Custom Remodeling Contractor Kansas City
Five Fold Solutions is a Kansas City–based design + build firm founded by Max and Jason. Max leads business strategy, marketing, and financial oversight, while Jason manages production, scheduling, and client experience on the project side. Together, they bring a balanced partnership that blends craftsmanship with vision.
Their mission is simple: to transform spaces and serve people with excellence, integrity, and purpose. From kitchens and bathrooms to decks, basements, additions, and light commercial projects, Five Fold Solutions is known for trust-first service, timeless craftsmanship, and a purpose-driven approach that puts people first.
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-Transcript-
Brad Burrow (00:01):
Welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts. Get inspired, then go live your story. It’s In a World With Real Media. Hello and welcome to The In a World with Real Media Podcast. I’m Brad Burrow, and today we have Max Farmer and Jason Luce.
Jason Luce (00:36):
Yes,
Brad Burrow (00:36):
From Five Fold Solutions and really excited about having ’em on the podcast. Let me read a little bit about what they do. Basically a contracting firm, and they’re going to give us a lot more detail on this, but there’s a lot of faith behind all of this, which is really cool and we’re going to dive into that. But let me read to this, read you kind of what’s on the website. So you guys know what this is about? Five Full Solutions LLC is a results driven general contracting firm serving residential and commercial clients across greater Kansas City. Founded by experienced partners. We combine strategic leadership and disciplined client focused approach to deliver exceptional design, build and remodeling services from initial consultation to project completion. So from start to finish, you guys are doing that kind of work. So thank you guys for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Tell me, well, the first thing, and I ask Carly this as well, it’s like Five Fold Solutions. Tell me what that means.
Jason Luce (01:34):
When Max and I get together, the idea was how do we give back? How do we reach out? And we’re both very spiritual people and at the time we were both exploring Ephesians for just the entire chapter four, and you can look it up and see, but it basically speaks about the Five Fold Church. And every one of those folds in the Five Fold church is important. You need all of ’em for the body of Christ. And so that’s where we landed. We landed on Five Fold Solutions for our name. And so our thought process is that we would try to embody every one of those pillars, is what we’re calling it on our logo. Is each one of those pillars. Can you add into that?
Max Farmer (02:21):
Yeah. Those pillars are really strong as far as our identity goes. We definitely wanted to have that approach, just incorporating faith into what we do at a high level. And this was kind of a soft way of incorporating that.
Brad Burrow (02:38):
You guys get asked that question a lot,
Jason Luce (02:40):
Surprisingly not that often.
Brad Burrow (02:42):
Yeah, that’s the first thing I saw. Five Fold Solutions what does that mean exactly? It was really curious about that.
Jason Luce (02:48):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (02:48):
Awesome. So faith is, I know we want to talk about that, but that’s a big part of the foundation of what you guys are doing.
Jason Luce (02:55):
Yeah, it is the foundation for what we’re doing.
(02:59):
Yeah,
(02:59):
Absolutely.
Brad Burrow (03:00):
Do you feel called to start this business? Do you feel like that was like, this is something God’s calling you to do?
Jason Luce (03:05):
Without a doubt, absolutely. 100%. Yeah. It was probably two and a half years in the making from the first conversations Max and I had till the tax ID was formed, but a lot of prayer in that leading up to that. A lot of talking and learning.
Brad Burrow (03:26):
Max, you’ve got, I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and you’ve got a pretty diverse background.
Max Farmer (03:32):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (03:32):
Spanned
Max Farmer (03:33):
A couple of industries for sure.
Brad Burrow (03:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So why construction? What kind of led you to construction?
Max Farmer (03:40):
Actually, that kind of fell in my lap. I’ve kind of had a background working on things my whole life out of necessity actually. But
Brad Burrow (03:50):
I know your dad, so I believe that a hundred percent.
Max Farmer (03:53):
Yeah, we like to work with our hands for sure, but I’ve always been drawn to entrepreneurship and so learning different businesses, different industries, I’ve been able to take lessons from a pretty diverse group for everything from customer service all the way to the medical industry to now construction, GI technician. Yeah, I did that for about eight years and it was some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Is
Brad Burrow (04:17):
That right?
Max Farmer (04:17):
Yeah. Healthcare workers are by far a step above, and I kind of cherished that time in my life working with those people.
