 This is Starbastore Front. This month is Women's History Month and we've partnered with Cat Footwear to bring you stories from female entrepreneurs in the construction industry. This is the third episode of our four-part series. The goal is to highlight some of the female movers and shakers in an industry where they make up only around 11% of the workforce. Our guest today is Joan Barton, founder of Dirty Girl Construction. In another life, Joan was a music composer crafting everything from orchestral symphonies to commercial jingles. But when a friend asked her to oversee the construction of his house, she said yes and figured everything out as she went. The ability to create and build a house from the ground up spoke to her in such a way that she switched careers and went into contracting full-time, eventually founding her company in 2008. Joan is now at a point where she can look back at her long career and impart the wisdom of someone who's been around the block a time or two. Hell, at this point she's basically built the block. To listen in, we cover everything from how being a waitress helped her to market her company, how the construction industry enabled her to avoid selling out, and why she considers her plumber to be an artist. Now onto the episode. Welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Joan from Dirty Girl Construction. First of all, why the name? I love the name. I mean, honestly, okay. Really good marketing. Yeah, it is. That was sort of the first point. But I wanted to change the concept of what those words mean when they go together. I'm really trying to change the way we perceive women in construction and women in the world. I think it empowers us to be thought of as women in construction as opposed to the maid coming over to be the dirty girl. It's like that thing where they said, you fight like a girl, and somehow it used to be a negative thing and now it's a powerful thing. Same idea. I love it. This is also like, you don't necessarily recognize it's construction. When I first went through your website, I was like, what could this be? Is this a group? Is this a conference? Right? I wasn't sure, but it's literally the name of your company, which I find so cool. How did you first get into construction? Totally by accident. I was at a stoplight and a friend. I'm like, where is this guy? I was literally at a stoplight, Washington and Lincoln. In Concord, Massachusetts? No, no. Out here in LA. I was over in Marina Del Rey. My friend Dave pulled up next to me in his vehicle and I was in my convertible, and I was, yeah, whatever. I was 30-something and top-down, didn't have the skin cancer yet, and just sunning myself and he said, hey, how are you doing? We haven't seen each other in forever. I'm waving like everyone can see me right now. I said, oh, I'm good. What are you up to? We're chatting. Then he said, you know how to build a house, right? To which I said, yes, because that's who I am. I just say, yes, not knowing that the next question was going to be, oh, I'm going on vacation. Could you take care of my build while I'm gone for three weeks? Which was the next question. I said, yes. That's how that happened. This all happened at a light? At a stoplight. What inspired him to think of you for this? No idea. I have a lot of friends that I would never ask that question to. No idea. Then you're starting to manage this project. I managed the project. Luckily, they were at finish. The thing was, it was a remodel addition. They were pretty much setting tile, putting in countertops. Could you read plans? No. No, God, no. Nothing. I've never been a job site in my life just fully lied. That's the only word for it. But I thought it would be fun. I'd gone to art school for many, many years. I understood project management and how to put things together because of what I was doing in the music business, but no, I didn't know anything. I thought, well, how hard could this really be? Then I gave it to you. I really love it. I really love it. I went. I did a great job because he hired me after that, but I didn't know what I was talking about. I just asked a ton of questions. Somebody would say, well, what kind of edge do we want on the countertop? I'd say, what are the choices? Then they would throw out words that I'd never heard and I would say, well, let me think about that. I probably should talk to Dave. I'll get back to you tomorrow. I would run over to the library in Venice because there was no Google. I would look up words like Bevel and OG and Dupont to figure out what they were and look at it. Then I would come back the next day without talking to Dave because I didn't want Dave to know that I didn't know. I would make a decision and that's how that rolled out. That's amazing. Then he hires you again. He hired me actually to run his office, which turned into me learning how to bid and do spreadsheets and understand the monetary side of it, which to me is just as important as understanding how to build a house if you want to run the business. I did that and then I started loading trucks and then I was site supering and I was basically running his projects because we had so many running during the day. That's how I learned. He's a developer? Is that? He's a GC. Okay. Single family residence. Okay. Then I guess I was doing so much that he stopped looking for work and started surfing. I don't know. Wow. He's had to let us all go. Which happens, right? Yeah, totally. You just take a break. I went and did my thing. My first thing was a ground up house. Then you start marketing yourself. That's when you start Dirty Girl Construction. I didn't start Dirty Girl for another two years, I think. Looking back on it now, from everything that you know in your position now, how would you grade how you did on that first project? Interestingly enough, I think if it was a scale of one to ten, I'm going to give myself an eight. Nice. I'm going to give myself an eight. I had to put an elevator in to that house. Oh, that's super hard. Super hard, right? Yeah. Like, Natalia won't do that. I won't do it. She does commercial products a lot of times. It's really hard. It's super hard, yeah. So, where I failed was controlling the architect because there's some semblance of that that has to happen, or maybe I should say integrating with the architect. My desires and my skill set and my knowledge of what had to happen and making that relationship amicable all the