Embracing opportunity: How to prepare for a crazy summer season

Zach Wojtowicz:

What is up, everybody? Zach Wojtowicz here.

Charley Burtwistle:

Charley Burtwistle here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

And I am in a fantastic mood.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Why is that?

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Zach, two reasons. One, I’m getting to spend time with you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Ah, you feel that love?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, we’ve really turned a corner. Two, we have some very exciting guests today. We’ve been on a roll with guests lately. We have to give a huge shout-out to our producing team for lining these up. But Chris and Yvonne Johnson, I would put in the celebrity category, have their own HGTV show. We are just lowly, little podcast hosts, so I feel very honored to catch a glimpse of the celebrity lifestyle and get to talk to these people.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hopefully, we don’t get starstruck and just fumble over our words.

Charley Burtwistle:

Exactly. I was fumbling right there, but very excited. And it sounds like, did you meet them or …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Okay, so they were at Buildertrend University recently. I’ve heard nothing but great things. We got a packed booth behind us. People don’t know this, but we often record in front of a live audience of people listening in.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re clutch, basically. We perform well under pressure.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach, what are we going to talk about today?

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re going to talk a little bit about their story. It’s really interesting to talk to people that have been in the TV world. So, I’m interested to see how that happened and what that ended up as. We’re going to talk a little bit about their Buildertrend experience, their Buildertrend U, BTU experience. So, we’re going to do the whip around.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love it. A good old classic whip around.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, as they say in the biz, I assume. We’ll check with them.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ll check with them. All right, let’s do it. Let’s get them in here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, Yvonne and Chris, welcome to “The Building Code.” How are we doing today?

Chris Johnson:

Good. What’s up?

Yvonne Johnson:

Thanks for having us.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, no problem. Our pleasure. We love having our people that are BTU alumni. We’ll save that for later. But you guys were just in Omaha, and that’s a big deal. But before we dive a little too deep into your story or about your experiences at Buildertrend, why don’t you tell us your story and a little bit about your business?

Chris Johnson:

So, I’m Chris Johnson. I’m a licensed general contractor here in Atlanta, Georgia.

Yvonne Johnson:

And I’m Yvonne his better half and 51% owner of our company, Reclaimed Karma. Please make a note of that.

Chris Johnson:

I work for her.

Charley Burtwistle:

There we go.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. Well, this episode will air a little bit later, but we just had the Super Bowl and Atlanta’s own Usher was down there. I just need to know, did he deliver?

Chris Johnson:

Oh, he brought it. He did.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It was fantastic. I was calling out during it. I was like, “That’s the hat from the music video. We’re just recreating the music video live here.”

Chris Johnson:

It’s so crazy, man, because in Atlanta you can just randomly see just people. Atlanta is one of those cities where you pull up at a red light, and you pull up next to a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, and you’re like, “Oh, snap.” We met Woody Harrelson at a restaurant one time.

Yvonne Johnson:

Oh, we did.

Chris Johnson:

I was like, “Oh snap.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

There’s Woody, hanging out. Omaha doesn’t have that. We got a lot of Priuses and insurance agents. Every once in a while maybe Warren makes an appearance at a McDonald’s nearby, randomly. Go ahead, Charley.

Charley Burtwistle:

I was just going to say, so you guys met Zach. We talked to Nicole before you guys hopped on. Big fans of you guys at Buildertrend University. I, unfortunately, did not get the opportunity to meet you guys, and I know a lot of our listeners are very excited to learn more about you. So, tell us a bit more about your journey. How did Reclaimed Karma come to be? How’d you guys get into the industry and where are you at now?

Chris Johnson:

So, Reclaimed Karma as it exists today is a boutique design and build firm, but it was not always that. When we started out, basically, we bought a house. We’ll give you the condensed version. So, we bought a house. We didn’t have the money to furnish the house.

Yvonne Johnson:

We were house poor.

