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! --- Listen to the podcast here: 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? Simply Tiny Homes: We defined sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. 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....