Developing a Leading—and Winning—Custom Building Company: Living Stone’s Story

Sean Sullivan never builds the same house twice—the next must be better than the last.

It’s not just because he’s a custom builder. It’s a mindset—and much of a lifestyle—that’s been the foundation of success for his 28-year company, which happens to be the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) Custom Home Builder of the Year.

“Why would we never want to continuously improve our product or our service?” says Sullivan, president of Asheville, NC-based Living Stone Design + Build.

Kaizen is the Japanese term for continuous improvement, and Sullivan’s steadfast commitment to this has resulted in continuously upping the ante for his builds, business processes, and customer experience. It’s what’s led him to open a portfolio of companies—an interior design firm, a furnishings company, and a local design district community—since incorporating Living Stone Design + Build. Today, he leads nearly 60 employees.

SEAN SULLIVAN, THE 2023 CUSTOM HOME BUILDER OF THE YEAR, HAS ALSO PUBLISHED A BOOK FOR CLIENTS TITLED "BUILDING A QUALITY CUSTOM HOME." "I ULTIMATELY WROTE THIS BOOK TO HELP OUR CLIENTS ANSWER QUESTIONS,SO THEY COULD NEVER COME TO ME AND SAY, 'NOBODY TOLD ME.'" EXPLAINS SULLIVAN. "WE GIVE THIS OUT EARLY IN PRE-CONSTRUCTION. WE REQUIRE OUR PROSPECTS AND OUR PRE-CONSTRUCTION CLIENTS TO READ THE BOOK BEFORE WE LAUNCH CONSTRUCTION." | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

Sean Sullivan’s Journey: Subcontractor to Design-Build

An opportunity arose for a young Sullivan in the early 90s, when his employer, a custom builder, suddenly shuttered its doors. He and two partners then opened a subcontracting company.

“General contractor” was the title Sullivan wanted, so then came Living Stone Construction, the first iteration of the company. At the time, there was no integration of design and construction. It was the traditional way: Sullivan would bid on a project after architects designed it, after the land was paid for, and Sullivan sat there hoping the clients selected him—but had to stay within their unreasonable budget.

The homes were beautiful, but Sullivan wasn’t satisfied with the process.

“No one's working for the benefit of the client,” thought Sullivan. “We became one of 10 people bidding on a house and we thought, ‘What is the sense in this?’”

Design-build was the answer for bettering the process and customer experience.

“And so we said, ‘We know who the best in the business are. Let's develop a network where we all collaborate—imagine this—for the benefit of the client,’” recalls Sullivan.

Going against the grain of the Asheville market proved challenging for Living Stone in the beginning. It took two years of networking with architects and attending American Institute of Architects (AIA) meetings before a single architect wanted to work the design-build process with Sullivan.

While the architectural section of the pre-construction team developed, Sullivan’s wife Laura opened ID.ology Interiors & Design to assist clients in selections and furnishings. The architecture team today consists of five.

​​”If you meet the client's expectations, there's no reason that at the end of the design phase that you wouldn't be able to build a house because the budget is going to be met,” says Sullivan.

A COMPLETED PROJECT BY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD. THE CUSTOM BUILDER TYPICALLY HAS 16 TO 20 ACTIVE JOBS, EACH COMPLETED WITHIN 14 TO 18 MONTHS. THE COMPANY WORKS ON COMMERCIAL PROJECTS, CUSTOM REMODELS, AND NEW CUSTOM HOMES. | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

‘Perfecting’ the Custom Build Process

There are two elements of a custom home building process that supersedes everything, says Sullivan: program or budget. Do the clients focus on their needs and wants or do they first value the amount of their investment?

Answering this question is step one of Living Stone’s process. What follows is a custom experience, concierge-level experience called the Eight Levels of Service: Partner by Designer, Priced by Design, Age by Design, Green by Design, Interiors by Design, Build by Design, Furnishing by Design, and Maintenance by Design.

Each level of service outlines what Living Stone provides to its clients, from its commitment to green construction and healthy interiors to its aging-in-place designation and design to the continued maintenance clients receive after moving into their homes.

Living Stone has developed its portfolio of companies to service clients at each of the eight levels. And developing these levels in-house resulted from Sullivan’s persistence in producing the highest quality homes.

Keeping Clients Engaged Through the Long Process

Living Stone’s process today comes from Sullivan’s years of problem-solving. One major challenge when shifting to design-build was clients dropping out due to long pre-construction times.

In North Carolina, the homes face unique challenges with ridgetop ordinances, erosion, and steep slopes. It often requires up to six months of pre-construction. During that time, clients would become less interested. The issue, Sullivan found, was that clients had “no skin in the game.”

“What we did is we formalized the process. Number one, you've got to communicate better with your client,” explains Sullivan. “The way that you formalize that is you give them a pre-construction services contract … which is just a stripped-down version of our construction contract.”

This contract got skin in the game for clients and granted permission to Living Stone to engage engineers, architects, and more to move through the design review board process smoothly. It’s a topic he discusses often with his colleagues in his NAHB Builder 20 Club.

“That was a huge breakthrough,” he says. “It gave us permission and the ability to be able to start charging for our time. We went from being an overhead to being an income producer. And number three it forced us to communicate with the client on a regular basis.”

LIVING STONE MADE GREEN BUILDING PRACTICES A STANDARD IN 2008, AND HAS CERTIFIED EVERY HOME SINCE THEN. | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

Constant Client Communication

During custom projects, if builders don’t supply constant overcommunication, things can often go sideways. At Living Stone, the team sends a project status report every two weeks from the time of construction to completion.

