What I did was build.
Not build in the way that is a metaphor. Build in the actual way. Design things. Develop properties. Put real materials in real arrangements in real landscapes and make spaces that people would live their lives inside.
Holt Ridge Developments started at a folding desk in a rented apartment when I was twenty-six. I was working at an established development firm and doing the work well and watching the firm make decisions that were not as intelligent as the firm believed they were, and I thought about this for one
year while I learned everything I could learn from the inside, and then I left and started Holt Ridge with the specific focused energy of someone who has decided they will be the only witness to their own beginning and who is therefore accountable to no one’s timeline but their own.
I took on small projects. Residential renovations that nobody else wanted because the margins were thin. I was meticulous about every decision. Every material choice, every contractor relationship, every client conversation. I was building a reputation and I understood that reputations are built from the
