Why Most Custom Home Projects Blow Their Budget

Host Adrian Kizy goes deeper with Randy Najjar, founder of Sapphire Luxury Homes, on what actually separates Sapphire from a traditional custom build — and why the "design-build, fixed-price" model exists in the first place.

In the traditional path, a homeowner hires a separate architect, civil engineer, landscape architect, interior designer, general contractor, and landscape company — and tries to coordinate all of them. That's how timelines blow up, budgets double, and "we started at X and finished at 3X" horror stories get made. At Sapphire, every one of those roles lives under one roof.

Randy breaks down why Sapphire is fixed-price instead of cost-plus, what that actually means for a client's budget, why front-loading every decision protects both timeline and sanity, and how the team designs every home in 3D photorealistic — sometimes VR — before a shovel hits the ground.

In this episode:
0:00 The architect's perspective on custom home building
1:10 The traditional path: too many cooks, too many handoffs
2:28 How projects balloon — timelines and budgets blown
3:15 Everything under one roof at Sapphire
4:26 Build your dream team before you buy the land
5:24 Why Sapphire doesn't charge for blueprints
5:47 Fixed-price vs. cost-plus — the real difference
9:25 Running a full design department in-house
11:28 Why every decision gets made up front
12:15 A fridge isn't just a fridge — front-loaded selections
15:44 Three benefits of designing everything up front
16:53 Tailoring the Sapphire process to every client
18:41 The two phases of design and the 6-month timeline
20:53 Where Sapphire's design inspiration comes from
22:55 The New American Home tour and luxury home travel
24:08 The canceled flight and Miramar Lakes
26:17 The E-Myth — working ON the business, not IN it
28:54 The four quadrants and what Randy loves most
30:11 Passion projects — the Cameron, the Kylie, and 2028/29
31:20 The meaning behind the Najjar name

Connect with Sapphire Luxury Homes: 

www.sapphireluxuryhomes.com 

www.instagram.com/sapphireluxuryhomes

If this episode resonated, please follow the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share it with someone building something of their own. New episodes coming soon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

