Contractor Cuts
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Contractor Cuts
Eliminating Client Issues: How To Navigate Customer Disputes Without Losing Your Reputation
We explore the essential differences between personal and professional relationships and how this understanding transforms dealing with customer conflicts in contracting businesses.
• Friend relationships are reciprocal with mutual expectations, while customer relationships require professional boundaries
• Contractors must set clear expectations from the beginning, not assuming customers will give benefit of the doubt
• Creating a Client Engagement Agreement establishes how the relationship will operate
• 80% of project work should happen before the first hammer swings through proper planning
• When conflicts arise, approach as an objective third party rather than becoming defensive
• Real-life flooring dispute example demonstrates choosing between protecting money or reputation
• Losing control of projects often happens when skipping due diligence to accommodate tight timelines
• Clear communication boundaries prevent customer resentment and contractor burnout
• With overseas clients, setting deadlines for decisions helps maintain timeline accountability
• Even with timeline slippage, maintaining professional communication preserves the relationship
Remember, we aren't selling the renovation—we're selling the customer's experience of receiving it.
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner and I'm James. Thanks for joining us again. Issues with customers and conflating issues that grow and grow and grow to where how do we deal with jobs that go sideways, customers that are angry, all of that stuff, and how we should pose ourselves from the beginning to the end of the relationship, to where, by the end of the job, the customer is still enjoying the process and our relationship and we're able to diffuse any sort of issues that come up. And so we're going to dive in that today we're going to start with talking about relationships and kind of how to set it, how to set the table throughout starting a job with a customer, and then we're going to dive into a couple of real life examples that we've been going through recently and what we're doing, how to deal with it and kind of how to avoid it in the future. Doing how to deal with it and kind of how to avoid it in the future. Good, okay, yeah, great, perfect, sure. So tell me, james, let's talk first. Talk about the relationship with the customer.
Speaker 2:I think one thing that I see when coaching guys that's that's kind of like this this doesn't make sense. Uh, you know you need to change your, your mindset on on this, is it I I've heard it's not fair, that's fair. They can't do that. That's not like I didn't do that. They're doing this.
Speaker 2:And I think one thing to dive into and look at is the difference of a friend relationship, spouse relationship uh, you know that type of a relationship versus a customer right and so on. A friend relationship, right, me and you are friends, me and my wife have a conversation, me and those type of relationships are reciprocal. I need something from you, you need something from me. We both have an expectation that if someone's feeling something, they're going to speak up. We, you know, with my wife we are talking about a vacation this summer. We're not, you know, I don't need to set down all the ground rules and lay out exactly what she has to know and understand before figuring out where we're going on vacation. Right, we, we can have that exploration conversation without any expectation that that person or me really should be doing something more than the other person.
Speaker 1:Right, it's kind of a reciprocal relationship where we are both working hard to really help, you know, connect and make sure we both understand what's going on with a customer as you and you have a history with this person where you've built a trust that, like you know, even if it gets dicey, we know we're going to come out on the other end. Be what we're gonna be fine yeah, and it's the with.
Speaker 2:In a friendship or a relationship uh, you know, a spouse, girlfriend, whatever it is there is an expectation of benefit of the doubt, right, and I think that that phrase transferred over with customers is I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt Cause I know me, cause I know me, and I did not mean to do that that way, I did not mean to screw that up, I did not mean to miss that. And for a customer, I am no different than the checkout person at Costco, like I'm no different. In their head, they're purchasing something from me and I owe them to be a top notch, 100% perfect service. In their head. Look like, what does that even mean? What is their expectations of that?
Speaker 2:And most guys get into these relationships with customers and start projects with zero definition of what they are actually purchasing, of what they're getting from me, what, what's the difference? Right, I don't start with you know, hey, james, I'm Clark, hey, you know, starting a friendship. And then, like, just so you know, what I need out of my friends is I need one call every two weeks, I need you to at least get a beer with me once a month, right, we don't do that with friendships, yeah, but that'd be nice sometimes, no, but if you, if you don't do that with a customer, then you're at fault and that seems not fair. Right, it's like that's. I mean they expected that.
Speaker 2:I mean I never told them that I'd do that. I never told them that I'd do that. I never said that I would do that. Why are they expecting that of me? So, changing it over? Looking at that, how do we set the table with a new client, with a customer? How are we building into avoiding issues throughout the job? What? How do we deescalate those issues and get to a spot right? What do you do, james?