Brad Burrow (04:27):
You were there a long time. That’s a long time. I
Max Farmer (04:29):
Was additionally going school for medicine, but ended up just being drawn to business and entrepreneurship and I didn’t like the lifestyle that I was kind of seeing. Not that it was bad, it just wasn’t for me. And so made a change and went from there.
Brad Burrow (04:48):
And then Garmin, you went to Garmin for a while?
Max Farmer (04:50):
I went to Garmin for about six years. I kind of learned how big business does in a corporate setting. And again, good group of people. Garmin’s got a great culture and I really kind of enjoyed my time there, but I also kind of felt like I was called to do more. This is the result of that.
Brad Burrow (05:11):
You think all of your, and I’m going to ask you this too, Jason, but all of your experiences have led you to be prepared for what you’re doing right now?
Max Farmer (05:19):
I think so. I like to think of my life as a conglomerate of lessons, and so I’m able to draw from,
Brad Burrow (05:27):
I’m a slow learner. I don’t know if you are.
Max Farmer (05:29):
Me too. And I’ve got to learn the hard way. That’s it. What are you doing? Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. But yeah, no, I’ve enjoyed my time and my career choices and part of entrepreneurship is learning as fast and as cheaply as you can, but I’ve really enjoyed my experiences up to about now.
Brad Burrow (05:55):
Yeah. Jason, what about, tell me a little bit about your background and your experiences.
Jason Luce (06:00):
Well, I went to the Army directly out of high school and then after that, didn’t know what I was going to do and Max, it fell in my lap. It started in construction as a carpenter, building houses, and then worked my way up to the finished stuff and then eventually jumped out of my own and here we are.
Brad Burrow (06:21):
So you’ve kind of been an entrepreneur for quite a while then?
Jason Luce (06:24):
Yes, first tax Id boy, maybe 15 years ago or so, somewhere around there. And let’s see, 51 now. I started somewhere in my early twenties, about 20, I think is when I started in the business. So about half of that time was under my own umbrella, let’s call it. You mentioned something about all the experiences leading up to this. Absolutely. And I look back a lot at those experiences and I recognize that none of those were experiences that I manufactured myself. Everything was put in front of me by God, and he was just like, come this way, come this. Sometimes I was dumb enough not to follow other times I was right there, but either way, it was a building process, not by me, just by me following. And that got me with Max, with whatever experience I had, and it just together into this persons formula that was designed out of our control.
Brad Burrow (07:31):
And
Jason Luce (07:32):
It’s exciting to see that happen.
Brad Burrow (07:33):
Guys compliment each other. Then
Jason Luce (07:35):
We do. We often talk about how in the short time we’ve been together, we couldn’t exist without each other. What we have in front of us couldn’t be there. And I know as a business owner before having Max as my partner, I failed a lot. I don’t fail as much now, and it’s wonderful.
Brad Burrow (07:55):
Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Jesus was a carpenter, right?
Jason Luce (07:58):
Yes. He was
Brad Burrow (08:00):
Kind of following in his footsteps. I think you think about what a carpenter does, watched houses be built and the framing and all that stuff. And if you don’t get the framing, everything else afterwards is not right.
Jason Luce (08:14):
Trickles
Brad Burrow (08:14):
Downhill. What you do has to be right. I mean, I dunno if you think about that in the business side of things, but the foundation of you better build that wall from the beginning, right?
Jason Luce (08:24):
Yep. This is so accurate.
Brad Burrow (08:26):
Yeah, it’s very interesting. Okay, so let’s switch gears a little bit. So we kind of talked about a little bit about why Five Fold Solutions. What’s different about you guys? I was thinking about this, the whole market for renovations and general contract. There’s a dime a dozen, right? Mean there’s a lot of them out there. So what sets you guys apart from the rest?
Max Farmer (08:56):
First and foremost, it’s the relational aspect of it. We like to think that we have that one-on-one personal relationship with all of our clients. They’re comfortable with us. I feel like they are able to just explore what they want to do without the judgment or the need, the push to kind of do it. We love to dream with people, and I think in this industry, contractors kind of get into that mode of I need to get work in, need to do it, and if you’re going to waste my time, I don’t want anything to do with you. We’re not that way. We just haven’t been that way from day one. So I think the relational aspect is kind of our niche, if you will.
