Heart meets hustle: How this Texas builder scaled with purpose

Charley Burtwistle:

What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of “The Building Code”. I’m Charlie Burtwistle.

Carly Ward:

I’m Carly Ward.

Charley Burtwistle:

Carly Ward, you are a pro. You jumped right in there. Didn’t even need the introduction. This is what, third, fourth?

Carly Ward:

Fourth.

Charley Burtwistle:

Fourth episode. Are you feeling good?

Carly Ward:

I’m a stand-in.

Charley Burtwistle:

You can be honest with me. Are you trying to take my spot? Let’s just get that out in the open right now.

Carly Ward:

I’m not trying, but I think other people are pushing for it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Other people are pushing for it? Yeah. I can sense some hostility. You beat me to the studio today. Everything was all set up. Carly-Charley is a close enough name switch that they could just delete some H’s from the content and everything’s good to go.

Carly Ward:

The branding’s too good. If we get you out of here, then we just drop an H and an E and we’re good.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’re good to go. On a serious note, we do have some big changes coming to “The Building Code”. Starting July 10th, we are shifting to a monthly format. As opposed to our weekly quick hitters, 20, 30 minutes, we would do monthly more hour-long interviews, conversations, recurring segments.

Carly Ward:

Content is going to be a lot more focused, a lot more meat and potatoes, if you will. Excited to move to this new format, and not that you’ll be lacking any awesome content, because we’ll still be serving it up.

Charley Burtwistle:

For sure, and it’s not just going to be like interviews. It’s going to be more recurring segments, product insights, what have we been doing here at Buildertrend.

Carly Ward:

Industry knowledge.

Charley Burtwistle:

Industry knowledge. Some fun. If you remember the fishbowls idea that Courtney had, I’m sure that’ll be making an appearance again.

Carly Ward:

Truth or dare? You never know.

Charley Burtwistle:

Truth or dare? Who knows? We can have all sorts of different stuff. Thank you guys so much for being such loyal listeners. We’re not going anywhere. We’re just hoping to bring more additional value to you and, like Carly said, more meat and potatoes. That will be coming, like I said, July 10th. In the meantime, we have a fantastic guest today. This is a couple I actually met up in Boston at the Contractor Coalition about six or seven months ago. Carly, who do we have today?

Carly Ward:

We have Ryan and Hannah out of Fort Worth, Texas, from Our House Your Home. Excited to see somebody out of the Fort Worth area, as DFW is my former stomping grounds from my in-market coaching days. Excited to talk to them and they have some amazing homes, and they actually have some pretty exciting news as well that you’ll hear coming up.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, they’re awesome. It’s a really cool story, so I’m excited to get into it with them. Not only incredible business owners, but just incredible life partners as well too. I’m excited to talk to them again, so without further ado, let’s get them in here. Ryan and Hannah, welcome to “The Building Code”. Really appreciate you guys making the time to join us today. How’s it going?

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Good. Thanks for having us, Charley.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Busy.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. I feel like that’s status quo for you two though, which I’m sure we’ll get more into here, but I originally met you guys up in Boston at the Contractor Coalition Summit last year, so this is cool to see it finally come to fruition after the night of planning out at the bar. For those people who have not met you before, we always like to start with just real basic who you are, where you came from, and how you got to where you’re at today.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah. Well, we’re Ryan and Hannah Schwanbeck. We are in Fort Worth, Texas, area. Hannah always says Dallas. I’m always like, “We’re Fort Worth.” It’s a big difference if you live here.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Most people that aren’t from here don’t understand the difference.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah. We started our company in 2018 and we’re a design-build company, so we’re 50% construction company and then 50% interior design firm.

Charley Burtwistle:

I always like to hear the origin story of the business. Is this something that was always on the roadmap for you guys, or an idea that came to you out of nowhere one day and you jumped at it, or how’d that happen?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Ryan married a ready-fire-aim person. As a stay-at-home mom of three, I was just loving my babies, but then also felt like I had a little bit of a creative knack that was going unanswered, and so I organically started a business out of our house. I basically was decorating rooms in our home and then selling the whole room, so everything from the chandelier down to the rug and the accessories in between.