way through. So I failed doing that the entire time because I'm a pretty strong personality. So I really had to learn how to play well with others. And then the other thing was probably not really understanding the time management. So back then you could build a house in seven months that now takes 21 because everything's different. It took me closer to 11 months to build that house. So I was not really understanding what was going to happen schedule-wise. But there were methane mats. There was an elevator. There was a lot of things I had never seen before. And I was pretty much on my own trying to figure out how to build a house from the ground up. So, yeah, but it taught me so much that I do now. So what it taught me was really the design of a home. It wasn't just reading the plans. It was understanding how to put something together that wasn't on the paper. Because we didn't have... There was no standard plan for methane back then. God, I sound so old. No, no, no. Back in the day. Just a paper barrier, right? You find it and then you add a barrier? Well, depending on the level, the methane level. So if you're in a buffer zone versus I think if it goes up to a level five where there's a massive mat, but you vent it out the roof and build the whole thing under the slab. So like creating that and having to design these things that were not designed by anybody else. The city hadn't designed it really yet successfully for a modern home. So in a modern home you don't have all these places to hide these things, right? So it really put my design brain to work. So it taught me a lot about what I've done in the future. So I think I did pretty well. And the clients were happy. And we were on budget and nobody died. Nobody died, that's a big one. I don't think anybody even got hurt. What was your first experience into the construction world? So I went to school for architecture. That's what my degree is in. And right after freshman year there were no more summers off. It was all co-ops, mandatory internships with companies in the city that had to sign off on your work and your experience. And my first interview was with somebody that basically I got this job through my parents. They knew some guy. And I had an interview and he said, do you know Revit? And do you have a car? And those were the two questions. And I said, do I know Revit? I can learn it by the next time I see you. Yes, I know Revit. And yes, I have a car, that's for sure. And so he said, great. You're hired. You're our next BIM manager, building information modeling, MEP coordinator. And so I had to learn how to coordinate all these systems together and run meetings in the field with subcontractors. And I started going out into the field and that was amazing and I loved it. And I can remember standing on top of the Boston University Student Services Center that we built. There was a five story building right behind Fenway Park. And it was opening day of the Red Sox and we were standing on top of a roof slab that had not been poured yet. So we're bouncing on the rebar, me and like 10 guys. And the Blue Angels flew overhead and we're all standing there and it's like a hot April day next to Fenway Park. And we were all just so happy and so excited. And I was like, this is the coolest shit I've ever seen in my life. This is what I want to be doing forever. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, like when I drive out to a job site for the first time when we break ground, it just, I don't know, it's get your boots on. Early in the morning, driving there feeling so much joy, like so much. I can't even explain it, you know? And it's unlike anything else I've ever felt. And then you get to the other end of the project and you think, wow, like a thousand hands created that. And I always feel like I didn't have anything to do with it. It's a very collaborative process. Yeah. And I think the more hands that touch it, the better off the piece is. That's what I've learned. Yeah, absolutely. That's what thrills me about it. I started a new company a few years ago to foster that and foster younger people in the industry. I have so many architects that come to me and say, can I go out in the field with you for a year? Can you let me project manage something? Because they don't understand how to build a house. So how do they design it? I'm able to design a house because I know how to build a house. And I figured out how to use SketchUp and my drafter. And I shouldn't call her my drafter. The woman in my office who I've worked with for 16 years off and on is like the CAD master, you know. And so the two of us are just ding-ding-ding-ding all the time. And most of our projects now we design completely in-house. So not always, not always, but it's faster and less expensive for our clients. But then everybody gets involved. And the new company is about having artisans and architects and owners. And it's called She Spoke Studio, by the way. So everybody gets together and can create this thing from ground zero all the way through as a team. There's no wall up between me and somebody else. Like, because I'm transparent no matter what. Everything's out. You want to see my books, here are my books. You want to see what I'm looking at, here's what I'm looking at. A lot of people don't care. They just want to have their house done when they come back from wherever they're living, you know, and that's that. But a lot of people really are into designing their homes, to some degree. So for me, having the ability to create a platform where we can come together and teach each other the best of ourselves is really important and learn the best of someone else. Because I think you know, you went to architecture school. Did you learn anything there, really, that helped you out in the field? Nothing, absolutely. And I hear it all the time. Yeah. And it's like, you know, you're wondering why there's so much of a rift between architects, engineers, and contractors, is because we're all kind of siloed in our own things. And it's like, you know, we're trying to build something that to us doesn't make sense that it was drawn a certain way. And they're trying to draw and spinning their wheels to draw something that's easy to build or that, you know, makes sense to build. And then the engineer is applying their knowledge. And it's like everyone is, you know, constantly fighting with each other. But when starting in construction, it wasn't