Latest / Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY / Walk Your House Plans Before You Build: Life-Size Blueprints (with Joe Matejka, Walk Your Plans)

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Walk Your House Plans Before You Build: Life-Size Blueprints (with Joe Matejka, Walk Your Plans) · Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY

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  Foreign.
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  Ready to turn your house into the home you've always dreamed of without the headaches or huge bills.
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  You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.
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  Hosts Eric G.
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  And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.
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  Now let's get this hour started.
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  Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.
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  I'm Eric G.
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  Thanks for joining me today.
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  We have got a great piece of technology because as a certified kitchen designer, the biggest thing that I fought was having clients that could actually visualize what I was trying to do.
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  And today we have Joe Mateka in founder and this is the cool stuff, guys.
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  This is founder of Walk youk Plans.
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  Welcome Joe.
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  Eric, thanks so much.
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  I appreciate being on your show.
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  So thanks for having me.
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  I really appreciate it.
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  Looking forward to this.
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  You have created something that has been needed in the design and construction industry for generations.
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  And this is amazing.
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  Let's talk about what you're doing out there because this is going to make it so much easier for people that are remodeling or building a new home.
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  Yeah, it's, I think with a lot of things in life you make your own mistakes and with that comes you try to find some solutions for it.
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  It's a little bit of how this business came together.
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  So yeah, I saw, I think it was on Instagram or it was on YouTube or something came up and I went, I saw your video of it looked like a big warehouse.
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  And then of course, just the floor plan sitting there on the floor and I went, oh my gosh, finally somebody gets it.
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  And well done.
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  So for the people that have no idea what you're doing, let's walk them through the basics.
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  Sure.
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  So our business is walk your plans.
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  And that kind of the how we came to starting the business is just.
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  If you'll humor me for two minutes, I'll give you a little backstory.
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  So I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my whole career.
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  I've been parts of three different national build outs.
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  And about six years ago I decided to invest in an investment property out at Yellowstone with a business partner out of Salt Lake City.
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  And what we decided to build is it's a six bedroom lodge, sleeps 26 people.
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  And we were doing it remotely.
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  So like a lot of people were passing blueprints back and forth and change this, modify this.
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  We felt like after three or Four months.
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  We had the perfect plan and we were ready to go to construction.
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  The deal we had was I financed the build out and my partner, as he was in Salt Lake, he was a GC on the project.
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  And so we had him pour the foundation.
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  I flew out right after the foundation was poured, just to check it out.
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  And we start walking the plan.
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  And it didn't take us more than 5 minutes till we realized we had screwed up big time.
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  When you have 26 guests, up to 26, typically it's maybe a family reunion, might be a group of friends.
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  Whatever it is, they want to be together.
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  The reason they're on the trip and renting a home is so they can be together.
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  And with that, you need a great room.
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  Well, I can tell you we wanted a great room for the house.
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  We didn't get a great room.
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  And the joke is, I got a good room and I wanted a great room.
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  And we just messed it up.
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  And neither one of us caught it in a pre construction environment.
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  So we just kind of had to do the best we could to modify it.
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  And really at the end, we just had to live with it.
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  And that was a painful lesson, right?
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  And almost simultaneous to that.
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  I'm based in Cleveland, Ohio.
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  I and a couple friends, we bought an investment property here in Cleveland.
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  We bought a defunct Catholic school, and the Diocese of Cleveland had a school there for 90 years.
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  They closed it in 2005 due to low enrollment.
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  We bought it in 2020, converted it to commercial space, and we had no problem running out the classrooms to businesses.
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  But then we had this big open gym space, and we're like, how do we monetize that?
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  Well, one of my partners in the building, he's the biggest residential builder on the west side of Cleveland, and he helped me with my Idaho project.
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  He said, joe, I have an idea because I think if we could ever figure out a way to take blueprints and scale them so you could walk it before you build, it would really help.
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  And my painful job or project out in Idaho, I'm like, yeah, that would have helped a lot, right?
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  So it took us about a year and a half to figure out the technology behind it.
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  But Eric, from the time we did this thing, just took off like a rocket ship as far as the business goes.
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  So we take blueprints and we project them exactly to scale.
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  So what it allows you to do is pre walk your construction project before any brick is laid or any lumber is put up.
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  And what we found is that clients get a chance to catch Pre construction mistakes.
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  And our builders, architects, designers, they routinely tell us they catch over 90% of their pre construction mistakes at Walk youk Plans.
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  So they make the modifications digitally and when they go to construction, they're going with a far better plan in place that they know is going to work that the client's going to like.
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  They've gotten buy in from everybody.
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  It speeds up the construction project.
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  It keeps them on time and on budget.
