Latest / Building The Business / From Dropshipping Tiny Homes to Building PERCH for Homeowners Across The US with Cameron Jo'van

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From Dropshipping Tiny Homes to Building PERCH for Homeowners Across The US with Cameron Jo'van · Building The Business

• speaker-0: Hey, welcome to Building the Business, a new podcast and show. We talk with entrepreneurs about how they're going to grow, what's currently working for them, and hear about their entrepreneurial journeys of what's taken them from the beginning to where they currently are at and where they're headed. This very first episode, I'm incredibly excited to tell you that I'm going to be interviewing Cameron Jovan. He is the founder of Perch, where it is becoming the printify of home building. And so I really hope you like this one. We're getting into backstories of how he started selling stuff on eBay, including women's dresses, flipping them around for profit, and then getting into a media side of things and now using SEO to drive a ton of demand and pipeline for Perch, his new company, all about building modular homes. Hope you enjoyed this one. All right. I am incredibly excited to welcome Cameron Jovan to Building the Business. Cameron, man. I I've been following you for LinkedIn. We were talking off camera. I've been following your post for a while. And I've actually been looking at like businesses that business owners who are doing something that's just sort of off the cuff. It's sort of a business idea that I wouldn't think of necessarily being like, that's what I'm gonna do. and then I've been seeing your stuff and I'm like, man, this guy's got a really cool journey. So I just wanna welcome you to the podcast. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I appreciate it. speaker-0: Dude, I I'm super curious. We're gonna dive into perch kind of what you're building right now. I always like to start on these just because not everyone's a business owner or started a business or a founder. And so I always love to just kind of know, first off, do you feel like were you born an entrepreneur or do you feel like you became an entrepreneur? Because I get both camps where some people are like, Man, I was eliminated stand kid right out the gate. Like where did you fall in? Was this something that was like kind of natural or is this something that came over time? speaker-1: Definitely natural, man. I mean I'm rem I remember watching back some old VHS tapes and I was I remember this one instance where I was talking to my uncle and he was telling me to go to bed and I was like, I'll make you a deal. I was like, listen, I'll make you a deal. You give me two cookies, I'll go to bed. So that's I feel like that was like that was the that was the foundation. That was the core of it. Over time, my first actual leg in entrepreneurship, like many other people, was was eBay, right? So so eBay is where it really started. I think it was about fourteen, fifteen and I started selling my first venture was was was sneakers online. I was reselling sneakers and then After that, I went into you know, you gotta go where the demand is. I went into women's dresses, ironically. So I would I found a wholesaler and I would get, you know, like ten to twelve dresses across, you know, different sizes. And it would cost me twenty bucks to get these dresses wholesale. All of these dresses. Then I would turn around and sell each dress for anywhere from, you know, eighteen to thirty bucks. And I mean they would they would fly. So it was it was amazing, man. And this is obviously I'm talking, you know, pre AI, so that's not like I had, you know, a model that could wear it or whatever. So I had to really figure out how to position this in a way that was gonna sell online and that's where I started learning about, you know, in this e com capacity, you know, conversion mechanics and psychology and positioning and the the kind of the branding of it all and everything like that. And And these were just jobs I had to make money when I couldn't, you know, either drive anywhere or, you know, there were other things that were prohibitive of getting a job, you know, and be in in the same place. With this, I was like, wow, I you mean to tell me I can make money online and the only place I really have to go is to like ship the thing. Right. So that's where I really fell in love with entrepreneurship. And I mean, you know, such as life, you gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta go to college and you gotta You at that that maybe now that's optional, but right then and there, you know, you gotta go to college and you have to kinda hunker down and and build a skill set, something you could, you know, fall back on, as they say. And so yeah, that's what I that's what I started doing, man. But it was fun. I so I definitely have always been some bit of entrepreneurial. speaker-0: That's I'm just picturing a young Cameron, like, dude, like were they actually shipping the dresses like to your house and stuff? Or are you holding inventory like that? Going. speaker-1: hold but I would I would only hold like two designs at a time. So I'd only I was really only if you really think about it I was because they had no MOQs. So I was only like forty bucks deep at any given point. Which was like snuffing. You could do that. Yeah. Yeah. You could do that. You could do that like on a bad day, you could do that. Like it's worth it was always worth the the the the whatever the risk there was. I mean the risk was I sell nothing, I'm out forty bucks. I'm out, you know At the time forty bucks was a couple of weeks of gas, you know, and you're like, But you know, it was a couple of weeks of gas, you know, a a couple of trips to the movie theater or whatever, you know. speaker-0: Did you did you do were your parents like, Hey man, where where are all these dresses coming from? Like I don't know if you have sisters like, Hey, are these for me? Like speaker-1: No so s yeah, it was speaker-0: I'm