collaborative coming up. And now it's just starting to be where, you know, like the architects and engineers on our projects, you know, we'll text, we'll FaceTime on a job because it's just so much easier than having to send these formalized, you know, letters in about a question about something. It's like, can we just get on a call and go through this together? Or can you guys just come out to the site? This past couple of years with COVID has actually forced us. 100 percent. It's been great. It's been so great. We jump on a Zoom call and I'm like, this is what I'm doing. This is what I want to do. How do we get there? And the engineer is like, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, you know. And it happens in five minutes instead of five weeks. We saved like 200 grand on our last development just by doing that. Like no one could give me a straight answer. So I just kept texting everybody, being like, we're all chatting right now. We're all on site. Let's go. And sure enough, it was exactly what you're describing. I always get bummed out when architects are afraid to do that because they always go back to the liability thing. You know, they want everything in documents and paper and stuff. And so as a developer, I hate that. Meeting minutes. Yeah. Simple. Just follow it up with it. I mean, you can have an open discussion and then they write up their minutes. I do it. Yeah. Called she she spoke studio. She spoke studio. And is it just project specific? Like is it is it is everyone full time? Or is it more of like a contractor type setup? It's whatever it wants to be. OK. The one thing you'll learn about me is I do not define myself, my space or my vocation. Yeah. I think getting architects out there is epic. It's so needed. I have so many architects that I've worked with over the years who, even if I'm not on their project, will call me and say, how should I do this? Like, you know, from a builder's standpoint, they're not afraid to ask. There's no ego involved in creating if you're truly creating, right? And collaborating. So you have to put all that stuff down. And sometimes I don't know. I'll say, you know what? Let me ask someone who's better at this than me. Like you're asking me something that's kind of outside of my specialty. I've created friendships over the years with people. And like Friday at five, every Friday at five o'clock, my phone rings. It's an architect that I talk to. Every Friday at five, we haven't worked together in three years. But we have a Friday phone call. You know, it's important. It's important to bounce ideas and say, what are you working on? And where are you held up? And how are you feeling about your business? And are you, you know, getting bigger? Are you getting smaller? Are you in the sweet spot? That, you know, all these things, especially navigating the last two years, it's important that we have these relationships with people, other builders, subcontractors. And for me, a lot of the people that I work with, I consider them artists. You know, they're not like my plumber is an artist. My electrician is an artist. And they are also my consultants when I'm designing because things are changing so quickly. You know, you're developing and you go, we started this project three years ago and now title 24 is dictating that we change our entire electrical engineering now. You know, okay, who's gonna do that? Well, you better have a really good artist or engineer. I love that. I think about when people ask me about developer and whatever, and like, I'll show them like this building as an example. To me, these things feel more like an art to me. It feels more like an album and everyone's experiencing it in their own way. It's not just a building. And the reason I say that is because the more people that are involved, the better it is. Like the artists, the mural behind me, they're not on the architectural plan, right? And like Natalia's touch. And so every human has been involved in some way adding their touch. And that's what makes it something you feel when you come in and it's not too dimensional. And you know, it makes it more fun also. And then you get to see other people improve and then come back to it and they're like, wow, I did that. It's so funny, in architecture school, I remember if I had heard the word ephemeral one more time, I was gonna go nuts. But now, like building spaces, that's where I've learned what that means and how to create that. And I don't scoff at the word anymore because, you know, something like this, it's like, it's the little things that you notice that you feel, you know, it's this, you know, parota wood table. It's the custom fabricated bookcase. It's the sofa that is the perfect shape for the space and how it lends itself. And so it's like all those little things are what creates like a soul of a space. And, you know, when I was designing in school, I didn't really, you know, I just said, what is that? Like, you know, I'm gonna spend all my time trying to chase a feeling. And now in building, it's like, that's exactly what I'm doing, is trying to create a feeling for people to come in. And when you're working with people, we're like, I have an end user that's a single family, typically. And so it's not just what I wanna design, it's what do they need me to design? And how do I evoke the feeling that I have inside myself from them? That's, you wanna mirror that somehow. You're providing comfort and you're working with three of the most important things that anybody has is their family, their money and their trust, right? They're handing that all over to me and saying, make this, that's huge. Like, that's huge. So I get that. And so when I'm looking at like what my window package looks like, I'm also looking at what's outside that window. Like where's the tree? Where's the street sign? Where's the sunshine, right? All of that matters. So not everybody can get outside the box they're building. How have you seen the perception change of women in the industry since you first got in it? I don't really pay attention to tell you the truth. I know there's more of us. Yes. I don't really pay attention to it either. And I get this question all the time is like, what's it like being a woman in construction? And I'm like, I'm a woman in the world, I don't know. Yeah, it's all you know. I mean, like, I don't know, I have a vagina. So that's separate from I have a hammer. I mean, it's just there. It's