Jason Luce (09:39):
Absolutely. It is. What I would add to that is first and foremost, it’s always God’s plan and not ours. And I think that so often in this line of work the other way around, it’s
Brad Burrow (09:53):
God come along with this plan I’ve come up with.
Jason Luce (09:55):
Exactly. So
Brad Burrow (09:56):
I’m guilty of that, man.
Jason Luce (09:57):
Well, everybody does it right? And it’s just how do you keep from falling into that rut? And so that’s something we put at the front end of everything we do. We can sometimes get a month down the road and be like, uhoh, we’ve got the reins in our hands. That’s when things start collapsing and we realize uhoh, we got to hand back over. But once we have that as our basis, then we move into what Max was getting at. And on top of that, from the actual product that we’re putting out in itself, as you mentioned, it starts from the very beginning and we pride ourselves in detail, attention to detail. We really try to focus on delivering a product that is at the top at whatever the cost is. If we take a lot of effort and things that can be swept under the rug that a lot of guys do because the money might be off and we take care of those things, the end product is extremely important to us and the details to get there, we don’t leave any out.
Brad Burrow (11:03):
Yeah. So talk about the dreaming thing. You said a little bit. So the concept, somebody has it, I want to build a deck or I want to add this room onto my house or whatever. What does that look like? I mean, do you come in and just, here’s the vision I have and say, well, maybe if you did it this way, you could do this, that kind of thing. What does that look like?
Jason Luce (11:27):
It really starts from the very first conversation with client. And as Max said, relationship is the, we look at it as it’s probably 90% of the product is the beginning relationship. And when you hit the relationship and the things are working in tandem, then the details come later and they actually come pretty simple. As long as you go in with pure intentions from the beginning, it seems to fall. Right.
Brad Burrow (11:59):
Do you think that’s different than other companies out there? I mean, that feels like a lot of work being done upfront, but to ensure that the rest of the project goes well, maybe that’s not happening with other contractors.
Max Farmer (12:12):
I’d like to think that there’s this productivity based mindset when it comes to most companies, whereas we’re trying to nail a feeling that a client’s trying to have, they’re imagining a space that they can just live in and it be incorporated into their daily life. That’s not done quickly. That takes time, it takes effort, and we kind of enjoy that part of the process. We do. The money doesn’t really matter to us at that point. It matters that we’re trying to hit that feel for them.
Brad Burrow (12:53):
I would think that them working with you, it’s like on the creative side, we’ll have people come in and say, well, I need this video. Or I’ve had people come in and say, I need people to fill this way. When they see this piece of content, well, we kind of know how to get there. But the process, the creative process is much better when we work together to accomplish that. And that’s kind of what I’m hearing from you guys is like, you know how to do it all, but working together with a client is going to make that product much better,
Jason Luce (13:26):
Much better. I think the key is you have to try to keep, no matter how much experience you have, you have to understand that ego can play no part in this, right? You have to check it at the door. And sometimes that’s hard when you think you know more than client, maybe you don’t. So giving some space there really, really helps.
Brad Burrow (13:49):
And that probably builds trust with your clients too. Well, they’re listening to me.
Max Farmer (13:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Burrow (13:53):
Yeah.
Max Farmer (13:54):
I mean, trust is the number one thing we’re trying to preserve, acquire, and utilize. We want them to be able to trust us as much as we trust them.
Brad Burrow (14:04):
So what do you think, if you could say there’s one problem that we solve better than anybody for commercial customers, for homeowners, anything, any of those types of clients? What are the one thing that we do the best?
Jason Luce (14:19):
We’re definitely at the top with the whole relational value on the overall product. We just think it gets left out too much. It just gets left out entirely too much. And you can get to the end goal without that, but if you incorporate that, it’s a much better ride to the end.
Brad Burrow (14:45):
I saw some pictures. I think I saw a video, maybe a drone video on your website, and it looked like the homeowner was there. Maybe it was on a deck, if I’m remembering. But I know for me, if I was hiring a contractor to do a project, I’d want to be there every day kind of seeing what’s happening and understanding. Are you guys good with that interaction with your clients? It looked like that’s what was happening on the deck project.
Jason Luce (15:11):
We encourage it actually. It’s beneficial to all parties, parties involved. Plus what we want to do is we want the client to be as involved as much as possible. We’re accustomed to have people over our shoulders, and that’s okay. We’re okay with that.
Brad Burrow (15:31):
Yeah. A lot of people would not be happy with that, right?
