How did he manage to successfully build his house? The obvious metaphor is unavoidable: he dove into the project with enthusiasm and with the meticulous planning that characterized his success off the three-meter springboard. It's not by chance that he can gaze out his dining-room windows or from the upstairs loft and look directly down into a wildlife-filled hollow. To properly place the house's foundation on his property, Olivo stood on a ladder and approximated the ravine view that has since rewarded him with sightings of deer, ring-necked pheasant, porcupines, foxes, turkeys, even a bear. So he could show his family their future home, Olivo spent 49 and a half hours ("What can I say? I'm a measurement guy") constructing a scale model out of balsa wood and Styrofoam. Later, when decisions had to be made about integrating the beam-framed ceiling of the great room with the more traditional construction of the kitchen, the model proved invaluable to Olivo in talking through the solution with Syth.
"Tom and I talked by phone a minimum of two to three times a week and faxed things back and forth," recalls the builder. "He's so into computers, he could be talking to me looking at a Webcam picture of Main Street in Bozeman and remark about how sunny it was," Syth says, laughing. "There was no way I could tell him we couldn't pour concrete because it was raining."
Olivo proved a model client. The builder says Olivo taught him a few things about how to rein in a construction budget when necessary. By negotiating contractor by contractor, Olivo was able to trim $30,000 from the total budget, saving, for instance, 5% on excavation, 37% on painting, and 11% on windows, by purchasing early.
The home includes a 900-square-foot office atop a three-car garage. The office features a kitchenette, a full bath and guest room, and a conference table, making it perfect for client retreats. When he's not on the road meeting with customers (typically he travels about eight days a month), Olivo generally works in his office, communicating with his handful of in-town employees by phone and E-mail. He's usually up by 5 a.m. and at his desk by 5:30. Most days, he'll work until 2, then head to the gym or out for a run, possibly in the mountains behind his home. The last four years he has run the 20-mile Bridger Ridge Run in the Bridger Mountains. If he doesn't opt to get in a little fishing, he'll work a couple more hours in the late afternoon, then knock off for the day when his daughters (his second daughter, Christine, was born in 1995) come home from school. At about 50 hours, his current typical workweek is significantly shorter than his workweek from his California days.
"It's all about balance," Olivo says, explaining that because he experienced overuse injuries as an athlete, he has become sensitive to how overworking could injure his private life. Work "was affecting my sleep, my patience with my wife. But I've learned how to pace myself in business," he says.
Since building his dream home, Olivo has settled into what he likes to describe as the Bozeman plan. Nowadays when he needs a break, he can simply hop into his car, where a ready-to-cast fly rod usually parts the front seats, its tip held fast beneath the passenger-side visor. Within 10 minutes he can be standing in clear, fast-running Montana water, casting and stripping line, thigh-deep in the kind of trout stream that fly-fishing aficionados plan vacations around.
John Grossmann is a freelance writer living in Mountain Lakes, N.J.
... And the Most Beautiful Business?
In the stairway leading up to his office over the garage, Tom Olivo has hung a photograph of a lone fly fisherman standing calf-deep in a picturesque trout creek. He is that fisherman.
The same image appears in a glossy brochure advertising a 232-acre real estate development near Bozeman called Baker Springs. Olivo is a moonlighting minority partner in the project, which is being developed by a local company called the Cold Water Group. Dream home accomplished, Olivo believes he has now hooked a dream business, one that combines his passion for fly-fishing with a rewarding economic opportunity.
"It's my observation," says Olivo, "that everyone who visits Montana wants to somehow have a piece of it." Within Baker Springs, that piece won't come cheaply. Only 11 20-acre lots will be sold in this ultra-exclusive private fly-fishing community, at prices averaging around half a million dollars per lot. The attraction? Mountain views on all sides. A 10-minute drive to the airport. World-class fishing almost within casting range of your doorstep in four manmade ponds (some of them stocked), the West Gallatin River, Trout Creek, and most notably, Baker Creek, one of Montana's legendary spring creeks, which the developers have brought back from near death. Decades of hard grazing by generations of cattle had badly degraded the creek, fouling its waters, breaking down its trout-friendly undercut banks, and burying its gravel-bed spawning habitat. Olivo helped secure the money to buy the Baker Springs property and fund the initial round of more than $1 million worth of ecological restoration and pond development. As an added lure to avid anglers, the developers restored a farmhouse that was on the land and installed Bud Lilly as riverkeeper and resident legend. Chatting streamside with Lilly, a renowned former Yellowstone guide and tackle-shop owner who pulled trout from Baker Creek as a schoolboy in the 1930s, may be the equivalent of taking batting practice while Ted Williams banters with you.
The Cold Water Group, Olivo explains, expects to close on an adjacent 300 acres and covets another 400-acre Montana property. "All will have the same theme: restoration, conservation, and recreation," he says, stressing what appeals to him personally about the business model. "Not only is it good for the people who live there, but the entire fishery [beyond the property] will be improved because these spring creeks are important trout nurseries." --John Grossmann
Copyright © 2001 John Grossmann.
The Inc Life
The Most Beautiful House in the World
Preshrunk
Arthur Bagby's Croquet Lawn
Younger Than That Now
Family Time
Pleasure Island
Back Story
Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.
