Episode 87 - The Power of Combining Building and Design: Insights from Marcos Santa Ana
Episode #87 | Marcos Santa Ana | The Power of Combining Building and Design
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams catches up with Marcos Santa Ana from Alloi Architecture and Construction. They dive into some cool stuff about blending design and construction, regional building quirks, and the ups and downs of remodeling. Plus, they bond over their love for the great outdoors and the peace that mountain adventures bring.
Listen to the full episode:
About Marcos Santa Ana
Marcos Santa Ana was born into a family of artists, builders and craftspeople in the upstate community of Woodstock, New York. He studied architecture across the world and attributes the Scandinavian influence from studying in Aarhus, Denmark, Spanish modernism from his study in Barcelona, Spain and his American experimentalism from several influential professors at the University at Buffalo in the State of New York who earned their degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of design and Cornell University. Marcos’ culturally-diverse education influences projects at Alloi.
Early in his career he worked in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut with several design build companies. In 2005 he moved to Los Angeles to further develop his design build philosophy. In 2008 he earned his general contractor license and founded Alloi a year later. Then went on to earned his architecture license in the state of California in 2011. In 2018 Marcos earned his certification in high-performance design from the International Passive Haus institute in Germany to develop technical practices that enhance human comfort and reduce wasteful energy loss in the buildings he designs.
Marcos is also an experienced mountaineer who thrives on the mental and physical challenges of scaling high-altitude peaks. His passion for mountaineering fuels his desire to continue exploring and pushing his limits in pursuit of adventure and personal growth. A few noteworthy climbs include Cotopaxi in Ecuador, Middle Palisade in California and Mount Eolus in Colorado.
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SPEAKERS
Mark D. Williams, Marcos Santa Ana
Mark D. Williams 00:48
Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark William and today I am joined from the west coast with Marcos Santa Ana out of California. Welcome Marcos.
Marcos Santa Ana 00:55
Thanks so much for having me, Mark. Appreciate it.
Mark D. Williams 00:57
Yeah, excited to have you on so you're with alloy architecture and construction, and I'm really excited to hear about this. We've had a lot of builders on. We've had several architects on, but there's so few architects that are also in the construction world. I've had a few people that we've had on, dagen Koffler out of San Diego, who you might know a few construction companies that got into design, but I don't know anyone in the architecture world that also has a construction side, and so I'm really excited to have you on and your homes are incredible. We'll have all of your stuff taking the show notes. For those that aren't familiar with your design work. It's it's extremely impressive stuff. So why don't you give us a little brief intro on yourself, and we'll just dive in, probably mostly the history of your company, how you got started where you're at, and then probably a lot of the nature of my questions are going to be centered around balancing two totally separate companies, and why we don't see that more in in the construction world and an architecture world?
Marcos Santa Ana 01:52
Yeah, no problem. Yes. I'm an architect and a general contractor. I'm also a certified high performance building designer through a company or an institution outside of Germany called Passive House. And I got into the Passive House world a couple years back when the state of California changed their energy code, and I was I knew that this big change was happening, so I wanted to make sure that we could both address the energy code but also increase the indoor air quality and performance of buildings, just in general. But yeah, so I own la architecture and construction, but we're a team of 10 here in LA. We focus on high performance buildings, but also creating Zen, minimalist homes. So it's the balance between modernism but also performance.
Mark D. Williams 02:35
I love that you had mentioned earlier about the harmony of design and watching your videos on your website, even a half hour here, while I was logging on and getting ready for an interview, it was honestly I found myself relaxing while I was watching your videos. Of my shoulders relaxed and obviously the music, the cinematography is very intentional, clearly, but even the home that you're designing in, I think I have a huge respect for architecture because a skill that I don't have as a custom home builder. I love it when I get to partner with architects that as you're getting into the plan and as you're building it, sometimes even as the builder, be Well, I'm certainly good at reading plans and seeing what it's going to become once you build it and it's there, you're like, Oh, wow. That's what the intention was behind this, the shaft of light. And I'm just, I would love to, like, slice open an architect's brain and have, like, some MRI scan
Marcos Santa Ana 03:27
in theory that may make sense. But tell us
Mark D. Williams 03:29
a little bit about you come from a family of builders. Why don't we start there? Sounds like you started in 2009 tell us a little bit about that. Was a great time to start, by the way, why don't you tell us a little bit, tell us a little bit about those early years and the influence of your family and what inspired you, Ian to go down this path. Yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 03:45
it's a good place to start. So I'm from New York originally. I was born and raised in the Woodstock area, so upstate, about two hours north of New York City. So yeah, my father was a construction coordinator and also a carpenter for IBM. So I don't know if you've heard of that small company, but they were expanding several years back, and he was coordinating all the mid rise office towers in the area. So I was born into the construction world in that sense. And then his good friends were architects and other builders. And when our family was expanding, he reached out to his good friend from work. He was an architect. And so that was my first experience integrating with the architecture world as a kid. So we, we remodeled our house. I was a it was like a 1500 square foot house, and built it up to maybe 2000 so as a kid, I saw blueprints and the ones that were actually blue back there, back then, and ended up living down the street during the remodel. And my uncle, who was a general contractor, tough to get away from all these builders, but he was the builder, and we, I was actually living down the street, so during the construction process, as a kid, as a rambunctious little kid, I was playing in and out of the construction site, playing hide and go seek with all the carpenters. And they're like, Who is this? Kids? But that was where it started, which is a common story amongst builders.
Mark D. Williams 04:56
I think, yeah, for myself, it was a similar story in the fact that. Hello, my uncles, my dad, I guess I'm third generation, but ours is broke. Ours is broken because every single generation, it basically stopped and retired, and then there was, like, a couple years, and then the next generation is like, Oh, I guess I do want to do this ours instead of, like, the Olympics, instead of having all the baton passes, ours is more like, oh, you know what, hey, drop the baton. Start a new race, do it your own way, but same deal. It's inescapable. It's in your blood. You see it, and then once you start trying it, you're like, oh, wow, this is actually really rewarding. And it's such a visually I think we as we talk to a lot of schools and things like that, as I want to promote more trades and people getting into it is, like, one of the most common things that we hear from kids in why they get into it. And a lot of framers in particular, is after a week of work, you can look back down the street and see the work you've done. You're like, wow, we just added a second story. Like, visually, it's pretty powerful to see what has happened and transpired. So yeah, I
Marcos Santa Ana 05:55
mean, the framing stage, everyone loves the framing stage. Demo is super exciting and framing as well. But yeah, within the weeks you have some a big structural setup, which is pretty incredible.
