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I love this song. The lyrics always makes me think. And I have been doing a lot of that lately.

I have been thinking about how LJ Urban started in a small garage in West Sacramento as Asante Homes. A company with an entirely different vision and passion than you see today. And how we are rapidly coming to a place where we will be able to help redefine housing as you know it in Sacramento.

The best part about the whole story is that I can claim so little of what has happened. I would be remiss if I did not tell you that the real visionary thinkers behind LJ Urban are the employees. Technically, I lead what we do here at LJ Urban but it’s so far from the truth to say that this whole thing is my deal or my idea. I was in a meeting last week with Vanessa and Micah (who handle our entitlements and construction processes) and they were talking with our architect and engineer about a project and I was completely lost. I literally had no idea what they were talking about. This is a conversation that I should be right on top of: I own this company and supposedly make decisions about what we do. It hit me there that a visionary company is so much more than a visionary person. I could be the craziest smartest guy in the room, but with out the craziest smartest people to back me up, I really would not get anywhere.

LJ Urban has come a long way and made a lot of very good decisions, brought a lot of great people on board to help define and drive the vision that has become LJ Urban, but what excites me most is a future defined by those same great people. What can be accomplished when great people are allowed to be creative and mess up every once in a while is amazing. I can’t tell you enough how exciting that is to me. We have not even begun to scratch the surface of the impact we can have on the built environment or better yet everyone’s expectation of the built environment.

As a company we are still so young, we have yet to even build our first house (other than the yurt we donated to a Mongolian family last year for Christmas). But, to me, that’s the good part. We have been able to figure out so much and make so much headway in redefining the way people will live without having a bunch of disgraceful attempts out there that people have to live in.

LJ Urban is not going to do things the way you have seen them before. We are unable as a team to settle for mediocre, second-best tries. And I think Sacramento will be a better place in the end from what we accomplish here. And the best part for me is I don’t even know how this happened, hardly any of this was my idea. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that you can accomplish anything if you first get the right people. I’m just thankful to have figured at least that much out.

So where do we go next? We have been fine tuning our financial engine over the last year and have landed on a really great system that not only sustains it self but increases in both functionality and efficiency as it grows. The best way to describe it is that the more projects we get the better the projects become and the better they become the more we can get. Sort of like a flywheel that once spinning is much easier to keep going.

We are really excited about the Broderick area in West Sacramento and see a lot of opportunity for us to make a lasting impact.

We also now have the opportunity to redefine new home sales. We all got together and talked about how to rethink the way things work and decided that we had to start by removing the commissioned sales people. Because we believe its hard to have a relationship with someone whose income depends on whether or not you decide to buy. I am excited to see who we hire in that area to help define who we are.

Another area of innovation is the green building practices which we will always be furthering. There is surprisingly little in the way of inspirational companies to model after. I am excited to see what we will be able to do in this area over the next ten years. I can tell you one thing; I don’t believe things will stay as they are. We simply cannot sustain the construction methods we use today.

There are many other exciting things we will be working on. All I know is that I know very little about the future. The next few months seem clear but after that its only the greatness of our people that will limit us and I don’t see that well drying up for a very very long time.

It’s a great ride!

Levi