Welcome to the Interior Perspective, where luxury real estate meets timeless design. I'm Nicole Fisher, a Hudson-based interior designer working with the region's most exclusive properties. Each week, we sit down with top brokers to explore the stories, insights, and inspirations behind the most remarkable homes on the market. This is your front row seat to the art of elevated living. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to The Interior Perspective. Today's guest reminds me that every luxury home behind it, there is a curated interior and a beautiful finish. And there's also a story of grit, evolution, and relentless ambition. That's exactly what our guest brings to the table today. Felipe's journey did not start in the boardroom. He came to Canada as a child from Chile, and by 19, he was working as a tile setter in construction. From those early beginnings through the years of hands-on labor, he built a career rooted in detailed craftsmanship and a deep respect for quality. Fast forward to today, he is the CEO of Versa Homes, a firm that builds custom luxury homes and estates, where he personally steers each project from feasibility to final walkthrough. And don't get me started on this hockey rink that I saw in one of his projects. But what I admire most is his belief in a home that isn't just about a structure or its finishes. It's about legacy, lifestyle, and its story. The same ethos we hold at NFID when we design interiors that feel lived in, soulful, and deeply personal. So in this episode, we're going to go behind the scenes of what it means to build not just houses, but homes with integrity, vision, and heart. Let's dive in with Hey, Nicole, thank you for having me. And yeah. I'm so happy you're here. I was briefly telling you before, but I am just so blown away by your website and the way that you were able to clearly define what you do, why you do it and what you offer your clients. So give me a little bit of backstory on, you know, your early years and how that still kind of shapes what you're doing today. Yeah, so I mean I was in construction early, early on in high school taking construction courses and classes and my woodwork teacher, which you can see him on my Instagram to this day. 30 something years later, we're still hanging out. Wow. Talking to each other. And he's a big part of why I'm here today. But yeah, I was I was always the type of guy that figured things out. And if they didn't work out, I would ask myself why and try to find a solution and slowly chipped away at from tiling to renovations to building these crazy homes right now. You know, I don't even know how or why we're doing them. I know, right? It just seems like they just keep getting bigger and bigger, right? Yeah. What did your experience in that early kind of hard work that you needed to build this career in construction influence your definition, really, Like what influenced it? I think my woodworking background. So again, it goes back to my teacher. I was building crazy things in high school. When I was in grade nine, I was building dining room tables, then got to like bigger dining room tables with teardrops and lion paws. And I found that I was able to do that. Grade 12, my last year, I said, hey, you know what? I want to do something tedious. I built myself an electric guitar, you know, handmade. And I just love that craft. I love the challenge. And when I get into homes here in Canada, anyways, Vancouver, there's a lot of craftsman style homes, a lot of molding, a lot of classic looks. We do modern too, but the craftsman style home is kind of what makes me tick because I love that detail, right? Right. I love that, too. There's so much that we're we involve and infuse in all of our projects with that millwork. And it's just that level of craftsmanship. Honestly, it's it's just like a dying breed. It's something that it's getting harder and harder to find it Yeah. Those layers of craftsmanship and molding over molding and details. They last a lifetime, they're timeless, right? You know, we're what, 2024? We thought we'd be at the Jetsons, but we still see the Strathmore and You lost a year. See Oh my gosh, I love it. I feel like I get the same reaction all It's 2025. It is 2025. We're putting that down. Firm. Okay. What triggered your leap from construction to building your own firm? I enjoyed doing construction with my own hands and I just loved it. And I thought of it, I didn't see it as a business. I was just having fun and then people would ask me to do things. And then I started making money at it and I still didn't see it as a business. I remember my accountant said, hey, you got a lot of jobs. I said, yeah, we're doing great. He goes, yeah, but there's only one problem. You're a nonprofit organization. I said, what? I paid my house. I paid my car. I'm fine. I fed the family. And they said, no, no, you're running a business now, right? So it kind of clicked a little. Didn't totally click, but it clicks. You got to raise your rates and start making money. You're running a company. I said, okay, cool. And they told me to raise my rates, and I did, and things started to go better. But then I had an accident and sliced my arm, cut my artery. It was really bad. I