We started branding it as though a success. We were selling curated rooms, and then our curated rooms would go really quick and then that garnered design clients, then design clients would have me come in. Ryan tripped onto one of my design client projects, bringing me a surprise Starbucks since I had trades, and was like, “Yo, what you doing?” I’m like, “Oh, a little bit of this, that.” He was just constantly bringing order, and so we started getting more requests for renovations.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

I literally thought she was just picking out some furniture for a client’s house, so I was like, “Hey, let me run you some coffee.” She’s got trades in there, ripping the floors out and putting up wainscoting and painting, and I was like, “Do we have a contract? Do we have insurance? What are we doing?”

Hannah Schwanbeck:

I’m like, “She and I, we talked. We’re good. We’ll figure it out.” Ryan’s like, “Alert.”

Ryan Schwanbeck:

“Are we making money here?”

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Thankfully he went to college for this, so he really used just his business experience. He was in finance and business. We also worked at our church, so he was great with teams. We really used … he used, I didn’t … all of his skill sets there. He brought order to what I was creating, and so we got to be a lot more official at that point, and then we started getting larger and larger renovations.

Covid actually propelled our business. The world was shut down. People were bored at home and stuck watching Instagram, which is where we were sharing what we were doing. From then on, it just catapulted us. I actually had exceeded his income at that time, and so he stepped away and joined me. It was a huge leap of faith and we just went all in, and we’ve just grown since then.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

For us, there was really no business plan laid out. It was more these opportunities just kept coming our way. Then at some point we looked at each other, because we were just hustling on the side, and we had three kids at the time. We started our business when we had our third kid.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah. She was six weeks old when I started deciding to sell furniture out of our house.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

We just looked at each other and we’re like, “What if I also quit my job, we go all in on this? What are we capable of?” You just really don’t know until you put yourself 100% into something. Hannah has a background in event planning and design and all this, so she’s a very natural creative and great with people. She’s just finding ways to get into people’s houses and, “I would do this and this.” We really had some amazing clients who trusted us at the start to give us … we did a huge lake house renovation when Covid hit, and that was a pretty scary time. Nobody knew what was going to happen, but we were able to continue on that project and just knock it out of the park. It was a weird time, but it really propelled us in that season.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah, and I would say one of the main reasons that we just kept saying yes to these opportunities is it was really buying us time back with each other. Previously with our different career paths, especially before I was a stay-at-home mom, we really had opposite schedules, so events are primarily on evenings and weekends, plus you hold office hours, and then same thing with what he was doing. It’s just we didn’t see each other.

It was one of the straws that just broke was when we realized, “Oh, I’ve only seen you once this week.” That was at the same point that we were having a lot of interest with our curated rooms, and so he started doing the math … Lord knows I wasn’t … realizing this could be something for our family. Yeah, it was a really fluid time, but it was amazing because we just got to lean on each other, and the rest is history.

Carly Ward:

I’m curious. You guys started off as life partners, transitioned into business partners as well. What did you guys learn the most about each other through this process?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

I would say to really stay in our lane and play off of each other’s strengths. While I certainly ask Ryan for his feedback … and he gives us huge feedback on design when I open it up to him and show him where I’m at, and sometimes he’ll help me with that missing link … he really leaves total control to me on the design side. I fully and completely trust him on how he runs the business, the systems and processes we’re implementing, implementing ways that we can get more efficient.

I would really just say instead of … not competing, but instead of me trying to tell him how he could improve or him telling me how I could improve, it’s really just trusting this is what he was absolutely made for and this is what I’m made for. If I can stay within my lane and him within his, it’s pretty harmonious.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

To just encourage each other more than we correct each other. Probably just good marriage advice in general, but it’s like, “Hey, I’m totally here on your team. How can I help you do your job and serve you, to make your life easier and to make your stuff work?” We try and trust each other, and we’ve had to really work on our communication skills and not let things fester from the workplace into personal family life. It’s challenging, but I think it’s really made us grow closer together.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

It’s extremely rewarding. It’s like I married him because he is who I love the most in the whole wide world, and this is who I would prefer to spend my time with. It’s like when we were, especially those ships passing in the night season, it’s like, “Gosh, I married you because I like you, but I hardly see you, and even though people I’m working with are absolutely wonderful, I didn’t marry them.” It was really just one of those things of when we started seeing that time back and also playing off of each other’s strengths, we started realizing you absolutely can exist in unity, especially if we’re not critiquing each other, like Ryan was just talking about.