All right, guys, welcome back. Uh episode two of the Dream Builders podcast. Um, so we're gonna dive a little bit deeper uh in the way that I think that you know, like Sapphire does things. So one thing that I want to touch on is uh the architect's perspective. And what I mean by that is like in your traditional, I guess say, interaction with the builder, right? People are either meeting with an architect separately, getting blueprints, bringing them this and the other. It's almost like a separate entity. And sometimes there's probably animosity and butting of heads and whatnot, but you kind of absorb this as part of um, I think that all in encompassing experience. And you're you're an architect, right? So um I want you to talk about your vision again and like sapphire and whatnot, but like from the architect's perspective.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah. Great, great point. So, you know, a lot of the traditional route, if you will, when you're building a luxury custom home, is you hire an uh a salesperson to help you find a real estate agent, help you find a piece of property, you hire an architect to do your architectural drawings, an engineer to do your civil work, a landscape architect to do your landscape design, then you hire a general contractor builder, then you hire a landscape company. And there's a lot of an interior designer, right? There's a lot of different pieces to this puzzle. And oftentimes you as the as a homeowner don't want to deal with all of these things, right? You're you're coordinating and hiring and paying all these different people, and that's kind of the I guess one of the opportunities that I saw in the custom luxury home building space is if you can get it to be more streamlined, where everybody is on the same team, because like you said, a lot of times, and I've done it before where where I was just the builder and there was an interior designer and an architect and uh whatnot, a landscaper, and it is challenging because everybody has a different way of of doing things, or yeah, um they're not getting the information that they need, or you know, we're waiting on the design, the designer's waiting on the client, and the architect hasn't updated the plans to reflect what the designer wants to change, or whatever it may be. So it gets convoluted, it really does, and it becomes very challenging, and there's a lot of mistakes that happen, timelines get blown, and and this is how budgets get blown. Yeah, this is a big concern for a lot of our clients when building a home is like, you know, I don't want this project to take three, four, five years, and I don't want it to double and triple in price because we've heard horror stories my friend built, and they started at X and it was X times three by the time they were finished. And you know, that's a real thing that happens. Um, you know, my background in in architectural design, and that's really, you know, my forte, and that's the part of the process that I love the most. Um, I can coordinate all of those things from within, right? So at Sapphire, there all of these things happen under one roof. All the all the different phases of design and construction all happen in and even the land acquisition. A lot of times people think, oh, I found this one-acre piece of property, I'm gonna buy this, I'm gonna build my dream home. Well, they don't do the proper due diligence that's necessary to build a home, whether that's you know, check in the ground conditions, soil borings, or are there any easements, any HOA restrictions? A lot of times you there's a lot of restrictions that aren't visible just by looking at a piece of property. You have to do a lot of homework, you know, there's a wetlands on the on the property, setback requirements, etc. etc. So HOA sometimes they limit what kind of materials you can use for a driveway or for a roof or for whatever it may be, gutters, even like you'd be surprised at some of the limitations. So knowing all that and hiring the right team that anticipates these things, we're gonna do all that due diligence and all that homework and coordinate all of those things for you. So I think it's super important, whether you hire Sapphire or anybody else, you know, that the team is selected initially and early before designs are created, before lot is necessarily purchased, at least identify who you want to use, interview those people, bring them all together in a room and say, you know, this is my dream team, if you will, and make sure that everybody's aligned with your vision, budget. You know, you don't know how many times clients have come to me with a set of plans that they have designed by whomever and said, We just spent 100 grand designing this home, and we told the architect our budget was whatever it was, five million, and we're getting this bid out by other GCs, and we're getting bids for seven and eight, and that's way over our budget, and that's another big part of this. An architect, are there amazing architects out there? Absolutely. There's some really great architects in our market, you know, top-of-the-line guys that can design super cool homes, but ultimately feasibility is a big part of it, right? I can design the coolest home in the world. But if you if you can't afford to build it, what's the point? At Sapphire, we don't really make our business model isn't around selling blueprints. We we don't even charge for them most of the time. It's part incorporated in part of the home. Yeah. Our goal is to design a home that's feasible for you and your family, whether it's you know the style or the layout or and of course the budget. So us being a design build company, I think that's what is really important. And and plus we're fixed price, meaning that's a big differentiator. If we could talk about that for a second, too. Yes, sure. Most custom home builders are cost plus, meaning, you know, you have the cost, the components that make up the house, you know, foundation, framing, windows, doors, roof, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They budget all those things out, and then they add a percentage on top of that 15, 20, 25%, whatever it may be. And that's how the the builder is is paid. Now, a lot of clients think that's better because it's a very transparent process. Um, you know, the the builder is showing me every invoice and I'm just paying a uh a markup that I'm comfortable. Well, let's think about that for a second. Yeah, there's pros and cons, right? What's the incentive for the builder to get a great price for you on any contract, whether it's an electrical or framing or whatever? In fact, they're hurting themselves by getting you a better contract or a better price, right? Because they're making percentage on top of it. So oftentimes they're they're not they're looking for the you know a better quality guy or a better timeline guy, somebody that they have a great relationship, but it isn't necessarily the cheapest. So yeah, there's that component. And then oftentimes when the client is in control of that checkbook, if you will, because they think it's transparent, they tend to spend more money because they feel like, oh, I know this is 10 grand plus my markup, 20%. It's 12 grand. I'm okay with it. And then those little things start to add up. Yeah, and that's how a lot of times these projects just balloon out of proportion, whether it's design-wise or selections or whatever it may be, landscaping oftentimes. So with us, we're a fixed price. We tell you we'll design a home and say this home with these features, this landscape on this home is X amount of dollars. Three million, five million, eight million, whatever it may be. Yeah. And unless you make changes, then that's the price. Right. And you know that very early in the process, right? Um, we like to guide our clients that way. So kind of coming back to your question here, yeah. Um having the architect as also the builder has so many advantages in the sense of designing something that we know can be built, not only from a feasibility perspective of from a construction standpoint, but also from a budgetary perspective, right? Yeah, I don't want to design a $10 million home if your budget's $5 million because you're not gonna build it, and then what's the point? Right. Yeah, you're not happy. I didn't get a build job out of it. It's it's not a great situation. Not a win-win. No.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Um I think, yeah, I I think a lot of people, it's probably very clear that there's there's gonna be advantages of you know having it in one place, right? And the biggest one probably is that that budget because when you've got that bird's eye view, right? You also know you tend to know, like, okay, this is typically where clients tend to spend more or less, and you can kind of guide them through those decisions. Um, I've sat in on meetings where you know you got a really good feel for what was really important to a client, what was it nice to have, and you kind of guided them to help them, you know, get what you want versus one, it's it's very sequential, right? Once it's off the architect's desk, it's almost like, hey, that's your problem now. Um, but I imagine, um, as well as pros, there's gonna be some challenges internally about you know bringing some of that stuff in-house. So um are there, and I guess, you know, what does that look like? And how do you how do you how do you how do you go about those things?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

