What does it really take to scale a business inside the fast-moving world of homebuilding and construction?
Pat Crowley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at EPIX Interiors, pulls back the curtain on how top builders and service partners collaborate to deliver speed, consistency, and quality—without sacrificing relationships.
Based in Arizona, EPIX Interiors supports new home construction with everything from flooring and cabinetry to countertops, bath surrounds, and design center services. In this episode, Pat joins Knoodle CEO and founder Rosaria Cain for a candid conversation on what actually drives growth in the construction ecosystem.
Together, they explore:
-
Why alignment between builders and trade partners is a competitive advantage
-
How strong relationships fuel scalable, repeatable success
-
What it takes to deliver operational efficiency without cutting corners
-
Lessons learned from working at the intersection of sales, marketing, and operations
Whether you’re a homebuilder, developer, or service provider navigating a complex supply chain, this episode offers practical insights you can apply immediately.
🎧 Listen in to learn how the best companies grow by building smarter partnerships—not just bigger projects.
Transcript
Announcer 00:00
Welcome to the Knoodle founders hour, where we go, founder to founder with host Rosaria Cain today, our special guest is Pat Crowley, founder of one hope, a nonprofit that helps build better outcomes for home builders, tradespeople and ultimately, homebuyers.
Rosaria Cain 00:17
Good morning everyone. Good morning, Pat and welcome.
Pat Crowley 00:21
Good morning. Rosaria, thank you.
Rosaria Cain 00:23
We’re going to spend some time talking about One Hope and all that’s involved with it. But let’s start by talking about you, the man behind it, and your amazing story. We were just talking about this very minute, about miracles. Well, you share, can you share some of the incredible miracles in your life and what you’ve encountered in the past?
Pat Crowley 00:44
Well, sure, and I will, and as I reflect upon miracles and the miracles in my life, I was made very aware quickly that we’re all miracles, that we’re all unique and amazing contributors to our workplaces, our societies, the environment, in general, because of the miraculous way that we’re individually built. So when I think about me as a miracle, I really think about two key things, and the first one is that I was very blessed to be born into humble and simple circumstances. I was born in a in a neighborhood in West Phoenix, at 41st Avenue in McDowell that was definitely lower middle class, and things were different in 1967 in the early 70s, than they are today, but we were definitely not even a middle class neighborhood, and it was a very working class neighborhood, but, but not only was I born within that community, and candidly, a minor, a minority within that community, but I was younger than all the other kids that I went to school with. I went to school my mother enrolled me in school when I was four years old, so I was younger than everybody else, and I was a minority. And I think about the blessings as I learned to strategize and overcome those two particularly being a minority and being younger, the blessings that they’ve imparted upon my life. It’s it’s a miracle, and it’s really simplicity is where the miracle started, and that miracle provided me the opportunity to become a creative individual. And creative people have the ability to consciously engage in work that others think are crazy. Creative people will do things that others won’t do just because I say that just doesn’t seem reasonable. Less creativity that’s not unreasonable
Rosaria Cain 02:52
and genius,
Pat Crowley 02:54
I don’t know if it can be taken as genius, but that is really how a miracle in my life is that I was blessed to grow up in this humble environment, and as I moved through the environment, I was also blessed to be sent to a private school, private Catholic High School, Bourgade Catholic High School. And that brought me into a whole new world from my neighborhood around Isaac junior high school at 35th Avenue and Indian School and Carl Hayden High School, where most of my neighbors went to school. So then I got into a whole different middle class environment, and that opened my eyes to a whole new world.
Rosaria Cain 03:38
Well, tell us about One Hope you are a founder now, which is exciting, and the work you’re doing with this nonprofit, because I think it’s going to fold into some of what you just spoke about.
Pat Crowley 03:50
Thank you. I will One Hope. The idea behind one hope comes from Ephesians four verses one through 16. And Ephesians four is about the unification of the church. And the Apostle Paul starts with speaking to do the work that you were called to do, do God’s will and do the best that you can with the tools that you’ve been given. And and I go back to the miracle of how I got to here and One Hope, and this is what I was called to do with the challenges of being younger and being a minority and growing up in that environment. Great.
Rosaria Cain 04:35
Well, tell us what the mission behind One Hope is.
Pat Crowley 04:38
Yeah, the mission behind One Hope is really to attack the the roots of the problems that we face in our industry. And the home building industry is an amazingly wonderful and abundant industry. This is a great industry, and because of that abundance, it gets overwhelming to attack the challenges and create new streams of awakening and changes which could make us even more efficient. So One Hope is about unifying the abundant nature of the many contractors that come together the many home builders that are part of building homes in a major community like Phoenix, Arizona, and unifying it.
