Episode 34 - David Latimer, New Frontier Design
Listen to the episode
Transcript
Prefab Review
Hi, my name is Michael Frank and this is the Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab housing industry and sort of the adjacent industries. Today, we're speaking with David Latimer, the Ceo and founder of New Frontier Design. To start, David, can you tell me a little bit about the history of New Frontier and how you got into doing all this stuff?
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on the podcast. So way back in college, I studied literature and philosophy and always chose a lifestyle of adventure and travel and experience. Not any one career path. I was one of those creative types who had no idea what I wanted to do and I spent a lot of time meandering through different places and industries. I lived in New York for almost three years, in East Village. I worked in fashion primarily. I traveled around Europe backpacking by myself for about eight months before New York, right after college. And I got burned out of New York and moved to Africa, Uganda, and worked in an orphanage helping to expand and improve what they were doing in a village outside Kampala and then Chicago. But yeah, a lot of travel in between all those places. And between that timeframe, so about six years ago, I don't have time because I don't even know how to measure time anymore. Around a decade ago, I moved back to Nashville. I was born and raised in Nashville. And at that point, I had, you know, worked in hospitality, worked in tech, started doing design-build for bars, restaurants, nightclubs in River North and a couple of other trendy areas in Chicago. I was in and out of construction. My first job in high school was working on a framing crew. So I've always been really drawn to self-reliance and autonomy and I love learning. So, I get bored easily and am just very curious and always trying to improve myself and learn new skills, ideas, and concepts. So when I moved back to Nashville, I had this opportunity to be a GM, director of ops for a restaurant that had all the ingredients of a real home run. It turned out to not be. That turned out to be a perfect example of what not to do and how not to do it and who not to do it with. Which is very painful but a very important learning opportunity. And it sent me into this really introspective time where I was like, “all right, I'm anxious. I don't like the work I'm doing. Why am I living this way? How can I change?” And I started, you know, an inward journey. And I learned about myself. You know, journaling meditating, reading all sorts of resources on entrepreneurship. And I hate this title, but you know, self-help, picking up new skills. And during that time, my dad does affordable housing in Nashville, he has the oldest nonprofit. It's over thirty years old. And he introduced me to tiny homes on wheels. He saw it as a very good solution for increasing affordable housing. Now I'd say it's a legitimate crisis, but affordable housing issues in Nashville. And you know, it's in Bimmick, across the country. And I instantly fell in love with the product. And I was like, “wait a minute. so this is something I can design architecturally and do interior styling and decor myself? I can build it myself? I can move it wherever I want to go? It's a mechanism for intentional living, meaning you have very finite constraints on what you can do, and so you’ve got to be really intentional about how you consume, what you consume, and they bring your principles and values of daily living into your daily living, right? So it really becomes a life of experience over the acquisition of stuff and status. You know, I haven't experienced anything outside of time. I'm not sure if any other person has. If we take more control of our time, we are able to control our experiences and our relationships, which to me, is what life's about. So it;s a roundabout way of saying, “when I decided I wanted to do this, my father and I built the first couple together.” I learned a lot with him and he really gave me my start. So I'm very indebted to him and grateful. And then I I started to branch out to my own company. The very first tiny house I designed, I built with my my former partner and still good friend, Zach Thomas. He is in Nashville. I got an opportunity to have to be on an HGTV show. So the very first one, a design built from scratch, was on this episode, and that just launched everything from there. You know, Architectural Digest and all sorts of very reputable media design-build construction outlets throughout the country and the world covered it. With a small team, we built the first one and then once demand grew, hired a team, and started of producing them in Nashville.
Prefab Review
No, that's great. So yes, let's get into that and then we'll come back and talk about the design, which I think is actually probably the most notable. But in terms of the teams thing, so you actually started by building the first 1 or 2 themselves and then you actually have like a factory of carpenters and people who are actually building these? Or do you now outsource that with some kind of partner factory or something?
