Work Worth Doing

Dean (00:00)
How's everyone getting on? Welcome back to another episode of Quiddable and another edition that's below episode 10. And as you know, that means you can still call yourself an OG. So I appreciate you.

If you are new to the show, the point of the show, the reason the show exists is to help people who are in jobs that don't serve their soul. And this is something that's very important to me as this was me a couple of years ago before I set up my own business. My hope is that through listening to this show, you can reframe your situation, view it as quittable and find something that's more conducive to how you actually want to live your life as it's too precious.

too, too precious to do shit that you don't care about. Now, my guest today is Paul Laufford. Paul lives in a tiny home which he built himself and has since created a business that helps other people build tiny homes. In this discussion, you will hear us talk about how he built his first tiny home without any prior knowledge, what made him hand in his notice to leave his job that he didn't connect with,

how living with less has changed his relationship to money and possessions, and how he battled the classic imposter syndrome when launching this business. The thing I love about Paul's story is that despite its uniqueness, you can definitely apply his business and life learnings to whatever situation you're currently in. So kick back, relax, and enjoy the episode.

Dean (01:35)
You're a guy who I've admired for a long time. Seriously, I've seen you on Instagram whipping up the Tiny Homes, posting about it. I love the message. I love what it stands for. Tiny Homes are just fucking cool, man. I think they're great.

Paul (01:40)
up.

Dean (01:50)
And yeah, I'm excited to get into this because I think your story is one that genuinely will inspire people.

Paul (01:57)
Thanks very much. yes, I live in a tiny house and I built that tiny house. My business is building tiny houses or at the moment it's building a tiny house. And then I also, I teach people how to build their own homes and run short courses here. So that's good crack. I love it.

Dean (02:04)
Yeah.

So let's just assume everyone doesn't know what a tiny home is. Let's just explain to get started with what the hell is one of those things.

Paul (02:22)
Yeah, mean, it's in the name really like a tiny home and mine in particular is a tiny house and wheels. So tiny home is generally considered to be any dwelling that's like under a thousand square foot Like mine's way less than that. Like mine's about 180 square foot. Mine's like totally off grid eco home. So I made it as close to passive as I could. So it's totally airtight. It's solar powered. It's got a mechanical heat recrytivary ventilation.

Dean (02:26)
haha

Paul (02:46)
Basically, it's just taking a regular house and squeezing it down into a very small size. The unique thing about mine is obviously that it's on wheels, so my house can be towed by my Jeep, you know, can just hitch it up and drive away. And basically the buzz that that is, you don't need to own land. So like I spent roughly 30 grand on my tiny house about four years ago on materials. Did most of the labor myself, had some help. Didn't do the solar system myself, a friend did that, but he did it for less than market value. And we used a lot of secondhand stuff, like all my windows and doors are secondhand. Most of my solar tech was secondhand.

The steel cladding that I got was from an old cattle shed that came off the ground like so. There were some savings in that but all in all I spent about 30 grand and now I live in a family's land. They let me live there in exchange for, well pretty much for free. I give them power off my solar system but they don't really expect anything in return. They just like what I'm doing. So I've landed on my feet there. I've been very lucky. So yeah, that's a crack.

Dean (03:38)
So when you were starting this, did you get some sort of manual or did you just say, right, I like to look at these things, I've seen them online, let's just wing this and see if I can put them together?

Paul (03:50)
Yeah, it's kind of a long convoluted story, but I suppose we'll probably get into that. like more or less like I'm part of the driver in me doing it was that basically the Internet has democratized information so much that I actually felt possible to do without the construction experience. Like I didn't have construction experience, but I did have a wealth of project management. My project management experience is relevant to events. Like I'd worked in events for over decade, but but there's definitely parallels. It's really just getting things done, you know, and.

Yeah, I I bought a book, was absolutely crap. It was called The Idiot's Guide to Building a Tiny House, which I thought should be absolutely perfect, but it was shit. Funny enough, like it was totally useless. I should have put the thing in the bin. I bought an ebook or two that were one of them was in particular was really good. I lifted some designs from that and then most of it just came from YouTube. YouTube and Googling stuff and looking at people argue on the internet over what is the best way to do things. Like the unique thing about tiny houses is that they're so small that the level of engineering in them isn't.

isn't overly complex. It's not like trying to, like a conventional house is so big that there is very complex engineering and loads involved where like the roof in my tiny house only weighs a couple of hundred kilos. You know, it's not the most complex design in the world.

Dean (05:00)
Yeah. What I love about that is the fact that you were just like, yeah, yeah. You know, I'll just try out these things, test it out on YouTube, see what's, see what's going on and then just kind of go for it. That's so good, man. So how long did it take to build?

Paul (05:08)
What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, there's many sleepless nights.

