Simply Tiny Homes: How Innovative Sustainable Housing Impacts Our Lives With Dr. Sean Dixon And Megan Blythe

Sustainable living isn’t just about the materials and products we choose to use. It’s about lifestyle and how we navigate and live life every day. Joining Stephen Jaye on this episode are guests from Simply Tiny Development, Founder/CEO Dr. Sean Dixon and Sustainability Coordinator Megan Blythe. They define sustainability and what inspired their mission and work in helping individuals convert to tiny living. Housing is a big part of creating a sustainable future, and knowing how to discern between short-term versus long-term sustainability is critical. Sean and Megan also share how they inject sustainability not only in their products but also in their culture. Listen in and learn more about how you can start living for the future!

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Simply Tiny Homes: How Innovative Sustainable Housing Impacts Our Lives With Dr. Sean Dixon And Megan Blythe

One of the things that keeps us sequestered and stuck in lifestyles that we don’t want is this idea of a one size fits all solution that is supposed to be applied to everyone. I think that this solution, in my view, as the traditional solution of you get your job, you get your paycheck every two weeks and you buy a big house and you fill it with lots of stuff that may or may not be bringing people happiness. I’m not here to rag on any particular lifestyle. My object here is to open people up to more possibilities that there are other options and other ways in which we can orient our lives. One other way is this movement toward tiny homes. My guests here are Dr. Sean Dixon and Megan Blythe from the company Simply Tiny Development. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Stephen. Thanks for having us.

Thank you very much. Dr. Dixon you are the one who started this company. Can you tell me a little bit about what prompted you, what inspired you to decide to start developing more tiny homes and also camper vans?

It all started in my doctoral studies and looking at the ways of the world and where we’re going globally. I finished up my studies in Organization Development and Leadership with a concentration in Change Management. A lot of that was looking at large-scale patterns and where we’re going especially in the workforce and burnout. Those types of management paradigms are prevalent under those types of studies. I’m also very passionate about the environment. I live in Colorado, Megan formerly lived in Colorado, she’s from North Carolina, with very outdoorsy style people.

I looked at some things and said, “How can we make a large-scale impact on what we want to do especially with pressing global paradigms, like climate change and things like that?” I looked at real estate, had a little bit of a background in that and then said, “Here’s an opportunity that we can start changing some larger scale things that could have major impacts.” Construction is wasteful. Everything we’re seeing with the population increases and the way that the housing market is going, the up-and-coming generations are starting to think differently about what is important.

One of his major topics is housing. Providing some alternative solutions that can help the planet and saw a large-scale social problem the exact same time was the way I took this angle for the company, Simply Tiny Development. Launched and brought Meg on as a full-time sustainability coordinator. That is the center of the business model and how everything’s guided. Her focus is just to look at all things from a very unique perspective and see how we can be more efficient. How can we use less? How can we do more with better materials? How do we sustain ourselves as people and the environment and then our communities?

That’s a broader way of looking at sustainability. When a lot of people think of sustainability, they tend to think of environmental sustainability but the word has a broader definition. It means anything that a system that you can sustain over time. Burnout is a great example of an aspect of our work culture that’s not exactly sustainable. Megan, I’d like to welcome you also to the show. You are the sustainability coordinator. Tell us a little bit about the sustainability-oriented, what that means and what you do day to day.

A lot of what I do for the company is researching the products that we’re using and the suppliers who provide those products because it’s easy to sell reusable items. Are you sustainable and eco-friendly yourself? Making sure that they’re not greenwashed. There’s always going to be a dilemma of it’s sustainable but is it sustainable forever? Is it sustainable long-term? It might not be sustainable in two separate situations.

There’s always going to be, “Yes, this item is sustainable but this one is more sustainable in the long-term.” Just because it’s not sustainable right this second may not mean that it’s not going to be sustainable over a long period of time. It’s battling yourself and your thoughts constantly and seeing which one outweighs the other and which one’s better in the long run.

What that brings to my mind is some confusion around the term sustainability. I’m not aware that there’s any specific set of standards about what criteria anyone has to meet to assess something as sustainable whether it be a product or a business. It sounds like you’re alluding to, there’s short-term and long-term sustainability and a ramp-up to sustainability of some kind. Can you explain to the readers how does that work? How would we think about sustainability for more than just this binary, either it’s sustainable or it’s not the type of frame of mind?