New Frontier
Yeah, great question. So the first few like I said, was just me and a few friends. I mean, I have amazing friends and Nashville has a really cool maker community. It certainly did you know, ten to fifteen years ago. Like I said, once I got a few of those under my belt, and started getting the orders, I hired a team locally in Nashville and we started building in a production facility.
Prefab Review
Yeah, excuse me. Is a production facility just like a barn or a warehouse?
New Frontier
Actually, I'm on one of my friends' farms there. Yeah, it was essentially a smaller warehouse. We would, you know, get them all dried in inside and then move them outside to do a lot of finish work and whatnot.
Prefab Review
Yep.
New Frontier
Yeah, so had a team. I would say probably the equivalent of like 10 full timers with different subcontractors for different things. And that was great. I wanted to learn all the things about coming from concept to sale to making a product. For me, making a product is very important. I don't just want to sit in a world of ideas. And you know, as a lot of architects do, I want to make something that's real, that exists, that really adds a lot of value to people's lives. So, I learned a lot. And then about three and a half years in, I was like you know, I don't want to be spending all my time project managing. I'm a designer and a creative, first and foremost. So, I want to spend more time creatively. And my product has been very high touch, high custom. So I worked very closely with my clients. And I want to free up more time to spend more time with them and I've been very fortunate to have incredible clients.
Prefab Review
Great.
New Frontier
The business started formalizing in 2016. I'll get to present day. But yeah, I mean I'm trying to think of where I'm missing.
Prefab Review
I know, so sorry. So then, you're saying you outsource some of the actual construction to another group or something?
New Frontier
Yeah, sorry. So there was this really special, formative event in the summer of 2016. It was 2016. Like I said, the first tiny house jamboree was in Colorado Springs and all the very pioneer tiny house people were there giving talks. And you got to see the tiny homes, and it was a really special event. I thought it was gonna be pretty small and it wound up being 40,000 people and 3 days. And very serendipitously, the first day at the garden of the gods before it started, I ran into this guy. We were basically parked beside each other to go walk around the park the night before it started. His name was Jim Stolsvis and he grew up in southeast Pennsylvania. He was a builder for a long time and grew up in Amish Country. If anybody has any experience with them, they are of the highest integrity personally and of the highest integrity and their work ethic and what they produce, we really hit it off. And as he was starting a company at the same time, we would swap war stories. You know, give each other feedback and advice. And couple years in, when our companies were established, we love to collaborate, and it was just this symphony where it made sense. We did a couple projects together and were like, “this is such a great fit for both of us.” And we haven't looked back. And then I just added to Liberation Tiny Houses.
Prefab Review
Yeah.
New Frontier
And that is just a group of incredible human beings. I really love those dudes personally and professionally. It's just been such an incredible experience. They've allowed me to to adapt and evolve.
Prefab Review
So the division of responsibility is mostly like you're doing primarily design and customer facing stuff and then they're doing the production of the homes?
New Frontier
Yeah, so I went from running the business, managing everything to hey, I want to have a smaller business. I want to have a more flexible, remote business .And like I said, I want to be spending most of my time doing the things I enjoy most and the things I'm best at. So I took the building pieces, obviously the hugest part and the most time consuming. Like I said, I get it. I get a sale. I'd go through all the design phase and then I work with the builder to bring it to life. And I, you know, had another builder who will remain unnamed, who was the polar opposite. And it was a terrible experience. And I'm sure that's one of the painful lessons of outsourcing anything or building anything. You're going to come across some shady people who live from the opposite of the place of integrity.
Prefab Review
Totally. Yeah, I think a lot of what we do is doing diligence on partners. And I'm sure you did real diligence. You know, it is hard. So we try to help people avoid this as much as possible. But yeah.
New Frontier
It is. Yeah, but that's a really important service. You know, we don't know until we learn it. Prefab Review
So it's good that you found some good partners.
New Frontier
I mean tiny homes are on the less expensive side of what we do, but people are spending 6 or 7 figures on something. These are serious purchases to people, so it makes sense to spend some time making sure you have high confidence in it.