It took me about a thousand hours over four months to build the shell. When I moved into it, it was basically just a shell, like a ladder to get up to the loft to bed and a really basic kitchen. then since then I've built out like a stairs, some cabinetry, a much better kitchen. I've done loads of finishing details and stuff, but it was perfectly livable after those thousand hours. I have no idea how much time I put into it after that because the basic construction of it was a lot easier than the finished work. Like finished carpentry requires a lot more precision and skill.

then rough construction, like the difference between really skilled people doing rough construction and unskilled people is that skilled people can get through it in like days, what would take me weeks, you know.

Dean (05:57)
Yeah. Do you have a bathroom in it? Do you? Is that a silly question?

Paul (06:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course it is. Yeah, I've got a bathroom in a shower, yeah. No, it's not, suppose it's not, but yeah, it's got a dry composting toilet and a shower, and I use propane for gas, like I've got an instant hot water boiler, so that does the kitchen sink and the shower.

Dean (06:15)
So once you've got this and a car that it can attach onto, you can go ahead anywhere, right?

Paul (06:20)
Pretty much, yeah. I mean, wouldn't suggest attaching a tune to a micro. You probably want something with a bit of a tone, better like your Jeep. and I have towed it, like it's not, I wouldn't say it's the most fun thing to tow in the world, but obviously the stakes are high when you're kind of towing your life savings down the road. yeah, like it does tow. It doesn't tow easy, cause it's a lot of weight, like it's three and a half tons. So you want to be doing it early in the morning or late at night when there's not much on the roads and the wind is low. Wouldn't suggest moving it in the winter, like, cause it's very tall, like it's four meters tall.

Dean (06:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Paul (06:49)
Like the dimensions of mine, it's 6 metres or 20 foot long, it's 2 .5 metres wide and it's nearly 4 metres tall, which is really tall. Like if you look at a truck driving down the motorway, that's generally 4 metres tall, they're usually 4 metres

Dean (06:56)
Chunky.

it like driving it? Do you have to go at like two miles an hour?

Dean (07:06)
We interrupt this broadcast to ask for a quick favour. If you are in any way remotely finding any value from this podcast, please consider leaving me a follow on whatever place that you are getting your podcasts. And if you really love it, please give us a five -star review as it really helps in this early stage of growth. Thanks.

Paul (07:22)
Yeah, you don't want to be going much more than like 30 or 40 miles an hour. You want to be going slow. The chances of the thing tipping over are very, very slim. Like there's a 350 kilo lead acid battery in mine. It's sitting right on the axles. It's a low loader chassis. There's a lot of weight basically.

pinning it to the road and the low loader chassis gives it a lovely low centre of gravity but I think after the first time I moved it I was like the next time that happens I'm paying someone else to do it and I'm taking a sleeping tablet and I just don't want to be involved in the process, just wake me up when it's done. In fairness, at that stage I had just built the house, I was completely burnt out, I was in bits and to see it all going down the road was extremely tense. My engineering had never been tested, I'm an absolute spoofer here building this thing.

Dean (07:48)
Yeah.

Ry.

Paul (08:06)
off YouTube and stuff and I'm like, will this actually work? Like is it gonna, are the wheels gonna come off while it's driving down the road? Which incidentally they did and it hit the deck, but you know.

Dean (08:17)
I did!

Paul (08:19)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I had a TV crew filming me because there was a production company pitching a show to RTE, lads I used to work with in Joe .ie. And basically, like, I put a thousand hours in over those four months. So I was working absolutely insane hours, burning out at both ends, got total tunnel vision, totally neglecting, like, nutrition and sleep. And the wheels of the trailer, I'd be taking it on and off the whole time because you generally don't leave them on when you're building because they're just in the way of what could get, they could get damaged.

In addition to that, like my parents are there, the production crew were there. So they're filming. my last 24 hours.

These lads are filming in the warehouse. I can't even be using tools. I can't be making noise. So I just neglected to check my wheel nuts at the right torques. So we're driving down the road. We're like...

Dean (08:53)
Mm.

Paul (09:01)
fucking five kilometres from where the thing was built and I just see a wheel go flying up the wrong side of the road and the whole trailer hit the deck and everyone's like, no, They get out of the van and I'm like, no! Like half the house is on the ground. I'm obviously having a meltdown. Imagine you've just been to three festivals back to back. That's how I felt. That's how high my emotions were, you know what mean? And literally the worst thing I could possibly have imagined happening has happened.