like, I'm a general contractor, period. I am a woman, period. I'm an amazing general contractor, period. My husband says that all the time when people say, oh, she's a great female contractor. He says, she's a great contractor. And I look at him and I say, thank you. Thank you for saying that for me, for us, for the world. It's super important to understand that any underrepresented demographic is just as capable of doing a job that, quote unquote, a man is. I'm not better or worse because I'm a woman. I'm just a woman. I think women are better at it. I would tend to agree that in many aspects on all of our projects. Well, we're attention. Yeah, the level of care is real. We deal with stress differently. We deal with projects differently. But there are men in my life who I mean, I'm mostly surrounded by men, amazing men. I have 100 of them. And they're all part of my family. I get that they do some things better than I do. We all bring something to the table. Same way, every person brings something to a project. But as far as running projects and seeing them all the way through, women tend to have more patience and longevity. It's because three or four years of a project is a long time. My husband wants to be done two years before we're done. But he'll stick it out. He'll stick it out and he does an amazing job. He works with me, by the way. I may not have mentioned that. What does he do? He's the director of operations. But basically, he runs the field. And he's been in the business for 37 years. So twice as long as me. And he knows everything. And what he does better than me is keep me sane and keep me standing up for myself when I want to lay down. Because there's days when I feel beaten. And he's like, you're not. He helps me just switch your perspective and own myself. So he's like my biggest supporter. What happens on those days? How do I get there? You know, sometimes I'll have a client who's just completely unreasonable or I'll have a design team that isn't performing and I'm beating my head against the wall and I can't change it. And he says, don't change it. Deal with it. Then I call my lawyer. That's great advice. You know, but yeah, it is great advice. But that's the collaboration that only a partner can bring. Like a husband or a wife can bring not necessarily just a business partner. Because you know, your husband, you said he knows everything in the field of operations. But if he were just running your operations for you, he probably would not have the same impact on your emotional well-being and your ability to push through that he provides you. And then that's what's interesting as we further develop this show. We talked to more couples who work together. It's seeing how they balance their relationship with their work. You know, some have very strict boundaries. Others are just like, you know what? This is our life that we're building together and we're going to do everything as one. I mean, how do you see that relationship? Well, Dan will tell you that he kicked me out of the field to let him do everything. And he did. He had to find his own way in my business. Because when I hired him, we weren't even dating. So his first thing was, get out of my way and let me do what you hired me to do. He's a bulldog. And I was like, well, I'm not leaving. And he's like, we're going to fight until you leave. And we had a couple of battles on job sites. And then I realized that I needed to let him do his job and let go of the reins because I'd never been able to trust anybody before with my business. That's probably the hardest part. It's so hard. It's so hard. Well, because so many people had failed before him. And when somebody fails in construction, you find out way after the fact a lot of the time. And then you have to rip everything out and do it again. It's costly. So it's really hard to know until it's too late most of the time. Well, not that it's too late, but it's too late to fix it without ripping it all out. And when you're talking about families and timelines and money and all profit lines, it's hard to let go. But I just always trusted him from the minute I met him. And so it was easier than any other time. And so after maybe two or three weeks, I backed off. And I went and started running the business in a different way from a different angle. And it grew like a weed once I did that. What did you do differently? Because there's a couple of things that you've mentioned here. So I know a lot of people, when it comes to, I need to hire somebody. They live in this analysis paralysis of where do I begin? How do I start? And they don't actually go down the road of trying to hire anyone. They just stay in their head. They stay in the room where nothing gets done. And then at some point, they start putting energy toward hiring someone. And then it backfires in what you said before, where it's like it didn't work out. So then they get jaded. And then they go back into, I knew hiring was hard. It's just weird. Like it confirmed the fear. I knew it was hard. Here I did it. And it didn't work. It's never going to work. You spend a lot of time getting out of that mindset. And then you hire another person. And hopefully that works. But if it doesn't, it just confirms the right. Because this is the thing we talk about on the entrepreneurship side of it a lot of the time. It's like there's a mental journey there, and a trusting journey there. And so it sounds like you got through that. And then what was the thing that made, like what was the realization where your company was able to grow like a weed? Was it you just leaned into what you were great at? Well, yeah, I had a list. I always have lists. I'm a list person. I have less lists now. But back then, I would be like, here's all the things that need to happen on this job site. And at the end of the day, I would call him and say, here's all the things that need to be done. And he's like, I already did them all. I'm like, you did all of these things without me telling you. They're all done. I'm like, you do that enough times with somebody. You know that they know, right? It's when they aren't even sure what you're talking about that you kind of know you're in trouble or they're unwilling to ask. So I knew he was doing what needed to be done without me getting involved, which is, I got to say, it's rare, right? 