Paper products seem more sustainable because they are decomposable or biodegradable or whatever reason. They seem more eco-friendly but we essentially have to use way more of them. Where you have a reusable bag, that can be used for such a long time. Looking at that, you think it’s sustainable and it is sustainable but only to a certain extent. It’s the same thing with any scenario. For example, I am buying a van that we’re going to be converting. It’s a diesel engine. From the get-go that looks like it won’t be as sustainable because it’s a diesel engine but I’m going to be doing van life.

For the most part in one location, I’m not going to be traveling constantly. I’m not going to be going and driving hundreds of miles every week. That van for the most part is going to be sitting in one location unless I decide to go and travel for a trip at some point. I see it as more sustainable because I am using an older van. I’m not creating new waste by buying a brand-new van. It’s honestly all up for interpretation, which is this huge dilemma and it confuses everyone but it’s always up for discussion. If you can prove your point, it’s a valid point on how it’s sustainable then it very well could be.

Dr. Dixon, what does sustainability then mean to you? What criteria do you assess to believe that something is sustainable?

We had to take a little bit of a broader definition on that then we have to apply our organizational principles to those types of standards. We’ve used sustainability. We defined sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future generations or the needs of the future. That could be from an environmental social perspective. Looking at that, we have to put our guiding principles in place and look at where we’re exactly as far as a company goes. Our two core products are tiny homes and then camper vans.

Two dissimilar products yet that are exactly the same functionality-wise. Housing is different. We’re looking at a lot of different ways to improve things and that’s putting more eco-friendly materials into the builds. Construction waste is a huge problem. Stuff that can be reused, recycled or repurposed, that’s the primary driver for what we do there. We can take it out, proper maintenance cycles and then replacing it with something of equal or greater value every single time or something that is some type of biodegradable.

Looking at a lot of hemp materials, marmoleum and then a lot of air-purifying paints and overall better materials for homes themselves. Camper vans are a little bit different. Their lifecycle, we haven’t quite figured out yet. We’re using the same materials and things like that but then we have to look at the end product here where this van is going to go. We’d like to loop it back around, bring it back to us or perform some type of different conversion or upcycling for the vehicle. Repurpose it in some way, shape or form.

That makes sense. Your company seems to, at least at surface level, seems to have two or maybe even more missions at the same time. You have your environmental issues, the sustainability. The tagline that I see on your website says, “Experience the freedom that comes with a lower cost of living.” That alludes to what I was getting at the beginning of this show about not being shackled to this one size fits all solution for life. Do you see these both as being under the umbrella of sustainability or do you see them interplaying with each other in a different manner?

They both interlock on a sustainability principle. As far as the houses and the vans working together again, it’s utilizing the same materials. Understanding how we can repurpose things. Lowering the cost of homeownership essentially is simplifying your way of life, enriching your life by simplifying. The less you have, the less mental clutter there’s going to be, the more you can focus on the better quality of life that you were essentially going to have. When it comes down to that stuff, you can look at it just from a functional perspective and that is the less you have, the less there is to maintain.

We’re in a consumer culture where you have to buy stuff for stuff. Larger houses are expensive. They break. They’re important to maintaining a good stock of housing in the US. At one point it was great to rehab and flip and upgrade and everything else but we’re starting to lose the ability to do that. There’s no inventory. As commodities continue to go up, what we experienced, the fluctuations and all of that, drove building costs through the roof. Building larger homes is now going to cost much more. Will we get out of this rut? I’m not exactly sure.

The backlog and materials and everything else. We have to consume more in order to catch up. We’re tapping into different forests, areas and natural resources to try and play catch up to get back to where we were. That’s not possible on the trajectory of where this plan is going with looking at a 9 billion global population. We have to do more with less. We’re going to have to get very creative. In doing so, that’s going to be changing the way people look at housing and living. A lot of our customers in the camper vans, they’re running businesses out of them.