Dean (09:05)
Noooo

Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

Paul (09:26)
We're all running around looking, because one wheel we saw go off, but there's two wheels on each side. So we had lost another wheel, like we didn't even know where. One of the camera crew found that. So he's there shooting this wheel in the bush. He's got no one to like pan to to get a reaction from. So he's like, no. Luckily we broke down outside a mechanic's house that one of my mates knew. So we're banging on his door. It's like 8am on a Monday morning. We're like, get your forklift now. And we got, like we had it back in the road and moving within like half an hour, I'd say. Thankfully the lads that were helping me.

we're all over it and very calm, where I was not. But yeah, it was like the worst moment ever. It was like, it's all gone wrong. Like in retrospect, it's just a nice lesson in paying attention to detail and double checking things. And to be honest, it was a nice engineering test because the house is very heavy, it hit the deck and like, you'd never know. There's nothing out of place, was nothing wrong, no windows broken, anything. in the end it was fine, but yeah, it was a tense, tense few moments.

Dean (10:14)
Amazing.

I love the idea. mean, I think everyone can probably relate to this. We've all seen like the images on Instagram of people in the middle of like, you know, Switzerland or Ireland or somewhere beautiful. And they've got this tiny home and they're making their little cup of tea and they're chilling, you know, it's, it's, but that story definitely does not, does not sound like that picturesque picture. But I'm glad you got it sorted anyway.

Paul (10:45)
No.

Dean (10:47)
So at this point when you were getting filmed and you were post build, was this more so to document your journey or was this more so then, right? I'm going to try and maybe make this my, how I earn a living as well.

Paul (10:59)
Well, filming was basically we felt like there was a show in it because like a guy leaving the city to go live in the countryside is an often interesting story and then to build your own house with no previous construction experience is something some people do but it's completely ridiculous really and could make for good TV but these guys started like making this pitch to RTE or to an unnamed TV company we'll say, an unnamed Irish TV company early on in the process of me building the house.

Dean (11:22)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Paul (11:26)
They were extremely slow to come back as they tend to be. They weren't exactly on it. And they eventually said, yeah, let's do it. But the house was built. So was like, well, there's nothing left to film. You missed it. I had been taking a lot of video because I wanted to make a how -to series and to document the journey. But the quality of my stuff wasn't broadcast quality. And to be honest, I gave up on shooting video halfway through the build because it was another few hours every day that I just couldn't afford to spend on not the build.

But in terms of running a business out of what I was doing, it was always something I wanted to do. I really enjoyed construction, I guess I'll go back to the start with it. I used to work in event management. I'd been working in event management since before I left school. I went to a couple of raves at an early age, and I really liked rave culture. I really liked acid house culture, I thought.

I thought it was a really good thing and it was kind of the first time I really connected with myself and with the world around me and other people so I wanted to kind of, I felt like it was a meaningful worthwhile thing you know and eventually started running my own gigs. Did the first one in town but I was still in school, think you might have heard of it. And like, yeah so, and it had it all for me you know what mean like it got.

Dean (12:29)
I recall. I do recall.

Paul (12:35)
nearly shut down by gangsters, it got raided by the guards, the amps blew because the room was too hot at like half three in the morning, my brother got arrested, got un -arrested then later that day, like it was brilliant. And I went on doing that for total chaos and I loved it, know, was me hooked after that. Lost all the money, the guard seized all the cash, know, was barely 18, I was afraid to go back to the guard station to look for my money to pay everyone.

Dean (12:46)
Chaos.

Brilliant.

Paul (12:58)
And we managed to get another venue going, but it was like, I'm really sick of the high stakes nature of this. I'm not enjoying the risk of thousands of euro at a time. So eventually I went to more corporate event management and within 10 years from running that first rave, was running like...

outdoor parties for some of biggest tech companies in the world with hundreds of thousands of euros a budget and just insane events really. It's kind of the highest you can get with doing that corporate stuff. It was fun. It was a really fun way to make money and the company I was with in particular were a very cool company that treat their staff well. But there was still something missing for me. It just wasn't. I knew I didn't want to do that forever.

And I had been killing myself working at it and getting myself to a good position in my career. Then eventually I had enough money saved to buy a house or to have my deposit for a house to get a mortgage. at that point I was really unimpressed with what was on offer, like the quality of housing in Dublin, which is where I wanted to buy and just the insane cost. And then the whole concept of a mortgage was something I found very hard to swallow. It just seems like madness to me. I understand now that I own a home, be it a really small one, how...

banks get away with getting people to pay for mortgages because having a house of your own is absolutely amazing. But ultimately, if somebody offered you a car at 30 % basically, you're going to pay an extra 30 % of value with that car over the next 20 years, you'd be like, absolutely not. This is the worst deal ever. Why would I do that? But it's just accepted as the norm for mortgages. But I thought there must be a better way to do this, albeit one with a bit of sacrifice in terms of space. So that was how I ended up thinking of the tiny house thing.

Dean (14:34)
So it was kind of bred out of you wanting to leave Dublin. Or was it more that you were just not a fan of maybe delving into this mortgage thing and you didn't really feel like that was the right move for you?

Paul (14:34)
and what.

Not even.

