0:00 - Madeline
Okay, so you interviewed our number one fan recently.

0:03 - Andy
Apparently, yes.

0:04 - Andy
Kuda Ramsey. He's an architect and he said he's been listening to our show. He listened to the very first one and has been listening to it ever since. So that was pretty eye-opening, I guess, or also humbling that he told me that. So it was a fun show. What did you think? I really enjoyed it.

0:22 - Madeline
I thought he brought a lot of energy to the show. Five seconds in, I was already laughing. I think he mentioned something about y'all working at the same place at different times at one point.

0:36 - Andy
Yeah, so I did not know that, but we actually had one of the same first jobs. My first job was somewhere he worked. And he's an architect, so this was an engineering company. But that was what got him going into drafting and his career. So it was just interesting that we crossed paths, albeit at different times. Through that company, so that was a wild thing. And we're both in the same town, so we learned a lot of things, connections that we had. It was a fun show, and we say that we like to inspire, educate, entertain, but we hit on all three for sure. Definitely entertain. Educationally, I learned so much about things such as T and D. Is tradition, or TND, sorry, which is traditional new development. And basically, you'll learn more about it. It's really intriguing. It's putting the community first and not the car first. It's putting the people first, not the car first. So are we designing a house for people or cars? That's sort of a quick primer for it. So quite intriguing, quite interesting, very philosophical at times. Episode, but also fun and educational. So we really hit on all three, and not to mention some of these other points. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

2:02 - Madeline
Well, I think that about sums it up, actually.

2:05 - Andy
Let's shoot to the intro. Okay. My name is Andy Richardson. I'm a structural engineer, and this is my producer, Madeline, and this is the Enhanced AEC Podcast, where we learn the why of AEC professionals so that you can learn your why. Let's jump to the intro.

2:22 - Madeline
Welcome to Enhance, an AEC podcast where we learn the why behind AEC professionals so that you can learn your why. Well, welcome to the Enhance podcast. Thank you. Good to have you on here.

2:34 - Andy
It's great to be here. Definitely. I've been looking forward to having you on for a while. Did you see that?

2:41 - Cooter
I don't know if I was a first listener or early on, but I was in there early. Really? I've been following it the whole time. I mean, it's exciting to, you don't have the most exciting of job titles, right? You're a structural engineer. We don't expect you to be a creative guy in the room. But yeah, it's great that you're doing this.

3:05 - Andy
I love it.

3:06 - Cooter
I haven't seen them all yet, but I bet I'd see more than most.

3:11 - Andy
Probably your number one fan. Oh, awesome. Well, that's cool, man. I'm happily surprised by that. So it's just something I enjoy doing and enjoy learning from people like you and in the community, Beaufort and beyond. Really have focused a lot on Beaufort the first several episodes, but we hope to go outside of Beaufort and South Carolina even. So I like to start out, you're a listener, so you know I like to start out with a curveball opener, so I got one for you today. Oh, good, good, good. The show Survivor. I don't know if you remember that show. I do, from way back.

3:51 - Cooter
I haven't seen it in a long time, though.

3:54 - Andy
Yeah, so I don't know if it still comes on, but let's imagine that you wake up tomorrow as a contestant on Survivor. Okay. And you can use your architectural skills. What architectural skills would help you, and how would you use those on that show?

4:10 - Cooter
That's a great one. Listen, I will say, though, I love to repurpose stuff. So I do think that I could scrounge. I could find lots of random things and be able to take care of myself with things and reuse them in different ways. My wife hates it, right? Because I can't throw anything away. Like, oh, you know, I could turn that tire into a seat cushion in the future. I don't want to get rid of that. So I think I'd be all right from a repurposing, you know, kind of bringing something back to life perspective.

4:42 - Andy
Yeah, awesome.

4:43 - Andy
That's definitely a curveball. I didn't expect that at all.

4:48 - Cooter
Well, I had a little help with AI.

4:51 - Andy
But no, thanks for playing along. So yeah, going kind of more traditional like as far as your background and things, but I wanted to get a sense of some inspiration that you've had from, you know, maybe artists or obviously architects that have inspired you. It could be people that you had in school, or it may be your mentors, but what are some inspirations that really have given you what your skills are?

5:22 - Andy
I can actually tie this right back into some of your podcasts.

5:26 - Cooter
So, you've had Stoney on, right? Stoney and I have been friends forever, and we used to joke that we were going to do a radio show together when we worked together because we worked together early on while he was actually doing bridge work still, he and I were drafting together. And we used to joke all the time that we were gonna do a radio show together. So that's why you started this podcast, right? I talk about things all the time and I never take action on it. So it's nice to see somebody take action. So Stoney and I have had a fantastic relationship forever, joked about that stuff. But then the other one is you had Joel Newman on. And I love Joel. He's awesome. The firm that he runs here in town, Thomas & Denzinger, Jimmy Thomas is an idol of mine. So when I was just before starting architecture school, when I was just kind of starting to get there, I noticed in Beaufort specific buildings and they always kind of resonated with me, right? And later after going to school, after kind of learning more about architecture, after understanding things, come to find out they were all done by Jimmy. Jimmy Thomas. So, he was a big idol of mine at the very beginning. Kind of inspired me to do a little bit better. I don't even know him, but I've loved his architecture for a long time, and I can see his mentorship in Joel and what Joel does today.

6:54 - Cooter
So, it's pretty good.

6:56 - Andy
Yeah, there's a certain touch. It's like a certain touch that architects bring, and it's really cool. So, are you now One of the things I really like, I mean you're right down the road from me. I mean we're literally on the same street, Charles Street, and Joel's across the street as well, but we don't get to talk as much as we would like, so it's really one of the things I've really enjoyed is just getting to know people better and getting to know your story, so I guess like your background. What is your background? I don't even know. Are you from I am.

7:33 - Cooter
Born and raised in Beaufort. This is home. I love it. Tried to escape a few times. Always pulled back. Anytime I have had that itch that I needed to go someplace and do something different, Beaufort always calls us back. I love it here. I was even here for architecture school. I went to Savannah College of Art and Design, so I commuted from Beaufort to go to school. So yeah, this is it for me. Background-wise, and we have so much to talk about, I don't want to take up a bunch of time with background stuff.

8:09 - Andy
This is about you, man.

8:11 - Cooter
Oh, thanks. This is going to be a long show, but I love to talk about myself. Background-wise, though, I actually, I was really fortunate to get a lot of different folks guiding me early on, right? So one of my very first, well actually, one of my very first jobs was in a nail factory. And I realized I needed to go get a career, right? I was sorting nails and realized that this wasn't gonna be very good for me in the long run. So I did decide to go to school, went to architecture school. While going to architecture school, I actually worked for Nivens Engineering here locally.

8:51 - Andy
Yeah, and it was- I didn't know that. It was- That was my first job. You worked at Nivens? Yeah, 1998 is when I started there.

9:01 - Andy
No way!

9:02 - Andy
Yeah, so I didn't know we had that in common.