You know, ultimately all those things have to happen, right? There has to be arc blueprints have to be made, a a site plan has to be created, design has to be, you know, done and selections have to be made. Somebody somewhere is doing that, right? And if the client is, if the homeowners, you know, piecing that all together, they're paying individual fees to all of those uh people. Whereas at Sapphire, that's all just part of that fixed price. We're not billing out for architecture services, interior design services, whatnot. Yeah. So the the challenge from my perspective is I have a much larger staff than most general contracts. We have an entire design department. You know, we have uh myself plus two additional architects on staff. We have a landscape designer, four interior designers, a furniture specialist, design specialist. So we have a a relatively large design department that's within the the company. So, you know, it's it's staffing those those positions, making sure we have the right people that share the vision and the excitement for the homes and um making sure everybody's aligned and and representing the company well. And yeah, and overall, I I'm super happy with our team. We have a great team. Uh many of them have me have been with me for many years now, and and we all are you know marching to the same tune, if you will. Yep. Um but really that that's from a from a business owner's perspective, I'd say that's the biggest challenge. On the flip side, though, I I retain ultimate control over this process, which helps me deliver the best product to the client, the best home from an efficiency perspective, whether that's timeline or cost, um, from a quality perspective, because we're really big on designing things up front and early in the process. Yeah. We don't want to be building this home without decisions made because ultimately then we're gonna have to take you know one step forward, two steps back type situation, which costs time and money. Yep. You know, clients sometimes um give me some pushback, like why do I have to pick out my appliances? Yeah, you know, when we haven't even dug the hole yet, or why do I have to pick my pink color? Whatever. Well, you know, they don't rightfully so, they don't know the whole process or the experience, but everything is tied to everything else. Uh uh a fridge isn't a fridge. You're not buying a fridge off the shelf that's you know from Home Depot, for example. You know, there's when you're building a level of home, a home of this level, I should say, you know, there's 48-inch fridges, 60-inch fridges, 72-inch fridges. Do you want the columns together or separated? You want panelized or stainless steel panels. There's so many, then that's just the fridge, the range, the dishwasher. There's so many questions around that. And each one has intricate components that make that up, right? The size of the opening, obviously, for that space, but water lines, gas lines, electrical, they all have to be in very specific places for a sub-zero fridge. I'm just using that as an example. Sure. Um, the cabinetry, the countertops, everything is correlated to everything else. So you can't make design decisions kind of like solely, right? It's a whole very holistic approach. So if I'm constructing a home, I need to have all my decisions. Can can you build a car without knowing the specs that you're gonna be building? No, right, it doesn't make sense. At one point, you're stopping the assembly line. Right. Yeah, you can't decide what kind of engine you want later, right? You know, and that's that's the right way to build a home, to make all your decisions up front. Do changes happen here and there, whether it's because of a discontinued product or the client saw something? Yeah, sure. Changes happen, and that's okay within reason, but it's not we can't move on with construction because we don't have this decision, right? Right. And things these days have really just gotten more and more complex. A light fixture isn't just a light fixture anymore. You know, with integrated LED and low voltage, sometimes you don't even have high voltage wiring. So if you just run a a wire, you know, 110 wire to this fixture, like a typical scenario, but then you buy a light fixture that requires low voltage, now you're kind of yeah, you're transforming it, whatever. Yeah, it's like yeah, and people don't necessarily know these things, right? We've learned these things from experience, and obviously we're well tuned with industry, with the industry, and then the changes within it. But you the things that you would think, like why do I need to make this decision right now, really implicate a lot of the other decisions and the co-construction path.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up because I was gonna ask you about it. Um I think I think it's safe to say that you know, you try to front load a lot of those decisions, um, and for the reasons you just said, but also I think that maybe clients tend to like enjoy the rest of the process when they're not worried about constantly being bombarded. Um, but that could be a challenge in and of itself, right? Like that's uh depending on the uh uh I guess the interest, how how how involved somebody wants to be, um, it could be a lot of decisions that can even it could be a lot of decisions that need to be made. Um, it could be that they're just kind of trusting you. So I want you to kind of touch on that a little bit too, because yeah, that whole arc it's a full process. I think you can kind of cater the the the tolerance, let's say. Like how involved does somebody want to be? And you know, some people are involved in every decision.