Jason Luce (15:34):
Don’t do that. It took a while to get there, but that’s where we are and we’re happy with
Brad Burrow (15:39):
It. So I want to switch gears just a little bit. I want to go through kind of your process, but first, there’s a lot of people in this business, marketing wise. How do people find you guys? What are you doing right now? Is it referrals? Is it word of mouth?
Max Farmer (15:58):
Yeah. Primarily our business is word of mouth. So our clients that we’ve worked with in the past are referring us to other clients, and that only comes by having a stellar relationship and trust and seeing that the product that they wanted to be built right off the bat is actually coming to life and fruition in front of them. But there’s a small segment of business that’s coming from social media. So we’re on Yelp. We’re a better business bureau. We’ve got a handful of platforms that were Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all that kind of stuff. And Max, you’re kind of in charge of all that side of things, is that right? Put a lot of work in it. It’s been a steep learning curve, but yes.
Brad Burrow (16:35):
Yeah, I’d love to dive into that a little bit with you. But we got a website obviously, but boy is the whole algorithm thing and AI and it’s all changing, and I feel like the people that figure that out right now are going to be way ahead a year from now or maybe two years from
Max Farmer (16:56):
Now. Yeah. The big push for AI to go into SEO, so search engine optimization, it’s a new hot topic thing right now. And so kind of the old school way of doing SEO was kind of changed now by AI and having to learn your way through that is fun. But yeah, the main marketing push now is, I think we’re trying to lean on that word of mouth to kind of make that work. But the social media aspect, we’re documenting builds, we’re pulling out blog posts, things that are kind of aimed at educating the general public of what’s possible, what we can do, and kind of bolster the dreaming part with our clients. So that’s kind of our goal right now.
Brad Burrow (17:54):
So I do a podcast with another gentleman that’s got a web company, and we talk about digital marketing. We were talking about this just the other day about ai, and Google now does not want to send people to a website. They want to answer your question when you ask the question. Have you noticed that? Yeah. So it’s changing. It’s like unless you put in general contractor, Overland Park, Kansas or whatever, something like that, maybe you’ll come up on that, but you ask a question, I’ve got an exhaust leak on my engine and a Ford Explorer 2018, it will come up with a pretty good explanation as to what that could be. And the idea is that they don’t want to send you to a website. They want to answer that question right there. So it’s like you’ve got to be thinking Google almost to have success there.
Jason Luce (18:49):
There’s another aspect of the AI that we’re finding is challenging and is how to make our content look like it’s not all ai, because AI takes over everything, and it’s been an awful challenge for us to How do you incorporate the pure feelings involved with ai? It’s difficult.
Brad Burrow (19:09):
Yeah. So a little side note, I just did an interview with a business journal yesterday and they asked me to talk about AI in our industry, and we’re using it on some things, chat GPT for different things. We’re using a platform, well, we’re doing a documentary on the history of women’s basketball right now.
Jason Luce (19:28):
Oh, cool.
Brad Burrow (19:29):
And so we’re taking old pictures that were from 19 50, 19 40, and we put ’em into a program called Topaz, and it UPS into 4K. And so it’s really interesting because it’s adding things in that it’s making decisions on what’s going to put in there. And so we’ve been doing it for a year and a half now. So something like that. And the difference between a year and a half ago result wise and what we get now result wise is a big difference. And so for us, it’s great for that. Enhancing stories, all that stuff. The girls don’t have 10 fingers anymore. They actually have five fingers. But I think I was telling you, I think AI is something that we are going to have to embrace, but there also, and I said this, the human element, you can never replace the human element of what we do. And the same with you guys,
Max Farmer (20:30):
Never. Yeah, I’ve used AI quite a bit, and what I’ve noticed is it gets you into the ballpark and won’t run the bases for you. You can’t take a swing, but it’ll get you into the ballpark, and sometimes that’s just enough to start getting the juices flowing. You will get those questions to ask
Brad Burrow (20:49):
Half the battle sometimes getting into the ballpark,
Max Farmer (20:52):
Right? That’s right. Yeah.
Brad Burrow (20:52):
Right. So tell me a little bit about what’s the experience look like working with you guys from step-by-step, if you guys have it broken down into that process, what does that look like?
