Tessa Bradley - Artisans Group
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[00:00:00]

James: Hello and welcome to Marketing Passive House, the podcast where we hear from architects, designers, builders, suppliers, owners, and other experts in the passive house and high performance building space. be talking about what's working and what's needed when it comes to marketing buildings that meet or aspire to the passive house standard. your host, James Turner, and today I'm joined by Tessa Bradley, principal architect, and CEO of the Artisans Group Architecture and Planning Company. Tessa, welcome to the show.

Tessa: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

James: My pleasure. So before we get into it, and for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what led you to begin this passive house journey?

Tessa: Sure. So I am the principal architect at the Artisans Group with my co-principal, Roussa Cassel. So we're a women-owned, women-led architecture firm, and we've been focused on passive house for over a decade. I was in the second round of trainings, like the first time that PHIUS did like the trainings in [00:01:00] cities that weren't Urbana.

Tessa: So like the, the second year they did them I was in that round of trainings. So I've been a part of the community I think over 15 years actually.

James: Wow.

Tessa: we, we did the second certified passive house in the state of Washington neck and neck with Joe Giampietro and Dan Whitmore. And so yeah, we've been at it a while.

Tessa: We've done a ton of passive house projects. It's what our firm focuses on. It's what people find us for. And it's, it's been a real passion of ours and our firms for a long time.

James: Nice. Well, congratulations on the, the neck and neck, the photo finish for that, that first project

Tessa: Yeah, thank God. 'cause there was a, there was, you know, there's always a lot to learn, but there was. We were all learning together definitely in that moment.

James: Mm. That's really nice. Yeah, I mean, I will say one thing I've found really nice about the passive house community is how much it feels collaborative, not competitive.

Tessa: I agree. Yeah. It's very different from other circles of architects and, [00:02:00] and A & E professionals in that way.

James: mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there's, you know, still feelings of like, oh, I wish we got that job, but it seems like everyone's genuinely happy for other people to succeed and really just kind of move the, the whole thing forward. One well performing house at a time.

Tessa: I, I much prefer to lose projects to people I like and respect.

James: yeah. Right. Yes, exactly that. So you said people know you for building passive house houses which brings me directly and neatly to the thing here, marketing passive house. Do you put yourselves out there builders of passive house? Do you use the word, the

Tessa: We do we, we definitely, I would say, you know, it's constantly evolving. I would say we, we sort of went through, we used passive house aggressively in the beginning, and then we sort of transitioned to being really focused on [00:03:00] the aspects that would matter to your average client. So we kind of transitioned into being, do you want a healthy home?

Tessa: Do you want a home that's more comfortable? Do you want a home with low energy bills? You know, sort of like the more bite-sized, you know, less technical piece of it. And then, you know, as we built momentum and got more and more high performance. Buildings in our portfolio. You know, we actually needed to sort of talk about how we were doing, what we were doing less and more.

Tessa: It became just, you know, do you, do you want our product? Right? Do you want one of our homes? And I would say now we use high performance and passive house, like fairly intermittently on our website. And we, we are overt about it. But I would say that from the beginning our marketing has been great architecture.

Tessa: And we believe that great architecture is defined by measurably better buildings. And so we, you know, our first, our first step forward is, is sort of the portfolio, the quality of the work. And then it just so happens that the way that we do that work is passive house. [00:04:00] And so we get an array of clients.

Tessa: Some are just like, we like your work. Yeah, yeah. How you do it, that's your business. That sounds great. Whatever. And then we, we also get like the total, the total you know, nerdy like super into the details, have been reading about versions of this and fine home building for a decade, you know, that, that kind of thing.

Tessa: And, and we work well with all those kinds of clients 'cause we have a ton of overlap with them, you know, in whatever way they find their way to us. Either it's, it's, you know, aesthetics and beautiful homes, or it's. High performance homes. And so it doesn't it doesn't much matter to us how they come to us.

Tessa: 'cause our approach is pretty much the same either way. Right. And really the, the only thing that changes is how much access we give them to the technical pieces of their project. If they're not technically savvy or technically interested, we don't drag them through it. We just make the good decisions for them.

Tessa: And, you know, ask them about outcomes. Right. What, you know, how do you, how do you want your mechanical system to be, to manage, you know, how do you want your [00:05:00] maintenance of the building to be, to manage you know, the things that are more accessible to, to folks that aren't as into the details.

James: Nice. I like that. makes me think of a concept in, in copywriting, which is my background: Future Pacing where you're kind of like getting the person to see themselves in the future version of themself that you're providing them with your solution.