Rosaria Cain 05:29
Well, home building and development in general is an inner is an interesting environment right now. We’re talking about affordability and sometimes a lack of available trades people, the construction world is kind of at a precipice. Walk through how your mission kind of coincides with that.
Speaker 1 05:51
Okay, well, the cornerstone of One Hope and how it coincides with that. Goes back to Bourgade Catholic High School, where I had the opportunity, through my miracle, to go to school. Shea Homes, who have also been a subcontractor for through the last few decades, all around the country, is building a trade school at Bourgade Catholic High School, and I happen to be on the advisory board at Bourrgade Catholic High School as well. So it’s starting to galvanize all of these miraculous features in my life and bring them together. And that’s where the core of One Hope is around the development of a trade base that can deliver homes efficiently with great quality.
Rosaria Cain 06:42
So when we talk about, what problem are you solving and your your your new nonprofit is solving? Is it affordability? Is it creating more trades people to do the work so that they can have a prosperous life? Is it assisting home builders and creating a workforce, or all of the above?
Pat Crowley 07:08
It’s all of the above, and that’s where I go back to the abundant home building industry. And the challenges with with making and creating change is there’s so many pieces and parts that go into building a new home after the land has been developed and purchased and developed, so the complexity is strong, but home ownership is the American dream, and we are challenged in today’s environment with interest rates and costs where they are to get folks, the Generation Z group in particular, into homes that they can afford.
Rosaria Cain 07:47
Okay, so is that the problem that you’re solving right now, or is there more to it?
Pat Crowley 07:54
There is there’s much more to it, because there are so many components that go into the cost thing. First of all, prices are going to go up. That’s just our reality. Things are going to get more expensive. The challenge is, how do we build the most fair home at the right price that can align with the wages of the folks that need to buy them, and that is a big problem. And really striking at the root, rather than the leaves, of the problem, is what it’s going to require. The trade school attacks a big core element in getting available work to build the number of homes that we have out there at the right prices.
Rosaria Cain 08:38
What’s the advantage of having a trade school? So you said it’s affiliated with Bourgade High School, yeah. What? What’s the advantage of having the trades introduced so early on into the careers? That’s unusual, correct?
Pat Crowley 08:51
Historically, it’s unusual, if we think about how trades people have been developed from the post-Depression era, trades people were developed because that’s what they learned to do to survive. So trades people of my father’s generation, the baby boomers, they learned how to work and they learned how to work and make money. So the natural escalation of the trade workforce was integrated into, in its most primitive form, survival. Well, we evolved, and the world got better, and things got better. So by the time we got to my generation, the generation Xers, the dream was to go to college. And now we’ve sort of worked our way into Okay, a lot of kids have gone to college, but now technology is changing the world again, and AI is being introduced to the world in a huge way. And a lot of what we hoped and aspired to to deliver in terms of careers, it’s being displaced. It’s not being changed, it’s being displaced by AI. So we’re having to migrate back to the things that AI can never replace again, which is trades.
Rosaria Cain 10:12
So you’re talking about making a AI-proof career, where that they can prosper despite the headwinds of AI taking jobs in the community,
Pat Crowley 10:26
I wouldn’t say AI proof. A better way to put that would be AI-enhanced, okay, because AI will enhance the way we work in the efficiency and the way we deliver it, and that is going back to the root of the problem, in integrating AI into how we become more efficient and better. AI cannot do the work AI cannot deliver the way a quality electrician the way a quality woodworker can with framing and finished contracting. AI will never be able to robotically do slab work the way we do it today. AI will never be able to set intricate wall tile, shower work the way that we do it today through a robot. And I shouldn’t say never, because I don’t know that, but within the foreseeable future, there are solid careers that that we need significantly within the market that will not be threatened by any type of technology.
Rosaria Cain 11:29
So One Hope brings together the trades through this school. Correct, home builders, who I take it, need the trades to work with so they can build a house better. How does it help overall, the people in the community, perhaps future home buyers? Does it make homes more accessible? Does it make the time to build a cycle time less? What are some of the benefits, all all around?
Pat Crowley 11:59
The benefits all around again as we attack the root of the problem are the integration of all the challenges. It is the ability for us as an industry to harness data that shows us how to schedule better, how to efficiently build them. But when we talk about labor, our biggest challenge is simply the supply of it. Okay? MIT did a study in 2024 that said we we lost about $19 billion in revenue directly due to unavailable labor. So the labor industry, the lack of supply of the labor industry, is raising the cost of buying a home, the simple economics of it. So the more labor that we can deliver that’s qualified, the simple economic equation will be right sided, and we can build price homes at the right, correct, fair market price that are comparable with wages.