We’re pretty good with quickly course correcting. If I start getting out of my boundary or him out of his, we’re just like, “Hey, I got this.” Or he’ll say, “Hey, I got this.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” That’s a good boundary. At the same time, we have complete open lines of communication where I want his feedback, I want his encouragement, and if he sees something I’m missing. Absolutely open to hearing that all the time.

Charley Burtwistle:

It sounds like you guys could, maybe as your next side gig, have a wild marriage counseling approach where if people are struggling with their marriage, you have them start a business together for a while, work through those communication expectations.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Right.

Carly Ward:

Through the design process, honestly.

Charley Burtwistle:

Exactly.

Carly Ward:

It probably comes up. You could have a good market already for it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Maybe that’s a new vertical Buildertrend could get into. It’s like, “Hey, struggling with your marriage? Sign up for Buildertrend.”

Carly Ward:

Equal part custom home builder, equal part marriage counselor.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. On a serious note, everything you guys are describing, it’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever really seen these parallels so clearly before, before talking to you, is all the things that we talk about on the podcast with our customers that are building just world-class businesses and operations. It’s clear communication, proper expectation, very distinct roles and responsibilities, so people know what to do to succeed and where they need help. Everything that you guys are alluding to is also just super applicable in the marriage.

It’s cool that you guys are very forward with that and it has became part of your brand as well too. Even the name of your company, Our House Your Home, is super powerful. I’d love to dive into that a little bit more of where did that come from, and what other messages or brand are you hoping to send to your client to set yourselves apart and be like, “Hey, we’re doing this in a different way, in a way that’s more beneficial for us, beneficial for you,” and I’m sure a big reason why a lot of people choose you as the design-build that they want to work with.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah. I think what really motivates us is, I mean, we love cool design. I mean, that’s super motivating. It’s a passion. I love to build things with excellence in craftsmanship, but the thing that really drives us is family and just this whole idea of a home is a place where you build your family, your kids take their first steps. In everything we do, we’re trying to help people create that community, just even confidence in their home where it’s like, “I want to host, I want to have everybody here.”

I love watching Hannah interact with our clients from a design standpoint, because she’s like, “Hey, what if the living room wasn’t just centered around a TV, but it’s around community? Where are we going to put board games, and how many people do you want sitting in here when your whole family’s over? How could we find ways to make sure that your grandkids are coming over to the house and they feel like they can have a play space?” I love everything that she talks about from a design standpoint. We’re just here for the family and for people to find ways of connection inside their home. For us, that’s the huge motivator.

Our House Your Home, for me and our superintendents … because again, our company is pretty unique. We truly have a construction wing and an interior design wing, and we’ve never wanted to break those apart separately because we love doing all of all the projects that we tackle. It’s like, “Hey, you have to take both of us on.” It’s like both or nothing. With our superintendents it’s like, “Hey, we tell our clients, `When we’re in your home, we want to treat this place as if it was our own home. We want to treat this house just like that.'”

Even down to we know how important it is for all the subcontractors and vendors and tradesmen that are coming through the house. They’re like family to us, and it’s like they’re guys who I would trust in my home. We always brag on our guys. Literally we’ve seen our subs taking people’s trash cans in, checking on the sprinklers. It is like, “Hey, your grass was dying,” so we’re checking on those things. We care about those things.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

I would just say, I mean, there’s an extreme ownership. There’s a deep responsibility when we have someone that’s entrusting us with their property, with their significant investment. There is that responsibility, that ownership, that Ryan really, really embraces. I mean, it goes from the top down, just even to our vendors who might be bringing us a batch of our light fixtures or something. I mean, we have truly surrounded us with people that I would feel completely comfortable sending over to your house or to my grandparents’ house. It is that thing of we really treat our clients’ properties as if they were our own, but in a less deep way, I mean, that name came from literally how our business started. We were selling furniture out of our house.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Our house is truly our showroom. We took our dining room and we renovated it into a studio, and we were setting up bedrooms, offices, dining rooms, everything, from the rugs to the light fixture to the window treatments, all the furniture. She was designing these very curated, one of a kind, almost like a Rooms To Go.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah. You’ve got all of it. You got the light fixture, the things on the wall, the whole thing.

Charley Burtwistle:

You were doing that just in one specific room in your house?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, okay.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

It had the best natural light. Between 2:00 and 3:30 every afternoon is when we knew to take our professional pictures. We had a whole setup and lighting and all the things. It was actually before Facebook Marketplace was Facebook Marketplace. It was when you had to go into a group or be accepted into a group back in the day. I was involved in, I don’t know, 15 of these different groups.