Chris Johnson:

Right. So, we started building and refinishing furniture in our garage to furnish the home. I was in sales at the time with PepsiCo. Yvonne was a business owner, and her business was starting to slowly …

Yvonne Johnson:

It was tanking.

Chris Johnson:

Yeah, it was tanking.

Yvonne Johnson:

That’s really how it started. I was really feeling bad about my business and he literally handed me a bottle of wine and a paintbrush and he was like, “Go in the garage and just paint something. We need furniture.” And back then, 12 years ago, it was becoming a thing to refinish furniture. So, I was grabbing stuff off the side of the road, cleaning it up and painting it with my bottle of wine to get over the drama of me losing my business.

Chris Johnson:

That’s right. And I had never picked up a tool at that point in my life, but we walked into Restoration Hardware. We just bought a house, and we were house broke, but we went shopping at Restoration Hardware and she was like, “I like this dining room table.” And I was like, “I like it, too, but it’s not going home with us because it’s eight grand. It’s not happening.” And at the time it’s like imperfectly perfect furniture was just coming into play. I was like, “Bro, I can build that. It’s sloppy. I can build it.” So, I found a pallet and built a coffee table out of a pallet.

And she posted it like, “Oh, look what my husband built for me.” And somebody said, “Is that for sale?” And she was like, “No.” And I was like, “Delete. Yes, absolutely it’s for sale.” And so we sold the pallet for $300 and then with me being in sales, I started doing the math, and we turned the sip and paint therapy room into a sweatshop, and we just started cranking out …

Yvonne Johnson:

I don’t think we can say that …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Figuratively, figuratively.

Yvonne Johnson:

It started off as a hobby and fun for me with the wine and the paintbrush. He was in the garage like, “Come on. Paint more. Faster. We got to get this done.” He ended up selling literally everything in our house, everything that he would build. I would put the dining room table in. I was so proud of it. And somebody asked for it and I remember I came home one day and it was gone. He had sold it out of our house. Just everything was going. Everything was for sale.

Chris Johnson:

Everything was for sale. So, that evolved into …

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love that …

Chris Johnson:

What’s that?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I just love your sales guys kicked in and like, “Everything’s got a price. What do you mean?”

Chris Johnson:

Right. Absolutely. We were negotiating. Nothing was left. Everything had to go. It was one of those furniture businesses that always goes out of business every three years. We would fire ourselves … Going out of business. Everything’s got to go. So, that evolved into us doing little, small projects in people’s homes as I started to become a little bit more handy, and Yvonne’s design eye was widening. And then we decided, “Huh,” because we had caught the HGTV bug, just looking at … It was like wallpaper. It was always on in our living room. And so we said, “Well, we should do our house and then maybe we could get into house flipping or something like that.”

So, we hired a contractor. The contractor was showing up every day at 12:00. Well, hold on, let me rewind. We sought out this young man that was in our neighborhood doing some work, brought him over to get a quote. He said that he could do our kitchen for $4,800.

Yvonne Johnson:

Okay, that’s where you guys need to just stop and wonder what’s wrong with that? We were told he could renovate, tear down all of the walls in the kitchen. This is where you know we’re the problem. $4,800, and we thought that that was …

Chris Johnson:

That was like, “It’s a great deal.”

Yvonne Johnson:

We were like, “Okay, it’s a decent deal. We can afford $4,800 for a whole kitchen renovation.” Are you kidding me?

Chris Johnson:

Because we didn’t know. We didn’t know any better.

Yvonne Johnson:

Handed him the money, all of it up front.

Chris Johnson:

Handed him the money, yep, all at one time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You just carry cash. It was about $4,800.

Yvonne Johnson:

In cash.

Chris Johnson:

Right, in cash.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s so funny.

Chris Johnson:

So, he pulls up ready for work at 12:00 p.m. the first day of the job, and he pulls up in his sports car and all of his tools, he’s ripping him out the plastic. Everything isn’t even open.

Yvonne Johnson:

We’re going to get killed for this on this podcast.

Zach Wojtowicz:

No, no, no, no. This is great.