We’re starting to see a lot of different uses from them. With the fires in California, we’ve had a couple of clients asked for disaster vehicles. A lot of interesting things have come out of with COVID and climate change and things like that. Looking at providing some alternative solutions to homes is one way that we can do that. As far as sustainability goes, you can take a van, it can be an adventure vehicle or it can be a full-time live-in home. Look at them as stepping stones in a way that can loop back around especially the tiny homes.

For, let’s say, a younger couple, that might be a viable option. $150,000 home to get you in there and get started. You enjoy the first couple of years of your life, do a lot of outdoor things. They can be moveable. We have them on engineered foundations where they can be taken somewhere else. You can hold on to that home build equity. Your maintenance costs are generally lower because you’re not replacing as a penny and then you can bring it back around. Let’s say you do want to get into a larger home later on down the road. We can turn it into an additional dwelling unit or a mother-in-law suite.

You have that option. Providing people better ways to build generational wealth. That’s why this company exists, to build generational wealth through sustainability. We have to show people that there’s an alternative path in doing so and giving them different options and ways of viewing the world and different ways to repurpose or provide different functionality to something that was very linear in the past.

That’s good to know that these tiny homes have the ability to be picked up and moved to other places because I know living in a few other places is something that’s appealing to a lot of people. Megan, as sustainability coordinator, how much of your job would you say is related to this? If I were to simplify and say that there’s environmental sustainability and there’s a category called lifestyle sustainability, sounds like what you were getting at, how much of your job goes into this lifestyle sustainability? Are you primarily focused on the environmental proportion of it?

I’m covering both of those. A lot of it is instilling it within the workplace. For example, I only work four days a week with six-hour days. We created my work schedule to be able to still experience the life that I want to. I can wake up every morning and have a nice morning and cook a nice breakfast. I can go on a walk on the beach every morning oftentimes to see the sunset because I live on an island off the coast. I get the sunrise and the sunset over water every day. I’m able to see both of them without having to be like, “I’m still working,” or whatever the scenario is.

That is a huge portion of living a sustainable life, is that I’m able to do the things that I love because I have the time to do them. I’m not continuously saying like, “I’m working a 60-hour week. I’m working a regular 40-hour week. How do I make time for things in the winter when the days are shorter?” That’s a huge portion of it. Instilling that within our workplace is one big way that we’ve started and focused on that sustainable life. If we find a brand that’s sustainable and we like it a lot, we’ll share it with our teammates to make sure that they have access to those as well so that we’re sharing the knowledge that we’ve found because, ultimately, we can’t do this by ourselves. A big portion of it is starting your sustainable life within the workplace.

Here’s a general question. Dr. Dixon, you talked a bit about how we need to find some creative and innovative solutions as to how we’re going to occupy 8, 9, potentially 10, we don’t know how these population projections are going to go, billion people on this planet. Do you find out that there are some people who are in the sustainability world that are undercounting the ability to innovate in the way that you all are doing?

Yes. The reason for that is because it’s where the focus goes. We’re a triple-bottom-line focused company. That is why sustainability is the center of our business model. With our focus on that all the time, that’s where the innovation comes from. We’re constantly questioning our systems, creating new systems or looking at the status quo. A thing that we normally do is we take a good hard look at conventional wisdom. We take the best pieces of that conventional wisdom and then we totally deviate. That’s how we innovate.

That’s generally our process for doing so because there are a lot of good lessons and good things that come out of conventional ways. Conventional ways will get you conventional results every single time. You have to divert from that and take a hard angle. A lot of it is trailblazing. It’s a lot of unknown territory. It can be slow at times, trying to maneuver through things and figure different things out. See how they work if they work. If they don’t, we have to reflect very quickly, come back and say, “That wasn’t the best way. How can we pivot one more time and do it a little bit better?”

One thing I wonder is that a lot of people will look at the conventional wisdom or look at what is currently in order to understand the problem, put it in context before innovating. What is the magic amount of looking at what is and entrenching yourself in what is that prevents you from becoming so entrenched that you can’t imagine anything else? As you see with some people who have done the same exact job function, the same exact way for say, 15, 20 years. Is there a magic amount that prevents you from going being too aloof on one end of the spectrum and too entrenched on the other end?