had nerve damage and anyways, the worst thing that ever happened to me turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because I couldn't do the work anymore. And I said, hey, like. What am I gonna do now? No one can do this better than me. And I quickly found out, excuse my language, I was full of shit. I was forced to hire other people to do my work. It turned out 10 times better. And my business just started thriving like crazy. And I was forced to get into the business side instead of hands-on tools. And I Wow. That's, that's incredible. And I think that's the biggest challenge for creatives like us to understand that you can't grow. There is a ceiling when you're doing it yourself and to get to that next level and to keep growing, you have to be able to delegate and trust other people to just, as you said, not only do it that you would want, but probably do it 10 times better than what you're doing. And yeah, How did you find those type of people? How You know, it's a good question, because at the beginning, you're kind of a nobody. And you know, when you're a nobody, no one wants to work for you. But then you start to market yourself properly and make some noise. And now all of a sudden people are knocking at your door. So at the beginning, it was a little touch and go. And, you know, the guys that I got at the beginning were good. but they weren't like what they are today. But it went with the level of jobs that we were doing. You know, there's a trade for every client, right? But as we were growing, we started getting better trades, we started getting better jobs, you know, and it just started chipping away at it. And finding good trades was easier, but there's always a trial and error. And I learned that Don't trust what people tell you. They always sell themselves. Go look at their work, talk to their clients, and talk to other builders and say, hey, how was this guy for you? And then when you have them and you find them, keep them close to you, hold So all your guys are in My structure is I'm a general contractor, obviously, I have project managers, I have foremans on site, carpenters that do odds and ends, and helpers that will do like the cleanup. Other Yeah. How do you maintain your, you guarantee Everything. It's a great question because everyone says you can't do that. How the hell do you do it? And I just literally handed a house over on Friday, right on schedule, right on time. And the trick to it is simple. Listen, if you go into a cost plus model where, you know, you start excavating a house and start building it and the client's not done the interior design, you're waiting for answers and it's only going to get more expensive and you cannot put a schedule to it. You know, you can, if you want, you can write one, but it's just not going to be met. So what I found out early on that if I had a clear scope of work and I had everything chosen for my client using cheer designers and making sure that everything is picked, and if some little things are not picked, you can put a small allowance to it. But when the scope of work is defined, you can define a schedule easily. You start building out your schedule with your trades, and you laid out how you see fit, how you build a home, and then you start calling the trades and you say, hey, how long are you gonna take? Oh, four days. I said, are you sure? Because in our contract, you must be done on time. You have to have tight contracts with the trades. We do a fixed price and a fixed schedule. So if you have those two, if you have a fixed price, you can move fast the I mean, it's the dream. It just feels like it's never happened. I've never met someone like you that says, well, guys don't do it A lot of guys want the jobs. If the client says, jump, they jump. So the client says, just start. We'll get it done. They will start break his own rules. So if you don't follow your own format. you know, you're gonna derail, right? The other thing is, a lot of builders don't wanna do the work up front. And it is a lot of work to put together a fixed price and a fixed schedule. It takes a lot of coding, precision, tools, and you have to do that up front. And they don't wanna do that, they're too lazy. Just give me the plans, let's go. The craziest part is too, if I was a client, I would want a fixed price for two reasons. One, my price is guaranteed. And two, the builder is forced to learn the plans before he starts. How many guys do you know, and I'm sure you know, that just take your plans I'm going through it right now. this is when a million change orders happen, or I didn't notice this, or I didn't account for this, or you added more lights than we talked about. I just think you didn't look at the job site well enough. I think you didn't look at the project well enough to do your due diligence. And now I'm paying for it, or my client's paying for it, and I brought you Yeah, it's a collaboration. It's a system that I have that a lot of designers also have to get used to. They're used to like, oh, we're working with a client. Let's just frame the house and when we get there, we'll walk through it and keep picking stuff. Well, that's just the recipe for overages. And time and time is money. And it's going to take