Mark D. Williams 06:04
Now I really, what I think I probably like the most about it is just assembling the team. And as I've gotten older in my career, having these different talents and having somebody like you that kind of does it all. Let's talk a little bit about as you got into it. Did you obviously, I'm guessing, started with architecture first, and then decided walk us through the maturation of like when you decided, hey, I'm going to do architecture, but I'm also going to have a construction company at the same time. How did that? How did those early years work?
Marcos Santa Ana 06:31
Yeah, so pretty much at the age of 10, I realized I wanted to be an architect and and so actually, before architecture school, I work with my uncle, the general contractor. So I was sweeping floors, and I just kept moving, flying back and forth when I was starting. Then they gave me some tool bags, and I started learning finished carpentry. And so that was I was always kind of integrated into the construction, but always knew I wanted to be connected to the design as well. So went to school, summers and even winters breaks between college, I would also work in construction. And as you probably know, working in the cold climates can be tricky, working with ice and snow, and that kind of thing makes a little bit trickier to frame and have more concrete, for that matter. But yeah, so I was that was kind of why I wanted to kind of blend architecture and construction. And I felt like, with respect to design, you have to if you're just no no offense to just being architect, but in my opinion, if you're just the architect, you lose out on the precision and the control. So if you find the right builder, it's great, but if you don't, oftentimes you can have issues in the field. That was the reason why I wanted to have two companies or two departments. We actually just combined our companies things back and forth between having two separate entities versus having one entity as two departments. But yeah, it's more about executing. So as an architect, client comes to you and have has this big, big wish list, wish list, and wants to, you know, get moving so you build a really solid relationship with the client, depending on for six months, depending on the client, sometimes over a year in the project. And then the typical approach is you send the project out to bid, as you're aware, and you try to find a quality builder. Now, some architects have their go to builders, which is even better. But for us, we felt like once we built this relationship, we want to continue. Because when someone comes to the architect, they don't want a set of drawings, right? They want to actually live in a house, or live in a or use a building as an office. It's just a means to an end, right? But if you can deliver a set of drawings that are beautiful, that's great, but it needs to be set instructions for the builder, right? The in my opinion, the best architects are the ones who know how to build the best, and the best builders are the ones that understand design. So that's part of the integration. And obviously this process is not nothing new. It's been happening for centuries. Back in the day, you had to be a builder, a master builder, before you even pick up the pencil, right? So they both complement each other. Yeah, 100%
Mark D. Williams 09:07
I love what you said about the relationship and seeing it through. Obviously on the other side, being a builder, having a synergistic relationship with the interior design team. But it's a lot it's probably more akin to football in the sense that you have the offensive lineman, you have wide receivers. It's a huge General Manager. It's a huge operation. The idea that you could have so much of it controlled, sort of in your own house, one of my questions is, why don't more architects have construction branches like, why is that not the normal thing? To your point, a long, long time ago, I'm guessing, and maybe I'm wrong. Correct me, if I'm wrong, but it seemed like building probably preceded architecture. Would you agree with that
Marcos Santa Ana 09:46
statement? Yeah, I would think so, yeah. I'm
Mark D. Williams 09:48
thinking like, way back near all times, right? Yeah, you need a shelter. You know, nobody's designing these leaves and trees. You're like, I have an ax. There's a saber tooth tiger coming shelter. Yeah, let's go. Ian. This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. We use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally, as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, Ryan interview Peter and Ed from Pella Northland about their journey into the power ownership. It's interesting because I only know one builder who we actually went to school in Germany. Land shoot is the name of the company land shoot Germany, and so he named his company after that town where he was an architect. And so he's a builder and an architect here locally. But you know, there's pros and cons as a builder, because this was one of the questions I was going to ask you, is as a builder, if I keep all my design in house, are architects going to be threatened and say, I don't want to work with that builder? They might modify my designs in at least in Minnesota, where I am, we have something called the Parade of Homes. It's one of the oldest in the country, or it is the oldest in the country. And I would say the lion's share of clients come through the builders first, and then we essentially build the team from there, architects and designers in California. Do you think that architects are the main point of contact first? I
Marcos Santa Ana 11:26
think it depends on the project and the client. So some clients who, let's say, aren't super connected to the art world, they may go directly to a builder, but clients who understand the quality of design. Know that it makes sense to go to the architect first, and it all depended, because it's the blanket statement. But there, there are some builders who understand design, respect design, and conversely, there some architects that aren't so great at design, right? So you do have to do your homework, but we've been la Los Angeles, there's definitely a history of modernism. So there's a history of quality modern homes, and both on the architecture and the construction side. So I think just and being in big urban you're going to have a lot of people who are internationally trained and understand not just the benefit of having a high performance home, or home that's not leaky or less efficient, but also something
Mark D. Williams 12:23
that's beautiful. Early on in your career, before you had separate companies, and you mentioned you recently just merged both of them, did you ever have someone that would come with you come to you for design, but say, hey, we want the construction bid out. And conversely, did, did anyone ever say, hey, we want you to do the construction, but we don't want you to do the design. Did that ever happen? And how
Marcos Santa Ana 12:45
like that does happen? Yeah, it does happen on occasion, and sometimes, actually, we'll on purpose, build for other really good architects. So we have different tracks, like the three tracks you have the design build track, which is what most our clients are coming to us for, with respect to design and construction. Some projects are just what we call design only. We've actually worked in about 40 different states across the US. So we just finished a bar in upstate New York. We've worked done project in Hawaii, Chicago, Florida. So a lot of those projects are on the commercial side, but yeah, so we have worked all over the place,
Mark D. Williams 13:21
and I assume those would be design only. You're not okay,
Marcos Santa Ana 13:26
exactly. So no, go ahead. Some design build firms will do the build, even if they're not local. And then there's some build builders are really focused on will build anywhere, whether they have a project manager that they ship throughout the country, and they work with local GCS or whatnot. But for us, we felt like it's best to only build the projects that are within our local region, because we have a good relationship with all of our trade partners. That's the basics.