120% or you found him. I found him. Or he found me. And then I leaned into growing the business. I hired a business manager. That was your second hire? That was my second. I was the business manager. And what did the business manager do? He helped me with marketing in a sense of broadening my network and teaching me how to get out of my little bubble and make a phone call and go to a party and talk to people and be comfortable with it and realize I'm just having a conversation and I'm not selling anybody anything. I'm just having a conversation. I'm being me. I'm in that now. I'm like, actually. And this is why I'm asking you because this ties so perfectly with our podcasts where what tips can we give entrepreneurs to grow their business? And at the same time, they're very specific to construction. So I made a tier list, which is just like a Salesforce type of thing that you do. So he's like make three tiers of all the people you know and put them in each tier, friends and family. And then I think it was people that I work with on the regular, you know, I don't remember what the exact words were because it was a while ago. And then people that I know, but I'm not really close to that could help me with my business in some manner. So, and then every week I had to make 10 contacts. I had to call somebody or email somebody and set up a meeting. And I had at least 10 meetings a week. So good. And it could just be about whatever, but it turned into amazing is what it turned into. Yeah. I just want to know this candidly like, so someone gives you that, they give you the steps, they give you the formula, but then you have to go execute it. And so was it for you because you had the structure where you like, oh, I can go, I can do this. I can bang this out. Or were you like, cause in some way you're really putting yourself out there and that's the hard part. Yeah. At first I didn't want to do it. Yeah. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, I'm tired. Secondly, it's like having a whole other job at first. 100%. Networking, you're doing your thing. I wasn't really comfortable. I'm comfortable talking to anyone about anything. If they, if I know they want it, I was a waitress forever. I could upsell you on anything if I know you're hungry. But if I don't know if you're hungry, how do I start this conversation? Well, you have to find something in common and then naturally a conversation grows. So I would go to these parties where I don't know anybody by myself and I would have to reach out to somebody. Otherwise I'm gonna be sitting alone in the corner and what's the point of having gotten dressed? And we've all been there. Yeah. Now I'm not a shy person, but I am strangely introverted in crowds. I mean, I don't know why. I think I'm a watcher is what it is. I just like to watch people. And then I like to have very intimate conversations that mean something. Like everything in my life is meaningful. I don't have a lot of time to waste. Me either. I can't do small talk. No. For like a minute. Yeah. Max. So I just started picking on people who also looked like they were alone and approaching and putting out my hand, back when you could shake a hand and saying hello and then finding something in common. Which oftentimes was the person whose party it was. You know, these functions I go to. I go to a lot of artistic types of things. You know, eclectic people. So there's always something going on where there's just a bunch of cool people there that have something to say. And so you just have to find a common language, a common bond. And I would end up having these really intense conversations with people who I didn't know who they were. And a lot of times they were exactly who I needed to know the next week. And they would say, oh, you're a builder. That was sort of like the smallest part of the conversation. It would almost be in passing. And eventually all those people became clients. That's how it works. You never know if it's next week or next year or 10 years down the road and how big the project is. But every single one of those people became a client. And that's the exercise. And then their friends. So I've never had a problem getting referrals. That's the way my business always worked. But to broaden that circle and know that you're booked out for four or five years instead of four or five months, there's a comfort in that. And then you can plan and you can, then you can expand your business. I'm gonna ask you this question for Natalia because she's in the expansion mode right now and almost like graduating to what you're talking about. And so the question becomes, all of a sudden you go from having four or five months of work to two, three years of work and you gotta hire again. Maybe. Maybe. Okay, what's this like? Let's do the- It depends where you're at in your- Build the bridge of that. I always be like, could you start off in the flats of Hollywood and then you work your way up at the hill into the bird streets and then you come back down to Bel Air. That's when you're about ready to retire. Right? Right. That's where I am. So the trajectory of building your business, you know, it's interesting for me, and I think most people at my level think this way, the more you're running, the more projects you're running, the more people technically you have to have or you're working 20 hours a day. So how much do you wanna work? So first you're like, how much do I wanna work a day? Not 16 hours. Okay. I work like four. I mean, in the field, right? I go to work and then I work from home, whatever. I used to work 20 hours a day when I was where you are. And that's what you have to do to grow the business, to grow the clientele, to make sure all your stuff is right, to make sure your people are doing what they need to do, to get your materials to like, and right now it's even harder because everything's like 10 times as long to get. So you're doing triple the project management. It's like 20 teeth to get people to respond. Yeah. Oh, it is. Like, oh, did that person email me back? No, it's been three weeks. I've had so many alerts. So you might email her. Right, so you have a list of people who haven't contacted you that normally would have contacted you and you can't get stuff from your vendors so you're doing their project management. I mean, it's a lot more than it used to be but everybody started to grow their business during COVID because there was this massive boom and I did the complete opposite because I knew better. And I've had no stoppages, no COVID. I've made