time to get these decisions made. And then if you make them late, you're going to order something that's out of stock, or it's going to take another three to four weeks. And it just keeps compounding and time is money. So money goes up and time goes further. So this is how the projects get out of hand and out of control. If you don't guide your client through the right path. You know, and I blame it on the builder, not on the designer, not on anyone. Like I tell my designers, no, I need this done before we start. We're not starting until all this is done. And I tell the client, once this is done, I give you a price. Once you sign off the price, then we build. And all you have to do is just watch it from afar or come and I love it. Oh my God. I prefer they bring up, you know, some form of wine or alcohol, but you know, coffee's okay too, I guess. You can't drink on site. I know that's bad things happen. I love that idea. And let me ask you, when you do have that next level of having not only an architect, of course, but an interior designer on board, do you get those full packets from both parties before you even get into your diligence My biggest things that I talk about in Instagram and all that kind of stuff is hire your builder before your architect. And you've probably seen this too. If a client goes to an architect, the architect is going to wow the client with what they can do, because they're artistic. And it's going to deliver everything the client wants, but they rarely know the price of the building. So what happens is, if you go with no builder, he can't guide you and say, hey guys, this is too much money for what you asked for. So they keep moving, moving, moving. They go interior design, building, oh wow, we got plans in our hands, let's go get it quoted. So they find out that the good builders are coordinating it correctly, and it's too much money. And then they try to find the cheapest builder. And then when they find the cheapest builder, because they can't afford what got drawn, the So my thing is, hire your builder before your architect or with your architect, so that you're all on the same page, understand what size of home you want to build, what is the potential cost, and while the architect is designing that home, The builder can say, hey, this is good. This is not good. This is too big. We're going over square footage. Now, if you do this, we're going to need too much steel. Steel is expensive. And then you can get that client to start making decisions. So the client started at four or five million dollars for a build and ends up at six. They'll know why. They know because they chose that steel and they chose more square footage. At least Right. Right. So if you're able to kind of stay within that number, how do you distinguish or guide a client to not do to not have to do cookie cutter and then versus getting something That's experience. The more that you build, the more you know what something's going to cost, right? So our first discussion is, what do you want to build? And I want to see some pictures. And once I see some pictures, we talk about in detail, like, what do you foresee? Do you like the stone? Do you like this? Do you like that? And then we say, hey, a home like this is going to cost you between $400 to $500 a square foot or $500 to$600 or $800 to $1,000 or more. We're building one that's $1,300, right? As long as you set the expectation for the client, it'll be fine. But if you give them a low number and then you spend six, seven months with them designing all this a year, and then you end up at a grossly over number, guess what they're going to say? See Right. So we, we don't want to spend a year with a client and then lose a job. So we set the expectations right at the beginning. And if they're not good enough for you, then we're not Right. Yeah, I love that. It makes so much sense. Because I think you're, you just hit the nail on the head in terms of not only experience, but people, the builders are not totally grasping and understanding and putting in the due diligence of Guiding your clients through pre-construction is the only key to success, Right? Not because every, like this happens all the time. Oh yeah, we could do that for 300 bucks worth of it. And then it's so easy for a builder to start blaming architects, designers, city, and clients needs. Well, I didn't know you wanted to do that. That's going to be more. Well, I didn't know this and I didn't know that, right? And then all these budgets that clients get. Clients always demand budgets before design. Have you ever seen that? They're like, give me a budget, give me a number, give me a price. I'm like, price for what? Well, for this project, here's the layout of my house. I'm like, you don't have anything yet. You don't have all your finishes. Your finishes dictate your rough-ins. Your rough-ins dictate what we do. Um, I don't know what I'm doing, but I can tell you that could cost you between this and this, but I can't give you a price. Well, Joe did. Well, Joe is just you want me I yeah. So what kind of conversations do you have with them to understand their, you know, lifestyle and budget while still, you know, pointing them in the right direction in terms You