It wasn't even wanting to leave Dublin. One major driver in it was pragmatism with the sheer expense of having to pay a mortgage basically. And then the other huge driver in it for me was sustainability and environmentalism. at that stage in my career, and I was feeling more more disillusioned with working in corporate events, at this stage I'd moved to a media company and

Dean (14:55)
Yeah.

Paul (15:09)
Yeah, just wasn't. I felt like I was putting in a lot of effort, but ultimately the end goal here is that we're kind of entertaining people for a short amount of time. And when it came to the events I started out working at, it would have been festivals and rave culture and stuff like that. And I've had some of the best experiences in my life at those events and made some lifelong connections. I feel there's real value in those, whereas the higher end of events is basically marketing. It is just marketing or else it's employee retention for massive companies. And it's like, don't really feel like what I'm doing here is.

is that important? And I hate to say that because there's so many people I know that work in those industries and it's a really fun way to make money but I felt like I needed to do more basically for the environment, for the planet at large. Basically I found myself doing a course, a short course in Clock Jordan in this eco -village, so this is this amazing eco -village in Clock Jordan which is where I am right now and I was really impressed by it it's this...

67 acre site that about 30 people or more got together in the 90s and they basically wanted to build a better life and to show people how they could live more sustainably. So instead of buying their own houses individually across the country, they bought this singular site and they basically built their own village. They built all these unique houses and the village has like its own forest, it's got its own farm that feeds half the people here, it's got allotments to grow your own food, it's even got an amphitheater like this.

And even when I arrived four years ago and they're about 18 years into their project, like the place was just incredible. Like it's this verdant green, amazing place with such strong community roots, kids milling around everywhere, like free range kids basically, just having the crack. And I was really inspired by what I saw basically. I was like, I decided, like I handed in my notice during that course, like I decided then and there, like I have to do something like these people have done. Like I have to put my efforts behind something that I feel can actually help people to make a difference.

That was when I got out of the events and started moving towards this. So I was doing it out of pragmatism, but I was also very strongly trying to change how I was spending my time and basically where my resources, my own, the only thing I can really control is my output and what that output is going behind. Is it going behind keeping somebody employed at a major tech company or is it going behind helping people live their lives in a way that I think might be better for them and for the planet, you know?

Dean (17:22)
What you just said, I think is probably going to land with so many people, that feeling of like, hey, look, I like the thing I'm doing. It takes a lot of boxes for me. It's like financially sound. It's fun, bit of crack. I like the people I work with, but there's just, you just don't have that sort of sense of purpose with it, or you don't necessarily feel great about it. And you think to yourself, okay, long -term, at what point do I kind of pack this in, or is this just the thing I do now forever?

I feel like you just have to reach that tipping point. So yeah, take me through what happens then after you leave and you build this. At what point then do you start teaching courses on it how does that kind of come into the picture?

Paul (18:02)
Yeah, so mean there was a huge gap between that, between me handing in my notice and me starting working the tiny house was literally a couple of months, you know, I think it was August when I was handing in my notice leaving like Sonny O 'Clock Jordan and by June the next year, which is, I don't know, whatever, eight or 10 months, I was in a workshop and rat down pretending I knew what I was doing, sticking timber together and building my gaff. But,

I was about two years into living in it when I had always wanted to do the courses but I just didn't feel like I was ready and also I needed to live in the house to verify that it was a legitimate option because I couldn't really talk a big game about tiny house living as brilliant having not done it. So I said I'd do a year in it and see after that as an experiment really to see how it was and there was a lot of other stuff involved in getting to that point. I had to sell half of my possessions really because it's a tiny house, you're still physically won't fit in it.

That was actually a much better experience than I expected it to be. Getting rid of superfluous stuff is actually very rewarding and feels really good. It really changes your, without saying too much of a hippie about it, it does change your relationship to consumerism. I can do a lap of Ikea now without filling my trolley full of stuff that's shiny that I like to look off that I absolutely don't need because I just physically don't have the space for it. Similarly with clothes and stuff like that, you just limit your stuff to how much you can cram into your tiny little space. You know yourself.

your possessions are kind of like a gas like they just fill the available space that you have and before you know it you've just got a bunch of shit you never use filling up space so

Dean (19:29)
And anyone who's like, I mean, have you ever done like a clear out of your room and you've just thrown out 20 % of the shit you own and then all of a sudden you just feel like I feel different. It's like this thing was costing me to it's like the cost of there's a cost of owning it.

Paul (19:39)
Yeah.

It's mad that, and I can't really quantify it very well, but I have to say it felt really good getting rid of all that stuff and I missed nothing. There was nothing I missed, like, you know what mean? There was no point. And like, when I arrived at my house, like I had two gym bags of clothes, some cooking equipment, a surfboard, hilariously living completely inland and temporary, and a couple of instruments, like I had so little and I've filled my spouse with so much shit since then that I definitely need to call. But like, yeah, I never wanted for anything that I'd gotten rid of, surprisingly, like, you know.