There’s no hard- or fast-line venue. There’s a bright line for doing it. A lot of it is intuition, dabbling in there. If we get too wrapped up in a problem, we have to have the ability to check ourselves and say, “We’re spending too much time here.” Sustainability is very time-consuming. A lot of businesses stray away from that. If you’re looking at profits all the time, time is money. When you’re doing sustainable things, the viewpoint generally is, “This isn’t making me money. I’m not going to do it.”

You have to switch the perspective on all of that and know that everything in the business is sustainable. That includes long-term profits. You have to take long-term steps in order to realize those long-term profits. The short-term gains, yes, those are fine but you’re going to have short-term results in all of that thinking. It’s swallowing the pill of saying, “We got to take a step back here for a second. We might need to put a little more extra time and to think about what we’re doing.” Harness that need for some instant gratification especially when there are pressures from the business.

We’re undergoing a capital raise. We are a younger company. Our runways and our burn rates, we try to control them as much as possible. There are always those conventional, external pressures from business and the world that will force that focus to, “Here are the numbers.” We have to be very strong in our conviction and our why and our purpose to pull ourselves away from that and to look at the real reasons why we’re here and the objective and the goals that we’re trying to achieve. Megan is that beacon of light in the company.

She is the one who is always firm. She’s the rock. She’ll take a little bit of time and say, “Sean, you’re spending a little bit too much on this side. Let’s bounce back. Let’s look at what we’re doing and the sustainability piece.” The belief is that doing the right thing for the right amount of people will ultimately lead to the numbers and the figures that we want and need to thrive as a business. The money will come if you’re going to do good. That’s what we hold true in our hearts. That’s what drives us and keeps us afloat when times get a little bit tougher, things get challenging especially with the stutter steps that we have through COVID and supply chains and things like that.

Things can get challenging. Megan, as the beacon of light, do you have anything to say about how people can manage? We talked about the triple bottom line. For those that don’t know, the triple bottom line combines your standard profitability for your individual company with what it means for the people in your organization, as well as what it means for society as a whole, which is where sustainability comes in.

When we’re looking at trying to maintain that profitability and the interest or the satisfaction of the investors, which is going to pressure people in one way, what is that special formula to even make sure that the investors continue to understand that, “We care about your investment. We know we want you to get the rate of return or the long-term expectations you’re going to get but we’re not going to compromise these other parts of the triple bottom line, our core mission and the why beyond the money that we decided to start this business?”

A lot of that is being transparent with people. We fully understand that we’re not going to fit with most people, like our business model, who we are as a company, the level of sustainability that we are forcing on to our customers. That’s what we are. We are forcing sustainability onto people. It’s not going to align with everybody. We know and understand that and that’s okay. Not conforming to that, that’s going to be a big portion of staying transparent with people who do invest with us. Letting them understand and know that’s a place that we are firm and will not budge on.

That’s our portion and that’s what we’re doing to help the planet. We’re standing strong with those ideals. That being our ground point, we’ve attracted so many incredible people. The people who are invested and have been on this journey with us, they are all for it as well. It’s great because we’re just attracting like-minded people. We’re going to continue to do that because they’re going to tell their friends and their friends are going to tell other friends and then it’s going to start getting to people who don’t have these mindsets. They’re like, “Maybe I should have this mindset.”

That’s where people are going to start getting their return. They’re going to market for themselves and their own ideas that they see in us. It’s not hard to be passionate about it. Much of it is being passionate either against it or for it. That’s the thing. You’re not in the middle ground. You’re either for it or against it. You either think climate change is real or you think it’s a scam. You’re talking about it whether it’s good or bad. If it’s being talked about, at least it’s being talked about. The biggest portion of it is staying transparent and letting people know this is who we are. We aren’t changing that. Take it or leave it. We hope you take it.

That also involves being okay with the people that are going to leave it. I’m wondering if this has been both with your investors as well as with your customers for that matter. If this has been more of a self-selecting process of that eccentric-minded, that outside the box people are the ones that you’re going to find or if you do have to sometimes say no to potential investors or customers who are in the wrong mindset.

We’ve never said no to an investor but as far as clients go, we had turned down a few that did not align with us. There was a lot of pressure to, “I want the cheapest model I can get.” Especially for a van conversion, which is, “I don’t care about the stuff. How much is it going to cost? Put the Silas foam in there. Put all the materials that have no repurposed life-cycle, they go into landfills.” We got to say, “This is the line. You can still cross it,” or we’re going to say you were not a good fit and we’ll refer you to somebody that’s better for you.”

