Joining the conversation, Sean McAleer brings a fresh perspective on outdoor living with his innovative deck designs. From transforming a sinking patio to creating a master design plan, discover how Sean mixes functionality with creativity. His journey from growing up in a family of craftsmen to becoming a master of deck design is both inspiring and informative. Whether it’s through incorporating advanced lighting or adapting to changing styles, Sean talks about leading the way in comforting and practical outdoor living spaces.
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SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello there, friend. Angie Austin and Jim Stovall talking about his Winners of Wisdom column. And this week it’s Emotions and Economics. Hello there, Jim.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, hello there, Angie. It’s good to talk with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m fighting a month-long something, rather. My friend had RSV, so I don’t know quite what I have going on. You always think you’re going to beat it, right? So, sorry, I’ve got a little bit of a cold going on. How was your weekend?
SPEAKER 07 :
Weekend was great. One of those where I probably had plenty of stuff I should have been doing, but Ms. Crystal and I needed an R&R weekend, so we just enjoyed the time and I read a little, caught a couple ball games, and we caught up with some friends. So it was wonderful. One of those weekends that Monday morning I was glad to say, hey, let’s get back to work. It’s great.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, if you read a high-speed book every day and you read a little this weekend, does that mean you read two books over the weekend each day or a book and a half?
SPEAKER 07 :
I actually had a couple of books. I wanted to read that I’ve had on my list. And these are books that I read at normal speed. One is an autobiography that Cher wrote, and one is one that Robin Williams wrote. And they both read the books themselves. And so listening to them in their voice is worth slowing it down. So, yeah, I did those in addition to my other books.
SPEAKER 03 :
You said Robin Williams and who was the other? Oh, I would love that. Okay. All right. Now that’s neat. Yeah, I like to listen to the voices as well. All right. We’re talking about emotions and economics. You’re up over 60 books now. I think you wrote six last year. You said that they’re starting to come to the house and arrive as my mother’s perusing through them. And it’s funny, you know, she likes to tell me all about you when she reads the books. And I’m like, yes, I’m familiar with Jim, Mom. I’ve been talking to him for over a decade. Yeah. It’s just funny. She likes to teach me when she reads. So what is emotions and economics about?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, personal finance is about 90% personal. And that’s where the emotion comes from. The economical part of building wealth and becoming a millionaire is fairly easy. It’s controlling the emotion. And as a blind person myself, I’m always amazed when people get caught up in optical illusions. Or you remember there was a deal, oh, a couple years ago, where there was some kind of picture of a girl in a dress, and everybody was arguing, is it orange or is it green? Or whatever it was. And different people saw this dress in different ways. And I remember all our teams sitting around the conference room one day, and we were having lunch, and they were arguing about it. They passed it around, and everybody couldn’t believe that somebody else was seeing it differently than they did. And I think that is just absolutely fascinating. People can see, and you still don’t know what color something is. And it’s very important that we get those kind of emotions and opinions out of the way. For example, from 1991 to 2011, there’s 20 years there, from 1991 to 2011, there was a great bull market. You could have made a lot of money in the stock market with the exception of the 2008 mortgage meltdown. But even with that, institutional investors, hedge funds, mutual funds, professional investors made double-digit returns, way over 10% returns on their money. For a 20-year period, that’s a staggering amount of money. Because when you do that, you know, you will double and redouble and redouble. So you’ll have about eight times your money in a 20-year period. Well, during that same 20 years, the average individual investor, little mom and pops out here that are managing their own account and they’re picking their own stocks, they actually lost money. They were below zero. And the difference is the emotion. And I think it’s really good that we’re talking about this right now. Because with all the things going on in the politics and the world news and everything, the markets have been bouncing up and down. And people understand, you know, if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to buy low and sell high. They get that. Everybody knows that. But they don’t do it. And as in most things, Angie, we’ve talked about it. We don’t fail because we