way.

ALEX
When I came back into this industry, I pivoted and thought about what I wanted to do. One thing I thought was really unique: when you enter a new endeavor after having experiences and mentors, you have this moment where you can step back and be really intentional about your trajectory. You can say, hey, I did it this way before, but I'd rather do it this way moving forward. Owning your own business is really iterative, and you're almost inherently acting from hindsight, because you've got to have cash flow. But when you get to reinvent in the moment, you can say: I want to strive toward this. I want the product to be that, not this, because of past experiences. Do you have anything on your mind like that, a lesson from the past you specifically want to address in the branding of what Jason Ragan Design Studio is?

JASON
That's a good question. You mentioned I worked in commercial. I did higher ed design work, spec office, corporate campus custom office things, some retail, and now the residential world. I think there's a lot of client interaction where I saw good things and bad things, and not necessarily because of the people involved, but because of the process sometimes. Keeping clients super abreast of what's going on, which I think is possible at the scale of work I'm focusing on, which is residential right now. Communicating what's happening, how it's happening, at the time it's happening, and not brushing things under the rug. Previously it's not intentional that things get brushed under the rug; it's just a giant project, and maybe we didn't think that was important at the time. But then the client, six months later, is like, we never talked about this, we didn't get to decide on this. So: focusing on the client, having the same level of investment you would have if it was your project. At a bigger firm, sometimes that gets missed. Bringing that personal interaction: we care, at a high level, about what you care about on this project specifically.

ALEX
It's interesting to hear you answer it that way, because to relate it to my company: my company is very client-focused, obviously, but if I'm truthful, answering that question for myself, I would've talked about the product. What kind of architecture, we want to be building modern, all that. What I hear when you say it is that you're very client-focused, very communication-focused, and that is the product at the end. Which I think is fascinating in the design world, and the construction world in general. While we are building this physical entity that is the end result, it's oftentimes the process that defines the industry as a whole, how people perceive us. Most times, people come to work with us because they see pretty pictures. But when they talk about you after the process is done, it's: Jason was amazing, he listened to everything we said, we had the easy conversations and the hard ones, and we appreciated how we had the hard ones. To hear you answer with that as the first thing is honestly a little refreshing.

JASON
Thanks. I do love drawing, I love beautiful buildings, and I have things I like and things I don't in terms of styles of architecture. But so much of it, especially at the scale of my company, me and my cat, is this referral network of: how are you as a person, how do you treat other people? And that gets communicated. For the Frank Gehrys of the world, it's a different game. At that level, it's a branded piece of architecture, and that type of architect exists here in Boulder County and Denver as well. But the majority of the work I've been engaged on has been focused on understanding the vision the client brings to the table. They see you as a professional who can help them execute their vision. So you're kind of mining the whole time, uncovering what they're really after, through precedent images, previous experiences, the house they live in now, what they liked and what they didn't. And then eventually you can talk about what it's going to look like. Or maybe they come with that: we saw that you did this.

Me personally, right now, I'm super interested in the breadth of architectural history and how it's been applied to residential. Colorado, 1860s through today, there's been an import of style from different areas. If you go through any of the old towns, Boulder, Fort Collins, even Louisville, Lyons here, Lafayette, they have these beautiful old towns built from sometime around then through the 1920s. I love what I see in these places. My education was modern architecture, and all of that history kind of got brushed to the side. Modern architecture is the future, the path forward, and I probably bought into that because that's what I learned. But I've had this resurgence of interest in older stuff, older styles, and how it can be personal and comfortable.

ALEX
That's super cool. One of the local quarries here in Lyons, which I didn't know, is actually the biggest natural architectural stone quarry in Colorado. Here in town. They're having a little lunch seminar on Friday. Now that I'm getting some work here in Lyons: I love modern architecture, and at the end of the day I just want to build cool stuff that clients love. But there's a part of me that's like, you go to California and learn about the historical influences here and there, and people think that's cool, to amplify that, even if you aren't from there. And Lyons specifically has such a cool history with the quarries and the red stone, and it could fit in modern architecture. I'm really hoping, with the couple of projects we now have here in Lyons: let's consider that. Instead of completely changing the facade and having resentment within the community, it's such a small area that if you can tie a few things of historical perspective together, the way people experience this town is going to completely change. It's not going to be some crazy modern thing up on the hill that everyone's talking about; it's going to blend in. Which is also difficult, I'd imagine, from an architectural standpoint, because you're having to adapt to each local geography you work in.

