Consulting Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:03.734)

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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of Consulting Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael Bernzweig and joining us today, we have Travis Fox. He's the visionary co-founder of Build Your Fortress. And with that, Travis, I want to welcome you to the podcast.

Travis (00:23.842)
Thanks Michael. I appreciate being here. You know, whenever it says visionary co-founder, I've always shudder from that word. like, Hmm, you know, I don't know what's that old saying. There's no such thing as that.

So hopefully I'm hopefully I'm that visionary for this generation, but I would shudder to tell you that the industry was founded long before Travis Fox was on the planet.

Michael Bernzweig (00:37.055)
I love it.

Michael Bernzweig (00:44.95)
Yeah, we'll leave it to the audience to decide. with that, was hoping for anyone that may not be familiar with Build Your Fortress or the whole concept of high performance panels, can you kind of share with our audience a little bit of your journey and a little bit about the day in and day out of what goes on there at Build Your Fortress?

Travis (00:47.479)
Fair play.

Travis (00:54.061)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (01:09.58)
Yeah, but you're actually catching us at a profound revolutionary time for us. And I don't mean revolutionary and contrarian, I mean, as an evolutionary on how it's going to revolutionize the manufacturing industry. So I'll mark that and then go backwards and answer your question. I actually got into real estate when I was 19 years old from two things. then here's the irony. One, I was trained by Robert Allen when I was a kid on how to do money, no money down deals. Cause I was fascinated by this concept. was...

Michael Bernzweig (01:24.376)
Sure.

Travis (01:35.829)
I didn't grow up as a privileged child, even though I grew up in the golf world. My father was an incredibly frugal man, a military to the bone. So every penny was marker to the, some sort of output. And, know, every time I entered a tournament, it had to have an ROI. So it was always built on that performance model. Hence the name high performance now 40 years later, I got into real estate and I started doing fix and flips when I was younger because

It made sense to me and golf and real estate was always my dream and passion of, if I'm going to go play on the PGA tour, wish dream, um, then I want to design golf courses because that makes the most sense to me. Cause without real estate, there's no golf. That's how I got into real estate and started looking at it. And then I read, you know, at the risk of sounding political, I am not political for any of you about listening to the show. Uh, I just read a book that influenced me. read, you know, uh, now president Trump's, you know, the art of the deal back in the late eighties. And it got my attention of, well, right.

Michael Bernzweig (02:25.313)
Right. Who didn't? Anybody in business that didn't read that book?

Travis (02:30.361)
Right. I, know, and again, I don't mean political for all of our friends on the other side of the aisles, whichever aisle, you know, I don't care. care about our veterans. That's what's most important to me. And as I went through my, my career, I was, I would do two things half the year. I would spend on real estate, fixing flips and developing portfolio. And the other half I would spend in the film and television side of me and the, on the psychological side of me, which is really, you know, the blend of the two going 40 years later. And as I continued to grow, I started to look at things. Then when my son decided to go, my eldest son,

decided to go in, in list and he became a special force operator. he was tack P did four tours for his God and country and finished his, his law degree at Georgetown and then did some posts. And now it's currently reenlisted to the, as an army captain in the reserves. It is, he's, he's the captain America of our family, but it really started to bother me. And it was just, he had called me when he had come back from his last tour from Afghanistan and you know, was going through his significant stuff.

Michael Bernzweig (03:14.477)
That's a mouthful. my goodness.

Travis (03:26.433)
And then the lumped, he was started like, that, I think I want to buy a house and I'm just going to kind of focus on my next level of career and buying a house for him became challenging, which I thought was odd. It's not, know, it's this, this, this would seem to be your perfect borrower, right? You've got a military veteran, know, he's in the decor, he's decorated. He's, he's got law degrees. He would seem to be that guy, but you know, let's agree the military isn't always the highest paying thing in the world and that's fine, but his credit was solid and he couldn't buy a house and

Michael Bernzweig (03:32.727)
Sure.

Travis (03:54.368)
I just kind of started looking around and said, well, why not? I don't understand why you couldn't afford a house. And then I started really diving into it. And I realized that a lot of what we've been doing in this country, and even up to this conversation, we're still building with something we've been doing for 200 years. You know, all the way back to barn raising days. If you want to go back to the Colonials and I'm going, well, that's a great tradition. But if you really expand your vision for all of you listening to the show, look what's going on in the rest of the world.

They're building with advanced materials. They're building at speed. They're doing things that are conceptually were originally considered out of bounds. I'll cite Dubai as a perfect example. I mean, what an incredible turnaround they've done in the last 20 years. And again, I'm again, I'm not political, not ideological, and I'm not theological. I'm just looking at from just a pure perspective of advancement. I go, unbelievable. Oh.

Michael Bernzweig (04:28.269)
Where are you?

Michael Bernzweig (04:42.079)
Dubai is just absolutely extraordinary in terms of the structure they've built, the, you know, everything just unbelievable.

Travis (04:50.238)
Yeah. And having been there and looked around and went, gosh, these, know, and I use this analogy, which kind of dates myself, but all of us. Yeah. It really is. mean, continuing to do that. And now that that whole region is really starting to expand. And so we started looking at that and I said, well, you know, it feels like we're here in America building in the Flintstones era when we should be building in the Jetsons like the rest of the world. And then I started to, I kind of went on this tear of

Michael Bernzweig (04:52.781)
Jar dropping.