more money during COVID than I've ever made in my career. Like, I knew to do the, I saw it coming. I knew what it looked like. I got everything I needed before it hit, before we bought on that, before the lawsuit started, before the quarantines happened, all of that and I'm just cruising through it, right? Because I saw it coming but that took a lot to get there, to understand what the markets look like, to understand that I have to look at what's happening in the world to plan for this house over here, right? So if you're growing, if you're a sole proprietor or if you're the CEO, you're the only owner, right? There's nobody else. So then you've got to have a site super on every project or it's you or you have someone covering multiples. It's me and another and we're covering all of them. How many projects are you running? Four right now. Okay. So I used to run 15 projects at a time. These are like 1.5 to 2.5 million dollar projects each. Okay. So four is good. Commercial, all like a lot of components. Oh, that's a lot of stuff. Yeah, okay. So I would say you need two more people and somebody at least one amazing project manager. I have the unicorn right now. Okay. She's amazing. Good. But I need five more of her. And then hire and then get her an assistant. Get her an assistant and then have somebody doing your admin and your books and answering your phone. I do have, actually, I do have a CFO service basically and a bookkeeper that does, yeah, all of that. Good. So that's kind of a person. So an assistant and then one more person. Yeah, because the amount of busy work. So much. The busy work. I can do a whole day of busy work. Joan, thank you. This is so good. Well, I just like this. Natalia never comes on the podcast. And so for this month, it's been very fitting but to have, you know, get real world advice to not, we can share with everybody and share the secret sauce because everyone to some extent is struggling with this is like really good. Yeah. And you don't have to hire, you know, in our business, you don't have to hire somebody as an employee to do a contract job for a certain period of time. You can hire in a site super for three or four months to make your business work. So I always look at it like I'm subbing out everything. Right. That's the mentality. That's how I think as a developer. Yeah. I'm useless. I can't do anything. But let me go hire everyone who can. And I just work really hard on that. So do you have anyone she can hire? No. It's funny, people are poaching people. Oh yeah, that's the only way. That's the only way right now. We have, my brother-in-law is moving here from Massachusetts actually. And I'm gonna be training him and he's not in construction. And he's gonna be probably her assistant, or Charlene's assistant. It's funny. It's like with construction, there are certain roles where, you know, you definitely need someone that has kind of grown with the industry and has worked for big companies and has that kind of experience. But there's some people that, you know, for certain roles that you can just, they have the personality for it, you know? And you can just teach them how to do it. And it's like anything else to them. Like it's. This was Angela from Move Over Bob. And so she was a barber. She's like, I know people. And I was telling her like, every architect should go be a barber. Or in your case, you mentioned you were a waitress. Every architect, every GC should be in that world for a year so they learn how to deal with people. I have poured coffee at Dunk of Donuts. That's the whole game. It's just Dunkin's now. I know. It's so weird. So weird. What's up with that? I ran a stick. Get your Dunkin's. I worked at Brigham's. Oh nice. For a lot of those were attached to Dunkin. Yeah. They were like the same building. Oddly enough. But I really think as far as like building your business up, you've got to get to a point where you're working less and you're making more money. Like that's the goal. Yeah. It's an efficiency play. It's so hard to decide what and how to delegate though and when you make that leap. It's like Diego said when you're hiring and then someone doesn't work out and then you're just so defeated because you put all that time and effort into training them, finding them, getting yourself to feel comfortable trusting them. Okay, let me give you one advice. Shush. Okay. So love it. On show, let's go. I love it. I love it. Oprah says. This is so great. You get advice. No. So my business manager said to me you will know in the first week whether or not somebody's working out and if they're not, get rid of them. You owe them nothing. I just like, I have my conscious is like screaming like, well, give them a chance. In tech, we had this thing called hire fast, fire faster. I mean, it's so good. Seriously. That was the whole thing in tech. You know, you know, you're like, someone can interview great but then you get them out there. They would do three week contracts. Yeah, you do a three week and you know. We would fire them or they would graduate. And don't give them too much money up front. Like don't give, don't hire them. Be like, oh, well, I should pay them this because what, like, because I feel bad. Like, don't feel bad. I worked for $18 an hour when I started and I was designing for $35 an hour when I started designing. So when somebody comes to me and tells me they want to make $120,000 a year straight out of college, I say, I hope that you find that job. Yeah, it's not here. That you have zero experience and I'm not trying to be a jerk but like you want people to want more. Like you don't, if you just hand people everything, there's nowhere for them to go. There's no way for you to reward them because you're then cutting into something that you can't afford. I'm not saying undercut everybody. I'm saying really look at what people should get paid. You can look that up on the Google. You can actually look at your location and figure out what that is if you don't know. And then if they're great, you pay them a little bit more but I think you really have to understand what people think about themselves when you pay them a certain amount of money and if you pay them too much, the performance doesn't always meet that and then you're going to get frustrated as a business owner and then you're going to be angry and then you're not going to want to work with them because you're going to have a resentment and really it's