Mark D. Williams 13:54
How often, excuse me, do you guys, self perform any of your own work in terms of, I notice on your website there's paths for hiring architects, lead designers, but you also had something in there for master craftsmen or master trimmers. What on the construction side? Why don't we talk a little bit about how you allocate the people, on how you run the companies and what your role is. But let's start with the number of employees you have per company. I guess we'll start with construction. How like, how big is that? Let's call it the construction division, and how does it operate? Yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 14:25
so right now we're a team of 10 across both companies, or now it's one company, two departments, but it's pretty much split 5050, I would say. Now it's a little bit heavier on the construction side. So on our construction side, we have project managers, site supervisors, and then we have one carpenter. So most of the work we do with our trade partners, as far as the actual construction, but our team is more of a pickup framer if we need to do this and that, or small items, and that allows us to be more flexible, to grow as needed. And so that's worked well for us. I know a lot of other builders, or design builders, I think go with a lead carpenter app where there's a carpenter that's sort of leading the site, but it has tools, tool bags on and is doing a lot of the work themselves. Did you
Mark D. Williams 15:12
early on? Did you face like that was a deliberate choice that you wanted to and if so, why? Why was that the choice that you made?
Marcos Santa Ana 15:21
Yeah, so I think I do. I think it really comes down to your trade partners. So if you can trust your trade partners, and you have quality trade partners, specifically finished carpenters, then it's not that much of an issue. But I think it's also regional. I have friends in the Midwest, and they they tend to lead, have more in house labor. And I think I don't know if it's a labor pool or if it's just kind of the way they do it there, but in LA, I think there's enough trade partners that you can build relationship with that it's not an issue for us.
Mark D. Williams 15:52
I've seen a huge mix here locally, being an upper midwest, as I've asked this question, I think a lot of it has to do the personality of the owners, for myself, personally, and I think some debt, debt diversion. We're a small company of five, and most of our homes are probably between two to 5 million depending on what we're doing, not including our remodels, but and there's been times where I've thought I would like to have my own we have two trimmers that we use pretty much on every project for 15 years, and we tried to bring one of them on at one time, but honestly, they were making more money being a subcontractor than an employee. And so then you're like, Oh, I'd like to bring you out as employee, but I can't pay you for whatever the number was. Like, why would I do that? I'm like, I agree. We've given you too much work. But then, oddly enough, things really slowed down. We had no work. So I thought, oh, man, I'm really lucky that they weren't on staff. You think about overhead. And then that actually, that trimmer ended up going to work for a he was tired of the the ying and Ian and just the full and he's, I want a steady thing, and so he was right at the right time, but it just wasn't the right time for us, because we were also down at that time. And I talked to other builders, and they often you can make money on your employees. I've heard some companies say that they can make as much money on their employees salaries as they can. I don't know about the actual numbers. If you're paying, let's say here, let's say you're paying a trimmer 65 or $75 an hour. But you're paying them, his salary is 50. You're making $25 an hour. You know, whatever that local rate is, you can adjust your labor burden rate. There's plenty of builders that do that have very successful companies. There's a someone in my builder 20 group was remodeled up in Michigan. He's got like, 30 or 40 trimmers, and he kills it. He's just absolutely murdering the market. But I think up there, there's so few people, and he's got, like, all of he's got all of them. They're all him. And so it's he basically has, he's controlled the supply and demand to his benefit, which is, kudos to him. It's just interesting to talk to you. Obviously, in LA, you've got a huge city, so you've got massive amounts of people you can call on. Yeah, we
Marcos Santa Ana 17:45
don't have a shortage of people, that's for sure. Yeah, I have another friend in the Michigan area, and he's got a lot of in house labor, but a lot of his project, a lot of his projects are smaller scale, siding or windows and that kind of things. And that, of course, makes sense to just get it done in the house. Yeah?
Mark D. Williams 18:02
I agree. It is nice to be able to say it. I could start tomorrow or I could start next week. I think the part that's paralyzing for me, why I haven't like to do it. I like fewer projects, but bigger projects from a management flow, it's way easier. The idea that, like, I have to worry where my guys are going on Monday, that just seems like a ton of logistics to have to deal with every single week for a 40 year career?
Marcos Santa Ana 18:22
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This guy, he's got, like, a big board where he's got 100 projects going on. It's just so much management and animal.
Mark D. Williams 18:29
Well, let's talk a little bit about the architecture side. So you've got, so how many projects can you take on at a time from the design? Because I assume the design is the feeder for construction company. How do you like manage that flow?
Marcos Santa Ana 18:41
Yeah, most of the time, that's correct. We usually, I would say we probably do about 30 to 35 projects a year in design, because a lot of them, not all of them, are local. But yeah, on the design side, we kind of break it down into a studio manager who manages all the design side, and we have a concept designer and a detail designer, so we break the process down, nutritional AIA process. You have the schematic design and sign development starting to help. So we've simplified it a little bit so we just have concept and detail. And so when we break down, and that's how we offer it to our clients as well. So clients can hire us for the concept stage as one, one stage, let's say, one contract, and if they don't like us, they're free to go. But if the whole idea is that when we also blend it in with a feasibility study, and that's obviously not one of the benefits of design build approaches, every time we present a design, we're including a ballpark price on the construction. So for us, it doesn't make sense if we get our clients excited and they don't have the budget for it. So that's a very important thing for us, and it's it seems seem to work the more we focus on budgeting. Obviously, every client's different. Some clients budgets not an issue just getting them getting exactly what they
Mark D. Williams 19:57
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Marcos Santa Ana 21:18
Yeah, one of the advantages trust. So as you, as like I mentioned before, as you go through this long process of design, and depending on the project, the client ends up trusting you on not just the bill, not not just on the design, but also the build portion. And another benefit is during design, sometimes we'll actually even start, if the client allows to, we'll start doing some exploratory demolition. So we'll get our build team involved early, so it makes that transition very smooth. And like I mentioned before, detail, sorry, estimating is happening from day one in design, and so our build team is looking at the plans and looking at the design and going to the site, so they're very familiar with it. It's not just a cold project, okay? Permits, ready? Let's go out and see what we can do. It's a little bit different. That's some of the benefits. And we also, in house, sort of do interior design. We call it selections. Some projects will end up going all the way through to furniture and drapery and that kind of thing. So it's pretty helpful to have it all under one one house, once you build that trust,
Mark D. Williams 22:24
the and from a marketing standpoint, I'm always interested in marketing. How are most of your clients finding you
Marcos Santa Ana 22:30
most of our clients? So we've done the like paid per click kind of idea with we've tried Yelp and house and all these other options. And we also have, there's a local neighborhood magazine that we've been a part of for a while. They get distributed throughout the most of the single family home zones in LA, so we're listed as one of the vendors there. So those are some of the ways that we used to get most of our leads. But now we're starting more rely on Google searches and and the different like PR approaches. We just got an award for one of our projects and mid century modern projects. So that's got us a little bit more notoriety, I would say. But, yeah, it's definitely a super lot of good firms out here, a lot of good builders, architects. So there's also a lot of work, which is nice.