We’re totally okay with that. I’m not here to force it on you. We’re here to give you an alternative path and an option if you would like it but we’re not going to compromise our standards. We’re not in that position to do it regardless if it does cost us some money, uphold our reputation and who we are and that’s worth more than any dollar amount that you can ever put on that.

All I got to say is nice because there’s a lot of people who would certainly go the other way on that. Even some people have a mindset where they’re afraid to disappoint people. You are in a way of disappointing people but that runs right back into this longer-term thinking versus shorter-term thinking. You’re disappointing the person right away but in the long-term, everyone’s going to be happier. My question is, what’s the profile of the people that usually are your core customers that believe in your mission and everything that you’re doing with the waste and everything?

Our profile is good but we tend to see it’s spread consistently or evenly throughout the triple bottom line. Whether that is the environmental portion, the social impact or the profit for purpose, somewhere in there. We have a couple of different areas, which makes us lucrative and attractive in a lot of ways because you don’t have to align with all of them. You can align with just one. If your belief system is strong enough to fall under there and we might be a good fit for you. If you get 2 out of 3, if you get 3 out of 3 then we’re the perfect match.

A lot of younger people, we’re seeing a lot of challenges with kids coming out of college and there’s a ton of debt, low paying jobs, things like that. We’re seeing a lot of older people who are empty-nesters and people like that who are trying to downsize. They’re trying to do something a little bit more. That’s very popular with the vans and then the homes as well. We’re starting to get a lot of traction on, “Can I put my kids in this if they do want to come to visit? Can I go there or stay there when I want to go and visit?”

Demographics are, eco-friendly would be the number one thing. If you’re not willing to compromise on that then we have a chance of maybe doing some business or doing something like that together. The people who tried to push that eco-friendly thing out of the way, there’s a little bit of leniency here and there when we juggle these sustainability problems. It’s not sustainable if the product doesn’t last. If there is a chemical or a certain sealant that is going to degrade or fail functional-wise down the road quickly then that’s not a sustainable thing that we do.

We’d have to go ahead and make a decision to say, “We might have to take a harsher chemical here to increase the lifespan of the products that we’re producing.” Meg and I see to it and we weigh those options of what is the best. We try to look, “What can we do with the chemical? How it can be recycled. If we do have to use it, that’s what we do. Make sure it gets to the appropriate recycling facility where it gets disposed of properly.” That’s as far as we can possibly go as a company and everything else, is to make those difficult decisions in there.

A lot of people, they’re looking at their footprint as far as everything goes but lifestyle is a big thing. The freedom of movement, not having large mortgage payments, large car payments, insurance and all those things that go with it. They want to be able to move now especially COVID shook all that up where we can work remote. You can jump in a van and you can travel. You can chase the weather. Make calls that you can find it. There are 365 days of whatever you’re interested in. You have that ability as long as you have a good internet connection at this point.

Those lifestyle people are becoming very prominent in that. As chemicals and food allergies become more transparent and relevant in our world, people are not willing to compromise on that. They want more sustainable products for their families. They understand the long-term impacts of sitting in a home that’s off-gassing all the time on their lungs, which leads to compounding effects. If you look at it all, that’s medical bills. That’s a decreased level of living.

People are starting to understand that now like, “What’s the net benefit I’m getting out of all of this when I look at it all the way across the board, throughout my lifespan, my life, and my children. I want the highest quality for them. I want the best for them.” They’re starting to weigh those concerns because there are alternative paths available. Before, that was not around so you had to accept it. Now you don’t. Now, you can increase your quality of life. There might be some minor inconveniences as far as pricing or something like that goes but the net tangible benefit is much higher than that dollar amount.

Megan, I think about the idea of chasing the weather to myself as, a first of all, a former storm chaser that’s gone looking for tornadoes in the plains. Also, with this idea of going to different places. I live in Denver but wouldn’t mind being elsewhere for, say, April and the first half of May, when we get those freak snowstorms and maybe it’s a time to be somewhere else. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the impact that these tiny homes and camper vans will have on the lives of the people who buy them?