Jason Luce (21:05):
It’s pretty relaxed. We don’t have a formula. It starts with a site visit or contact phone call. However, site visit, we usually get some ideas and depending on scope and size of project and all of that kind of stuff, the next step is what we do is we come up with a design. We start working on design or at least a starting point. Do you do that, Jason? Do you do this? Yeah, we do. Okay. We do. If we need to get Cat or something like that. Do you? No, we’re on paper.
Brad Burrow (21:38):
You’re just writing it out?
Jason Luce (21:39):
Just writing and drawing.
Max Farmer (21:41):
He’ll map out or he’ll draw the actual deck or patio or Awesome. Awesome. Old school man. Old school, awesome. Yeah, it’s
Jason Luce (21:49):
Great though. Sometimes it’s challenging. I can’t do it. Any of the CAD programs or anything can, and if we need to take it to the next step, we’ll get the architects involved before we get to the city. But before we do that, we usually give a range of cost for a couple of reasons. Number one, we don’t know all the details of the project. We’re still spitballing ideas. Number two is we don’t want to just hand you a number and walk off. We see that too much where people just go, here’s your number. They have no idea what they’re going to build for ’em. They just know they’re going to refinish their bathroom and then they walk off and folks are like, what’s next? So we start with a range once we get some ideas put in place and we can narrow down cost. And then from there, it’s basically just signing contract and moving on,
Brad Burrow (22:43):
Making it happen.
Jason Luce (22:43):
Making it happen.
Brad Burrow (22:45):
Yeah. Can you guys share any recent projects that you guys can talk about? Maybe some case studies or anything like that, that were good successes?
Max Farmer (22:53):
There’s a case study on our website in our outdoor living section, and it kind of highlights some key features and some design challenges that we
Jason Luce (23:02):
Had. Yeah, there’s definitely design challenges.
Max Farmer (23:05):
Yeah, talk about those now.
Jason Luce (23:06):
Okay, so this particular project started off as a resurface. The deck was in place, south Johnson County on some acreage. There’s plenty of space to work with if we needed to. There was an existing gazebo at one end of the deck. There’s a pool at the other end of the deck. I’m pointing to areas of the project. You know what I’m talking about.
Brad Burrow (23:35):
I see it right there.
Jason Luce (23:36):
However, what we did is we took up the pool deck, new stamped pool deck and coping resurfaced existing deck. When pulled the existing deck up, it was shot. So the challenge was how do you fix the frame without tearing it all down? And the short answer to that is it’s next to impossible. And this one homeowner wanted to try it. So we did, and we ended up replacing probably 60% of the framing.
Brad Burrow (24:12):
Oh, wow.
Jason Luce (24:13):
Yeah. So in the long run, probably would’ve been better to take it down, but we’re still trying to work within the parameters of the client’s decisions. So we did and we made sure we kept the cost down as much as possible. As we’re building, he’s getting some ideas, which were great. We ended up having a separate, let’s call it 20 by 16 detached pergola covered roof system in there, which was fantastic. It was off to the side of the pool. So the deck butted into that. Right next to it was the gazebo. They were very partial to the gazebo. The gazebo is old and was collapsing. We reshored everything and redid some of the frame, and then we actually incorporated some of the decking into our decking. So the decking from the gazebo followed through to the new roof
(25:09):
Structure,
(25:10):
And then we had to combine gazebo with a new roof feature. Man, it was
Brad Burrow (25:16):
Problem after problem we had to solve. Sounds
Jason Luce (25:18):
Like it was, we like to call them solutions,
Brad Burrow (25:21):
Possible
Jason Luce (25:22):
Solutions. So it actually turned out really well against the house where the deck made the house. We also added another 10 by 12 roof feature. So the decking went from pool to new roof feature to gazebo around, hit the house and come around and traveled into the new deck feature on this side, and we filled it with lights, and it really turned out to be a nice project. I think it is a case study on our side.
Brad Burrow (25:53):
How long did that take? Just curious.
Jason Luce (25:57):
So we did all the work physically ourselves, and it I think took three months.
Brad Burrow (26:05):
Oh, wow.
Jason Luce (26:06):
Maybe it was four by the time we were done.
Brad Burrow (26:08):
So in the middle of that, you’re probably having conversations with the owners like, okay, we have all day long every day.
Max Farmer (26:15):
And he was pretty meticulous on the detail part, if I remember right.
Jason Luce (26:19):
Yeah, he’s an attorney.