you who failed. You failed them by doing that. As you talk about like how you're moving to Bel Air and all that stuff, how do you view the exit for you? Can you sell your company? How do you view that? Yeah, it's kind of hard when you're named dirty girl construction. You got to find the right person. You want to buy it? Sell it to you. You got to find the right person. I looked for years. I've had people come through and work for the company and I've said if you stay here and you do well here, I'm happy to figure something out as I ease out but it's tricky. I don't know that I'll ever really retire completely not because I want to keep doing it but because I understand at this point what I do means to the world. I get that I've changed things not on purpose. I just got up every day and put my boots on but things have changed because of what I've been doing and that is something I don't take lightly. I love that. That's a good relationship to have with the world. Yeah, you understand your skill set and you understand the value that you provide people, communities and you take that seriously. I'll probably just transition somehow into the she spoke like I'll build something once in a while or if younger women want to come and learn how to build maybe I'll take on a build so they can all learn how to build. I mean, there's gonna be a point when that will be the point. Yeah, have you heard of Girls' Garage? Have you heard of them? No. Oh yes, I did actually. I did recently. Pretty amazing what they're doing. They hold workshops and they're female friendly and basically just kids, almost like kindergartners learning how to build stuff which is pretty awesome and she's just done so much good programming, trade shows, road shows, really on a mission to just, I think it's exposure, just get younger girls into seeing it, playing with it. And my sister-in-law called me. She's a preschool teacher. She said, what do we do with the girls and the kids in general? Because in school there's not arts and crafts and home ec and sport. I mean, everything's been cut, right? So there's certainly no shop. I said, get power tools out, not in preschool. But I said, get the power tools out. She knows how to use them. She's a welder and an artist. And I said, and give demonstrations. And then do what the shop teachers used to do with skilled protected demonstrations when they're in eighth grade or whatever their appropriate age is and get them comfortable with these things ahead of time. And then hopefully it'll spark some interest. I would love to have a platform where I can bring younger people or not even younger people, older people. I have older women who say, I wanna do what you do. And I'm like, go do it. That would be pretty cool. It would be cool. It would be like, let's go build a house. There's a group in Utah, I think. It's all women building a house up there from all over the place. What I bump into is people wanna come out to a job site and hang out with me and I'm like, well, there's liability. Yeah, totally. That's kind of hard. A lot of our investors are like that. They're like, can I be a PM for a day? And I'm like, would you let me do surgery on you for a day? Right, right, right. It's tricky. Or maybe I can review these legal documents for you. You can walk behind me and don't touch anything. Watch where you step. That's the hard thing. It's like I had a letter recently. I get letters all the time from people with this one really touched me about, I was a grandmother and she wanted to have her granddaughter come down and work for me and no skill set, nothing. She's like, she can go to the job site with you. She can do this and she can do that. And I'm like, but she can't. Yeah. She can't, right? So how do we platform that? That's what's difficult. I see. How do you solve that problem at scale? How do you solve that problem? Yeah, exposure, but through safety training, through some experience, so they come on and they're not novice. With a 16 year old, right? Right, right. It's tough. At the big picture of your career and everything that you've done in this industry, one of the things that strikes me the most is you've got a background in music. You used to be a composer and. I'm still a composer. I just finished a show. I just want to say that. That I still do it. I just did East Coast, so my brother is an actor, not to interrupt you, but I think it's important that we don't give up what we were to be what we are, right? So he's directing a Sense and Sensibility at the Vokes Theater in West End. So it's one of the oldest theaters in the country, or at least on the East Coast. And so I wrote all the music from the West Coast for the show and I have never seen it. And it's going up in two days. That's fantastic. Well, one of the things that strikes me the most is like there was a quote that you gave a magazine back in the day that talked about why you left composing as your full-time job and went into construction. And I believe you said something along the lines of I didn't want to sell out. For me, that speaks volumes about where you saw the industry heading. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious about what your view on selling out would have been if you had continued down that path and what in the construction industry or the space allows you to keep who you are as a person and apply that in a way that you saw as liberating. Good question. Only Nick asked a good question. Back in the day. It's very thoughtful. So computers and technology obviously changed a lot in the music world and the world in general. But composers got replaced by computers in a lot of ways. The need for us was lessened and people just started saying things like, well, my kid can do that on GarageBand and for a dollar, right? That kind of, I mean, literally, people would say stuff like that to us. And so I said, well, then have your kid do it on GarageBand for a dollar. And let me know how that goes. Let me know how that ad campaign works out. I wasn't willing to write 100 demos for free when we used to get paid or churn out somebody's ad campaign because that's mostly what I did was advertisements for 2,500 bucks because that's what they were paying all of a sudden. Okay, so I've got to do a national spot that used to pay $50,000 for 2,500 bucks. So now I have to do 10 of those every month. I mean, well, sorry, 20 of those for the same money twice a year. So now I have to get 40 