9:06 - Cooter
That's pretty hilarious. So 98, well 98 is when we became Allison Ramsey Architects, so I had already, I was long gone out of Nivens. That's pretty funny. So my first real job, my first introduction was actually through Nivens Engineering, and it was picture-perfect like it couldn't have been any better for me because at the time Hugo had just come through Devastated a lot of areas. I had gone to high school with Kirk's son. Okay, and I was you know, I was college I was 18 years old and Kirk called and said we've got an opening on our survey crew, but it's in Orangeburg There's a plant up there the roof fell down. There's a lot of stuff going on. I hear you're interested in becoming an architect architect, it'd probably be good for you." And I was like, wow, let's do it. I was cutting trees at the time for a tree company, right? So it was fantastic. So I took the job. I went to Orangeburg on the survey crew, thinking I was going to be a surveyor and learn more about structural engineering and mechanical engineering than you could ever imagine, right? Like we were inside of this plant. We were measuring deflection in the floor joists. We were doing topographic surveys of acres of flat rooftops and finding where drains were. I mean, it was crazy. It was so good. Steve Andrews actually worked for Nivens at the time. And I got to meet Steve and we became great associates forever. And just through that one connection, so many doors opened and so many opportunities opened out of that. It really was kind of eye-opening. I learned surveying. I got to understand what mechanical engineering was. They had a guy named Rick that was a mechanical engineer that was designing rails for them for the lawnmowers, a lawnmower plant. And he was building conveyor systems through the paint booths and all of this highly technical stuff. And we were laying them out and using steel tapes and doing all this crazy. I was the Rodman, so I was on the dumb end. Of every item, but it was so good. It was such a good learning experience. Then later, did more and more survey with them, and then eventually left, started doing other kind of drafting for other folks, and it took off.

11:30 - Andy
Yeah, and so all during this time, you were in college, or that was put you through college? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, driving all the way to Orangeburg, and then back down to Savannah.

11:40 - Cooter
Yeah, it was a lot of road time, but we stayed in in Orangeburg for probably a solid year. We'd be up there during the week, come home for weekends, back up there during the week working. So it was an interesting beginning point. Really good. Yeah, that's really wild. I mean, I didn't know that.

12:02 - Andy
And I'm definitely familiar with those plants up there in Orangeburg. I mean, I did painting and welding. Really? Cutting. I didn't weld, but I cut steel I was the same thing as you. When it came to engineering, I could design it, but then when it came into like, hey, we got to get, sometimes it would get to a situation where, because it's a design build type situation, and we would get where we got to get a job out. I remember we did an all weekend thing on Thanksgiving weekend. That's hilarious.

12:34 - Cooter
Because they were like all hands on deck. Well, that was the motto for the company, right? He would use you for whatever you could, right? That way, I mean, to me, it was amazing, right? I learned how to put in concrete floor drains in a seafood plant, like all kinds of stuff that I would never have been exposed to. It was incredible.

12:56 - Andy
It was a good time. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, you went to SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design. I mean, SCAD's been around for a while, and I imagine it's evolved quite a bit.

13:08 - Cooter
Yeah, it's a good bit different. When I went there, they weren't fully accredited. They were actually going through their process. So I kind of went in on chance, came out ahead of the game. I actually ended up getting a master's degree, even though I didn't even know I was going through a master's program. So when they did get their final accreditation, we ended up getting kind of back accredited, which was pretty nice. We joke about it, my classmates. Because I literally got my master's degree in the mail, right? Like it just showed up a couple of years later.

13:45 - Andy
And you didn't even know you were getting it.

13:47 - Cooter
It was like... Bonus. We paid for it. Don't worry. Oh, yeah.

13:50 - Andy
What did you think? I mean, is this a mistake?

13:53 - Cooter
Yeah, I thought it was fake. I really did. Until my classmates were like, hey, I just got a master's degree in the mail. And I was like, I did too. And it turned out, yeah, the program we had gone through was a master's program. They just couldn't tell us because it wasn't fully accredited. It at the time, so it was good.

14:11 - Andy
Yeah, that's really cool, and I went down to Savannah from time to time. I mean, I do work down there, obviously, but I also went and watched the Savannah or SCAD story, so it talks all about the story and how Paula Wallace developed SCAD. I mean, a lot of people around here know what SCAD is, but some people aren't familiar with it. Do you think that's a unique in terms of like compared to the national scene?

14:40 - Cooter
I don't know about now. It was really small and personal when I was there. You knew the Paula and her husband's story and the things that were going on at the time. There was a lot of feuding and fighting going on. There was lots of turmoil with professors over tenureship. There was a lot of stuff going on when I was in school there. I don't think it's like that.

15:07 - Andy
Yeah, well I'm referring more to like the creativity, like it would seem to be a cutting-edge concept at the time.

15:14 - Cooter
You know, I would say, and I'm not saying this to my benefit, but I think the answer is yes. I don't have artistic abilities, right? Like I'm not naturally an artist, and I am definitely more of a technical-minded person, right? Like, you know, give me a straight edge, give me specific, you know, dimensions, and I can be comfortable. I don't like to bend those rules necessarily. And they actually did teach design. And I would never have thought that it was something, you know, I always felt like that was just something you had, right? Creative types, they have it, they're good at it, it's what they do, but they actually teach design. And yeah, it was great, it was great. So, you know, I went in, to the rooms, and everybody would have these beautiful drawings on the wall, and their freehand drawing, and just magnificent stuff, and I'm using AutoCAD and drawing straight lines and stick people. I came from a completely different mindset, but when I got to the other end of that, to actually understand design and understand how to get there, it was impressive. It was great.

16:24 - Andy
Yeah, so is that a process that's something you can learn?

16:27 - Cooter
It is. It is. At least I think it is. It's done pretty well for us. Yeah.

16:34 - Andy
I mean, as far as like, okay, I can learn design.

16:38 - Cooter
Yeah. And they teach you that it's in everything, right? And you know this just with your podcast. You actually take those same lessons and you apply them to everything you do. You have a concept in your logo that carries through to your six Es and that's design. That's it, and you can learn it, and you can apply it to everything.

17:03 - Andy
Well, I didn't create the logo, but there's things in you that you want to get out, and that's what's really cool about an architect, and what you guys do is you're able to take these ideas that people have a lot of times, and you guys have an interesting business model, which we'll definitely get into that, but I mean, I think you do some custom work, too. We do. Right? So, meaning custom architecture. So, in those scenarios, you're working with a custom homeowner that, hey, we want to build this. And how do you get that idea out of their brain and on the paper and then ultimately in real life? Yeah. So, how does that work?

17:45 - Cooter
It's so much easier today than it used to be. And to kind of bring all of this full story, I met my business partner, Bill Allison, in 1993. And I met him through Steve Andrews. Steve Andrews introduced me to him, said, this guy's a new architect in town. He needs someone like you to help him out. He's got the talent. He's going somewhere. You need to stick close to him. So he actually made the connection between me and Bill, which has been fantastic. I can't thank him enough for it. And Bill really did have the typical architect brain. He has the creativeness. He's the best house designer I've ever met in my life. He can look at something. He can draw it. He can get it just right. The proportions are there. It's just in him. It's not in me like that, but I had the tools and the systems and the ideas to be able to put it all back together. We were a nice match at the beginning, but he also had a belief that he wanted everybody to be able to afford an architect. He didn't want to only work for an elite few that could spend big bucks to have someone do a custom house for him. So early on, his mindset was, I'm gonna do a custom house for somebody, but I'm not gonna then just put it on the shelf. I'm gonna put it to use, I'm gonna show it to others, I'm gonna offer it to sell, I'm gonna take it to builders, and I'm going to provide a different way for folks to get into better housing. And that was his concept at the beginning, And once I got to understand him and what he was trying to do, I was like, wow, this is great. This guy, he gets it. This is a different path. It's not your traditional way of doing architecture. It's not gonna be one house a year. He wants to actually change things. And that was inspiring to me because I had the same, even though I didn't know it, I had the same passion inside. I wanted to make a difference in housing. I didn't want to just do capital way houses and picture perfect, absolutely diamond of a house. I wanted to, you know, got to mic check. Yeah, mic check, yeah. Sorry to interrupt. That's okay. So that is where we began and that is kind of still to this day, that's what we're still trying to do, right? One of our house plans that we sell online and we do sell a ton of house plans online, but they're all custom houses at the beginning, right? They were done for a client, for a specific site, for a specific need in a more traditional architectural way. But once we're done, if it's a good house, we put it out there for others to take advantage of it, right? So, you know, and this is where architects struggle with what we do, right? Like as a, as a profession, you know, when, when other architects look at what we do, they just don't understand it. How could you possibly charge one guy $40,000 to do this house and then turn around and sell it for $1,750 on the website? And we do. And it is bizarre, right?