JASON
Yeah, and that's super interesting, to be able to adapt. It's not that you want to recreate the past, this bygone era, and look at it with nostalgia. But there are things you can learn from. Modern design is amazing in what it does well too. It's just that part of the education kind of completely eliminated a lot of the stuff that came before Corbu or Mies van der Rohe. I'm re-looking at what was there.

ALEX
Mies van der Rohe has come up on, it's got to be four or five episodes.

JASON
He's the architect's architect. He's the guy who didn't care that the clients didn't like the house, and got sued afterwards.

ALEX
Okay, now that you've said he's the architect's architect, now I get it. You touched on something there. On every single episode, whether it's been somebody on the construction side or the architecture side, this idea of trust has come up, and how crucial it is to the industry. I think it needs to be more openly talked about, especially with clients. From a marketing perspective, there's an education that takes place where you go, hey, this is our product, and this is the way we're going to get you to that product. And if you're aware of how that works, the odds of us getting you there are infinitely higher. So I always think about being a trust brand and how to communicate that. That's actually what led me to adapting so many things from the commercial space, oddly enough. The marketing pitch for the company, and obviously we need to workshop it, is basically that we're taking a commercial approach while holding space for the emotional process that inherently is residential construction. Residential construction, like any industry, has had its challenges with the trust component. What would you say, if you had to pinpoint from your experience between commercial and residential, where's that difference coming from?

JASON
Good question. I think there are a lot of small things that make commercial versus single-family construction different, and they add up to almost different industries in the end. The clients are different. Working on a corporate campus, I'm designing for the office people that are going to use it, but they are not the people in the design meetings. You might have one or two big community-room meetings where employees can come, but they're not the stakeholders, not the people making the decisions. Usually it's the C-suite, or oftentimes a facilities manager. And that comes a lot from the commercial world: you're building an asset. In the residential world, for custom single-family homes anyway, the asset is not the main priority. It's very emotive, and it's utilitarian for what that family needs. Whereas the asset-driven approach in commercial and higher ed is very much driven by: are we going to get what we need out of this building, and how are we going to transition this building to somebody else down the road?

That approach lends itself to different types of contracts. Maybe the trust issue comes there, because as a business working on a new building, say a ten-story building in Greenwood Village, you have to create contracts in the best interest of the company and the asset long-term. So much of the emotion is taken out of it, because you have a schedule and a budget based on future financials. With residential single-family, you just don't have that. You have people that already have homes, building a new home for themselves or a second home. The timeline isn't there in the same way, and a lot of times they're in a financially secure position to engage in this activity.

ALEX
You made me think of something. The people on the other side of the table when I was doing commercial stuff, a lot of times they were maybe not accountants by title, but they were definitely spreadsheet-accountant types, and that's how decisions were made. I said before that so much of the residential space is educating clients on the process. You just made me realize: every single time I did a commercial project, the reality was that that client, quote-unquote, had probably done more projects than I had. Whereas on the residential side, I've had clients that have done remodels, and inevitably you have the person who's redone their bathroom and thinks it's the same as a tear-down. But nobody who's done multiple custom homes. They don't know what the process is. So you're right, it is two different products. And if that's the case, the education part becomes way more important.

JASON
Definitely.

ALEX
Which is trust, really. Hey, I need you to trust me to tell you how to do this successfully. And also communicating that if it is a different product, you need to look at the ROI differently. Especially in the luxury markets. I have a lot of people who say, well, there are no comps in the area for this. That's a totally valid point, and frankly it's their financial decision to make. But a friend made an incredible point that I've brought up in a ton of conversations. If you go to a restaurant and buy a really nice bottle of wine on a special occasion, you're not asking, am I going to get this investment back? It's: is the experience worth it? The key word there is experience. Experience costs. And I've explained to people: there's going to be depreciation in all of this. There's a cost to having something truly custom, built to you. The question is, with the gained experience, the gained joy of that unique product, is it worth it to you? People need to define their value system to answer that. And that's marketing, that's education. How do you have those conversations?

JASON
I think that's education, and a great way to build the trust you're describing. The clients they're building single-family homes for have lived in homes their whole lives, but they haven't gone through the process of building one. Those are two very different things. They know how to live, but maybe they don't know how to build and design. So helping on that journey, and educating on the process, the systems, the materials, to a point that makes sense for that client. Because not everybody cares about the wall assembly and where the vapor barrier is and what type of insulation you're choosing based on global warming potential or performance. There are a lot of technical things, and you've got to figure out for the client where the balance is.