Speaker 1:starting off a job, setting up a new relationship with the customer, to really start eliminating the future issues. Well, clark, the first thing that I would say is the first, uh, the first step in anything is acceptance. Okay, and then just you got to accept that this is the way it is. You're just going to get railroaded. Well, no, not even that, but you need to accept that it's your job to lay out the groundwork. Yeah, and you could.
Speaker 1:That could be like this is such bull that I have to be the one to do Just flip it. Yeah, I get to. This isn't my friend, necessarily. This isn't my girlfriend, this isn't my spouse. I need to let them know, because I'm the professional. I need to let them know how this goes, how I operate it might be different than other people and explain to them not only what the product they're going to get, but what is the process, what is the experience that you're intending to give them, so that, when, when an issue arises, cause an issue will arise that they know how you plan on dealing with that. Yeah, that's, that's important.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, and it's also setting up in the front end. You know our our three core values are communicate, advocate, lead and the more you can show them, you're their advocate and I am your representative and I'm here for you with the knowledge that I have in this industry whether I'm a painter contractor, hvac tech my knowledge you're hiring me for is that I'm here to protect you with my knowledge. Let's get this done together and let me come in and be an advisor on getting this done for you Right and setting that up. They know I'm not perfect and talking about that, but really laying it out to where. Hey, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to go above and beyond. I'm going to try to figure this stuff out for you. I'm going to do my best to put this together and have you a part of all the behind the scenes you can see behind the curtain as to how we're doing it and really inviting them into that process, but also allowing them to know where you stand in that process, right, the conversations that we have like on a on a side estimate when I'm walking through a side estimate with a customer, I'm laying out to them this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2:Here's where I might not have answers right. Here's where I don't know. I'm going to have to get my HVAC technician involved before I can even give you a number on that. I don't. I don't know how much it costs to. If we want to change over this thing, yeah Right. And starting to lay out, when I try to act like I have all the numbers and I know everything, that's where the customer's like okay, so he knows everything. Well, why is that wrong? And then you start building. You know you've got a bucket of trust when you start any relationship with a client and the more you spill out, the more that that trust gets out of the bucket. You're not refilling it. And so how do we, from day one of the first interaction with them, keep all that trust in the bucket as long as possible?
Speaker 1:I know how you can refill some trust, how, um you, uh, you stage an abduction of, like their pet, okay, and then you get their pet back. We did this like three years ago. Yeah, uh, the pet died, which was a bad it was really embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Uh no, so it's tough to rebuild. I mean, you on like one thing we've talked about in past podcasts, you got money and reputation and you usually got to burn one to get the other in any sort of conflict. The goal is to have both those at the end of every job. But if I'm losing reputation because they're not trusting me, I've got to burn money to prove it. Or if I can't burn money and I need to protect money, I'm going to lose my reputation Like sorry, we're going to screw you on this thing, as in your opinion. Yeah, and so I think that's kind of the mindset of how do we preemptively set the table with the customer to where we protect both of those things throughout it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, Well, I've got a great example for that, yeah, please. Well, initially, though, the the way that we set the table. The CEA is where we lay out, kind of our client engagement agreement. Client engagement agreement. This is how we are going to operate, just so you know. But we're in a we've, we've resolved this now.
Speaker 1:But there was an issue with a flooring job out in Texas, and you know the client it was really nice house. There was a lot of of different aspects of the project, but the primary thing was the flooring and, uh, they, they had changed a lot of paint colors. They, you know, we'd paint the house, the interior of a room and the ah, different like two or three times, and they were paying for it. They were fine, paying that cost, um, but the flooring was one of those. You know, it was natural flooring and every, every board was had a different grain, some different coloring, and they wanted to have more uniformity, but that that wasn't a hundred percent possible, and we talked through that and the materials they picked, right, yeah, um, and so we finished the project and six months later, we're getting a call about the flooring.
Speaker 1:Uh, warranty issue on the floor. At first blush, it looks like they want the floor to be uniform color, which is impossible, which we talked about initially, um, and that that was the primary issue, and every picture they would send it was very vague as to what they were actually talking about. You know, and I'm in Georgia, I got to get to Texas to actually see this for myself, um, and so eventually I get there and, uh, I'm on and I'm fully prepared to be like well, and we had a project manager on site.
Speaker 2:Yes, lives there, but he kind of exhausted there.
Speaker 1:We want to talk to somebody else yeah, yeah, um, and so the full, the full trip there I'm planning on. You know I I know how I feel about this. You know you guys have been very nitpicky thus far and now this is six months after the fact and you're complaining about something that we've prepared you for and you want me to pay, you know five grand just out of my pocket just to fix it. You know, hands down, I'm like that. There's no way I'm doing that.