21:00 - Cooter
I mean, yeah, I guess so.

21:02 - Cooter
It's absolutely crazy, but it does offer a different way to folks that can't spend $40,000 to have a house design. I mean, we could just custom houses, but we believe that that design and that better design should be more accessible to everybody, right? We used to joke it's kind of like the airbag, right? Nobody had airbags and then the airbag was invented and it got put in. Now everybody has airbags. It's just standard, right? It saves lives and it makes sense and we kind of feel that same way about our houses, right? If we can do a better house and we can get it out there to everybody, it raises every It just improves the playing field for all. So that's kind of where we began in the idea that we were going to sell stock house plans. We were going to make house plans available. We don't sell as many straight stock house plans as you would think. Our main business is somebody finds it, and it's almost perfect, but it's never perfect. They like it, but they need to move the master bedroom over two feet, or they need to change the bathroom. Or they don't want 10-foot ceilings, they want 11-foot ceilings. There's always something that's not quite right, so we tend to modify them. And it just feeds the engine, right? So we make that change for them, that same plan goes back online, somebody else sees it, and it just builds a giant portfolio of better housing for folks out there.

22:27 - Andy
I mean, it sounds like an amazing business model.

22:30 - Cooter
It's turned out to be a pretty great business model. Yeah, yeah, so that's really cool. And we've got a long way to go, right? Yeah. Now starting to understand it. That's awesome.

22:40 - Andy
So I want to go back to the $40,000. Not to get too tied up in that specific number, but the guy who buys the original house, and I'm just trying to understand, how does that work? I mean, you have an agreement, I imagine, with him. Does that favor him at all to go to a different architect versus you guys? Or what's the benefit to him?

23:06 - Cooter
The benefit is it's still half of if he went and hired a different architect. So we do adjust our fee knowing that if it's a good house, it's going to provide income for us down the road. So when you get into the apples to apples, we're still a better deal than some other architects.

23:31 - Cooter
But it does come with that catch, right?

23:34 - Cooter
Like, you know, it's not just for you. We're not going to stick it on a shelf. When we're done, we're going to put it on our website. We're going to sell it again. It's our concept. It's our plans. It's our copyright. We own it. You don't own it. We're letting you build it. But no, this is part of a different system. And folks that want a one-off, we offer them the price. They usually don't pay They kind of go, well, this is a custom house for me, and I want it, and it's not that big of a deal. And they sign up anyway. But they have the right to not, right? They could certainly go and hire a different firm and get a different house done. But if they have seen what we do and how we do it, they're typically our clients and understand our business model and have no problem signing up. Moving ahead with it.

24:26 - Andy
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. There's some other benefits in there, too.

24:31 - Cooter
Each house is not a prototype, right? When you sit down and you design a house from scratch, it's the first time that thing's been built. There's some learning curves in there, right? We're all human. There's mistakes in there. There's things you don't catch. When you're on the version of it, you got all those bugs worked out, right? All of those little things are gone, so it's not your one-of-a-kind house, but you're getting a better house in the end, right? As long as it's not next door to your neighbor, no harm, no foul, typically. Yeah.

25:10 - Andy
Now, that was the question I was going to ask, next door to your neighbor. Do you have any criteria for that? No, but we've actually had that happen before.

25:20 - Cooter
Like literally neighbor? Embarrassing thing that you would ever have happen. We literally doing a house for somebody, finish it, they're taking their time to build it, it goes online, somebody else buys it and starts it, and sure enough, right next door. Built their house before they had even built their house, and it was, that hurt. Because that's not the intent, right? What we're going for. Once you put it on the web, though, it's kind of hard to control, right?

25:55 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, we've gone through that process with a different plan book company, and they were pretty hardcore about that. I don't know how they governed it or whatever, but they wanted us to send stuff back to them, and the exact plan. Because I got the CAD files, and I was like, I'm changing. Because I can know how to use AutoCAD, so I was like, I can just change a couple things. I don't need to pay you the architectural fee, but do you allow that? I mean, do you allow people? You don't allow them to do that, the AutoCAD?

26:28 - Cooter
No, we don't sell our AutoCAD file, but they are allowed to buy the right to build it and go and build it, make any modifications they want, but we don't sell the CAD file. It's kind of our advantage, right? Sure, that makes sense. Yeah, because we offer the services, and honestly, we like to think we can do them better than most can. We know our system, we know our files, we know our houses, we know what's good, we know what's bad. We can typically offer up insights to folks that they don't know about. Hey, you probably shouldn't move that window to here because of this, this, and this. So they can definitely just buy the plan and go and build it, buy the plan, have somebody else do modifications for them. That's all fair game, but we usually don't make it very easy for them, because we want to do that work.

27:17 - Andy
Yeah, right, right. That makes sense. And we've worked on a lot of your plans as our, you know, 2096, so.

27:23 - Cooter
We share our files with all the associates that need it, right? Yeah. Because, you know, you need it to work on.

27:29 - Andy
Sure, sure. Because we're doing, I mean, down here, as you well know, I mean, you have to have structural done for the wind loads. We're in a high wind area and you work in, so the interesting thing about your work is you're all over the country, all over the world. I mean, you're doing stuff not just in this continental U.S., right? But there's different criteria and structural criteria. These dang structural. Because if it weren't for the structural, you could probably just sell it anywhere, right?

27:59 - Cooter
I suppose. Well, we do sell them anywhere. Back in, oh gosh, it was a long time ago, probably like 96, we actually started doing our plans differently. Before exactly that reason. So, you know, when we first started doing our house plans, we would call out the typical stuff that everyone would call out, right? Okay, it's a two foot wide footing. It's 12 inches thick. It's got three number five bars in it. And we're going to do a number five bar hook at eight inches on center. And I mean, we would call out the basics that the code would prescribe. And then somebody would wisely hire a structural engineer. And the structural engineer would go, Oh, well, we just need number four in here we don't need number five bars in here and he would do his plans and then our phone would start ringing hey I need a letter from you your plans call out number five bar structural engineer says I only need number four bar I want to use number four bar I need a letter because the building department says you know there's a conflict here so after a couple of thousand of those phone calls you realize hey you know maybe we shouldn't do this this way so we still draw everything the same way but we don't call out any of the structural information anymore. It either references the International Residential Code, you can either find it in the code and build per the code, or you have to hire a structural engineer, and that pretty much takes care of everybody everywhere. There's still, and you know this because you're in the business, there's still some tricks and some finagling you have to do, but for the most part, the moment we started doing that, the phone stopped ringing. The conflicts went away. Right because it was always either see what the code says about this or see the structural engineering drawings and Voila conflict is gone. The structural engineering drawings say number five bar. So I'm gonna use three number five bar So it's it's been a very simple move We made a long time ago that really and it goes all the way through the house. We don't call out rafter sizes We don't call out stud sizes. You know, we will draw everything two by six but you'll never find where it says 2x6 is at 16 inches on center because I really don't know if that's the right answer. You do. And if you say 2x6 is at 12 inches on center, well, go by that. Don't go by me. I'm not a structural engineer. So we dumbed down our plans and we caught a lot of grief over it. A lot of builders were like, there's nothing on here. But there's nothing wrong on there. And that's what's even better. Right? There might not be all the information you need but it's not the wrong information and the wrong information on that set of plans causes problems.

30:42 - Andy
Yeah I mean it's I find it to be helpful you know to have that you know the lack of conflict you know obviously that's that's our business so we can just go right into it we don't have to say hey let's delete this or that so but I do want to talk about the the thing that you were mentioning earlier regarding continuous improvement. Actually, we had Lucas Han on here talking about continuous improvement, but I was curious if you're using any techniques. How do you improve from plan A to plan Z 26 times or 10 times? Are you using technology? Are you using a sticky note? How do you make sure that, hey, this didn't work out the best, We really like this. How do we get that to the plan B and so forth?

