The Bloxspring Essential Eight: Josh Dorfman

The "Lazy Environmentalist," Plantd Founder, and Host of Supercool Answers the Only Queries That Really Matter

Josh Dorfman was never supposed to get into real estate; Josh Dorfman was going to be a spy.

And, maybe, in some respects, he is. Or, if not a spy, at least a chameleon; he’s someone who has changed his focus within the broad notion of the “built world” the way many of us change apartments in our 20s. In other words, with notable frequency and a surprising lack of trepidation.

After a sojourn in China that was intended to be the bold beginning of a career in the foreign service led to an epiphany about the need for a more sustainable approach to life, Dorfman founded the direct-to-consumer furniture brand Simbly. A sobering lecture from an employee about his own sustainable practices, or lack thereof, inspired his award-winning TV show, the “Lazy Environmentalist,” which aired for two seasons on the Sundance Channel and, in turn, led to his Sirius Satellite Radio show of the same name. Dorfman took a break from the world of media to co-found Plantd, a startlingly innovative company that transforms grass into building materials, with two former Space-X employees, and then made a triumphant return to storytelling with Supercool, his podcast that highlights everything innovative happening the world of green technology.

I was fortunate enough to meet with Dorfman recently and subject him to the “Essential Eight,” our deceptively probing series of questions that interrogate luminaries in the real estate sector about the evolution of their career and perspectives on the state of the industry.

He told me about why being anti-immigration is “pretty dumb from a business point of view” and why young people should learn about the industry before they try to start their own business, among other pearls of verifiable wisdom.

1. How did you initially get involved with the real estate industry?

I got involved in the real estate industry because I was thinking about the carbon impact of construction, and I was very focused on solving two different problems both of which are climate related. One, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and finding a way to lock it away, sequester it; and then two, developing more sustainable materials for the built environment. And those two goals coalesced into the company Plantd that I co-founded. Plantd exists to pull carbon from the atmosphere by growing a biomass, a grass that grows 10 times faster than trees, and then turning that into engineered building materials that replace wood lumber in homes, at least as a starting point. We pull carbon, we create carbon negative building materials, and we fulfill our mission. And if you can do that in a way that is also at the right price point—with great performance and that doesn’t ask a builder to change anything that they wouldn’t do otherwise—you stand a chance of success.

2. What’s the most unexpected aspect of how your career has evolved?

The most unexpected way that my career has evolved is that I am a businessperson at all. Because I always had a sense that my career would be more in diplomacy or international affairs in some way. That was my passion in high school through college, through study abroad. It’s why I went to China in my early 20s after college. I was always thinking about being a diplomat, always thinking about bridging cultures, which was something that I really loved. And my life and my career took a different path. I never saw that coming, and I never saw myself really being in love with business. But really, it’s not business, but the power of business to create positive impact that’s been a through line for me for over 20 years.

3. What advice would you give to someone entering the industry today?

I would say pick whatever aspect of the built environment and sustainability interests you. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s all going to get bigger and grow more, there’s no question. Anything you pick will be a growth industry.

And then do your research. Find the best companies to join that are the most successful and also mentor and train young employees.

Learn as much as you possibly can from your first couple of jobs about how to operate in the business world. That is the most important thing a young person can do. It was true 30 years ago, it’s true today.

The opportunities to start businesses, to start really impactful businesses, especially around the built environment or sustainability, will come later. Because when you’re dealing with the physical world, it often takes longer to understand the business dynamics that move those industries. So, just get as much really good experience from the best places you can to launch your career.

4. What has surprised you most about how the built world and the real estate industry have changed since your career began?

Well, I’ve been surprised twice. For a long time. I continued to be surprised by how slow the real estate industry was to adopt sustainable and green building practices and technologies. I remember in 2006, I had started this radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio called “The Lazy Environmentalist” and I was interviewing Jill Fehrenbacher, who at the time was running a very fast-growing blog called “Inhabitate” that covered green buildings and architecture. And she dropped out of Columbia University’s architectural program because she was shocked that none of her professors cared one bit about green building; they thought it was a fad. They thought it was just niche, and that it didn’t matter to the architecture profession or to the future of real estate. And she was like, “you all have no idea what you’re talking about.” And they were blind to what was coming.