Charley Burtwistle:

Everyone needs a good origin story. You got to start somewhere.

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is fantastic because you guys are going to rise out of this ash when we get into your accolade sense. So, it’s good to see anyone can start from the humblest beginnings.

Chris Johnson:

Yes. That’s what we’ll call it. Very humble. So, he was coming in every day around 12:00, leaving at one, two o’clock, because he had to go pick up his kids and stuff. And this led into around Christmas Eve, and we were supposed to put up a beam in the middle of our living room. We had temporary walls up on our kitchen countertops to keep everything up.

Yvonne Johnson:

This is a whole other podcast.

Chris Johnson:

And he had told us, “You don’t have to get an LVL. You can make your beam.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is awesome. Oh, this is so great.

Chris Johnson:

I know, right? I YouTube how to make the beam.

Yvonne Johnson:

To hold up our whole house.

Chris Johnson:

That’s about a 17, 18-foot span. No, I’m sorry, it’s about a 15-foot span. So, I took some 2x6s and layered them together and then did plywood 2×6, plywood 2×6, wrapped it, screwed it, and it was-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Rock solid.

Chris Johnson:

Yeah, and it was flat. I didn’t even stack the 2x6s on the stream side. I stacked them flat like a hamburger.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They don’t call us “The Building Code” for nothing, like, “This is not up to code.”

Yvonne Johnson:

And of course, none of this is permitted. We didn’t even know what that was, right?

Chris Johnson:

Yeah, we didn’t know any of that. So, Christmas Eve rolls around. He says, “Hey, I’ll be there later today.” I called him, I said, “Hey, I’m running around the corner. I’ll be right back.” When I pulled back in the neighborhood, I see the butt end of his little sports car leaving. And so, I called him and I said, “Hey man, are you coming to put this beam in?” He’s like, “You don’t dictate my schedule. It’s Christmas Eve. I have to go get my kid’s stuff.” And I lost it. I absolutely lost it.

Yvonne Johnson:

So, long story short …

Chris Johnson:

I lost it on him. The police showed up. And then Yvonne is crying on Christmas Eve that we’re never going to get our kitchen finished. And I said, “I will figure it out.”

Yvonne Johnson:

That was basically when he was fired.

Chris Johnson:

He was fired. Nicely put. He was fired. And I told her I would figure it out. Long story short, our friend is a screenwriter and she was like, “This is absolutely hilarious. You guys have no idea what you’re doing. I’m going to make phone calls to some friends I have in California. When they call you, just say yes.” And Yvonne was like, “What do you mean just say …” I was like, “Hey, she just said just say yes.” So, they called us and said, “So, you guys have a renovation company.”

Yvonne Johnson:

On a video chat.

Chris Johnson:

Yeah, a video chat, and I’m like, “Absolutely. Yes, that’s what we do. Yep. We renovate homes.” And they’re like, “You guys have a booming furniture business, too?” “Yes.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

A hundred percent.

Chris Johnson:

Absolutely. “And you guys are taking over your city?” “Absolutely, that’s what we’re doing.” So, they said, “Well, we’ll be out. We love you guys. We’ll be out to film a sizzle.” So, we’re walking around our little city square and we’re filming the sizzle for HGTV and Yvonne is like, “This is never going to happen.”

Yvonne Johnson:

They’re going to catch on …

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is literally unbelievable. I cannot believe this.

Yvonne Johnson:

And Chris has a full-time job and they think his full-time job is a contractor.

Chris Johnson:

So, while walking in the square, this guy pops out and says, “Oh, what are you guys doing,” because we got all the cameras up. He’s an actual contractor.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He’s like, “I know a contractor when I see one. This guy, he’s not one.”

Chris Johnson:

Right. So, he’s like, “What are you guys doing?” We were doing a big commercial renovation, and we started talking. I told him we were filming a show for HGTV. He’s like, “Oh, cool.” He said, “Hey, if you ever need anything, give me a call,” and he gave me his card.