31:35 - Cooter
Like how do you incorporate that? Yeah, so that is actually still a problem for us, right? There's a lot of kind of just old experience that other folks in the firm don't know that, you know, me and Bill and Bill know because 25 years ago I had to pay for an elevator shaft because it didn't come through the roof in the right spot, right? Like, so So it is tough to get some of that. A lot of it's in training and just making sure everybody's checking things that they need to check. But for the most part, you can tell when you look at the house and the drawing, you know if it's been updated or not. You kind of go, hey, we have a better version of this that we need to talk about. Or I can show you a better version. But our improvements have been more in what are we going to do next? It better and easier for people and you know how do we how do we put it in their hands and and that's really what we've been kind of focused on for a while now right like some of the changes that that we've made so one of the so one of the things I tell this story I tell this story too often I at one point in in life I was going through a module modular plant. Because we've looked for every silver bullet out there. Precast concrete panels, pre-built wood panels that we're going to tilt up, modular. You name it, SIPs. We've done them all. We've played around with every building, maybe not every, but most every building technique that's out there. And we were always looking for the silver bullet too. And it really doesn't exist. But there are certain work better than others. But at one point, I was going through a modular plant. And the foreman on the site was showing me around. And he's taking me through and he's showing me all the things. And, you know, I asked him, how long have you been here? And he's like, I've been here 30 years. I'm like, Whoa, so 30 years, this guy's been building modulars, right? And they're kind of new to me at this point, right? Who knows when this was, it might have been 98, something like that. It might have been 2000. And I go, wow, what so how much have you seen that is different over your 30 years of doing this? He's been in this same plant for 30 years. And he stands up straight and he goes, you see that table over there? I said, yeah. He goes, 40 foot, perfectly flat. I said, okay. And he goes, and we use a different kind of glue now. He was dead serious. And at that moment I kind of said to myself, wow, that's the construction industry in a nutshell, right? And when I'm 30 years into this, I hope I can say more than, well, we don't use blueprints anymore, right? Like, what's different? What have you done differently, Cooter? Well, we don't use blueprints anymore. Now we can just make black and white copies of everything. For the technology that's out there, we're really pathetic, right? And I hate to say it, but I'm actually at 30 years now. And I can't say that I've evolved anywhere near as much as I've been trying to evolve, but we're still working towards it. We're still trying to, right? So we do have some things that we're doing differently. We've got new things that we're trying to do differently. So, you know, at one point in, I don't know how many years ago this was, but at one point I was actually shopping for a bicycle. So I decided I was going to ride my bike to work. I wanted to get a little healthier. I wanted to just be better about life in general, and I didn't like the car in the first place. So I spent days going to every bike shop in Savannah, every bike shop in Beaufort. I'm trying to find the right bike, right? Everybody I talked to, they'd ask me these questions. They'd tell me this, tell me that, and I don't know what I'm doing. I've never gotten a bike, right? So I don't know what the right bike is. Got this guy telling me to buy this bike. I got this guy telling me to buy that bike. I got a guy telling me to buy this bike. Finally, I kind of narrowed it down to two bikes that I thought were the right bike for what I wanted to do. Of course, I'm a shopper, right? So of course, I get on the internet and I gotta shop the internet to try to find the best deal now, right? I'm looking at these two bikes. And I run across this little thing on one of the bikes. I don't remember the brand, and it was called Bike Match. And it was, take this little quiz, and we're gonna find you the right bike. And it was the dumbest, funnest little quiz I ever took in my life, right? It was like, okay, how hard do you wanna ride, right? Like, hey, I really wanna, and there were graphic images that went along with it, and funny little things. But it did ask you questions to kind of find out what kind of cyclist you wanted to be, right? Are you gonna be an intense guy, Are you just looking to ride a half a mile to work? When I made it to the end of the quiz, two bikes showed up and it turned out to be the two bikes that I had on my short list. And at that moment I said, why can't I do this for houses? People that want to do a house, they go through the exact same thing. Imagine trying to find the right house. Where do you begin? Who do you ask? You ask all these people. You don't know where to start. So, we did a stupid little quiz called House Match. Back in the day, it was a little quiz you would take and you would answer these questions that we had built. And it was the questions that I would ask everybody I called, right? Folks would call me and I'd say, okay, well, how big of a house do you want? Oh, you're looking for to the house in square feet. Oh, do you have any views? Do you have any views out the back? Do you want your living room on the back? You want the master bedroom on the back? Do you need an attached garage? There's a standard things that I would ask them so that I could start finding a house plan to show them and to say, Hey, what do you think about this? So we basically built that same quiz online and I would just direct people to the house match quiz. Just take this little quiz. Now, when we first did it, we weren't very technically savvy. So that quiz would get emailed to me. And then I would look through it and I would go, Oh, I know what they're looking for. And I'd go into the database. And I'd find 10, 15 houses and I'd put in an email and I'd send it over to them. But it worked, right? So now we actually have that quiz on our website. It's tailored to our plans and you get in there and you fill it out. And when you get to the end of it, it shows you the houses that fit the criteria, right? So here's the number one house for you based off of what you put in there. And it's turned out to be a great starting point for folks. Is it the perfect house? Rarely, right? Does it have the basic parameters that get people thinking in the right direction? Yeah, almost every single time. So, you know, we do a follow-up and we usually, you know, we probably get three to 400 inquiries like that a month, right, of folks doing the quiz. And we follow back up with them and we get survey answers back. Did you like it? Did it work? Did you find your house plant? And it's had a remarkable success rate, people. So, folks do love it and sometimes it works, finds the right house, they click the buy it now button and life is great. Typically, it just gets them started down the path. I want to take that into the future, of course, right? Like, not only do I want to put the house in front of them, I want to give them the ability to fix it. Oh, I like this house, but it'd be a lot better if it were Craftsman, right? Like, that technology is there and it's coming and we've got to embrace it and engage it and use it AI is amazing, the things that it can do. It's not going to replace architects. I know a lot of architects are scared to death. It's not going to replace us, but man, it can make us so much better, right? In the future, I hope that someone can come to my website and just type in what they're dreaming about. Hey, this is what I'm dreaming about. I want a beach house that's got four bedrooms, and it's got this, and it's got that, and it kind of looks like this, and voila, here it is. There are image generators that can do that. It's close. It's close.

40:00 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, it's every day. It's like a new story. It's like, what's the next thing? 2025, we're starting to see AI agents, and I can see that applying to what you're talking about. I had one I saw on LinkedIn yesterday, and it was like a phone number. You call it, and it's like talking to a human. It's amazing. It is amazing. I don't know. I could even imagine something like that for what you're talking about. Instead of calling Cooter, you call this agent, and then all those things are answered, and then it does this for you.

40:38 - Cooter
It's so close, and there are companies that already do it. There is an incredible shed company that you can get online. You can literally customize your own shed. You can move your doors around, is around the whole time you're building your shed, it's telling you how much it costs in the right-hand corner, right? Oh, I added a window, there goes another $200. So it's live keeping up with you. You make a change, you see the impact of the change, right? So when you get to the end of doing that, you can literally hit the Buy It Now button. There's a guy in Walterboro that calls you up and says, when do you want it delivered? Like, it's phenomenal. And I wanna do that with houses. Why aren't we doing that with houses, right? A lot of folks think it's too complicated. There's too many variables. There's too much. You can't do it with a house, but you can, and we'll get it there soon.

41:30 - Andy
You got to start somewhere. Oh, yeah. Definitely. I agree with that. I want to keep going down this path as far as you guys are making a lot of improvements. You have ideas. You've really been innovative from day one with Alice and Ramsey, but what else is for you guys right now?

