Jaymie Friesen [00:00:00]: Let's say somebody can come in, and they're gonna buy into a lot for $200K. And you are going to spend $100K building them a tiny home. So they get a tiny home and they get some land, and then you have $100K left over. Now if you did that 10 times, you'd you'd have raised $2,000,000 You'd use a 1,000,000 to build the tiny homes, and you'd have a $1,000,000 left over.

Ethan Waldman [00:00:22]: Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman. And in today's episode, I'll be talking to Jaymie, a visionary who transformed his life and business during the pandemic. From bankruptcy to building a thriving tiny home community on 160 acres, Jaymie's journey is nothing short of inspirational. He co founded Living the Off Grid Dream, a program with 9,000 students worldwide and shares practical strategies for creative real estate and business acquisition. Jaymie will share several methods and frameworks for innovative financing and his plans for a sustainable future at his homestead. Whether you're looking to live off grid, start a tiny home community or simply get inspired by an incredible story of resilience, you won't want to miss this conversation. But before we get started, did you know that I personally send Tiny House newsletter every week on Tuesdays? It's called Tiny Tuesdays, and it's a weekly email with tiny house news, interviews, photos, and resources.

Ethan Waldman [00:01:29]: It's free to subscribe, and I even share sneak peeks of things that are coming up, ask for feedback about upcoming podcast guests, and more. It's really the best place to keep a pulse on what I'm doing in the tiny house space and also stay informed of what's going on in the tiny house movement. To sign up, go to thetinyhouse.net/newsletter, where you can sign up for the tiny Tuesday's newsletter. And of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. I will never send you spam. And if you ever don't wanna receive emails, it's easy to unsubscribe. So again, that's thetinyhouse.net/newsletter. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy next week's Tiny Tuesday's newsletter.

Ethan Waldman [00:02:29]: Alright. I am here with Jaymie. After going bankrupt during COVID, Jaymie and his brother used creative financing strategies to buy a 160 acres of barren land and turn it into a tiny home community retreat center with Airbnb rentals and are currently building out their regenerative farm. He's the cofounder of Living the Off Grid Dream, a program that helps people do the same as they've done with over 9,000 students across 20 countries. After finding it hard to find good work at a fair price when it comes to tiny homes and structures, he and his brother Shelby bought Elk Ridge Cabin Company, a prefab dwelling manufacturing business. Jaymie, welcome to the show.

Jaymie Friesen [00:03:07]: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ethan Waldman [00:03:08]: Yeah, thanks for being here. So can you walk us through your journey from bankruptcy during COVID to creating this, you know, thriving tiny home community? I know that's probably a long question to answer, but maybe like, what was going through your mind and the first couple of steps that you took?

Jaymie Friesen [00:03:24]: Yeah, I mean, I think it was something that was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to do was to just the idea of owning some land, growing our own food, not having to work a day job and just kind of living on the land and being close to nature and spending my days that way. And then when COVID hit my previous business, we ran an e commerce company, it had cash flow issues. And then we had to bankrupt the business and do an asset sale. And then I was working corporate for the company that bought our assets. And that went south fast. And really, it was so brutal that I was basically like, I have nothing to lose now. I just I just want to get out and I want to go get some land and move to the forest like I always said I would. So yeah, we kind of we saw people using creative financing strategies for real estate investment in the cities, which is very common.

Jaymie Friesen [00:04:18]: But we didn't see anybody applying that to rural land. So we use the same strategies such as the BRRRR method, which we can chat about to, to get into, into real end instead of just buying like a townhome or something in the city.

Ethan Waldman [00:04:32]: Cool. Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to talk about the unconventional finance strategies, because a lot of my listeners are in that same place of, you know, they either already own a tiny house, or they're building a tiny house, or they're thinking about building a tiny house. But the where to put it, the how to buy land is kind of the biggest piece of the puzzle. So yeah, let's let's jump into it. Like, what what's the BRRRR method? You just mentioned something that I've never heard of.

Jaymie Friesen [00:05:01]: Yeah. So, the BRRRR method is basically in the cities, what a lot of time what a lot of people do is there's the money person, and then there's the manager. So the manager comes in with no money, and the money person comes in, and they put, you know, the 15% deposit down, plus they cosign.

Ethan Waldman [00:05:18]: So

Jaymie Friesen [00:05:18]: they come in with a credit score and all that. And then oftentimes, they even put a little money on top to renovate the house. And then the manager will take that, they'll find the property, they will pay and manage the renovation of the property. And then they will rent it out and then use the rental income to pay the mortgage. So the manager is responsible for paying the mortgage. Yep. And then they will refinance it and then repeat. So that's where buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat.

Jaymie Friesen [00:05:49]: That's what the BRRRR method stands for. Yeah. So we saw people doing that. Yeah. And it was a way for somebody who doesn't have any cash to step into real estate without any money down. And with poor credit, because after our my bankrupting my previous business, I was $40,000 in debt between a student credit line and a couple of credit cards that I use to try to save my business, which didn't work. So that's one method. There are there are many others.