don’t know what to do. We fail because we don’t do what we know. and the market will go off 2%, 3%, and people will panic and say, I’m getting out. Well, that’s a bad time to get out. Now, we always have to remember the Stovall rule, which is do not have money in equities or in the stock market that you don’t have a five-year horizon on. If you’re going to need this money sooner than five years, get it out of there. It needs to be somewhere safe and reliable and dependable that’s not volatile. But if you have a five-year horizon… You don’t have to worry about it. I mean, the 2008 meltdown, as we were talking about, that was one of the worst times in our lifetime to be in the stock market. But if you were in then and you just held on until 2011, you were in positive territory. You made money. And if you have a five-year horizon, that will take care of the vast majority of your problems. But the thing that the institutional investors do that individuals and people like you and me too often don’t do is they’re on autopilot. They’ve already decided when it gets to this point, I’m selling. I don’t care what’s going on in the world or who’s mad at who or what the tariffs are doing. It doesn’t matter. When we get to that point, I’m selling. And if it drops below this point, I’m a buyer. I’m buying more of this. And they will actually do that. They’re on autopilot. And if you can do that and get your emotion out of it, it’s easy. You know, everybody understands buying cheap when they go to the mall or go to the grocery store. And, you know, but can you imagine someone going to the mall and saying, well, I really like that, but I don’t want to buy it. It’s too cheap. It’s come down. I don’t want to buy something that they, no, that is just ridiculous. That’s what we all look for, except when we talk about our investment money. And then people, well, you know, I don’t want to sell that because it’s gone up. I mean, look how high it is. I don’t want to get rid of that. Yeah, you do. I mean, but so those are the things we talk about today. And it’s just a matter of taking the emotion out of it And great pilots understand this. And they’ve told me, you know, when you’re in a fog and you can’t see where you’re going, there are times you would swear you’re flying straight and level and you’re really upside down and you can’t tell. And so you have to trust the instruments and you have to trust, you know, what you’re being told and you take the emotion out of it. Because if you go with what you feel, you’re almost always going to be wrong.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, we have investment accounts for the kids. I think it started around for Riley, 12 or 13. The girls have theirs as well. They work summers as a lifeguard. And my daughter actually has a she’s going to college, you know, to play volleyball. But she has a job interview. And she said, where’s my resume? I said, have you made a resume? She was like, I’ve got a resume because I’ve been for two years. I said, no, I don’t believe you ever had a resume for your lifeguard job. She goes, well, how do I make one? What do I do? And I’m like, well, we can make one before Monday. But, you know, make sure that they want one. It’s for daycare and there’s a lot of teenagers working there. So anyway, she’s going to do that. So what’s my point to all this? My point is my husband puts their checks right in their investment account. Well, guess what? Guess what that leaves them with to buy everything else? That leaves them with mom. So my husband’s like, well, let’s tell them no. And I’m like, well, they need things like lotion and shampoo and shoes and pants and everything else. So, I mean, that’s fine. But when they want things that to me are a little bit like exorbitant, like they might want jewelry or like my daughter wanted an eyelash curler, but it’s $25. Well, mine’s $3. So, you know, I’m not buying yours for, you know, $25 or whatever. But it’s interesting that, yes, they’re great investors because they have the bank of mom.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and it’s tough to be the bad guy. It really is. But, you know, and it’s good to let them start handling the money. I remember when Miss Jessica and I started to, you know, I became her guardian, and we had to go through finances, and, you know, and I had put her on allowance for all of her stuff, and including her school expenses, housing, and everything. And I suggest we don’t have money for that unless we take out something else. And so I sent Michael, my driver, I said, go over to the bank and get the, you know, a monthly allotment for getting cash. And he brought it to me. And when we went over to pick up Jessica, I said, let’s go in the house for a minute. We spread it out on the dining room table. This is your money for the month. And she said, we are rich. I said, well, let’s see how you feel here in a minute. Okay. We’re going to take out the rent money. There it is for your, your apartment at the university. And then here comes your tuition money coming. And there’s your food right there and your utilities and your fees and and your health care and all this stuff, and here’s the money you got left over to do whatever you want with. Now, if you want to go do this other trip and this thing, where would you like to get that money? Which of these discretionary accounts would you like to not spend money on this month? And all of a sudden, it started making sense to her because those real Benjamin Franklins are staring at her.