Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Nelson.
Hi daniel, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Since I was born, my dream was to play professional hockey. That was my entire focus growing up—through grade school in Rockford and high school at Grand Rapids Catholic Central. After high school I signed a contract in the CCHL (2019) and moved to Canada to keep chasing the hockey dream. When COVID shut down the world, I made a mad dash home and crossed the border a few hours before it fully closed.
Once I got home, I took a month to rest from the chaos, but soon I was itching to be productive again. I was given a scholarship to Aquinas College, started a business degree, and kept myself on the ice skating for their men’s hockey club.
One day, while hanging out at a friend’s house, I noticed they had some renovations going on. I’m chronically curious, so I snuck behind the curtain and met Ernest Lee Groff, who was installing a new shower. We basically had love at first sight. Lee and I liked a lot of the same things and were on the same wavelength right away. I offered to clean his tools and carry heavy stuff to earn some money during the pandemic. We started working together the very next day.
Little did I know I had stumbled into the orbit of a generational figure in the world of tile. “Lee,” as I call him, is to tile and mosaic work what Wayne Gretzky is to hockey. From that first job at my friend’s house, we went on to do a lot of high-end installs around Ada and East Grand Rapids.
At the beginning, it was clear I was there to make Lee’s life easier—not to do the skilled work. That’s all it was for a while. But with my constant curiosity and Lee’s incredible leadership, I started to get the hang of it. Everything changed when we walked into a $30 million project in the hills of Ada. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never seen craftsmanship like that or met so many talented people in one place.
I quickly realized construction wasn’t for the “low IQ class clowns” like I used to joke—it was for serious, high-level performers. Lee needed me to step up, so he gave me more responsibility, which I took and ran with. He says I picked it up quickly, but really it was the combination of his mentorship and my curiosity. It was fire and gas. Before too long, he had me slinging tile at a high level.
After a little over a year and a half, Lee graciously cut me loose. He told me he knew I had the entrepreneurial spirit and the skills to do this on my own. I worked with him from the start of college until about halfway through. Most days started with classes from 8–10 AM, then work with Lee until around 5, then back to school to make up the classes I missed—or do homework—then dinner wherever I could, and finally hockey practice from 10–11:30 PM. After two years of that, I was depleted. I couldn’t keep all three up forever.
As my personal business got busier, I realized it was time to cut hockey out of my life and really focus on finishing school and growing the business. I was never a big fan of college anyway—I felt like everything they taught in class, I was already learning in real life through work. But after many attempts at dropping out, I eventually stuck with it because I could get good grades pretty easily while still working nearly full days. And honestly, people think I learned how to hire subcontractors in construction—but the truth is, I was subcontracting schoolwork to classmates long before that.
My business started doing small jobs for friends, working for cheap, and slowly built up to high-end clients over 2–3 years. I bought and renovated a rental property in the spring of 2024, which I really enjoyed. Days later I started my biggest job to date: an extremely high-end lake house on Higgins Lake with Harbor View Custom Builders out of northern Michigan.
That job belonged to Mr. Ben Fettig, the owner and builder at Harbor View. Ben and I became great friends over the course of the build, and I quickly realized the general contractor/builder role was something I wanted to grow into. For the five months I worked under him, I would basically trap him in conversations and squeeze out whatever details I could about how he got to where he was. He gave me about five minutes of “question drilling” a week, and I’d think about his answers the entire time I worked until the next check-in.
I fell in love with tile for the freedom and the compensation, but I’ve always wanted more—and building custom homes felt like the next big step. In the winter of 2024, I became a licensed builder. I saved and worked for another year—making it roughly five years of tile-specific work—until now, November 25, 2025, when I’m breaking ground on my first start-to-finish custom home build.
This home will show future clients the quality of my work and give me crucial experience leading a full build. I’ve been lucky enough to learn from some very successful builders—Ben Fettig, John Danker, Jeff Collins, Doug Sumner, and more. Watching these high performers operate has been incredibly inspirational, and I watch with a close eye. My close relationships with Ben and John especially have taught me more about building than any book, class, or course ever could. Having their wisdom to call on in a pinch has saved me more than once.
Going forward, I’m laser-focused on making this build stand out for all the right reasons. I aim to be a builder that subcontractors love working with and that the highest-end clients trust.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The highs are very high, the lows can be low! Tax season the first go around was not very fun!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Daniel Nelson Designs (DND) operates under one roof but delivers in three key areas: high-end custom home building, elite tile craftsmanship, and real estate/rental property investments. Our future is firmly rooted in building exceptional custom homes, but we continue to serve our tile clients with the same top-tier quality that built our reputation.
We combine hands-on expertise with real market insight to develop strong real estate holdings and investment opportunities. Our rental property fleet is small today, but it’s growing—and soon we’ll be acquiring and building many of these properties ourselves.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love Grand Rapids! The people are my favorite. The winter weather is my least favorite.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://danielnelsondesigns.com
- Instagram: dndbuilderco
- Facebook: DNDBuilderCo