just picturing the the Jovon household like Hey man, what's going on if there's no context? speaker-1: When when I was doing the sneaker business, I was living with mom and so she knew what was going on. On the flip side, when I did the the women's dresses, I was living with dad and then he was like he just walked in the room one day and just saw a bunch of dresses. He was just like he just walked out, he just left. He didn't wanna know. I think he just didn't have any questions. He was like, Whatever, man. So it was that was a time. That was a time for sure. Yeah. speaker-0: Dude, that's awesome. So you so I was just curious. So you did like out of school then, so you go to college, out of school, do you do you did you end up going and getting sort of more of a traditional kind of corporate gig or work with small business? Or did you keep the entrepreneurship thing going for like straight after that? speaker-1: Man, I mean it was it was challenging because I ended up having a lot of you know, I think Pharrell Williams, you know, if you know music, he ended up being quoted recently, said, Listen, you know, great ideas are like it's like having a library card and if you've got a library card, use it, right? Use it while you have it or whatever. And so I got my library card pretty early and I started having these ideas way before the technology or the you know, instrument for me to get from where I was from idea to something existed a lot of times. So it was actually a little challenging, because I didn't feel like I could go into entrepreneurship in the way that I was envisioning. Now, could I have, you know, financed a car wash or a laundromat or did, you know, like a traditional business? Absolutely. My brain was just like somewhere else though. And I loved it and I hated it because I always had ideas that no one else seemed to have. But it was also a challenge because no one's every everyone's like, what are you talking about? Right? speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. speaker-1: Or like, we can't do that yet, you know? And so yeah, getting out of college, I went right into I think my first job was actually recruiting for recruiting for army officers. I had a top secret clearance for like ten minutes. Yeah. that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. For this like, you know, flight simulation training. That's all I could tell you. Yeah. speaker-0: Well, I bet between that, between eBay, it sounds like that and the recruiting side, like building those marketing and sales skills early on, like I'm sure anything speaker-1: It's speaker-0: like any current recruiting opportunity, man. I mean you're hitting the phones, you're calling people, talking speaker-1: I mean, everything everything is really boils down to sales. What people don't realize is you're not selling the thing. You're selling the relationship to to whatever the desired outcome is. So you're selling the relationship to like, hey, Will, let's be friends. You can trust me because I'm going to help you 10x your podcast listeners, right? And you just have to innately trust that I am the person to do that and then I'm not gonna just like, you know, take your money and run or whatever. Right. And so I would I would actually go to interviews looking for jobs that I thought were going to be, you know, you get you get advice from everyone is like going to tech or go into this and that. And you're like, all right, whatever. And you listen and you go to the interviews and you get the interviews, and the interviewers would tell me, they say, You belong in sales. I'm like, crap, you know. Crap, man. Like, what do I do with that information? Because you go to set you go to get a job in sales, they're all like, What sales experience do you have? And you're like, Let me tell you about a time I negotiated my bedtime with cookie. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So it's like, How do you how do you how do you come full circle with that? And and so what I did was I was actually strategic. And it's funny because I'll towards the end of our conversation here, I'll bring loop this back because this is very interesting. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I was told I needed to get sales experience. I said, Well, how do I get sales experience in a way where I can go to these jobs, you know, make a boatload of money, but be qualified. And I said, I got it. I'll get my real estate license. Because when you get your real estate license, once you pass the test, you can get, you know, place your license at any brokerage and, you know, you go and do your thing. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: There's no barrier to entry other than The broker liking you and getting your real estate license. But if you go to for a sales job, the barrier is how much experience do you have? Have you sold this product? How many people do you know? How quickly can you get up to speed and this, that, and the other? And so getting the real estate license was like my back door into the other sales opportunities. And so what I did is because it's it's it's sell or die. That's it. There's no, there's no salary, there's no base comp or anything. It's Either you're selling a home or you're starving. And so I did that. And then I went into I met someone, had a relationship with someone and got a job thanks to those sales skills. Had a job had a job at what was then, you know, yellow pages, and they were doing they were just getting into digital. And man, I sound like a a relic now, but listen, I speaker-0: I remember it, dude. I remember I'm thirty nine, soon to be speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I remember close. We're close. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And they said, Listen, we're doing the digital thing and whatever, whatever. And so I got in there, they had a a base, you know, this was we're talking twenty third what is this? Twenty thirteen, fourteen, okay. And I get in there, I have a base, it's like thirty grand, you know. And I'm like, All right, I you know, it's better than what was happening in real estate. So it was the positioning of it was me having been in real estate. Where it's sell or die and I go over to in in it in Atlanta at that. Like everyone and their mom's a real estate agent. So, you know, I mean I've seen heck, I've actually seen, you know, mother-daughter teams and like literally everyone and their mom. So so it gave me an appreciation and a gratitude for just having the base pay, right? To work off of. And so long story short, I was there for, you know, a couple of years or whatever and yeah, had really good success. And I actually I mean, I brought in the WNBA account and I brought in a out of Atlanta, brought in a big medical supply company and had really big accounts, was making a lot of money. And the money was great, but I realized I'm just a relationship guy. Like I'm just a relationship person. Like this is this is what I like doing. And the management and the directors at that time said, Hey man, you're really good 'cause they would come on the calls with me and say, Hey man, you're really good at this. You need to you You're selling solutions that we don't even have. Like you're you're from the perspective of like your the relationship you've got is so good with these companies and these teams and these people that they're coming to you for things we can't provide, but they want you to give it to right? And so they're like, You gotta go somewhere else, man. Like we're not firing you, but like we're encouraging you to like go because We can keep the we can do, we can keep that here. And I think they'll maintain it 'cause like you've built it pretty deep. But if you go somewhere else, you can give them the other things that they need, right? And and at least we'll know that on the other side of the relationships that they've got, it's you, right? So we know that everything's, you know, ship shaped. And little do you know, after this, you know, you go through these journeys in life, it's all positioning you for something bigger. Greater, grander, laner. But you just never s you you can never you can never see over the horizon. You always just see like you know, I feel like you know, John Cena, right. speaker-0: No sure. speaker-1: So you can you can never see that far. So, you know, you go to the next job, the next job, the next job, and you realize, you know, I was in programmatic ad sales and I have this big, you know, account with low sum improvement, or like I go over here and I'm in, you know, Martech and automation and supply chain and logistics. And then you go over here and you say, you know, I'm working with, you know, app people that build their own apps and I'm helping them, you know, monetize it. It's like as a little side gig, you know, some consulting. And then you fast forward, then you next thing you know, you're running your own, you know, tiny home, prefab, e-com business. And you're like, speaker-0: How do we get here? speaker-1: I got my real estate license. I started selling online. You know, I I know how to do market, you know, so it all just like compounded to that moment. And so Yeah, I got into purge because I I started this other business. I had a different brand. Back was against the wall. I had gotten laid off or I was laid off or, you know, or unemployed for 10 so or so months. And with the last job being at a biotech company. At the biotech company, I was I was helping people well in my role, effectively the job was. We need to sell this, you know, seven hundred fifty thousand dollar, five hundred thousand dollar, whatever it costs, you know, lab equipment, right? And so helping people discover that from these sets of providers or these solution providers was the role. Sitting between, you know, digital and IT and all that. And so coming out of that and being like the only job I ever really like loved. Great team of people, amazing objectives, clear work. I loved it. Coming out of that, I was like, Man, what do I do? And so I just toiled around, you know, AI was like barely writing emails at that point, you know. And so, you know, I was like kinda messing around with it, had some fun and then still was able to, you know, get my daily bread, right? I was I was I was I was kicking along and I was doing anything I could to just make money. I was like, All right, I gotta keep the bills going, I gotta keep the daughter situated and the the dog fed and everything and you know keep speaker-0: Sounds like up to that point, like you I mean up to now, like you'd built a solid skill skill set that allowed you to probably do in connections you'd made, opportunities, yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, it was it was it was it was wild ti it was a wild time, wild times. So I ended up doing, you know, I was doing taxes. I was doing taxes, I was doing you know, whatever, just to keep things flowing. And it wasn't until I had this, you know, come to Jesus moment and the moment was, What do I need to do to like really have purpose? I don't wanna just do things and stuff and jump from here to there and just try to like always just you know I could become Captain Planet and get all the skills and just be this like, you know, megazort of of skill sets, but like what what do I do with it? Right. And so the answer was, okay, sell homes online. So then it made sense all those skills that I had and compounded, put me into this. So I was importing homes online. I was im I found a supplier that I had a good relationship with. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: imported the homes from China to offer people affordable housing. I could only offer homes as affordably as I could obtain them. At first I started here in the US, I tried to find, you know, again, pre pre AI. So like if you just didn't type the right thing, you weren't going to find it. Right. And it's crazy to think that that was life. Like if you you had to try all the word salad and figure out the right entry, you know, to get the results you needed. And no matter what I typed, and I maybe I wasn't arguably I was typing the right things, I just couldn't find anyone locally that could do this. And so I went offshore, imported a product, set up my storefront on a one dollar Shopify trial. And 'cause I had like no money left. And speaker-0: Wait, hold on, when you say product, like did someone ship a a l tiny home to you? speaker-1: Not to me, I just had them ready to be queued up, you know. Ready to go. Right. speaker-0: Put the order in in was this offshore to okay. speaker-1: So I'm basically like T L D R basically was drop shipping tiny homes. Yeah. Drop shipping homes. And so speaker-0: From what I've read is the easiest thing to sh drop ship of all things but you know, T shirts, you know, stuff and then tiny hopes. speaker-1: Right, yeah, like it's as easy as lipstick. Right. Yeah. I mean it it gets it would have it now the challenges, and this is what I didn't know. I was I was a stickler for just dive right in, you know, like speaker-0: Figure it out. speaker-1: Yeah, let's figure it out. It's like, you know, you're you you can speed run the Mario game, you know, and y 'cause you know you've got, you know, you get hit and you'll just shrink down a little bit. And then like once your ego comes back, you'll you'll be, you know, fine. As long as you just don't run into a flame or, you know, jump down the hole, you're fine. Right. So I said, okay, like, what's the worst that can happen? Like I'll still be alive after this. It's good. Like, let's just let's go. And so this is the calling, this is the mission, let's do it. So I get into it, I'm setting the page up. I design it myself. I have no budget to hire designers and all that. I mean, one dollar Shopify trial, let's figure it out. And putting it together 45 days in, I get the first sale, 35K, boom. Right. And right online and the sales cycle, because I'd been studying the the analytics and looking at the user sessions and just tracking users across the site and what are they looking at? And How do I optimize the copy and the flow of the page and move this here and move it there? And let's I mean, you know, does this button need a drop shadow and just everything I can optimize on that page I was doing. And so I did it and we got our first sale and it was to a rocket scientist in Nevada doing rocket testing in the desert. And speaker-0: Housing out there, like pre built. speaker-1: there's nothing going on out there. They needed it scorching in the day. and it's freezing at night and they're like, We need shelter so we can we can do our rocket testing in the day, but then have a place to like a proper facility to, you know, use the bathroom and have a meeting, take some notes and just like cool out and, you know, play some call of duty or like whatever they wanted to do. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. speaker-1: They wanted to just like get out of the sun for a little bit. And then at night, instead of, you know, driving from the desert all the way to wherever they lay their heads, it was like, hey, we could just use one of these as a room and so on and so forth. So so yes, they made the investment. The deal was like admittedly the deal was too good to be true. I didn't make any money on that one because I learned and I knew I wasn't going to, but I knew I had to learn where all the little Fi Fi Fo fum fees are and the, you know, the cost of doing business along the way was going to be, hey, you got to pay this here and this has to happen here and you got to pay for that. And so I just had to figure that out. But then It wasn't af wasn't too long after that. I mean, it just went to the moon and I was getting I was getting I mean, I was drowning, right? It was a good problem to have. And I was getting like forty, four zero, forty inquiries daily. So like you could call them I wasn't looking at them as leads because it's it's me, right? But if I had been if I had been selling those, they would have been leads. I would have said, Hey, I got forty leads for you. Coming in every day. It was absolutely ridiculous. And I couldn't, I couldn't keep up. I just couldn't keep up. It was a lot. Yeah. It was wild, man. speaker-0: I got I got so many questions. So th just this was was this my tiny home hub? Is that what it was? Okay. The a couple of things I I I want to go back to if you're okay, real quick is I know all the sort of steps lined up to this making total sense. Right. But in my mind, I'm thinking like as an outsider, I'm like, all right, you've you've obviously done the the you know, when you were younger, flipping clothes, right? Like shoes, dresses. And just kind of curious on the in the backstory, like, where does where did the like pull from the purpose of the housing come in. Because of all things, it's like, man, that's kind of like logistically in my mind got to be one of the tougher, maybe it's a false belief of mine, but I'm like, man, I'm thinking like tons of raw materials, transportation, right? And it's like, you know, someone might be like, you could start another printify business. It would be way probably less logistically heavy. So just kind of curious. I know you had the skill set, but to take that on, I'm guessing there had to be like some sort of internal pull that was like, hey Or was it purely a nobody else is really doing it or there's only a few one or two competitors and it's just an opportunity? I don't know. I'm I kinda curious like how how did you decide on that route to go? speaker-1: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, I did have my so just like as a foundational layer, so it was something I understood it I had my real estate license since twenty fourteen in Georgia. So that was just like a foundational, like, okay, I understand what an ADU is. I understand what, you know, a prefab or a modular or a manufactured or a container home or like I understand the realm of housing. So that was like my my my base layer. But that was from, you know, a decade ago, right? Yeah. And so when this moment came in twenty twenty four, it was I kid you not, I mean, it was it was a calling. It was not a this was divine intervention. This was a message from above. This was not my because there was I tell people today, they're like, Man, you know, how'd you come up with this? And what do you you know? And I'm like, well, I'm like, listen, let me step back. There is a million and one things I could go do. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: That would be so much easier than I'm not I tell people all the time, like, I'm not in this for the money. I'm not in this for I mean, I you know, you have to figure that part out, but you're not I'm not in this to make a killing, I'm not in this to because it's easy or simple or whatever. This is like the most complex thing that I could have chosen to tackle. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And anybody that's listening to this chosen was done with finger quotes. Okay. There's so much far less complex things. However, because it's complex, it gives you a little bit of security that not everybody's doing it. Not there's not there's not a whole bunch of people in a line behind you to come do this. And you may have support this way because, hey, that's a tough nut to crack. More power to you. Anything we can do to support, let us know. Right. So yeah. So so it's it is interesting. But yeah, it definitely was not like it wasn't on my bingo card to to just say, Hey, I'm gonna go solve housing problems. I think that you know, I was what's the saying, you know? You know, I'm a man of faith, so I think the saying goes that you know, God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called. And so arguably Arguably he ran me through some qualifications a long time ago. So I I did all the little like things to to to then give me enough, just enough. You know, what do they say? You know, you know enough to be dangerous, right? So like I knew enough to pull solutions together in a way that's impactful and meaningful to people without putting myself, you know, first in a way that's more selfish than not. And so, you know, there were a few homes in the my tiny home hub era, there were a few homes that I effectively, you know, gave away just to learn, just you know, just as my tuition. Right. Yeah. And, you know, but the fact that money was coming in and in and coming in in large amounts was good enough to give me not like validation or anything, but just gave me a little bit of buffer, a little breathing room to to, you know, slow everything down and say, okay. There's real people with real challenges and real problems and everything. You know, how can we really help? Right. And so so that's what I was focused on. But yes, I mean, man, it was a logistical nightmare because you're importing from overseas, you're importing from China. And it's not I wasn't importing from China for any reason other than if I can get it affordably, if it's affordable to me, it's affordable to you. Period. Right. If it costs me a hundred thousand dollars here. I can't really I can only do so much for you, you know, at at that era, at that stage. But see, now things have shifted politically. There's a new administration, and so now it's a whole different conversation. At the time, tariffs were low. So it have too much of an impact on steel or prefabricated imports or anything like that. Manufactured housing, you know, those those HFS codes were were or HS codes were low. So you could get it in. And you could sell someone a home anywhere from, you know, four hundred to eight hundred square feet, you know, just the one or the two or however many, and you could go, you know, forty K per structure all the way up to, you know, sixty K and people would buy multiple from me. And people would buy their credit cards, they would do an ACH or they would get financing and we would run the transaction online. Sometimes I had, you know, like a call it a like an escrow or milestone payment setup where I'd say, Hey, make a production deposit to get started. And so they'd give me, you know, fifteen, twenty percent or whatever. What was it? Twenty percent. Well, hold on. Thirty percent to get started. And and then I'd say, okay, great. I'll kick off production once we get your frame together. So the first step I would do is I would send, I would email you, I'd say, hey Will, here's a photo of your the framing's going up. Okay, boom, then your your flooring's going in. Okay, boom, then your, you know, electrical's getting late, like you're like your subfloor, then your electrical, and then your plumbing, and then you're and so on and so forth. Then I'd send you the progress. So you'd be like, okay, I can release the next payment, the next payment, right? And then we'd get it all packed up and ready to get on the truck to go to the boat, to get on the boat, to come over here. And then that's where people are like, you know speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Like, I'm a nervous, right? And I'm like, okay, it's fine. Give me a couple days. You're gonna make this last payment. Give me, you know, twenty-four to forty eight hours, because I'm in the US, they're you know, in China, it's like we gotta just play the time zone game. And and then it would go to I get you a tracking number, you know, a FedEx UPS style tracking number, and you can see where it's at, right? And so you have just like I said, once it's on the water, I've got as much information as you do. We're in the same boat, so to speak. speaker-0: Yeah. What you talk about, so 'cause and man, I'm so excited to dive into the model here in a sec, 'cause one, you just talked about that sense of safety, right? Of like feeling secure, someone feeling secure that like, hey, I'm I'm making a good purchase and like it it's trustworthy. But I I think if someone's listening right now, probably thinking like I am, dude, so what ended up happening with my tiny home hub? Because in my mind it's