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  And obviously that's a win all the way around for everybody.
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  Right?
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  You don't have to have the painful conversations with, hey, we didn't catch this, but now it's going to cost you an extra 20, 30, $40,000 possibly to kind of modify your plan.
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  So we started it here.
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  We've due to the fact that our, our business just happens to be very visually appealing.
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  You can see what we do and really understand it.
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  And that's helped us significantly grow the business in a quick way.
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  We're, the goal is to put 120 locations in the U.S.
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  we currently have 58.
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  We're building towards it.
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  We're about halfway there.
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  So that is cool.
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  As a kitchen designer, it was one of those things that I would show up at someone's house or the construction job site, and I think one of the biggest pain points with clients was the island in the kitchen.
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  I'd be saying, you need 48 inches around it.
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  They'd go, oh, 36 is fine.
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  They had no idea what they were talking about.
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  They couldn't visualize it.
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  So how I had to do it back in the day was I'd show up with two or three pieces of foam board before, cut it up, make it feel like an island, stick it out there and create an
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  island that they could walk around to scale.
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  And then they'd go, oh, yeah, I can't walk behind somebody if I have the door open to the range or the, or the dishwasher, let alone trying to install the refrigerator that was that deep anyway.
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  So it was one of those things that was always a battle.
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  And I always thought that this was a great way to do it, but the technology just wasn't out there.
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  And then you had to have the square footage to do it.
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  So this is brilliant, man.
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  I love it because so many times those bedrooms get lost in scale, right?
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  Oh, by the time you put a bed in there, it's completely different.
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  Or is it a twin?
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  Is it a king?
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  What do you got?
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  And now you can scale it up.
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  I can tell you this.
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  This house that I'm at my Home in Cleveland.
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  We did an extensive remodel in 2017 and 18.
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  Had that exact problem with the island and same thing, we taped it out and laid it out.
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  But you hit in the kitchen, you hit the single biggest modification we make.
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  So most architects will give a 42 inch space between the sink and the island.
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  We move over 65% of all islands for exactly what you said.
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  You open that dishwasher door and all of a sudden you got a pinch point, right?
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  And so we see it all the time.
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  But what happens, what's great about it is we get buy in from.
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  We say our tagline is we get to.
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  Yes, quicker.
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  We get all the stakeholders in the room talking all the issues through and resolving them.
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  And we can resolve them digitally, which obviously is a ton less expensive and way more efficient.
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  It's amazing what you can do in an hour or two of a walk and how many modifications you can make and how much cost savings you can have for the home.
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  Yeah, that's huge because all of a sudden you can actually put both people in the kitchen, right?
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  If you've got a couple you're working with, they can be in there and go, okay, you stand at the sink, you stand at the, at the island, or vice versa, whatever that is.
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  And they're like, yeah, I don't have enough room.
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  Beautiful, you fixed it.
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  You're not calling four trades out there to move the island when it's already assembled.
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  Yeah, no, it's.
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  I mean, that's a big one.
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  We catch that all the time.
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  And we also have an elevation wall which allows you to put up your cabinets.
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  So what you can do is you can walk, you can stand at your sink and say, what's it going to be like to get to this bank of cabinets?
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  What's my travel time like here?
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  How does that work?
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  What's the most efficient use of this space?
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  And again, digitally modifying it is no problem.
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  And it's just so much more efficient.
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  And at the end of the day, we're delivering a better product for the homeowner.
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  And that's really our goal.
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  Our goal is to truly help someone customize their home so they get exactly what they want.
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  Maybe not necessarily the architect, but they, as the homeowner who live with it, they get exactly what they want.
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  And that's what we try to do.
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  I bet the architectural community out there loves it because now they can walk in there and just start taking notes and all of a sudden that fireplace makes sense, where it's located and the windows and that kind of
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  stuff.
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  And that's got to be really fun to watch people kind of get it, because most people that are building a house or doing a big remodel have no visualization skills.
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  Because for professionals, it takes a while to get it, let alone homeowners.
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  It's really tough.
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  That's very true.
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  Initially, we had a little bit of pushback from architects.
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  And the reason being, you got to remember that those blueprints are their baby.
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  And there's an old saying, no one wants to be told that their baby's ugly.
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  Exactly.
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  And so when we first started, we had to kind of say, hey, look, let's not take this personally, but let's kind of help the homeowner get to where they want to go over time and just repetition of people
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  seeing it.
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  And really, the most important thing is we always ask if it's a professional coming through.
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  Builder, architect, designer.
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  We ask them to bring a client because what we want them to do is we want them to see it through their client's eyes.
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  As soon as they see that, they know they're doing the right thing right, and everything gets better.