41:48 - Cooter
You know, our typical process is really kind of dialed in and I don't want to say it's the best it's ever going to be. We're changing it daily, but we actually finally understand it, right? Like we're 30 years into this now and I think we're pretty good. We're not perfect. We're not perfect, but we're getting pretty good. So, you know, if you find a plan of ours online, and you want to, you know, it's a house that interests you, if you contact us, go through our process, listen to us, let us guide you all the way through how you get to the end result, it's simple, it's easy, it's not that complicated, it's not that paralyzing, and you'll get a good end result. I mean, we really have, you know, we've goofed up so much that you can benefit from it now.

42:42 - Andy
Hey, that makes sense.

42:43 - Andy
So, let's talk about that a little bit more. I mean, as far as you gooped up. I mean, what are some setbacks or struggles in your career? You name it.

42:52 - Andy
I mean, they're all good, right?

42:54 - Cooter
Like, they were painful at the time, but now that we're on the other side of them, every mistake that we've ever made, it's just made us so much better. You know, I joked about the elevator, but that was one of the early ones, right? You know, we had an elevator in a one and a half story house and we didn't account for the fact that we needed room above the cab for the elevator to actually be able to fit and to be able to pull it out in the future. And we ended up having to build a dormer on the side of this house for the elevator. And we ended up paying for that, right? You can't pass those kind of errors along to your customer. Oh, sorry for you. Now you get to build a $15,000 dormer to cover a mistake. So mistakes like that, make us a lot wiser down the road. We've dealt with so many flood zone issues. You know, we've never had anything disastrous happen, knock on wood, right? You know, we've been tested in hurricane areas, but typically we put all of that work on the structural engineer. Luckily, our houses are always there when it's over. So the structural engineers are doing a remarkable job out there. But yeah, you know, typical mistakes like that. And because we're still very simple in how we do things, we still make a lot of those coordination errors. You know, we're not fully BIM. We're not fully integrated. So we look like we do everything in 3D. If you, from the outside, it looks like, oh, wow, all you got to do is move that wall and everything gets done for you. But in reality, none of that happens for us. We are still, you know, we change the plan, we change the elevation, we change the roof Like, we're still 2D drafting our construction documents, and that does leave us open to some of those errors that a lot of folks aren't subject to anymore, right? You know, when you're in Revit and you move this wall, it kind of moves most things with you. You can still make errors, but those types of errors have typically gone away with full BIM. But, you know, we've got house plans that are 30 years old that we might sell once every five years, so we can't go back in and change 4,000 house plans at once into full 3D models. We're kind of progressing out of that and getting better in those arenas as well. We do have this cool little configurator that we've built. Again, with the theme of putting the power into the hands of our customer, we now have the ability to, when we do a 3D model for our clients, we can actually load it into the little configurator that we've built that allows the client to change materials and colors and really customize the entire house. So, you know, if they want to see what does this look like with a metal roof, they just change it to metal roof. That's cool. We don't want blue shutters, we want red shutters. They can click it and change the color of the shutters and it's fun. It's fun to be able to kind of get it to the point where we can put it in your hands and let you really make it happen, right? Because we're really there for guides. We're not there to tell you, oh, you should have a white house with black windows and this metal roof. It's, you know, what house do you want?

46:10 - Andy
Let's just help you get it there. Right, right. That makes sense. So, we started out talking about, you know, style or that you could almost see that, you know, and I can see the Alison Ramsey style. I mean, I'm driving around. I'm like, oh, there's Alison Ramsey house right there.

46:26 - Andy
It seems like that hurts a little bit.

46:29 - Cooter
I hope you Oh, wow.

46:30 - Andy
No, it's okay. That's not a compliment. I'm sorry.

46:34 - Cooter
It's not. It's not. I mean, we truly believe our houses should fit in, right? And, you know, we like to look at context wherever we're working and make sure our house belongs in that context. So, you know, when we're in Oklahoma, you know, the beauty of Google and Street View, right? Like, I can have a client call me and be somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma and give me their address and I can literally immediately go into Google and look at their street and look at what's built around them, right? So I can be on site in seconds now compared to the old days where they might send me a few pictures. But we like to look at that and respond to it, right? So back to the typical architect's role, like we believe in context, we believe in local vernacular. I try to educate everybody one of my clients on that type of stuff. So, when someone is doing a house in a certain area, I want them to respond to that. I want them to make sure the vernacular is right. I want them to make sure that the context is right, that they're not out of whack with what's going on there. So, I hope that you really don't get to where you can identify a signature.

47:48 - Andy
Well, I would think that, on the other hand, I am in the low country. There is a certain certain vernacular associated with this, and you guys are responding to it, so the things that I'm seeing are, but there is an Allison Ramsey twist probably. There can be.

48:03 - Cooter
There can be.

48:03 - Cooter
The metal roof is kind of one of those things.

48:06 - Andy
The St. Helena is one of my favorite, by the way. I see that, and I'm like, okay.

48:12 - Cooter
That's a fun house.

48:13 - Andy
There's some of them. I love the metal roof. That tends to be one thing that I see a lot of, but that does go with the low style a lot, but I'm somebody who appreciates architecture. I did one semester, and then I went to engineering, but I appreciate it, so I love learning about it and talking about it, so I appreciate what you guys are doing in terms of, it makes a lot of sense what you're saying, trying to adapt to Oklahoma or Buford or et cetera.

48:47 - Cooter
And it is funny because I do believe that, I think Eric Brown was the first person I heard say this, I don't know if you know Eric or not, but he's in Savannah now, used to be local here in Buford, he's an architect. He used to say that Buford's biggest export is architecture, and it sort of is, right? All of our houses are rooted in Buford, right? When you kind of see them and you see most of our style and most of the houses we They really are kind of rooted in Beaufort, rooted in low country vernacular. And we sell them all over the place, right? And we're not the only ones. Eric Moser does a similar type of work as us, similar type of style, and he works all over the country as well. So it really is kind of funny that little Beaufort is kind of pushing architecture out all over the country.

49:44 - Andy
Yeah, that's pretty awesome. It's fun. So I want to talk a little bit about T&D. That's a big deal for you guys, right? It is. Can you talk about that?

49:57 - Cooter
What is it, and how does that impact the community? Yeah, so you asked at the very beginning about an idol or a mentor, and that's probably, outside of Jimmy Thomas, locally with architecture, for sure one of the most influential person that I've ever met in my life is a guy named Andres Duane. And he is a new urbanist that was responsible for doing seaside and kind of really one of the early founders of the new urbanist movement and TNDs, traditional neighborhood developments and all of that. And I first, I don't know how long ago it was, but I watched a presentation that he gave for a project in Columbia, South Carolina. It was just such common sense, Andy. He just got up there and he talked about the basics of how you live in a house, right? Like, hey, what's wrong with us giving people a nice private backyard where they can have a garage back there and they can have a little pool between their garage and their house and they can have a courtyard space back there, but they still have a front porch that's actually on a sidewalk and some neighbor might actually walk by and wave to them and talk to them rather than being 40 feet away from them because We've got two cars parked between the house and the street, and they're walking in the street because there is no sidewalk." And he really just drove home how wrong everything we were doing is. We used to know how to do proper development, and all of that knowledge just disappeared. It just went away with the typical car-dominant neighborhoods that we do now. Traditional neighborhood T&D, traditional neighborhood development, was really just a response to that. It was a different way of doing a neighborhood. Hey, we're not going to put the cars front and center. We're not going to put the garage front and center. This is not going to be all about how quickly can I get into the garage and get it into my house. This is going to be about creating a place, right? We're going to create a neighborhood. We're going to create a place where people want to live, where people want to walk, where people might actually say hi to their neighbors. And hey Joe how you doing and Joe might be sitting on the front porch and go hey Rob how you been and actually kind of bring it back right and and it's it's amazing when you start to see these neighborhoods especially now you know 30 years later you can see these places and see the value that those neighborhoods have maintained and also you know kept and improved in comparison to other neighborhoods that are just more car dominant, right? And it goes to the house itself too, right? A lot of people don't realize just the scale of a two-car garage on the front of your house. If you've got a 50-foot wide lot and you've got a 24-foot wide garage to get two cars in it, it's taking up more than half of your lot, right? That leaves you a lot of room to make the house nice. It's hard. I actually am surprised at how good-looking some people can make those houses for what they're dealing with but but it's tough like that's a huge space that is you know you got to deal with the car first and you can't really deal with the person and we believe let's deal with the people right like let's make the home about living inside about living outside about a way of life doesn't have to be all about the car yeah so we kind of start with a lot of car hate and it grows from there. Hence the bicycle conversation, right?