Mark D. Williams 23:16
That's, yeah, it seems because what is your I know like in Minneapolis, or there's a greater area here, I think we're, like, 100,000 units short of what we need of a housing shortage. Do you have an idea of how short of housing? Because la always hear about how expensive it is. You have any idea on numbers of like, how many you know dwellings you're short of? Because I know ADUs have exploded out there over the last couple decade for sure. Oh
Marcos Santa Ana 23:39
yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big initiative trying to build more housing. So the adu revolution has been going on for a while, and we had this state code called SB nine, which allowed you to take a single family house, single family lot, split in half, and then build two units on the front, two units on the back, and then you could sell the back lot. So that's even more expansion. And then just recently, they've removed the requirements for parking altogether, as long as you within a half mile public transit. All these things are great for adding housing. But the other thing is, stereotypically, everyone knows that LA, you're stuck in your car. If you remove house, if you move the parking requirement, people have to park somewhere, right? We LA has been building the infrastructure. We're still trying to get our train line to get to the airport, which is going to finish pretty soon. We've got the Olympics
Mark D. Williams 24:30
gonna fit, yeah, exactly. It's gonna finish some time for the Olympics, exactly.
Marcos Santa Ana 24:33
So LA is trying to get ready for the Olympics. So there's a lot of transitioning happening. But one of the strange things is, recently the SB nine law, they're thinking about pulling it back. So some people who are already in permitting or having some issues with that potentially So, but yeah, the actual numbers, I don't have off top my head, but
Mark D. Williams 24:51
there, yeah, no, that's fine, you know. And are you considered? I don't know. Yeah, I forget. Is it not all the ocean committees and things like that? That like being how close you are. I've had, I've interviewed a few others in California, and it just is your permitting cycles are insanity. To me here, I grumble if it takes me three weeks to get a permit. Now, if I if I have to do, obviously, variance work, or things that are not compliant with a code, or things that I could be a couple months, but that's about it. And we're kind of like, Oh man, that's a couple months like that. What a pain. But out there, at least in the Bay Area, it was like a year, easily. Is that true of La too?
Marcos Santa Ana 25:29
Yeah, I would say the Bay is a little bit more painful to get your permit. But here in LA, if you are within a mile of the ocean, you have to deal with the Coastal Commission, and then that could take 18 months, so just to get past coastal but even non coastal projects, if you have hillside projects, which we do a lot of hillside homes, that's also more challenging, because we have to do the soil samples and analyze the foundation, that kind of thing. But we had this one project where we were looking to a code or would allow a six foot wall, like a side wall or a landscape wall, and our client wanted to go to eight feet, and it took three years just to get through that approval. That's small. We had to go to the there's a local neighborhood we had to get through if there's so there's so many hyper local neighborhood committees and specific plans and that kind of thing. So it really depends. And of course, within la there are multiple jurisdictions, multiple cities within LA. I think Beverly Hills is its own city. Culver city's own cities. Ian Montes own city within the jurisdiction of LA County. So there's a lot of different departments to understand.
Mark D. Williams 26:33
And from a remodeling standpoint, I would imagine it's significantly easier
Marcos Santa Ana 26:38
from a remodeling standpoint, as far as permitting? Yes, yeah. So the kind of rule of thumb is, anytime you modify more than 50% of the house, it triggers pretty much full plan check, and you're going to have to upgrade the rest of the house with respect to fire code and structural so if you do keep the project with the remodel small, and then it can save some time. I was actually, there's been one year podcast about that you're talking about. I think you're mentioning three, if it's less, if it's more than three remodels. That was interesting. You're saying,
Mark D. Williams 27:12
Yeah, that's funny. That just came out. Actually, today you're, you're hot off the train for that. Okay, yeah, that's that one's hot. Yeah, we do. I would every year's a little bit different. This year we'll do more percentage wise, we'll probably be 70% remodel and 30% new homes. But in a normal year, we're probably 6040, the other way, but just depending on the timing of some of our homes are larger, so they take a couple of years. But then when you don't have, you don't have something in design, it's about six months to a year later, you have that drop off, right? And so when interest rates went up last year, we definitely had a drop off this year in new home construction for us personally, but I we do a lot of stuff on old homes. I live in a 1919 home in Minneapolis, and I do the older homes. They're fun, but and I've made all these mistakes on my own home. And so my rule of thumb, at least, for what I do, is, if you're doing more than three editions or three remodels, depending on how you COVID, it's like, what if you can't tell me what you're saving. That's not a remodel, that's a tear down, yeah, and such. It was a painful one, because I did it on my own home. I had two little kids. We had one on the way, and I was just like, of course, you keep adding and adding and adding and before you know, and you're down the road, I'm gonna do this. And then it's only in hindsight you look back, you're like, you know, what if I just tore that thing down and built new it would have just been a way simpler process. But I'm not saying, I'm not saying don't remodel, because I'm all the last three homes I've done are remodels, and they're beautiful. People love them, but sometimes it's, maybe it could be a part of my own personality where it's, I wish I did the thing that I didn't do. And yeah, when we talk
Marcos Santa Ana 28:38
to our clients, we say, this is the best approach. And then if we're trying, we're like, let's do the complete opposite. So, Oh, totally,
Mark D. Williams 28:44
100% we I try to do whatever I can to get my clients out of the home if we're going to do a remodel. And it's the sheet rock dust and the hours, and a lot of them are young families, and it's just they have young kids and it's disruptive and things like that, and but I'm a hypocrite. We did our last remodel at the height of now, COVID had just started. We had, we were, my wife was eight months pregnant, and we were middle of the remodel, and we went, in fact, I remember we she didn't deliver in the house, but we rented a VRBO for three months while we had the baby, while we were doing the painting phase of our house. Because I'm like, we're not going to be in our house while it's painting that's not
Marcos Santa Ana 29:22
two by fours. And figure this exactly. I'll just figure it
Mark D. Williams 29:24
out. And so I use that all the time to my clients. I'm like, trust me, we have done the worst thing. Do not do it. And another builder I had on, he said his go to line is if they said, Can I live in the house? And they're like, how much do you like sawdust? And like, Excuse me, and like, do you like sawdust on your dishes and in your glasses when you drink water. And I just thought that was a really good visual representation of there's going to be dust everywhere. And if you want that's fine, it's the expectation, yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 29:49
oh yeah. So much easier. Because no matter how durable your clients may think they are, if you have noise constantly for six months, get gets to you after a while, especially, we try. Network there, and, oh yeah, right. It's tough to keep all the let's talk a
Mark D. Williams 30:04
little bit more about design, but you had mentioned this passive home certification. Tell us a little bit more about that. I'm aware of what a passive home is, but obviously there's different gradients. I assume, even like your clients, I would imagine the clients on the West Coast are probably with energy conservation, the cost of gas. Probably people are. It's probably more of a hot button for them than it is here for and I'll just maybe give you some from my point of view, is that I have Brian, I'm good friends with a solar company here, Greenway solar. Shout out to them and but it is a struggle. I include a solar presentation with every home now, and I have yet to have a single client say, Yeah, let's do it, unless it actually makes sense financially. Where they see this thing paying itself off on a short order, they're like, Man, I'd rather spend my money on cabinets or whatever. Same with geothermal and some of these other things. What do you see on the West Coast? How much of it do you think is west coast? And how much of it do you think is higher design that you're doing, where you're leading it, and people are coming to you because you're passive home certified for design?