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And we definitely tailor our approach. So just to take a step back, the designing the home up front, like when I say designing architectural, the landscaping, the interior selections before we even break ground or very early in the process has three benefits. One is obviously the construction that we talked about. Yeah, two is the budgetary, right? Now you before I even break ground, you know ever I know every component going into this home, every fixture, every wallpaper, every plug, you name it. And we know a true fixed price. So we know your budget before you break ground. It's not like six months in, and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm two million dollars over budget. What am I gonna do? Yeah. And uh third, you mentioned, yes, are there a lot of decisions front loaded? Absolutely. But during construction, you can really you've made all those decisions. That anxiety of, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta pick this, pick that, is gone. Yes. You know, you know the cost, you know what it's gonna look like. We design everything in 3D, photorealistic, so you know exactly what this home is gonna look like. Yeah, we can even we do it in virtual reality for some clients. So it really takes that stress of during the construction process away. Yeah. So I wanted to touch on that. Um, and then to go back to your question. We have we have our sapphire way of how we like to do things, but every client's different, right? Some clients are I've had a couple of clients that have literally quit their job to build their dream home. This this has been an aspiration for them. They love it and they enjoy it and they want it to be super involved. Not my favorite scenario, if I'm being honest. Um you know, sometimes when when clients get too intricate with details, it tends to burden the process. Sure. Um, you know, we are the experts, we are the we've done this dozens and dozens of times. Um, so we know the best path forward. Um and we've had on the flip side clients, I've literally had clients that have never I never met until in person, until we delivered them the keys. They they were either from I've had some in Seattle, I've had some in Carolina, where we did everything virtual and they were out of out of state and they were moving to Michigan, but they couldn't physically come here. Yeah. Um, I had one that I didn't meet till I get literally the day I gave them the keys, and one other client that we met one time kind of halfway through the project, and then at the end. So, and then I've had clients that have literally told me, I'm super busy, I I run all these businesses, whatever it may be. I can't meet 10, 15 times or whatever many times that you need me. Yeah. How do we shorten this process? It's like, I love your houses, I love what you do, I'm very happy. This is my thought and my style. And we got it done in three meetings. Yeah. He came to our office three times, we presented everything, we gave him some options, and he was a very like, I want A, I want B, or I want some of the A and some of B, and we combined it, and and he was happy with that route, right? Yeah. You know, those are I would say the extremes. Um, in general, typically we have two phases of design. There's the architectural side of things, uh, and and they're happening somewhat simultaneously, or there's overlap at least. Yeah. But the architectural side where we're designing the facade of the home, the exterior, what it's going to look like, and then the floor plan, obviously, the finished basement, as well as how the home is going to sit on the property, you know, driveway and the landscape layout, if they want to pool, yeah, you know, all those things. And then the infrastructure component of the home, which is what we call infrastructure, which is things like the water heaters and the electrical system and the insulation package and those types of things that we design up front. That's kind of that first phase. And then the second phase is the interior design selection. So this is where we're picking out cabinets and countertops and flooring, paint colors, whatever it may be, all the yeah, the fun stuff, if you will, where the clients enjoy. And typically that process is anywhere from 10 to 20 meetings. Yeah, most often right around 15 is kind of what we found is the sweet spot. Each meeting, two to three, maybe four hours. So there's definitely a commitment here. There's a time for commitment. Yeah. You know, can we get it down to 10 if that's and within our within our typical staff hour process? Yeah, we could, and and we can that we can make that happen without an issue. If you want some clients, they need more time or they want more options or whatever it may be. And sometimes it stretches to that 20 meetings. But overall, the cadence is once every one to two weeks. We're meeting for two to three hours for you know, 15 meetings. So it ends up being about a six-month design process overall. That you know, those two phases are overlapping. The permitting process is overlapping as well. So we're at some point when we're far enough along, we can create a permit set of plans, submit those to the to the municipality and start that process. So overall, it's a six-month design and permitting process before we actually break around and get into construction. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