Prefab Review
And that's really cool. So just transitioning into what you actually make, so you guys make really striking, I guess I'd call them tiny homes. They're almost like little pieces of art.
New Frontier
Thank you, very kind.
Prefab Review
I mean they're interesting and they're specific, right? Like they're sort of interesting use cases. But they don't necessarily feel like they're supposed to cover all tiny home use cases, which is totally fine. So given that, at least on your site, you have whatever, 5 or 6 models, how did the product line develop? How did you sort of settle on these as the kind of homes that you were going to sort of show to the world and do at least some production at scale?
New Frontier
Yeah, I think as with most people and most entrepreneurs, you have this goal, this vision of what you want to do, and along the way, all sorts of hurdles and opportunities. You come up and it's kind of a meandering path but always discovery and being adaptable and just constantly challenging yourself to learn and grow. So, the very first one in affordable housing, attainable housing was a really important part of my ethos. And if you look at my price point, you'll see that is not where…
Prefab Review
Right? It's got a sort of more attainable luxury or something like that. I don't know how you'll describe it.
New Frontier
Yeah, I'll get to what what most of my clients are using my homes for. And now, that certainly saves them lots and lots of money for their situation. We actually signed this deal with this production company to do a TV show, and it wound up not getting picked up, but they had this other show called Tiny House Big Living where they featured a different build every time. So, I hit it off with them. They had a builder drop out and I wound up filling in this last slot.
Prefab Review
Nice.
New Frontier
And it was like, what am I going to do? And so I kind of built this design and built this one for myself. Well you know, my partner Zach is like, “I've been a builder for 10 years and never had an opportunity to be on HGTV, so let's just go nuts and build the design and build the coolest tiny home we've ever seen.”
Prefab Review
Yeah.
New Frontier
We had kind of carte blanche on some level. So we did that. We went nuts. I'm extremely obsessed over details and quality. I'm a long-term thinker meaning I'll never compromise the quality. I'd rather take a haircut than cut corners. So, that's the the Alpha. So we just made it as cool as we could and as nice as we could. And yeah, that TV show launched and gave us a lot of publicity right away
Prefab Review
Right.
New Frontier
We kind of weren't sure exactly how much it costs. I've run businesses but I never had my own, and I didn't have overhead, I wasn't paying myself. there's a lot of big financial factors that weren't accounted for.
New Frontier
The home was already really extensive when we launched it, and then I realized it was tens of thousands of dollars underpriced. And so that was a painful lesson. But what ended up happening is people saw and and said, “this is incredible. We love this.” And they were just higher net worth people who had these circumstances. And they're like, “oh, I want this. Oh, you're going to do this custom? Cool, let's add all this.” And so that's what wound up happening. the Escher, my second, the Alpha, was very original. And yeah, I was living in that off and on for about a year
Prefab Review
Was that one of the homes on your site?
New Frontier
Before Disney bought it from me. It's a whole whole story. Actually they took it up to the World Trade Center did this massive, huge production unveiling dance party. All this stuff. And it was live on Good Morning America. So that was a very surreal experience.
Prefab Review
That's awesome.
New Frontier
Yeah, anyway, the Escher was the second model and that was the next evolution of the Alpha. It was for a family. They were about to have their first child. They lived in the Santa Cruz mountains in California and had this really cool, interesting life. And you want a separate bedroom on the opposite end of the house. So the Alpha was kind of a collaborative process. You know, making the Alpha more family friendly or for more people who can live and should be in the space. And then the Cornelia and the Orchid. A client named Cornelia. She's German, and she's you know, one of the extremely successful, multiple international bestselling children's author. She does children's fantasy from like really young ages to young adult. There's a handful of people in your life wbo you meet where there's your life before you meet this person your life after. And she's been one of the most influential, positive presences in my life. She's a great mentor. She bought my hounds for a property she used to own in Malibu. And the point of them was as a little writing studio. It was the first Cornelia and then she also hosts young artists from around the world to do residencies and mentor them. What's been really cool is my clients have given me total creative license. They give me the parameters of what they need and they're like, “make it happen.” She was kind of like my matron. You know, I think of Florence when Michael, I'm not comparing myself, but these artists had someone financing.