Tessa: I, yeah. That I've never heard. Say, say that. Future pacing.

James: Mm-hmm.

Tessa: That's really cool. I like that term.

James: Yeah,

Tessa: heard that.

James: ah, there you go. Something new every day. maybe I made it up. Who knows. No, I'm just kidding.

Tessa: Still new. Yeah.

James: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. And so, wow, that, that neatly covers both aspects of it too. 'cause I find that there is certainly a cohort of people who don't talk about passive house, like, who won't talk about passive house and just quietly build them to the standard, but [00:06:00] without having anyone to ever worry about why their houses are performing so well,

Tessa: One of my best friends in this industry is Jesse Thompson. Thompson Kaplan. I don't know if you've, you've had him on the show, but he would be another great guest.

James: Reach out.

Tessa: but he him and I have been very good friends for, for many years. And our firms are similar in some ways and he's, you know, like further, further along in his career and is, is firm is, you know, further along in its, its development as well.

Tessa: But I think we both kind of both came to the, let's not talk about passive house to sell passive house conclusions at similar times. And so it was fun to have, you know, someone to explore that with as we were both, you know, successfully selling high performance architecture but really seeing how we could do it without dragging anyone through the weeds of the conversation.

Tessa: Right,

James: Interesting and nice to have someone in a similar space doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So do you find high performance resonates with people [00:07:00] enough? Like do, do people get what that means even, or is that even a little.

Tessa: Well, you know, I think the language around how we market better buildings is challenging. And I, I wouldn't say that we have figured that out. We have a fantastic copywriter we work with that I think has really nailed and established the voice of our firm over the years. But even, even so, it's, it's almost like the language is inadequate because you say, you know, you say high performance, it's not very sexy.

Tessa: That doesn't sound like a, like a thing. You want, like it sounds sexier than passive house, but it's also less definitive. And then, you know, you say healthy home or like good air or you know, some of these more accessible things. And they sound like greenwashing because everybody's saying those words.

James: Hmm.

Tessa: And some people are achieving that and some people aren't.

Tessa: Right. And there's like all this gray and subjectivity and even the statement. So I, you know, I think the language that we talk about better buildings with is, is really challenging. And I'm constantly trying to figure out [00:08:00] how to say measurably better buildings without it sounding so un, so terribly unsexy, right?

Tessa: And so, I mean, that's why I think we've always sort of relied very much on photos. And, and then I also really love the sound bites we get from clients. You know, I had a client once who was like you know, he was, he was bald and he was like, I, I don't have to wear a beanie cap in my own house all the time.

Tessa: And that's great. You know, or people being like, you know, oh, I don't need coffee in the morning anymore because I wake up, you know, feeling so refreshed. In my old house, I always needed coffee. And so sort of those like anecdotal bits I think are, are, are sexy and useful. But yeah, I, I wouldn't say we've cracked the nut.

Tessa: I say we're like, you know, it's, it's an evolving journey to try and figure out the best way to talk about what we're doing.

James: Right. Nice. Yeah, and the social proof thing definitely helps, especially not just about like, oh, it's so [00:09:00] beautiful, or things that could be true in a not high performing home.

Tessa: Yes.

James: Yeah. Yeah.

Tessa: agreed.

James: Yeah,

James: I, I remember there was an ad campaign and I, I suppose multiple people have used it, but what, someone's sitting next to a window where it's demonstrably winter outside, you just like picture that.

James: Yeah, right. Or wearing a t-shirt or something, you

Tessa: Yeah, right there, there's socked feet sitting against the glass that isn't ice cold or what, what have you. Yeah,

James: Yeah. You

Tessa: yeah.

James: instantly be like, oh, right, that's not normal. I wouldn't do that.

Tessa: I wouldn't do that. Yeah, no, I wouldn't do that in my house.

James: Mm,

Tessa: As I wear a beanie cap sitting here in my home talking to you online? Yeah. I, I don't live in a passive house. I live in an old, old house, so

James: I, likewise. Yeah, that's definitely been one of the passive house journey is just increasing envy, house envy. But

Tessa: Yeah. My, my co-principal built, built her own passive [00:10:00] house and taunts me, taunts me almost daily. Yeah.

James: enough. So I'm curious to know if you've ever had experience with walking people through homes to get the passive, because that's another thing, right? Like you can't really talk about how something feels in a way that's.

