Protect The Asset: Wildfire Defense Strategies Every Real Estate Investor Should Know

Jim Sprouse (00:00)
Fire code came around in 2007 and 2008 in California and they changed it to, know, government changes names. We’ll see what we see now. doesn’t matter. It’s the hardening of the homes. have your vents have to be down to one 16th, a minimum one eighth inch. A lot of those homes, that’s why those homes are lost. They’re out of code because of flying things. Embers take down 90 % plus of the homes in wildfires, not direct flame. And it’s preventable.

Micah Johnson (00:21)
Makes complete sense,

everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Jim Sprouse, who makes some serious moves in the wildfire defense industry for the last two years now. Jim, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.

Jim Sprouse (01:45)
Thanks for having me, Micah I really appreciate it. Happy Friday, everybody out there. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s have some fun.

Micah Johnson (01:51)
Absolutely, man, I’m excited for today. What you and your company do is very specific. I love it because of the passion that’s behind it. And it’s just the way you’re going about doing it. that’s how you do anything is how you do everything, man. And so I love what’s going on there and I’m excited to really dig in with you on it. So for folks that are listening in that aren’t familiar with you yet, tell us a more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

Jim Sprouse (02:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, man, you use the word passion and that’s, you know, it’s a big, actually one of our tenants of our company as well. On top of a few others that we really abide by, but we are passionate from keeping homes burning down wildfires. It’s as simple as that. ⁓ Whether people use our systems, which we can talk about, or just do the basics they need to do. But, ⁓ you know, when you see events that happened, everyone’s very familiar with the Palisades in Malibu and Altadena last year, 17,000 structures were destroyed, right? Now on the real estate market, ⁓ that’s 17,000 structures you’re able to sell.

There’s a lot of emotion around it. It has disrupted our entire insurance market in California. mean people are getting canceled. They’re getting non-renewal their fallback plan the fair plan caps out that’s riddled with issues We have a we have a very big challenge over on the insurance side. It’s because homes are burning down So when we started the company our origin where the passion started

was we’re actually, live on a preserve in San Diego and it was New Year’s. We had a couple of libations. My now business partner and I were out in the back porch with another one of my friends who’s an advisor, who’s an aerospace tech advisor for our manufacturing side, and about the systems and everything. And they’re talking and they’re like, why don’t homes have some kind of defense built in? Like, why is it that every time there’s a wildfire, people evacuate and hope and pray that their homes still left? And at the end of it, was kind of, said there was some libations.

They had laser beams. They literally designed our company. We don’t use laser beams, but they literally designed it. And as an entrepreneur, I was like, I’m always looking for good products to take the market. And I had been searching at that time. I was in another industry that didn’t do well. So I was an executive in a large solar company. I’m like, this is something here. So we spent a couple of months there looking at them. I’m environmentalist. have environmental studies degree. And so we started putting out what is now the Amber Pro Wildfire Defense System.

And we found out it was actually in an industry that had been around for a little bit. But since that and OK, so that was in 2020, 24. Right. And so and then we have one of our our M.O. has been in business for 20 years. Right. So we understood the construction. We’re licensed contractors and we understood that we understood homes. We understood in-home sales. You know, I’ve been in sales my whole life. I’ve run teams. We understood we use traction. You know, West at Bill. We had the business savvy to look at it we just needed.

this product to find, know, what the big solution in the market. But what then happened after that, Micah, it was, you know, in January of 2025, things completely changed in California, completely with those big fires. mean, 100 % close to, I mean, it was bad before even to get insurance. It was bad in a number of ways, but when 17,000 structures were done, and back in 2018, we had a whole city of paradise burned down, right? So it was, and we’ve had other fires and Ventura, it’s like,

You know, we live on the coastal land too. I get to do lot of ⁓ presentations and stuff and I do up and down the coast and I say, look, you know, for people to think the coastal lands are going to burn, Lahaina, Malibu, Palisades, Ventura, these are all coastal towns, right? So we actually just did a project literally in Malibu. put a system on a house on the ocean, right? So it doesn’t matter where you are. People think, if you’re in the Wui, the Wildland Urban Interface, or if you’re in the mountains, no, man.