Prefab Review
No, I understand, people who support your creativity.
New Frontier
But yeah, so you just kind of said these are your songs so you make the song you want. So Cornelia, I named after her. And then the Orchid was as soon as I delivered it. She's like, “okay, I want another one.” So that's where the Cornelia and the Rrchid came from. And then the Luna was was my attempt at a more economical home than the others. So that's kind of the evolution of models. I have a new one that haven't released. It was really expensive to build so I don't know if I'm going to even offer it. It's been a cool project too.
Prefab Review
That's awesome. Yeah, super cool. So basically it sounds like a lot of these end up being bespoke things you've done for clients that you are able to then offer more widely to the world.
New Frontier
Yeah, exactly. They’ve been real high touch, high custom, for you know, up until really the past six months. And navigating the absolute nightmare that covid has created for the construction industry at large.
Prefab Review
You mean just in terms of like it's hard to get windows. It's hard to get labor but like commodity prices and things like that?
New Frontier
Anything home goods. Yeah, supply chain nightmares. Extreme price increases, volatility, and increases in raw materials and labor. The third-party home goods. You know, all that was just a logistical nightmare. Especially when you're producing inside, right? And you have a very limited number of things you can do and one project getting delayed can delay 6 others. So yeah, it's a hundred times worse for any company bigger than mine. So I've kind of moved the business model more to customizing the units that already exist and really refining and simplifying all the offerings. And I think you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs and first time business owners, you think of a new product in the nascent market. You think, “oh, well I need to offer all these options in order to get clients.” And yeah, at some level, that's been true. But you kind of have to take a leap with that wager and say, “well, maybe people don't want that many options.” We think we do, but we really don't. We all suffer from extreme decision fatigue in this current world and we're not even aware of it. But I mean, it's exhausting. You really only have so much glucose in your brain to spend making decisions every day. So, we've really just simplified everything and that's the direction we're moving in. So I'll touch on this later, but doing a site build and also modular design for full size homes, interior, architecture, all that.
Prefab Review
Yeah, that's awesome. So I guess one of the questions you talked about before a little bit was ah and it's interesting because so we've ah we've talked to a few people in the tiny home space and this actually varies a lot based on the company. What are the use cases, what are people using your homes for? You talked about affluent people putting these on as like little guest houses on their Malibu properties. We've seen that it is pretty standard for a lot of airbnbs and short term rentals. Why do people use your homes?
New Frontier
Yeah, great question. One of my mottos from the very beginning has been downsize and upgrade. I knew there were a lot of hurdles from a zoning codes perspective for tiny homes on wheels. And there's a lot of resistance from people because it's a massive paradigm and lifestyle shift to downsize from three thousand Square feet to 300. So part of my thing was, I want full size rooms. I want full size appliances. Because you're just spending money on so many fewer things, get the best you can of that item. And this helps you make it more attainable to downsize like that. But part of I don't know if you're gonna talk about design, a few big ones for me is indoor-outdoor. So a lot of glass surfaces. That garage door allows a whole wall to open, hidden storage, most people just cram everything in a fullsize home and it just feels really cluttered. I like clean, open rooms. So when something's not in use, it slides away. And part of that is multifunctional furniture. But yeah, my clients have become small families or individuals who have a beautiful piece of property. It's in a more remote area. Building on it might be cost and time prohibitive. And so they get this prefab unit. It's completed. They do a little site work. Get it ready. We bring it up and it's hooked up within a day or a few days or a week.
Prefab Review
Yeah, so it's super cool because so many people come to our site and are like, “hey, I own this remote piece of land in X Y Z. I just want to throw a modular home on it.” And usually we're like, “well, you know, in order to throw a modular home on it,, you actually probably need to get a crane back there.” So it actually sounds like you know, if you can tow it, you can probably achieve that. But in terms of actual site work, what do you? What do you end up asking for? Is there a pad? Do you end up using RV hookups or do you go off-grid? What are the different ways people do this?