Travis (05:15.552)
Well, what's out there? There's got to be something. I mean, we got, we have flying cars, we have electric cars, we've got phones that we can do that are straight out of Star Trek. And yet we're still building out of sticks and bricks. And we have these massive storms that are incredibly intense, that are wiping out swaths of humanity and structures at any given moment. And something doesn't make sense to me. So I started diving in and I was, I mean, I found SIPs, or structurally insulated panels. And for those of you don't know what it is, I want you just to visualize an ice cream sandwich.

You have an outside edge of OSB, and then you have a hyper compressed polystyrene. You would know that as styrofoam, but we compress all the air out of it, so it's a solid block. And then another OSB. And these things fit together like ice cream sandwiches and paint by numbers. And I went, wait a minute, this is the most simplistic and ideologically intelligent system I've seen out there. And I've seen a lot of crazy stuff out there and there's amazing things still even beyond in different aspects, right? Right. And so I got really fascinated by it I said, well, wait a minute. So...

Michael Bernzweig (06:07.115)
Yeah, it's like, is everybody not doing that?

Travis (06:13.628)
If I took the two passions that I'm passionate about, which is one, you know, real estate, but more importantly to our vets and you put two together, you now have build your fortress and build your fortress is based on the ideology of high performance panels, but revolutionized and understood that here's the fundamental problem. I can build all the warehouses you want Michael. That's great. They're slow to build and moreover, they cost millions of dollars to equip and put the manufacturing equipment in it. And then they're stuck in one geographical location and then say, Hey Michael, you want to build a house in New York, but my facility is over here in.

Nevada, well, logistically, I'm, now causing this challenge to get these products to you. And so as we looked at, well, we could do it for rail head. And we started looking around and I said, well, wait a minute. The fundamental problem is it's a fixed location. Well, if you look at our military, military does a very simple thing. They do an advanced thing called a forward operating base. So we put it out there, which is what SIPs were originally used for a part and partiality. I might add, by the way, it was a quick way to put up a structure, make sure they're protected because of their strength and their solidity.

It added a bunch of other layers, but you could also disassemble it from a military application and move on. So you're, you're maximizing your resource allocation. Fast forward. Now we've been working on, on that challenge now for the last two years. And last year, 2024, spent my pretty much everything we have and everything our focus on was how do we take the manufacturing plan and I bring it to you or what we now dub operation Knights of the fortress.

Where our military men and women can learn how to build these steps. They can learn the line. They actually have an opportunity and they can become a franchise or licensee owner, which is our mobile line, which is four trucks, four 52 foot semi tractor trailers that roll into a location like Los Angeles is a perfect example. And we're kicking the, we're kicking the panels out right there on the spot, as opposed to taking an order from one of our facilities, trucking it in, dropping it off and adding all these other steps and layers and time. How about just build it on site?

We're building these massive developments, or in this case, we can get rid of this wonderful organization. And I say this with respect to all of our friends in the government, but FEMA sucks. And it's not, it's not combat effective. It hasn't worked. We're still having rebuilt from Katrina. And that was 15 years ago where we have, you know, parts of Louisiana are still decimated. That's unacceptable in my opinion, in this country. And it's time for us to move into that era from the Jetsons, know, from the influence onto the Jetsons.

Michael Bernzweig (08:15.565)
Yeah.

Travis (08:33.148)
And now also too, but give our vets not only the homes that they deserve, and I'm not talking just giving them, they learn how to build their own house, but they can do it in hours as opposed to weeks or months because of the speed, but the solidity and also to our military know how to hold a community. And we're doing rebuilding a community together. have military men and women are first responders. These are the people you want is your neighbor. Cause if something goes south, I want them as my neighbor so that we can move and have a triage center. have emergency resources. We all work together as a unit because they've done it.

in real time, whether in civilian life and, or in military life. And that operation allows us to all look deep inside our hearts, especially now and go, okay, as Americans, regardless, whatever race, creed, color, age, I don't care. We all agree to one thing. We made an oath to the flag. We pledge allegiance to the flag or in military, you made an oath to defend the constitution, both Ford and domestic. Well, domestically now out of service, we have homelessness. It's a problem. We have vets. We're losing 44 vets a day right now on average.

And so we partnered with black pack and CVG, which is our veterans organization so that we can actually help our vets get the support they need, get the job, but not just a job because the job sucks. Give them a chance for opportunity for escalation all the way up to becoming an owner and actually own one of these. our goal now is to put 40 to 48 of these licensing franchises over the next 24 months, one in each of the 48 States. now.

You truly have the modern day cavalry and we can rebuild America literally starting with our communities and going forward. And that's how I arrived here on your show.

Michael Bernzweig (10:04.235)
You don't pick anything simple. It sounds like you definitely jumped in with both feet and obviously have a mission and a purpose and a vision, and it sounds like you're rolling that out. So I guess the first question that comes to mind is what inspired the creation of Build Your Fortress? What was the founding story? How did it come together?

Travis (10:07.965)
No.

Travis (10:16.682)
I do.

do.