like, dude, forty inquiries a day. this is starting to potentially blow up in terms of potential. And so I did some research and I kinda I think I know the answer here. But just kind of curious. So what ended up happening? It sounds like from the outside, like, man, what a gold mine. We're getting forty inquiries a day. People are buying this major high ticket, you know, yeah, you know, very high ticket sort of things online without having to have a huge sales team. So just kind of curious what what ended up happening? speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, relative to what people normally buy online, yeah, high ticket for sure. I mean, if you look at this compared to, you know, golf carts, saunas, you know, coal plunges, you know, whatever other things people buy on the internet, this was probably as high ticket as it goes from a consumer perspective, right? You know, t I mean these are like these are like right up there with boat prices, right? So so yeah, it was it was interesting and you know, it you had a good Sense of you had a sense of purpose and mission, but you also had like a strong sense of responsibility. Like I have to see this through because there's people that are either, you know, going to you know when the you know when the someone's running for president, they're running for office, and they start calling out these like middle of nowhere towns, like, you know, the people out in Scranton, Ohio, and you know, you're just like, what is Scranton? What is this? speaker-0: People live there? speaker-1: Yeah, you're like, what what is this? What are these cities you decide to call out? So but there were these cities, you know, and I I feel like I'm on a podium here, but yeah, it was like, you know, Mina, Arkansas or, you know, Turlock, California or wherever. And these people are ordering shelter, right? They're getting shelter affordably for not just for themselves, which I thought was so amazing. There were people ordering these homes sometimes for their community. just for to help other people who were unhoused and they said, Hey, I know a good a good woman. She's a good mother. She's got a daughter, you know, and there's a situation or whatever. And we're ordering this to set it up in our backyard to help her get on her feet. Right. And you're like, this is what I'm a part of. Right. And so that that would that's where the the purpose came in. So you're like, look, I'll I'm gonna help you however I can, you know. And of course you got your recreational uses where people are like, Hey, I need X amount of these for my hunting lodge or ski lodge or speaker-0: You're rocket you're you're everyday rocket scientist. speaker-1: Every day rocket scientist. No biggie, you know. And you know, so you you feel a good a good sense of purpose, but that's why you take it so that's that's why I took it so hard when the climate shifted and now tariffs are hitting me. And what people don't realize is so like let's say you've got a I'll give you a contrast here. Let's say you're importing a you are selling t-shirts, and your t-shirts you sell them for, you know, fifteen dollars a pop or whatever. Tariffs hit you, they're hitting your whole container of t of t-shirts that you're importing. So maybe you're importing, maybe your t-shirts cost three dollars hard cost, you know. But then you've got a container of, I'm just making up numbers, you know, 20,000 t-shirts. So three times twenty thousand, you know, sixty thousand times your tariff on whatever, you know, textiles increase was. So you've got to figure out a way to pay that before it can even get into the country. And so maybe your solution is, well, creatively thinking, okay, I can increase advertising really quickly, you know, try to sell through most of these t-shirts. on the front end and then I can get the capital to then get them in here, no problem. Right. There's a quick solution for that. Or maybe there's some existing orders that you have to say, hey Will, I know you bought that t shirt for, you know, fifteen bucks from me, but like tariff thinks kind of crazy. It's gonna affect prices a little bit. I gotta charge you an extra three dollars. Is that cool? You know? And you get the three dollars times all your orders, like the math works out. speaker-0: Make up speaker-1: Right. But if I say, hey Will, I'm Got your home in, I know you paid thirty K for your home, fifty K for your home, sixty K for your home, but the tariffs went a little crazy on steel imports and there's a reciprocal tax and then there's this and that and the other. Anyway, well, do you have an extra ten grand on you? You're like, absolutely not. You're like, absolutely not, I don't. So let's let's go back though. The tariffs actually moved over fifty times. There was like micro changes that happened because there's a lot of different tax and tariff categories, right? And so they changed like fifty to a hundred times. speaker-0: Pri prior thing is camera, had you had you had any like working knowledge of like the tariff system of like prior to this modular home? Like was this all like you're just figuring it out on the fly? speaker-1: I did on the fly. On the fly. Yeah. Yeah. And you had and you had to learn quick because you need you know, you need to know what you don't know is an opportunity for and I listen, I have faith in humanity, right? On a good day. speaker-0: It's tested at times. We still both speaker-1: It's but what you d what you don't know is an opportunity for someone who's you know, not kind hearted to try to get over on you, right? And in this business and or in that in that business, you're dealing with a lot of people from all over, a lot of people you'll never meet in person, a lot of people you've never even seen before, and they have no conscience about it. They're just trying to make money. And I've definitely seen where people would try to get over on me. Right. And so I had to learn really quick, really fast, everything there was to know about taxes and tariffs and imports and