Your First Build: Where You Learn Just Enough to Be Dangerous
There’s something almost intoxicating about your first build. The plans are approved, the dirt is clean, and your ego is freshly inflated. You think you’re about to create a masterpiece. What you're actually doing is walking into a gauntlet with a blindfold on and your shoelaces tied together.
That’s not to say you won’t learn a ton. You will. You’ll learn so much, in fact, that by the end of it you’ll be tempted to call yourself a real estate developer at parties—just to see if it lands.
But make no mistake: one build does not make you an expert.
Lesson 1: The Brutal Value of Sequencing
On my first project, we ordered the drywall a week early to lock in the price. Smart, right? Except it showed up before the windows were installed. By the time those beauties went in, our drywall had sat through two rainstorms and smelled like a musty hockey bag. Rookie move.
You learn that construction is like a symphony—except no one has the same sheet music, and the conductor is also doing three other jobs.
Lesson 2: Your Budget is a Work of Fiction
You think you’re organized. You’ve got your spreadsheet. You think you are a GC. And then you find out the city wants a tree report. Why? Because there’s a stump that might have belonged to a maple back in the ’60s.
That report costs $3,000. Plus another $1,500 for the arborist to say, “Yep, it’s dead.” 6 weeks later and Welcome to the magical world of soft costs.
By the end of your first build, you’ll stop using the word "budget" and start using words like "fluid targets." It’s more honest.
Lesson 3: Bureaucracy Is an Art Form
Here’s a fun one. We had an insulation inspection scheduled. The crew was done. Everything looked perfect. Inspector shows up and fails us—not because of the insulation, but because someone left an empty Tim Hortons cup in the crawlspace.
I wish I was joking.
You learn very quickly that building code is just the baseline. Navigating the personalities and politics behind that code? That’s the real game.
Lesson 4: Delays Are Not Hypothetical
There’s no such thing as an on-time build. You might as well schedule your project timeline around Murphy’s Law.
One week it’s weather. The next it’s a strike. Then your plumber’s in Costa Rica and the framing crew is stuck on another site because their last project ran late (go figure).
If you’re lucky, it just means delays. If you’re not, it means holding costs and blown financing timelines.
So Are You an Expert After One Build?
No. You’re not. You’re just dangerous enough to think you might be.
You’ve seen some stuff, sure. But you haven’t seen enough. You probably had a consultant or GC carrying most of the weight. And most importantly, you haven’t made—and survived—enough mistakes.
Real expertise comes from bleeding on enough job sites that you stop bleeding.
The Bottom Line
Your first build is like your first love: intense, educational, and a little bit delusional.
You walk away with stories, scars, and spreadsheets that make you shake your head six months later. But if you’re smart, you also walk away with humility—and a hunger to do it better next time.
Because it’s not the first build that makes you a developer. It’s the hundred things you do after that.