You can sense the happiness on people. When they truly are happy and they’re doing everything that they love, you can sense it. It’s a vibe that radiates off of them. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around somebody who does van life. They’re usually little adventure groms and they’re always outdoors. Whether they’re hiking, they’re usually probably going to be slightly dirty. Half the time they’re tan because they’ve been outside as much as they can. They can’t stop telling you about all these sites that they’ve seen.

They had a noose in their front yard or they hiked a 14,000-foot mountain or yesterday they were snowboarding and today they’re serving. It never ends positive feedback to them. They’re gaining so much in their own life that they don’t need things. It’s almost like in underdeveloped countries where they’re so happy because they have so much in their regular life, they don’t need these things. They’re experiencing a different type of happiness and lifestyle. That’s what you’re getting from van life or in tiny homes. You’re able to experience totally different things.

No one who lives in a van is going to tell you, “I have the coolest living room. I spend all day in it.” They’re going to be like, “I have the coolest deck. I have the coolest front yard.” It’s like their front yard is their world. It’s a world as far as they can drive their van. It might be putting it on a boat and shipping it across the ocean and getting it to a different country. For the most part, the world is in their hands. They’re not living in this spot to live in it. They’re living in this spot to live outside of it, which is neat. It’s hard to change that mindset if that’s what everyone has always been used to. It’s scary. Don’t get me wrong. I’m doing it here and I’m terrified, but it’s awesome.

When I think about what’s going on in a lot of people’s lives, one problem that comes to my mind quite a bit is the problem of loneliness. I’ve seen a lot of the issues we have. Some of the suicide, drug addiction, violence and I see loneliness is one of the key contributors to this. One of the things I’m wondering is because you’re describing the type of person who does that hashtag van life or feels like you’re describing a person who is not a homebody. What would you say that your company is having an impact on this whole loneliness problem that we’re seeing so much especially in North America but I can imagine in other parts of the world as well, with all this internet communication and everything?

It’s putting people out of their comfort zone. I’m not going to say that one thing fits all. If you’re continuously doing the same thing, even I get in a routine and I’ll realize like, “I haven’t done anything in four days. I got to get out of the house and see people.” It’s easy to get stuck in a pattern especially with working from home. That’s been a huge thing. I know certain people are like, “I cannot wait to get back into the office. That’s like my night on the town thing, going into the office. I get to meet all the people. I get to see all the people. I get to do all these things.”

They’re almost the perfect fit for it because living in a smaller location, they would never be there. They get to go and see and do all these things. It’s like getting out of the habit of falling into that routine. These lifestyles are the opposite of a routine. There’s so much out there. There’s much to experience and take in. I lived in Colorado for three years and I didn’t travel much outside of two ski resorts and Denver. Now that I’m not there, I’m like, “What were you doing? You had so many beautiful sites all around you.” It’s taking advantage of those moments when you have them. instead of looking back on it and being like, “I missed out.”

That makes sense. Ever mentions this idea of life re-evaluation? One of the things that happens is that when we don’t periodically reevaluate our lives. It could easily drift based on whatever forces are around you every day in a direction that we had never even imagined us going in the first place. What do you think is the right frequency? Almost everyone’s required to reevaluate their lives once a year at New Year’s. I’ve heard some people that are doing it constantly. How frequently do you think someone needs to stop, take a break, reevaluate their lives and thinking that same question, “What am I doing? Why am I doing things this way? Why am I doing this day in day out, day after day, the same way?”

I keep referring back to van life but it’s easier to make the picture relevant with that in this scenario. When people switch to van life or switch to tiny homes, it’s usually abrupt. It’s not like, “I’ve been thinking about this for years and now it’s the right time.” It’s like, “I need a freaking change.” They do it. It’s common. They’re like, “I’ve been stuck in this whirlwind of the same thing over and over and I’m going to just flip my life upside down,” then they go and do it. I’m not going to say what the perfect frequency is but that’s something that you should visit every single day.

You can sit down every morning and say “What does my mind need? What does my body need? What does my soul need? What does my heart need?” It’s going to direct you if you’re doing the right things. If your body needs a rest day, give it a rest day. If your heart needs for you to plant a tree, do that. It’s staying in tune with who you are and what you need on a day-to-day basis. A lot of people don’t ever ask themselves that. They get, “I’m just going to work, get my coffee, come home and take care of the kids.” They don’t sit down and visit what they need to be healthy in their own mind and body. You get so used to not asking yourself those questions, that when somebody looks at you and says, “What does your soul need?”

