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discounted home sites, and be a fresh face in a market that is imploding around us. And it’s worked out pretty well.” Of course, there’s another saying: “The first days are the hardest days.” “Initially, just before things started blowing up around us, we made some business proposals to a few banks for lines of credit they were going to make available to us,” O’Brien continues. “That’s about the time when WaMu (Wash- ington Mutual) went under and the banks said, ‘We decided we no longer want to invest in real estate,’ pulling all their offers off the table.” Providentially for the nascent business, one of O’Brien’s partners had a good relation- ship with a small, local bank. “Mark reached out to them, and they decided that they were will- ing to give us a line of credit and help us get going. If we did not have that connection, we most likely would have stalled at that point.” There is yet another saying: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single TIM O’BRIEN HOMES step.” Tim O’Brien Homes’ first step was small, indeed. “In 2007, we closed one home and sold two,” he remembers. But then the journey began to speed up. “In the following year, we sold about 28 homes. Around 2009 and 2010, we were able to go back to some of the banks we had originally talked to and secure addi- tional lines of credit, allowing us continue to grow the business. We sold about 49 in 2009; about 59 in 2010; and we just kept climb- ing from there. Now, we’re doing about 225 homes a year.” Originally based in the greater Milwaukee area, the company expanded into Madison, the state capital, in 2012. Today, between the two markets, it has 58 full-time employees. The fact that Tim O’Brien Homes has suc- ceeded as well as it has is even more re- markable considering the fact that O’Brien isn’t your ordinary homebuilder. “We decided when we started the organization that we’d be a green and energy-efficient builder be-