Travis (10:32.497)
Yeah, you know, I'd love to tell you was a, you know, a joy, joy, feel good feelings. No, I was actually pissed. I was actually really pissed off and I wasn't pissed at anybody. was pissed at a theme. Meaning again, Jetsons versus Flintstones. How is it we can say we're the greatest country in the world? And I believe that we are, but we're doing things that are so bass, backwards and so debilitating to the specifically to the construction industry at large. And we've seen this in post of these apocalyptic storms, whether it was, you know, whether you have North Carolina.

where you have the horrible and I'm ex, I'm an ex Southern California. So the LA fires hit very close home to me. In fact, I grew up in Marina Del Ray is not far from right where then I played Riviera more times than I can count both, you know, in my professional life and my, amateur life. And to watch that happen was it's surreal. It's, mean, you, you, again, you don't see these things for movies, but this was real life. And then I started looking at Michael, wait a minute. Why are these people not able to get back to their homes? They've lost everything. Give them a shot. The slabs already there.

Give me the blueprint. Let me roll in with the trucks. Let's start rebuilding right now. But instead, we're going through red tape. Makes no sense.

Michael Bernzweig (11:36.141)
So let me ask you a question. So like if you were to bullet point the details that make these high performance panels a game changer in the construction industry, what are the details about these panels that make it a real game changer?

Travis (11:53.466)
Yeah, fair play. Well, let's start with the basics, right? On average, you're going to save 30 % of waste because we're not measuring and cutting with lumber package. It comes done for you. Windows are pre-cut, the windows are pre-cut, but it's assembled on site. So you have the ability to fabricate and move things without having to go, I got to this whole wall down and redo it again. No need to. Two, speed to build.

Literally speed to build and you can see this on our website where we worked with Habitat for Humanity which has a really good speed to build, about 21 days to frame. We did it in four and a half hours. Exact same blueprint, side by side house comparison to go, there you go. So when you look at that, speed to build is on average 50%. On top of that, operating the house makes it interesting because our factor on our standard six inch walls is R25. But it doesn't change because it's a solid core versus...

you know, insulation where you have gaps and you have studs that are apart and you have all these other air loss factors that people don't think about. And that's the difference between putting food on the table or, you know, making a car payment or even maintaining the house, you know, heating and cooling. So you're going to save about up to 70 % in HVAC and even more so SIPs are the only product that the Miami-Dade County has certified and approved survived storms. have 160 mile an hour ground force rating. What does that mean? Well, it means you're going to survive the storm. And that's why it's called fortress. And only that because

Our military men and women have the opportunity to come and be a part of this for all of us. United States is a fortress. Our communities are fortresses. Our states are fortresses. We are fortifying and rebuilding America because we haven't really invested in our country hardcore really since World War II. We've done things here and there. I don't want to misspeak, but let's talk on a macro level. Name a major metropolitan area and I guarantee you I can walk in there and some part of the inner city is falling apart and it hasn't been rebuilt because we go to sprawl.

And then we cyclically try to come back and rebuild. The problem is if we rebuild all the same thing, we're going to run into the same result. So we need something that's better, faster, greener and stronger and uses less resources. And also because we can start recycling the polystyrene. So instead of putting our landfills, which doesn't decompose styrofoam doesn't use it. And now we use it in a product that makes sense. And we're using less of our real wood resources because of the timber, we're only using the OSB. And now we can start moving to R and D products where we're using renewable resources like hemp. We're using.

Travis (14:07.643)
bamboo. And now you've been moving into the coconut husk as we start to move towards the islands down in the Southeast outside of Florida to go, well, they don't have wood. So we had to use other sources and we continue to do so going guys, we can do this. It's for all of us. It's better from the cities, the states, counties, everything. So we're have better, faster, greener, stronger houses. And now you're seeing this and we all know this when we see insurance companies not insuring on certain areas.

We have to have a product that they have to ensure because it's already been rated and done by outside third parties all the way from the department of energy to Kobe, Japan on seismic studies of sips. And that's how we, that's how we do it. And that's what the kind of the distinct advantage are right out of box.

Michael Bernzweig (14:45.719)
So are other organizations doing this? if so, how does it stack up? Or if not, why is no one else doing this?

Travis (14:53.787)
Not enough are. answer is not enough. mean, there's really only, there's officially there's supposed to be 60 SIPP manufacturers in the entire United States, ourself included. Realistically, there's 10 that I have found that I believe are hardcore, when I mean by hardcore enough that they can have an output and a throughput that can keep up sustainable resources and push out the product. However, given situations that we're currently facing right now, again,

The ones aforementioned LA, North Carolina, Florida, et cetera, who are still in the rebuild mode. We can't build plants fast enough. president Trump is correct. Right now we need to bring manufacturing back to the United States as fast as it can, whether it's static or mobile. We chose to go mobile for two reasons. One, we can be on in and we can respond instantly to some location and help rebuild immediately. Put up emergency structures, put up emergencies of resource centers that can be built literally in hours so that they're structurally there. They're ready to go. They don't have to be pretty. They just have to work.