No idea what that question is.

It’s like, “I don’t know. I don’t want to know what my soul needs.” It’s a scary place. It’s simple as journaling and saying, “This is where I’m at today.” It might be buying a house with five bedrooms and a property that’s twenty acres or it might be living on a beach in a hut. You could say, “I don’t want to have a home. I want to force myself to have to travel constantly.” I know somebody who did that. He was like, “I’m going to force myself to live in a tent.” He was like, “I can’t even tell you how many comments I’ve seen, how many shooting stars I’ve seen and how many people I’ve met.” I’m like, “That’s awesome.”

Not that I want to live in a tent but it’s figuring out what exactly it is that you need and then doing that. It’s being transparent with yourself. A lot of people are not that. The last thing that they want to do is talk about how they feel or what they want. They’re so used to thinking about doing for others that it’s like, “I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about what I need because then I’ll need it.”

That’s a common problem. Dr. Dixon, was this part of your process in deciding to start Simply Tiny Development, thinking about what you need?

One hundred percent. I looked at it. Going back to the management problems that we are seeing, which is burnout and things like that, how do we sustain our people? When we view everything through a sustainable lens, you ultimately increase the quality of your life. When you look at everything through a sustainable lens, you have to take a very different perspective in the fact that everything is so examined. You have to lead this incredibly examined life.

What that ultimately leads to is you questioning the day-to-day interactions and the minute-to-minute interactions that you have, which leads you to the present moment, which is ultimately what we want. All of us want to live in is the present moment. When you’re constantly re-examining your assumptions, beliefs and patterns, looking for something better, you will always be in the present moment and finding something that is better. Therefore, you increase the quality of your life and how you live.

It’s enriched and vibrant. It feels so much better instead of always being in the future or worrying or something like that. The examination of your life and yourself is one of the most important things. We take that very seriously. Every day is personal development. What we do is start with personal development. How are we feeling? Normal check-ins. If you’re not feeling good that day, take the day off, go deal with the mental health stuff because it ultimately comes down to efficiency. When you’re struggling mentally, you got energy leaks all over the place.

You’re scattered and trying to multitask. That’s not efficiency at all. What we tend to do is say either we take the day off or focus on one single task at a time. When you’re tired, you’re tired, come back tomorrow. That’s it. The world works like that. Believe it or not, 24 hours is not going to make or break most things. There are times where you need to make a decision but as far as stepping off something you’re working on for that day to go heal, now we’re increasing that curve and the longevity of the person, which ultimately leaves the longevity of the organization, which ultimately leads to longevity of society so on and so forth.

It all starts with the individual. If you’re not tackling the personal development things, we have a good saying, “We spend more time working on ourselves than we do our jobs.” That’s exactly what happens. We spend a lot of time trying to cover those things, emotional intelligence, working out certain issues whether that’s personal life or whatever it is. Those have to be tackled first because ultimately you bring them in and they bleed every single time. When that energy diffuses, you’re tired. You don’t recover for the next day.

That compounds all the time. Those principles apply to everything that we do whether that’s something that we’re building whether that’s people, our interactions with customers, it’s all the same thing. They’re very universal principles that we can apply. We’ve seen amazing results with it. Personally, I’ve never felt better. I believe Meg is on the same trajectory. Leading an examined life put you in that present moment. That can change the world. Especially the way we work.

I love that way of thinking. That seems to brighten the face of the traditional work culture way of thinking, if you’re not here from 8:00 to 5:00, if you’re not fully immersed in this, if you have a personal thing, check out the door. You had a fight with your spouse and you left your house at 7:30. You forget that happened until 6:15 when you get home because you’re at work seems to be the traditional way that the workforce has worked. At least in the 20th century, I do see a lot of that changing. I’m glad to hear that you’re embodying that.