Yvonne Johnson:

Thank God.

Chris Johnson:

So, I put the little card in my pocket and kept moving and film my little sizzle. And about a month later, we get a call. They say, “Hey, the network loves you guys. We’re actually going to film a pilot.” And I was like, “Yes.”

Yvonne Johnson:

I was dying inside, like, “Oh, our life is over.”

Chris Johnson:

So, I called the guy. I said, “Hey man, I got an opportunity for you. We’re actually going to get this small little show. Would you be interested in working with us to be able to do the show? We need a general contractor.” He was like, “Yeah, sounds like fun. It’ll be cool.” So, our first official renovation client was on national television. It was the first client we ever had was on national television.

Yvonne Johnson:

And nobody, except for all the people that watch this, no one knew except us.

Chris Johnson:

But we crushed it, we crushed it. And so, I would be staring in the camera and the producer would ask me a question, and the contractor would say … and then I would regurgitate what he just what he said. But we had the eye for it. We created the whole design for it. By that time, I was pretty handy with custom carpentry and fine woodworking. So, all of the elements that were put in there, we actually did do it.

Yvonne Johnson:

We did an amazing job. We crushed it. It aired. It’s not like it got done and they were like, “Oh, we can’t even air this.” It crushed it. It aired. And that changed our entire life. That one episode changed the whole direction …

Chris Johnson:

Trajectory.

Yvonne Johnson:

… yes, of our business. And from furniture to renovations, we were getting calls from really all over the country. And from there we had to catch our business up. So, we couldn’t pretend. So, then Chris started working with the contractor, which became one of his great mentors and mentored under him for many years until he got his own general contractor’s license.

Chris Johnson:

So, I studied under him. Then I sat for our state exam, passed the exam. So, now I’m licensed. I can build up to three stories, 20,000-square-foot commercial. And we specialize in luxury kitchens and baths, additions. We move into our first new build this year from the ground up. It’s a twenty-six hundred square foot pool house. Three stories. I know. It’s a little, small project.

Yvonne Johnson:

That’s good for us. That’s a great way for us to get into home building is to be able to work on a pool home that’s basically the size of a home.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley and I know all about that. We’re well compensated on “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Speak for yourself.

Chris Johnson:

So, that’s our story.

Yvonne Johnson:

That’s our story. That’s where we’re at. So, now we’re pretty busy. We are able to be pretty selective in what we choose to work on, which is so amazing. We’ve gotten really big into social media. In 2020, I had to make some changes, we both did because things slowed down. So, I took a lot of courses on social media and that blew up our social media side of our business, our content creating side. And we’ve been able to work with companies like The Home Depot and Loctite and GE …

Chris Johnson:

Siletz, Bear. Buildertrend now.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All the big dogs.

Yvonne Johnson:

That’s our life.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s awesome. I think that was by far the most incredible origin story we’ve had on the podcast here. Normally, it’s like, “Yeah, my dad owned the business and I took it over.” And we’re like, “Oh, that sounds great.” 30 seconds later we get into the question. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, and I’m glad you guys were laughing, too, because there were definitely a series of very unfortunate events leading up to you guys making it there. So, I didn’t want it to seem like I was laughing at your struggles, but knowing what goes into it, that’s unbelievable. It’s like the truest example of fake it till you make it I’ve ever heard.

Chris Johnson:

Pretty much. Welcome to Atlanta, baby.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. Well, let’s actually talk a little bit. So, we always try to circle it back to our listeners who maybe they have ambitions to be better at social media, or to build a network, or get with these brand partners. What sort of advice would you give to people who maybe haven’t had the same kind of well, what is happening as it’s unfolding but now want to get to these opportunities? What have you learned along the way that you can share with people who are listening to your story?

Chris Johnson:

I probably would say number one is let’s not pretend it’s not work. It is work. It’s another job. For that side of our business, that entity is called Creative Karma. And so, we have just built up the habit and the muscle of filming everything that we do. And it is, it’s another job. You could literally hire another person to help do it and document it.