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  And in any job, it's not the yeses or the no's that get you, it's the maybes.
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  And people can't make up their mind because they can't visualize.
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  Eric, I tell you, I'm that person.
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  I'm the person who can't.
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  I wasn't able to visualize it at this house.
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  I wasn't able to visualize it out west.
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  I just happens to be who I am.
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  It's not my skill set.
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  And I will tell you, in this house in particular, the anxiety that it gave me of writing, you know, big checks to me and not knowing that was going to.
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  What was going to come out the other end of the pipe was going to be exactly what I wanted.
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  I hated that feeling.
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  And it feels really good to help give the end user confidence in their project and belief in it.
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  It's just neat that we have kind of created a tool that has value in the marketplace.
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  Most importantly, helps the people who are going to own that home get exactly what they want.
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  No question.
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  I would say that typically, as a kitchen design professional or bathroom design I was doing, I would probably go through seven or eight design iterations only because they would tell me what they want, I draw it, and they'd
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  go, oh, oh, yeah, that doesn't work.
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  And you said it probably wouldn't, but here it is anyway.
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  And we would go through these things over and over again.
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  And many times we would end back up because when I drew plans, it would be revision 1, 2.
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  I would number them.
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  So we had an idea.
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  And so in case we had to go back two steps, I always had it, I didn't lose it.
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  And so what happens was, is more often than not, I would back end back up at one or two because they just couldn't visualize the changes and talk about saving design time.
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  I mean, it's time for the architect, designer, it's time for the client.
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  They don't have to have six design meetings.
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  If you can get them from point A to point B and they get their questions answered.
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  Yeah, and we can do it on the floor too.
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  I mean, we can modify on the floor.
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  So as you come in, we have that.
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  We have evolved, evolved our technology to the point where we can drag and drop different pieces into the exact specifications and move them on site immediately so that the homeowner can really understand.
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  And we can actually do it three dimensionally too.
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  So our technology is advanced.
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  And I think when you're in a tech, you kind of have a tech play, if you will, in an industry you want to, obviously if you either evolve or you become extinct.
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  Right.
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  So.
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  So yeah, so we can do the modifications.
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  And when they leave, the confidence, the smiles that we see, we love, because then we know we're hitting the nail squarely on the head.
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  Right?
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  Well, when they can start seeing that, oh, wait, this flooring, this big large scale piece of flooring now fits scale wise to the room because they go, oh, I get it.
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  So all those pieces that kind of intertwine within the space of a great room or a kitchen or things like that.
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  Now all of a sudden there's a scale to it that they could see.
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  Because what's funny, I always say this, when people show up, they'll see the plans on a new house.
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  I've seen this a million times.
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  The first time they walk in the house, they go, oh, it's way different than I visualized.
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  It's way bigger, it's smaller.
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  And so you're jumping in way before that, that gotcha moment like you had out there when you walked the space and went, holy smokes, we're on the wrong track and concrete's already cured.
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  Yeah, I mean, it's a problem.
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  I mean, you're looking at shadows on the ground, which it's counterintuitive to think that would actually feel like the space.
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  And even the videos that you see online, we have people come to our space specifically because the sense of space, the sense as if you're really in your bathroom or your kitchen or your entryway or your closets, you
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  feel as if.
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  And some of the intimate conversations we have if it's a residence, like between a husband and wife about how they're going to set up their bathroom, it's just interesting.
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  And I'm like, we know we have it because they're talking as if we're not there about who does what in the bathroom.
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  And sometimes more than you want to hear, right?
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  Absolutely.
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  I can write a book about the crazy stories.
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  You walk away and go, wow, got it.
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  Okay.
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  You know, it's, it's funny, but what's so true, People will go out.
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  Let's talk furniture placement for a minute.
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  They'll go out and maybe they're designing it around this new couch that they've always wanted.
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  The couch shows up and the house is done.
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  And they're like, wow, scale wise, this couch is twice as bigger than it needs to be.
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  Now you can put that space there and say, hey, the furniture actually works or it doesn't.
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  So I'll share with you that.
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  But I'm not sure how long it'll be till this airs, but I can share with you.
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  We're about to announce a partnership with the 13th largest furniture retailer in America, High end Our House Furniture, where they're going to be bringing their clients through and doing exactly that, dropping their exact pieces into the space.
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  Because for them, they're in the business of selling furniture.
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  And what stops people from buying, well, if I'm not sure it's going to fit and you've got a fairly expensive couch you want to sell me or sectional or whatever it is, I have a hard time saying yes.
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  Right.
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  Well, what we allow them to do is take it and drop it right into the space and say, this is exactly what it's going to feel like.
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  And what our house likes about it is in addition to that, they can say, not only do we have the space for the couch, but let's look at this table.