It outlines what’s happening on the project now, what’s to come, any impacts on the budget, and outstanding tasks for the homeowner.

Accurate Estimating, Value-Engineering, and Budgeting

A key part of the Living Stone process is accurately estimating a budget for the homeowner. Within the last few years, the team developed a software system called Ballpark Estimate.

This provides an easily adjustable project scope and selections that can either fit into a client’s budget or spit out a ballpark estimate to provide to a prospective client. The team uses its last 10 projects to gather the prices of every product.

“When a client comes to us and they say, ‘Hey I want to build a 3,500 square foot home,’ what would be my projected budget?’ We can plug in those few numbers and spit out a detailed estimate saying exactly what their cabinets would cost, their drywall would cost, their paint, their framing, and everything,” explains Sullivan.

"WHEN SOMEBODY GETS A CERTIFIED HOME, THEY'RE GETTING A HOME THAT'S WORTH MORE THAN THEIR NEIGHBORS," SAYS SULLIVAN. | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

Green and Healthy Differentiated Homes

When a client builds with Living Stone, they’re guaranteed an aging-in-place and Energy STAR-certified home. In Asheville, NC, green homes are common, but very few builders do it as a standard for all their builds, according to Sullivan.

“What we want to do is we want to design a home that they would never have to move out of now,” says Sullivan.

Each home can be accessed without stairs, all homes have curbless showers, special door knobs, and an extra emphasis on light. Living Stone also focuses on healthy, comfortable interiors and efficient performance.

They go so far as to ensure the furnishings in the built home meet these standards as well. It’s what led Sullivan and his wife Laura to launch their furnishing company Atelier Maison & Co.

“We really felt led to do that because we were designing green homes and we were building green homes, but what we discovered is we weren’t teaching our clients to live green,” says Sullivan. “Our goal was to deliver a home to our clients that had no smell.”

That smell he’s referring to are VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, the chemicals that off-gas from products. The Sullivans realized they built a healthy box that simply housed VOCs, because they would enter through the furniture. And the Sullivans didn’t want to keep their furnishing company a secret from the industry, so they opened a retail store to offer their organic, healthy furnishings to other builders and designers.

SEAN SULLIVAN AND WIFE LAURA SULLIVAN, PRINCIPAL INTERIOR DESIGNER AND OWNER OF LIVING STONE'S SISTER COMPANY, ID.OLOGY INTERIORS & DESIGN. THE COUPLE OWNS LIVING STONE'S HEALTHY AND ORGANIC FURNISHING COMPANY ATELIER MAISON & CO. TOGETHER. | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

The Secret of Success

With all Sullivan and Living Stone has accomplished, it could not be achieved without strong leadership and an even stronger culture.

Sullivan says Living Stone has three audiences to serve: the external client, the community, and the internal client, or the team. They’re each connected, but Sullivan says the real secret to small business is that winning culture. It starts with creating a self-managing company.

He’s seen it too many times: putting out fires and living in a world of chaos.

“Developing and creating a self-managing business has been our key to success and we’re not there yet, we still have aspirations of how to become better,” says Sullivan. “If everybody knows their lane and expectations and you hold people accountable, then you're gonna have a much better success ratio.”

To develop it, he tapped an organizational health consultant, who first set up accountability exercises. The first exercise was helps and hurts—this pushed employees to share what the strengths and weaknesses of the leader.

Sullivan engaged The Table Group to further develop an engaged team, introducing the core values of humble, hungry, and smart.

“Everything gelled and came into place, and even during COVID, we actually thrived so it was a great example of how you can build a culture when everything else seems to be down,” says Sullivan.

SULLIVAN SAYS TWO VALUES HE'D DEFEND TO THE DEATH ARE INTEGRITY AND CAREFUL MONEY MANAGEMENT. "WE HAVE TO INSTILL COMPLETE TRUST WITH OUR CLIENTS AND WITH OUR TRADES THAT WE'RE GOING TO PAY AND MANAGE THE MONEY THAT'S GIVEN TO US ... IN AN INDUSTRY THAT'S FRAUGHT WITH FINANCIAL DISTRESS, WE WANT TO STAND OUT," SAYS SULLIVAN. "THE INTEGRITY PART, THAT GOES BACK TO THE CULTURE, IF YOU DON'T SAY WHAT YOU DO AND DO WHAT YOU SAY. HOW CAN WE TRUST YOU?" | PHOTO COURTESY LIVING STONE DESIGN + BUILD

Serving the Community

Sullivan has discovered that when people live beyond themselves, they’re happier internally. It’s why he’s so involved in the building community through the NAHB.

“You get out of your membership what you put into it and everything that I've gotten out of my membership has been reflected in where we are today,” he says. “I've been dedicated and volunteered with the local the state and the national and it has come back to me tenfold.”

Locally, Living Stone identified three charities to support: The Black Mountain Home for Children, the Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, and Bounty & Soul. The team serves at one charity on the first Friday of each month, even inviting clients to join in the charitable actions. It helps the team achieve their mission of “building happier and healthier lives.”

Living Stone’s ethos of continual improvement and building better lives is reflected in each area of the company, from its intentional culture to its thoughtful portfolio of companies, and serves as an example of the impact custom builders can have on their communities and team members. It’s what’s garnered Living Stone the honor of Custom Home Builder of the Year.
 

Rich Binsacca contributed to this piece.