I want to I want to dive a little bit deeper on design, because like I said, by bringing architects and building in-house, it's a little bit of a unique situation. So do you typically kind of just take inspiration from a client? Do you kind of have your own inspiration and say, hey, based on an intake or what you need, we think this would be great for you. Where do you get your designs and your inspiration? Where does that come from?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

You know, it's all over the board. There isn't a one size fits all answer to that. Um, so we build our own homes under Sapphire. We do a couple a year where there isn't a buyer attached to it. So it's either a spec home or a model home. And that's really where we get a chance to be super creative, do things that some clients might not be as comfortable with, or something new and unique where we can kind of trial it out, if you will. Yeah. Um, on those particular projects, I I gain a lot of inspiration from from everywhere, whether whether it's you know, older homes that are, you know, a hundred years old and and you know, this have stood the test of time or Like the newest and coolest, latest and greatest trends or homes or designs that I've seen on Instagram. A lot of a lot of what I follow on Instagram, if you look at my for you, if you will, is a lot of home stuff, design, architecture-related items. So we pull a lot of designs from that. You know, what's going on? A lot of design originates on the West Coast for whatever reason, California, and then kind of makes its way here. Um, or Europe. A lot of really cool stuff is happening there. Um, lately, a lot of really cool stuff's happening in Florida. Um, every year, or I almost every year, we try to go to the builder show where we, you know, are keeping up with the latest and greatest, newest products that are out there, whether it's you know, fixtures, plumbing, and lighting, or um, construction methods or whatever it may be. And then usually uh every year I go to the um what do they call it, the the new American home. So it's a it's a luxury home tour where they're building 10 million plus dollar homes. So this year's was in Orlando, it was a $14 million home. Last year's was in Vegas, it was a $13 million home or maybe more. So you get to tour these homes and see some of the cool stuff that they've done and how they design. And obviously, different parts of the country have different design requirements, whether it's uh weather related or you know, if you're desert, if you're in the desert, you know, it's gonna look differently. And believe it or not, one when I do travel, even with my family, oftentimes if I if I see a luxury community, I'm gonna go tour some homes. I've done that numerous times. We actually did that. We did that air, right? We started that in Arizona in Arizona Scottsdale. What see what's going on seven, eight years ago, whatever it was. We toured a few luxury model homes that they had. I've done that funny story. I was in uh Florida at Marco Island with the wife. This was maybe six years ago, and our our flight home got canceled. And my my wife wasn't happy. We had a newborn son, and she's uh kind of freaking out. And we couldn't find a flight home from anywhere in Florida. I checked Sarasota and Fort Myers and Jacksonville and Orlando and Miami, Fort Lauderdale, you Tampa, you name it. I checked every airport. There was nothing, there was a a winter storm or uh a weather storm coming through. Weather storm, I don't know, whatever you want to say. Yeah. And came through, so they canceled all the flights. So we ended up having to stay an extra night. And on the way from Fort Myers Airport to Marco Island, there's a huge billboard that says America's number one luxury community is Miramar Lakes. And that was very intriguing to me. So we passed by it. This is the first time I'd seen it. So we get to Marco Island, I'm Googling this thing, I'm checking out like, wow, these are super special homes. So I don't know, call it fate, maybe that that flight got canceled. We had to see an extra day. And this was like, I don't know, 15 minutes from the airport. So I told the wife, I was like, I'd love to do this. Can we go and check out this? So we went and we toured a bunch of homes. They have a lake, and they had a the salesperson took us on this pontoon and took us around the lake and showing us all these homes. It was a really, really cool experience. So we gained a lot of insight and inspiration from that. So that's a long-winded answer to your question. But yeah, I we gain it getting inspiration from from everywhere. And then clients do bring us oftentimes inspiration of things that they see. Oftentimes they're 30 million, 40 million dollar homes in California or Florida, and their budget's not that high per se. But you know, we take those and implement some of those design elements into something that that works with our architectural style or yeah, um, within our climate and within the budget.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah. I wanna I wanna kind of end things on, I think maybe I don't know if it's a challenge or but it's something maybe unique to you. Um because you're the architect, so you're going to these shows, you know, keeping up with the latest trends. You're also growing a company, yeah, and you know, you're running that. So how do you manage that? Which what's what do you love the most? You know, like do you feel like you're getting pulled or just yeah, tell me a little bit about that that perspective?