know, a really good one that ties into it. Obviously, you know, Dan Martell, because you're in this group is the rocket sales system. So through asking them the right questions, through that rocket sales system, they start to just spew everything out. Budget, needs, wants, ideas, all this kind of stuff, right? And all you do is just listen with your ears and write it down. And then when you write it down, you can tell what they want. And then you go, okay, well, it sounds like you need this architect and this designer. And then we go to their website and we'll show them what they do, blah, blah, blah. And they go, yeah, that sounds great. But it is. I have to do, I'm speaking at Job Tread Connect, which is a construction software about how to build a fixed race using Job Tread. And one of my videos I'm going to have there to start, it's going to be funny because it's going to have a guy going into a dealership to buy a car. And he asked the sales guy, Hey, how much is the car? Well, 70,000. Let me see the engine. Who put the engine in? Well, the factory. Well, how much did they pay the technician to put the engine in? Oh, I don't know. Well, I got a buddy that can put it in. If you want to give me a discount, we can take the engine out. I'll put it in myself. Right. Like Like that in a car dealership, or you go buy something at home Depot. Do you buy something and ask them how much did it cost to build it? Or do you just see the price and buy it? Right. That's the thing clients, you know, if, if you go cost-plus they look at price, you show them finance financials. Um, they don't understand them. It took you a long time to understand financials. How do you expect the client to see them day one and go, this looks right. You know, um, It's a, I mean, it's a crazy world out there with pricing, right? Telling clients that low price, not being honest upfront, not putting the client in a bad financial scenario is the biggest responsibility that we have as builders. And Nobody cares. I think that's like, you totally nailed that. It's actually, It's so painful to be a part of these jobs sometimes because you feel like the only one who actually gives a shit about the person who's gonna live here. And it's like, how do you not care? whether they're just, you know, throwing things that are, you know, damaging nilly willy or price gouging or whatever. It's just, these are, these are people like they, or they're trusting us with like the most intimate moment in their lives that like change, we're changing their lives, biggest investment. And they're going to, It has such an impact on their day-to-day, what we're doing. And it's wild If there's people wanting to build a house listening, I'm going to tell you this. When a builder has a fixed price, they will care about the material. When it's a cost plus, they'll just order like it's an open buffet and eat half the plate and chuck the other half away. But if it's a fixed price, you're going to just make sure that you using takeoff measured all your lumber brought in the right lumber, make sure you took care of it. You're not throwing anything away. And if there's leftover, you would return it. Right. They don't treat it like that. And the cost plus cost plus Why are you selling time? You're running a business, you're selling time? That's Should I get paid for one month worth of work? Yeah. Or That's Dan always talks about the plumber who comes in and just has to go boop, like Just because, you know, it took me 25 years to figure that out. Why should I just get paid, you know, my $120 for Right. It should be a $600 bill, call out business overhead Interesting. People are chicken shit to charge for their Well, it's a confident, yeah, totally. It's a confidence thing. It's, you know, how do you put a number on your, how do you tell people to put a number on Yeah. You just have to know that yourself, you Yeah. I had a client, you can laugh about this one. Had a client, I priced the whole job out and it came out to $2.7 million for this house. And they told me it was too expensive. They couldn't afford it. I said, no problem. So they went for the cheap builder. I got called back at the end and I looked at this house. I'm looking at the windows. They're upside down. Okay. I'm looking at the backsplash. It goes 13 inches past the countertop all the way to the casing. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, right? I'm looking at the siding as a disaster. All the overlap details are bad. The deck, Trek's deck was horrendous. Like, I'm like, yep, you, you, you saved 300 grand. I said, what was your biggest problem here? He goes, he's never on site. I said, there's a difference. We have a full-time guy, a foreman on site and he's never on site. You would never complain about that. And we send you a daily logs every single day. And we update you on what we're doing. We protect and clean your home and we don't leave it a mess like this was, Oh, here's a good one on that same home. How about the AC unit to the left of the front door? This is giving me like hives. I can't even listen to this story. I'm telling you, it's one of those things that I look at it and this contractor is charging a fee for the whole build. Like instead of charging