53:34 - Andy
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:35 - Cooter
Full circle.

53:36 - Cooter
And I've always, I've never understood a garage, to be honest with you, right? In our climate, I've never understood a garage. I guess, you know, if I were under three feet of snow all winter long, maybe I would understand the garage a little bit better. But I really have never understood the garage. Cars are made to be outside, right? Like you drive them down the road, They go in the rain. They go in the snow. You don't have to protect your little car, right? They're designed to be outside. So I've never fully understand why we spend so much money to dominate the front of the house with garages, and it just takes away from all of the other experiences. So it's just a different viewpoint.

54:20 - Andy
Yeah, it's an entirely different philosophy, really. Yeah, we're here by the window, and we got the cops coming. So hopefully we're not breaking any rules here with the conversation about TND. But yeah, I mean, is there any communities around here that are impacted by that?

54:38 - Cooter
Yeah, one of the first ones was Newpoint, right? So Newpoint was probably, I don't know if it was, it probably was one of the first traditional neighborhoods after Seaside, right? Like it was one of first well-known T&D developments was right there on Ladies Island. It was modeled after downtown Beaufort. I think their main streets through New Point were actually modeled on Craven Street in the old point. It was the same idea. Hey, here's a great neighborhood. Why aren't we building neighborhoods like this? Let's do something more like that over here on Ladies Island instead of all of these other things. So Newpoint was an early one and then Bob was a developer. Bob and Vince were developers of Newpoint. Those guys parted way after they did Newpoint and Bob went and did Haversham here in Beaufort, which is honestly I think it's probably the nicest neighborhood on the East Coast. I think it's probably the best around. The things that he's done over there have been amazing. And then Vince went to Charleston and developed a project called ION, which was phenomenal. And then there's been hundreds after that, and the whole idea of the new urbanist movement started catching on once a few of those happened, and folks started getting around the idea that, hey, we can do this a little better. It doesn't have to be this way.

56:15 - Andy
So it was like a spark has developed right here in our backyard.

56:20 - Cooter
I mean, it all started with Duane's down in Florida, but we definitely have folks come to Habersham and Newpoint from all over the country to see and understand those developments. I mean, in Newpoint, they did something totally crazy. Waterfront property, right? They've got on the river back there and they actually pulled the houses off the water and created a public park along the waterfront that the houses sit behind. And that was foolish at the time. People were like, why would you do that? You're giving away your best lots. And to them, it was just the opposite. We're giving everyone the best lots. And it worked, right? So that value went all the way to the, no matter where you bought in Newpoint, that public park on the water, that was yours. You were buying into that, right? So you were getting your lot here, but you could walk down there and hang out all you want. And those types of movements and mindsets really, people started to go, wow, this makes sense. And it was just crazy, right? Nobody would ever think you would do something like that. Still to this day, I have to tell people about it, right? Look at how they did it at Newpoint. Because it's still the first thing that a developer says is, I've got 1,000 feet of waterfront. I want to carve this up and sell big dollar lots on the water. Wrong with that. That's how you have to do it sometimes, but you can also do it a step better, and they kind of proved that.

57:54 - Andy
Yeah, so it starts really, I mean, the developer is the end of the sphere, it sounds like, It's what their vision is for the community, and how do you educate people on this?

58:06 - Cooter
Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. That's a big process. Big question. It's a big process, and we kind of fell into where land planning through the years. So, you know, we started just doing houses. And then over time, our houses were in T and D's and folks would come to us with terrible land plans, but they'd want to build our houses. And we'd go, well, you know, we'd love to sell you our houses, but they're not going to work on these lots, right? Like they're, they're not designed for your typical cul-de-sac lot. It's going to look goofy. If you want to build this style of house, you got to throw this plan away and redo it. And, you know, that's a big ask, right? Somebody's already gone through engineering, already gone through planning with engineers and landscape architects and gone through permitting process. And then you tell them their plan's terrible and they can't do what they want to do. And they got to throw it all away and start over. And, you know, some of them understand and suck it up and do what they want to do and do it correctly. And some of them say, well, you know what? Oh, well, I'm too far down into it already.

59:10 - Andy
Right.

59:10 - Cooter
But yeah, so we ended up getting into planning kind of incidentally because of those types of issues. So we'd end up, you know, okay, well, we have these houses. We know you want to build these houses. These are the types of lots that they work well on. So put them together like this.

59:28 - Andy
Right. It's educating right at the very beginning of it. Yeah. So the cul-de-sac style house, you know, you have a name for that, by the way, right? Do you mind sharing what that is?

59:39 - Andy
I don't know if I do.

59:40 - Andy
Oh, I'm going back a little while, but is Snout House, is that?

59:44 - Cooter
Well, yeah, you can definitely call them Snout Houses, yeah.

59:47 - Andy
Yeah, okay. Is that because it looks like a snout on the front? Yeah, I mean, it really is.

59:52 - Cooter
It's kind of that big nose on the front, right? There's nothing you can do about that garage.

59:57 - Andy
Have you used that in a while? I mean, that's going back probably several years.

1:00:01 - Cooter
Yeah, you know, architects love to name stuff. We didn't name the Snout House, but yeah, they're still Snout House.

1:00:07 - Andy
But you do those, or do you avoid those? We will do them.

1:00:12 - Cooter
I don't snub my nose to them. No pun intended, I suppose.

1:00:16 - Andy
Well, we're not the best at them, right?

1:00:19 - Cooter
So if that's a driver in the design, there are folks that do them better than we do. And I usually tell my clients that, right? Like, I'll do this for you, but this guy does it better. You should look at his stuff, right? He's better at this style of house than I am. It makes sense for you to go here and work with them. But yeah, we do them.

1:00:43 - Andy
And then do you say like, hey, let me show you why. Maybe give you some ideas of why I do that or is it you just say, you know, just go over here and talk to this guy?

1:00:54 - Cooter
You can usually tell pretty quickly, right? Like I will ask, why do you want this? And kind of dig into what they're looking for and what their goal is. But if we get to the point that that is a fundamental beginning point, then I usually do recommend, listen, we'll do it for you. I'm not opposed to it. I'm happy to do it for you. I want your money. I want your business, but this guy's going to do a better job. Definitely. And back to mistakes, right? Realizing that we're not as good as that as somebody else, there was a lot of error to get there, right? But now that we're there, it's even better, right? Clients appreciate that, and the folks that I send to the other guy if he does a good job, that client sends them to me first. The first referral is to me for me to give them to somebody else because they know I'm gonna treat them honest. If it's something that I'm gonna be better at, I'm gonna say, yeah, we're right fit for this, and if we're not, I'm gonna say, no, this guy's better.

1:01:50 - Cooter
You should go see this guy.

1:01:52 - Andy
Sure.

1:01:52 - Cooter
I mean, that makes a lot of sense. If somebody wanted a Jimmy Thomas house, I'm not gonna try to do it. You need to go see Joel. That guy knows how to do them.