categories and codes and countries of origin and all this kind of routes and all this stuff. And so there were a couple of times where I had to actually excuse me. There were a couple of times where I actually had to go to the bank and make this executive decision to say, okay, I can either, I can either call Will and Sally and Joe and Jim and John, have this conversation five times over and pray for the best. Or I can just go make the payment out of my own pocket to make sure they get what they were promised without any fuss. Because when you're looking at risk mitigation, right? And it like a business's and an executive's job, right? Like we people always wonder what like CEOs do. Their job is to just mitigate risk across the operation of that business. And so had to make that executive decision to say, I'll just pay the money and mitigate risk because the risk is opened up If I tell you, Will, hey, tariffs went up, this, that, and the other. You owe an extra five to ten K, depending on the size of your order, right? Defy the ten K on this, is that something you can do? Now, we have to keep in mind, you're not just budgeting for that. You're budgeting for the s foundation of the land, like the th the site prep, the land prep, the foundation, the concrete, you know, the labor. maybe a crane or or or a telehandler or whatever to, you know, s set everything in place. The you know, the set crew and just, you know, your plumbing, your plumber's gotta come out and your contractor to handle the G C for the electricity and all the other stuff and, you know, lunch that day and you got kids and all this kind of stuff, right? You don't want your kids running around the sets. So you're like, you gotta have somebody I mean, people are living real life trying to get things accomplished. And here you go calling about, hey, got an extra five K on you. They're like, what? Immediately. And the persona that you're talking to is usually the wife, the mom. And so you have to sit back and like play this out in your head. And you have to kind of do that like Doctor Strange moment in in Avengers where he's just like looking at all 40 million possible. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. And and I said, okay, well, even if I tell you, I run the risk of you. saying, I'm just gonna go file a chargeback. Because I'm scared, I'm nervous, I can't wait twenty four hours. I don't want to be out of my money. You start freaking out and you go and you do a chargeback. Right. And then the chargeback means that you've you did it on a credit card or an insured or protected, you know, payment method of PayPal or whatever. And you go file a dispute and then it freezes money up in my account. Or my entire account and then takes sucks the money out of there, gives it back to you. But then that money really, I've already spent that money because I spent the money on the actual product and the shipping and the everything else to get it to you. Right. So it just that times five or ten is like unbearable. So I say, okay, I'll just wire the extra forty, fifty K. Everyone's happy. My risk is nominal because even if just one person does this, I'm out more than the amount if I just buy the bullet. So you do that the first time. So you just do that just once. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: You do that once. You do it you do it, you know, nominally. You know, then there's a we forgot about the the the port strike with the, you know, the port workers and now shipping and stuff gets a little more expensive too. And so there's those that that those things that happen mid flight, if you will. And so you gotta figure that out and so on and so forth, right? diesel's gone up all of a sudden because of some, you know, pending impending doom with Russia and Ukraine and you know, you're just like, What is going on? So fast forward, Trump gets in office, raises the tariffs a hundred and fifty percent, hundred and fifteen, hundred and five, whatever. It's moving around like like a slot machine here and then and then you say, okay, this is unbearable. And the the math isn't working anymore. You know, I'm putting people in tough positions. I don't have the capital anymore. I'm I'm drained. I gave it all away. speaker-0: Yeah, too good. speaker-1: I gave it so effectively, it doesn't seem like it, but effectively, and I'm not saying this is like some claim to glory, but effectively everyone that I served got free houses. Because I was at the end of the day, I'd had nothing left because I gave everything away. And it wasn't until today actually on this podcast right now, it wasn't until this moment I actually felt good about saying that. Because before you're just like, you know, you're you're in it, you're in the thick of it, and you're like, you know, I'm giving everything away and I'm just trying to help and whatever, and you're like, I how am I gonna keep my lights on and whatever, right? And So but yeah, it it it it felt good to do that, but it was definitely stressful. There were just times I couldn't, you know, there were some customer make goods and some things that you had to do along the way, such as with any service business effectively. Because we were this unique blend between a service and a sales business, right? speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Because home is never a home or a shelter is never something you just like. accept the money and just like disappear into the night. You've got to like you've got to like see it through, you know. So so yeah, that but that that definitely put me on the sidelines for a while. And then I had to now and now, you know, now AI became a thing, right? And now it does more than write emails. And so I was like sitting on the sidelines like what do I do now? You know. So I had to I had to stew in that for a while. speaker-0: Yeah. Dude, I it's so first off, just thanks for being willing to share that. I know it's probably a you know, as a business owner, we always talk about successes, right? And it's