Firemen don’t discriminate. And when that changed the landscape and $150 billion plus cost of all that, people didn’t realize how much smoke damage costs and how many claims and all the lawsuits and all the emotion around it. You can see the passion that comes out. We want that to stop. Whether you’re using our system or just doing the basics, protect your home, which you can do with hardening a home and defensible space, ⁓ that’s our mission. That’s what we do. yeah, we built the company to provide

We call it putting a wildfire defense on steroids. You if you want an ultimate protection, very highly effective, you know, that that’s what we do. We also do a spray service. So we, we assess homes on the certified wildfire mitigation specialist.

Our team is trained to how to properly assess a home. look at the structure and we look at the surrounding vegetation. We understand all the laws and we’ll go back if they want to look at one of our packages. Great. If not, they have a list of things they can do to improve their property. Whether or not they contact us again, they know what to do to help.

keep that property to protect and defend it from wildfire. Because it’s not if, it’s when. And that’s not some sales jargon. That’s literally what CAL FIRE says. It’s not if, it’s when. Be prepared. So, yeah, that’s how we got started.

Micah Johnson (07:20)
Right. Right. Right.

It’s powerful, man. mean, I haven’t lived through many wildfires, but I’ve lived through my fair share of hurricanes over here in Florida. it’s when you were talking about that, like we’ve developed system after system to protect our houses over here now, but I’d never really heard of one for fire either. Right. Like, it’s, it might be way more destructive, right? Like hurricanes erupt, but man, fires, that shit is terrifying. Like it’s…

Jim Sprouse (07:38)
Yeah.

Hurricanes

will knock over a building, right? Fires will just take the whole damn thing.

Micah Johnson (07:54)
Yeah, I get you. mean, it is there’s nothing left after it’s done. And so it really makes sense that this space is opening up, especially with the fact that when Cal Fire saying it’s not if it’s when that you need to listen at that point, you need to listen. And if you’re in an area where this is this takes place, it becomes a responsibility at that point. Like once you know, then you’re responsible. If it happens after that. Cost of doing business like you knew.

Jim Sprouse (08:06)
Yeah, absolutely.

Micah Johnson (08:23)
You knew at that point, now it’s on you. Like, well, I feel, still feel bad. Yes. I have sympathy, but my empathy will kind of lack because you knew, you knew, are you going to learn this time? Right. And I love that y’all are bringing something out there that eliminates a lot of what you’ve seen people go through. Right. One of them, an influencer I followed his house got burned down. Now he lives in Costa Rica and I was just watching his life change, but what, you know, Oh my goodness. Like people were completely.

Jim Sprouse (08:24)
Yep.

Yeah, you knew.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (08:52)
Changed like it’s life is not the same at all anymore.

Jim Sprouse (08:54)
It’s crazy.

I’ll tell you a story. One of the ones that I talk about is we have a lot of I’m not an active firefighter. I know. I’m not that tough, man. I do the mitigation ahead of time, but we have a lot of friends that are active firefighters and advisors. And one of the sad ones is they just told us on their podcast and like my friends told me because a guy came up to me. He’s all ash and he was like the fires are still going and he held up his wallet. He said, this is all I have left. There wasn’t one material thing that he had left in his life. Car.

any possession he had, he had a wallet. that was, and the guy told me this story. He’s like, that hit him, that hit that firefighter. That was real. You know, and then there’s look, in the last decade, there’s 200 lives lost. There’s a lot of destruction, but yeah, it’s serious, man. It’s destructive. It changes, it changes things.

Micah Johnson (09:39)
It is. It is.

So what is, let’s shift it to the investor standpoint a little bit. We got real estate investors that listen to this show. In these kind of areas, what’s a way for them to process this? Because I mean, protecting our assets, that’s kind of top of the list for a lot of us. So what would you say to that market? What do they need to think about?

Jim Sprouse (09:59)
Yeah. Well, it’s, yeah.