Tessa: We, we had some very gracious clients over the years allow us to show their homes in both like tour of homes, to photograph them, to walk people through them. And people were really, really generous with their time. And you know, over the years I've definitely seen like a cultural shift of people being really not as interested to have people in their homes.

Tessa: You know, I think like people don't want images of their homes on social media. I, you know, I think people don't want their homes to be geolocated people, you know which people can do with like, even a photo just peeking out of a window these days. And so, you know, we've seen that decline. The one [00:11:00] advantage is that we did, my co-principal Roussa did build her her own passive house.

Tessa: And it was the first passive home that was prescriptively certified through PHIUS. I, I believe, maybe is one. If, if it wasn't the first, it was one of the first, and so we are able to you know, use that to show clients when they wanna be, get inside one. We also now we, we've self-developed a mixed use building for our new passive house office.

Tessa: So our passive house office is on the main floor and it has six passive house apartments above it. Yeah. And one of those apartments we have like, on Furnished Finder, so there are times when it is open as well or people can stay in it. So yeah, we've, we've tried to create some opportunities for people to actually get in one.

Tessa: But it's, it's getting harder. I think that, I think there's just like, you know maybe like a lack of psychological safety around having your home be open now for, for whatever, you know, cultural, cultural influences over that. So yeah, I definitely think that's an advantage to have one that you can have accessible is really [00:12:00] smart.

Tessa: And it's kind of, I mean, that's sort of what we built our firm on, was our first passive house. The clients were very gracious about being on tours and letting people come see the home for, for several years and many clients after them. So we were able to be like, yes, it's different. Yes, you can meet the client.

Tessa: Yes, you can walk through it. So yeah, made a big difference. Huge difference.

James: Hmm mm mm I hadn't thought about the Geolocating thing. I mean, I can understand especially COVID kinda made people weird about other people in a way that they weren't before, but

Tessa: It definitely shifted society. And then the geolocating thing is kind of new to me, but we're actually having to, like, when we have a home photographed, we're actually having to change markers, geographic markers because there are people that will go online and find these photos and then locate the home and then publish its location.

Tessa: I dunno why that would be your hobby when you could like make art or some fucking thing. But like, apparently that's some people's hobbies. So.

James: Oh man. Yeah. That's just not cool.

Tessa: Yeah.

James: [00:13:00] Yeah. The subject of admitting or not admitting passive house, or not admitting is the wrong word, but, but anyway, like owning it, talking about it upfront or not where does certification fit into that?

Tessa: You know, for us certification, we encourage and we, to be frank, we mostly encourage it on the projects where it makes really good sense. Where we've, we've gotten to a design that they're really pleased with. They're on budget, it's probably gonna get built. And then it's like in our area it's so gray and it's so dark that, you know, we have a lot of heavily shaded sites like in the middle of the woods that would be very expensive or very difficult to actually meet, you know, certification.

Tessa: I would say almost all of our work is probably within 10 or 15% of the standard. You know, the passive house standard.

James: Yeah.

Tessa: And it's really the ones that where there's client interest because there really needs to be client interest. It's not an easy task to certify. It's, it's a tax on us. It's a tax on the builder.

Tessa: You know, I think it has great [00:14:00] quality control repercussions. But it definitely, it's expensive and it takes time and you have to be invested in it. Otherwise, you know, your average client or developer is gonna be like, no, why would I do that? Out. So you need a client that's interested. You need the right project.

Tessa: You know, that certification isn't gonna be you know, a problem. I think. 'Cause I've, you know, I've really come to peace with, if I have a client who's not gonna cut down a bunch of trees on their property and still wants a house on that location, that I'm still doing a good service to do a high performance home, like the best home I can do on that, given the access to daylight, the best home I can do there is, is great and that's good enough.

Tessa: So you know, I think I think there's really interesting push and pull in this community. It can be a very uncompromising community. But I actually believe that design is just a series of compromises. And so it's how you make those compromises and which ones you make that make a, a great project or just an okay project.[00:15:00]

Tessa: And so, yeah, I'm pretty peaceful about that approach. So I would say like maybe one in four projects or one in six projects we get certified.

James: Nice.

Tessa: Yeah.

James: And do you usually bring it up or is it something that. Half

Tessa: we,

James: people coming

Tessa: we definitely have a conversation with every client. We do have people come to us and tell us right out of the gates, like, I do not wanna certify my home. I've read, you know, about the process, or I, you know, have considered it, but I'd rather take that money and buy, you know. Solar panels or something like that.