Every Thursday at 2:00, we would drop our curated room. We would usually drop one, two or three a week, and then they would all sell within 24 hours or less, and so it garnered this little following. When they started selling quicker is when people were like, “Gosh darn it, I wanted that home office. Can I hire you to just come do mine?” We just kept saying yes to those.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Our kids got really … because we’re selling furniture out of our home. We did that for about two years, and our kids just got used to waking up and having a whole new living room set up. New couches, everything. Just hilarious.

Carly Ward:

“Mom, it’s been a week. When’s the dining room going to change?”

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

They would tell us, “I don’t like this kind. I liked the one with the lower arm.” I mean, it’s funny because they’re three, four and five, but it was always cute to hear their feedback on what they did and didn’t prefer.

Carly Ward:

It’s amazing to hear the passion behind your mission and your business, and obviously it’s taken a lot of work to combine forces from both the construction side and the design side, and obviously there’s probably a lot of challenges that bleed into your personal life. I’m curious if you guys have any standard resets or rituals that you guys practice, for those challenging days where work is starting to bleed into personal life.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

That has never happened to us before. We really don’t have many challenges.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Just the on/off switch, really.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Right. It’s every …

Hannah Schwanbeck:

[Inaudible 00:18:34] from the day.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

It’s every day. It is every day, and I 100% want to brag on Buildertrend, because that’s a tool for us that’s completely reshaped our life at home. We lean hard on Buildertrend. It’s a selling point for us with our clients. They love the communication, but for us it’s like, “Hey, our evenings and our weekends are sacred for us. It is family time. We turn our phones off. We love you, we care about you, but if you have any thoughts, any questions, go check Buildertrend, because 95% of the time it’s there. The schedule’s there, the daily logs.”

Hannah Schwanbeck:

[Inaudible 00:19:18] weekly recap.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

All the CAD plans are there. Actually, even on the front end, I guess as we’re growing and we’ve been doing this for seven years now, you start to learn some of those reoccurring things that happen. I used to get texted on Sunday morning all the time. I’m in church, I’m getting texts at 9:00, 10:00 A.M., asking like …

Hannah Schwanbeck:

“Are y’all finished?”

Ryan Schwanbeck:

“Is the electrician finished? Why is the light switch here?” You’re just like, “Oh, man.” It felt like work never shut off. Well, you start to learn those habits, and then now we’re able to communicate proper expectations with our clients up front. “Hey, on the weekends, go look at Buildertrend. I promise it’s most likely there. There’s an electrical plan, there’s a schedule. You’re going to see when they’re coming back.

“If you have a question, shoot us a message, and now our whole team gets it. A lot of times we’re in meetings, so now our project manager, our superintendents, our junior designer, somebody’s going to reach back to you within 24 hours.” Our clients love it, so we get way less text messages, phone calls. Our family time is much more protected, and now our clients feel way more communicated, felt and heard.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Then also I think it’s even just having that right mental state. Sometimes we need to friendly-remind one another when we are having that residue from the workday at home. It’s just one of those decisions of fighting for family first, and we are absolutely in complete unity on that. He fights for me and I fight for him. We fight for time with our kids.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

We fight a lot, yeah. We’ve been there.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

All of the circumstances. I mean, you’re available 24/7. We live in a smart age. Technology is rapidly advancing, and so you have to decide to turn it off. You have to decide to be remote when you’re not remote. I think it’s also just that approach that really helps us when we need to reset at home, and realizing when we’re not. Maybe it’s that a conversation is starting because we’re trying to process the day, we’re trying to close the window so we can be home, but sometimes we’ll say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you.” If you’re not careful, it can really back you into the day really quick.