1:02:01 - Andy
So, I mean, so much value you guys are providing to the community. We talked a lot about the impact of Allison Ramsey on the community, like with these different neighborhoods, but what is it that's driving that for you? What is it that drives you to do what you do?

1:02:23 - Cooter
I really do want to see it be better. The construction industry is really a mess. And I consider us part of the construction industry. We're right there with the contractors. And just the system is so flawed all the way through. It can just be so much easier and better for people. I talk to folks and they just don't know where to begin. They don't know how to... And it goes throughout. It's everywhere. Even just trying to buy a house plan, they don't even know the right questions to ask, right? So they'll go online and they'll do a Google search and they'll land on somebody's website and they'll find a house that they think is good because it says it's good and they'll buy that set of plans because it's cheap and they'll get them and then they'll take them to a builder and they'll find out they can't afford the house and they spent $1,000 on nothing, right? They throw away that set of plans, and they go, well, now what are we going to do? And there are better ways of doing it without spending any money, right? We work really hard to prevent that scenario from happening. That's the nightmare scenario. My goal is to get you in your house, your way, your budget, and get it right. That's what we're trying to do, and there's ways of doing it it and there's ways of just kind of ignoring all of the problems along the way and taking people's money if you want. So, you know, it's, it's, we're, we're, we're in it for the right reasons all the way through. I mean, there's just so much room to improve and so many opportunities to make it better for people. I mean, we just, we've done a bad job in our housing for a long time and there's no, there's no excuse for it, right? You know, we do a lot of Habitat for Humanity houses. We treat them the same way we treat, I should say this and I shouldn't say this at the same time, but we actually sell a lot of our Habitat for Humanity houses in locations that these houses are treated like gold. And it's funny and not funny at the same time, right? Because a lot of times someone, oh, that's a Habitat house, right? Well, it might be a Habitat house, but the same house in a rental market in South Florida is pulling in $650 a night. It's the exact same house. There's no difference. It's the same house. If it's good, it's good. We want that same good to apply to everything. It's not because of money that makes it good. You can do some things design to control that. It doesn't all have to be all because it's well-designed. That's not gonna make it cost a fortune. Yeah.

1:05:23 - Andy
So it sounds like there's still some work for you to do. So much. What's next for you? Like in terms of just generally speaking, what's next for Cuda Ramsey?

1:05:34 - Cooter
The next is I really want to be able to put the power of that design into the hands of my client. I want to be the resource I want them to be able to find a house themselves, customize the house themselves, know what it's going to cost themselves. Like I want that path to be very easy and I want them to only need me if they need me. Oh, I'm stuck. I need to talk to Cooter about this, or I need to talk to my architect about this. And we can get it there. And so, I mean, we're working towards that. It's going to be a long process because ideally I'd be some giant, you know, $500 million a year company that's going this direction. I'm not.

1:06:17 - Andy
I thought you guys had it all figured out.

1:06:20 - Cooter
We do have it figured out, we just don't have the money to do it. So we know how it should go, but we're not going to be able to make it there overnight. So we're slowly building out that process for ourselves. Somebody else is going to come do it better and do it really legit with real money at some point, and they'll hopefully have looked at how we do it to get there, to be honest, right? They're gonna go, oh, yeah, these guys actually know how to improve it. We're gonna do it. So, yeah, there's a lot to do. There's a ton to do.

1:06:57 - Andy
Do you feel like you put your stake in the ground already, or are you still, like, your legacy, or are you still working on that?

1:07:06 - Cooter
I do feel like we've influenced the housing market. Our little company has had an impact nationally, but I don't know. When you look at how much bad stuff gets done compared to how much good stuff gets done, there's so much room for improvement. I do think we've made an impact, but we're not done. We've got a lot to do. Awesome.

1:07:34 - Andy
Well, I do have one quick question, and then I want to just give you an opportunity to anything else you want to share about, but you have a funny question. Can you tell me about your name? I'm sure people are going to want to know. Is it a nickname?

1:07:50 - Cooter
It's 100% a nickname, and there's two good stories about it. One is my real name is Ralph, so there's not a lot to work with there, so I don't have a great first name. My middle name is Wayne. You know, not a lot to work with there. Um, when I was a baby, I was crawling on the floor on my hands and my feet and the doctor, I was in the doctor's office and the doctor came out and he goes, Oh, look at the little cooter going across the floor because you know, that's a turtle. And I was crawling like a turtle and I became cooter at that moment. My mom and dad stuck with it and I've been cooter ever since. I tried to shake it because it's hard to explain to everybody all the time what cooter is. So, during college, I was Wayne and that was easy. After college, I said, you know, it's just not right. Like, I'm just not Wayne. I really am Cooter. So, I went back to using Cooter for everything and I did realize the secret weapon that that name actually is. It immediately lowers expectations. Okay, that's a secret weapon.

1:08:56 - Andy
It is a secret weapon, right?

1:08:59 - Cooter
meet a guy named Cooter, you don't expect very much out of him. So all I have to do is perform to what a normal guy would be, and you think I'm a little better than I am, right? So it takes the bar that should be here and it kind of puts it here, so I don't have to step quite as high to get up over it.

1:09:18 - Cooter
So it is sort of a secret weapon.

1:09:20 - Andy
I like that. I'm sure you've never had anybody ask you about that, talk about that one at all.

1:09:26 - Cooter
Yeah, no, we've talked about the name a good bit.

1:09:29 - Andy
It's not an uncommon nickname back in that time period. I've met two other Cooters, yeah. I know my wife's grandfather used to call them Cooter as like a nickname. Just like, hey, Cooter. I think it's just a nickname that was used, I guess, when you were growing up, but in the South. In the South, that's right. Anyway, the next question, Cooter, is Was there anything else you wanted to talk about today? Did I hit on everything? We covered a lot, right?

1:10:04 - Cooter
We talked about kind of our basic services we provide and what we do. I think that was good. We got to figure out how to incorporate structural engineering into the ability to sell over and over again. That would be great. It's not as easy for you guys, right? Things change for y'all. I'd love to figure out how to provide more for my clients in that realm, right? Because currently we kind of, I don't want to say we ignore it, we just don't provide anything for them, right? When we're done, we turn them over to a structural engineer, we'll talk to two or three for them, we'll put them in good hands, but there's no integration. And I do know how you like to work and your system is smart and it's right, right? Like if you could, if you can look at those issues at very beginning, there's a lot of opportunity in there to do things even better. I just don't know how to figure out how to integrate that into such a streamlined, down-and-dirty process.

1:11:05 - Cooter
Yeah, I think there's a lot.

1:11:07 - Andy
There's so many variables. I mean, you're talking about the variables of the colors and the finishes, but even structurally, there's so many variables because you go to the Midwest, you're dealing with snow loads, and then also you have to get the foundation down into the ground. Down here, obviously, wind and seismic.

1:11:24 - Andy
And snow if we have another year like last year.

1:11:28 - Cooter
We had snow on the ground for like three days. I thought any moment now they're gonna change the code. Oh, now you got to start designing for snow load.

1:11:37 - Andy
We actually had some failures that we saw. Like, not us, but there were some failures that occurred.

1:11:43 - Cooter
We got some phone calls and things.

1:11:46 - Andy
Oh, I'm joking about it. It really happened. It was mostly screened porches because they're not really designed for the heavy snow.

1:11:53 - Cooter
Flat awning screen porches, the aluminum ones.

1:11:55 - Andy
Yeah, they're just failures. So we got some interesting stories about that one, too. But yeah, I mean, it would definitely be good to be able to figure out a way to collaborate on that front. But that would be something maybe we could talk about further. Was there anything else you want to hit on today? I mean, do you feel like we kind of hit all the high points?

