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A new neighborhood under construction near Sacramento, California, in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, looks like a typical subdivision. But its one of the first developments designed at a neighborhood scale to withstand wildfires. Each house goes farther than Californias latest building requirements for high-fire-risk zones, from enclosed, ember-resistant eaves to dual-paned, tempered glass windows that can better withstand extreme heat in a fire. The design considers not just each house, but how homes interact, spacing buildings at least 10 feet apart and removing combustible features to prevent fire from spreading between them. Called Stone Canyon, it’s one of the states first Wildfire Prepared Neighborhoods, a standard developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), a research nonprofit funded by the insurance industry. [Photo: KB Home] Designing homes that withstand wildfires At a unique facility in North Carolina, the nonprofit recreates wildfiresfrom embers to wind speedand then uses controlled tests to see how houses perform. We build full-size structures and we can control the wind speed and direction,” says Roy Wright, president and CEO at IBHS. “We can control the ember flow and the cast that is coming in that direction. We put out and publish really interesting, wonky things about wildfire. But [with the new standards] we said, let’s just take the most important pieces of the science and make them really plain and usable for developers and homeowners.” [Video: KB Home] KB Home, the national developer behind the project, decided to tackle a new level of fire safety after learning about IBHSs research. At a building conference in 2024, the team watched one of the nonprofits demonstrations, which featured a house built to the standard building code next to one built to IBHSs standards. They simulated a wildfire event where embers were blowing against the two structures, says Steve Ruffner, president and regional general manager for KB Homes in Southern California. The home that was built to the old standards burned fairly quickly, within about half an hour. And the other home didn’t burn at all. At the time, KB Home had another development underway in a fire risk zone in Escondido, near San Diego. On the fly, we changed the design guidelines of our homes to accommodate the IBHS standards, says Ruffner. (The homes, which start at around $1,000,000 and around 2,000 square feet, are aimed at “step-up” buyers looking for an upgrade; in the development near Sacramento, they start in the high $700,000s.) [Photo: KB Homes] IBHS had already put out a new building standard for “wildfire prepared” homes in 2022. In 2024, after meeting with KB Homes, it sped up the development of a related standard at the scale of a neighborhood. To get the designation, homes need to include features like noncombustible gutters, a Class A fire-rated concrete tile roof, ember-resistant vents, six inches of vertical clearance at the base of exterior walls, noncombustible fence and gate materials, and a five to 30-foot “defensible zone” around the home where any vegetation is carefully spaced to avoid the spread of fire. Plants have to be drought-resistant California natives. The standard overlaps with California’s newest building code, but requires better, more resilient building materials for certain components. California’s code also doesn’t require at least 10 feet of space between buildings or the elimination of “connective fuel pathways” between buildings. [Photo: KB Homes] “Structure separation is the biggest indicator of wildfire progress that will take placethat density,” says Wright. “That’s why when you’re building new developments, you can incorporate this in. Because you want to make sure that within the adjacent home, if it is fully engulfed, that you’re giving the next structure a chance to survive.” Fires often spread through embers that can be blown long distances on windy days. In both the development near Sacramento and the one in Escondido, the homes are near open wild land that could easily burn; embers wouldn’t have to travel far. “We want to make sure that those homes can withstand those embers showers,” Wright says. “If embers are going to land on the property, it may ignite some bush or something that is away from the home on the parcel. But what’s closest to the structure is going to be able to withstand those embers showers. And if one of the structures has a really bad day and ignites, we slow the spread so that we’re not going to lose the whole neighborhood. We’re going to actually give the firefighters a chance to get in there and actually beat it down.” It also protects older homes nearby. “There are adjacent subdivisions or neighborhoods that were built 40 years ago,” he says. “And th kind of actions that these neighborhoods have put in place are actually going to have a protective effect for their neighbors, because when they can withstand the impact of wildfire, that means the fire doesn’t spread.” [Photo: KB Homes] From lab tests to proof of concept In the first project in Escondido, KB Home worked with the city to change some design guidelines (instead of Craftsman-style homes made from wood, they pivoted to ranch homes with cement-based siding or stucco). The city also required timber fencing that was treated for fire, but when IBHS explained that the coating quickly wears off in the sunmaking this type of fence flammablethey were able to switch to a metal fence that looks like wood. The switch actually helped save costs, Ruffner says. In total, all of the changes didn’t add significantly change the development’s bottom line, and there were some unexpected benefits. “We found