We were lucky to catch up with Bijan Taherkhan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bijan, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
When I was a very young teenager, all I wanted to do was be able to travel the world while still having all the comforts of a home. At that time nothing like this existed. I was not interested in RVs, they are nothing like a normal home, and when you step inside of one, you don’t really feel the expense of what I came to know as a “Tiny Home on wheels”. So, about four or five years later, when I started noticing this brand new concept of tiny homes on wheels starting to debut in my reality I knew that I was going to build my own someday. Fast forward to age 31. I had apprenticed in a handful of Carpenter skill trades, and was a journeyman in another handful. Basically, I had enough skills to build my own Tiny Home! I taking the majority of my savings from building and farming in Northern California to build my first tiny Home with my beloved partner, Sarah (now wife). We called it the “westhaven” because we built it in WestHaven California, which is a very small town on the north coast of Humboldt, we built our first home on sacred grounds with massive redwoods towering over that wild coastline. After almost completing our Tiny Home, we moved to San Diego and lived on a horse ranch for a year to be closer to our family after our one year in San Diego was almost over. We decided that we wanted to build a second Tiny Home because the first one had gone so well, so we bundled up the rest of our savings and poured it all into a tiny Home that we now call the “Joshuah Tree“. After the four month process of building our second Tiny Home, we were able to come up with a plan to sell both of our tiny homes and start a business! We took a trip up the West Coast of North America and finally settled on Bend Oregon as our new home and space to expand our brand new tiny Home business. I finally settled on the name “Spindrift Tiny homes” due to my love for surfing and nautical life. “Spindrift“ is a nautical term used for the spray of a wave being blown off the backside by an opposing wind. To me, there’s nothing more freeing than being hit in the face with spindrift, paddling into a completely unique wave. It just feels wild! We rented a warehouse near our home and begin building as soon as possible. After a lot of hard work, we finally nailed down our first clients in the new warehouse for a custom build of a 26 foot tiny Home that was fully off the grid with solar and tons of custom features such as a space for heated iguana and a catwalk that joined both the sleeping loft and the office loft on the adjacent end, we also created in-house Shou Sugi Ban. Burnt cedar exterior siding. We burnt each piece separately and coded the whole exterior of the (tiny Home) in a custom-made black tung oil that makes the home fire mold and pests resistant. There was a lot of ups and a lot of downs throughout the beginning of our Tiny Home journey, for instance, we had to finance the first build out of pocket, which was no easy feat! I am still so grateful for every single client, and every single experience that we have gone through and our knowledge of tiny spaces and sustainable practices is ever growing.
Bijan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Bijan Taherkhan, I am 39 years old, and Have become fluent in almost every aspect of homebuilding. When I was 16 years old I took my high school equivalency test and begin working in the trades. My reasoning was simple, I could go to school with all the other kids or begin working for my neighbors drywall company and make $100 a day. The choice was simple, we had very little money growing up, and as soon as I could begin to contribute, I did. My neighbor owned a small business called “same-day ceilings”, we would get up at 5:30 AM and surf the dawn Patroll for an hour or two, and then head out all over San Diego county where we would scrape acoustic (popcorn) ceilings and re-texture them for $100 a day for two years until I moved up in the business. This was a similar pattern for me, moving my way up the ranks, and changing professions within the contracting world To eventually learn, almost every trade.
Growing up and finding out who I was through every single boss that I’ve ever had is what brought me to where I am today. I learned from the great bosses that I had and I also learned from the worst bosses. What to do, how to do it, how to treat my employees, how to treat my clients, and how to take care of myself in the process.
One of the worst things in contracting in my opinion is the constant and large amount of waste throughout every job. It is insane to me how much actually ends up in the landfills around our country Regarding the building process. So, when I finally began my own business, I had the chance to chip away at everything I didn’t like seeing in my everyday surroundings. our (tiny Home) business goes to incredible lengths to cut down on waste and use sustainably made or reclaimed items. For instance, we have lately been using a sustainably and kindly harvested sheeps Wool for our tiny Home insulation. It is very normal for us to use reclaimed Barnwood or locally milled/live edge slabs for shelving etc. The more local we go, the less packaging we receive, and that makes me feel much better about continuing in this field lessening our Eco footprint. We also donate every month to foundations that plant new trees because we use a certain amount of timber per build, I make sure that we are planting enough trees to offset whatever we are using.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The story is tough to talk about for me, but it definitely indicates resilience. There was a time in the early part of our business, where I just wanted to take on as much work as I could possibly get. In that process I was less picky about my clientele. I had a client that was difficult to work with, and several things went wrong. Instead of being able to speak with my client and help them through anything, and everything, which is how I normally operate, they decided to go straight to “lawyering up“ and suing our Tiny company. Long story short, we settled out of court but I felt very unjustified throughout the process. I was so terrified to have an attorney and a lawyer and learn about the entire aspect of the business that I didn’t dream of when I began this journey. After this experience, I learned how to pick our clients more carefully and choose people that are more aligned with our mission of sustainability and appreciate that we only work with one client at a time to make your dream of a custom built (Tiny Home) on wheels come true to the best of our abilities. This experience also gave us an opportunity to clarify our contract, and make everything much clearer for future clientele.
I absolutely love working with our clients. Every time we have ever built a home, we have maintained a personal relationship with them, and their families, as we work very closely together to make their (tiny Home) dreams come true.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A constant lesson that I had learned growing up in the trades business. Is that “money is everything”. Most of the time my bosses had superficial relationships with their clients, and it never lasted longer than the actual work being completed.
One of the things that I quickly learned to change is that yes, money is very helpful in making a home perfectly for our clients, but it is definitely not everything. I think that the most important thing about making homes for people is to feel aligned With purpose and belonging. The purpose, being why you feel you are meant to make homes for people and the belonging is a heart centered connection to everything I do and touch that is for another human being.
I truly feel connected to every home and client that I have ever built and built for, and pour my heart and soul into everyone of them. I know that I am here to build a new concept and a new earth and at the moment it looks like making tiny homes on wheels for awesome people. SO GRATEFUL
Contact Info:
- Website: https://spindrifthomes.com/
- Instagram: @spindrifthomes
- Facebook: Spindrift Tiny Homes
- Youtube: Bijan Taherkhan