the rates, he's charging, no, I'm only going to charge you like 80 grand a year or 80 grand for this build. $2.8 million bill that you're responsible for, for 10 years, you're charging an 80 grand fee. So he's pounding his chest that he's getting all these jobs, but he's landing jobs because he's cheap. But the amount of disasters that he's and fires that he's putting out, it doesn't even amount to a good business. Right. Oh my gosh. I am. That is such a sad, sad story. I mean, oh my To look at it, to see if he was going crazy. I said, you're not going crazy at all. This is, this is not what you designed. This is, it's, it's a, a bad attempt Yeah. So I mean, I'm sure there's so many stories like that, but I always blame the clients, to be honest. I don't I don't blame the trades. You know, the client just went You get what you pay for every single time without fail. Wow. That's wild. So you, you touched on something with your, um, your 10 year warranty type thing that you have for your clients. How do you handle Oh, it's easy. So we, we actually don't have a warranty. Oh, we have our own warranty. So in our warranty is as long as you live there, we're still building your house. So what happens is here in Canada, I'm not sure how you guys do in the US, they have a two, five, 10. So two years of workmanship and the materials, and then five years for your roof, you know, and then your structure is 10 years. But we believe that your home should last you longer than that. So anytime there's something wrong, we would go and fix it if something was to go wrong. But the key is to make sure that your assemblies are well talked about and everything is getting done properly. And how you do that, We have a checklist that our foreman has to follow every single step of the way. Right. So nothing goes wrong. Trades can be good, but sometimes they messed up. You can't trust it. Right. So you got to double check the work all the time to make sure that you're not going to get a warranty call and you're only going to get a call to come and Exactly. But I always say that. As a matter of fact, I built a house eight years for my clients and I fixed their front door. And their front door was actually kind of falling apart because they painted it black. and black attracts the heat, and you know how those don't have warranty, but what do I do? I said, listen, we're gonna rip this out. We're gonna give you a new door, paint the whole thing, new handles, and call it a day. How much is that? I said, oh, I'm not sure yet. This was five years after we built the house. Ripped the door out, put it all back, and we said, okay, you're done. She goes, what do I owe you? I said, nothing. So your door should have lasted you longer. Yeah, but we painted it black. Yeah, but I should have told you not to. So it's not a big deal. And she goes, really? I'm like, yeah, no problem. Well, I got a call a month, uh, no more than that. Now, six months ago, you'll see on my, on my Instagram, we built them a coach house on five acres and now we're building them their main house. Total project costs will be about six So I always say to builders, don't squawk about your warranty. That's marketing. That's better money spent Right. You can turn a problem into a solution that client will go, what the heck happened to? Holy crap. These guys are good. They came in, fixed it in. Oh, they didn't charge me a penny. Like that's that's amazing. Right. Yeah. You're going to have problems here and there. Like you're not, it's not a perfect world. You could be the best builder in the world, but you're going to have some, some things to fix once in a while. Right? So, and then, and if you do just kind of go run, do it, do it fast, impress, You, my friend are. a unique I know you're right. I mean, we do that for our clients too. We try to just be there for everything, but there's only so much that our And we understand that. There's designer mistakes that get made and we take care of them. We say, hey, don't worry about it because we know we got the bigger bill, right? So like if there's a $10,000 fix for a designer, that's a lot of money because their bill is not that big. For a builder that's handling most of the work, if you made a mistake, we say, hey, listen, we'll take care of it. Now, if you keep making mistakes, we're going to say, this is the last job. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. You know, but, but I mean, things always happen, right? You just got to support your team. Um, if you support your designers, you support your client. What's going to happen. You're going to keep getting jobs. Yeah, it's true. Make it up on the next one. Right. Like the next one, don't make the mistake. And It's all about that relationship, the collaboration. It's so important. OK, my last question for you is, are you can you come to New York, I actually have been to New York. Was I? I was just in New York with Dan. My gosh. Can you please come open up a satellite versa in Yeah. No, it's awesome. I actually little little story back in the day, I got signed to a band called Jet Blackstair. We got signed and we got a record deal. And Island Def Jam was their record label in New York. Yeah, Ellie Reed signed us. And we went to the