Yes, putting those tools in place like Buildertrend are huge, but then I also think of just keeping those daily reminders in front of you and then allowing yourself to be humble enough. Whenever he needs to be like, “Hey, we’re at home, we’re with the kids,” “Oh, yeah,” instead of being all defensive about it. I think it’s all of the things mixed up into it.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

I wanted to say too, yeah, we do a good job. Weekly date nights, it’s huge. Another marriage tip.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

We have to. It’s non-negotiable.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah. You gotta remind yourselves we’re not just business partners, and we’re not just raising kids and taking care of a house. Date nights are important.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

They are sacred.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

What we’ve found is we don’t talk about work frustrations, like, “Oh, this client,” or how are we going to solve this problem, but we will talk about those things that charge us up, like dreaming. We have some awesome new projects coming up that we’re so excited about, so we’ll talk about those things, because for us it’s not work. That’s something like a joy, like a passion, a dream. When we’re on our date nights, Hannah’s looking up properties and showing me stuff, and for us that’s energizing.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah, so I think it’s that, but it’s also like, if we’re talking about the kids or something like that, what’s not going to be our date night is what we’re trying to help that kid grow through or something. If anything, it’s celebrating the wins. “How cool was it that no one got the game ball on Thursday?” Almost really just guarding how sacred those nights are and that it’s really our fill-up time, and it absolutely keeps us sane, and it reminds each other why we got married and why we like each other when we’re out having fun, playing pickleball or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, we used to be super competitive at our university on the sand volleyball court.” That was part of our story. It’s even just doing those things that are little fill-ups, for sure.

Carly Ward:

I love to hear how intentional you guys are about your time together and really delegating the right topics for the right spaces, because as we know, it’s way easier to get into all the crummy parts of your day or your week, but to your point, what’s going to fill your cup and make that time together so impactful? It’s incredible to hear, and it’s such a simple thing that I think every listener could take away and implement in some area of their life.

Charley Burtwistle:

For sure. You don’t have to be married for that to be super applicable to your life. The intentionality and the structure is going to prevent burnout, regardless of if you own a company or if you just work a nine-to-five or you’re married or not. The intentionality of that all I think is ultimately going to set anybody up for success. Also, not to move past it, huge shout-out to Nolan for getting the game ball. We’ll celebrate that for sure.

As we’re talking about different tools that you guys have … appreciate, obviously, the shout-out for Buildertrend, we’re huge fans of yours as well … another thing that we had talked about up in Boston which I think also came to fruition was your involvement with CBUSA. Is that correct?

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah. I mean, for us, the relationships at CBUSA have been huge. I don’t know. I feel like we’re younger in the game, right?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Oh, by far, yeah.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Even when we started in 2018, the first thing we realized was, hey, we need to start following along and almost finding some mentors, and that can even be through a podcast, so we found some.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Who are the titans in the industry, who’ve been doing this 10, 20, 30 years.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Right, so it’s like let’s go ahead and learn from those people who’ve been doing this and learn from their mistakes. Man, what you can get from a small podcast can absolutely change your business for the rest of the year. I just started binging on all of these podcasts from builders and also designers, and we based a lot of our business on their models, because I’m like, “They’ve already figured this out.” For us, finding a mentor could be somebody on a podcast or YouTube, somebody that you follow along.

Then we joined some builder networks, and joining CBUSA and getting into those relationships with people who have been there. I picked up the phone just last week and talked with another builder in our area, in our Fort Worth group, and just like, “Hey.” Monday mornings are always a hard day as a builder because all the homeowners got to think about their projects all weekend, so blow up your email, blow up your Buildertrend. I mean, all this stuff. I wake up on a Monday morning, have three major client issues all in one day, and …

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Project issues.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Project issues.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

All of them that are like …

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Different clients.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

You’re always in the gray zone as the builder of, like, “Gosh, what?” Ultimately we want to do the right thing, and sometimes that’s a hard thing to figure out. I picked up the phone and called one of the guys in the group and just like, “Hey, I just want to bounce these three scenarios off of you. Tell me if I’m crazy. I mean, seriously, like check me on it.” We talked through each one of those, and he was able to share similar stories and just give really good, solid advice. By the end of that, not only did I have some solutions, but I just felt encouraged as a person, like we’re not in this alone.