Jaymie Friesen [00:06:21]: There's just there's options to find owner financing deals, especially in the US. There's way more options in the US for owner financing, where you can, yeah, just finance it off the owner with no banks involved. There's websites, you can get land for $1 down. There's websites where you can find really affordable land. There's lots of other methods, auctions, etc. Generally, I think a big one is also just knowing what to look for. A lot of people look at land, and they only look at conventional properties, because they don't know what they don't know. You know, an example might be that we have, there's new technology for drilling wells, you can look like a lot of people won't buy a lot, because they're like, oh, there's nothing growing here.

Jaymie Friesen [00:07:02]: Or there's no water here, which is huge. But if you knew what we know about this new technology to drill wells, it can pinpoint underground water with 95% accuracy, even in a desert. Like people don't value that land. But with that, you could turn it into a lush oasis. And you could get it for really, really cheap. So so there's there's lots of creative ways even on just how you perceive the market and perceive what areas to get into.

Ethan Waldman [00:07:28]: Okay, so did you use the the BRRRR method to acquire your 160 acres?

Jaymie Friesen [00:07:34]: We use that method particularly, yes.

Ethan Waldman [00:07:36]: And then, you know, I think the next question that someone asked is, well, how did you find the money person?

Jaymie Friesen [00:07:42]: Yeah, that's, that's always an interesting one. Our story with the money person is very interesting. So first, I kind of wrote this out. And I wanted to, I wrote this out just as a plan. And I would just kind of talk about it. And people kind of knew that this was something that I wanted to do. Yeah. And my journey was actually one where this is a kind of a side story, but it's exactly what happened.

Jaymie Friesen [00:08:08]: This, I had this arch nemesis in high school that would be I grew up in a rough area, he would give me death threats, he would could threaten my family.

Ethan Waldman [00:08:16]: Oh, no.

Jaymie Friesen [00:08:17]: And it was a it was a rough time. I dropped out of high school in grade 11 because we couldn't what we couldn't be down the same hallway together. We would get in fights all the time. And it was super stressful. So I decided to drop out and I went to an adult learning center and I just privately did my education. And then years years later, I just messaged them. And we had both changed a lot or whatever. And I just messaged them, Hey, let's stop looking over each other's shoulders.

Jaymie Friesen [00:08:42]: And let's go for coffee and just call a truce kind of thing. So, that's what we did. And I started talking about this dream that I had to, you know, buy this land. And right away, he was like, that's something that I always wanted to do. And then he ended up coming in and, and helping out with the down payment, cosigning, etcetera.

Ethan Waldman [00:08:59]: Oh, wow.

Jaymie Friesen [00:09:00]: To help us get this property. So if if I can change my worst enemy who one day wanted to kill me into somebody who could who could come and do this, I mean, a lot of people want that, right? A lot of people are looking for land, a lot of people have this similar dream. And a lot of people don't have the time or they don't to build it out and manage it or they don't have. Yeah. Or they don't have the desire to live there full time. A lot of people it's like a dream that they'd love to do in the summer is to have like a summer cabin kind of thing, but not necessarily live there year round.

Ethan Waldman [00:09:35]: Right, right. Well, I think that it's across the board of, you know, there are people who are just looking for a place to live in a tiny house full time. And yes, there are a lot of people who are looking for some kind of summer cabin or some kind of part time thing.

Jaymie Friesen [00:09:48]: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I mean, and the tiny home stuff is very unique. I mean, there's lots of there's lots of other ways to find the money. We're using other we have a client actually that has demonstrated this other method very well where essentially he has built a community and doing a tiny home community model can actually be way easier to gather the money with because instead of trying to get the money from one person, if you built a community, you could get the money from a bunch of different people. So we have a client named Jonathan who did a community in Costa Rica. And he's raised, I believe, over $5,000,000 now for his community. And they keep buying neighboring properties to expand, and they just keep making more lots for people.

Jaymie Friesen [00:10:31]: And basically, everybody just comes in with a buy in, and they'll come in and put, depending on the size of the lot, it could be $100 grand, it could be $300 grand, and they come in and they, you know, buy in and then he then he keeps doing that. And he budgets so that each person buying in doesn't just pay for their lot, but they pay enough to cover infrastructure builds. So for example, let's say somebody can come in and they're gonna buy into a lot for $200 grand. And you are going to spend $100 grand building them a tiny home. So they get a tiny home, and they get some land.

Ethan Waldman [00:11:05]: And

Jaymie Friesen [00:11:05]: that's what they have the rights to. And then you have $100 grand left over. Now, if you did that 10 times, you'd have raised $2,000,000 you'd use 1,000,000 to build the tiny homes, and you'd have $1,000,000 left over. So with the $1,000,000 left over, let's say you found that property for $500 grand, you could pay back the person who helped you buy the property, and you'd have $500 grand left over that you could then build amenities, maybe you build a common area with a sauna and a natural swimming pool and whatever, and a shared co working office space or whatever else it is that you'd want to do. So that's, that's an interesting model that I think applies specifically to tiny home communities. That's pretty, pretty powerful.

Ethan Waldman [00:11:49]: Fantastic. So I want to go back to your story, because you know, kind of where we left off, you went bankrupt, you decided to, you know, buy some land in the mountains. And I'm curious. And it seems like from there, you've gone into the tiny home community, some short term rentals, teaching about living off grid. So can you can you kind of keep going on that story? Like how did the tiny house thing kind of come into it? And was that what you were thinking of from the start? Or is that something that you found along the way?