Speaker 1:No, I get on site and I see there's, there's tape, there's tape marks on the ground where you know maybe they hadn't finished the floors yet, but they put tape paper down just to protect it and they didn't do a finished sand before they finished the floors, and so there is obviously tape lines that have collected dirt and now they're at the point where you kind of you need to sand it again to get, you know, light sanding albeit, but you're not going to just sand this one area and then stain it. It's not going to look right. So all of the things that they were complaining about and some of them weren't even on our scope, as I'm walking through with them and they're pointing things out and they're like we just don't like this, we don't like this. I'm not engaging with any of it because I'm like that's not on the scope, let's not talk about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we get to the flooring part and I'm like this is on us. It doesn't matter what all this other stuff is. They're asking for a certain amount of money. I think that, based on what I'm seeing, where our issue is that we owe them that money, yeah, so I ended, I went into it with the thought that I'm going to I'm going to stick my foot in this. I'm going to this is the wall. I'm not letting you take money from us just because you know you got a lot of money and you can push me around. I'm like no, this part's right.
Speaker 2:The other 90 is wrong, but this 10 satisfies the need to pay them their money yeah, right where when previously in the old days it would be an argument about the first 90 that was.
Speaker 1:That's their fault but this and this and you, uh, you've been so nitpicky about all this stuff. You changed your mind about all this stuff, did you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:you, you were the problem of this and you did like escalating the issues because you're, you're right, you're justified in that argument. And if it was a friend relationship, I'm like, hey, man, come on, this isn't real. Like what are you doing about? But when, when we change the mindset of I'm working the front desk as a hotel, and so, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, what do you need? How do you negotiate?
Speaker 1:And now this doesn't mean that you go in there. You know, spineless, a eunuch. You know I'm I'm sitting in there with with the guy and I'm like, listen, we're not like this massive company. You know Austin's a small part of of what we're doing and so this isn't like you know, this massive company that you're like I want $5,000. Like sure, it's not worth the trip. Here you go.
Speaker 1:I'm like that's not how we are Like this is that's a, that's a chunk of cash, that's straight profit. So I'm not just going to stroke a check for you right now and honestly and I'm I'm kind of posturing I want him to know that this is not an easy call for me so that he doesn't try and get more out of me, honestly. But I'm like I'm not just going to sit here and stroke a check for you and honestly, if we end up to the point where I think we owe you money, I'm going to ask you if we can break this out into payments, because I don't want to hurt cash flow. I was just very honest with him about this scenario. End of the day.
Speaker 2:Well and the less, not that you're lying about not having the cash, but the less of a target you are. If it's like, hey, can I make payments on this. It's like, oh these guys. I'm not going to hire a lawyer and go after these guys because they don't even have money for a yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think that's great. So I wanted to make sure that he knew that I wasn't um I. I think he was under the impression that there was more. You know, there was more room to negotiate there, and I just wanted to make it clear like I'm having a hard time with what you want already. So, uh, end of the day, uh, I finished the trip, got, got back to Georgia, ended up writing him an email, you know, a few days later, and just kind of laid out.
Speaker 1:I didn't blame them at all, I just said, based on what I saw, I think that what you're asking for is reasonable and reasonable. I want to make two payments to you blah, blah, blah and whatever the response, I think, to your point saved our name. We lost some money, but it saved the name and they were really appreciative. They really were appreciative that I came out there. They were really appreciative that we spent the time walking through. We even brought another flooring guy out there to give us another opinion, and so, at the end of the day, we lost the money.
Speaker 1:They probably won't use us again, at least for flooring, but they were really happy with other aspects of the project, and so when they're in conversation with one of their friends about the project. They might be like I wouldn't use them for painting, but they did X, y and Z really well. So if that's what your project is, it's a good. It's a good team to use. Yeah, if I had stuck my, you know, if I had drawn the line in the sand and said this we're not doing it, there's no way that they would have done that, and on top of that they would have probably tore us up on Google.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of this. I think the number one thing on a rewalk on a job that you think you're done and there's issues, is I want you acting like a lawyer. I don't want you to be a defendant, I want you to be a lawyer and so you're going in to understand both sides, because I can argue against the side once I understand where they're coming from, right, and so if I sit there and listen, if you show up as a defendant and you're just doing nothing but defending, you're just trying to get out of paying me. You're just trying to get out of paying me, you're just trying to get out of this, right, and it's the whole the conflict us versus you that they start feeling when you argue, the first nine and the last one comes along, yeah, and the floor is like well, maybe that's a little bit, well, maybe all of it's a little bit than James, right, and so there's there's so much wisdom in approaching of like, let me walk it, let me take a look, let me understand, let me take notes. And then I'm not arguing much.