And that's the problem we're running into. And then start rebuilding these cities so that we can move faster, but also too, turns the economy. Well, let's backpedal off from that emergency services. Let's just talk about development. Instead of having these, developers be in these projects 18, 24 months and waiting so that they can't move because the banks won't give them any bigger, large lines of credit because they're stuck in a project. You can turn these faster because you go from a horizontal, your verticals go up 10 times faster, which means people are buying the product because they can see it. They can see the ends in sight.

They can start moving into that space and now all of a sudden it turns the entire economy. mean, let's be honest, building is part of the economy of the GDP of the United States of America. That's how we built this country.

Michael Bernzweig (16:27.725)
And obviously you're in the right space as things are transitioning now in the US. So I guess my biggest question is you've eliminated a huge roadblock in terms of the manufacturing process. It's a no-brainer. But what are the existing constraints? Obviously, before you can lay down a new structure, you need to have a foundation, need to have infrastructure, you need to have a lot of other components.

components to the whole process. So, how does it, what's the reality? How does it all roll out?

Travis (16:58.509)
Yeah, there's three big, there's three. Yeah. It rolls, strangely enough, we're the fastest part, but we're held up by parts that we have no control over. You're right. The horizontal development entitlements, man, my God, I think I lose a year every year time a project starts because by the, okay, we'll be done eight months from now. It's entitled and we're ready for horizontal. Even the horizontal space has made massive adjustments on their ability to pour slabs and create infrastructure so we can go to vertical quickly. That's the first one is.

The government bureaucracy with all due respect is too slow, in the smaller towns guys get with it. We got, we got to streamline this process. It's not rocket science, right? Look at the blueprint, look at the plat. Let's make it happen. That's the first one. The second one is capital constraints. Most people have this ideology. Well, that it just, it gots just too good to be true. And I went, well, okay, let's start with iPhone one. All right. Let's go back in time. Let go back to the iPod.

Let's go look at some of these massive tech. I mean, look at AI. We're at AI now. I mean, never thought the web was cool. Now we're at AI. Now we got walking robots guys. It's possible to build structures without having to do traditional sticks and bricks. Are there influence of sticks and bricks? Of course, but it doesn't mean it has to be the entire totality of it. And also to our grid here in the United States is failing. It's not built for the amount of technology pull that we pull every, mean, just here in this studio, I've got three monitors.

two computers and three phones going that are all pulling electric on top of the lights, on top of your standard operation. So times that by, I don't know, 330 million people times X, we're pulling a ton and the grid needs a little bit of support. And with these houses, we're not spending as much heating and cooling because our R factor is solid. And that's a cool trick that most people don't look at when you buy a structure of what it takes to operate it. We look at it, but we really pay attention to it because each one of us is subjective to what temperature loads we like to live at.

And that's the freedom of living in America. And then the third is realistically coming to the space of what does the capital investment look like? Right? Because we talking about, we do reg CF? Do we do investment banking? You know, does it have to have a certain amount of EBITDA before they get to scalability? There's all of these factors where, you know, back in the day, when we first started looking at rebuilding post-World War II, it was, Hey, if it solves a problem and it makes reasonable sense, then you could get support. Unfortunately, in today's banking world, it's incredibly difficult.

Travis (19:17.657)
Not only did they want everything from the company, but they want it from all the top officers, everything to the point where, know, you get penalized, for not being big enough, which then you get this divide again, right? Well, if you got the top ones building and the ones trying to get into it, well, the divide is here and it's this constant battle as opposed to wait a minute guys. And if you watch the super bowl as a recently, there's a unifying message that's out there and something that we're big about. It's like, look, upholding the oath is for all of us.

America needs help right now, regardless of political ideology. don't care about politics. I care about people. I'm in the people business. You can call it build your fortress, but at end of the day, I'm in the people business. And the Maslow, Maslow vane hierarchy of needs, food, air, water, shelter, shelter. So if we don't have a theme of safety, I don't care if it's a 900 square foot ADU or it's a 40,000 square foot warehouse. If we don't have some sense of feeling of safety, then you have a very unstable society because people don't feel like they have a place they can.

call home, their own, the American dream, all of those things that you and I, and at least our generation grew up on believing in really chasing this younger generation doesn't even have a chance. I don't stand a chance. The rental market is incredibly expensive. And that's part of, cause we have a lack of inventory. mean, currently right now we have, we live at a, just north of an 8 million home deficit, meaning that there's 8 million homes needed just to supply every single person in this country with the opportunity for a home. I'm not talking about rental. just talking about home, 8 million and growing.

And so when we look at that concept, every single one of us as, builders, manufacturers, developers, even if we're going to the a hundred miles an hour as fast as we can all go, we should be so lucky to make an 8 million home deficit in the next decade. So we need everyone to get involved in this and step forward. Doesn't necessarily have to be build your fortress, although I think it should, but nonetheless get involved and somehow start looking at real estate investment companies that do this on a scale. And there are several major corporations that do sticks and bricks that are of note and they're very well done.

but also to look at some advanced building. No different than you would do your traditional banking and commodities with stock market. You're also now looking at crypto. I would analogize it's the same thing. Continue to develop the way you're doing it because we need the help and we need it, but also start looking at advanced products. There's a ton of them out there. Build Your Fortress being one of them who are all revolutionizing that same market and diversify your portfolio without going into your mitigation of risk. That's, your, I'm not a...