Jaymie Friesen [00:12:23]: The journey has definitely morphed along the way. There are definitely some big elements of this that we had never planned on. The original plan was to build a nice small home, a little cabin in the woods, and have some Airbnb rentals, and pretty much quit my job and never have to work again and basically retire. So my my thought was I'm gonna retire in my mid to late 20s. And that's what we that's that was the original thought. And then we got out here. And that's what we started with, we built the infrastructure for a retreat center and short term rentals, which is great, because it's it's dual purpose, you could use it for help, maybe we want some people to come help us build a garden or, or do something, right? You need housing for that. We do, you know, Live Work Exchange people that help us needed housing, you can host retreats, we have people pay us to come and stay use this place as a wedding.

Jaymie Friesen [00:13:15]: We were within our 7th month doing this, we went from barren land to making $30K a month on month 7. And that was from having that infrastructure to host events. And then in the meantime, we rented out an Airbnb. So that was our income for the 1st couple of years. And then the community side started because we needed help. So we naturally needed more like living areas for people. So we we needed people who could bring their own home. So we opened them up and built sites for people who could bring and tow tiny homes here.

Jaymie Friesen [00:13:48]: So yeah, we've got a couple iterations of the community side. We've had community options for free where people would come and stay for free in exchange for helping out around the property a couple hours a day. And that was fine for the phase we were in. But you know, communities can get messy really, really fast. So now our community is all paid staff, like everybody who lives here is on our team, and they are paid, or they are live work exchange person. So we've had maximum 24 people on our property at any given time living here, including families. So yeah, there's, you know, kids running around homeschooled and all that stuff.

Ethan Waldman [00:14:29]: Wow. Well, it does not sound like you're retired.

Jaymie Friesen [00:14:32]: No. I mean, it could be honestly. Yeah. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman [00:14:37]: Sounds like you're working on that.

Jaymie Friesen [00:14:38]: Well, the way those that's a huge proponent of all of this is people have this dream of doing this. But oftentimes, when people get out here, they realize it is so much work, that you end up just creating a job for yourself. And then you're kind of a slave to just something else, which is just trying to survive out here. So we wanted to make sure that we kind of used our business mindset to systemize things so that we didn't have to do the work if we didn't want to. So if we wanted to leave and go to Mexico for a month, or we wanted to, you know, go see your family and friends in the city for a few weeks, then we can leave and come and go at any time whenever we want. And that requires good knowledge of, like mechanical systems as well as human systems of having a good team, and training and communication systems in place.

Ethan Waldman [00:15:29]: Well, yeah, I can imagine that to keep to keep the whole operation humming. And what an accomplishment to have done it in such a short amount of time. I mean, COVID started in 2020 proper. So you're you're only like 3, 4 years into this?

Jaymie Friesen [00:15:44]: Yeah, yeah, about 3 and 3 and a half years coming up on 4. Yeah, 4 in the spring. So, yeah, it's, it's been a crazy journey. I mean, we came out here with nothing. And we had no idea what we were doing. My brother and I came out here. Everyone thought we were nuts. There was no water, no toilets, no power, no internet, no cell service.

Jaymie Friesen [00:16:05]: And we walked out here just 2 of us. So we just started building stuff. And we probably wasted $300,000 in mistakes, buying the wrong equipment, buying the wrong materials, overpaying for stuff, overpaying for a big solar system that wasn't nearly as good as what we got sold on. Not necessarily making big I mean, I'm sitting in my tiny home, and it's amazing. We love it. But there's definitely better options that we could have got Yeah. That we didn't know of at the time, which is why we ended up getting into building them ourselves. So yeah.

Jaymie Friesen [00:16:38]: Basically, that's kind of the next part of the story that we never expected to happen was, was the teaching side of it, which is essentially just helping people learn from our mistakes, because we've made so many and still manage to do it. So if we can make all the mistakes in the world and still do this, then I hope that we can help other people do it easier. But, yeah, we've basically, we put out an Instagram story one time, and this is back when we had a couple 1,000 followers. So we just put a story out there. We're like, hey, is anybody interested in learning about what we've done and how we've done it and how to buy land and design it and do all that stuff. And we woke up to more more people more tickets

Ethan Waldman [00:17:21]: like purchase than we could handle. So we ended up having

Jaymie Friesen [00:17:22]: to open up more weekends to than we could handle. So we ended up having to open up more weekends to book everybody in. And we were doing we have photos of our of our workshop in the winter because we had to move it forward to get everybody in. So there's snow on the ground. And it just snowballed from there. People kept asking for, you know, can I can you teach me online because I don't want to pay for a flight to come out there and meet in person? And that's how that's how that began.

Ethan Waldman [00:17:48]: Yeah. So you've you've had over 9,000 students. Is that is that true? Yeah. That's amazing. Can you share some any notable success stories? You mentioned Jonathan already? Sounds like he's totally killing it down in Costa Rica. But yeah, any other stories to share?

Jaymie Friesen [00:18:07]: Jonathan's a good example of the community side of things, because I guess we help people do homesteads, farms, communities, and retreat centers are kind of the 4 and most people want kind of a mix of all of them, to some degree. Another client and now good friend, FJ in Pennsylvania, he came in. And he ended up talking personally with the with the landowner, and got $400,000 off of a $1,200,000 purchase price. So about 30% off, I believe. And he ended up getting $200,000 worth of heavy equipment included with the purchase. So bulldozer, tractor, and all that kind of stuff. And then partnered with a partnered with a, the, what's it called, Rosedale Institute or something like that. It's the institute who created the organic farming, like certification, essentially in the US.