Tessa: Right. And particularly I think e either people want to use their home as a teaching tool, which I think is very noble. You know, when they wanna certify or they are worried about sort of quantifying its resale value. But for many of our clients, they're not, they're not planning to sell their home.

Tessa: They're planning to, you know, live out their lives in their homes. And so the resale, you know, maybe isn't as critical. And you know, many clients are just doing it 'cause they wanna live in it, not 'cause they wanna. You know, have it be a teaching tool, which is also totally [00:16:00] great. So we try to find an alignment of motivation and an alignment of, you know, is the project a good candidate to be certified?

James: Right. Right. I, yeah, and I hadn't thought about the plaque as a, a marketing tool for the then homeowner to, like you say, quantify, not just tell people this is, oh, this is a great house, but

Tessa: Right.

James: there's an institute that certified, I mean, they'd have to then, mean, oh, I suppose, I don't know if there's a, a passive house, reseller market.

Tessa: Definitely not yet. I, you know, I've never even had one of our homes sell. I mean, I've never had a single thing that I've done except maybe some remodels from early in my career go on the market. So, you know, I, I don't, you know, I don't know what that resell market would look like. Right. And, and I don't know, I, you know, I can't quantify if a certified building is worth more money than a not-certified building.

Tessa: I think probably the, the comfort, the, the systems the quality and the, the energy bills probably are the things people are looking at versus the [00:17:00] certification. But, but I mean, that being said, you know, I, I pay attention to the miles per hour, you know, sticker on a car.

James: Mm-hmm.

Tessa: You know, we're probably just in an arc that we can't see.

Tessa: Of like con consumer awareness. Right.

James: Yeah. We just haven't got there yet.

Tessa: yeah. Well, and I remember like, you know, built, built green had a lot of momentum here for a long time. And I'm not as engaged with that community anymore 'cause I've kind of gone all in on the old passive house approach. But you know, I, I think there was some.

Tessa: You know, greenwashing that kind of happened with that standard where it was like you could have a built green, you know, level one, which was basically code built plus energy star, or you could have a built green level five, which was like really high performance. And I don't think your average consumer knew the difference.

Tessa: So, so as challenging as certification has become, in my opinion, I do think that there is some value to protecting the quality of [00:18:00] the brand.

James: Mm-hmm.

Tessa: you can choose to not certify for something that's not a perfect fit. Right. And so I think I think there's value to the approach despite it being a challenging one to deal with at times.

James: Yeah, yeah, I get that. And from your perspective, I suppose, having a sort of one in four, one in six hit rate. As long as you're. Doing, I don't know what, how many years, like, I'm not trying to, you know, dig into those numbers. But if you're

Tessa: Yeah.

James: couple every couple years, then you're, you're keeping your hand in.

James: Or maybe

Tessa: Yeah, I mean we've, we've probably designed almost a hundred passive house projects and we've probably built north of 40 or 50 over the years. So it's, it's been a lot.

James: Nice. That, yeah, that's a good number to be working with. Like you're clearly in the game

Tessa: Yeah, we're, we're right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, and it's, it's, it's definitely changing. We don't really. Mar we, we are pursuing other market sectors. We do a lot of large [00:19:00] scale commercial work planning, doing a hotel right now. So, you know, we have like half our firm doing that. But the, the passive house, residential work just kind of comes to us from our, from our website at this point.

Tessa: Right. And you know, it, I would say like residential has fallen off a little bit, which I think is just a a reflection of the economy. And again, maybe that like lack of security people feel around the economy. But you know, we have, have built enough momentum in that way that, that, that work, we can capture some of that work.

James: Nice. Right. And yet yeah, the residential side, I guess there's a lot, it's a lot more personal.

Tessa: It is, yeah.

James: to people who are doing passive house for developers where they're, they're not gonna be living in the building and it's, it's just a math thing. And I guess like the higher up the scale you go, the more sense, or it almost make, doesn't make sense not to build to the passive house standard

Tessa: The bigger, the building, the e, the the better the, the money metric,

James: Yeah, that's,

Tessa: right?

James: interesting.

Tessa: Yeah. [00:20:00] Yeah. I.

James: I, I like that and I like that it's, it's a, it's the logical course of action if you're trying to make more money at that

Tessa: Right.

James: it's also the logical course of action if you're trying to build, like affordable housing and make it so that the people who living there have a better quality of life. Without having to have other acoutrements moments of life to make it better. Right? Like

Tessa: You? Yes, we, we are actually

James: life, but you have a nice place that you live. And so like

Tessa: right.