Travis (21:40.672)
advisor. So don't take that position for me, but just look at that as a comparative analogy. You're splitting your portfolio. Why wouldn't you do that in a construction industry where we can get better results?

Michael Bernzweig (21:49.358)
So can you talk a little bit about the footprint of your organization in terms of manufacturing and capacity and all of that? Because obviously, as important as the actual physical product and the design and speed of market is, if you don't have the capacity to get the solution out there, it's all for naught. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Travis (22:06.231)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (22:15.061)
Yeah, we were in, for the last couple of years, we operated out of a facility, where we were co-parting with our other, our other partner at the time. And we kept looking at this philosophy of going, this is where I came back to my previous comments of putting the manufacturing facility is not cheap. It's incredibly expensive and time consuming. And so we've put all of our efforts in the mobile line for two reasons. One mobility, but two, the line that we've developed as part of our IP gives us a deeper output and throughput on the line.

In previous models, we were putting out about 60 panels a day. What does that mean? Yeah. It means about one 1200 square foot house a day, give or take. That's about what it means as opposed to a four times output where we can do up to 200 panels per every eight hour shift. Now we're pushing out four to five homes a day. You do that five days a week and you're doing it on site. You can move through a development very quickly, or at least a phase development for sure. That's that's multifam. Then again, that's RALs that's hospitals, that's hotels.

or single family res of any size, you know, we tend to like to focus on the workforce and attainable housing sector because I find the housing is incredibly expensive and it doesn't need to be, but it is. And a lot of that is labor. Yeah. But what if you could reduce that? What if you could actually get, we have one company that's challenged us point blank said, if you can get an entire house built for a love, you know, about $140,000, 1200 square foot, three, two, two vaulted roof. If you can get that done for about $140,000.

They're ready to go. They're like, we have 2000 doors are ready to build this year alone in just one state. I'm like, okay. So for us, it was, well, we can keep investing in all of this, uh, know, manufacturing and building and, going through that nonsense, but it takes forever to put these things together. Even if we take over an existing facility or we go mobile. we have shifted our entire output to mobile. Uh, yeah, it may, well, it's revolution is not revolutionized as the line, right? I mean, and what made it even more unique is

Michael Bernzweig (24:04.183)
Well, that makes sense.

Travis (24:11.06)
We can take that line and take it off the trucks and put it into a facility, even temporary. So, Hey, Mr. Mrs. Mayor, you're having a scenario. You've got all these warehouses that are empty. Let us, we'll take, we'll, we'll appropriate one for a couple of months. We'll put the line in there. We'll put people back to work. We'll output what you need. And if you, that's all that this city needs, then we can put it back on the trucks and take off, but you've got what you need. You've now got people in the ground. You've got deeper infrastructure, and then we can see what the sprawl of the city looks like.

Michael Bernzweig (24:36.307)
I love it. You're not only taking advantage of helping the community get back to back to business, but you're also employing people. Now, what is the level of skill required for the actual manufacturing process and for the actual construction process?

Travis (24:45.481)
Yeah.

Travis (24:53.014)
Believe it or not, if you're going to go from an educational level, high school, you don't need any more than that. More, moreover for us, our first line of opportunity that we look at is our, our, uh, dishonor, our debt discharge is the word I'm looking for discharge vets and our first responders who are looking for the next career. I mean, one of things we do in the military is we teach passion, purpose, mission and vision team. And then we say, by the way, thank you for your service, Michael. And we throw you out and Hey, you're discharged. Now you're back in the world and there's none of that.

Michael Bernzweig (25:12.502)
Okay.

Travis (25:22.901)
It's just utter chaos. We're in the military. It's very regimented. We know exactly what we're doing. Here's what the value is. And this is what happens. And I learned that from both my father and as well as my eldest son, I didn't have the honor of serving, but I've been around it my whole life since I was literally two years old and watching and growing up on military bases around the world and saying, kids, there's a value output. know exactly what you're doing. There's a chain of command. have secondaries and you have this as brother and sisterhood. And then we throw them out to the streets and say, well, thanks for your service. Oh, well.

Good luck. and I think that's a disservice, but moreover, then we say, okay, go find a job. Well, what jobs can they really do there? That depends on what they were in service, but let's say as a macro comment, it's team. Well, a of, a lot of jobs aren't in that team space for them. So for us, the first, those are the first people we look at. as long you have a high school education, but moreover for me, Hey, as long as you're, if you have

ambition and you have a willingness to get up and get on your feet and get back into the game. Whatever that game may be, we're going to find a space for you, whether it's on the line, whether it's part of an assembled crew, whether it's driving the trucks. Moreover, and what I really idealize is I want them to own this. It's their right. There's a reason why you and I are having this, this wonderful show that you've invited me on. Thank you. This is because men and women stood on a wall and they made sure that this country has been safe and we've been doing it for 200 plus years now. And we forget often.

I know I'm guilty of it too and I hold myself in contempt that every day I get up and if I have anything to complain about, you better remember why you have something to complain about. And that is because for 200 years we've made sure that this country is borders are protected both internally and externally, regardless of politics and regardless of ideology. But for example, if the men and women had not answered the call of world war II, this would be a very different conversation in a very, very, very different world right now. So let's step back a second.