Yvonne Johnson:

And we have we.

Chris Johnson:

And we have, yeah. But in the beginning you just have to be very diligent about documenting your journey, and it’s good for you to be able to see where you started. When you start, it’s going to suck. Like everything else that you do, it’s going to suck. Nobody’s going to like it. It’s going to be crickets out there. But it’s all about being consistent and being consistently consistent, because we burn out at times. There’s times where we don’t post for a minute because it is a lot of work. And then there’s other times where we’re on it. And so you just have to continue to show up everything else in life. So that’s number one, I would say. And then …

Yvonne Johnson:

Being authentic. We’re not afraid to share the good, the bad and the ugly. So, if we have a great day …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Proven that today.

Yvonne Johnson:

Look at what we just told you. But I mean, we are a husband and wife team. We have good days, and we have some not so-great-days, and we have no problem letting people know that it’s not all roses over here. On a business side, on a marriage side. Marriage is hard enough as it is, let alone running a company together, but it’s the biggest blessing ever to be able to run a business with literally your best friend and your partner who you know has your best interests at heart with personally and in business, so that’s been great.

Chris Johnson:

Marriage is not hard. I enjoy what I do every single day working with my wife.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Why are you holding up your right hand, like you’re swearing?

Chris Johnson:

That’s the clip for the episode. That’s what we’ll use to promo it right there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yvonne’s going to want that one clip, too, and just play it back every time …

Yvonne Johnson:

Exactly.

Chris Johnson:

She heard what you said.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You’re on camera, sir. You’ve been recorded.

Chris Johnson:

That’s right. And then I would say the other thing is, too, the whole goal around social media for us is for it to expose what we do on a daily basis to more people. So, it’s another marketing arm. And so, for anybody out there that’s not documenting their process, documenting their transitions, transformations in their projects, then you’re missing out because what it has done for us is it has not only been a marketing arm, but it’s also a level of validation for future prospects and clients to where we have had people hire us and said, “We love how clean you keep your work site and we know you do that because of the videos that you put out there.”

People have waited on us for a year or two years because they trust our process. And when you’re visible, they know that you’re not going to be running off with their money. Our goal is to take the con out of contracting and being fully transparent with your videos. It allows that, and it gives you the type of power of where you don’t necessarily go in selling to a potential prospect. They reach you and you’re actually qualifying them to see like, “Do we really want to take them on? They got some quirks. I don’t know if this is going to be a good fit for us.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, it flips. I think the industry for the longest time was so dominated by word of mouth as far as leads and getting prospects in the door. And what social media has allowed us to do is skip the middleman and have the word of mouth come directly from your mouths to the respective clients. We’ve had a few episodes about this, and it’s really in the last three or four years in the construction industry, particularly, has really taken off. So, it’s awesome to hear you guys echo that sentiment and definitely going to be getting a follow from me right after this episode. One thing you guys have mentioned a couple times, Reclaimed Karma, Creative Karma. The karma in your company name, what’s the story behind that? How does that play into your business?

Yvonne Johnson:

Well, we definitely believe in giving back. We believe in giving out everything great about us and hoping that that comes back 10 times. And I think karma just fit because we do everything based on good karma, great karma. That was the first part of our name that we knew was going to be part of our name before we added reclaimed. But karma was definitely a huge part of our name, a huge part of our company. And we just feel like if we give great out, we’re going to keep having that come back.

Chris Johnson:

And Karma really aligns with who we are as people, our family values, and to echo Yvonne, our core values as a company. One of our core pillars is I and I, being intentional and integrity, and we try to make sure that everything we do lines up with that and karma circulates right in there. So, what we put out, we want to get it back.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love that. I think actually the theme of this episode, recognizing we’re 20 minutes in …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Like, “Oh, there’s a script?”

Charley Burtwistle:

Upcoming busy summer season.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re going to go full 180. All right, the editors are going to have a hell of a time with this one.