Jaymie Friesen [00:19:04]: And, and, and they basically offered to come in and, and help him build out his farm for free with government grants. So he's a really good example of leveraging other people and other organizations to help build his dream. And he started with nothing. And when he was looking at that property, he had no idea where he was getting the money from. So, yeah, so that's a that's a really cool, cool example. We have a mother of 2 in the Okanagan in BC, which is right near us. It's one of the most expensive places in North America. You know, we're talking like, you're in the you're in the million and millions of dollars to be able to buy something in the Okanagan Valley.

Jaymie Friesen [00:19:46]: Like, you're probably like, $2 to $3,000,000 for like, kind of a decent home on like, I don't know, an acre. And then for anything more than that, you're like, if you were to buy a farm, you're looking like, in the you know, closer to 10,000,000.

Ethan Waldman [00:20:02]: So

Jaymie Friesen [00:20:03]: she managed to, to come in here and find somebody find a good lot that had good zoning for what she wanted to do to build a community. So she has people coming up with tiny homes and, and other people building houses and that kind of thing. So yeah, she's doing the community thing. She also has GeoDomes up. So she came in with as a as a busy small business owner, mother of 2, and was able to come in with with no money down and make her dream happen and leave a legacy for her kids. So that's really, really cool project to see come to life as well.

Ethan Waldman [00:20:35]: Awesome. So I'm gonna just share a little what's going on in my head. Because my next question was going to just be, what about someone who's doing it on like a smaller scale, like just just for themselves? But then what I realized is that it seems like, well, I guess this is my question. Should people be thinking beyond just a single parking spot for their one tiny house? Like, it sounds like what you've put together here or what you're what you're alluding to is that if you try to do more of a development and say buy land and make parkings for 5 tiny houses or 10 tiny houses that that can actually become a profitable venture for you rather than, you know, buying the one little piece of land for your one little tiny house that you're gonna pay for?

Jaymie Friesen [00:21:21]: It totally depends what everybody wants. Like, basically, you can strategize for whatever it is that you want. The way that I think about it, though, is that like, it just kind of depends on what you want for your lifestyle, I suppose. If everybody had money to go buy land and park their tiny home on it, then I wouldn't be teaching anybody anything. I mean, I can teach people what land zoning to get. And I can teach them how to design it, and how to budget and all that stuff. And that's really important as well, and will save you a lot of money. But for the most part, what we're kind of talking about is that land is really expensive.

Jaymie Friesen [00:21:57]: And people who buy tiny, like, if everybody had a bunch of money, they probably wouldn't even be buying tiny homes to begin with, they probably would be just going and buying a normal house and call it a day, right? So generally, most of these projects, from this perspective are a little bit kind of going into it with a budget. So I like to think in terms of sustainability and being self sufficient. And a lot of people think about that when they you know, they want to grow food, they want to have, you know, lower bills and all that kind of stuff to achieve financial freedom. That's a big part of what that's this is about. But I think when people think of like growing food and that kind of stuff, that's what they think of when they think of self sufficient. But I always argue that they forget about the financial self sufficiency of it. So I'm like, if you read, you know, for example, like Guy Kawasaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad. Poor Dad buys a house, lives in it and just pays his mortgage every month.

Jaymie Friesen [00:22:52]: Rich Dad sees that as a liability, because it is. It's not a liability if it covers itself, if it generates some income. If it doesn't, and you can't, for whatever reason, pay that, then the bank's going to come and they're going to take your property away. Right? So I always see things in I only see things as self sufficient if they can cover their own costs. So for example, you could do something small, like you could buy a small lot, you could put your tiny home on it, and you could park 1 or 2 other tiny homes on it or GeoDomes or whatever as some rental units. And then you have enough income to cover your mortgage, cover your get your current tiny home if you wanted to finance once, you could cover your financing costs as well, and your living expenses. And then you could work from home and you'd have everything that you need just by managing a couple of small rentals that you could do in like an hour a day. Right.

Jaymie Friesen [00:23:42]: And then there you go. That's basically retirement.

Ethan Waldman [00:23:44]: Sounds that's that's pretty sweet.

Jaymie Friesen [00:23:47]: Yeah, there's, there's lots of ways to get there sooner. And a lot of it stems a lot of the things that people want to do is like, they want to buy a tiny home in cash, which is like, I don't know, maybe $100k or they want it for a small one, or they we bought our tiny homes for $200,000. But we financed them, which is not great over time. But it got us into them sooner, it would have taken us 5 years to save that much money. And then we just have rentals that cover the cost so that it doesn't even matter to us. So a lot of people a lot of it's like money barriers where people just feel like they want to, they want to save up for 10, 20 years to be able to afford the thing they want to afford. Whereas we kind of help people rethink how they view the financial system to be able to think in more terms of cash flow rather than saving for the rest of their lives.

Ethan Waldman [00:24:38]: Nice. So it sounds like do you have a background in in business? Like, do you have an MBA or something like that?