Speaker 2:I might be dropping little tidbits like okay, did we do we paint that area? Okay, we didn't. Okay, cool, and I'm gonna take notes. But I'm at, it's nothing but curiosity on that walk, it's nothing. But hey, help me, I thought didn't we talk about you were doing x, y and z yourself. Yep, okay, cool, I just just keep going. Right, we're not. We're not calling them out, we're just kind of dropping those question marks around the property and then you go back and say, okay, listen, they're legit. On this, my flooring guy should have done a top sand before doing the, the, the final poly on it, whatever. That being said, you can go back to your flooring vendor. Hey, let's split this. You should have done this like you pulled the tape up and you didn't top, saying like we needed a little bit of sanding. That should have been done.
Speaker 1:that's part of your, your and that's and that's what we're doing we're splitting it with the vendor so.
Speaker 2:So you, you go back and say that so now it's only 2,500 bucks out of pocket on a, on a, on a decent sized job. Yeah, that's not a problem. But that being said, going to them, being a lawyer and being, you know, a third party viewer of it, you also have to view your flaws right. You also have to be like, yeah, we could have, we could have done that. Now we also talk a lot about you. You get, you can't do this on every single job. You can't cut five grand at the end of every single job back to the customer. You need to make sure 19 of your 20 jobs run well and you're well organized, with the right crews doing it to where. The one time you got five grand to throw at it, yeah. And if you don't have that small amount of error on the jobs, you don't have enough availability to throw cash to fix things. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And I think that's that's where guys get in. Trouble is because of the disorganization, because of the lack of processes, the lack of the client engagement agreement conversation, the lack of laying out who's covering what, not using, like our software that has the work order to the crews, the same verbiage as the estimate to the homeowner. Having stuff like that that protects the money, allows you to end a job to where, 19 times out of 20, I'm not having to cut any money back or give discounts and then the one time that happens, that's absurd. That's not my problem. This is a person that I want to impress, though. You know what? Here's your five grand. That's great. I probably could have negotiated down to $2,500, $3,000. But let's make them happy, let's make them whole. We haven't.
Speaker 1:You know it's been 20 jobs since we've had to lose money on a job, yeah, and and getting back into like the actual physical act of like being there and walking through that situation. Yeah, I think every time that I've been involved in that, the client has been, uh, really disparaging about that crew. Yeah, yeah, that crew is these guys had no skill, these guys were just slapping one of them smelled like smoke yeah, and those are the scenarios where I get real hot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's taken a long time for me to be able to, like, um, deal with that in a good way. Yeah, but uh, my, my thing that I do to help myself get in the mindset is I literally asked the client can I be candid? And they always say yes, and uh, I say it's hard to hear that because I've never had an issue with this crew before. I'm not saying that, that this didn't happen. I'm looking at the cabinets and I'm looking at the paint drips, like that's obviously a problem. I get that. I know that they have skill. I know that they're not just throwing paint on the wall.
Speaker 1:This was a miss, obviously, yeah, but these guys are not. You know, joe, blow off the street. We use these guys all the time. You know that. You know, in Austin we've been in business for two years, years. I've never had an issue with this paint crew before. And you're telling me they have no skill. I don't agree with that, but I see that this is an issue, yeah, yeah. So I'm agreeing with him, but I'm also taking up for my crew and the main point is I am not going to give him. I'm not going to let him think that I brought a vagabond into it. Well, that's, that's a double that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a double, that's a that's a two birds with one stone, because not only are you defending your crew and diffusing the guy, you're also letting them know like, uh, your experience is 100% of this painter's job sucks. My experience is one out of a hundred. He's 99% perfect and maybe he had a bad week last week. Yeah Right, and I wanted to let you know, like I didn't just hire this guy off the street outside of a home Depot to come paint your house. Like I'm sorry that you're the 1%, that that went sideways, but we're here to fix it. That's why I'm standing here. I'm here to fix that. I think you're. You're so right. I've, when I've gotten hot with customers, I remember one specifically back. Juan was one of my main crews and I remember someone specifically being like that guy's just not all there. And and I remember being like you're not all there.