New Frontier
Yeah, for sure. One of the advantages of tiny homes is the adaptability to pretty much any site you could think of? Meaning, you can make them fully off-grid or you can have off-grid solar and do septic or tie into city utilities, county utilities. Like you said, the logistics and the cost of getting it from a factory to set up on site, are just so much more, tens of thousands of dollars more whereas mine, a truck pulls it up and sets it down. But yeah, usually they put a pad in there that’s mostly gravel. sometimes it’s concrete but it's some combination of either all city utilities or a lot of off-grid.
Prefab Review
I think I saw you being interviewed. It was quite cool. It was in Southern California on a hilltop or something like that?
New Frontier
Yeah, a couple of units on top of a mountain. But yeah, it was exceptionally beautiful. Yeah for sure. So that's a great thing that it's fully off grid and it's a luxury experience in this really rustic desert mountain top. And otherwise, it would be massively inconvenient or just feel like you're camping. And this is like I won't use the word glamping. It makes sense. It's not a huge sacrifice for people.
Prefab Review
So one question I had, so we talked to a little bit about, you sort of made allusions to historically, one of the challenging things about these tiny homes on wheels has just been parking and just this kind of like legal gray zone. But it actually seems like particularly in California, but in a number of these kind of more progressive areas, I think LA County, definitely Placer County, is starting to have regulation where you can actually do tiny homes and tiny homes on wheels as ADUs. Is that something that you're seeing? Getting more demand from those kinds of areas for these things? Just because, I imagine that simplifies some of the issues here.
New Frontier
You know, not really. I think I would like to market a little bit more to that. You know, the thing in the city is it can be actually more inexpensive more and more economical to just do a site built ADU. Then there's all these venture backed companies. It's amazing. How much venture you know? Yeah, just California and Silicon Valley, and these companies have tens of millions of dollars to build really cheap products on new business models.
Prefab Review
In LA there's a lot.
New Frontier
You know the new national business model is you burn money for tens of years and so you own the market share and then you actually have a business that works and put all the other small companies out of business which is really fun. But now you have so many of those that just offer really cheap, inexpensive products. And so it just remains that my clients have, especially with Covid, right, have this unbelievable exodus from cities, if not permanent. You know, you’re moving residences. Then at least this, because of a need to get out of nature, I can't do anything in a city. How do I do this? Oh, it takes 5 years to build on site. Let's do this. So, reconnecting people with nature which is a huge, important thing for me. And then yeah, that's mainly where my clientele comes from. I have done a bunch of enterprise projects like Disney, Dunkin Donuts, that was a cool one. We had a house that ran off coffee beans, spent coffee granules. But I've moved away from those. This has been really cool but they're just so much more time consuming. But again, it's usually a little bit higher net worth individuals, some celebrities and that's just the right fit for them.
Prefab Review
Cool. So you talked about how you're sort of transitioning to also doing design work on full size residences, how do you get into that and what's this data these days?
New Frontier
Yeah, so I had a little bit of background in that. I've always been really interested in the spaces that humans create. I love nature and wilderness. I'm most at home out in the woods or the mountains or whatever. So creating a space is sell a selling point. We spend most of our time indoors and most of our time in the home. So, It's a really sacred thing and I kind of dabbled in in and out. I worked in for Raloh Lauren and did some visuals and stores and then that Chicago experience with bars, restaurants, nightclubs. So I think it was naturally happening. I'm really interested in hospitality, creating experiences for people and most of those are site built stuff. So I think it was just a natural evolution. What really was a tipping point was 2 things. One, I'm self-taught. I've had some amazing mentors. So I’ve learned a lot just through trial and error and and having a few mentors and just sitting down and watching tutorials. Before covid actually hit, I got to a point where I'm like, “okay, I can actually start doing this remotely.” I can. I'm not going to have to outsource the entire going from idea to construction documents to getting it built. So that was going to happen anyway. When covid hit and lockdown hit and that panic of what's going to happen, a bunch of projects fell off. A bunch were put on hold. And I'm like, do I even have a viable business anymore? So I launched that to give me a whole new market. So I'm not totally confined to this one product, right? It's one product type and then it's a very limited niche market. So I announced it and got a few projects right away. They're really exciting, out here in West California. I went to Texas but it just made sense and then lockdown just made it like, “okay, I got to do this now” and that actually wound up being the best thing for demand we ever experienced for some of the reasons I alluded to earlier.