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  Can we add a sofa table?
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  How about a coffee table?
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  And another big thing for furniture is for furniture industries when it doesn't fit, the returns they have to take and how that impacts them.
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  Right.
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  So that's a big deal.
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  And again, we bring people in and we bring them to the point where they have a high level of comfort at what they can do and we, again, we get to yes quicker, no question.
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  And oh my gosh, that solves the dining room table incidents.
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  Right.
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  The.
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  The.
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  Oh, my gosh, I'm going to have 22 people over, and there's no way to walk around the table.
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  Or the table.
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  Yeah, but it's those kind of things that when you're designing a custom home or even a renovation, which is even worse because you're stuck with the existing walls of where they're at, that's just brilliant how it gets you
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  from point A to point B so much easier.
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  And then the homeowner who doesn't have a lot of confidence in the process anyway, because they're struggling now can go.
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  That feels.
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  That's exactly it, Eric.
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  You get it.
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  Exactly.
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  That sense of relief, like when people come in.
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  People come in a lot of different ranges, but there's a little, I think, a little bit of apprehension not really knowing what the experience is going to be like on the front end.
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  Probably the single thing I'm most proud of with this business is when we started it here in Cleveland, my partner, we were about six months in, and I had realized we hadn't had anybody come through and say, you
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  know what?
• 16:51
  That was pretty neat.
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  But I didn't really see any value in it.
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  So I was proud of that at the time.
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  Here's an interesting thing.
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  We're three and a half years in, and the Cleveland market, we have yet to have a single end user come through and be like, I don't get anything out of it, but I guess I tried it, but it
• 17:09
  didn't work.
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  Every single person gets some.
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  Some takeaway that's a positive.
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  And the.
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  When they walk out, the smiles, the kind of the joy that the husband and wife kind of have together, and also don't sell short their belief now.
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  And whatever, whoever brought them in here, be it the builder, the architect, the designer, whoever had the foresight to say, hey, let's go do this.
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  As they go down the road with their client, now their client can look at it and say, you know what?
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  He did me a pretty solid bringing me to walking plans.
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  Maybe the next suggestion, they're going to be a little bit more open to and a little bit more have a little bit higher belief.
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  And we love doing that.
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  Right.
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  We like bringing people together, getting them on the same page and moving forward with confidence.
• 17:52
  Yeah, it makes so much more sense.
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  And oh, my gosh, talk about reduce the liability for the design team as well.
• 17:59
  You know, you can catch those architectural mistakes that seemed good on paper, but when you get it down there and start walking around, you go, okay, we tried to make that work.
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  And it didn't.
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  All of a sudden you're not reframing walls because they just didn't end up.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  So we have, we show.
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  Often show a blueprint in the Cleveland studio of a home that was actually a gentleman, happened to be able bodied, but then he became handicapped.
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  And so he.
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  They were redesigning his house.
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  And one of the things that their master bedroom looked perfect on paper.
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  It was going to be beautiful.
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  Right.
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  But when we brought it to scale, we found out immediately there was no way it was going to work the way they intended it to work.
• 18:45
  Now, I've asked our builder partners and architects, if we're out of the ground and we discover it, then what's the, what's the price on the fix to this?
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  And the range has been anywhere from 20 to $50,000.
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  This just one mistake.
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  And fortunate.
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  We're fortunate we caught it and we're able to kind of get that thing straightened out and make some modifications.
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  But again, digitally, versus when you're into bricks and sticks, it's a lot easier and less.
• 19:11
  You think about that.
• 19:12
  Yeah, you think about that.
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  I mean, in a wheelchair, can you make that radius turn?
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  Can you get around that?
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  Can you.
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  That's brilliant.
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  Because now all of a sudden they can be rolling around and go, man, if I had another eight inches here, that would make life so much easier.
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  Oh, my gosh.
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  Right now you can go, okay, we're going to scoot that over a little bit.
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  And you've solved it.
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  Versus, sheesh.
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  Okay, let's stop the electricians.
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  We're going to move this wall.
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  Now all of a sudden you've got a reframing and then engineering's got to get involved and that gets to be really expensive really quick when you start moving stuff around.
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  Sure, sure, for sure.
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  And that's, that's the goal again.
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  Let's keep that stuff to a minimum.
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  That's going to happen.
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  But if we can.
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  If we can catch three out of four of them, four out of five, let's do that.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  I think what you're going to see too is, and you got insurance companies out there for architects and builders and stuff, and they're going to turn around and go, hey, if we can reduce our liability, why aren't we
• 20:03
  doing this?
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  Well, interesting you would say that, Eric.