national spots. Well, it's not gonna happen. So let's just be realistic. If you get one or two, you're happy, right? So now I have to write a music library and sell my music that way to Tom, Dick and Harry and whoever and I'm no longer connected to this and I'm just selling, it's not my thing. It's not why I write music. I write music because I feel something and you feel something. The same reason I build houses. So I couldn't do that and I wouldn't do that. And there was really no place for me to go and there was no way for me to survive. And I didn't want to write songs like not to put down music of the day but I have a really hard time. I have a degree in songwriting which is a very strange degree but I studied how to write a song. And so when I hear a song that's just a chorus over and over and over and over and over again, I'm like, well, that's the easy part. Give me the rest of the song. What's the rest of the story? So a lot of music we hear now is just the chorus. Okay, I'm gonna put in just the windows and call it a day, right? So it's like instant gratification. That's not my deal. It's not what I do in anything that I do. So I stopped doing it all because it just didn't suit me anymore. It wasn't art to me anymore. It was just the business of music had become an industry. Yeah, I was like, we're just a machine now. There's such a huge difference between getting together with 10 musicians in the studio and doing it from separate places and hoping that it all comes together. There's a different energy that's created the same way if you're building a house with people you're all in the house building. So how did I bring that forward to now? I don't work with anyone I don't like and I don't do anything that I don't like and I will fire a client if they mistreat me and I will walk away from anything that doesn't feel like it fits the culture that I've created. I don't allow injury to happen. I don't allow anyone to feel less than. I mean, there's just like, there's something about the character of the build that has to suit the character of the company and that's what I've carried forward. It really needs to be meaningful on a multitude of levels. I think this is gonna happen in coding as a whole. Like I think coding is gonna become democratized that'll change and then people will go back into like the skilled labor market. And so then the yo-yo will just or the pendulum will swing back. And so the earlier you can get in now into this world of building and construction the better off you're gonna be. You can start a company and you'll have a ton of people that'll wanna come in because they'll make more money than sitting behind a computer. And they'll be more gratifying and they won't be essentially a coding farm. Well, look at how many people are growing food in their backyards. I don't wanna say we're going backward but we're reverting to things that mean something. Totally, yeah. We're nurturing ourselves in a way that matters. Anything else we should know about you? Anything else you wanna talk about before we ramp? Yeah, you know, I think the only other thing is I'm available for people who really need me. Careful. And well, I'm calling you every day. And I think it's important to say that I'm available because when I got to this town, nobody wanted to talk to me. And it doesn't mean that all the crazy people get to call me. So if you call my office, it'll tell you to send me an email because that's how it works. I am going to have in the future now that things are hopefully getting a little bit more normalized. Part of she spoke is having groups of people be able to come and get together and ask me questions, ask you questions, other people in the business to really come together and collaborate and exchange ideas and talk about how do I get from here to here? To really nurture each other. So there'll be an outlet for that. So people who really feel like they wanna hang out can sign up for these seminars or whatever they end up being Duncan and- Yeah, right. And the farm cup. I was thinking about this and I was even thinking about hosting like an AEC architecture engineering construction like paint night, like wine and paint night like in here where we just all vent and drink wine and paint and talk about everything. And that's been like a vision for like eight months. And I just, I'm like, I'm gonna think about that next week. Next week and then- Well, come see my space when you have time. We're down in Englewood and- I'd love to. I've got like 4,000 square feet down there. Amazing. I bought that place four or five years ago and it's just, actually, we have the same table. So as I saw this tip, I have two of them and they're just like my project tables. And I want it to be a space where people can come together, you know? And really say things like, hey, I'm doing this music thing and hey, I don't know how to tie my shoes. And you know? It's your version of getting 10 musicians together in a room and creating something. It really is. It's my 10 pan alley. That's what it is. And that's what I've always wanted. That's fantastic. Oh, yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. We'll make sure to share your email address and everything else because we're gonna have people contact you. Let everyone know where they can find you, social media or wherever. Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I think it's Dirty Girl Construction. I'm on Twitter, but I never use it. I don't tweet because I'll get in trouble. And you can email info at dirtygirlconstruction.com and everything will eventually get to me. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, John. Thanks for having me. That was awesome. You guys are awesome. This conversation with Joan was part three in our four-part series, highlighting women in construction. We'd like to thank Cat Footwear for helping us to share these stories. Since you've stuck around for the credits, consider subscribing if you're not already or better yet, leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's one of the best and easiest ways you can support us in the show. We are at Startup Storefront on every social media platform with the exception of Twitter where we can be found at STS Podcast LA. The team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexie Jamison, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is by DoubleTouch. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.