Jaymie Friesen [00:24:44]: Or No, God, no. I am completely self taught. I've had about 7 companies, 7 businesses since the age of 13 or so. So I've just learned the hard way. That's like

Ethan Waldman [00:24:57]: earning your own MBA through experience.

Jaymie Friesen [00:25:00]: Yeah, much more expensive than MBA. Or maybe more profitable than the US. Real results. What's that?

Ethan Waldman [00:25:07]: Or maybe really more profitable than an MBA at times, you know, you gotta you gotta pay $100,000 to get one and you're you're starting out negative $100 ks after your MBA.

Jaymie Friesen [00:25:19]: Yeah, true. True. Yeah, I do. And it's for me, it's really just the useful that's the practicality of it. Like, you know, those books were written 4 years before you start your program, and then your program's 4 years long. So by the time you're out, you're all the information is 8 years outdated, and it just doesn't make sense anymore.

Ethan Waldman [00:25:36]: Yeah. So before we I want to ask you about the Elkridge Cabin Co. And I also want to ask a bit about the like permaculture and farming. But before since we were talking about the program, I'm curious, you know, what does what does the program actually cost to be a part of for the online course?

Jaymie Friesen [00:25:53]: Yeah, it's, it's $297. So it's pretty we make it pretty affordable. We've had a lot of people come through and and tell us, Hey, you should be selling high ticket, you should be selling this for $5,000 .There's other people selling, you know, similar info products and stuff online for real estate investment for $5, 10, $20 thousand. So we our goal is not to gouge. Our goal is to we reinvest all that money into marketing to expand into building new products. We now have a suite of like 30 products. One of them, for example, we hired a guy full time to pretty much go around the all of the US and Canada and find all of the no zoning and unrestricted land zoning that exists.

Jaymie Friesen [00:26:36]: So for example, if you want to start a tiny home community, or you want to have a couple you want to do with your friends or family, well, almost all zoning is not going to allow that because you're only allowed to build a couple of structures. Whereas with no zoning or unrestricted zoning, you can put as many structures as you want on it. You can have a business, you can have rentals, you can have a farm, you can do whatever you want without a permit. I'm not well without a business license. It's like the ultimate freedom land zoning. And land zoning is something that people often forget about. And it stops them right in their tracks when they're trying to execute their dream. So yeah, things like that.

Jaymie Friesen [00:27:12]: We just so we invest a lot in rebuilding new resources like that for people. So, yeah, that's that's the cost. And then, we do what is it? I think it's, like, $600 a year or, like, I think it's or $67 a month or something like that to, to get on calls with me twice a month, which is also quite quite affordable compared to, like, like, industry standard. So you can come and ask questions, and I'll help you strategize and help you through, to get basically from a to b. You tell me where you're at, and you tell me where you wanna go, and we're gonna help you get there.

Ethan Waldman [00:27:45]: Sweet. Sweet. And is that those are like group calls that people are on? Or is that like an individual one on one?

Jaymie Friesen [00:27:51]: Those are group calls. Yeah, we did individual one on ones. But they're not as valuable because you don't get to hear other people's questions. And a lot of times people don't even know what to ask. Yes.

Ethan Waldman [00:28:00]: I so agree. So agree. So agree. Well, tell me about the the Elkridge cabin company.

Jaymie Friesen [00:28:09]: Yeah, we bought that earlier this year. So it's been 8 months or so, which is which was really exciting acquisition. Essentially, we bought our tiny home. Shelby and I each bought a tiny home. I'm sitting in it right now. I'm in the back office. The door is kind of closed because my wife is in the other room. But they're very nice.

Jaymie Friesen [00:28:30]: But we just had a poor experience with the builder. So the units themselves, there's, you know, things that were not great. Yeah. Gaps in the floorboards. My brother's front door swung open completely by itself. Like, it wouldn't stay closed. We had just unfinished work. You know, the some of the appliances, it didn't work when we got it.

Jaymie Friesen [00:28:50]: And we just kind of figured, like, for the price that we were paying, we paid kind of a premium mine was Shelby's was $198,000 Wow Mine was 208,000

Ethan Waldman [00:29:01]: Wow.

Jaymie Friesen [00:29:02]: So we bought we're like, okay, we're gonna go big, we're gonna get like, the nicest things that we can find really. It's not

Ethan Waldman [00:29:08]: high end.

Jaymie Friesen [00:29:08]: Yeah, It's not the nicest nicest, but it's a it's like a really nice middle ground. And so we just figured like, okay, this is gonna be a great experience. But, yeah, this this service, we just didn't find that good. We're getting like, we grew up in the construction industry. So we understand how things are built. And we understand the service behind it. And it wasn't that the mistakes were made. That's fine.

Jaymie Friesen [00:29:31]: We get it. We run businesses. It was that the way they handled it was they blamed it on us every time something went wrong and just argued over it. And I'm like, no, like, when I get something, I shouldn't have, you know, a bunch of gaps in the flooring and and a bunch of, you know, half finished work inside of the house. So yeah, we kind of that was frustrating. The pricing, we just knew that we could get something for a better price. And to give you an example, with our new business, we sell the exact same thing that has more square footage in it for about 125,000. So almost saving like $80,000 or more.