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  So what we're finding in the marketplace is I solved to my problem, which was a residential construction problem.
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  And when we started the business, we were 100% residential.
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  I will tell you, we're 75% residential.
• 20:19
  25% commercial.
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  And I have a sneaky suspicion that commercial piece to it is going to continue to grow.
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  Right.
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  Because there's a lot of risk involved in commercial projects and there's bank loans and deadlines that need to be hit and costly mistakes at the end of the day can be huge.
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  There's a hospital here in Cleveland that totally screwed up a new build.
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  The word I've heard is that it's a 60 million dollar screw up.
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  So yeah, that's a big one.
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  And you hear about that all the time.
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  I'll give you a real world example.
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  There's a restaurant built down the road from me about two miles down the road from me about a year and a half ago.
• 20:52
  And I walked in the restaurant set at the bar and to the left of me was the main thoroughfare to the rest of the seating area.
• 21:00
  This was probably I, this had to be a 2 to 3 million dollar build out.
• 21:04
  Well, I sat there for about 15 minutes.
• 21:05
  They sat someone at the, at the first table and for the next hour and a half I watched them walk around that thing.
• 21:10
  Cause their main third, they didn't allocate enough room for it.
• 21:14
  And so I use that as an example when I bring people through our studio.
• 21:19
  Earlier this summer we had an intern and she was shadowing me for the first day.
• 21:24
  Ava, this is for you.
• 21:25
  I brought that example up to the client and Ava, my intern says, oh my gosh.
• 21:31
  And after the people left, I said, what was that all about?
• 21:34
  She said, I worked at that restaurant.
• 21:36
  I worked there for 18 months.
• 21:37
  She goes, you're right.
• 21:38
  Every time we sat somewhere in there, I, she was a hostess, she goes, I had to walk him around that thing.
• 21:43
  I said, yeah, and we see that all the time, right?
• 21:45
  You think about medical facilities, we're about to sign a national partnership with a big medical company.
• 21:50
  But like Surge ors, think about restaurants and cook lines, all the different kind of businesses that there, there's risk involved and you know, we try to help that.
• 21:58
  So yeah, especially with like I've worked in my cabinet career a lot.
• 22:02
  I did some high end, high rise commercial projects that were, you know, hotel on the first 28 floors and the 28 to the 42nd was residential.
• 22:11
  And holy smokes, there were so many errors on the architectural side on some of those things where there was, they got the door sizes wrong.
• 22:20
  Well now they had fire, they had what, three semi trucks of fire door frames the wrong size because they weren't big enough.
• 22:28
  And they, they were three floors of the parking garage.
• 22:31
  That were sitting there of pallets and pallets of metal, steel frame doors that were wrong, that were too small, that probably would have gotten caught if they'd have done that.
• 22:40
  And I remember one day walking through there and there was a guy out there with a chop saw cutting those up and putting them into scrap bins.
• 22:47
  Oh, no.
• 22:47
  And they all went out.
• 22:49
  Someone lost a job over that.
• 22:51
  Yeah.
• 22:52
  Hundreds of thousands of dollars of door frames that went out and it would have been caught by a simple walkthrough like.
• 22:58
  Like using, you know, 100.
• 22:59
  Yeah.
• 23:00
  And it's again, insurance company, I'm sure picked up that cost.
• 23:03
  But I think you're going to get more and more of those commercial companies going, hey, now we can get you.
• 23:09
  Better rates because the banks are looking at us.
• 23:13
  The banks are looking at it too, because they're the ones who are loaning the money.
• 23:16
  Right.
• 23:17
  So they want to mitigate risk.
• 23:18
  So for banks, it's like, hey, look, if we can modify and knock out 2/3 or 3/4 of the pre con cost overruns, why would we not do that?
• 23:27
  Right.
• 23:30
  It's fun.
• 23:31
  It's fun.
• 23:31
  To Eric, I'll tell you, I think had we done this two years ago, I probably said, I have 2/3, 3/4 of this thing figured out.
• 23:39
  I'll tell you today, I don't think we have 25% of it figured out.
• 23:42
  Like, there's just so much more and so many more opportunities for us.
• 23:46
  And as we continue to go and we grow and also as we form a national footprint.
• 23:50
  So as I said, we have 58 locations.
• 23:52
  Of those, 40 are open and 18 are in the process of opening.
• 23:55
  But as we get a more firm grasp, the national partnerships I think are going to be a great asset for us.
• 24:02
  And when I talk about that, I'm talking about residential construction, I'm talking about commercial construction, major architectural firms, all kinds of national kind of partnerships where they're building all over the country and we can help them.
• 24:13
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 24:15
  And I love that.
• 24:16
  And of course, there's people listening now that are going, holy smokes, we got to put one of these in my town.