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, those real Benjamin Franklins are staring at her. So what is the biggest problem people have with investing?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I think they get emotional. They get in and they look at it. You know, I’ve told you before, I put my brother in a, oh, wow, an IRA way back when he started his little tiny construction company. And I said, hey, it’s going to come out. Don’t look at the statements. Don’t do anything. Don’t touch it. He forgot he had it. I mean, you know, it was pizza money back in the day. And then later on, he needed a bond on a deal. And his bank president said, why are you buying a bond? Why don’t you just bond it yourself? You got the cash. And My brother said, no, I don’t. What are you talking about? He said, well, you have nearly half a million dollars in your retirement. He said, no, I don’t. He said, yeah, it’s right here. And he just had never looked at it. He’d forgotten about it. But if he’d been looking at it, you know, in the mid-90s, we had a downturn. In 2008, we had a downturn. It would have scared him to death. But no, you just don’t look at it. I mean, it just doesn’t really matter. Because as long as you’ve got that five-year horizon and you’re diversified properly, it really doesn’t matter. And for people listening to us, what do I got to do to diversify? You can go to any broker or any online thing, Fidelity, Vanguard, any of them, and you can buy an S&P index, Standard & Poor’s, and all you’re doing is you’re buying a piece of the 500 largest companies in the world. And that’s all you’ve got to do. You don’t have to pick winners and losers. You just figure the tide’s going to come in and all the boats are going to go up. So I just want to buy a percentage of everything. And if you do that alone and just forget it, you’re going to get very wealthy.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And if you could just forget it. And it’s interesting, too. Another thing people do is they get all nervous when their retirement counts are moving around. And, you know, in my younger years, I wouldn’t even look at them that much. I just knew kind of where I wanted everything to be. And on a day-to-day basis, I didn’t, you know, mess things up, you know, mess around with where I had things. And my husband, he loves to look daily and then he’ll send me this list and it’ll have like the kids accounts, our accounts, my retirement account, this property that we sold, that account, like it’s all divided into these different pots. And then you can see what each pot has done. And you’ll be like, look at how much we lost today or look at how much we made today. And I don’t know, to me, I can’t get into that because it’s not real to me. Like the real amount is in 10 years. It’s not, I’m not upset if you lose a hundred grand in a day, right? It’s like, okay, you lost a hundred grand a day. It doesn’t mean anything to me because it’ll be back in a month or at the end of the year or whatever. So why, why get so engrossed in that? But maybe he thinks it’s fun.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve always been grateful that they don’t put the other things you spend your money on in the newspaper or on quotes. Can you imagine? Here’s the value today of Angie’s house. Whoops, Angie’s house dropped a little today. And, of course, her car’s down another 300 this week. And, you know, that would scare people to death. But you don’t see it, and it doesn’t scare you.
SPEAKER 03 :
That is so funny. All right, so Jim, what do you want people to take away from the article this week?
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, go on autopilot to the greatest extent you can. Have your investments come out regularly. They go into an account. And as long as you’ve got a five-year horizon, put them in an index, buy the whole market, and just don’t worry about it. And you’re going to be fine. Now, other brokers will tell you, well, you may need to get more sophisticated and do other things. Yeah, later on, if you have big money, you want to do that, it’s fine. But I’m going to tell you, you can become a millionaire and reach your goals by just doing that. You don’t have to get cute. You don’t have to do anything else. But if you get emotional and start bailing out at the bottom, you know, it’s like getting on a roller coaster. If you get scared, the worst thing you can do is try to jump off. You try to jump off in the middle of the ride, and, you know, they’ll take you to the emergency room. So you just need to hang on and realize what you got in for the long haul, and everything’s going to be fine. Just relax, guys.