out that tempered windows are much tougher, so we didn’t break as many windows during [construction], and we ended up saving a lot of money that way,” says Ruffner. [Photo: KB Homes] The first neighborhood in Escondido includes 64 homes, and an HOA agreement that requires homeowners to maintain gardens over time so fire can’t spread between plants or trees. The first homeowners have been carefully adhering to the plan. “They want to make sure they don’t break the rules because honestly, insurability in California is a big, big deal,” says Ruffner. “If you’re not insurable, you have to go into the public programs that are very, very expensive. And so at least they have a good chance here to negotiate with insurance companies.” The newest neighborhood near Sacramento will follow the same path. So far, only model homes are in place; KB Home builds each house to order as each home is sold. Each house will be evaluated by IBHS before the neighborhood gets the “Wildfire Prepared” designation, though it’s getting a provisional designation now. [Photo: KB Homes] Now that KB Home has shown that meeting the standard is financially viable, other developers also have projects underway. Around a dozen other projects are being designed to the standard now, Wright says, some with several hundred homes in a single development. Of course, the work can’t completely eliminate risk. It’s not possible to make a house completely fireproof, Wright says. But in a worst-case scenario, even if 20% of losses in a neighborhood could be avoided in a fire, that’s “absolutely phenomenal,” he says. “Every time one more structure doesn’t burn, that means that structure is not sending off its flame. It’s not sending off its embers,” he adds. “Every time we save a structure and it survives, we really narrow the path of how that fire will propagate into a neighborhood.”
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E-Commerce
Most sales pitches fail for one simple reason: they try to say too much. It’s natural to be passionate about your product or service. Of course you want to showcase the features and benefits. But if you want your audience leaning in and listening, less is always more. We live in what I call an AHA world. AI-focused, hyper-connected, and always-on. Distractions abound. If you cant capture your prospect and customers’ imagination immediately, youll lose them to their emails, Slack messages, and TikTok feeds. The good news is theres a 90-second fix that will help you craft a pitch or presentation that keeps your audience on the edge of their seats. The structure is so simple, its almost too good to be true. Its the same framework the world’s best journalists use to keep their readers coming back for more and the same approach I teach leaders, sales teams, and founders who want their message to cut through. Lets dive in. Find Your Headline Most people start creating a pitch or presentation by opening a slide deck and dumping content into it. Or worse, opening an existing slide deck and trying to rearrange it. Dont. Before you write a single word or think about your visuals, you need to strip your pitch down to a single sentence. Imagine it appearing on the front of a newspaper or at the top of a social feed. What words would you choose? Keep them short, punchy, and memorable. Ten words or fewer is a good rule of thumb. This single line of text becomes the anchor for your entire pitch. It forces you to stay disciplined. If something doesnt support your headline it doesnt make the cut. When you look at the newspaper industry, the best headlines have an emotional element too. They dont just present information, they engage the target audience. A weak pitch headline is forgettable: SaaS Product Seed Round is accurate but bland. $10 million Opportunity To Revolutionize Fintech is much more compelling. A strong headline creates energy. It signals to your audience why they should care. But its most important function is as a yardstick for your content. Test every slide, story, and statistic against it. If its aligned with the headline, it stays. If it doesnt, it goes. Distill It Into Three Key Messages When you look at the text of a newspaper article on the page, youll see the headline and a number of subheadings. If all you do is skim those, youll have the gist of what is being said. You dont need to read the whole thing. That structure is a great shorthand for pitches and presentations. Your audience cant absorb unlimited information. Most people walk into meetings already holding a handful of important thoughts in their heads: deadlines, dinner plans, unfinished tasks. If you give people 17 reasons why your product or service is a good fit, theres no hope theyll remember all of them. Id like to suggest that three is the magic number. Not seven. Not five. Three. Three ideas feel complete and satisfying. Three creates a sense of structure. Three gives your audience a map they can follow without working too hard. When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone back in 2007 his headline was Apple reinvents the phone. His three key messages were as follows: An iPod. A phone. An internet communicator. Eight words, three ideas, total clarity. His whole presentation was built around those unifying messages. He covered a lot of ground in his 1 hour, 42 minute presentation but those were the things he kept coming back to. Your three key messages are the organizing ideas that sit beneath your headline. They are what your audience will remember long after the details fade. Ask yourself: If they only kept three things from this pitch, what must they be? This is where you need to be ruthless. Speakers often flood their audience with data points, product features, or historical context. But