• 24:21
  And I want to get involved.
• 24:22
  How do they do that?
• 24:23
  All right, so that's.
• 24:24
  You find our website, walkyourplans.com and on there is a link that if you're interested in opening a location, just give us your information.
• 24:32
  We have an interview process that we bring you through.
• 24:34
  Most of our licensees, it's a licensing organization similar to franchising, but you're an independent Owner.
• 24:40
  But most of our licensees are industry people.
• 24:43
  They're either own construction companies, they're potentially architects.
• 24:47
  We've got probably five or six interior designers who own locations.
• 24:51
  We've got realtors who own locations.
• 24:53
  So it's more industry people.
• 24:55
  And then we have another subset that are just entrepreneurial.
• 24:58
  I happen to not be an industry guy, so for me, I came from another industry.
• 25:02
  I had to learn the industry and then figure out how to build a business.
• 25:05
  And frankly, Eric, I'm still learning the industry, but it's a process, right?
• 25:11
  I talked to sheriff guys like you to help raise the bar for me.
• 25:14
  Thanks, man.
• 25:15
  It's funny, I taught probably.
• 25:17
  Gosh, it was before COVID I was the home technology speaker for the national association of Home Builders.
• 25:24
  So I would show up at the kitchen about design, show down there, design a construction week for KBIS in Vegas.
• 25:30
  And I'd have my own, my own stage and I'd be talking everything from lighting to design.
• 25:36
  And I brought out probably 2018, 2019.
• 25:40
  I brought out the VR glasses, which really never really took hold in the industry.
• 25:45
  But it was fun to be able to sit there and take a space and time and you could use it for kitchen design because you could mark a spot on the floor and go, okay, this is what this
• 25:55
  would look like from here.
• 25:56
  And it helped visualize.
• 25:57
  But it was such a clunky process that it just never.
• 26:03
  Back then, the technology was kind of there in a kitschy way, but it really wasn't something that was sustainable in that.
• 26:10
  And I think that technology has gone so much farther with what you guys are doing.
• 26:14
  To see it on a grand scale versus put on a clunky set of glasses and do it.
• 26:19
  And I really like the direction you guys are heading with this.
• 26:21
  I appreciate that.
• 26:22
  We've been approached by 3D goggle companies about partnering with us.
• 26:27
  Two things are reasons why we didn't do it.
• 26:29
  Number one, I didn't know this, but when we started to do our research, we found that studies have been done.
• 26:34
  86% of all women experience some form of vertigo when they put the goggles on.
• 26:39
  I didn't believe that necessarily be true.
• 26:41
  It sounded too large for me.
• 26:42
  So I asked for a three month period.
• 26:44
  Every woman who came in, have you ever tried VR goggles?
• 26:46
  How does it make you feel?
• 26:47
  Oh my gosh, it makes me dizzy.
• 26:48
  One of my tech guys, during a demo from a VR company fell over and I was like, that's a liability that I don't necessarily want.
• 26:57
  It's a bigger Liability.
• 26:59
  Yeah.
• 26:59
  Our partners, our build partners.
• 27:01
  I've got one in particular he's been doing the 3D for, he said, about four or five years now, and he's been with us for about three.
• 27:07
  He's one of our first builders.
• 27:09
  He said that his description of it is VR is a toy.
• 27:13
  Walk your plans is a tool.
• 27:15
  He said people get excited because it's look, it's visually, very visually appealing to put the goal is going to do it right.
• 27:21
  But you can't really get a sense of space in there to really make modifications.
• 27:25
  But on our floor, you can make it.
• 27:27
  And we do bring the 3D into our evolve technology, but via an iPad, so you can, we can place the furniture and move it around.
• 27:35
  And that's why companies like our house actually partnered with us for those types of enhancements.
• 27:41
  That is awesome.
• 27:42
  Yeah, I mean, it was cool at the time and it was a kind of a neat little tool, but you're right, it's so much better to put that technology on a pad so people aren't running into each other
• 27:51
  and getting vertigo or walking away with their stomach upset because it just didn't feel right.
• 27:58
  That's not the experience you're looking for.
• 28:00
  You're really looking for.
• 28:02
  Yeah, it's funny.
• 28:02
  And I think one of our challenges as a tech company, a tech play, is to evolve our business.
• 28:08
  And so what we do, we've been positioned in the marketplace as the company that's taking it national.
• 28:15
  So it affords us the opportunity.
• 28:17
  Companies are now approaching us and saying, hey, look, you've got a national organization.
• 28:22
  We have technology that we think will enhance your stuff.
• 28:25
  And so what we do to vet is I have two of my licensees.