James: part's, yeah.

Tessa: Well, and I, I think it we're actually doing my, my, my project for many years has been to do 112 units for Habitat for Humanity locally that are all certified passive house. So we're, we're starting the horizontal infrastructure for that in like a month.

Tessa: And we're starting vertical construction next summer on the first phase of that, which will be like 40 units. And so those are all townhouse designs since, you know, habitat for Humanities you know, format is home ownership, so they'll all be [00:21:00] owned units but they'll, they'll be passive house. And and it's really fun, you know, when you have a six unit townhouse that has a lot of common walls and not a lot of, you know surface touching daylight, right?

Tessa: Like the design challenges are different, but also like your assemblies are much thinner. You know, a lot of things become almost, almost like our energy code. 'cause Washington State's energy code is very innovative and aggressive. So it's, it's kind of fun to see what you can do with, with a really budget focused project when it's at a scale that, that makes sense.

James: Right. So you can make use of those benefits of the bigger the building.

Tessa: yes. Yeah.

James: Interesting. And I've, I've heard of doing deep energy retrofits on town homes where. realize, oh, we have a shared attic or this like little weird things that come out. But by building the project from the start, where the I, I'm, are they all inside the envelope or do they each have their own envelope?

James: Like is

Tessa: So they all have their own envelope in the sense that they'll be [00:22:00] airs sealed from each other. And they will be insulated, but they will not be as heavily insulated to each other as they will be to the out. Well they'll, they'll have two walls. They have double walls basically. 'cause you have to get to certain acoustic ratings between townhouses.

Tessa: So you can't like, hear your neighbor making dinner too loudly in your kitchen kind of a deal. So you know, all of that kind of overlays pretty well. 'cause we, we need the, we need the air tightness and the insulation and the separation for fire for acoustic. And for past house. Right.

James: There. Nice.

Tessa: so yeah, it's, it is pretty exciting.

Tessa: I'm, I we've been at it several years and, you know, a project of this scale takes, takes quite a, a lot of time. But we're getting very close to, to being able to deal with, with the problems related to construction instead of just the problems related to planning.

James: planning right out of the frying pan into the fire,

Tessa: Yeah. Yeah. It's nice when the problems change. Actually, I think.

James: Hmm. Give you something for your day

Tessa: Yeah. Yeah.

James: [00:23:00] Hmm. Have you found, now I you did say earlier that things have changed, but have you, have you found that just kind of the general public is more aware of what a house can be now than they were say, 15 years ago?

Tessa: I, you know, I think we're incredibly privileged to practice where we, where we are. You know, I think that there are you know cultural identities, you know, in different regions and, you know, an interest in sustainability and interest in the greenest home. You can build an interest in a home that's low maintenance and really comfortable because we have a very cold, very wet climate that that is, you know, deep, deeply uncomfortable for some.

Tessa: So, you know, I, and, and then we just, you know, I think we, we have sort of a anti-establishment, you know, sort of subculture here. We're like, we don't wanna do it the way everyone else does it. We want to do it a better way. You know? There's just so many little things about our culture [00:24:00] and our society here in the Pacific Northwest that aligns so beautifully with passive house.

Tessa: I mean, even just, you know, that it's, it's birthplace was in a place, you know, that. That is really similar to our, to our, you know, climate. Right? So I, I feel like we, we have a lot of interest and that, and that is proven out with how much work we get to do in our firm. Right. You know, I, I really admire the practitioners who are making this work where there isn't a big pool of people interested in what you're doing.

Tessa: You know, places. Like places like Eastern Canada, places like Texas, places like, you know, all kinds of places where, you know, you don't just have a pool of you know, semi semi affluent hippies waiting to hire you.

James: Hmm.

Tessa: And so you know, I feel, I feel really privileged and really, you know, honored to, to get, to have the amount of work we do.

Tessa: But it's, it's, I don't, I think it's as much about. The culture here as it is about our firm, right?

James: Right. I hadn't thought of that. I, I, I, [00:25:00] two things that you've brought up that I hadn't thought of. One was that Austria and Washington State Mountains humid,

Tessa: yes.

James: I'm assuming like warm summers too, right? Like you,

Tessa: Yeah, we, you know, we have historically not had warm summers in my life that I've lived here. But due to, to climate change, we're, we're getting warmer summers and we even had a heat dome where it was like 110 here for a few days, two summers ago.

James: Right.

Tessa: I started my career, no one put air conditioning in their homes.