Now I don't like war any more than anybody else. think it's one of the worst atrocities in humanity that we do to ourselves, but until everybody comes to a peaceful state, we still those men and women and their families, something that is often overlooked. The effect, the effect on these families when these men and women go to serve for a year or two years at a time and they're not home, these kids that grow up without their mother or father who are both maybe military on discharge and out on service, they should have come back to something that gives them solidity. And for me, it became a very strong, passionate drive.

Travis (27:41.044)
I mean, it's not just, Hey, I just want to build houses and help the vets. No, I'm actually a little bit on fire about it. And I think we need to be it's time that we stand up. It's been a long time since America's had a real strong pride in itself. And I'm going back, you know, not just in the most recent times I'm talking for a while. How come? Because I think we've lost our ability to, we've lost our ability to communicate in an effective way. We don't know our neighbors like we used to. We have had so many, we're getting hit on so many different fronts. Wouldn't it make sense? Let's start with building your fortress. Cause back in the day,

Michael, we used to build each other's house. I would help you build yours and you'd come help build mine. Now we can do that because you don't need to be a tradesman to build a SIP product. It helps, but it's not required.

Michael Bernzweig (28:22.125)
So walk me through a day in the life. My town just got hit with a disaster. Everything's destroyed. You come in, what does it look like? Where do you start? And what kind of a timeline are we looking at based on cooperation from the community, from the government, from all the different...

stakeholders involved? What are we looking at?

Travis (28:53.617)
Yeah, good question. the first thing we'd want to do is no different than, you know, we're very blessed because we are on, this company, we are represented even at the board level, by all four branches of the military, right? From colonels to sergeants. So we have all four branches are represented specifically focused on the logistics and operations and finance. And how do we move this, this like an efficient unit, which is something the military generally is really good at. Is they perfect? No, cause they're still humans involved, but all or over they've got it down pretty well.

So if that first thing you want to do is you want to move in, in our humble opinion, and establish a forward operating base. And that was put up a SIPP structure where people have shelter from whatever may be happening, but also to where we can start to distribute emergency services. Now I'm going to pick you to a visual for everybody listening. So that this makes sense to you in most recent times, you saw this in LA where instead of that happening, what people did is they, they reclaimed the big parking lot over in Santa Ana. And we made the biggest, basically, you know, for lack of definition,

resource center that we could find where everybody brought water, the clothes or food or whatever they needed. So these people could have the basic services because their entire lives were obliterated through these fires. Well, what if you had a building there? You could pop up, sit building up. That's very quick. Boom. You could put it up. Now people have shelter. You've got an organizational structure. can have inbound logistics, outbound logistics, water, same thing with our, our first responders, fire and police specifically EMTs. We're on the front lines for a place to fall back, refresh.

Get what they need, go back into the fight, whatever that fight may be, whether fire, know, traffic control, emergency services. Secondly, from there, it's starting to work with city officials to go, okay, where's the first place we can start rebuilding to give these people an opportunity? Do we need to build temporary services? Do we need to build a temporary neighborhood to put these people in or like with LA? Well, the slab is still there. Now we need to do the demo services, of course. And that's not something we do. We partner with other demo services and say, pull all that demo out. Let's inspect the.

the slab and instead of going through the red tape of making these homeowners go through it, we pull the blueprint down and we start printing right on site and I say printing the panels and then we can start to assemble. Now what's even better for this Michael and something that is a huge fantasy of mine and something I think is beyond cool is the homeowner can actually participate. They can come in and help rebuild the house because again it's ice cream sandwiches and paint by numbers. Each panel is individually marked. Each panel stack is individually marked.

Travis (31:13.318)
The actual studio print comes out and you could see it. You can't screw this up, but part of it, they get to take pride in rebuilding. They're not waiting for somebody else to do it for them. Now that doesn't mean there aren't other people involved, but now we're talking about community building. And I promise you, you rebuild a house or you build a house with someone you've never met and you're doing it together. There's a bond that comes from that. Now it's not bond of the same bond that you would experience in war. Let's say the brother, the brotherhood or the sister that comes from that experience.

But this is a war. It's a war on homelessness. It's a war on how fast we rebuild, how fast our communities are integrating. And when you do that, it's a cool experience. It's cause Nelson's like, I remember, Hey Michael, remember when we were building that, that, that bedroom right there, we got that corner put in and we were like, wow, that was fast. And now we're moving to the next house at each house. Then we feel a part of it. And I don't mean that you have ownership of it, but you feel a sense of worthiness. This is a pride and you've seen this and only time we see this in mass is generally in disaster all the way back from nine 11.

All the way to now, most recently LA and North Carolina, North Carolina, Maui is another one we have Florida. Now we've got Houston's had challenges as of late. And of course, you know, Florida gets hit every year with hurricanes. I'm going guys, there's something different about it. Now you want to sit up, just donate your money, which is great. And we appreciate that when you donate to 501s, but what actually, if you could come out, you don't need construction experience. All you need is a willingness. That's different. Now the people who truly want to help feel like they can come and help. And that's what makes this impact from those that just a financial level, but more importantly,

a community building level.