Rosaria Cain 13:06
And this is a real shift in the paradigm on the way things are done right now.
Pat Crowley 13:12
It’s a huge shift.
Rosaria Cain 13:14
Tell us how this turns it upside down
Speaker 1 13:17
today as we challenge affordability, our company, EpiX interiors, we are a finished trade company, so we do cabinets, floors and countertops. We have half a dozen to nine significant competitors, but we all draw from the same labor pool. So when a home builder goes out to bid flooring, we’re all, six to nine of us are drawing from the same labor community. So the labor rate is set by the market, not necessarily by the training or the quality or the pedigree behind that installer. What’s happened is, over the decades, a lot of labor has come in from it’s immigrated in. And it may be qualified, it may not be, and a lot of it is, I don’t want to socially go to this fact and say that people can’t do the work. That’s not the case at all. It’s just we do not have the data harness to ensure that it can be done properly,
Rosaria Cain 14:21
And that’s why home homes are so much oftentimes, and this is why it would reduce the price to the average person buying a house
Speaker 1 14:29
That and we integrate the AI and the technological and the innovative scheduling practices, and we train people to communicate in a contemporary environment, the way most kids do on social media, and we integrate the home building industry into our contemporary lifestyles, they will be built faster and cheaper.
Rosaria Cain 14:55
So some of this is a public information push to let kids know at an earlier age there are options, that it’s not just college alone. Is that part of the part of the vision of One Hope?
Pat Crowley 15:12
That’s absolutely a part of the vision. The other part of that vision, though, is the social and moral awareness that having a trade degree or a trade background is not a step down in lifestyle. It’s actually a step up in giving to the community, in building opportunities for oneself to become an entrepreneur or a business owner. It’s a step up, not a step down, but as we’ve migrated from post baby boomer children becoming trades people to generation Xers everybody going to college, we’ve lost that social allure of good quality craftspeople. So we’re really attempting to attack that moral stigma.
Rosaria Cain 16:03
That’s a big order. Let me ask you this. So what you’ve done before this to put yourself in this position to be a founder of a nonprofit that really hits at this issue head on, which is a big one, why don’t you walk through some of what you’ve done, like your years of work for Fulton Homes, your work at EpiX, which you talked to, which you talked about briefly, and walk through how you’ve gotten here at this point, where you’ve been able to come up with something that’s completely new for the whole industry.
Pat Crowley 16:36
Yeah. Well, thank you. And I hope that it is new, and I hope that it’s innovative, and I hope it’s worthwhile. Obviously, we are just going in every day. I’ll give it my all to make sure that it is innovative and contributory. But I graduated from Bourgade Catholic High School in 1985 and I went to the University of Arizona and earned a degree there and did well at the University of Arizona, and my socialization skills and my ability to grow out of my humble community, it evolved and got bigger and better, and I went to work for Shaw Industries in 1990 they interviewed on campus at the University of Arizona, and Shaw Industries hired me at the time, Shaw took the carpet industry. They were really a paradigm shifter in soft floor covering. At the time, typically all soft floor covering and carpet was sold through what were called distributors, flooring distributors. Well, Shaw broke that model and they started selling carpet direct. And how they did that is they broke the traditional trade model of what a carpet sales representative looked like, from 40-50, year old professional salesperson who called on behalf of the distributors to the carpet retailers, to a bunch of young, college educated guys that saw 14, 15, 16, 17, carpet stores a day and delivered that material direct from the manufacturer to the carpet retailer. So my evolution into home building really started with a change mentality that I learned at Shaw Industries.
Rosaria Cain 18:27
So and then you’ve, you’ve worked with interiors for with Fulton Homes Design Center for a period of time that was many years, correct?
Pat Crowley 18:36
Yeah. So through Shaw Industries, I work with home builders in Southern California that purchase carpet directly, and that made me aware of more than just floor covering retailers. It made me aware of this whole entire home building market. A team from Shaw Industries left acquired a flooring company in Seattle, and I became a partner in a company called Super Floors, and we started here in Phoenix in 2000 and I moved to Phoenix in 2003 and our relationship with Fulton Homes really got me going into the design center business and really changing the path in design centers and how they were managed and run with and by home builders.
Rosaria Cain 19:25
So with this amazing career, it certainly led to One Hope. When did you decide that the shift had to be made in the industry and that you were you and your organization is the is the one in the group that should be doing it?