Speaker 1:You're not all there, my guy yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like like that was the first reaction, but it's like, it's, it's okay, like when you feel and now go to therapy for this, but when you start feeling those feelings, you just say it out loud, like, hey, I just want to let you know, like Juan's a good dude I name a feeling I'm feeling a little angry, I'm feeling murdery literally out loud is hey, listen, I know that that's your experience right now from this situation, but I've known Juan for 12 years and he's a very intelligent guy, right, and so I'm sorry that you've experienced that and a great hugger you should feel his hugs. No, but, but literally, like I understand that's your experience. But to be told, like, like you said, if I could be totally honest with you by saying that that gets like that starts my anger boiling, cause you don't know him. Yeah, right, you're talking about my guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And as soon as you say that something like you're right.
Speaker 1:You're right they back off. They do because they they're hot and they're talking themselves up. They've been living in the house and seeing the deficiencies and they start talking about it. And I connect with that because when I start talking about stuff, I get hyped up and then having somebody be honest and bring it back down to reality, it's like you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes from Juan was the problem that caused my life issue to oh, he's a person and we've all liked that, and so it's okay to say that Now don't go and attack the person Like you're an idiot. No, why, it's like you're the more right, which is where a lot of guys go. But the truth of it is like you just call it out, you're like, hey, that's honestly like I'm getting a little angry because you don't know him and that that's not okay to say about my guy, right, and so it's a, it's a de-escalation in the moment. But you need to be the lawyer, you need to be a third party, assessor of both sides and who's at fault on each situation. And I'm usually only going to talk about the stuff I'm at fault at and not even talk about the pain issue that they had, that we didn't even go in that room. Yeah, right, and normally they won't even go back to it.
Speaker 2:You say, listen, I'm let's talk about. You know, after assessing this, I think we should have stand to those floors and so I'm going to go ahead, we're going to give you that $5,000 back. I, I, you know, I would rather not, I'd rather do X, y and Z, but if that's what you prefer, we're going to do that for you. And they say well, what about all this stuff? Well, you know, I don't feel like the other stuff's within our scope. If you see anywhere on our scope where we were called out to do that stuff and we were supposed to do this, and it wasn but really assessing everything we talked about, the only thing that I see that I should be responsible for is this. Now, if you think it's more, that's okay. We can have disagreements on what should and shouldn't be covered.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying for is the 10 things that you listed. I'm willing to give you five grand to just be done and be happy with what it is. Now, if you think you deserve three for the floors and two for the other stuff, I don't care. I'm giving you five grand, but either way, that's the most that I feel like that is fair for us to give back, right. And at that point, if they're like, no, you owe me seven grand, I'm sorry, five's all we can do and I'm just going to stick there. And at that point it's like okay, then it's zero until we come to a conclusion at five Right, like that's, that's where we're at Right, and so I think that's the conversation. I guess we're going to small claims, I guess we're going to hunt, we're going to court, but that's that's kind of the conclusion.
Speaker 2:When we're having relationship issues post-job, let's talk about. Mid-job, let's talk about, I think, the example that we talked about with your customers moving from overseas and you've been managing them. I think this is a really good example of what really happens how we lose control of a project. So why don't you lay out that scenario and then we'll kind of backtrack and talk about what should have been done differently and how you're getting back on track with it.
Speaker 1:So this is a large project and we're working with a designer that we've worked with before, so we're excited about that and it's going to be a beautiful project. So the whole, the whole. And before they moved overseas, we were about to do a project for them and then they decided to move. So they're coming back. We already have a relationship with them, um, and so it was all kind of like oh, this is great, we're we're moving in the right direction, and then they come with when can you get it done?
Speaker 1:We'd like it to be done by X and, based on the scope of the project, we're like that's going to be tight and we at this point, there wasn't anything we were doing that was going to require permits as the job starts unfolding. So just a renovation, basic renovation. And we tell her this we typically do a due diligence where we get everything dialed in before blah, blah. But you're wanting to be in by this day, and the only way that we can do that is if we get like we need to get demo started, we need to order the flooring, we need to get the meps in here, like we need to get things going immediately, and so we were willing at that point to put the, the, the process, to the side a little bit. You know we're, you know me and David are still operating as if it were a normal project, but because of the scenario, we weren't able to get through all of due diligence. So the, the scope is changing wildly as we're going down the road.