Marcos Santa Ana 31:02
Yeah, yeah. Some would say that building or designing in your neighborhood makes more sense to go passive. And so, because of the cold climates and the the efficiency that comes with that, but even in LA, where you have and of course, the climate's changed. Actually, I've been in LA for about 20 years, we used to have no humidity. Used to have no no mosquitoes. Now it's the opposite. I don't want to complain too much about LA, but, yeah, so, but
Mark D. Williams 31:28
you sound like Minnesota. Wait, high humidity mosquitoes. That sounds like Minnesota summer, right there. Yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 31:32
exactly. But, but yeah. So the benefits of passive house and high performance homes are effective even in climates like LA, but we do have some clients that come to us specifically for passive house or high performance. And like I mentioned, there are different levels. And so you don't have to go full Passive House, then you don't have to go full certification. Every project, we try to bring in some increased level of performance, whether it's like a self adhered air membrane, or if it's even if we don't go all passive house windows, we just add a few Passive House windows in certain areas, or sometimes we'll increase the glazing performance just on the southwest facades, where we get most of the heat gain. So there are ways to do it incrementally so it doesn't blow your budget in that in that sense, because you're right. A lot of clients, they once it's behind the drywall. They don't, they don't really care as much, right? Psychologically, but it obviously changes the indoor climate and also health. One of our clients, his son, is he's got asthma, and so one of the aspects of we've we're going to introduce the ERV, or separate ventilation system for the house. So LA, often times now, especially now has fires every summer, and so the particulates and the smoke and that kind of thing, if you do have a separate ventilation system, oftentimes they have hospital grade filters, which is nice, so you can close your doors and windows and have filtered fresh air. That's a really big benefit. But just psychologically, people think, Oh, I'm in LA, it's beautiful. I leave my windows open all the time. And why would I need to have this fancy ventilation system? But it makes sense, you have all set noise in urban environments where you want to have a peaceful night rest, want to keep your you're gonna have to keep your window shut sometimes. So there's certain critical aspects that, once you start thinking about, it makes a lot of sense. But every every aspect of high performance is going to increase the budget, right? Because if you could have a just have a return attached to your HVAC system, standard 80% furnace, right? Is the least expensive. And oftentimes in in homes, you'll you only see one return in the hallway, for example, and we want to provide at the very least the return in each bedroom, if not just the primary suite. Yeah? So it's definitely a discussion that we have with our clients and try to figure out, what are they willing to spend the extra to get that benefit for their family? Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 33:55
that's interesting. I think, you know, the sound is an interesting one, right? Because if you're going to go triple pain for energy, but also triple pain would be amazing for sound, I would imagine. And you know, we do. We're doing a lot of external insulation here in Minnesota, just from the cold point of view. But again, external insulation is going to kill a lot of sound. So it's interesting how maybe, maybe on the energy bill, just because our delta is going to be a lot higher, the coldest months in January, you'll hit minus 10, minus 20, something like that. And let's say you're heating your house till 75 or whatever. And that's a pretty big delta, where I imagine whatever your average temp Delta in was probably only a 20 to 30 degree delta. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
Marcos Santa Ana 34:33
we probably 4045, or so. Okay, yeah, so
Mark D. Williams 34:37
you got to warm it up to 35 degrees, something like that, where we've got to do a 75 to 80 degree delta. So much more sense. I agree. And there and we have HRVs and ERVs are pretty much, I think, code. Now I don't think I've built the home in the last 15 years without one Now, granted, we are at the higher level, so we were doing it, I think, before it was code. But now our homes are so tight we have to for just fresh air ventilation. One thing that I. Need to spend a little bit more time understanding is we spend. We talk a lot about VOCs and your paints, and you're talking about the products that we buy. Just in general, I think people, people are more aware of what they're putting in their body. And being a athlete myself and someone who just loves being healthy, I'm definitely more aware of what I eat. What's interesting to me is I have not spent very much time thinking about what I breathe, and it's interesting as some as someone who's in the home building space, it's something I think I need to spend more time educating my clients, and even if they're not aware of it. And I know obviously if you have an ERV or HRV, it's circulating air, and it is obviously cleaner, but I know the EPA, and there's some indoor air quality tests and certifications that you can get and educate it's something that I'm it's kind of on my 25 list to set myself apart from other builders here locally, but I know that Minnesota at a kid compared to California. I know California does have some harder energy rules, but Minnesota is one of the leaders I know at scale, like Lennar and Pulte and the big builders, nobody builds more efficient homes at scale than they do in Minnesota. And part of it is part of its our climate, right? Our climate is, I think, climate zone six and climate zone seven. So we have to, but a lot of the technology, it's no wonder that the three biggest window manufacturers are in Minnesota, right? You've got, you've got Pella, that, which is across the border in Pella, Iowa, you've got Anderson windows, and you've got Marvin, those are some huge window companies all within probably four or 500 miles of each other, which is sort of interesting to
Marcos Santa Ana 36:27
me. Yeah, as you say, for us in LA, the focus for you guys, the focus, I would say for sure, it's more insulation. Air tightness is helpful, but for you, insulation for us, it's almost the opposite. For us, it's all about air tightness and less about the insulation. It's based off our climate, but so so I know now a lot of the Passive House windows are there. The cost upgrade to go from dual pane to triple pane is getting smaller, but tech can be only really need a dual pane window in LA as long as the air ceiling is as long as it's very airtight. So each climate zone is going to have a different characteristic of passive house.