ALEX
Building science is the big push right now. Brands are pushing money into it left and right, and I think it's great. It's us catching up to the times a little bit. But at the same time, most of my clients like the idea of being environmentally aware and efficient, and they want to know at what cost. If I go to them like, hey, we're doing a really cool retrofit of a double-stud application, we're not going for passive ratings but we're using Siga Majrex with fancy air-sealing details, and we're going to see how efficient we can get at a low price point: the second I go into those details, they don't care.

JASON
You lost them.

ALEX
Why would they care? They just want to know what the end product is. I'd be interested: in commercial, was there that same attention to detail?

JASON
No. The attention was more on the return. Sometimes the systems can improve the efficiency of the building, which in turn has a better overall financial model. But those types of details weren't really a topic. It was kind of, you're the architect, you're going to figure that out and give the best one to us.

ALEX
When I first met you, you had just started working at Arcadea, right?

JASON
I think so, or maybe I'd been there for a year. I joined Arcadea just about over three years ago now. Before that I was in commercial for the previous 12 years.

ALEX
Because I remember talking with you about being curious what you were going to think of the residential space. Now, three years later, what did you find most surprising? Obviously you're choosing to build your company in residential, not commercial. What is it you've attached to?

JASON
The most surprising, I think, is still the variation in the clients. We were just talking about the building science stuff: some people are interested, some aren't. How involved people are on the project differs. How many meetings you have with them to help decide things. You have to navigate that a lot differently in the single-family world, where you have to get to know the people better to figure out how to engage with them. The schedules I would put together in commercial had deadlines tied to financing and other deliverables; you just went through a process. Here, the process is much more fluid, and you have to figure out where to spend your time and what's important, based on who you're talking to.

I found that super interesting. One super small project I was working on was a kitchen and living room remodel at a condo here in Boulder, an early-2000s builder-grade spec condo. They're tearing some stuff out and relaying things out, and I probably brought more to the table than they were expecting, in terms of design options, what it could be. It wasn't a bad thing in this case. It was more like, oh wow, you can really look at this in a lot of different ways. And we ended up going one of the different ways they hadn't preconceived. It was cool that the work I did was valuable, but it wasn't necessary to the project. It was a benefit to it. So navigating what level of service you're providing. And I think that gets easier the longer you've been doing it, when people come to you with knowledge of what you provide, rather than just a referral of, he's great to work with.

ALEX
You touched on a point that's close to home right now. I get a little pushback sometimes, since we use Procore and a lot of our systems are commercial. Is this necessary? Is this necessary? At the end of the day, you want people to hire you for your expertise and trust that expertise, and if they want the experience, they have to engage in our systems. But I've had to balance it, because some of it is cumbersome. I realize I don't have to report complex financials being reviewed by an accountant; we don't need three divisions of cost codes anymore. That's a waste of time, overhead we don't have to carry. But when I say we won't start construction until we've vetted a construction drawing set for X amount of weeks ahead of time, I have to stand behind that.

JASON
There's a line there. On the trust question, one thing that came to mind is the contracts. A lot of the commercial contracts I worked on were guaranteed maximum price contracts. They still had allowances, not everything was solved, but based on a set of drawings, they provided that client a certainty of what the maximum price was going to be, and a schedule associated with it. There's obviously risk, but when you have a contractor and an architect working from that shared understanding, we know the guaranteed maximum price and we know the schedule, they're working together in a way that maybe looks a lot like design build, but it's still two separate entities. And associated with that: there are change orders that come up, and you address them as they come up. And specifically on schedule, there's an end date associated with that contract. It's part of it. From what I've experienced in residential, a lot of times the end date is very flexible. In commercial contracts there are weather days built in, and if there happen to be 16 weather days this winter rather than the 14 we accounted for, we do a no-cost change order to incorporate that, the schedule gets changed, and everybody knows.

ALEX
A project manager who used to work for me asked why there's a weather section in Procore. I had to explain: it's not to tell people it's sunny. It's, hey, if we slowed down as a result of weather, in commercial you have to document that, because you might need it against the contract for your guaranteed end dates. I've done contracts for smaller municipalities where there was cushion on the end date, but there was a thousand-dollars-a-day penalty after it. The majority of contracts you're engaging with in residential, I'm assuming, are cost plus?

JASON
Cost plus, almost all of them.