Jaymie Friesen [00:30:14]: And then another thing, when we try we also tried the cheap side. We tried shipping container dwellings. So we bought some of those. And those were around $20,000 a piece. And, yeah, same thing. The guy left the doors and windows out of it for a winter, and they got covered in mold. So we we got them and we had to rip everything out of them and restart from the ground up. They were leaking.

Jaymie Friesen [00:30:38]: Even after the doors and windows were in. There wasn't enough insulation in it like he promised. He skipped a whole layer of insulation on the on the bottom. And they weren't built to code. So it was just, like, there's just so many issues that finally we just got really frustrated and, and we grew up in construction, we know how it is.

Ethan Waldman [00:30:57]: Yeah.

Jaymie Friesen [00:30:58]: You know, normally you hire a builder, and it takes 6 months longer than expected. And it costs way over budget. And that's normal, too. So we just said, you know, let's just we there needs to be somebody in the market doing this right. And we we wanted to, obviously, we wanted to build our dream and on our property and, and build our houses for ourselves and things like that too. And service you know, we wanna we wanna essentially use what we've learned and build tiny home communities for people. So we figured that would be a good addition to our businesses would be a, a tiny home manufacturing business. But we do full size stuff too.

Jaymie Friesen [00:31:37]: We do, like, double wide cabins and stuff like that. But, yeah, so that's that's kind of how we got into it. And we had never really we've sold some companies, we'd never bought a company before. And we use the same method that we use to buy land with no money down to buy business with no money down. And that's how we got into that.

Ethan Waldman [00:31:57]: Fantastic. So why did you choose to buy an existing tiny house company rather than try to start one?

Jaymie Friesen [00:32:05]: Yeah, that's a good question. Honestly, we are just following Cody Sanchez on Instagram. Yeah, if anybody's familiar with her. And she talks a lot about buying versus building. Mhmm. And the buying side is just because it's already cash positive. So for us to start our own, we would have to come up with all these designs and find a shop and front the money for building materials and staffing. Whereas if we bought something operating, we could buy it off the, the owned of current or the previous owner, using owner financing and use the cash flow from the company to actually pay all the bills and pay for the company itself, pay for the purchase price.

Jaymie Friesen [00:32:45]: So that's that's the main reason why we just thought it was faster. But, of course, it took, you know, it took some moving around to try and figure out, like, some searching to try and figure out, okay, what's worth it. Right? Because you don't wanna buy something, obviously, that doesn't have very good designs, and then you're just restarting from from scratch anyway. Yeah. But, yeah, one thing that we loved about that process was we I've never never done it, so we didn't know what to expect. But we just we had no idea. Like, I think this is something to be clear. We never really have any idea what we're doing.

Jaymie Friesen [00:33:18]: And everybody always, like, tends to, like, look up to other people like, oh, my god. How do they do that? It's like, we just walk. We don't really know what we're doing. And in this case, we just started asking people, hey, you wanna sell your business? And to our surprise, 8 out of 10 people were like, Yeah, I'm here. Let me show you around.

Ethan Waldman [00:33:38]: Yeah. Well, it's it's hard out there for a tiny house manufacturer. I know it's not an easy business to be profitable in.

Jaymie Friesen [00:33:46]: Yeah. So we got also I mean, basically, one one thing that we noticed is it can be a really good business. But most people that we found, including our tiny homebuilder, they didn't they came at it from a passion for affordable housing. And because they built a tiny home as a side hobby project, and that's great. Like, that's really great. And the intention is very good there. But not a lot of people come at it from the side of like a business person and a a professional construction person. Yeah.

Jaymie Friesen [00:34:18]: And that's why there's so many issues with our tiny home. So the people who had came in with that they some of them are doing very well because they've systemized it very well. Yeah. So, yeah, we we basically started asking people, hey, you wanna sell your business? And we started getting tours, which was really fun. We got to see the ins and outs of so many other companies building these things, and they would give us all these back tours behind, you know, and see exactly how it's all made. So yeah, it was, it was, it was fun. And then we just finally found somebody who was like, Yeah, we're down to do the owner financing deal and sell it. And we're like, Sweet, let's do it.

Jaymie Friesen [00:34:55]: And here we are.

Ethan Waldman [00:34:56]: So you didn't have to put any money down?

Jaymie Friesen [00:34:58]: No, we didn't. We did. We did put 200,000 down, but that wasn't ours. We basically took on a partner. And this is another really good way of finding the money person is asking for advisors. So we we knew we were buying this business. So we went out and we just called people who were in the industry, who were, you know, other people in business or whatever it is. And we said, hey, I mean, you you know, you're in construction, or you're in this or that, like, what do you think about this? Do you think it's a good deal? And by looking for advisors, the first person we called, they were just like, this is a great deal.

Jaymie Friesen [00:35:35]: What do you need? I'm in. And they and they gave us the money, and they took 1 third ownership. And then my brother and I each owned 1 third.

Ethan Waldman [00:35:44]: Sweet. And so you guys run it and and investors just a kind of silent partner?

Jaymie Friesen [00:35:49]: Exactly. Yeah, silent partner. Shelby runs that business. I help with the marketing and stuff. And then I run our I run our courses and coaching programs. And then I then like our on-site stuff here as well.

Ethan Waldman [00:36:04]: So this is all, you know, super impressive. I'm going to say exactly to you what you just said that people say to you, which is, Wow, this is so impressive. I can't believe you did all that. So it's cool to hear you also say, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. We don't know what we're doing. We just it just sounds like you are willing to start and just ask ask questions, talk to people and just find a way.