Tessa: We just, we, most of our old buildings don't have air conditioning. Still brand new apartments that get built here don't have air conditioning. They only have heating. But our climate is changing and so I think that's, I'm pretty, pretty irresponsible, you know, given.

James: Yeah.

Tessa: Given that that our summers are heating up and our summers are staying hotter longer.

James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, another point in favor of passive house, if you're not

Tessa: yes,

James: at least be able to go two, three days [00:26:00] keeping a, a lower temperature

Tessa: yes. And some of our early passive houses didn't have air conditioning, but, but most of them did. Thankfully, and all of them do now, of course. So.

James: Right. Well, heat, I

Tessa: yeah.

James: pumps are just wonderful.

Tessa: Why, why wouldn't you? It's more work to not, so, yeah.

James: Yep. We, we, heat pumps into our house and in our minds, we just did it because where you are, it was getting hotter. And our house is from the fifties and most of the houses around here don't have air conditioning or didn't. we were like, yeah, we're gonna get air conditioning. And we were putting in the heat pumps and they're like, you know, this will save you a lot of money in the winter. And we're like, oh, we'd never even thought of like, even though the were heat

Tessa: Yeah.

James: like it, it was purely thought of in my, our minds as like a, you know, modern air conditioning, but.

Tessa: Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I installed mini splits in my mid-century modern home that I'm in right now and years ago. And I, I didn't think I would use the air conditioning 'cause it, I just didn't need it before. I never thought about it or [00:27:00] wanted it. And then now here I am like, oh man, it's really nice to have your house be air conditioned when it's a hundred degrees out.

Tessa: Yeah. So, yeah. Spoiled.

James: And I hadn't thought about the fact that it was, that there's the, the counterculture of. The Pacific Northwest lining up.

Tessa: Yeah, I mean like the birthplace of grunge and you know, it's like, I don't know, we're, we're progressive and we, we try to sort of over bureaucrat everything, which is, is a downfall I think, but we also don't wanna be told what to do. So it's a very, it's a, a very interesting place to practice.

James: that's cool. That's cool. And it's cool that passive house can be that, counterculture darling. Like it's,

Tessa: Right.

James: even though it's in some ways more structured,

Tessa: Yeah. Right. It is.

James: against the grain by being better. I dunno, it's like a weird mix

Tessa: Yeah. It's, it's like, it is a weird mix. It's like it's constrained. It's very constrained in what you can and can't [00:28:00] do. But I think that great design results from that you know, I think parameters always result in the best creativity to, you know, the, to solve around them. But, but then I think that the people that live in our homes have a ton of freedom.

Tessa: You know, I don't think they feel the burden of the, the flex events with, you know, our Puget sound energy and they don't feel the burden of the rolling brownouts that are coming. You know, I don't think they feel guilty when they. You know, turn their thermostat up to 71 'cause it's, you know, a $13 energy bill instead of an $11 energy bill.

Tessa: And you know, I, I, I think there's, you know, they can open their windows and it's really, you know, very little, you know, to get some, you know, to smell the rain for a few minutes and like, you don't lose all the heat in your whole house and have to heat your house back up. And I don't know, I actually, I actually think that the freedom aspect of the lifestyle is huge despite the constraints of the path to get there.

James: Hmm. Nice. Freedom Homes.

Tessa: Freedom Homes. Oh, that sounds, Nope. That wouldn't work here. Nope.

James: [00:29:00] But an interesting angle to take if we wanted to break into a different market. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The opening windows thing. That's. Something that I think got a bad rap somewhere along the line that,

Tessa: Yeah, I don't know who, who started that rumor, but I'd like to punch 'em in their smart mouth. All of our clients open their windows whenever they want and it's great. Yeah,

James: Like if it would make that big of a difference, then you wouldn't need, like, you could just open your window for other things too, which

Tessa: yeah. Right.

James: work

Tessa: No.

James: on its own. Awesome. Well this has been great. Before we go, where can people find out more about you online?

Tessa: Oh, thanks for asking. They can find out more about our firm and look at our portfolio at www.artisansgroup.com. We also have a fairly active Instagram, which I think is just Artisan's Group. And yeah, we have pretty, pretty strong LinkedIn profile. You can find me, Tessa Bradley. And yeah, we try to stay pretty active [00:30:00] and we're, yeah, we're growing as a firm and it's an exciting time.

James: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Tessa: Oh my gosh, it was my pleasure. Thank you for asking.

James: You've been listening Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner, and I hope you'll join me again next time.