Charley Burtwistle:

No, this is great. I mean, this has been inspiring. Zach and I always joked that this isn’t our full-time job doing the podcast here. We come down here in between meetings, record these episodes and go back. And I’m always more motivated after talking to our customers and hearing stories. Like integrity and intentionality, that’s something that I can do right when I go back to my desk. So, I appreciate this has been a great episode already.

But I am curious by the time this airs, busy season going to be right around the corner, what are some of the key steps that you guys are taking? You had mentioned being really intentional about who you work with and being selective and things like that. What are some other things that people can do to get ready to ramp up and ensure that they’re streamlined as the busy season comes around the corner?

Chris Johnson:

For us, it’s all about scheduling, man. The schedule and trust in our process and not being too, not going to use the word greedy, but just making sure that you don’t take on more than you actually can handle and be able to perform at your peak on every single job, because you’re only as good as your last job. And so, with us, we are a boutique firm, so we don’t stack a lot of jobs on top of each other at one time. At any given time, we’ll be on a construction site, maybe two to three different jobs, and they all have different life cycles. So, we make sure we’re not starting demolition on two jobs in one day.

We want them to fall behind each other and spread them out enough because what can go wrong in construction will go wrong in construction, and we want to give ourselves enough breathing room to be flexible and bounce our interior crew and our trade partners, subcontractors around to each job effectively and not create bottlenecks. So, for us, scheduling is huge. And with Buildertrend we can keep everybody locked in on the schedule and not have to make multiple phone calls and make sure everybody’s aligned. Our internal team, our customers, everybody is locked in on the schedule and if there’s any changes, everybody sees it in real time. And so for us as Buildertrend newbies, we’re excited about that moving into the peak season of how well we can streamline the process of scheduling all our jobs together.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I guess I didn’t realize you guys were new to Buildertrend, which is really exciting. Welcome, officially. Probably should have led with that, but you just seem like veterans. You just seem like you really got it all figured out. Why question? So, you came to Buildertrend University, what was your experience like?

Yvonne Johnson:

So, we started with Buildertrend last year so that this summer we would have it together because we really needed to pull those processes in place and Buildertrend was the best option to help to make this summer a little easier on us because we’re great at what we do, but all the organizing can sometimes get a little out of hand. So, when we looked at Buildertrend University, we were excited. That was one of the things that also sold us on the program was because we knew we had all this hands-on support. So, not only do we have our own personal coach, but we were able to come to a whole university. So, we had an awesome time. I think Chris, honestly, understood 99%. I think some of it I had to come home, and I had to really take it all in because we are new, and we went to a more advanced …

Chris Johnson:

Super user.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Super user, so you’re new, and you jumped right in.

Yvonne Johnson:

So, I think once I got home and actually got into the office and was able to implement some of the things that we learned, it was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so eye-opening.” And it was so helpful to be able to have all of that hands-on support. We met some amazing people. We met some really great other contracting teams, and we were able to network with them and get some of their nuggets of how they’re running companies that some of them 10 times as big as ours, so it was awesome.

Chris Johnson:

We got a lot of best practice conversations there. I think for me, there’s two things. Number one, I got to dap up JP first, fronts because that’s who we had our dim sum with.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Your Salesman JP, but you two are an actual perfect fit. That couldn’t have teed up a better sales rep for you. We’ll make sure we clip that for him.

Charley Burtwistle:

JP, he has to be close if he’s not already on the Mount Rushmore of Buildertrend personalities.

Chris Johnson:

Yeah, so I got to dap him and hug him up, so that was cool. And then for me, it really just sealed the deal even stronger with … It gave me confirmation I made the right choice as to the program that we chose for our customer relationship and project management tool because you can genuinely see that the people at Buildertrend want to be there. At first we were like, “This is fake,” and someone will have a meltdown somewhere. But it was like, “No.”

Yvonne Johnson:

Everybody seemed happy, helpful.