That’s, yeah, for true, true asset protection. I think this is evidenced by, we look at the Palisades. Okay, so the rebuilds that are going on, a lot of them, the architects and the builders are putting these systems internally. So a lot of what we do is retrofit, right? You’re in a wooey area, wild and urban interface, we just want the protection. And then we’ll put them on the outside. We’ll go up to the eaves and we’ll put the heads. We never do roof penetrations. That’s liability. So we don’t need to.

we’re just hitting, we can miss the home and then spray around it. But what they’re doing to Palisades is, I mean, we’re getting call after call. They were putting pecs piping internally. So now they’ve got a structure that they’re building that when they’re done, they put the ⁓ drywall on the inside. The cladding is usually upright. they go, ⁓ then they’ll have it all built internally. Then we just go place a tank and pump. So when that tank and pump go in, you have an app, you turn on the thing. So the investors are looking at going, hey,

I’m pretty just said I’m protecting this asset and this is the best way. I always tell people fine show me a better way. We’ll do it. Like I literally I’m going to have a meeting up in LA next week about home defense like people can do it on there like a DIY. I’ll go meet with you if that makes sense for like equine properties or different things they want to target like I’ll go do that because I’m not going to put a big huge system on you know cost a million dollars and it’s cost prohibitive. So let’s find solutions and let’s find the solutions will protect that asset. So that’s a great example as an investor coming in going huh.

Now, you also want to look at your insurance costs and that’s a whole other discussion, right? But ⁓ that would be, yeah, that would be a primary way. And then I also say this, and this was a CoreLogic study with Penn State University, from Pennsylvania, so go PSU. Penn State University and CoreLogic had 6 million data points and they found that hardening a home will increase the value 1.4 to 2.5%. And I say, put our system on and 4%, I just threw a number out, you I just.

pull a number out. Hey, it’s more than 2.5 % of the value. And what’s the average home value in San Diego? It’s like $1 So there you go. There’s some of your ROI. And also I would say that if you’re investing and you want to attract people, you want to attract buyers, hey, that home is defend. That is defended. It’s got a system on it. Look at these areas that I always say this to Micah, there’s two things that are not going to change. There’s a lot of things that won’t change. But in our industry, there’s two things that aren’t going to change.

We have built in the wildland urban interface and we have a big problem with it because those homes burned down in wildfires and we’re going to continue to build in the wildland urban interface. There’s nothing prohibiting that with permitting, right? And the climatic conditions are going to keep worsening. And I don’t care why you feel it is or not. have to, this is just simple math, right? If you think it’s because of environment or a cyclical thing in the earth, I don’t care, but just look at the data. It’s getting drier. The conditions are worsening. It’s getting worse. It’s not getting better.

So I would say if you’re investing, especially in California, you already said it best brother, protect that asset now. And for wildfires, show me another way. You know, we believe in these systems. We believe in what they do. They’re very highly effective.

Micah Johnson (13:33)
I like that idea too about how to increase that value a little bit in the sense of your time on market is very valuable. if I’m thinking California, you’re replacing 17,000 properties, which houses are gonna sell first? The ones that are protected or the ones that aren’t protected, right? Which ones are gonna start moving until eventually they all need it. that’s the, I mean, that’s the reality. If you’re gonna go, it’s like living here in Florida.

Jim Sprouse (13:49)
You got it.

Micah Johnson (14:01)
Unless you’re in an old structure, you got hurricane windows, anything built after a certain period of time, you just have hurricane windows. That’s what are in there. They become the standard because the number one destroyer of things and killers of people’s flying debris coming through your windows. It’s not really handy to have.

Jim Sprouse (14:05)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, same with fires. Same with fires.

It’s embers embers embers is the number one reason things flying through the number number one thing in fire. It’s the embers. It’s not direct flame. It’s the embers flying through sorry to cut you off but fun not so fun fact not 95 % of the homes, but I’m a geek about this. I bhs did a study a year after the palisades fire 95 % of the homes are out of code. That means their events allowed the intrusion of embers to go in and that’s where a lot of those homes are burned down flat out 95 % out of all it’s

Micah Johnson (14:29)
No, you’re good.

Wow. Wow.

