Response, Page 5

The article continues, touching on a new idea in homes called “Home Basix”. “Now it just seemed like he was trying to make a quick buck”, Daniel offers. As you might imagine, the size of task it is to design, find land, price, create, supporting brochures, and then to build these homes took over a year and was anything but “quick”. These homes were planned long before 2006 and were introduced to the company as one of our 2006 goals in August of 2005.

Here is where Daniel steps the furthest from reality when he suggests that “bankruptcy began to be whispered” at our offices, and suggests we purposely attempted to accelerate construction on our office project to take advantage of our financier. On first subject, Daniel cites no evidence, reasoning, or person who was involved in any bankruptcy talk. During this time frame, the “builder buzz” was focused weekly on rumors of different builders have gone bankrupt. I heard this (and continue to hear this) from and about a variety of builders. If there were any truth to this I would think I would be in the loop. To this day, I know of no discussions, even jokingly, that have mentioned this. In the past few weeks, we have secured new loans and resigned old loans from two of our main banks. This would surely not occur if our financial picture did not warrant it.

It’s at this juncture in Daniel’s story that he adds “Hignite appeared to be liquidating assets…he put his Richfield home up for sale at $2 million” (side note, this is a bargain home shoppers). You need to remember that selling our home was mentioned to Daniel at our first meeting and the home hit the market in early summer, not at this later date.

Equally as disturbing to me personally is the next key section whereas Daniel attempts to suggest that I would attempt to accelerate the office (Miracle Village) project. In an interview with our Studio Manager Tim, he attributes this disturbing quote. “He tried to get as much done…so that when the bank saw it, they wouldn’t stop him.” The only problem with this inaccuracy is that the quote from Tim was supposedly given, as Daniel writes, in a February interview between Tim and Daniel. The project had barely begun in February. In February we had not yet seen much of a decline in home sales and all systems were “go”. We have always done our level best to be upfront with our banking partners just as we are with any business partner.

In the end, of all of the inaccuracies, misstatements, and edited quotes, my biggest disappointment is that we are an incredibly successful, honest company and Daniel’s story shows very little of this. The home market seems to be turning as we’ve sold eight homes in the past few weeks. Daniel interviewed so many of my friends, relatives, and home building staff that have high praise for what we are doing. Yet not a single one of them were quoted in this article’s six pages. Animation is/was a very small portion of a large home building company, yet the article seems dominated by this minor subject. We have hundreds and hundreds of Miracle home satisfied past and present clients yet not a one was interviewed. Shortly before Daniel finished his story, he called me to pursue a few more questions. When I inquired if this article was suppose to be a story about me, why hadn’t he called my mother, brother, pastor, or some of the missionaries that Miracle Homes supports – Daniel dismissed them. He clearly told me that this article was not about me personally so much as it was about our business. Yet when I asked him why he then wasn’t talking to me about a huge spec-home project we had just launched, he seemed uninterested.

Backed into a verbal corner, Daniel relented conceding that if his goal was to cover our business, he couldn’t just ignore one of our biggest home building ventures ever. He agreed to call and interview a respected former congressman who was at the center of this huge business deal with us. An hour later I received a call from the former congressman’s son. He told me that he had only praise for how my company and I had performed in putting this deal together. This deal might be the next big thing in lower Wisconsin home sales. This business associate said Daniel just wanted to know if I was telling the truth. He asked me “Tom, what have you done to this guy? He is not happy with you.”

The last line of Daniel’s article was the final surprise. While Daniel had represented himself to be the Assistant Editor to Milwaukee Magazine, his final credit line says “Daniel Libit is a Washington, D.C. based freelance writer” – one final inaccuracy.

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