I Did

The origin story of a simple lake house that became the foundation for everything we now teach. 

Before HODL House was a framework — before the Life Pattern interviews, before the Manifest, before any of the language we use today — there was a simple, not-fancy lake house my wife and I built for ourselves. We were 39. I was a baby architect obsessed with the early threads of what would become “personal architecture.” My wife was beginning her own commercial interiors firm. We’d found a sacred place with a sunset view and a house site perched over what we imagined could one day become a croquet lawn — a moment from a weekend trip that stuck with us more deeply than we expected. 

We were building something honest because it was all we could afford. The house was more pavilion than home, something we hoped to refine over time as our lives refined with it. The contract was $135K. Forty-nine single-pane windows the code wouldn’t allow today. Sheltering overhangs with brackets meant to fend off western storms and the near-miss tornadoes that sometimes blew across the lake. We couldn’t scrape together the extra ten grand for a basement, so we built on a plinth. It wasn’t optimal. It wasn’t precious. It was ours. 

My wife could finally relax there. I could relax because she could. That place became our sacred spot — where we fly our college colors off the dock, where we watch the seasons shift, the sun set, and our patterns move in the circle of the year. The outdoor shower runs off salvaged 1920s fixtures from old intown flip properties — probably dumps four gallons a minute — and I’ve never taken an indoor shower at The Lake. That place became our clarity long before we had the language for it. 

Friends showed up. Then friends of friends. We ended up designing their lake places too — each one carrying a piece of the shared rhythm: the outdoor bar, the island porch, the sauna, the golf simulator. A network of retreat and renewal built from individual clarity. 

One night near the end of construction, after a week of “vacationing” that was really us working alongside our not-so-top-notch builder, Scott, and his wingman to help them finish up, we were standing by the water looking back at the house glowing behind us.

Scott said, “I didn’t know it was going to look like this.” And without thinking, I said, “I did.” 

That moment still defines HODL House’s OG vision for me. Before land, before design, before budgets or builders — the clarity comes first. Knowing why we were building long before the world, and before builders named Scott, could see it. 

Everything we teach now comes from that one truth: 

When you understand your life patterns, the house becomes obvious.