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SPEAKER 04 :
Kiowa is listening to the mighty 670 KLT.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin here with the good news. Really excited about today’s interview. You know, I’d like to do a lot of DIY projects. I actually should say my family does, and my husband, and then we’ve got the three teens, so we all kind of joined in. He did a brick walkway. He just redid a store that’s a trailer for my son where he can sell all of his vintage stuff and travel around the country. He did our bathrooms. He learned how to do a lot of the tile work and stuff just on YouTube. Well, our next thing is… is our deck, the front patio is like sinking. It’s like a truck stack. And then our back deck, I really want to make it a bigger deck where you can like walk downstairs. So we were just getting into this and there’s a book coming out. It’s called Deck Rebellion, Revolutionary Concepts for Outdoor Living. And Sean McAleer is here. Hey, Sean, welcome to the show. Hey, Angie, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. OK, so what inspired your passion for deck construction? I mean, you’ve got some cool decks in this book.
SPEAKER 05 :
Um, I really didn’t start out thinking about doing decks. I just grew up in, um, I grew up as a third generation carpenter. I mean, I wasn’t a carpenter when I was born, but I was taken into work with, by my dad to his, um, architectural design wood workshop in, uh, New York at a very early age, just to get me out of the house. Cause I was the oldest of five. So my mother was more than happy to get rid of me. So there was a lot of wax on wax off and, um, working there and watching the things that he did. And he’s a master craftsman. And I just got a passion for design. And I started designing different things and actually finished my first basement at 14. Oh, wow. A neighbor wanted it done, couldn’t afford a real contractor. So they were willing to gamble on me. And I ended up doing it and doing it pretty nice, did custom cabinets and finished the whole thing and everything. But They gave me a lot of leeway with design and that just continued. So designing my passion for decks really was my passion for design. And when I started working outside and doing outdoor spaces like that, that’s what just really lit me up. I was so excited about doing it and really just enjoyed being outside and doing all that. So it went from design and then I found my niche and it was outdoor living spaces.
SPEAKER 03 :
I love, too, you know, I mean, not just the different shapes and, you know, these aren’t generic decks, but I like your use of lighting as well. I think that adds such another element to a deck.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s huge, and it’s typically for most people an afterthought. But for us, when we’re designing here, lighting is, that’s what brings the magic at night. I mean, you can have a beautiful space during the day. But if it’s lit beautifully well, I mean, people love to hang outside at night. And the lighting just makes the magic.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, my gosh. It’s funny. His lighting, my husband did all the lighting in our front yard. I’m like, oh, just do solar. He’s like, are you kidding me? Like, I’m wiring that baby. And whenever we pull up to the front yard, he goes, look at our winter wonderland and look at all the other neighbors’ dark tombs.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, right. And that’s, you know, you bring up winter right there. That’s a good thing. That’s something people don’t think about. Because a lot of the outdoor living spaces and the lighting and all the other stuff, people think like, oh, I’m just going to use it during the summer. And that’s what it was. When I first started out, it was like, oh, you know, I’m not going to spend that money. We only use it a couple of months a year, which led to covering it and heaters and fans and all that kind of stuff. But The lighting itself at night, and especially in the wintertime, I love the snow. It just looks like a winter wonderland.
SPEAKER 03 :
It does. You nailed it. It’s neat. It’s really neat. Well, all right. So let’s talk about this master design when you’re designing an outdoor space. Because when I’m looking at the pictures of your work, it’s not just like, hey, you threw on a deck. There is a master plan. So talk about the importance of that.