Mark D. Williams 37:09
This episode is brought to you by Helmuth and Johnson, a top Minnesota law firm representing clients ranging from individuals to emerging startups and multinational fortune 500 companies focusing on transactional law, litigation and appeals. Helmuth and Johnson attorneys are leaders in their field. David Helmuth and Chad Johnson joined forces 30 years ago in 1994 with the goal of creating a premier law firm capable of handling complex and challenging cases efficiently and effectively. Today, Helmuth and Johnson rank among the top 15 largest law firms in Minnesota, with more than 70 Twin City lawyers serving clients in more than 30 legal practice areas, they offer a full suite of legal services to clients without sacrificing their original commitment to providing responsible and affordable legal representation. To learn more, head to our website, the curious builder, podcast.com, or to their website@www.hj law firm.com, you had mentioned before and on the website a little bit you had mentioned you've got this interesting aspect of Zen minimalism. Your team was from. It ranges from Scandinavia to Italy to Asia to Africa. I don't know if they built there, or if that's where they're from, or some of their education, but you have a very diverse team, which I think would be really cool for the contemporary plus, I feel like LA is just this melting pot of nationalities from all over the world, so it has such a cool vibe to it. Tell us a little bit about how that affects your design. You had mentioned earlier, before we came on air, that maybe Feng Shui and zen like sometimes some of these design principles might fight each other a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit more about
Marcos Santa Ana 38:36
that? Yeah, some of our team members have lived in other countries, but also worked with other countries. Like our general manager, he's worked in Dubai and built large buildings in Dubai, and yeah, so we do have a kind of interesting mix in people, which I really enjoy, because it brings brings out unique international characteristics. But with respect to Zen and Zen modernism and Feng Shui, every project we whether we tell our clients or not, we are always integrating feng shui into the projects. And some of our clients specifically come to us for Feng Shui and but the idea, so the idea with Feng Shui is you're trying to hit creating a sense of peace in the home, but also peace, privacy and safety. Those are some of the focuses of Feng Shui, then you have so with Feng Shui, you can go full on practical or full on spiritual. So we're in the middle, because you can go full if you go to the side, that's very spiritual, can get very, let's say, almost like legalistic. So looking at a floor plan, and if you have a negative cut out, let's say, in the southeast, it could affect a certain family member. So like that type of stuff is very ethereal, I would say. But there's other logical elements, like, when you enter into a foyer, you want to have a lower ceiling and a more cozy area before you proceed into other parts of the home. Um. And then function has the Qi, which is energy flow. So some people would say that's fairy tale, but a lot of it actually makes a lot of sense. Where you want to capture that energy, you don't want it to just rush out to, like the shotgun house, where, like, you open the front door and then you see the backyard. Sometimes that's not the best approach. You want to actually create a sense of sequence and surprise as you walk through the house, or we even think of it from the start of the road or the sidewalk. When you enter from the sidewalk, you also do landscape design, I say Landscape Architecture in Denmark, so we try to start that procession and experience from the right edge of the property. But issue with respect to blending the two, the high performance and the Zen. Minimalism is at Georgia's high quality design is the passing house world or the high performance world. It's focused on air tightness and energy so if you turn your eyes away from design and just focus on energy efficiency, it can really provide an issue for just the quality of the home and the experience, even though it may be a nice, tight box, you may be losing out on connected to nature and that kind of thing. Some of our kind of like generic design principles, one of them is to optimize or consolidate openings. So like the typical house you'll see, is punctuated with little windows throughout. And so you have solid wall window, solid wall window, we tend to, we can, if it works for the design, consolidate the opening into one large opening. For a performance perspective, it makes sense, because you have less perimeter, and the perimeter is where you have the leakage. But also artistically, it allows us to have an interesting composition of solid and void kind of thing. So it's always a balance between the design side the efficiency.
Mark D. Williams 41:52
It's funny because as you're describing it, I'm thinking of like a journey, like I'm not educated in the a lot of the terms that you're describing. I certainly couldn't design it. I can relate to it as a human. So it's interesting. Like, what you're talking about. We did a design a couple years ago, and the architect was using the comments of, we want this to be that you mentioned the word journey or an experience. And I've never heard the term shotgun house before, which makes actually, makes sense, actually. But walking through the house and like, you get these little pieces of discovery and or things that mirror each other, and it's, oh, this is unique and delightful. And I think that is what I personally as a someone who loves artistry and loves the creativity in home building, I can really appreciate the thought that goes into a very well done home. And I personally like a smaller home that is more thoughtful. And I've spoken about this too, a little bit like shoes. Is Shaquille O'Neal has like, a size 22 shoe, right? My shoe is like 10 and a half, like, I would be very uncomfortable in his shoes, because I'd just be swimming in him, but he he couldn't even fit his two big toes in mine. And the point is, you need to design the home around the family and around the lifestyle, and for it to be the best fit, it really needs to be a custom fit, which is obviously why we do custom homes. But what we had a Zach Kelly on, he's actually in finances, but he was interesting. He said home builders often forget that we're not building for just one client, that home is going to be there for over a century, most likely. And the comment that I think we looked it up while we were on our podcast, it was like the average year that someone spends in their home is 12 years, which actually was higher than I would have thought. I would have thought in the US, it would have been seven. And anyway, the point, the point is that there's going to be four families in that home during its duration. And as a as builders out there, we can take a lot of pride, and as designers too, we can take a lot of pride that that what you're building is not just for the family that is going to live in it, that is designing it for you. It's going to transcend that and into generations beyond. And one of the things that I often tell my clients is that you don't want to have your a full full of team of yes men and women like you. Want people that are going to challenge you, that are going to bring up ideas and so that not only consider resale, but also not that you shouldn't build the home that you want you're paying for it. But someone be mindful of, hey, if you a lot of our clients want to sell their homes and move their transitional right, they're going to live in the home for five, six years. I need to have a pulse in the market. What do those people want? What are they looking for? And it used to be that if you didn't have a tub in the master suite or owner suite, like you were have, you were going to have a problem. Now that's that fads out. A lot of people just do big showers, because a lot of people don't take don't bathe anymore. And so anyway, it's just interesting, like, we're just reflecting what our clients are telling us and what we see in the marketplace, and then you try to that informs your design. Yeah, exactly.