ALEX
I'm cost plus, and I've been cost plus for a while. When I first got back into this, I won a GMP. I don't know if I did it in the best way possible, because I was figuring out that model. I will say this: if there's any prospective client listening, I will not do GMP. I will not do fixed cost. And the reasons, I think, are actually really insightful as to how the process should be. I've never started a residential project with the level of detail, whether in a spec book or a drawing set, that I had on commercial projects. Never once, and not even close. I've never even had a spec book on a residential project. I've had specifications, but not a spec book. Which I'm trying to change; I think we're going to do our own spec books for projects now.

Ethically, I actually like the idea of fixed cost. GMP is complicated. I've talked about this with one of my current clients, who of all things is a construction lawyer. We talk about it all the time: in commercial, a lot of times, contingency is something a contractor keeps if they don't use it. That's not residential. And interestingly, he wasn't quite aware of that until my actual contract came to him. He was looking at the initial budgets as a GMP kind of thing, and I said, no, no. That contingency is simply for me to advocate for you on estimated cost of completion. That's it.

I think a lot of people abuse cost plus. But the reason I would never engage in a fixed-cost or GMP contract right now is because of the inconsistencies, number one, of clients, and number two, the design teams I've worked with. And that's not to criticize the design teams. It's to say: if we were to put into those design budgets the amount of compensated time it would require to get to that level of drawing, people would look at it and go, holy cow, no way am I paying that before we ever built something. That's a reality of the industry, which I think is a shame. I don't know how to navigate it. I'd be interested if you have thoughts.

JASON
I agree with what you're saying. A lot of why you can't do a GMP or fixed cost on the projects we're talking about is just because the detail's not there when you're engaging the builder, and because the homeowner is still figuring things out. And that's okay; that's process. But if we can somehow figure it out, I think there's a level of elevated trust that can come out of a little of that certainty. I'm obviously still trying to figure it out too.

ALEX
Even though I'm cost plus, the reality is that our documentation system is really fixed-fee-grade. We do change events, and those go into change orders or budget amendments. We used to do potential change orders, but that's way too complicated for people. The reality is that anything over $500, we're documenting. If you have a $3 million home, that is a ton of change events, and without a really robust management system, it's insane. And I'm like, well, why are we cost plus if we're doing all this? The reality is that it protects us.

JASON
And you can look at what happened, go back and point to this as a moment in time where we made a decision, and that's the result. That's trust again. Just having that documentation is a great step, because a lot of times it doesn't happen.

ALEX
No. And the other side of it: I had a client recently that wanted budget updates three, four times a week. And I'm like, holy moly, I'd have to have three people on staff doing nothing but counting our subs' hours for them, because they invoice me once a month. Which is fascinating. The thing I want to progress on: I love doing unique things. I actually want to excel at doing unique things in the architectural space. But I want to have a spec book that isn't the end specification so much as: hey, these are ways we've detailed out how to approach unique challenges, with some documentation and expectations of costs associated with them. As opposed to, how are we going to hit this airtightness factor in this unique environment? Hey, we have a system we've used before, we've done it successfully. If we can plug that into what you're trying to accomplish, we can use it as a really powerful risk-management policy for the budget and the timeline. My experience in commercial was that most of the stuff we were installing was a very standard detail, a lot of times by the actual vendors. It was a system we were installing, as opposed to, these are the guys stick-framing, hand-cutting this fourteenth weird gable at a different pitch.

JASON
No, I think that's a cool idea. What I'm understanding is merging: staying with the flexibility of super-custom design and responding to clients' needs, but incorporating a baseline specification to help them understand where they're starting from. Which could be super valuable.

ALEX
What's the ideal project for you?

JASON
Hmm. Oh man, there are so many things, and it's probably going to change a lot, isn't it? It's a great question. I kind of have two different ones I'm looking at now as ideal. Right now, and it's weird to say because remodels are so hard, you never really want to do the remodel, but you're in Boulder, it's part of the beast: I'm super excited about this tiny little project, an addition onto an 1892 historic house. I'm excited about the process of investigating and understanding how this new, growing family could fit into this too-small house that's in a great spot with a lot of character. Seeing how their modern lives can be adapted to historic reuse.

But maybe the most ideal: I would just love working with a growing family, probably with a beautiful piece of land that they've worked hard for and are super excited about, who want to make something their own, and come to you with a lot of ideas, looking for your help and expertise in uncovering them. And just going along for the ride with them.

ALEX
Solving problems. I think it's interesting how difficult that question is to answer. In my conversation on Tuesday with Sherri of CG Modern, I asked her, how would you define a successful project? There are the cliché answers. But if you go one layer beyond, it's actually not a super easy question. And when you get to that next layer, you learn everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I know I do. It wasn't until I was asked that question that I realized, you know what, we are really good at remodels. Which is loaded in itself.