Michael Bernzweig (32:42.399)
And I can only imagine the level of gratification you must hear from clients day in and day out. Can you share a few stories of some homeowners and some of the experiences they had before and after connecting with you guys?

Travis (32:50.053)
I do.

Travis (33:01.838)
Yeah, the one that I love the most and it's because, you know, and it's really an homage to the late, great president Carter, who, know, has recently just passed, but habitat for humanity is, is values and its core core values are to here to this date from the original inception from a president and Mrs. Carter and getting to work with them. took us a while because again, their, machine has kind of been in motion for a while now. They've done it the way they've always done it.

And there, but they're starting to move into bigger developments. And, know, I cite Omaha as an example. Omaha is now the number two affiliate in the entire United States for habitat for humanity. And they're doing massive developments. I don't mean one or two. mean, 400 homes at a time. That includes the horizontal as well as the vertical. And to sit there and watch these volunteers, because what are our challenge was give us people who've, you know, normally are just volunteers who don't really know what they're doing in construction per se. Give it to us. 20 of these people showed up.

And it was instantly a family, 20 people who had never known each other were completely different walks of life. Yeah. was just instantly. Okay. How do we do it? Okay. Here's the first 15 minutes. We'll show you how to do it. Once we set the corner, they saw it and they took off and all of they naturally got into these teams and it became almost this. I say this term loosely, but it became a competition who could build the walls faster because they had started to figure out, Hey, this isn't as hard as we thought it was. like, no, in fact, it's actually quite simple. Your next challenge is.

Michael Bernzweig (34:01.453)
Okay, off you go.

Travis (34:25.456)
How come we didn't do five more at the exact same time? In fact, the head of construction who's an incredible gentleman, his name is Drew. And you can see this video on our website and actually watch us do it. And we timed ourselves because we said, Hey, we know we can do it faster in 21 days, but how fast can we do with people who have never done anything in this experience at all? And we got it done in four and a half hours. And that was slow because we'd stopped the teach and experience and have a cup of coffee for a second. Cause it went up so fast. They were like, Oh, I was expecting to be here all day. And I'm like,

Michael Bernzweig (34:47.213)
That's crazy.

Michael Bernzweig (34:51.349)
Yeah.

Travis (34:55.024)
Well, you can, if you want to be, but you don't, not required. And so those experiences, and I cite those from the perspective that to this day, um, I, matter of fact, I talked to drew last week at the time of this recording and we talked and it was like, Hey, we're to do the next group together, but now we're talking, we're contemplating doing significant, you know, minimum of 40 upwards of 200 of them for them at a speed build and why people need homes. mean, Omaha gets hit with a hurricane or scratch that. I'm so sorry. A tornado.

Michael Bernzweig (34:57.26)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (35:20.577)
and probably get through this.

Travis (35:24.192)
Every year, sometimes multiples and it just wipes them out. I'm like, guys, I hate to break it to you, but the sticks and bricks just aren't going to hold up anymore. We've got to do something better. So it was a really cool story of to see an organization with such history and had would have every right to say, this is the way we've always done it. This is kind of how we're going to stick to it. But they didn't, they said, we're willing to look, we're looking for more progressive, more innovative ways to do this because their objective is the same houses.

Michael Bernzweig (35:25.527)
Yeah, it's such a...

Michael Bernzweig (35:32.759)
Yeah.

Travis (35:53.209)
for humanity. of discussion. However we get there, as long as it's better, faster, greener, stronger, safer, and it still stays within the price points so that people can afford these homes. And I don't mean affordable housing isn't cheap. And audience be very mindful. The word affordable doesn't mean cheap. It just means affordable for the masses. You can replicate that word if you like with attainable.

or workforce as the government likes to David, they're the ones that adjusted means that don't say the word affordable. You got to say the word attainable and workforce. I'm like, okay, whatever works for you. And that makes most sense though. But I do think it's a misnomer. think we often think of, of affordable housing is cheap and often in the past, could be. However, comma, doesn't have to be. And so now we talk about, yeah, now we can attain it. Right? I mean, look, you know, for, you can, if you have the ability, I mean, more so, this is the part that really blows your

Michael Bernzweig (36:19.981)
haha

Michael Bernzweig (36:31.98)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (36:35.297)
Yeah, needs to be left.

Travis (36:44.329)
You could dang near build the structure yourself and then sub out the rest on your own because it doesn't take two or three guys, gals to get in there and do it and build these things. Because when you see it, you go, haven't people in that way at all? I remember one general contractor who was up in the salt Lake city or at, point blank said, we taught him literally in 20 minutes how to, how to put SIPs together on a hexagonal platform that we use to train. And he came in and said, that's it. And we said, that's it.

And he said, well, God, I don't know why I build a sticks and bricks. don't know that ever do it again. I said, that's exactly the answer I'm looking for. Not just from our product, but the industry at large, because there's a lot of other great, you know, other manufacturers out there, but you could come to order any of us and we can't keep up. There's no such thing as capacity at this point because there's so much deficit. So we move that direction though. And we at least start to get 20, 30%, you know, implementation into the work or the space.

Hey guys, we're actually going start making an impact and ultimately as the next generation comes up behind us, they'll find something better or they'll take it to the next level and go from there. And that's what makes them so high performance is output and mobility.