Marcos Santa Ana 44:32
That's so true. Yeah? Similar. We try to encourage at least one tub in the house, but usually it's not in the primary suite. Yeah? Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 44:40
for sure. With little kids, it's nice to have a tub more grandkids if you're if you're past that age, yeah, exactly as we wind down, one of the things, just because I knew we were going to have some fun talking about this, on the personal note, you have a very outdoor, centered lifestyle, and one that I really would love to talk to a little bit about it, why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the things that you're into? That you get your inspiration from for design. And let's talk a little bit about how you basically recharge so that you can show up at work. Yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 45:08
I grew up in upstate New York in the Catskill Mountains. I was familiar with those mountains that did a lot of hiking out there, but since being in LA, I was really got interested in these Eastern Sierras, which is about about a five hour drive from LA. But up there you can get a lot of beautiful, rugged, 14,000 foot peaks.
Mark D. Williams 45:27
So is that around Tahoe, or where is that specifically? It's just,
Marcos Santa Ana 45:30
yeah, just Western Tahoe. So it's up 395 so it's about on the way to to like Sacramento, or between San Francisco and LA, essentially. But, but, yeah, I was a rock climber. In my day, a mountaineer. I hiked several volcanos, and the biggest being in Ecuador, almost a 20,000 foot pack volcano, which is pretty intense. You know, crampons, ice, ax. Couple buddies and I, we made an attempt to Mount Hood a couple years back up in Oregon. But, yeah, it's definitely, uh, it's definitely been a fun experience. And with the rock climbing, it used to be because, you know, we get so connected with our work, and we can get stressed out of it. So rock climbing is, let's say, a pastime where if you're not focusing, you're gonna really have some big problems. So it's if you don't tie the rope correctly, it's gonna be a short, short experience. So what I loved about rock climbing, is it? You have to be 100% focused. It's one of the ways to de stress and hit this other Zen state. You have the Zen state and design the Zen state of exercise.
Mark D. Williams 46:31
You have to be, you have to be in the moment. My sister was basically world class rock climber. She's climbed you suddenly and the nose and all that stuff, and she's still climbs all the time. Now she's got kids, so she does mostly ice climbing. She lives on Colorado now, but I like mountaineering personally more than I like rock climbing. I need a destination. I need a place to go rock climbing. I'm like, ego up, you go down. I just for me. It just didn't do it for me. But I was just watching a Instagram clip of Alex Honnold talking about rock climbing or an interview, and he was talking about how fear, how most people now, we live in a generation where we don't experience fear, not fear from the standpoint of anxiety, and we're afraid of the future and that kind of fear, but like, literal fear. If I fall, I could die. If I'm not, if I'm not tying this rope light, I could plummet to my death. Or I was out mountain biking recently with some buddies, and it was like, I'm more of a trail runner, so I think a lot, and I listen to a lot of podcasts, because you're running, and usually when you're running, unless you're killing jornett, like, on some spine and mount Blanc, you're not really worried about death, usually while you're running and but mountain biking, I often think about, like, showing up with no teeth the next day, because if I'm not really my your whole world lives like 10 feet ahead of you, and you're like, you're in the Moment. You're like, you're like, right here, and because, if you're not, it's not like you're looking around, checking out the woods, like people my my parents or my wife will say, Oh, was it a beautiful ride? I'm like, I have no idea. I'm looking at a dirt trail. Yeah. But to your point, it's that free flow state, and it's, I think, alpine skiing. I love skiing. There's a part of that really feels like you're fast. You're one of the guys that I bike with a lot. He had just said, I asked him, like, what do you think humans fascination with speed is? And I loved his answer. His answer is that the faster you go, the closer you are to the veil of death. And I thought that was a really cool response, because his point like, I was just telling him like we rode bike, and there's something about accelerating at 3040, miles an hour through a turn or down a hill, and you don't get that kind of sense of Rush running. Or I don't, because I'm not that fast. And maybe a low Nile or low Nile, Lyle Noah gets that kind of speed at 100 meters, but I certainly don't get it. And anyway, the point was, is it was kind of cool. Your body realizes that one little false turn, or one little blowing tire or something animal or whatever, like you're gonna feel some serious amount of pain. And so anyway, going back to being in the moment, I found that extremely rejuvenating to show up to work, to build to whatever. So anyway, oh yeah, exactly.
Marcos Santa Ana 48:55
One of my mottos was, you're not truly living unless you're almost dying. That's a little extreme, but that's part of the fun. Is living on the edge a little bit. I mean, you can touch your humanity, yeah, and you're
Mark D. Williams 49:06
mitigating risk, right? It's not like I think sometimes, if people haven't done some of these things, they think, oh, that's extreme. It can be. But I think you can be very safe if you're if anyone's rock climbed, obviously, if you're top roping, honestly, the worst that's going to happen unless someone does something really dumb, which obviously could happen, but you're gonna lose some teeth, you're gonna break a bone in the grand scheme of life. Like, that's not terrible, but the but you feel, I mean, you're up on a wall, you're sweating, like, all of a sudden, instantly, you are, your body's okay. This fight or flight thing is kicking in, and it's pretty intense. And so I do think that things like that help us show up differently at work, yeah, oh, yeah,
Marcos Santa Ana 49:41
yeah. And then with the because you're mentioning your skier. So the similar experience when I've done a lot of winter mountain here. So in the winter, when you're on a mountain and it's one foot of snow or so, just the snow and sands that they are acoustically attenuating, they make it very quiet. And the. Piece, like the piece that you can find in the mountains, especially with snow, which is incredible. So there's, there's definitely something special about connecting with nature. Mountains.
Mark D. Williams 50:07
I was I went out. I did my actually, well, by the time this comes out, it'll be a month ago, but as of we're recording this four days ago, I did my first 50 mile trail race, and I went out. Thank you. I went out for my training run to see my sister. She was actually doing a detail out near Sacramento. So we went, I went up to toddle for three days, and we had a cabin in Montana for 20 years. And so I have a lot of really nostalgic memories of being in the mountains. You know, I know how my full family's in Minnesota, so I know why I'm here, but it's I and I love water, which we have lots of it, but I really feel a calling to mountains. And I think you just articulated, I think it's that silence. It's that quiet. It's that desolation. You drop over the back of a mountain, and you could be in the middle of the Andes, because then the Andes are pretty freaking huge mountains, by the way, that if you're whatever mountain you were looking at down in that volcano, yeah, in Ecuador actually, you know what? I think it's funny that was that we actually researched doing that. We ended up doing a different one. We didn't go that high, but what would you what's the name of that one? That Cotopaxi?