Chris Johnson:

Everybody is happy and so, you can see that when you call in for customer support, either on the chat or on the phone call, people at Buildertrend genuinely want to be there. They care about what they do and they care about who they do it for. And for me that was like, “Yo, this is amazing. If I get fired from my boss, I know where I’m coming to work. I’m coming to work at Buildertrend, baby.”

Charley Burtwistle:

We’re going to get you on the, you’ll be taking me and Zach’s job though. You can host the podcast if you come over.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Actually, you have way more experience than I do. So, that would be a great fit. If it doesn’t work out, all the best. Well, we’ve covered a lot today and I’ve had a ton of fun. We joked before we got on air about a second episode. I think I have to. It’s not optional. We will have you back on, so just figure out what works. Our people will talk to your people. I don’t know how it goes in showbiz. Sounds that like, “I can just fake it, and it’ll just happen.”

Chris Johnson:

Exactly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

But thank you both so much for being on today on “The Building Code.” We really enjoyed having you. We had a ton of fun, and we hope you’ll come back.

Chris Johnson:

Thank you for having us.

Yvonne Johnson:

Thanks for having us.

Charley Burtwistle:

Thank you, guys.

Yvonne Johnson:

We look forward to it.

Chris Johnson:

We do.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley?

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach?

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just had Yvonne and Chris Johnson from Reclaimed Karma. What a fun episode. I had a ton of fun. We’re not joking. We’re going to have you back on.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I mean, I can totally understand how they got their own show because what incredible personalities. Hardest I’ve laughed in a long time. Super fun episode. And I think a really, really good message, work is work. If you want to get what you want, you have to do the work to get to it. I am fired up now. So, I actually did, I didn’t want to stay it in front of them because I didn’t want to be embarrassed, but I did a little refurnishing when we moved into our new house.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, you did? I didn’t know that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. Same sort of story that they said, is like we walked through a certain big box furniture store.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m not paying 10 grand for a headboard.

Charley Burtwistle:

And the same sort of thing. I’m like, “The rustic vibe is in now of oh, imperfections is what the style is.” I was like, “I can do this.” And so, it’s embarrassing, but I had a beer die table in my backyard. It’s this big old piece of plywood, legs and everything, which I also built myself. And I mean, I can just sand this down, stain it, put some crown molding around the outside and paint it gold or whatever. And it would look exactly like that ten-thousand-dollar headboard at the big box store. And so, that’s what I did, and I had a ton of fun doing it. So, apparently, I should have just posted it and sold it and then I’d have my own HGTV show right now.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s funny. Is this you announcing to the world that you’re quitting “The Building Code” to go start your HGTV lifestyle dream?

Charley Burtwistle:

Not yet. But if that ever happens, I would love for them to use this clip and be like, “It was always Charley’s vision.” So, we’ll see if I’ll manifest into the universe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. Let me know.

Charley Burtwistle:

And I’ll use Buildertrend to manage my project, too.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, perfect. Do a little double dip and you’re our next influencer.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. Geez. That’d be crazy.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just figured out Charley Burtwistle’s life here on “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Enough about me. Zach, what’d you think about Chris and Yvonne?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Ah, they’re fantastic. I mean, I promised a whip around the beginning of the episode and that is what we got. And we talked a lot about things as well as far as keep going. Don’t give up. Really commit. It’s still work. If you want something good, you still have to take control of it. They have a great sense of perspective, and that genuineness really shines through. And I always find the people that are the most successful have that quality …

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s karma.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s karma. That’s exactly where I was going with that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Dang it. Sorry to beat you to the punch.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s all right.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ve got a log going.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I was going to beat you to the other punch, so we better stop just ruining each other’s material here and call it a day.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wrap it up. Thank you so much again to Chris and Yvonne. Thank you to Zach for being a great cohost. Thank you to all of our producers in the booth for all the work that they do. I’m feeling very thankful today.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Which is weird. It’s Valentine’s Day, not Thanksgiving, but it’s working out. Feel the love. Thanks, everybody.

Charley Burtwistle:

Thanks to our listeners. Until next time, I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

See you.