Dean (20:05)
Yeah

Paul (20:11)
I thought it would be much more difficult than it was and I was pretty cutthroat about it and yeah, it felt great. But I was living in the house two years basically before I could kind of worked up the confidence to really start to push the courses and to start pushing selling tiny

Dean (20:26)
people had seen you, right? You know, they'd seen you do it and you'd posted about it. And so there was sort of a proof of concept there.

Paul (20:32)
There was a proof of concept and I'd been doing slow marketing between Instagram, my website, and general word of mouth with people getting onto me and stuff. Marketing is probably my weakest point in my business. I'm crap at it and I struggle to change gears. It's probably one of my hardest things. I find it hard to jump between a construction worker, project manager, graphic designer, and then get to the marketing. To be honest, the marketing is the one that I always just push to the end and ignore, which is madness for a young business.

But I was also constantly working on the house in the background and constantly refining what I was doing to the point where eventually I was getting email. Like I got emailed a lot for people looking for quotes rather than me outbounding it too much. But eventually I got to a point where I was happy to sell, to make an offering that I thought was competitive with what else was in the market.

and something I could really stand over. similarly with the courses I found, I felt I was finally at a stage. I ran a course after one year. It was really a test run to see how it would work. And the people got a lot out of it. was actually the student, one of the students from that course is a friend that approached me and was like, you need to do that more. you need, I kinda, like if you wanna talk about imposter syndrome, like not feeling like you deserve to be in the position is one thing, but like literally pretending to be a carpenter is a whole other level of imposter syndrome, you know?

Dean (21:44)
manage that? How did you manage that feeling of feeling like you weren't good enough

Paul (21:47)
Yeah, I still struggle to, to be honest, but was other people. Strangely, it was other people. think I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm an extremely harsh self -critic, so if anything's less than perfect with the work that I do, I really don't like it I try and fix it. That really doesn't bode well for an amateur. You just can't do perfect carpentry when you're new at it. But it did help me to get better at my trade and to get better at it.

Running that test course and helping people out on their smaller projects and those people then approaching me and really telling me like that really, really, really helped them. Like they got so much out of that was what really pushed me on to do it. And people were really starting to request the courses. And since we've started running them, the feedback has been phenomenal and people are, it's like people have said that it's changed the course of their life. Like it's, this is going to have such a profound effect on them, which sounds crazy me saying it now, but.

I mean, I did a short course. wasn't particularly the content of the course that changed my life, but it was coming here and seeing this place. So, yeah, that was really empowering. And I think, I think also like we're not showing people like you can't really expect to get that much out of a three day construction weekend. We're really just showing people how, how they can go and then teach themselves really and pushing them in the right direction and trying to equip them with the confidence to go and buy power tools, to start looking at YouTube videos and follow a similar path. Because I think

I think one of the most interesting things I've learned is that you don't need anyone's permission, relatively speaking, to do the thing that you want to do. know what I mean? Obviously there is planning permission for things like houses and other such things. And obviously having a qualification, having a degree, having done an apprenticeship, all that stuff is going to help. But you don't need anyone's permission to just go for it, basically. And that was something that took me a long time to get my head around and to kind of...

really own and feel okay about, was really surprising to me and might sound surprising considering what I did was such a head to ball thing to go and do without any previous construction experience.

Dean (23:45)
Dude it just goes to show, like when you hear this from everyone who's like started something, everyone just feels like they don't know what they're doing anyway. And everyone's kind of just winging it

Paul (23:54)
is winging it. Everyone is blagging it. And I think there's a level of blagging where you're really, really good at blagging because you've got a PhD in the thing that you're blagging about, but you are still blagging. Like everyone is just blagging. And I think getting to a really advanced place in event management really showed me that because I was like, everyone is just blagging here.

I've got a friend who's been a very successful pilot and he's like, you'd want to see the cowboy stuff that goes on behind the scenes, you know? And I'm like, what? And the stories he tells me. I know another guy that works at a high level of motor racing and again, it's it's total cowboy shit. And it's like, are all of these industries just people completely blagging and winging it? Like, you seem like a complete idiot or lunatic until you actually pull off the thing. And then it's like, yeah, you successfully blagged, you've totally successfully blagged it, you know? So there's a lot to be said for it.

Dean (24:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's just so easy to look at your Instagram feed and just see this guy, that guy, entrepreneur, she's doing this. And then you're like, well, they've got their shit together. They don't. They never do. They have the same imposter syndrome as you and I certainly do. And I think especially at the beginning, right, that's just a part of it. You're just going to have, you're just going to be doubting yourself until you have, at least in your case, right, you had some degree of proof that came your way with people messaging you and saying, hey, look,

Paul (24:49)
Yeah!