Jim Sprouse (14:46)
Fire code came around in 2007 and 2008 in California and they changed it to, know, government changes names. We’ll see what we see now. doesn’t matter. It’s the hardening of the homes. have your vents have to be down to one 16th, a minimum one eighth inch. A lot of those homes, that’s why those homes are lost. They’re out of code because of flying things. Embers take down 90 % plus of the homes in wildfires, not direct flame. And it’s preventable.

Micah Johnson (15:08)
Makes complete sense,

Jim Sprouse (15:51)
Yeah, it’s preventable. Like your new codes now, right? Like, hey.

Protect the, go in, shelter, protect the windows. Like you’ll be okay, most likely, you know, that’s high percentage.

Micah Johnson (16:02)
Right, right. Well,

now they even build them where you got your hurricane shutters on the outside built in. Like it’s so simple now to protect your home from a hurricane in Florida that you’re just living on the edge if you’re not doing it. Right? And that’s kind of the same thing that you’re doing. If you’re living in a property, in a place, like it’s up to you. Everyone gets to decide where they want to live. If you’re going to choose to live in a place that lives like this, make smart decisions about being there. It doesn’t mean you can’t be there.

Jim Sprouse (16:16)
It’s silly,

Micah Johnson (16:30)
It’s not hurricane and firing all the time, right? It’s not all the time, but it’s the times that comes through when it does, it’s devastating. So it’s worth it to prepare. I’ve heard it called productive paranoia, right? You can’t worry about everything, but there’s some things you need to worry about. And it…

Jim Sprouse (16:34)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I like that. I watch this back

again, productive paranoia, I’m going to use that.

Micah Johnson (16:50)
Please, please man do because it’s like yeah, you learn you can’t worry about everything and most stuff you worry about isn’t gonna happen. But like my mentor tells me there’s a lot of life. We know exactly what’s going to happen. We just don’t know when and you have to prepare yourself for those things. You set yourself up for success. Same way. mean when we were talking before your business really runs the EOS system. You are hedgehogging on this same freaking concept man. It’s the same concept of just

Jim Sprouse (17:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Micah Johnson (17:18)
digging in,

sticking with it, keeping going. And I appreciate what you do. I love hearing stories and learning about things where it’s not just a little impact that you’re having. Because like you, that guy with the wallet, fires leave things where you can’t get them back, for sure. The things they take away, what they burn.

Jim Sprouse (17:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (17:44)
You

don’t get the memories back, man. You don’t get those things back. I mean, it wasn’t a wildfire. One of my favorite golfers here in Georgia, his house burned down and he lost like all his major championship trophies. He had a couple of them. And it’s like, you never get those back. You can’t have your original stuff back. So what are you doing to protect it right now? How are you taking care of it? Man, I really appreciate that. So, Jim, man, I could go on and on about this stuff. Let me ask you this for folks that are listening in.

Jim Sprouse (17:47)
a lot of emotion.

Yeah. Yeah.

Micah Johnson (18:12)
that wanna find

Jim Sprouse (18:12)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (18:13)
out either the DIY project or learn more about how you can help them protect their assets and their property. What’s the best way for them to find you?

Jim Sprouse (18:23)
Yeah, Ember Pro USA, ⁓ our website and our YouTube channel. Our website, ⁓ we have a free comprehensive guide. There’s a lot of stuff people can do. Like I said, man, we’re just passionate about keeping phones from burning down. A lot of these, and I tell everybody, put us out of business. Go prepare your home. I have that productive paranoia.

Go prepare your home and put us out of business. Go ahead, please do. We’ll go find another thing to, know, we got a big problem to solve. We’re not going anywhere probably for years and years and years. By the time I retire, we’re gonna sell. And then we’ll be in the maintenance mode and everything else. So put us out of business. Go to our website. There’s a free comprehensive guide and it’s like 40 pages. I pulled all the materials and it’s like, just start going through the guide. What do you, like people, there’s evacuations like in your hurricanes. Well, do you have your pet beds or your kid beds? You have everything together. Like these are just things.

look around your home. And we do videos on this on our YouTube channel. I don’t think I said like, do have Italian Cypress trees in Florida? Do like the big tall ones? Do you guys have the Italian Cypresses?