Pat Crowley 19:43
Yeah, well, the awareness came from being multi faceted, coming from a manufacturer, number one, and knowing what the manufacturer needed to do to get good quality product in through the home builders. And then secondly, really understand. Standing the flooring retailer, and then all the other trades that were associated with building a new home that I knew nothing of. And that’s where the Fulton Homes retail experience really brought me into a whole new world. And Fulton started talking about appliance selling and data and how you manage data to sell appliances, how we sell plumbing, how we sell everything other than flooring. The first design centers developed that I knew of in Southern California were run by flooring companies. So the design center was about flooring companies selling more flooring, not about home builders delivering finished homes, the integration with Fulton Homes brought all of that business model together,
Rosaria Cain 20:48
and now here you are, founder of a new organization. So what are your next steps? What’s what’s on the plate for 2026 in terms of one hope, for instance,
Pat Crowley 21:03
the next step is to bring the humble beginning and the challenges associated with home building together and start a grassroots path that create change. Create change again, create change in a very needed way, as we’re in an affordability challenge today, and people use the word crisis, it’s not a crisis, it’s today’s economic situations, but we do have to attack the challenge with humility and knowledge, and that’s where One Hope is going to start.
Rosaria Cain 21:38
So now you’re the leader of One Hope. What do you think it takes to be a leader to do this kind of change? I mean this, you’re probably going to break a few eggs. Probably not everyone is going to be thrilled with change, because that’s often, not always, but often the case. What does it take to do this?
Pat Crowley 21:59
You know, when we think about leadership, and we study leadership as as I’ve had to throughout my career, it becomes cliche written what a leader is and what leadership does, whether it’s Jim Collins Good to Great and getting the right people on the right seats of the bus is leadership, or it’s there is no good leader who won’t do anything in the company that he has to do. It’s really having the humility to address the problem as it is and take in every cliche of leadership that we know. Striking the root of an abundant home building industry is a real challenge. There are a lot of leaves and limbs that grow from the tree that we can’t attack at once. So a true leader really needs to stay focused on the root and stay focused on the cores, and be willing to dig in and invest in the work and bring the right people on the bus. So it’s it’s a combination of every leadership cliche ever written.
Rosaria Cain 23:05
Well, you certainly embody a lot of that.
Pat Crowley 23:07
Thank you.
Rosaria Cain 23:07
And as the leader, what are your goals for next year? I mean, you have a big plate in front of you full of promising ideas and trend breakers really. What do you think you’ll be accomplishing next year, by the year’s end?
Pat Crowley 23:24
By the year’s end, I hope to galvanize the leading influence in the home building industry. I hope to galvanize thought leaders, supply leaders, installation leaders, trade leaders, to present the ideal path to build homes at every level, from entry level to luxury, everyone that builds a single family for sale home, I want to create the ideal structure for them to draw from. We’re not going to solve everyone’s problems, but we need to give them light, and we need to give them the best resources from which to draw.
Rosaria Cain 24:08
Well, that’s you have a you have a big task ahead. Let me ask you this when you’re not working, what do you what do you do to reduce stress and keep you so grounded?
Pat Crowley 24:21
Well, hobby wise, I love to play golf, and golf is a great game, and I’ve learned a lot through golf. It’s been one of my most significant business tools, and many of my good friends I also work with and play golf with. So that’s great. Raising my family, though, is the consummate leadership role that that we did not address, and spending time with my young children, Collins and Camden, and putting them in the best possible situation to take advantage of a great life and then supporting my son, Jack, who just graduated from Grand Canyon University. That is where I spend my time in helping and loving my wife and building a great family.
Rosaria Cain 25:10
I think that’s great. When all is said and done, what do you want to be known for?
Pat Crowley 25:16
I’m hesitant saying that what I would like to be known for is being one of the most influential personalities in the home building industry.
Rosaria Cain 25:25
I think that. I think that’s, I think you’re already there. Pat, you’re already there. Final question, what one thing would be, would surprise people that they don’t know?
Pat Crowley 25:38
Well, there’s one big one for me, and most folks would never know that my mother, Hildegard, Charlotte Horne, was a nun in the Catholic Church.
Rosaria Cain 25:49
Wow, we’re going to end on that, on that fact and brilliant and awesome in every way. Thank you for your time today. I think we all learned a lot about what might be improved in the home building world and trades and all of these different revolving areas and how they can be solved.
Pat Crowley 26:09
Thank you. This was awesome
Rosaria Cain 26:11
Pleasure.