Max Farmer (26:20):
Yeah.
Jason Luce (26:20):
Oh yeah. Matter of fact, this is kind of a funny
Brad Burrow (26:22):
Story. That’ss a little scary working with an attorney on something like that.
Jason Luce (26:25):
He’s a great guy, great guy, but he’s very detail oriented and numbers wise, he was there. Funny story about this. So I have a pretty, at that point in time, there was a basic contract, right? Max has done some wonders with the contract since then, but
Brad Burrow (26:44):
Are you an attorney now? No, I chat GPT. I don’t think he would’ve
Jason Luce (26:48):
Poked any holes in this one, but I brought my very basic contract to him and he read through it and he goes, yeah, why don’t I call you tomorrow? And he says, not what you want. He says, I think we’re ready to go. But I kind of did some modifications. I get
Brad Burrow (27:06):
Back over there, he reworked the whole contract. Oh my gosh.
Jason Luce (27:08):
Changed the whole thing, which was great because he did some other protections in there, but I thought it was pretty funny. It didn’t bother me one bit, but it was great. It was,
Brad Burrow (27:17):
Maybe you can use that moving forward. Maybe he rewrote your contract for you,
Max Farmer (27:22):
But the end result was really cool. It was, the project itself made it look like it was a part of the original design for the house, but just gorgeous. We featured as a case study on our website, and so photos are readily available. No, that’s awesome.
Brad Burrow (27:40):
So one of the things I was thinking about when I was thinking about what we would talk about today, the renovation projects, you probably run into some crazy stuff. I mean, you mentioned a little bit on that project, the beams, the Joyce, I’m assuming from the deck bad, but can you talk about mean, do you think? Absolutely. There’s got to be some open up in a wall and what am I looking at here?
Jason Luce (28:05):
This we are in the middle of a disaster right now, which we’re going to handle, and we actually, as odd as it might sound, we kind of like this stuff a little bit because
Brad Burrow (28:18):
You glutton for punishment,
Jason Luce (28:19):
Right? A little bit. But you can only build a 12 by 12 deck for so long without getting bored. Right? Challenges are stressful, but fun for
(28:27):
Us.
(28:28):
We took on one, actually, it’s an insurance claim.
(28:33):
It’s in a house that’s about 39th and walnut, a hundred plus year old house. Oh wow. Old design, beautiful houses. But as you can imagine, there’s been a lot of different people that have worked on this house over the course of the a hundred plus years. On the second floor is this bathroom, they got a leak, and the leak came through the first floor. We came there and met the adjuster, talked through the adjuster with the insurance side, which is an entire different animal dealing with the insurance company. I was going to say, yeah, we got the numbers juggled back and forth to where they worked right inside the wall. However, we had no idea what we were going to get into. We could guess, and we’re able to work some of that stuff through what this insurance company calls supplements. So they’ll agree to some of it. They won’t agree to others. Either way, it’s open and we have to deal with it
(29:29):
Inside the wall, behind the shower, which was a corner shower. Wait, should we have a sound effect? Probably. Probably. So it’s a corner. Let’s call it an eight by eight bathroom. Behind one of the walls was the second half of the window. So the window is a double window, five foot by four and a half feet. What you see when you’re looking at the finished shower is there’s a shower and a window starts tight to it. Okay. That’s all you see. Well, that’s only half of the window. The other half of the window is behind the shower. So we open this up and that’s just the beginning of it.
Brad Burrow (30:15):
What do you do with that? You have to take the window out. I’m giving you heartburn right now, aren’t I?
Jason Luce (30:21):
Yes, because we’re right in the middle of figuring it out. But no, I think we’re going to leave it because we’re going to make it go back correctly. The cost of what it would cost the client they’ve opted out of, we’re going to make, and you have
Brad Burrow (30:35):
To reframe that.
Jason Luce (30:36):
Yeah. We’ve had to come out off of the wall a certain distance to allow for some insulation. The proper framing, the proper drying, all of that. At the same time behind it all is lath and plaster, and they’ve just secured all of their shower walls to the lattin plaster. There’s no sport
Brad Burrow (30:59):
Could come off.
Jason Luce (31:00):
Just you could push on the walls and they go wobble. Wobble. Oh my gosh. So anyways, we’re halfway through that. It’s going to get there. A matter of fact, driving up here, I’ve got the carpenter on the phone going, I’m going, hold on. Just take a breath. Just give me a few minutes. I’m going to be over there with it, but we’re going to get there.