SPEAKER 05 :
So many times, I mean, my background… my background before I just went exclusively into outdoor living spaces was building homes. And I have, which give, gave me a really deep, um, knowledge of, you know, site work, foundations, the, everything that goes into building a house. So when I looked at a space in the backyard, for me, it wasn’t really just, I need to focus on one little thing, although that’s where I started. because when I went to the outside, it actually started focusing on decks, was putting myself through college for the second time, and I scaled back from building very big projects to that. And there was a lot of other people involved because I was only interested in doing the decks. But the deck, in order to work out correctly, needed a patio, and the patio had to be a certain elevation. And then the kitchen was involved, and the kitchen should be where – It should be. And, you know, when we’re doing covered structures and fire and I had all these other contractors telling the homeowner all these different things that didn’t make sense. And I’m telling them, you know, that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tell him this is where you need it. And if he doesn’t know how to do it, tell him to come talk to me because I’ll explain it to him. So that started happening over and over again. And that’s how I ended up taking on just everything. I’m like, you know, if I get to direct this whole thing, I might as well. just design everything and handle the building from beginning to end. And those projects worked out really well. But I would still go to other projects. And during this whole process, I’d go someplace and, for instance, go to somebody’s house. They had the pool put in and they’re like, oh, we want to do one of these beautiful decks and everything else. And I’m like, yeah, the pool’s three feet too close to the house. Like, well, that’s what a cool guy said to put it. Like, that’s because he digs a hole. He wasn’t thinking big picture. Or they put in a kitchen next to where the deck is going to be and then they want to cover a roof on top of the kitchen. I’m like, well, now you’re standing on the deck looking at the side of a roof. It’s not going to work. So all these piecemealed kind of things together. So what I started to do with people I was working with was, all right, if you’re thinking about putting in a pool, if you’re thinking about putting in a fireplace, if you’re thinking about any stuff, let’s design a master plan. And then you can phase it out. You may not do all the phases, but if you do… It’ll all be there lined up for you so that when it’s all done, it all looks coherent and it was all purpose-built. So that’s the master plan. Thinking about the entire project and the whole project at one time. and then breaking it down into the pieces that you want to do as you go along.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I want to get the advice you give to people remodeling their decks, even if they’re not doing like a big, like for instance, ours is sinking in two spots, our track deck or whatever it’s called in the front. And in the back, like I’d love to be able to walk my dogs down off our deck, but I just want of those skinny ones, you know, around the back of the house, but it’d be great if you could sit out there and have steps you could get down into your backyard. So our projects are pretty simple compared to the pictures I’m looking at that you do. What advice do you give people to kind of get started other than the master plan? What’s next?
SPEAKER 05 :
Other than the master plan is, obviously, if you’re going to work with somebody, make sure you check out, I mean, a lot of people talk about contractor advice. You need to have somebody who’s passionate about what they do and knows more than just a single point, because if you’re going to have somebody who’s advising you on doing bigger things, you need to have that discussion, um, have a budget in mind because, and you may not know what it is to begin with, but if you talk to some people, have a budget in mind, what you’re comfortable with the days of, um, give me a quote on this, or I want to do something in the backyard. Give me a quote on this. We don’t operate like that. You tell me how much you want to spend. And my job is to give you the biggest bang for your buck. I want to give you as much value engineered into that project to make you as happy as possible. Because then I know you’re going to build it with me. And when we’re done, you’re going to be thrilled.