Prefab Review
That makes sense. This has been very cool. We're definitely on your site or Instagram, I don't know if I've seen if you've fully built any of those homes yet. I know it can take a while but excited to to see what it all looks like. We do you tens of homes a month with different clients and it's a lot of work. So I'm sure at least for us, I'm sure you're discovering that but just honestly like…
New Frontier
Yeah, it's a little bit of a slower timeline.
Prefab Review
My impression of one of the things that I'm very jealous of for you is, our biggest markets in terms of clients are outside of New York, outside of the Bay Area - Sonoma, Taho, and outside of the Los Angeles area. We do projects everywhere. And the permitting on some of those areas is not fast. So the nice thing about the tiny homes is it just seems like that is just less of a factor. Yeah I mean a lot of people kind of go under the radar. If you're in a more rural place it's and very private, no one knows. People care a lot less out there. But yeah, permits are awesome. Yeah, but anyway, I've seen probably 9 emails this week about revisions for drainage engineers and stuff like that. Which is all important but it just gets very minutae-y.
New Frontier
Yeah, fair.
Prefab Review
So moving on. It's been awesome learning a bit about your business and your journey. Anytime we have experts and interesting people in the field like you, we try to ask frequently asked questions. One is what differences do you make, like there's a couple photos on your site of your homes in colder areas. So we have lots of people who want to put these types of homes in areas that get cold or like outside of Jackson or Tahoe where there are 200 pound snow loads. What do you have to do differently for those areas, if you have experience with them?
New Frontier
Yeah, usually we just make it a pavilion and we tell people to get a bunch of hand warmers and just stuff them everywhere. No I don’t. The first project is in Idaho. I can't disclose where yet, but up in the wilderness.
Prefab Review
Yeah, we just did a a cool project in that area.
New Frontier
Idaho's actually, I can't talk about idaho because no one there wants anybody else to know how cool it is. But it is really cold, right? It's really cold. You have weeks and months where it can be negative 20. So one 2x6 framing, a lot more insulation, maybe a little bit of glass, less glass surface. But we do mini split which is how most people heat and cool them. Those are amazing products. The lowest temp you can get on those and then supplemental heat with a propane stove or propane fireplace. It has a thermostat on it and it cranks so much heat that it's like you're going to be hot at night, even in unlievably frigid temperatures. So there's little things you can do to glass, which is where most of your heat loss or gain comes from. If you get thick, plush curtains, it's crazy, I'm sure anybody who's been in cold places knows, but you get thicker curtains. It's crazy how much that blocks a lot of that cold air coming in or at least at least softens it a little bit, so just simple things like that.
Prefab Review
Got it, that makes sense. One question is we have a lot of people who see homes like yours and the idea of just buying them because there's a lot of people who who are doing these kind of like airbnb, sort of nonprofessional businesses, meaning they just own some land and they think this is a funky thing to do. Is that something that you end up doing a lot? And does that affect anything from like a use case perspective just because again, your homes are really cool, but, some of this stuff, in terms of putting pieces together, I could see it being in some ways really cool for Airbnbs but in other ways actually like a little complicated for people to do each and every time there's that sort of go into your calculus at all around Like. What makes sense for this use case?
New Frontier
Yeah, for sure. I mean, are you talking about from like a permitting/legality standpoint?
Prefab Review
No, from like is it going to be complicated for me to put together a dining room table or whatnot.