doing so only creates overwhelm. It is not your audiences job to decide what matters. Its yours. Decide How You Want Them To Feel With a headline and three key messages, you now have a pitch structure that is simple, repeatable, and memorable. The final step is to think about how you want people to feel. This is the part most people skip entirely. But its the one that separates forgettable communicators from compelling ones. Decisions are rarely made on logic alone. Even the most analytical audiences are influenced by the emotional resonance of the message. Before I became a communication coach, I trained and worked as a professional actor. One of the first things actors learn is the power of emotional intention. Before stepping on stage, or in front of the camera, you decide the feeling youre trying to generate in the audience or the other character. That choice influences your breath, your voice, your posture, and your energy. It changes how your words land. The same principle applies in a sales conversation. Ask yourself: What emotion do I want to leave them feeling? Should they feel excited? Reassured? Educated? There are thousands of options. Choose one. That emotion becomes the current that runs through your delivery. A pitch with emotional intention not only sounds and feels different but is far more memorable too. Heres the whole technique condensed: 20 seconds – write your headline 60 seconds – choose your three key messages 10 seconds – set your emotional intention Thats it. In 90 seconds, youve clarified your message, sharpened your structure, and supercharged your delivery. Its focused, clear, and engaging. And if youd like to see this technique in action, just look at the structure of this article. Its built exactly the way I encourage people to build their pitches: one headline, three key messages and a single emotional intention guiding the tone. In an AHA world, simplicity isnt a compromise. Its a superpower.
Category:
E-Commerce
The metallic fringe hanging down from the edge of Anishnawbe Health Toronto’s community health center near downtown Toronto is the biggest indication that something different is happening here. Created to provide centralized health care and traditional healing to the 90,000-strong Indigenous population of Toronto, the clinic is the centerpiece of a unique city block of development that was intentionally led by the Indigenous community and designed to reflect its culture. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] The wraparound fringe of more than 12,000 strands of stainless steel chainthe kind of aesthetic flourish easily targeted for elimination by the value engineers of a typical developmentis just one of many elements of the project that put its Indigenous roots on full display on this block. From its services and its building forms to the orientation of its landscaping, the development embodies Indigenous traditions, practices, and principles in a way that’s wholly uncommon in most urban environments. [Photo: Riley Snelling/courtesy KGA] Named the Indigenous Hub, this city block of development includes the aforementioned health center, along with an Indigenous job training center, two mid-rise residential towers, and public and private plazas. Indigenous iconography and material references can be seen across the site, from building facades that reference sacred blanket designs and healing rituals to wall treatments that evoke the bark of trees that once stood as forests on this site. It’s a project that goes to unusual lengths to put these elements on display. And it also required everyone involved in the project, from the developer to the architects and the landscape designers, to rethink their approach to urban development. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] ‘A place of indigeneity’ Located in a part of the city that was once the floodplain of the Don River, and before that the ancestral lands and hunting grounds for Indigenous people for thousands of years, the site holds deep resonance for the community. The designers of the project, including an Indigenous architecture firm headquartered in a nearby First Nation, put great effort into drawing those connections in the look and feel of the project. “The intent was all about how do we ensure that when people are in this block, they understand that it is a place of indigeneity, and also understand where they are within the city,” says Matthew Hickey, a partner at Two Row Architect, an Indigenous architecture firm that advised on the design of every part of the project. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] Working closely with Stantec Architecture, Two Row helped create the plan for the block, and then worked alongside Stantec and the architecture firm BDP Quadrangle to guide the design of the buildings and outdoor spaces within the block, including building facades inspired by traditional dress, traditional healing spaces that connect directly to the earth, and a central Indigenous Peoples Garden plaza where medicinal plants are grown. This ambitious, Indigenous-led development has been decades in the making. The charity health care organization Anishnawbe Health Toronto (AHT) had been searching for a place to consolidate and improve services it had been providing to Toronto’s Indigenous population since the 1980s. Then in the late 2000s, when officials in Toronto put in a bid to host the 2015 Pan Am Games, this former floodplain was targeted as a potential site for redevelopment. As part of the plan, and in line with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, a two-and-a-half acre section of the redevelopment area was set aside for Indigenous uses.
Category:
E-Commerce
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