Dean (25:08)
this actually changed my life. And then that like sort of self -fulfilling thing where you get that feedback and you're like, okay, well now I can go to the next level or maybe I can keep going.

Paul (25:17)
that external validation, although you should not need it, it did really help because I think something I was terrified to do was to lead anyone astray or to be a charlatan because unfortunately, as I talk about, everyone is blagging it and that you should be confident to just blag it a certain amount yourself. There are also a ton of charlatans out there and everybody is using every platform now to absolutely sell you something and tell you that this is absolutely the right way to do something and I think...

Our generation and successive generations in particular do need to just gain a new level of media literacy where you need to be able to somewhat spot the bullshit and spot the people that are kind of doing it for the wrong reasons, I suppose, or to sell you something. But like there is a fine line between that and amateurs like I am an amateur construction worker telling you how you should do things.

Dean (25:59)
in the same way, man, I am an amateur entrepreneur telling people that, look, you can change your life and kind of get out of a nine to five. But I mean, I look at my if I look at my own position, like I'm sort of qualified to tell somebody who's like a year and a half, two years behind me. Right. I've been in the shoes of somebody who was in a job they absolutely hated. And now two years later, I'm not. And I'm very flexible now. I'm very flexible in the same way you.

Paul (26:20)
Mm.

Dean (26:26)
a couple of years ago didn't really know what you were doing to Paul two years ago, you're now an expert,

Paul (26:29)
Mm.

something interesting that happened like we were running a build course at the weekend and I was walking away from the group that I was coaching to grab something from the workshop and I went past one of the other groups and there was two women and they were about to say, do you want to cut this piece of timber or shall I? And she goes, no, I don't want to do it. I'm just going to mess it up. I had to stop and turn around and go like, that's the whole point of you being here. Like do it, mess it up. Like you can mess this up as many times you want because this is a total training run. But I take that just fear of screwing it up. And that was so low stakes. It's like, you know.

Dean (26:52)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Paul (26:59)
There's like your whole point, you're here to learn, your whole point is to screw this up. I think that's just generally a good piece of advice is that you're gonna fuck shit up nonstop all the time and you kind of just need to get used to that and own it and making mistakes and screwing things up is just part of the course and it's always gonna happen. You're gonna mess stuff up with your clients and your suppliers and everyone across the board. How you recover from those mistakes is really more so what defines you to making up for it and making it work, like making it work for the people in the end, you know?

Dean (27:28)
Do think we should almost get better at just recovering from mistakes rather than trying to prevent them?

Paul (27:33)
I think preventative measures are definitely good, but only because I come in from an event management background where we didn't always take enough preventative measures and then things would go into shit and you'd be like, how this could have so easily been avoided. But I think it's just inevitable that mistakes are gonna happen, things are gonna get delayed, things are gonna go wrong. We're all humans, we make errors all the time. It is totally inevitable. I don't like this kind of dogma of pretending that you're always correct all the time.

Dean (27:44)
sure.

Paul (28:01)
And I don't really care when suppliers let me down if they apologise and they say this is how we're going to sort it. I have a major issue with people that don't own their mistakes, that don't really flag that the issue happened or make any kind of amends by sorting it out. Like I won't work with people. I'll try to avoid working with people again that do that.

Dean (28:17)
Couldn't agree more. just a certain degree of respect, isn't it? When you're working with somebody, you're dealing with somebody, something goes wrong, just hold your hand up. Hey, that was me, sorry. So going back to Tiny Homes and your mission with that, right? I was on your website and I saw that your mission with Tiny Homes is to help people to build better lives, right? And I want to get your perspective on why is life better?

in a tiny home.

Dean (28:42)
We interrupt this broadcast to provide you with something free. If you're liking what we are doing here and would like to hear more about what we're learning, please go over to quiddable .me, pop your email in and I will send you one email per week. Promise, no spam. Cheers.

Paul (28:56)
Yeah, it's good question and I think ultimately it's the financial freedom which is interesting because of where you've got to in your journey as well, know, but I think like a tiny house, like I spent 30 grand on mine, you'd probably want to predict to spend more like 40 grand on one for yourself because you you could put the labour down to about 30 % of the cost. But you know, if you've got a place sorted for yourself to live for 40 grand instead of, you 200 to 400 grand.

That can completely change your life. That means you can go back to college, means you can completely change your career, that means you're not going to be dependent on whatever job that you might feel stuck in because all of a sudden that changes. It means you could travel the world with that money that you've saved. That's the ultimate way I see a change in people's lives. And then I also just think that particularly in Ireland,

It's just so hard to move out of home for a lot of people now. think tiny houses in particular are a great solution for people that are aged from like 19 or 20 up until you're kind of in your mid 30s to 40s. Because it's that stage in your life that you really do need to leave home. You really do need to develop as a person. And that can be really difficult when you're living in your parents' scaffold. Obviously, if you're lucky enough to be able to live at home, fantastic. I think this can take, this presents a completely new model for where you live, at what stage in your life.

