We were lucky to catch up with Cody + Sarah Caswell recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Cody + Sarah, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Your home is more than just a place – it’s a feeling. The feeling of warmth, familiarity, relaxation, and inspiration that all of us need. Our love for creating homes started when we set out to renovate our first home: a historic 100+-year-old charmer that had good bones but needed some serious love. We were engaged when we bought it and had around six months to renovate it before we got married and needed to move into it. We were limited on funds, so we set out to do a lot of the work ourselves. The uniqueness of that house really brought out our creativity. We used reclaimed wood accents, custom cabinetry to create functionality in once-awkward spaces and even discovered an old wood-burning fireplace that had been covered up with drywall over the years. So much love, hard work, and sweat went into that house! The final product was something we were so proud of. What was once a funky, worn down, tired historic house was transformed into a beautiful masterpiece that paid homage to its original charm and craftsmanship. When we completed that transformation, we knew one thing for certain – we wanted to do it again.
Over fifty home renovations later, we have grown that passion into our dream business: renovating homes throughout Austin, Texas, and designing homes across the US. We get to turn tired, worn-out, old houses into beautiful homes for people to appreciate over and over again!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
We are Ivory Home, a design/build contractor in Austin, Texas, specializing in residential remodels and interior design for real estate investors and developers. We started out in the house-flipping world about seven years ago, buying rundown homes, renovating them, and selling them. The difference in our projects was always the design. We put much more thought and intention behind the design of our homes, and because of this, they always stand out when we list them for sale. People took notice of this, and after a while, other investors and developers began to reach out to us to see if we would design their projects as well. We saw a gap in the market and filled it. We started designing for other developers in August of 2023, and since then have designed over 100 projects across eleven states. In addition to this, we began bringing the construction in-house along with the design for developers in Austin.
Virtually designing homes is a new marketplace, and we are excited to be paving the way for this area of the interior design industry. Locally in Austin, we are continuing to grow our brand as one of the best and most sought-after design/build contractors in the area. All of this is centered around our passion for turning tired houses into loving homes, and we couldn’t be more blessed to pursue our passion in our careers.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
What comes to mind as the three most impactful qualities in our journey are faith, determination, and creativity.
Faith is believing that your idea will work and that there is a marketplace for it. As for anyone paving a new industry, it’s really hard to be 100% certain if your idea will work. You can do all of the market research in the world, but there is still that 1% chance that your idea won’t work. Faith is believing that the 1% chance won’t happen.
Determination is required for literally any entrepreneur. If you fall, you must get back up again. If you have a rough day, you must face tomorrow. If you have a bad quarter, you have to regroup and hit it hard on the next one. Entrepreneurship is extremely difficult, and you must have determination if you’re going to make it.
Creativity is usually what becomes successful in any given marketplace. You can even take an idea that already exists, creatively tweak it, and build an entirely new business from it (most businesses are some version of this). Creativity lies at the heart of our business, not just in creating homes but in building the business around what we do. Creativity with our marketing, client outreach, and designing homes. Business largely correlates with creativity, so if you want to survive, learn to get creative when challenges and opportunities are presented to you.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
Our ideal client is a developer who understands the need for uniquely designed homes and knows that they lack the necessary skills that it takes to create those homes. When clients trust our expertise and allow us to get creative, we do our best work. It’s all about trust and faith that we are experts in what we do. You can’t see the final product of a home until it is complete, so it is so important for a client to fully trust us and let our design be brought to life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ivoryhome.co
- Instagram: @ivoryhome.co
- Facebook: @ivoryhome.co
- Youtube: @ivoryhome-co
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