like, the highlight reels and then there's real like there's a reality stuff that it's tough to share with people and hard for other people to maybe understand and see and for you to like the worst thing that came out of that was that people got free homes. Like you know like that's amazing. Like that's a how many people could say that they've provided shelter for other people. you know, in their lifetime. Like that's that's such a cool thing. Dude, I I gotta see if maybe we could do a part two because we haven't even dived into perch, man. And I'm super ex I'm super, super curious on how you're rebuilding yourself in this in business wise of like, do you getting into this because, you know, spoil or you know, teaser, you know, it seems, Cameron from what I've been reading and and looking at, is like you've built it now within the US and getting distribution models and having local factories and going after certain markets versus sounds like before it was kind of like, hey, if you lived anywhere, we'll we'll get it to you. And now you're thinking through have just based on we'll just say policy changes of like, dude, how does that change the parameters in the game? If nothing else, if we don't get a part two, there's so much to take from this. If you're listening to this, like, man, this is amazing. I I I just to me this is what building a business is all about. The show is just what are the real stories? What are people going through? How do you keep moving? Like I think something like that would just totally for a lot of people be like, I'm done. I'm gonna go get a W two again and I'm out. Like that was cool. So man, I just want to say, Cameron, if we don't get a part two at some point, I just wanna say thanks, man, for your vulnerability and being willing to open up and share that. I think I can say with pretty good confidence, we run a fractional CFO firm at my company and we you know we see inside of small businesses every day. And you know, the side of things that I think people Tell you all hitting certain revenue goals and you look inside and you get to know and you're like, man, this is a hard thing to run. And sure, there's a lot of quote unquote revenue coming through, but like the end product at times like isn't what people would think it is. So I I just gotta say thank you, man, for for being willing to do that. If anyone's listening, or for those who are listening, I should say, for those who are listening and are curious about perch, man, where were you in general? Like, how can they best connect with you or learn about perch? speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. The perch website is at own O W N Perch. That's P-E-R-C-H dot com. And then you can connect with me most likely on LinkedIn. Cameron Jovan. That's Cameron with a C. Jovan is J-O-V-A-N. And then my X account is a little dormant, but I'm gonna be hopping over there. I heard that's the place to be, so it's just it's just Cam Jovan C A J O V A N. Under yeah, underscore on X. And then you could find me similarly on, you know, IG and other platforms. but yeah, absolutely, man. I'd I would definitely love to do a a part two. I feel like is much needed because what I'm doing now, it doesn't just feel like a business or a brand or a thing. It's like more of a more of like a call to A call to service, like a call to arms, a a a call to unite. There's, you know, a lot of talk about affordability and sustainability and accessibility and, you know, policy reform and change and all this kind of stuff in the US. And we're not the only place that has these challenges, but that's where we are. So that's where we hear it the loudest. But I don't see these solutions being built to influence the changes that we're requesting. You usually have to bring something to the table to have a discussion. And you know, I just kind of look at everything like you know, this is like a the the housing policy and all this kind of stuff in the US, man, it's like a just it's a it's one big party. And the challenge is is that the the side of the fence that's requ demanding the most change is like we're showing up empty handed, right? We're showing up without gift in hand without, you know, bringing the food to the park. Like we're not we're just the the guest that just shows up empty handed. We're like demanding all these things or like you didn't even bring anything. speaker-0: Ha ha. speaker-1: And so I feel like what I'm building gives not just me, but and and again, I don't really feel I feel called to do this, not because I set out to do this. It's I feel like everyone we align with and partner with will now be in a position where we can bring something to the table and have a discussion that trickles down and actually benefits the end, you know, consumer, the person that just needs an affordable place to stay. And so there's an actual real solution to this and I feel like I'm building it. I'm not building a piece of it or a facet of it or a corner of it. I feel like I'm building the actual thing. So so yeah, let's definitely have a part two. Yeah. speaker-0: I I'm I'm so pumped, man. I just like the the sort of societally conscious person of me is super curious about kind of your vision of where you're headed with it and and sort of the long term play. Then the business mind in me like, Man, I'm just super curious about the model too, of like how does anyone even go make these factory connections? How do you build the distribution system, all the stuff that like I'm sure there wasn't a book that was just like, here's the book on how to do module sell you, right? It's like, hey, you gotta go figure all this out. Right. So For the sake of time, man, I'm gonna let you run because I know you've got a busy day. Thank you for tuning in. I'll have all of all the links to to connect with Cameron in the show notes and post it on socials and LinkedIn and stuff like that. So keep an eye out for that. And we'll catch you guys on the next episode of Building the Business. speaker-1: Thank you.