So, that was 20 years ago. Since then, a lot has changed in architecture, but not that much has changed in the built environment. And so that surprised me that you can have all of these sustainability professionals at big C&E firms, at your Turners or your SKAs, all these sustainable-oriented architects. And, yet, if you look at, for example, how many green buildings are LEED certified in any given year versus the total number of new buildings constructed, it is the tiniest fraction of buildings that actually go through that process. So, I would say that’s surprised me, in a disappointing way, for a long time.

And now I feel surprised in a much more delighted way by how quickly I think the industry is shifting toward green practices.

Suddenly, there was some sort of tipping point, and it’s hard for me to identify exactly what it was, but things like mass timber went from being far out ideas that people were convinced were not going to work. People in the industry would say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about” or “it sounds vaguely communist, certainly sounds Scandinavian.”

And now, it’s almost like everybody’s doing it, and mass timber buildings are going up on college campuses and downtown in new health facilities, new data centers from Amazon and elsewhere. So, the move toward really cutting-edge sustainability over the last three or four years coming out of COVID, and the pace of it in particular, has shocked me.

5. What’s your favorite aspect of working in the real estate industry?

My favorite aspect of the industry, or maybe I would say even the industry’s impact, is that it’s one thing to build a beautiful building that takes the environment and climate into consideration and is wonderful for all the people who get to either live, or work, or play inside that building. That’s all fabulous.

But what I love about being in this industry are the developers, the architects, and the building professionals who also are focused on the age-old idea that the building should also be wonderful for everyone who’s outside of it. That buildings are so much a part of the civic fabric—whether you like it or not, acknowledge it or not. You create a feeling and a psychology within a city through a building—by its facade and the way that it sits in a city block or just how it sits on its land and what it says to the outside world.

And I have such an appreciation for those in the industry who really understand that when you’re putting something in the ground, you design it for the long term for everybody, for the community, for those who get to experience it from the inside and those who experience it from the outside.

6. What’s your least favorite aspect of working in the real estate industry?

My least favorite aspect of working in this industry is that it’s so slow to change. And I’ve seen it. I saw it when we were building Plantd and I had the opportunity to talk to many of the largest home builders in the country, almost all of the public home builders. And you end up talking to companies that just by the nature of their business practices are like, “oh, do you check this box?”

And it’s like, “no, we don’t check this box. We’re made of grass. Of course we don’t check this box.”

And the response was, “Then call me in five years.”

And it’s like, “really, dude? That’s how you’re going to operate your company?”

And the answer is “yes, because what we’re doing now works. So, why should we change?”

I really can’t stand that attitude. It’s more pervasive than I wish it were. You could probably make the case that it’s the same in every other industry, but I’ve experienced it in this industry, and as someone who’s always trying to drive change, I find that frustrating.

7. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the industry today?

Honestly, I think the biggest challenge today is labor. I really don’t see how that’s not abundantly clear to anyone taking a look at this industry, who’s tracking it. We don’t build enough.

We’re in a housing crisis, and yet we are either physically removing or scaring away pretty much the only population in this country that’s willing to work outside and construct a building. That’s pretty dumb from an economic point of view.

And that’s not to mention the skilled trades and what’s going on there. I think everything the industry needs to do to enable civilization to advance in the 21st century is about upgrading and modernizing. There is no question that we are moving to greater electrification. There’s just simply no question that there will be more electric cars, there will be more electric stoves, electric water—everything’s going to get electrified. Well, a lot of that electrification is not going to happen if there aren’t enough electricians who can upgrade electrical panels and enough folks that utilities can hire to run new lines for all of that built environment. We’re so far behind where we need to be—not just to keep prices affordable, but to actually compete globally against other societies like China that are already ahead and have no plans to slow down.

8. What makes you optimistic about the future of the built world?

I never thought I would say this, but technology makes me extremely optimistic about the future of the built world. I think that the industry really has no idea what’s coming, what’s about to hit it in terms of innovation. We are going to be living, in many respects, in a brave new world, which will be electrified and will be far more efficient. Honestly, it’s two to three years away with the pipeline of technologies that exist for current buildings to become far more energy efficient without having to do a whole heck of a lot. Energy efficiency is about to become super sexy. Hard to believe, but I really do think that’s true.

All of these “one day” technologies are almost here; “one day” is about to be tomorrow.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.