Dean (30:07)
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it in when I asked that question, I was thinking more like in the way of connecting with nature and getting outdoors, which is definitely a huge part of it as well. But it's interesting to think of the actual financial implications of that and what that can potentially open up for somebody, whether it's going back to college or just traveling more or whatever.

Paul (30:26)
just leaves more time and more space for the things that you want in your life basically, you know.

And then there is a connection to nature that's much stronger if you're somewhere green and lovely and because you're going to spend more time outdoors because your house is really small and you're only going to get out of it from time to time, you know. And then just having less things connects you to what matters to you. Like it kind of forces you to choose what matters in your life more in a healthy way, you know.

Dean (30:47)
Where have you seen that show up in your life?

Paul (30:50)
Like I said earlier, getting rid of all of my super possessions. Now I've just got a couple of instruments, the few clothes that I need. I think one of the most surprising things from living in the tiny house has been how much it's changed my relationship with money and my attitude toward money because I was used to making a decent salary, but also spending a lot of that money, the money would come in, it would go on rent and just general living expenses so quickly. And now if I make the same

in a month as I made back then, like it's staying in my account. It's not going back out and it's becoming savings, you know? It's a hard thing to explain. I feel like it has to just kind of be felt, but it did really change my attitude towards money and its value,

Dean (31:35)
What I think you've touched on there is the fact that you're doing something and it's not necessarily primarily driven by money and it's almost like it's bringing you away from money. like, yes, of course you're now building a business that can keep food on the table and when people leave a job or when they're thinking about leaving a job, all they can think. And I thought this was, but I had a lovely income coming in there. That was

how am I going to ever get that back again? But what I found is when you are forced to be resourceful, you can be very resourceful and you realize that, hey, look, that extra 500 quid I was spending on this or that a month doesn't really, you really need it.

Paul (32:14)
No, not at all. I mean, it's said on every podcast ever, but getting out of your comfort zone is actually really, really good for your self development, it turns out. like, I think having absolutely no money for a short amount of time really drove me to push the business on as well. Like I needed to be really broke for a while to get really hungry again, to really go for it and start working like a lunatic again, you know?

Dean (32:38)
Yeah, when there's no real risk present, it matters a bit less. And then all of a sudden, when you up the stakes, then you find a different gear, right? And you just kind of have to, you just have to. I just kind of go back to one of the things you said earlier about like marketing as a weak point for you. And this is just a business related question. Like what in doing this have been one of the biggest business lessons you have learned?

Paul (33:05)
Hmm, good one. I think one of the biggest business lessons I learned is that you really need to stick to your plans, and prioritise. there are parts of this business and this job that I really love, like the construction side of it, and it's kind of quite easy for me to spend 12 hours a day just building stuff because I love doing it. But that's also a problem because I will spend the 12 hours a day building stuff completely at the cost of marketing.

or getting back to people or the more important stuff. you kind of have to eat the frog in the morning and just get the thing you don't want to do out of the way. Now I've given advice that I don't exactly always follow, but I'm getting better at it, you know, and that's all I can hope for. I do, like I do really struggle with changing gears, you know, so that whole thing of wearing many hats and I can get stuck into a mode and I tend to be quite singularly focused and.

Being able to spin multiple plates is definitely, especially at this stage in my business, I don't have the resources to outsource things yet. you know what mean? Like the first thing I'm going to do when I have the resources to outsource something is dump the marketing on someone so that I don't have to do that because it's my least favorite job. But, you know, I'll still have to keep an eye on it. But yeah, I think that would be one of the biggest things that I struggle with or one of the biggest lessons I've learned. And then I think I've always believed in this, but I do believe in transparency as much as possible.

Dean (34:00)
Sure.

Paul (34:21)
You know, there's always an element with clients facing events when we were doing that, that like, everything is absolutely perfect and you don't need to worry about anything. It was more that they just don't see the chaos behind the scenes of the people running around screaming, making sure it all happens. But I think when you genuinely fuck up, or even when something has just gone awry or wrong, that you just own it and you tell people that this is the crack and this is what you're doing to solve that.

and no one ever doesn't appreciate that. Somebody might be disappointed in the moment that something hasn't gone exactly to plan, but it's better than them finding out after the fact that something's gone completely awry. I think being transparent with your clients and your suppliers is a really nice way to work, and it just makes everybody feel like they're on the level and that there's a certain level of respect.