JASON
We like remodels. They just take so much more work than people expect. When you start new construction, you're controlling so much more, and the processes we're talking about, you have a good sense of how to implement. In remodels, you're uncovering the work of people that had other processes, and you have to adapt your way of thinking. They honestly just take more work than new builds do, and that's hard to explain. People are like, why?

ALEX
And the next level of that: it takes more work, there's also more risk, and that means more emotion. We have really close friends with young twins, almost two years old, about the same age as my daughter. They were originally looking at a couple of homes that were going to need extensive remodels. And granted, a majority of my business is very extensive remodels. They asked me whether they should do it, and I said no. My wife couldn't believe I said that. But I said, you have to recognize, if you're going to remodel your home, and be living somewhere else temporarily, the deadlines are just different. You need to take account of where you are in your life, how much stress and complexity you can welcome in. I asked them: do you think that with twins that are almost two, both parents working, you could voluntarily welcome this incredibly complex and stressful thing into your life and say, this will be fun? They answered, oh, I don't know. And I said, if you're saying I don't know, the answer's no.

JASON
It's like you're pulling on a thread and it just continually unravels. You have to be prepared for more risk and more involvement than you expected. Whereas with the new build, you can see the outcome. Remodels, typically, are a labor of love, especially on an older home. They're doing it because they love it. And that's the right perspective to get into it with: I want to do this because I love how this is going to look, and how it looks now, and mashing those together. I love the process. But the thread unravels, and there's more you have to do that you never even thought about.

ALEX
Totally. I've struggled so much, from a strategy perspective, on both sales and managing client relations: if we get sent a set of prints for a remodel and I price that as such, from my experience, the estimated cost of completion on a remodel could be 20% beyond what those prints show. But if I say 20% in those meetings, I'm more expensive than somebody else. In theory, I want to be setting the most realistic expectation I can. So in a bidding situation for remodels, I just don't know how to succeed.

JASON
Yeah. I don't know how I would answer your question about success either, beyond the surface level of everybody's happy and it meets their vision. Is there something else that defines it for you personally? That's tough.

ALEX
Well, I've ended every podcast the same way so far, or at least starting after the second episode. It's a tradition my sister and I started when I was living in New Zealand. Rose, bud, thorn. Have you ever done that?

JASON
No.

ALEX
It's three things currently going on in your life. Rose would be something you're super happy about, that's bringing you joy. Bud would be something that's blossoming into your life, up and coming, that you're excited about. Thorn would be something that's hindering you or weighing on you. You can answer from a professional perspective or personally. Every business owner I know, there's obviously a merge between those two things.

JASON
Cool. We used to do something similar when my whole family gets together on big vacations, with my sisters and their kids and my parents: highs and lows.

ALEX
Adam Wagoner does too. My wife actually told me High, Low, Buffalo, the name of his company, is that. The buffalo is the unexpected thing.

JASON
I remember him talking about that. Okay. So, rose: what's beautiful in my life, in full beauty? It's just my family. It's amazing. I've got the two kids, one just turned one, one's turning three. My wife is doing great, she's got a great job that she started, and she's training for a ten-mile race this weekend. So the family's awesome.

The bud: obviously that's blooming too, but this Jason Ragan Design Studio, whatever this is and becomes. I've invested, my family's invested, we're excited for it. Continually learning what part of the industry I fit in and how I can help people. That's exciting, and scary at the same time, but mostly exciting.

The thorn: the thorn is just that there's not enough time. In anything that you do. We started this by talking about how life puts guardrails on things and helps you with decisions. But at the same time, I'm only 37, but if I had more time to engage with everything you wanted to: I constantly feel like I'm so curious and interested and want to learn more. I can't just keep investigating this one thing. So the thorn is that the sun rises and sets. That's great and bad at the same time.

ALEX
I'm a big believer in stoicism, and this idea of things being finite offering beauty. But at the same time, I'm like, man, I have so many things I care about, family being first and foremost, but also my work. And there are not enough hours in the day most times.

JASON
Especially in our industry. We're putting together so many different parts and pieces and systems, and you want to learn about all of them and understand the best way to do things. Architects, I see myself as a generalist. I understand a little about a lot. But I also like to dive in, and sometimes you just don't have the time.

ALEX
Totally. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

JASON
Yeah, of course. Thank you.