We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dustin Hoffman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dustin, appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

This is a very interesting question for me personally. I have always been very financially motivated. Throughout the years I have found myself spending much of my free time on various strategies to build wealth. I have come to the conclusion that there is almost a limitless number of ways to become wealthy over time. One of the things that I find the most interesting is that although having a high income is helpful, there are many other small decisions to hold onto your hard earned income that seem more significant throughout one’s lifetime. I’m always fascinated by stories of people with high salaries living paycheck to paycheck, and then conversely low-income earners dying with what seems like unachievable wealth. Now to answer your question directly. From my experience, our education system lacks even a basic understanding and inclusion of financial education. I never learned how to balance a checkbook or create a budget at any level of education. I did not understand the significance of your credit score. I didn’t realize that a poor credit score will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime, in the form of higher interest rates on major purchases. I didn’t understand that payments on most home mortgages are mostly interest for many years. All these items and many more are very easy to understand. I am still amazed to this day that these things are not common knowledge and taught in schools as part of the standard curriculum. My point is that I have had to put a lot more time and effort into learning these concepts on my own, sometimes the hard way, when it should have been common knowledge. I feel like a basic understanding of financial education would lead to a society of greater prosperity and allow many people to spend more of their time pursuing what they are passionate about, pursuing their dreams, and contributing to society in more meaningful ways. I think the first step is to remove the notion that talking about one’s finances is taboo. We need to start having open and honest conversations about money in our own homes with friends and family as well as in the education system. Some of these lessons are very costly, why make the younger generations learn these same lessons the hard way?

Dustin, 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?

I grew up working with my father during weekends and summers off as long as I can remember. My father, Dave Hoffman, is also an integral part of our family business, Log & Timber Solutions. He never stops doing what he loves, which is working. He is always building, renovating, or restoring something. Usually, a log cabin, personal residence, treehouse, car, truck, motorcycle, tractor, or who knows what else. At one point he was flying all over the world as a log home expert, not only troubleshooting and solving issues, but also teaching others how to construct log homes. My mother, Mitzi Hoffman, has also worked tirelessly for as long as I can remember in an office management role and is responsible for all office related tasks of our business, and I can’t recall a bad thing ever being said about her, though I’m probably a little bias. My wife Laurie graduated from college and had various jobs over the years, but was ultimately managing a small retail store before we decided to start Log & Timber Solutions. I went to a service academy after high school and earned a Mechanical Engineering Degree. After college, I traveled and worked all over the world on tugboats, container ships, car carriers, and drill ships for 10+ years in the engineering department. I transitioned into a project manager role at a shipyard on the west coast to be home with family more often. My mother and father had a business in central Pennsylvania that provided services to maintain and restore log cabins. When my wife and I decided to move back from the west coast we were both looking for new job opportunities, I started working with my father’s company on an interim basis. Ultimately, I put a business plan together and proposed that they should start a new branch of his company in North Carolina where Laurie and I were living. In the end, my parents decided to sell their interest in that business in Pennsylvania to his partner and start a new business with Laurie and I in North Carolina. And that is how Log & Timber Solutions was born. Log & Timber Solutions is unique for a few reasons. One there are very few companies that focus on Log Homes solely and are familiar with their characteristics. We are also very much a family focused company. We have many customers who we have long-lasting relationships with, and all the people we work with are like family to us. We believe that everyone should be treated as we would like to be treated. Along with the close family atmosphere, we are able to provide a very unique set of skills. The actual labor itself is not unique but many of the techniques are. The plethora of knowledge from my father’s building experience is very much unusual and priceless. I am asked by potential customers all the time why we are different. I respond that we have screwed everything up before on someone else’s house. Though funny, there is a large amount of truth to it. We specialize in maintenance and restoration of Log Homes up and down the entire East Coast. This includes washing, staining, caulking, chinking, repairing, or replacing rotted logs, and pretty much anything else you could need done that is log home specific. What we have found is that we are very good at looking at an initial condition of a log home and getting the outcome the homeowner desires in a way that is as painless as possible for the customer. Logs homes are not like conventual homes. They have protection systems on the exterior that need regular maintenance to keep them from deteriorating. Many people buy a log home without understanding the unique traits of a log home. You can’t just paint them every 20 years when you want to change the color. New log homeowners tend to go past the point of needing maintenance and then need us to get them back to a condition that is acceptable for them. This is where we shine. We like to say log homes are alive. They are always moving, expanding, contracting, checking (cracking,) absorbing moisture and then drying out. With all these things in mind, there is no one solution for any problem. There are also many different desired aesthetic options, such as high gloss to flat, transparent to solid stains, and natural coloring all the way to blacks, not to mention the variations of types of protection systems and most are not compatible with each other without additional costly steps. Trying to get from Condition A to the customer’s final desired outcome can sometimes be very tricky, and in many cases requires a completely different scope or work on the different sides of the home. With our vast knowledge gained from thousands of past projects, we can give homeowners several options and make sure we get the desired outcome that best suits our customers and their budget. So, in summary, we sell peace of mind knowing your home will end up just like you want it.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

As I mentioned earlier, there was a point in my life where I was working at a shipyard on the west coast. I liked and enjoyed my job, I liked my home, and pay, however my phone was ringing at all hours of the day and night. Even though I enjoyed the challenge of the job, my work to home life balance was way out of whack. My wife was also working more than she ever had in her life and we both just realized that our lives were not sustainable on that path and that we needed to reset. We decided we needed to spend more time as a family and that is what ultimately led to us selling everything, buying a travel trailer and taking a 6-month road trip across the US to determine where we wanted to start the next phase of life. Ultimately, we decided we wanted to be in North Carolina. That is what ultimately led to starting Log & Timber Solutions.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I would say a lesson that I learned early on is that you need to be flexible and adapt to your environment. I can tell you that my management style was drastically different when I was managing projects in the shipyard vs now managing our small family business. Looking back on it, I would categorize my shipyard management style as rigid, structured, and slightly dictatorial. It was effective at the time, though I’m sure there was room for improvement. What I can tell you for sure is that management style did not work at all for Log & Timber Solutions. I tried keeping the same rigid, structured, management style, and it was painful and ineffective. It simply did not work with my new team (my family.) Though both systems were dynamic in different ways, I found that in our family business everyone (even those not technically family) has an extremely high sense of pride and ownership in their work. It is part of our identity and who we are. For this reason, it is very easy to trust them and delegate to them, which was initially hard for me. I’d like to think I transitioned pretty quickly, but I know we had a few months in the beginning where things were less than smooth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.logandtimbersolutions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/logandtimbersolutions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourloghomeexperts/
• Other: We would love to welcome you to the Log & Timber Solutions Family. Give us a call!!

Image Credits
Log & Timber Solutions LLC