Dean (35:02)
I I've certainly felt that in the game of property, which is where I kind of segue it out of working in a sales role. you know, let's just say there's a lot of people fending for themselves in there who maybe don't act as ethically as you might help them to. it's just, it's just hard to, it's hard to ever want to work with someone like that, you know, and you can almost sense it from them a mile off.

when it's not there and what somebody is authentic and they are very accountable and hold their hand up, you can sense that. And so, yeah, you just sort of gravitate towards people like that a lot more. I What's something that you're learning right now?

Paul (35:41)
Balance, I suppose. How to take breaks is something I've famously been crap at. don't know. I think I've been lucky to be afforded some really great opportunities from a young age where I was always kind of punching above my weight in the jobs that I was getting, but that was kind of like, I worked over capacity for like ever in events because I was constantly lucky enough to get to a better position in my job, but it was also like, I really have to.

I have to like utilise this opportunity and show that I've earned it, you know, but that did just mean like my whole life was focused on work for a very, very long time. I do find that I do that again and that I have to force myself to take time off. have to force myself to take breaks. And ultimately, it's a better long term strategy. And I talked to one of my best mates, Julie, about this all the time, that like we tend to be such unhealthy binge workers. Like you just work extremely hard for a really long time.

And then you're like, why am I so tired all the time? Why am I so wrecked? It's like you haven't stopped. Like you haven't stopped for years. Like you haven't taken a half day properly. You're not eating properly. You're not exercising. Like you're not looking after yourself. And I feel like I'm getting a lot better at that, but it's still a challenge and it's still something I need to learn to do better.

Dean (36:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, you you're working the whole time and sometimes you just got to ask yourself, wait, wait, hang on a minute. I am working to get this, but what am I also, what do I want to do with Phil my other time as well? It's not just your life shouldn't be just linear in that way and just sticking to one thing. But I love that answer.

Paul (37:01)
Mm.

That and as boring as it sounds, you do just get diminishing returns. So I hate to turn taking time off into a productivity hack, but it is, do you know what I mean? If you burn yourself out, then you're just producing crap work and it's taken you longer to produce the crap work than if you just actually take a rest when you need it and actually look after yourself a bit more, you know?

Dean (37:28)
What would you say to somebody who's maybe considering getting into tiny homes? Like what would you say is maybe some of the cons? Cause we've obviously talked about like the pros and how it's great. And you're a guy who's very openly transparent about things. like, what would you say the downsides to getting into it?

Paul (37:44)
getting into a tiny house in particular? Yeah I suppose like space is the big one and like when I talk about tiny houses like I really envisage them as for one person per tiny house you know like I'm at a stage right now I'm in a relationship now and a long distance relationship so my girlfriend would come and stay with me in the tiny house but like we can get on top of each other in there and like we've both agreed like it's totally unfeasible for Kat to move into the tiny house you know that's just not gonna that's not gonna be good for the relationship so I think

Dean (37:46)
Yeah.

Paul (38:13)
I don't know if that's, it's hard to call that a drawback because you need to, I think you do need to look at them as a per person thing. Another difficulty is, you know, finding somewhere to put it. That is the major drawback and that is the biggest barrier to people getting them. Like I get an email every two weeks from someone saying, I'm ready to do this, but what's the crack of planning? How do I put this? How do I get somewhere to put it? And fortunately I can't really do publicly advertise just say, just go for it. You know, I just, can't.

Dean (38:38)
Yeah.

Paul (38:39)
It's too dangerous for me to tell someone to do that. Like I'll tell someone in the pub that, I'll tell a friend that, but I can't publicly say, give that advice from my official website or, you I've just, you know, you have to take that risk with open eyes and it be your decision and not some person on the internet telling you to do it. But other than that, like I don't have many, like it's hard for me to think about what's bad about them, you know.

Dean (38:47)
Right.

there's a lot of people who are listening. I mean, I know myself from being in, let's say the tech world, you're in sales or whatever. You look at life's like that, that are more simple. It's very attractive. It's definitely very attractive. And honestly, from speaking to you, I think a lot of people are going to be like moved by your story because you've just, you've saw something, you've kind of identified it. You've just said, fuck it. You know, I'm going to just give it a go. You looked at a bit of information, you winged it. You felt your imposter syndrome.

Paul (39:21)
Mm.

Dean (39:37)
and now you're kind of just making your way from it. It's so cool. not only just that, the thing itself is so cool. And if anyone has never stayed in the Tony home, go on Airbnb right now and book one because they're very, very cool. Yeah, man, it's been it's been great to have a chat with you, I've really, really enjoyed this.

Paul (39:55)
Yes, you too man, I've really enjoyed it. So thanks a lot for giving me the shout and keep it lit. I'm loving the podcast.

Dean (40:01)
Hell yeah man. if last thing, if people want to go and check out a build course with you and if they want to maybe come and work with you or build one themselves, where should they go?

Paul (40:11)
Thank you for

Dean (40:28)
Hell yeah, brother. All right, Well, great to have you on. Chat soon.

Paul (40:32)
Alright see you