New Frontier
Oh yeah, no I think that always varies from situation to situation. But for short-term rentals, which we do have a fair amount of clients who use our products for that. I'll give a little plug that any client that does, that we will use our 120,000 social media follower base and our 15,000 person email list to promote those projects give them a lot of visibility that might take them a lot of money or a lot of time otherwise, but the short term rental is you just dumb them down, right? I mean that you simplify them. You don't need a full kitchen. It's a kitchenette. You don't need this much multifunctional furniture that could get banged up or whatever, so you just simplify. It's a place with great weather. In Southern California, outdoor space becomes your indoor space really easily, most of the year. But there's things like adding a dropdown table. You know, making something that's a little bit more fixed or finding a great third party item that works perfectly in this one little spot. So you solve problems for a specific situation you create. And you optimize for specific situations. But yeah, I mean the short-term rental thing, I mean the Orchid, you see how simple that is.That was created for short-term rentals and the Cornelia and the Luna could be modified to have a ground floor bedroom which really opens up a whole new market for you because you know, a lot of people don't want to stay in a loft, especially as you start to get older. And then having your own privacy and the separation of bedrooms and that does add huge value.
Prefab Review
Yeah, perfect. Last question and usually I take questions from the audience but actually this is a personal one. So it seems like you have a beautiful product and kind of got into the tiny home thing at the right time. We don't really have a physical practice in the same way, but we are visible in this sort of up and coming prefab and modular space. So we get hit up on our site like at least once or twice a month probably from different TV producers about like, “hey, you should do X or Y TV show about building prefab houses” and we mostly honestly ignore it just because it seems like amazing exposure but also a lot of work and potentially a distraction.
New Frontier
A massive pain in the neck. Yeah, well you could burn that word, “potentially distraction” and know that for sure without question, ensures gravity. It's going to be a distraction. It's matter of how devastatingly a distraction it is.
Prefab Review
What's your experience been like with all that stuff?
New Frontier
I mean one thing anybody who doesn't already know this, should know this about reality television, the only thing that's real is that you're actually watching a television show, right? So you're not hallucinating and those are actual humans on the show. Everything else is made up to varying degrees, Up to 97% made up. You know, 25% made up. So yeah, I mean building construction and filming go way worse than oil and water, right?
Prefab Review
Especially like your timing and cadence is a little different on tiny homes. For our homes, they can take sometimes 18 months or 24 months from the beginning to end.
New Frontier
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you have those to do one episode, you're gonna have at least three full days of filming. Yeah, I mean it's just so much a resource and time intensive to produce visual media like video. It's just a massively disruptive force. So yeah, for those things it depends on the show. But yeah, the shows that I was on was perfect. I didn't change a single thing. The show reflected my business, us doing our thing creating our product with no input from the network. You have these design competition shows and the whole point is maximize drama. So its facts, we need to massage or jus be dishonest about how we will maximize drama. So there are a lot of different types of shows out there. Some of them are like true documentary. Some of them are true reality/drama maximum thing. But yeah I think from having my first two models or two designs ever being on feature episodes on HGTV was huge from a credibility, visibility standpoint. My next two models could have been in the same situation and I was like, “I don't want to walk that process again.”
Prefab Review
Yeah, I'm trying Green Launch competitive.
New Frontier
But as far as shows, there's a show coming up on, I don't know if I can actually say, on a big network that's all about smaller spaces and smaller living. And I just filmed an episode of that which would be exciting. So there are shows out there that I'm really interested in. You know I think about raising awareness to pragmatic, actionable ways people can live smaller. Not this, you’ve got to sell everything and change your lifestyle entirely. It's like no, even if you just change your philosophy, right? Living smaller is a movement based in a philosophy for many people. So yeah, I mean the TV thing is cool.
Prefab Review
That's a good summary. Yeah, our take so far has been if we could guarantee a great outcome like yours, like this will go live, get exposure, and educate people. We would totally go through the trouble. And given that we cannot, it seems like a lot of work given that we're pretty busy on other stuff. But maybe that'll change as we get bigger. It just sounds like a lot of work.