Designing, building people’s homes, they’re emotionally attached. Their finances are all wrapped up into it. Husbands and wives, families are trying to make all these hard decisions and there’s project delays, all this stuff. Just to relate with other builders that I love these connections, because there’s so many builders who really care and they want to go above and beyond, and they’ve been through these scenarios and they can just give me some advice and maybe something I’ve never thought about too. For me, CBUSA is great, rebates and all this stuff, but it’s the relationships for me that’s been really key.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love it. I think as we’re getting close to time here, a couple more questions I want to make sure we squeak in. You’d talked about on date nights, you guys love talking about the future and things that you’re excited about and passionate about. As you guys have evolved so much so quickly over the last five to seven years, I’m curious, what do the next five to ten years look like? What are you guys currently thinking about, and where do you want to take this that is on your roadmap that you’re thinking about?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah. Go.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Well, I mean, there’s a couple things. As we grow as a company, we have an awesome culture here in our team, and we want to grow this business where we bring more people on board and it’s a place where people can show up and actually enjoy their work, where people can just walk in the door and say, “I absolutely love my job. I love the people that I work with. I love the clients we work for.” As our business grows, it’s expanding very fast. We just want to maintain that, where there’s just a natural energy when you step in the door and everybody’s just excited to go after it. Hannah is a crazy dreamer, so she is just always thinking of crazy, impossible projects for us to tackle.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

That’s why I was so excited for him to answer this question.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Our next one …

Hannah Schwanbeck:

He’s the how. I’m like, “Here’s the what,” and he’s like, “I’m the how.”

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Tell them about our project that we’re launching, when we bought the land.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Yeah. We actually are about to build two different luxury spec homes. We actually only announced one on our social channels, but there’s two in the works. They’re really going to be projects without compromise. They’re going to be things that you don’t have to do, but we want to do. I mean, it’s the extra character. It’s the extra millwork. It’s the things that feel like a lot of thought went into that, because one thing that I have realized throughout our design journey, even though I didn’t go to school for interior design, he didn’t go to school for construction, one thing we’ve definitely studied over our entire career is just people and what really inspires them, and really what people want to garner out of their home.

Whenever we’re onboarding clients, there’s definitely some things that I feel like I get back consistently, and it’s that they want their home to feel like a retreat. They want it to feel warm. They want it to feel welcome, that when they host a party, they want people to linger. It’s like most of the time, if we just go into a general home where the bare minimum is there, you are there for the task and then you leave. In those homes where you start realizing the intricacy of the millwork, or whether it’s a lime wash finish on the walls or something like that, I mean, people stare and you talk about it, or it just gives you this cozy, warm feel where you want to sit in there and you want to finish your glass of red wine or whatever.

We’re very, very excited that these are going to be completely Our House Your Home designs and Our House Your Home builds, and then they’ll be up for sale for our clients. It’s not going to be a collaborative effort with the design with our clients, even though we absolutely love them, our clients. It’s going to be a really exciting opportunity to just show what we do, and maybe a couple of those light fixtures that might’ve been an aversion to somebody else, they’re going to get hung up, because they’re awesome and they do exactly what we want them to do. We’re really excited to be launching that, and I really believe that it’s going to be something that catches on down here, like this luxury spec home.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Well, DFW is growing rapidly and it’s full of cookie-cutter homes, neighborhoods that get built. I mean hundreds of homes that are getting built so fast, and it’s becoming very, very plain. It’s like, “What if we could help change some of that, going above just standard, right, with design?”

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Instead of just going home to go to sleep and to get fed, what if you go home to be inspired, to be filled back up? To really be like it almost pulls these brainstorming sessions out of you, like, “Oh, this makes me feel like I’m in Tuscany. This makes me feel like I’m in France. This makes me feel like I’m in the Southwest or I’m in Mexico.” We’re really excited. Each one of our luxury spec homes, I legit already have five Pinterest boards built out right now, and he’s like, “Squirrel, come back, come back.” Number one that we’re breaking ground on, I mean, they’re each going to have a very distinctive style.

I think that’s one thing that I really am so proud of our team on, is we do so many different styles. We definitely have a signature that comes through them. All of our projects, yes, they’re beautiful, but they all feel approachable. Even when clients show me these big, flashy pictures of lofts and skyscrapers and they’re like, “I want my home to look just like that,” I’m like, “Well, that’s super cool. We’ll give you the marble vent hood, but we’re going to do some elements that also bring it down where you and your guests don’t feel like you’re living in a museum. That’s just not who you hired.” It’s going to be really fun to see that throughline, all of those different projects.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Who wouldn’t love to just buy a custom home and not have to go through two or three years of …

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Thousands of decisions.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

I know. Friends, planning, delays, because it gets very emotional. You’re like, “Wow, we just got to buy a brand-new custom home.”