It also sounds like these tiny homes and some of these alternate options are giving other people the opportunity to do that, too because I know people are doing things like driving for Uber and doing the TaskRabbit. Some of the stuff where it may be a little bit tough to afford that five-bedroom house on Uber driving salary but this may be possible. You could drive for Uber. I once had an Uber driver that told me that he had driven 69,000 miles in half a year because he drove all the time for Uber and used it to finance ski trips all over the West, like Montana, Idaho, California.

My final question now, I’m wondering, is what would you have to say to people who are either thinking about changing their life up in one way or trying to start up a business because oftentimes changing a life up in that examining yourself and that thinking, “What am I doing? Why am I doing it?” will lead to saying, “I have this idea. This is what I’m passionate about. I’m going to try starting this.”

It’s not about the achievement. It’s who you become in the process. That’s what it is. In order to do those types of things, you have to become a different person. That is ultimately more valuable than any hard asset you can ever earn. No multitrillion-dollar, whatever it is. You have to become to run that business or do that thing.

That’s what you need to be most focused on and most proud of and constantly look at yourself and look back at where you are and where you started and appreciate that gap because you can make $1 million if you to lose $1 million. Guess what? You learn how to make $1 million. You can do it again. You can repeat that. You have the skills. The skills cannot be taken away from you in that whole process. It’s the mindset which you get out of it all and you can never spend too much money on personal development.

It’s the requirement because it is scary. It is terrifying in a lot of ways. Especially depending on how you were raised and whatever beliefs were put into your head as a young child or they’re all influencing what you’re doing. The money you view money and time, what you value whether that’s a big home with a white picket fence or a Ferrari in the driveway. All of those need to be challenged to see if that’s actually what you, as a person, believe and that wasn’t instilled upon you or in you from a young age. That’s a cultural pressure that is tough to break. If you do, you find yourself again. The ultimate reward is finding more of yourself of who you are and what you were put here to do.

It sounds like you’ve both found a little bit more of yourselves in the process. Megan, do you have anything to add to that?

It’s not being scared of jumping. I will be the first person to tell you that I’m impulsive but I’m smart impulsive. That’s the best way to explain it. I’m not going to go and be like, “Yeah, let’s go.” Spend $100,000 on a car. If I’m like, “Let’s buy a van, live in it.” I decided that within two weeks. I decided to move cross country in two weeks. I decided to move back cross country within two weeks. I decided to come on with this company shortly after he proposed it. Literally seconds, I was like, “This is the best thing ever.”

A big saying that I’ve had is “It’s not a high risk unless you make it one.” You can’t be scared to fail because it’s not a failure unless you were like, “I’m never going to do anything with that knowledge that I just gained.” If I buy this van and then I convert it and then I live in it for a month and I’m like, “I could not do this.” I didn’t fail. I learned something about myself. I gathered the fact that I do need a little bit more space to feel comfortable. I need a little bit more grounding than moving constantly or whatever the situation is. It’s never a failure because you’re gaining some knowledge from it.

It is the old adage of learning by doing. I’d like to thank you both very much for joining us on the show. I appreciate the way you’re facilitating alternate options to the standard narrative of how people are supposed to or the societal pressure on how you’re supposed to live your life, how you’re supposed to fill your time and your days. I wish you all the best in everything else. I’d like to thank our readers.

Hopefully, you got inspired by some of these ideas about how we can all look into ourselves on a regular basis, probably every day and be conscious, be aware of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what does it mean. Hopefully, all of us move toward a work culture that’s a little bit more natural for a lot of people than the rigid scheduling and having to get that 2:00 cup of coffee because that’s the only way you can make it through your day and end up wasting countless cups and all the environmental waste and the drive-throughs and everything that go along with it. Not to knock any of those companies but I did.

There it is right there. There’s a benefit that a couple of hours off saves some coffee cups.

Thank you very much and stay tuned for more. I hope you all have a fantastic day.

Important links:

• Simply Tiny Development

About Sean Dixon

Dr. Sean Dixon is the founder and CEO of Simply Tiny Development, a Public Benefit LLC. His research and doctoral studies uncovered a unique opportunity to use business as a medium for change. Sean’s passion for environmental sustainability and curiosity for organizational development provided the drivers for founding Simply Tiny Development, where sustainability resides as the center of the business model. In his free time, he enjoys reading, CrossFit, hiking, camping, and river surfing.