• 28:30
  One ran tech detective department for the nation's 8 8th largest commercial construction company, and the other was on the Meditech team.
• 28:37
  Yeah.
• 28:37
  And so when we get a new look at something, what I'll do is I'll bring them into a presentation like this, just a video call and we'll be presented.
• 28:45
  And four out of five of them, I'll get a text five minutes in.
• 28:49
  This is just something else reheated.
• 28:50
  But, you know, one in five is, is something that's worth vetting.
• 28:53
  Right.
• 28:53
  And seeing, hey, is this an enhancement that can help?
• 28:56
  And if it is, we're going to go after it.
• 28:57
  We want to do that.
• 28:58
  We want to continue to be push the envelope and be on the front end of what's happening, technology wise.
• 29:03
  So either evolve or you become extinct.
• 29:05
  So.
• 29:06
  Absolutely.
• 29:06
  And there's a lot of people out there that are becoming extinct, you know, in that.
• 29:10
  Because they just have it.
• 29:11
  So.
• 29:12
  So, Joe, what else do we haven't talked about today?
• 29:14
  I mean, you guys are just rolling this out across the country.
• 29:16
  Absolutely love it.
• 29:17
  I think this is a must have for the design community out there.
• 29:21
  I just think it's that cool.
• 29:23
  Yeah.
• 29:23
  I mean, it's.
• 29:24
  So the true story of how we started this was for me to solve my problem.
• 29:29
  And Eric, it'd be disingenuous for me to tell you that when I saw this, I knew we had a national international opportunity.
• 29:37
  I had built a previous national organization that I had sold, and it put me in a good spot where I didn't necessarily have to work.
• 29:43
  So this was something kind of a pet project that I was going to do with a couple buddies, and we started it here in Cleveland.
• 29:49
  And we're four months in and we didn't have really any kind of a significant social media presence.
• 29:54
  So I hired a woman here in Cleveland.
• 29:56
  Shout out Rachel with I won't give your last name this time, but I've done it in the past.
• 30:00
  But I brought her in and thinking we'd get just a little local presence here in Cleveland.
• 30:05
  Well, seven days after I hired her, she posted her first viral video that got over 4 million views.
• 30:11
  And I know we started getting inquiries from not only nationally, but internationally.
• 30:16
  And at the time, I'm like, heck, I don't know if this thing's going to work in Cleveland much, just anywhere else.
• 30:21
  So we kind of just tabled it, pushed a little forward.
• 30:23
  We went another six months.
• 30:26
  Then she posted your second viral video, but this one got over 37 million views.
• 30:31
  And that's when stuff went crazy.
• 30:34
  Yeah.
• 30:34
  So since that time, We've had over 6,000 inquiries from across the world.
• 30:40
  I mean, at one point, we had counted 137 different countries we had received inquiries from.
• 30:46
  And so I was kind of put in a position where I'm like, well, I actually know how to build a national business.
• 30:51
  Number two, I'm actually pretty good at it.
• 30:53
  And number three, if I don't do it, someone else is going to.
• 30:55
  So let's go.
• 30:56
  Right.
• 30:57
  So that's what we're doing now.
• 30:59
  And look, there's.
• 31:00
  With anything, as you build it out and grow it, there's frustrations in learning.
• 31:03
  And as I tell our licensees, I go, look, I would love to tell you this is a fully baked cake and we have everything figured out, but our folks come in and I kind of say to everybody, I'm
• 31:13
  like this isn't, we're going to need your help figuring stuff out.
• 31:15
  So please come in with an open mind and realize that we'll make some mistakes along the way, but we'll learn quickly if we work as a team and pull in the same direction and we'll grow more quickly.
• 31:24
  Right.
• 31:24
  So I've got a lot of sharp people in the room looking at it and trying to figure out the best way to do it.
• 31:29
  And I've been fortunate to have people who are patient enough to grow with us.
• 31:32
  Right.
• 31:33
  And be able to say, hey, look, this is going to be something that's going to be long lasting and we'll be a good slash great, viable business in the next couple years.
• 31:39
  We will be in a great spot.
• 31:41
  So, yeah, I mean in technology skips getting better and better, that's the cool thing is it's, and I'm sure that's the tough part, vetting that to go, okay, this is really cool, but it.
• 31:49
  Does this work on a national scale?
• 31:51
  Yeah, that's.
• 31:51
  I mean that's the thing vetting technology and saying, hey, look, if we bring this in, what's going to be the cost on it, what's going to be the return on it?
• 32:00
  Right.
• 32:00
  And is it something that we feel like is going to tip the scales in our favor?
• 32:04
  Right.
• 32:05
  You got to kind of look at the value proposition on everything.