1:12:17 - Cooter
No, I think so. Just an appreciation for you doing this, to be honest with you. I talk about all the things I want to do. I'm going to start a YouTube channel. I'm going to do a podcast. I'm going to do this. But I never get around to doing any of them. To see someone that actually says, you know what, I'm going to do this and does it, I have some envy, to be honest with you. I do see it as a way of educating and a way kind of permanently educating as well. There's so many things out there that we do wrong that we could easily fix, and so many just crazy stuff. I have so many pet peeves that I want to rant about, and this type of platform is it. We could do another four or five hours just on dumb rules that exist, that make no sense, like the size of a garage in relation Relationship to the house and you know, why can't you have more than 600 square feet in your garage? Like where do these numbers come from that people make up that turn into zoning ordinances that aren't based in reality and There are so many of those rules out there that don't make any sense that we need to get rid of And this is the kind of platform codes. Yeah, you know and not only just building codes but zoning codes as well, right and There's so many things out there that if you just kind of looked at it back in common sense, right? Like, hey, how do we get rid of these phone calls? Well, let's change this and people won't be calling about these problems anymore. If we did the same kind of ask why for all these other things, I think we'd get a lot better results out of everything. You know, there's a lot of rules out there that prevent good design from happening. And I know that's not the intent. It's never the intent. I don't think anyone's out there going, oh, we don't want anybody to have fun or live in a good house, but they write these rules that make no sense. Like a neighborhood of a pet peeve of mine, square footage rules in a neighborhood. Oh, every house has to have a minimum of 2,000 square feet. Why? I don't need 2,000 square feet. Why is that a rule for this neighborhood? Is it because you're trying to provide value? Well, that doesn't provide value. Quality does. Let's say every house must be at least $650 a square foot. If you're trying to control quality, don't do it with quantity. There's so many of those little things out there all the way through everything.

1:15:04 - Cooter
They drive me nuts.

1:15:06 - Andy
Let's do it. So many, so many of those.

1:15:09 - Cooter
Well, you know how to get a hold of us, right? I'd wear you out. We'd be in here every day, a new topic every day, just kind of ranting over things that don't make any sense.

1:15:20 - Andy
Yeah, well, if you want to get Cooter back in here and talk about some pet peeves, just type in pet peeves while you're at Next Review. But yeah, I think it would be great to have you back in. And also, your partners, I think their story would be great as well. Think they would be interested in coming back on?

1:15:39 - Cooter
Yeah, just to be counteractive to everything I said, absolutely. Well, I mean, it's just interesting. They have to tolerate me, right?

1:15:47 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, the Bills, right? Bill Allison. And Bill Harris. And Bill Harris as well, just, I mean, they bring a different, you know, it's interesting to me because, like, I work with a lot of architects, and there's not really this stereotype, in my opinion, There are some, but like you were saying earlier, the design versus the technical, it's interesting to see. There's a broad range even within architectures. Obviously, there's some things, just like engineers.

1:16:17 - Cooter
Yeah, we're a lot alike. All of us are a lot alike, even though we won't admit it. Most architects I meet are very similar.

1:16:26 - Andy
There's a similar. Yeah. So, Cooter, what's the best way people want to find out more about you. They might want to get a plan book. They might want to hire you for custom.

1:16:38 - Cooter
How do you get in touch with you? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our website, allisonramsayarchitect.com. That's the best place. Email is always the best. All of our contact info is on there. If you just want to see stuff, we do all the social media that's out there. We've got an Instagram page. We've got a house page that has hundreds of our projects on it. Our website has hundreds and it's got thousands of plans on it, but it's also We've also got hundreds of built houses on there. We do all of this Facebook. We haven't entered into TikTok yet. No TikTok videos yet. We're just starting to make videos and put them on YouTube. So hopefully we'll build that up over time because we really do want to get some of the educational stuff on there to try and improve everybody at the same time. Just answer some of those questions that need to be answered out there, right? Like, folks still think blueprints are needed for projects, right? When's the last time you actually saw a blueprint?

1:17:40 - Andy
I've seen one over at Stoney's office recently. We were looking at the old bridge, actually. Oh, wow! You know, just like looking at the blueprints for that. So it's cool, but yeah, no, blueprints are just a term, I think, that have carried forward, but yeah.

1:17:55 - Cooter
But it's nuts because they still sell them online, right? Yeah, and if you don't know, you think this is something you should purchase, right? If you don't know that there's a better way, I laugh all the time. I see that they'll sell a PDF to somebody, but if you want the PDF and blueprints, there's a different rate. I'm thinking, well, why would you? There's some stuff out there that just doesn't make sense. If you're getting the PDF, you can make your own copies. You can save that money. There are so many things. That don't have to fall into these institutional ways of doing things. I'd like to fix that stuff.

1:18:33 - Andy
So I know we've already kind of closed out to some degree, but I do want to go ahead and hit that one. I mean as far as like getting plans to the person who wants to get some plans, I mean like what's the quick answer to that? Like do I need a PDF? Do we need a CAD file?

1:18:53 - Andy
What do I need?

1:18:54 - Cooter
Like paper? Yeah, no paper. We don't do any paper anymore, just because it makes no sense. Everything we sell is PDF these days. We actually offer what's called a study set on our site. It's 50 bucks, and that's what I typically push everybody to at the beginning. Buy the study set, take it to a builder, get a budget established, make sure you actually want to buy these plans before you buy the plans. Don't buy a $2,000 set of house plans and find out can't afford the house and you end up throwing these things away. That's crazy. Buy a $50 study set. Make sure you can afford the house. If you want some changes, we make changes for you. If you want the house just as it is, we apply the $50 towards the final purchase price. You buy the purchase price. You go build the house. Life is good. Send us pictures. We love to see photos. It can be that easy. If you need to make prints, your builder's probably going to make prints for you. He's going to share the PDF file with his sub so that he doesn't have to make 1,000 copies that aren't needed. Most subs out there are happy to get a PDF and print what they need when they need it. Nobody really needs all of these giant 24 by 36s anymore that cost a fortune, right? You spend $100 on a set of plans just making a copy. You don't need to do that anymore. Just send them the PDF and everybody will figure out how to do what they've got to do.

1:20:20 - Andy
It's been a while since I've worked with a set of full-size plans.

1:20:25 - Cooter
Right?

1:20:25 - Andy
Like, who does?

1:20:26 - Cooter
I don't think anyone does.

1:20:27 - Cooter
You still have to get a permit for some reason.

1:20:30 - Cooter
I'm not exactly sure why that's even required.

1:20:33 - Cooter
With the full size.

1:20:34 - Andy
Yeah.

1:20:34 - Andy
But they're not blueprints.

1:20:36 - Cooter
They're not blueprints.

1:20:37 - Cooter
That's right.

1:20:37 - Cooter
They're black and white.

1:20:38 - Cooter
They're just copies.

1:20:39 - Andy
That are just white and black.

1:20:41 - Cooter
Black and white.

1:20:42 - Andy
Well, very good.

1:20:43 - Andy
Well, hey, this podcast saved somebody a thousand bucks today.

1:20:46 - Cooter
I hope so.

1:20:47 - Andy
If they just listen to that.

1:20:49 - Cooter
I hope so.

1:20:50 - Cooter
So cool, man.

1:20:51 - Andy
Well, it was a pleasure having you.

1:20:53 - Andy
And I really do appreciate it.

1:20:55 - Andy
And I hope the best for you.

1:20:57 - Cooter
Yeah, keep doing this.

1:20:58 - Andy
It was an instant classic.

1:21:00 - Madeline
Hey, everybody.

1:21:00 - Madeline
Thanks for listening to today's episode of Enhance.

1:21:03 - Madeline
And please leave a like, a subscribe, or a follow.

1:21:06 - Madeline
And we'll see you next time.