Brad Burrow (31:19):
Well, what a blessing that’s going to be for the homeowner to get all that resolved though, huh?
Jason Luce (31:23):
We love
Brad Burrow (31:24):
That part of it.
Jason Luce (31:25):
We really do like that part. Somewhere in there is the idea of how can we give back service work versus how can we stay afloat? We want to balance that
Brad Burrow (31:38):
Correctly. It’s hard. That’s very hard. I’ve had that same thing. It’s like you can get out of balance on that. You can very easily.
Jason Luce (31:46):
Either way. Either way.
Brad Burrow (31:47):
Yeah. So what is that balance? It’s not easy to get to that balance.
Jason Luce (31:52):
Stay in prayer. Right?
Brad Burrow (31:53):
Stay in prayer. Right, right. I think what you guys do, there’s got to be a faith element to almost everybody you’re running into. I would think mean. Think about the person in that house. They probably had an issue there. They’re probably freaked out about it. It’s like, is my insurance going to cover this? Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? I mean, you guys can kind of come in there and, all right, settle down,
Jason Luce (32:18):
Order
Brad Burrow (32:19):
The chaos.
Jason Luce (32:19):
We can put order
(32:21):
The chaos.
Brad Burrow (32:21):
But the faith element of that, I mean, do you share that with customers?
Jason Luce (32:26):
Yes. There’s a fine line on when to do that. In my experience, and Max and I both experience it from different levels, we do different things for the business. Right. I have a more face-to-face. And so I think it’s easier for me because I can see people in front of me. I can see emotion, and I also can get the feeling better on conversations at the very beginning on when to drop faith in.
Brad Burrow (32:53):
Yes.
Jason Luce (32:55):
You may have it a little more difficult on the phone a lot.
Max Farmer (32:58):
Yeah, I do. And trying to draw people’s intentions and emotion through the phone is a little bit more difficult. It’s
Brad Burrow (33:04):
Like a zoom call.
Max Farmer (33:06):
I would much prefer this interaction. I agree on the phone. So as far as being bold with faith, I think there’s a line, there’s a balance. There’s something you have to do. It’s
Brad Burrow (33:20):
Got to be spirit led, right? Totally. You can’t just, it does,
Max Farmer (33:24):
But at the same time, we’ve got to also respect the person in front of us. Right? Right. So pushing faith on people is something we don’t do.
Jason Luce (33:30):
No. Sometimes we can show our faith by our actions.
Brad Burrow (33:34):
So we work, I don’t know if you guys know this, but we work a lot with City Union Mission. Awesome. So we do their podcast and a bunch of content for them. But one of the things I think is really awesome about what they do is much like Jesus did, it’s like, let me help you with a physical challenge, then I’m going to talk to you about the spiritual side of things.
Jason Luce (33:56):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (33:56):
So let me feed you, give you a place to sleep, but then let’s talk about how we can really turn your life around. Fantastic. So that’s kind of what I’m hearing you guys say too. It’s like, let me help you solve this problem, and I’m for you. I’m with you. And that’s something I think it sets you guys apart from other contractors, I can’t imagine too many contractors at the big names here in Kansas City. They’re going to think that way.
Max Farmer (34:23):
Yeah, I would agree with you. Especially the bigger the unit gets, the more that the personality of the founders of the owners kind of gets
Jason Luce (34:32):
Complacency all that, right? Yeah. It gets a little shuffled.
Brad Burrow (34:36):
If you guys could grow, that’s going to be the challenge is to keep that same.
Jason Luce (34:40):
It is. And that was our first, let’s say, question
Brad Burrow (34:46):
When
Jason Luce (34:46):
We started this, is how do we keep that going? We know very quick when we start to receive things that we’re not used to, we can get lost in that
Brad Burrow (34:56):
And it can get out of hand pretty fast. Things happen quickly.
Jason Luce (35:01):
That’s right.
Brad Burrow (35:01):
Yeah. So staying grounded in your faith, I mean, that’s got to be a big part of what you guys are doing. I mean, I would imagine daily probably, right?
Max Farmer (35:10):
It is. Yeah. We definitely get pulled in a bunch of different directions, and so not having that foundation with God, and I don’t know how we’d be able to do it, to be honest with you.