• 32:08
  There's technology, there's a lot of things we'd like to have that, hey, this would be great.
• 32:12
  But you know what, it ends up being an expense, not a profit center.
• 32:14
  So do you want to bring it in and have it be an expense or can you take it and turn it into more profit?
• 32:20
  And again, does it have legs?
• 32:21
  Is it going to be long term viable in the marketplace and that kind of stuff.
• 32:24
  So we're always out there looking.
• 32:26
  I think one thing that holographic technology I think is something that on the horizon could potentially be very unique and different.
• 32:32
  We've had conversations with different people about how that might benefit us.
• 32:36
  But you know, we do know that the 3D tech via the iPad right now is the way to go.
• 32:42
  Currently people love seeing their own furniture in their space and we're able to do that.
• 32:48
  They're able to walk around it.
• 32:50
  They did.
• 32:50
  Like you said, Eric, a dining room table, is it a 96 foot inch table with eight chairs and how's this going to fit and let's allow space for that and maybe they decide, hey, either we need to make
• 33:02
  the room bigger or we need to buy a Smaller.
• 33:04
  A smaller table?
• 33:06
  Absolutely.
• 33:06
  Usually they go with the table.
• 33:08
  That's the easier way to go.
• 33:09
  That's the easier way to go.
• 33:10
  A lot less expensive down or expand it out, right?
• 33:14
  Oh, yeah, that's funny.
• 33:16
  Yeah.
• 33:16
  No, that's kind of things we see every day.
• 33:19
  Absolutely.
• 33:19
  So, Joe, how do people find you guys, if you're an architect, designer, homeowner out there going, oh, man, this is going to save my life.
• 33:26
  How do I fix this?
• 33:28
  So I will tell you, our site is walkyourplans.com which is obviously very good, but I will also share with you that you can find us on all social media.
• 33:36
  We're on Instagram, Facebook, all over and we've got about a quarter of a million followers out there or you can follow any of our locations.
• 33:44
  So.
• 33:44
  Yeah, but again, via social media, you can find us all over.
• 33:47
  All of our locations also have websites, so you can hit them and follow.
• 33:51
  Give us a follow.
• 33:52
  And again, if you have any interest or any, any questions, anything we can potentially help you with or look, if you have a technology that you think is an enhancement or something that you'd like to see, we want
• 34:01
  to know about that because we want to be able to look into it and vet it and see if we can offer it for sure.
• 34:07
  Man, that is awesome.
• 34:08
  Joe, thanks for coming on.
• 34:09
  I really appreciate it.
• 34:10
  I love what you're doing out there.
• 34:12
  This is changing the industry and it's so great to talk to you about this as you guys are growing and bouncing across the country and creating this whole network for the design community and the homeowners and clients out
• 34:23
  there that are going to get to use it.
• 34:25
  Look, again, as you said, at the end of the day, it's all about can you deliver value to the homeowner, to the end user, to the client?
• 34:32
  Can you consistently bring them something that they haven't had before that's going to ultimately lead to a better end game for them, a better solution.
• 34:40
  Right.
• 34:41
  We feel like we have it.
• 34:42
  We've been very fortunate to have really solid people join our team and help us continue to build it together.
• 34:46
  We're going to continue pushing it forward and I just appreciate being afforded the opportunity to come on your show and get a chance to talk to you and learn more about you guys.
• 34:54
  And we're out here looking to help.
• 34:56
  We will be at ibs.
• 34:57
  We'll be out front, actually.
• 34:58
  We have our own, our own area out front.
• 35:00
  So you'll see us when you're in your entryway.
• 35:02
  We're going to be right by registration.
• 35:03
  So you can come visit us there as well if you're.
• 35:05
  If you happen to be at the IBS show.
• 35:07
  So cool.
• 35:08
  Yeah, I'll be down there for.
• 35:10
  For sure.
• 35:10
  Having a good time.
• 35:11
  It's one of those shows you can't miss.
• 35:13
  Miss.
• 35:13
  Especially for the design community.
• 35:14
  Builders, everybody else.
• 35:15
  For sure.
• 35:15
  Yeah.
• 35:15
  Yeah.
• 35:16
  For sure.
• 35:17
  Joe, thanks for coming on today.
• 35:18
  I'm Eric G.
• 35:19
  Guys, check out walk your plans you've been listening to around the house.
• 35:24
  If we wake up in the morning and we can't remember.
• 35:34
  No one ever talks about the nights.
• 35:36
  They went to bed.
• 35:37
  Count them she came catch and sees getting beauty r at in your edge.
• 35:42
  To make for good story.
• 35:43
  Knock one back, no buzz, no worry.
• 35:46
  No one ever talks about the shots they did.