Michael Bernzweig (37:50.904)
Well, Travis, I want to wrap up with a couple of things because I know honestly how busy you are and I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to connect with us as there is so much going on in the space, but you, you sit or stand, I don't know what you want to say in a very unique spot within the industry and a very important area that's, that's obviously going to be.

Travis (38:10.926)
Sure.

Michael Bernzweig (38:17.193)
evolving very rapidly over the next couple of years. From where you stand, what trends do you foresee shaping the housing market? And how do you see this space within the market positioned to lead that change?

Travis (38:35.112)
as the aforementioned, the advantages of it, both, from speed to build saving our factor, all of the above cost effectiveness of running the actual structure post build is going to be your thing. But two, you know, unfortunately there's a big movement and I, I'm not a super fan of it. have to be honest with you, this, big, you know, high density, multi-stack multi multifam, type of buildings and they're necessary. Don't get me wrong. However,

If we're not going to build them out of those kinds of structures, then what's the difference seeing that in a hotel, for example, Michael, you and I are four doors down on the same, we're on a third level, high density, you know, building, but I can hear you close your door every time you walk out and my whole thing shakes because we really didn't build the solidity of it. Then, you know, what it really does is it creates a breeding ground for non-human non-human connectivity. I'll just be as polite as I can say that when we can, we can do that with this product.

Michael Bernzweig (39:31.757)
Sure.

Travis (39:34.198)
And many other parts of this product can do that. And every aspect from RALs, know, residential assisted living, which is a huge need in this country. And specifically in the special needs sector or something I'm another passionate about, because I happen to be a special needs parent. I'm an autistic parent of 22 years. And where does my son go when we're not on the planet? There, aren't really RALs for that. It's a huge sector that needs to be done in them. The solidities buildings and the soundproofing

Michael Bernzweig (39:57.837)
Yeah.

Travis (40:01.877)
Or the sound of dampening, I should say would be better. think we're positioned to be in the right spot, but not just from an investment growth perspective because of how we're revolutionized in the industry, but also to all of the brothers and sisters who are in this industry, which there's not nearly enough of us in the United States at all from the aforementioned reasons. Really making a conglomerate to build the fortress of the United States of America back as it was. And I don't mean going back in time back as in the salinity of we took care of the American dream.

Everyone had a shot to get their house. Everyone had a shot to start in an apartment, get into the single family res, move into a bigger house if they want to, and ultimately custom if that was something they chose to do. However, to be able to be part of that and know that the, you escalate in your move, you still have the same product load, meaning from the apartment to the custom home, you still have the solidity as opposed to a lesser product, perhaps at the, the, let's say the apartment level or even the single family, so to your custom. Why not?

If we're all on the same team, give it to them. I think those are our two strategic advantages, where the industry is going, how we can help solve it on both sides, but also from an investment point of view. Because again, it's about scalability and trust me, there's plenty of work for everybody.

Michael Bernzweig (41:10.455)
Makes a lot of sense and I'm gonna finish on this. Obviously we're gonna leave a link in the show notes that would like to reach out to you or anybody on the team. But for those interested in either partnering or investing in your organization and what you're doing, what types of opportunities are available?

Travis (41:24.961)
Hmm?

Travis (41:28.685)
Hmm?

there's several. mean, obviously we're still a private company. have designs. My, my dream, Michael, is to take this company public. I'm not qualified to take the company public. So we'll eventually have to find someone better and smarter than me. Cause I I'm not expert in that space, but to be able to get to that space twofold one that you have an opportunity to own part of it as an operator, as a four mentioned part of the Knights of the fortress and upholding the oath, as I had said before, but also two as an investor.

because of that scalability, because of that operation, because of that need and taking that public. if not for private, you, we are a private company. You can invest with us to actually, we do have investor relations through Skylark ventures, our East coast partner in preparatory for that opportunity to potentially go public or you can reach out. We're veteran, we're veteran owned, we're woman led, we're minority diverse. We have all of it here, men and women.

Um, everybody represented, uh, both on military side and civilian side. It, is to me, what is building your fortress is about as a unified community that says we can do this. This is what America was built on. It didn't matter what your race or creed is. As long as you're pink on the inside and you swore the oath of the flag, good to go. Let's move. What needs to happen though is, movement is not getting in this big, long due diligence processes. And I'm not saying don't do your due diligence people for out there, but I'm saying, come on guys, at what point.

Michael Bernzweig (42:34.707)
I love it.

Travis (42:45.483)
Are you willing to risk the dream and say, let's go because this is about a legacy. mean, we have some historical projects that we're up for that are massive that will, for me personally, we'll forever ingrain the build your fortress and the black pack name together because it was veterans and civilians coming together to rebuild America. Really, which is really cool honoring the past, but building in modern day era so we can speed build these things and bring it back. So if you want an investment, you can go to our website.

Email me directly or email our chairwoman directly and we'll respond directly with you and get you involved and see how we can help.

Michael Bernzweig (43:16.425)
I love it and I really appreciate the deep dive. That's what it's all about and thank you for joining us on the consulting spotlight today.

Travis (43:18.412)
Thank you. Thank you.

Travis (43:24.2)
Thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate it. Build better together.