Jaymie Friesen [00:36:29]: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's that's life, isn't it? We all Yeah, we all start as a baby and don't know what the heck's going on. And you just keep looking around and learning and doing new stuff. Right?

Ethan Waldman [00:36:41]: Yep. So before we like get way off into the philosophical land here, I'm curious about the land itself and the, you know, the regenerative farm piece of this. And actually, I'll say the way that we met is that we both know Kenton Zurbin, the permaculture expert. And Kenton actually introduced us. As soon as he mentioned your your business and your land, I was like, Oh, you got to introduce me. I want to interview him for the podcast. So talk to me about the the, like, regenerative farming piece piece of things and and what you're what you're going for and where you are with it.

Jaymie Friesen [00:37:15]: Beautiful. Yeah. We, we're kind of just starting, but I'll let you know kind of what our property is like to give you an idea of what we're working with. So we have 160 acres. It's very mountainous terrain. It is not traditional farmland in any way whatsoever.

Ethan Waldman [00:37:30]: Yep.

Jaymie Friesen [00:37:31]: We're in an alpine desert climate. So and and for those of you listening, we're in, Rock Creek, British Columbia. Okay. So it's last year was negative 40 degrees at night with, you know, 3, 3 and a half feet of snow kind of thing, in the winter, and then it's 51 degrees Celsius in the summers. So it's very hot in the summer, like a desert, and it's very cold in the winter, like an alpine climate. And our soil is dead and dry and silty, and just it's a cloud of dust over here in the summer. So and our well is 8 gallons a minute. So we do not have nearly enough water to support any kind of agricultural use, otherwise other than maybe like a small, like, hobby size farm type thing, which is kind of where we're at now, slowly building building up.

Jaymie Friesen [00:38:19]: So because we don't have enough water, the we need to do catchment. So we're planning on building a a it'll be the 2nd largest project of its type for water catchment for the amount of ponds that will be built here and networked together by swales. Okay. I believe the only one larger would be Seppholzer in Austria, I believe was his project, which is a very famous permaculture project. So we're hoping to do something similar to that and use that to replenish our aquifer, as well as to, yeah, just slow down the water and hold more water for usability on the property. So that could be gravity feeding orchard systems, pasture land, just use generally for, you know, for cattle and stuff to drink. Then the second layer will be cattle. So having regenerative managed cattle around the property to be able to rebuild the soil health.

Jaymie Friesen [00:39:13]: So we just got our first little baby herd. So we have 6 cows now. We got our own bull and some heifers so we can start a breeding program and just slowly build that up as our grasslands come back to life and allow for more head of cattle. And like little things like hobby farm stuff, you know, we have some laying hands, and we've got a big market garden, and we do garlic. And this year, I planted a 130 orchard bushes and trees for fruit and things like that. So yeah, we're we're kind of getting that getting that started. But basically, the way I see it is the financial sustainability piece and and the lifestyle piece of like, I want to have an orchard, I want to I want to have cattle. I want to know where my food comes from because I don't trust the system.

Jaymie Friesen [00:40:04]: And I just think it's better and healthier for us and healthier for the planet and the soil. But I don't want to be trapped inside of the daily work of that lifestyle where I have to be out there 12 hours a day, every day of the year, then it's not fun anymore. It's no longer a dream, then it's then you're a slave to it. So basically, I want each thing to be kind of like a hobby level business where it generates enough income, and it is systemized enough that it can pay somebody to full time manage it. So that I can do what I spend that I can do what I enjoy and spend my time. Maybe I plant some orchard trees today. Maybe I see the cows tomorrow. Maybe I go ride my horse around.

Jaymie Friesen [00:40:46]: I can kind of do a bit of everything.

Ethan Waldman [00:40:48]: Nice. Nice. How do you balance running the retreat center, the Airbnb rentals, the manufacturer well, your your brother does manufacturing business, but still it sounds like you're you've got your head in that game too, while also meaning maintaining the focus on the sustainable and off grid living? Like do you how much coffee do you drink? Do you sleep?

Jaymie Friesen [00:41:13]: I drink no coffee. I don't need stimulants whatsoever. They my brain's moving fast enough as is. But Okay. Yeah. I mean, I try to be in bed before 9 at 9 PM. And I try to be usually up around 4:30 or so. That's out of choice.

Jaymie Friesen [00:41:27]: I don't need to. I can, you know, do whatever.

Ethan Waldman [00:41:29]: Yeah.

Jaymie Friesen [00:41:30]: I can work an hour a day. And that's not exaggerating at all. We run our teams in about 2 hours per week. And it's just setting up systems. And I know a lot of people a lot of small business owners are always kind of complaining. They're always like, oh, you know, like, they're they're always complaining about, like, human human human, issues where people have drama, and they don't know how to manage people. And and it just sucks because they don't have systems.