Marcos Santa Ana 51:03
Oh, yeah. So Chimborazo, which is the tallest we could epoxy, second height, tallest, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 51:09
which I'm sure now Cotopaxi has become so popular with their branding and their stuff. So it's like, Patagonia, right? So you're down there, you're like, Okay, this makes a lot more sense when you're here in person. You had mentioned that you do some trail running now, do you still trail run? Yeah, yeah, I
Marcos Santa Ana 51:23
still try to run. Yep. I've done, I've done one half iron, iron man, yep. I've done one marathon. But it was in the mountains. It was actually a as an island off the coast of LA called Catalina. Oh, it has a marathon out there. So, yeah, I wasn't a lot of martial arts, so I don't have much cartilage left. So running is not necessarily the greatest thing for any cartilage, but like to stay busy.
Mark D. Williams 51:46
What kind of martial arts were you into? I've
Marcos Santa Ana 51:48
done a bunch Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kung Fu, Jeet Kudo, which is Bruce Lee's martial art. I've done Filipino stick fighting, which is called Modern, our nice, just generic grappling, which is kind of like wrestling. So done a bunch was
Mark D. Williams 52:02
that when you were younger, did you still practice it now? Did you compete? Or do you what was the yes,
Marcos Santa Ana 52:07
yeah, I competed. It was through college, a little after college as well. Yeah, I competed in, oh, I've also done, I've done so many different I've done Japanese cushion, which is a full contact karate. I competed when I was, I think it was when I was like 33 or so, which was a little bit late to be doing full contact karate, but I entered a few jujitsu tournaments back in the east coast. So yeah, I just love the martial arts, the Carters. And why I like the Japanese culture, because the jiu jitsu started in Japan, but it was transferred to Brazil, and now it's more of a Brazilian International known as Brazilian martial art, but interesting.
Mark D. Williams 52:43
Yeah, dude, that's
Marcos Santa Ana 52:43
pretty fun.
Mark D. Williams 52:44
I take it you. You like to travel. Do you travel quite a bit for even for work? It sounds like you do some designs for sure around the country. But have you done any international designs that you get to the privilege of basically going abroad and sort of mixing business with some pleasure?
Marcos Santa Ana 52:58
Yeah, the international projects would be Canada, so not so far outside of the US, but yeah, most of our projects are within the US, nationwide. And then, of course, Hawaii is also us, but yeah, but yeah. Most my travel internationally wasn't necessarily for work, it was more for school. So I studied in Denmark, Aarhus, Denmark, which is the second largest city in Denmark, next to Copenhagen. I also studied in Barcelona, Spain, so I did a lot of traveling throughout Europe and experiencing all the amazing, both historical and contemporary buildings out there.
Mark D. Williams 53:34
Interesting. Oh, that's fascinating. Where my wife and I are coming up on year 11, and we had discussed going to Japan for our tenure. So we obviously missed that. I am aware of how numbers work, I think. And it's still on. It's one of my favorite designers. Just spent the summer over there with her sister, and she kept posting all these pictures. I'm like, Oh man, I really want to go to Japan. And it's funny, because being Scandinavian descent, it's like, I love Iceland, Norway. We're in Copenhagen, actually, for our honeymoon a little bit. And I love the style over there. Actually, my favorite joke about Copenhagen is they have the chair museum there, like the Ames chair and these famous it's and I remember walking all day in this chair Museum, and it was a concrete floor and there was nowhere to sit. I'm like, this is a joke. How can you have the world's best chair Museum and there's nowhere to sit because you can't sit on all these world class pieces of art. And I was like, could nobody, like, have a little metal bench, anything? My feet were killing me. And I've often joked about that, that it's like being in a museum. You can see it, but you can't touch us. I just want to sit down right now.
Marcos Santa Ana 54:34
Yeah, exactly. So where are you from? Originally?
Mark D. Williams 54:38
Just, I'm a North European mutt. I'm Scandinavian, Swiss, Norwegian. So not directly. We've been here for, I don't know, four or five, six generations, but I think my grandma's half a quarter Swiss, and my mom is all scan Norwegian and Swedish or so.
Marcos Santa Ana 54:51
Anyway, okay, all right. But anyway, I
Mark D. Williams 54:53
appreciate very much you coming on the podcast, sharing your story, talking a little bit more, and now if I'm in LA, I'm gonna have to look you up, because I. Want to go for you have to show me up in the mountains. I was actually surprised, because I've only been to LA once. My wife has some family out there. We were there two years ago for a wedding. But how close the mountains are there? It's also there for the contractor coalition down to Huntington Beach. And you look back over there, and it was actually the two years ago when you had the crazy snow, right? They were shutting down Tahoe every week because it was like there's too much snow to even ski, and cars are just being buried. I'm just amazed at the amount of snowfall you get that close to the ocean. But
Marcos Santa Ana 55:27
that's what's great about LA Ian, 1520 minutes here in the mountains. So I like
Mark D. Williams 55:31
that. I couldn't handle the traffic, but, you know, maybe get me a helicopter so I can just get up there quick.
Marcos Santa Ana 55:35
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's fine. I think it's that's in the works, because the traffic's so bad.
Mark D. Williams 55:39
Oh man, I do want to actually, it's funny. We've talked about coming out for the Olympics. In fact, I think we'll make it happen. And anyway, sure we'll have everything in the show notes. And appreciate your time coming on. And if anyone's interested, they can reach out to you. Do you prefer LinkedIn, the website, to Instagram? What's the best way to
Marcos Santa Ana 55:56
reach out to you? Either way, message us through instagram.us.
Mark D. Williams 56:00
All right, that sounds great. Appreciate your time. Marcos,
Marcos Santa Ana 56:02
thanks Mark, thanks
Mark D. Williams 56:04
for listening to the cures builder podcast. If you like what you listen to, please give us a five star rating and write us a review. It really means a lot. It's a great way for us to just understand what you like about the podcast and what we can keep doing. So like and review and please share with your friends and family. Find out more at curious builder podcast.com, you.
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