SPEAKER 03 :
What are some ways, Sean, that decks are changing in their current home designs? Some of the cool things I see you’ve done on some of yours is like there’s a deck, but then maybe you step down into a more circular section of the deck with a step or two down where you’ve got a seating area and a fire pit. So it gives it like another element. It’s just not a big rectangle.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Yeah, that’s our circular fire. I love that. We won first place. That was something I put in for the awards we built in 2013. We put it into the 2014 awards. And it blew up all over the internet everywhere. And then when it went to the awards, All the other deck builders in North America saw it, and everybody started copying it.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s neat. And is that columns? It’s columns underneath it, right? So you’ve got the circular, and then there’s columns underneath it. That’s not a solid structure underneath it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. There’s columns underneath. Sometimes we do circular kitchens underneath it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, cool.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. So that’s a really great space. And one of the things I was designing for somebody, and form follows function for me, right? So they wanted… space to hang out and intimate space, fire space. We had a lot of zoning problems and minimize the amount of square footage, curve it back in to miss the rear yard setback. And I came up with an early version of that. And when I was in the space after we built it, sitting around this curved couches, that’s when they first started getting popular. It was like great because everybody faced everybody. Yeah, it was just a great space to hang out after dinner. they did an all-hands-on-deck party. And after everybody ate, we all went down, and there was probably 12 or 14 of us sitting around there. And that’s why I had the two steps. So you could fit nine or ten people on the couch, and then you could fit another six, seven people on the steps hanging out. So you literally have everybody sitting around the fire, which was fantastic.
SPEAKER 03 :
I love that. I love that. And then in terms of what you decided to put in your book, were there some elements besides that circular deck with the seating area and fire pit that you wanted to include? Anything else new and hot you really wanted to get in there?
SPEAKER 05 :
So one of the things with decks now, when I first started doing this 15, 18 years ago when I was just focusing on outdoor spaces, we covered very rarely did we cover a deck, but decks have become such a part of life, outdoor space. I mean, biophilic design. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term, but you know, just how good it is for you to be outside and be connected with nature. And, you know, children learn better when they’re outside and the breeze and you just, it just psychologically and physiological, physiological environment, um, Benefits are just huge for that. And so people want to spend more time outside. And really, if you just have a deck, it has to be the perfect day. It has to be not too hot, not too cold, not raining. And you actually have to be home for it to work out. So we started covering, we started covering a lot more decks and especially with the louvered roof, the Equinox louvered roof we use. That came about because a lot of people were like, yeah, I want to cover the deck, but I don’t want to kill the light in the kitchen. or the roof is a regular roof is not going to work out here. So I searched out this product and I hadn’t, the company had only sold two in the Northeast in the prior two years. They were very scarce. And I started designing them into the projects because now you could have the best of both worlds. You could open them, let the sun in when you wanted it, close it, keep it dry, cool fans. So one of the things, and this is Angie, this is a really cool thing that I never even realized until I’d been doing it for a little while. when you were a kid and used to go outside and stand in the rain and just look at the rain and breathe in that mist and just, it, I mean, Those rainy days as a kid being outside was like a super cool thing, at least it was for me. Well, how can you do that as an adult unless you have a covered space outside?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Yeah, it’s super cool. And I love it when you can get covered with like a TV under there and you can watch movies at night and everything. That’s also nice. And is there a certain kind of material? I mean, I know it used to be wood. What do you like to use now? Are there a couple of different products you like to use for, like I mentioned, ours is TrexDeck, I think. What do you like to use? Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
We use full PVC, and we have been for the last 12 years. So full PVC with an ASA cap, it’s ProCell technology inside the board. So it’s a foam core. So it doesn’t heat up the same way as a composite does because it’s basically the wall of a cooler. And you’ll get the heat on top, but it doesn’t go all the way through. So the sun goes behind the clouds, behind the trees. It instantly cools off. Full PVC with a what cap?
SPEAKER 03 :
asa oh okay good to know all right well i i can’t wait wait for your book to come out unfortunately we’re out of time i would love to go through another 15 minutes of uh you know talking about decks but um where will people be able to find you do you have a website we can go to yes absolutely deck remodelers.com and they can pre-order the book on there if they’d like excellent the pre-orders set up and then our instagram if you want to see the latest and greatest it’s
SPEAKER 05 :
We’re posting up all the new projects that we’re doing. So at Deck Remodelers on Instagram and Facebook.
SPEAKER 03 :
Excellent. All right. I’ll find you. Thanks so much, Sean. All right. Take care. Thanks, Angie. You bet. Take care.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