Carly Ward:

Probably some marriage counseling on the side, right?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Well, I think design is deep, it’s psychological, and then we obviously work with a lot of couples, and generally the couples are built very differently, just like Ryan and I are. It really is a privilege to lead those people through. When we hear that maybe they don’t see completely eye to eye on whether it’s finances or what the house looks like or anything in between, it is always fun to even just help them celebrate each other. Like, “Hey, he’s doing this because he really wants to take care of your family ultimately, and she’s doing this because she wants to make it worth your investment.” It’s finding those ways of how can we bring everybody back on the same page, and residential construction definitely gives us the opportunity to do that.

Carly Ward:

Well, thanks so much for sharing that exciting news with us. I feel lucky that we got the …

Charley Burtwistle:

The scoop.

Carly Ward:

… the tea on the podcast.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, yeah. That leads in my last question as well, is just where’s the best place for people to go to follow along with your journey?

Hannah Schwanbeck:

I would say Instagram.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Yeah, for sure.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

Instagram is ourhouseyourhome, all spelled out. Then we recently started doing more YouTube videos, and those are a little bit more interactive.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Little mini-webisodes on projects.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

They’re not made on my phone. They’re made by someone who actually knows how to operate a camera. The finished project.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Behind-the-scenes stuff is on YouTube, which is a lot of fun and a lot of dad jokes, which …

Charley Burtwistle:

Win/win.

Carly Ward:

That’s what brings the people in.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

… keeps it entertaining.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

At least for him, himself.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

I still make my kids laugh, so I still got it.

Hannah Schwanbeck:

I laugh.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s the only bar you need right there. Well, we’ll make sure to link both of those in the show notes so our listeners can go and check those out. Otherwise, we’re right at time here. I want to thank you guys again so much for joining and sharing your insights with us today. I got a ton out of this. I’m sure our listeners did as well too. Great seeing you guys again, and thank you so much.

Ryan Schwanbeck:

Thanks, Charley. Appreciate it. Thank you, Carly.

Carly Ward:

Thanks, Ryan.

Charley Burtwistle:

Scene. There we go. That was good. Well, we just heard from Ryan and Hannah from Our House Your Home, talking about, gosh, everything under the sun. That was such a good interview, one that I knew would go off the rails quickly in a good way, because I knew whatever content came out of their mouth would be better than any questions that we could have prewritten. Incredible business owners, incredible life partners. I learned a ton. What’d you think, Carly?

Carly Ward:

Oh, I got some takeaways for my own relationship, that’s for sure.

Charley Burtwistle:

For sure. What specifically stood out to you?

Carly Ward:

How intentional they are about the time they spend with each other. I know personally for me, it’s easy to come home and really get into the weeds about all the crummy stuff from my day or the past week. I love that they set the boundary with each other that, especially on their date nights, we’re only going to talk about our wins, we’re only going to talk about the things that we’re celebrating, because we have plenty of other spaces where we can get into the weeds about some of the more challenging things. I love how intentional they are with their time, and definitely something that I want to implement into my own personal life as well.

Charley Burtwistle:

For sure. I know I personally, I think like everyone does, have a habit of wanting to come back and complain about the day, and that’s just amplified when the other person actually knows what’s been going on in your day.

Carly Ward:

Totally.

Charley Burtwistle:

When I go home and talk to Audrey, she has no idea what I’m talking about. She’s like, “Oh, yeah, that stinks.” I would imagine it’d be even harder if it was someone at Buildertrend or at the same business that you’re working at. I think that intentionality is key, and it’s cool seeing them build this brand and this culture around their team and around their clients that all of that is applicable. It’s one constant stream, and clearly it’s working out really well for them.

Carly Ward:

Yeah. Incredible to hear that they started a showroom out of their house. I love the fact that every other week, their kids are coming down, “Oh, we got a new dining room. We got a new kitchen.”

Charley Burtwistle:

That sounds awesome. I would’ve loved that as a kid.

Carly Ward:

I mean, they’re going to be junior designers by 12.

Charley Burtwistle:

Exactly, exactly. No, Ryan and Hannah are awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing them again in person. It seems like we always run into each other at various conferences and events and things like that. Until next time, Ryan and Hannah.

As listeners, thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you could like, review and subscribe, that would be a huge favor. Then again, July … what’s the date? July 10th. We’ll be shifting towards our new monthly episodes, so make sure you are subscribed so you get notified right away when that comes out. Otherwise, until next time, I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Charley Burtwistle:

Peace.