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Great, great question. Something I think about almost on a daily basis, right? So when I first started Sapphire, I had read a book. It's either my number one or number two business book, but it was called E Myth. And then they had Contractor's Edition. This is a very early in my career, and um one of the uh things that stood out to me was to if you want to create a a company, right, and not just be a builder of houses, but create a a real company, a thriving company, you can't do everything yourself, right? You can't be the architect and the guy that does the permits and the guy that does the selections and the guy that does the sales and the guy that manages construction and warranty and client relations and everything, accounting and everything else. So um the the there was a phrase that was, you know, you have to work on the business, not just in the business, right? We've may have heard that. Um, that's something that has always resonated with me, and I've I've continuously tried to unload things off of my plate that either I'm not the best at, there are better people that are better suited for this, or I don't like. Yeah. Right. So one of the first of those things was accounting. Sure. I love math, but I hate accounting. Like I'm not data entry and yeah, you know, putting in receipts and invoices and checking against the contract and stuff. I that's not for me. So, you know, having the right people in the right place and then creating the systems that go around that as you grow, these systems become more and more important. You can't you can only you have to fall back on your systems because if I'm not there for whatever reason, I'm in touring a home in Florida, for example, you know, the business still has to run. So um bringing in the right people, doing the right jobs, and figuring out what's most valuable from your time, right? So where is my time most valuably spent? Yeah, where what am I best at, and what do I love the most? Right? You can there's um, I forget the name of the rule or whatever, but there's it's like the four quadrants. Yeah. Great at it and you love to do it, you're great at it and you don't like to do it, you like to do it, but you're not good at it, and you don't like to do it and you're not good at it. That's the things that anything that falls in that. You gotta get rid of those. You suck at it and you're and you don't like doing it anyway. Accounting. Yeah. So, you know, and then slowly moving your way so that you're only working in that box where you're great at it and you love doing it. Yeah, I'm still not there, right? I'm still continuously building and improving and and working on it. You can't just go and hire 20 people right up day one, right? Um, so for me, I love the client relation part. You know, I love building those that rapport with the client and their relationship with them. And so that's a big part of of what I do and where I spend my time. Um, although I don't like accounting per se, the financial, the financials of the business are still very important. So reviewing those on a month-to-month basis. I actually do like doing that, making sure that we're budgeting properly, we're staying on track. You know, where is our, you know, what kind of cash flow do we have coming in? What are we expecting to go out? Yeah, what do we have available to invest, whether that's in a a piece of property or uh build another spec or a model home. Those are the types of you know, kind of big picture decisions that I love to make and I'm very strategic in that way. And then I still love the architectural side of things. Um and and I'm still very much involved in that, uh, especially what I call the passion, my passion projects, which are those model homes every year. Essentially, we're building a new model home. Last, excuse me, last one was the Cameron. We're doing the Kylie, which will be going live in uh next spring, which I'm really excited about in the pinnacle neighborhood in Oakland Township. Um, and then we we're already working on our 2028 one and we're starting to think about our 2029 model home. So we're gonna start doing this where it's a yearly um showcase of of some of our best work, and those are the projects that really get me excited because I can be super creative. Yeah, um, you know, these are some of the higher-end homes from a price point perspective, so I can kind of think outside the box and do some cool and unique things and showcase our talents from both design and construction, what what we can do. So I do love spending time on those. I when I'm the rare occasions that I'm bored when I don't have uh anything going on, which doesn't happen very often, but I do find myself thinking about designing homes. Yeah, it's it's it's weird maybe, but it is something that I love. And going back to last episode, I'll say, you know, I was I was ready to throw in the towel at that home, but deep down, you know, I knew then and and and I know now this is what I love to do. This is what I was put on this earth for. Um, you know, feel creating beautiful homes from ground up, f helping people achieve their dreams, build their dreams, if you will, yeah, change their lives.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Absolutely. And uh, fun fact, why don't you tell us a little bit on that note about your last name and what it means? Call that fate.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah, so Najjar is actually Arabic for carpenter. Uh, I come from a long lineage of carpenters. Actually, I was talking to my grandma I don't know a year or two ago, and so I I mentioned the last episode, my uncle was at was a it was in construction, he was a carpenter, cabinet maker, handyman. Yeah. Uh his dad, my grandfather was, and his dad, and his dad. I I think we traced it back like in the as far as my grandma could remember, which was like the mid-1800s. I'm like, and my dad isn't, but my uncle was, and I kind of took took that in his same last name, right? Um, so I'm like eighth generation at least. So we're we're going close to 200 years of people in some sort of construction, right? Carpentry. Um, so there is a long history and lineage of that in my family. And so yeah, maybe that was fake.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Continuing the legacy. Sweet. That's another episode in the books. So um subscribe to this podcast, guys, if you want a deeper perspective on Sapphire and building and your experiences, and we'll see you in the next episode.