Micah Johnson (19:20)
I know we have a lot of bald Cypress I don’t know if we have Italian Cypress. ⁓

Jim Sprouse (19:24)
Okay. Well, Italian

cypress, they can be like 200 feet up in the air and like so, and they’re like just tall, they’re beautiful. And they do like a lot of, you know, privacy and stuff and noise blocking. And so people put like 10 of these together, but put your hand inside of an Italian cypress and pull it out. It is dead material. These things go up like candle wicks, 200, 300 feet up in the air. And what’s wild Micah is people put them right next to their house. They go right up into a wooden eave. I see it all the time. Like one amber goes in there. That thing, your house is

toast, it’s gone, right? It’s just it’s by there’s nothing you’re going to do. You evacuate and we’re catching that thing on fire in there. If there’s a bunch of them, I mean, it’s bananas. So look at what vegetation you have. Again, you might have to cut some stuff down, pull five feet away from your home and vegetation, especially if we see a lot of, you know, wood siding and stuff. It’s like get the vegetation away from that double pane windows. I mean, there might be some cost factors, but lots of your vents, you can have a handyman do them. You can do them yourself. You can get the material on on Amazon. So just

Go to our website, go to our YouTube, learn all that stuff. And there’s certainly plenty of videos of us with our wildfire defense systems. You can see more of that, but yeah, that’s the best way to do it. I just tell everybody, look at this is solving something you need to be educated about because you need to protect your asset. So just coming from that standpoint, I need to protect, I don’t care if you’re afraid of wildfires or not, just like I need to protect my asset, right? Okay, this is how you do it. There’s a guide, there’s videos, protect your assets.

Micah Johnson (20:49)
Appreciate that, man. Thanks for sharing that. For those watching and listening in, check our show notes. We’re gonna have all of Jim’s links there. And like I say on the show all the time, it’s not random folks that we bring on. They’re professionals at what they do. These are the kind of folks you want to learn from, whether it’s to do it yourself or to have something done. They actively live it. Man, I appreciate your expertise, the background that you have. I love it when someone can just pepper me with data. It’s one of my favorite things. It’s one of my favorite things.

Jim Sprouse (21:15)
Yeah, we learn from data, right, brother?

We learn from data, yeah.

Micah Johnson (21:20)
It’s everything. Well, it’s one of my favorite quotes. think it’s Demings. How’s it go? Something about data. don’t have data, it’s just something else. I can’t remember how it goes. It was one of my favorite quotes. It’s like, you just don’t have anything. You don’t have it. Or maybe it goes this way. In God we trust, all others must bring data. Something like that. I can’t remember how he says it, but it’s very powerful because it just shows you.

Jim Sprouse (21:32)
Just a guess or something. Yeah.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (21:49)
It’s everything. What does the data say? Make your decisions based on that. And I love how y’all go about that. Cause that’s where the, that’s the science of it. We’re not guessing. not, we’re not hoping. Hope’s not a strategy. This is actually how to protect, how to protect what you’re doing.

Jim Sprouse (22:00)
Hope is not a strategy. I laugh when people are like, it’s

not gonna happen to me. Really? That’s what everyone said right before it happened. ⁓ Really? We live in California, man. The climatic conditions are getting worse. You have a beautiful home, protect it. ⁓ It will happen. All right. That’s good.

Micah Johnson (22:07)
Everybody.

Right. And most people don’t think they’re most people. That’s another favorite quote, man. We’re all one.

We’re all most people. You are most people. Just accept it. Well, thanks again, man. Appreciate you being here. Dude, I’m full of them. Be careful. Be careful. We talk again. I’ll leave you with more, but I appreciate you again, man. Thanks for being here. Thanks everybody that’s watching, listening for joining us. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think you get value out of it. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do.

Jim Sprouse (22:23)
I got a couple of those. I got to watch this again just to get some of that. Yeah, I like that. This talk is good stuff. Yeah.

Micah Johnson (22:43)
Click that button, follow along with us. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Jim, folks out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us today. We’ll see y’all in the next episode.