Jason Luce (35:19):
That’s right. If we trace back some of the decisions that we’ve made are probably not the decisions we would make now. Usually at the root of those is when we’re a little off spiritually. If we get beat up for a week and we forgot to be calling upon God for decisions, then that’s when our bad decisions
Brad Burrow (35:39):
Seem
Jason Luce (35:39):
To,
Brad Burrow (35:40):
He comes through every time still. Right. I mean, to me, I totally get that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Humble, right? You got to stay humble. What would you like to see happen in the next two or three years with Five Fold? I mean, probably a hundred million in revenue, right? No,
Max Farmer (35:58):
I’m just kidding. No, we definitely want to have an impact on the city, though. Yes. We’d definitely like to see our name kind of be the go-to for problem solving unique problem sets, both in the commercial and the residential worlds.
Brad Burrow (36:13):
Sounds like you’re getting a lot of experience in that right
Max Farmer (36:15):
Now. We are. The cool thing is God is building those situations in us, and it just seems to be increasing in size and scope, which is phenomenal. So I’d like to see that personally.
Jason Luce (36:31):
So another thing we’ve always, one of our, let’s say goals long-term is how can we provide back? How do we give back? And initially going into this is until we were at a certain point, it’s awfully hard to give back if we are not at a level that we can give to ourselves yet. And so we’re starting to be at that point where we can, and our goal is we get to do more and more as we receive more and more. We want to make sure that we’re the conduit and not the accepter. Right? Yeah. Right. One particular circumstance we had, there was a family that had some physical needs, and so we were able to install a sidewalk ramp for them.
(37:25):
We’ve
(37:25):
Also donated several man hours and materials to, my brother’s a pastor in Raytown, and so he’s got a church that they’re redoing, and we’ve been able to be a part of that. And so giving our time to us is money.
Brad Burrow (37:45):
So
Jason Luce (37:46):
It works out for us that way.
Brad Burrow (37:47):
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Alright, so last thing, I wanted to just have you guys give me your elevator pitch. So I run into you, I say, Hey Max, what is Five Fold Solutions? Tell me what that is. I’d love to hear it from both of you.
Max Farmer (38:03):
Yeah. Five Fold Solutions is a general contracting company and we’re able to kind of solve unique problems with pretty quick solutions. So whatever you’re kind of facing, we’d love to take a look and tackle. So I guess that’s my quick spiel at what we are.
Brad Burrow (38:23):
Yeah. What would you say, Jason?
Max Farmer (38:24):
That’s hard for
Jason Luce (38:25):
Me. I don’t think I’ve ever ever thought about that. I’ve never put that question on myself. I would say that we are a remodeling company that prides ourself on detail. We love outdoor living and we love inside work as well, but we also want to push the relational value to the forefront of everything. So at the end of the day, it’s not about just providing a product that looks good, but it feels good along the way in the process.
Max Farmer (39:02):
Yeah, I think I like your answer better than mine.
Jason Luce (39:05):
It didn’t feel right coming out, so I’m glad you got it.
Brad Burrow (39:07):
No, that’s good. That’s good. Good practice, right? Well, alright, so we’re about done. So everybody that’s on the podcast, so it’s called In World with Real Media. So you have to do the movie voice, and I’ve had the CEO of Community America do this. It’s really fun. So I’ll show you how I do it. So you have to get really close to the
Jason Luce (39:27):
Mic
Brad Burrow (39:28):
And you have to do the movie voice. So say in a world with Real Media. So you just go up and say, in a world with Real Media. So I want you guys to each do that. Max, you want to go first? Yeah.
Max Farmer (39:42):
In a world with real
Brad Burrow (39:44):
Media, Karlie’s laughing right now. You can guarantee. All right, Jason, In A World With Real Media, that wasn’t bad, man. That was pretty good. Well man, thank you guys for being on the podcast. This is really awesome. Thank you for having us. Anybody that’s out there that is needing some remodeling work to do, I may have some stuff for you guys too. I’ve got some ideas running around here, but I think that you should give these guys a call. Go to the website. It should be in the notes and everything, but check ’em out if you need to have some ideas. Absolutely. That’s something that can help you with. Be sure to share this podcast, like comment, tell your friends about it. Tell your friends about Five Fold, and we appreciate you guys watching. And be sure to subscribe because there’s more content coming. Thank you. This has been In World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow Real Media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an episode.