David Letterman show. Went and visited there. How I love that. Amazing. So what is looking ahead? What's like A lot going on lots, lots of jobs that we have that are already signed up. And there's about I was 62 mil worth of work coming up. And then I started coaching Yeah. Yeah. Builder Dan has, um, has pushed me to do it. And I said, yes. And I've been at it for a couple of I love that. I mean, I, I feel very firmly. You have a lot to teach. Um, and I think it's important to build another the next generation, the next set of builders to think Yeah. I mean, I love helping these guys because their faces, once we tell them a few little things that how they should do things, they're like, oh my God, how come I didn't do this before? Right. Yeah. Or I didn't know that. And now within two months, these guys are having huge results already in their companies and they become this community that You know, like everyone builds a community, but I didn't know that it would happen so fast. You Coaching is rewarding. Like, obviously, I don't make my money in coaching. Obviously, it makes money, but but it's pretty rewarding to to help people and watch them change. You know, guys I haven't never posted on Instagram, they're posting away and doing the thing. You know, I'm literally, I learned all this from Dan and I'm not doing anything different than Dan does except for I'm focused on builders and trades. Yeah. He's a powerful dude. I mean, my life has changed 180 degrees since like just reading the And that's the life of coaches, right? Like Dan is amazing, obviously. But you know, if you invest money in yourself to learn, to get you past where you are, I mean, that's just that's the key. Yeah, that's the key to it. If you don't learn, if you don't learn new things, you're not going to grow. You're not going to you're going to be doing the same thing that you do Yep, exactly. It's all about that, that growth, but also surrounding yourself with the people that you want to be learning from and inspired by. And, you know, it's that has been the biggest, I think, lesson from with me too. And, you know, in coaching is just being in the right rooms has made such a difference. And even talking to you today and garnering these types of relationships, just they make such a difference Mm hmm. They do. And you know what? Like Dan's right. I Or girl, right? Yeah. If you're the smartest one, get out of Run. And if you're the richest one, run. Exactly. I love that. Okay. Can you give us a little piece of advice for a budding builder here that you would offer to maybe one A little piece of advice. The biggest piece of advice I can give somebody is like use your mind to envision what you're after. That's worked for me every single time. So it doesn't matter how much you know or how much you have or what you're doing. But if you can just focus and really vividly imagine what your outcome should be, it's gonna happen. So unless you're working hard towards it and you can do it, it just happens. I've done it so many times with so many things where you just, you know, envision what you wanna do or what card you wanna get or where do you wanna be? And it is mind blowing how like couple months after I'm telling you, don't overcomplicate it. Just manifest it. Put it in your computer screen. Put it on your phone. Put it wherever, whatever your goal is. And then obviously you have to work towards it. If you don't work towards it, it's not going to happen. But don't ask yourself, how am I going to get there? Just manifest It's crazy. My wife and I both do it, actually. Oh, yeah. I think I have some crazy manifesting support at home. Yeah. We're both in tune, you know? And the That's awesome. I love that. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Felipe, where can we find you? Give us your site, your Instagram, Instagram, yeah, it's philippe.frig. Felipe is F-E-L-I-P-E.frig on Instagram and every other channel. It's the same thing. Or you can Google Versa Homes as well. And the coaching is Versa Amazing. Felipe's story is a powerful reminder that luxury isn't born in boardrooms. It starts at the workbench, job sites, the grit, the discipline, the unwavering respect for craft, and of course, as we just said, manifesting. NFID, we talk a lot about interior style, texture, stole. Today, through your journey, we're reminded that soul lives in our structures, the bones of the home, the foundation built on the design, the hands that build it, and the craftsmanship that goes into it. When you choose to build with respect when you choose to root that experience and passion and integrity. You're not just building a house, you're building a legacy. And that is probably the most beautiful kind of design there is. So thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure chatting with you. And I look forward to Versa New York very Thank you, Nicole. Right on. Well, thank you for doing that. That's amazing. And Thanks for listening to The Interior Perspective. If today's conversation inspired you or you're a broker with a story worth telling, connect with us on Instagram at NicoleFisherInteriorDesign or visit NicoleFisher.com. Until next time, keep creating beauty, living with intention and seeing every space