Jaymie Friesen [00:41:55]: So even if you are coming in as a live work exchange on on our land, you're you're getting onboarded through an online training system before you even get here so that you know exactly what you're what's expected of you, you have knowledge of of what to expect and how to manage the dogs and how to, you know, where you're going to be cooking and how to clean that space and how to introduce guests and all sorts of stuff before you even show up. And then we have, you know, we have trial periods to make sure that everybody's work ethic is good, and that we all get along. And we have a pretty strict hiring process to make sure that we are to make sure that we're in alignment, like with our beliefs and personalities and the way we like to live. And then, like lifestyle wise, like, if you want to come here and just chug a bunch of beers, and you know, that's your nightly ritual, then you're not going to make it through the hiring process, because that's not what we do here. Everybody on our team needs to hit certain metrics each, or is encouraged to hit certain metrics each week to for their personal health and things like that. And then also on the problem solving side. So we we attract and filter out people who are good problem solvers and self starters. So and then we give people problem solving, like questions during during their hiring process to weed out people who can not only solve problems, but then turn around and then put it into a training framework to train somebody underneath them.

Jaymie Friesen [00:43:26]: And that finds leaders so that we don't have to hand hold anybody.

Ethan Waldman [00:43:30]: Nice. Nice.

Jaymie Friesen [00:43:32]: And then we have a specific meeting. And then after you do that, pretty much we have a specific meeting system. There's a book called What the Heck is EOS? EOS stands for the entrepreneurial operating system. And it outlines a, a meeting structure that you do once a week. And then we have daily check ins where people just text me what they're doing. And that's, that's how I manage a team in, in 2 hours a week.

Ethan Waldman [00:43:56]: Sweet. Thank you. Well, thanks for the tips. That's, that'll go into the resources section for this for this episode for sure. Looking ahead, what what innovations or trends do you see shaping the future of tiny home communities and off grid living?

Jaymie Friesen [00:44:13]: Yeah, I think I mean, I don't know. I really don't know. I foresee that there needs to be a lot more spaces created. Like, there's so many tiny homes being sold. And I know that because we've run one of the businesses. Yeah. And and we know a lot of the people in it. So I know that I know these guys' output.

Jaymie Friesen [00:44:31]: And I'm like, where are people putting all these things? You know, I think most people are still kind of hunting for people's backyards and and, you know, trying to slide it into the back of somebody's orchard or farm without the government noticing. And I think that we're gonna have to start building some communities for people to actually park these, which is a model that we would like to explore. But I think that's, I think that's a dire need. There's kind of a weird gap, right? Like, I see that I see like people trying to park them in the back of someone's farm or property. And then I see people, you know, maybe parking them in like an RV park. But a tiny home in an RV park isn't necessarily what a tiny homeowner is looking for. You're you're 5 feet away from your neighbor.

Jaymie Friesen [00:45:13]: The point of it is to have some freedom and have a yard and have space to grow some food. And you know what I mean? Like, it's it's a different vibe of people. It's a more elevated vibe than than most trailer parks. So I think there's kind of there's got to be this like happy medium of building some kind of intentional space that's meant for more of a high end, tiny home community. Yep. And we brainstormed this. And I think that I hope people take this idea and run with it.

Jaymie Friesen [00:45:43]: But I think it'd be cool to imagine a place where everybody gets more land and more space, and they can bring their tiny home. And you could have co working spaces, and you could have a big common area for events, and a spa and a gym. And you could even have commercial locations where people could pay a little extra and have a commercial space to run a business out of. Or they could get a lot that backs onto a bunch of farmland if they want to farm some goods. And whatever, whatever it might be, I think that there's things like that need to start coming around. And it's gonna make this these decisions a lot easier.

Ethan Waldman [00:46:20]: Yeah, well, I, I think they are coming around slowly. But the the trend is in the right direction.

Jaymie Friesen [00:46:27]: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely been, yeah, there's definitely been a lot. It's been cool to see like, we've helped some clients do it. We've helped some clients. A common one is people turning campgrounds into tiny home. Yeah, into tiny home villages. Because the land zoning works.

Ethan Waldman [00:46:39]: Yeah, yeah. But one thing I like to ask all my guests is, you know, what are 2 or 3 resources you recommend? Could be books or YouTube channels or Instagram follows. You already mentioned, mentioned a couple actually mentioned, what the heck is EOS? You mentioned Cody Sanchez. Anything else that you like to recommend?

Jaymie Friesen [00:46:59]: I'd say our email list. It's free so people can sign up to our email list. And I write pretty high value stuff, very tangible, very actionable, giving people step by step stuff. So if you don't feel like paying for the course, it's still a really awesome resource for that. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, a common one as far as people kind of living off grid and stuff, a lot of people love the Humanure Handbook Yeah. For like compost toilets.

Jaymie Friesen [00:47:25]: I think that that's something that everybody should read. It's kind of like potentially a little off topic. But I thought I think that one's good. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's, that's probably a good place to start.

Ethan Waldman [00:47:36]: Well, awesome. Jaymie, thanks so much for being a guest on the show. I hope you'll just stick around for a second after we stop recording. And it was great. Great to meet you. And congratulations on your success and hope it continues.

Jaymie Friesen [00:47:48]: Thank you. You as well, Ethan. Thank you.

Ethan Waldman [00:47:52]: Thank you so much to Jaymie for being a guest on the show today. You can find the show notes for this episode, including a complete transcript, links to the program that Jaymie talked about, and lots more resources at thetinyhouse.net/311. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/311. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to share it with someone who you think would enjoy it. Your support means the world to us and helps keep the tiny house movement thriving. Well, I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back in 2 weeks with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.