New Frontier
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so let me modify that, because I don't want to throw people like under the bus or networks. I had amazing experiences. And I've turned down some that are not didn't get one that turned out to be one of the biggest blessings in my career because that show was a nightmare. But some of them, plenty of them are true documentary shows, right? They're just showing a slice of life people doing their thing that's amazing. That's part of what I want to do. And I know you are doing that with this podcast. Just exposing people to great ideas and products and concepts and ways to execute. So there are definitely the ones I've been a part of that are amazing. They're not the reality shows that I'm kind of philosophically opposed to, so let's clarify that.
Prefab Review
It's been great talking to you and learning about New Frontier. The final question that I ask everyone is, what are you most excited about for your company or sort of the industry in the near future?
New Frontier
Yeah, it's a good question. It's interesting you ask that because I'm kind of in the spot where I've really started to automate things in the back end and a large part of that is to free up time. So I can work on my business and not in it, meaning more high-level vision. What I want to be doing and accomplishing, and we don't want to be serving the next two years, five years, ten years. So I'm in this phase where I'm really thinking hard about that. I think ultimately, for me and especially our new real estate reality, it's insane. Like literal insanity what prices are doing all over the country. And then in these random, rural places that nobody knows about it's just insane. I think a big driver of that is wealthy individuals buying up real estate en-mass. But mainly it's the fact that institutional capital, Wall Street firms who are managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets are buying up the the whole damn country. So I don't I think there's going to be a correction. I don't think it's going to be much of one. And I think the new model will be really hard for the vast majority of americans to own homes. And so all that to say I think it's going to be a landlord model where Black Stone Capital is your landlord. So I think for smaller spaces, right, this is the future of sustainability for people. There's something really intimate and comforting about living in a small space. Right size living, not a bunch of dead square footage that you don't use. I think from a housing standpoint, this is going to be part of the future. I think urban and more rural. It's a lifestyle people want experience. That's a new social currency. But from a totally functional home is one of the most important things in our lives. I think it's going to offer home ownership opportunities. There's more modular, prefab, site built stuff. So that's a big thing. And then just reconnecting people to nature, right? That's a huge thing for me. As it starts to disappear more and more and as people, we’re married to our devices, into convenience and those things are very seducive and can take all our time and attention. So disconnecting people from that. Reconnecting to nature. One of the things I'm trying to get into is experiential hospitality, to create a a really cool, beautiful, real amazing, more rural, rustic. There's a bunch of concepts out there.
Prefab Review
Yeah, we had the guys from Mo Living on a few weeks ago and them doing something similar.
New Frontier
Yeah, there's an architect here that I'm working on some of these projects with named Matthew Royce, very talente,d great guy. So we're working on a concept. Yeah, allowing people to live their values and principles of here's what I want to do, here's who I am, here's what I'm about. I'm going to live this daily, right? I'm not gonna live in the future, being present, right? Presence is huge. Tomorrow never comes today. So just reconnecting people to themselves, to their values, to enjoying life day-to-day instead of some future day, once some XYZ is accomplished which never comes, it's a fantasy. So just that and providing an attainable method of housing for people. So hopefully that answers your question.
Prefab Review
You’re homes are very cool and do you have any homes in the Bay area?
New Frontier
So, I've got one in Sonoma now. It's a super simplified Luna and then I had some in the Santa Cruz mountains. There's a few other ones that are private that we wouldn't have shown but those were on airbnb, they're going to be again.
Prefab Review
Awesome. David it's been awesome talking and learning from you. For more information about David and New Frontier Design visit newfrontiersdesign.com and you can always visit us anytime at prefabreview.com. Thanks again.
New Frontier
Yeah, let me just give you all a plug, what you're doing is so important. I really appreciate it. I mean, spreading awareness is just so huge and so needed. So, way to be a megaphone for all these different companies and just sharing all these different ideas. Thank you for this opportunity. It's such an honor to be on your podcast and keep doing the good work. Alright, cheers.
Prefab Review
Well, that's really nice. Thanks again.