Speaker 2:Now there's there's structural things involved now, what's funny is what you're explaining is how 95% of contractors that come into coaching startup it's I got, I landed a job, we got some numbers. Let's get started with the job and we'll figure it out on the way there somewhere in the job. And why we try to push so hard the proactive processes and everything that we lay out is is what, where the story's going. Yeah, but, that being said, when james is talking about our pre-con, our due diligence period, and we pick everything out first, we we say this and it's not just just lip service we do 80 of the work before we swing the first hammer. We do 80 of the work lining up all of our trades, getting every dollar spent perfectly to where all the change orders that could happen. We eliminate any possibility outside of stuff that we didn't know about, that that we don't have the ability to know about yet. Uh, and we pick out selections I want to know what cabinets, what paint colors, what flooring, all of that picked out before we start. Where clients are like I don't need that for two months, that's great. I do need it, like in two months, if we, if we figure out something that we need to move a wall, that wall might be holding up the roof and we can change that before we start, but down the road we can't change it without spending a ton of money. And so if you spend the time the extra week and a half, two weeks before starting a project, following her processes to get it all set up and squared away project following her processes to get it all set up and squared away, then when you start it just runs smoothly and you get everything knocked out and any sort of conflict that would have happened. You're you're really knocking the legs out from underneath it ahead of time, cause it's like hey, just so you know, we're looking at this. It looks like we're going to need to add a septic tank, so that's going to be a $15,000 change order. Where should we change the budget to be able to afford that? Yeah Right. And once you start the job, you can't change the budget. You can't make the square footage smaller, you can't remove the bathroom to save money, and now you're just screwing your customer because they've got to come out of pocket for all this stuff. Yeah Right. And so that's what James talking about.
Speaker 2:When you're talking about pre-construction, normally by the time we break ground we have the first labor show up on site. James has every detail spelled out on the estimate, or David does our project manager of. We have our selections workbook with every paint color selected, with every finish selected, with every toilet selected. We need skews on everything. All that is done so that that point kickback. Relax. I'll let you know, homeowner, when we need you, but we're going to do this whole job for you, right? So that's kind of preemptively to your story how we like to set it up. But this time they said we don't have the two weeks to burn ahead of time to get this set up. If we're if to get you guys into the house by the end of this job.
Speaker 1:So If to get you guys into the house by the end of this job. So we, we, we put a precaution in there for ourselves. Where we broke out, you know, we took the job and we broke out a portion of it and said, okay, we're going to do two phases, then we'll do due diligence demo. There's some sheetrock prep in there, um, you know, some way to delineate where we're at and what's ahead of us, but that as the project continues to unfold, that keeps getting more and more murky, mainly because of the cabinetry. So at this point we've had, you know, five, six different iterations of cabinet layouts. Who's going to do what? And at this point now it's like we've got our main cabinet guy doing the kitchen. We might do Ikea and the laundry. We're going to have a handyman finish the left side of the laundry, and then we're doing something completely different in the bathroom, and so it's all over the place and it's not nailed down yet.
Speaker 1:And the cabinet guy is getting, you know, chirped at from me, david, the designer, and the homeowner. Sometimes the homeowner is not talking to the cabinet guy, which is good, but it's been get. It was getting so, uh, convoluted. And then the other day I'm talking with david. I'm like we got to get this back under control.
Speaker 1:Man, the cabinet guy, I can tell is frustrated. I don't want to lose like. He's at the point where I feel like he might even be like I'm just out of this and so I'm like we can't have that happen because his finish is going to be so great. And me, david, the designer, we're all like we pushing this guy because we know what his, what his product's going to look like. And on top of that, he's custom cabinetry and the closest bid from like a semi-custom cabinetry is more than his bid. And so we're telling the client this and she's like it's just too much to pay for cabins. Like, yeah, it's, it's more, it's cheaper options, more expensive. Yes, so outside of all that it is. It was my. I could feel my frustration growing towards the client.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also the clients in Europe. So you are 12 hours difference in 10 hours difference to where it's like. I get one email a day, I respond. I'm not going to get a response till tomorrow night.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you might get one email, but there's also, uh, there's like five text threads going on. Some people are part of it. It's it's gotten out of control because we're trying to go fast. It's all reactive and instead, and instead of building their understanding of how are we going to communicate, david and I are trying to put the pieces together so that we can get the place now where it's like it doesn't matter where we're at If the cabinets are decided, if this is nailed down.
Speaker 1:We need to pause, pull back, have an honest conversation with this. We're not in a bad spot, but we need to stop how we're communicating because he's confused, he's confused. I'm not on 30% of those emails, david's not on 30% of those emails. So you have there's not a, there's no continuity in communication, and that has to end, that has to die. So I feel my frustration growing with the client and, as I'm talking with David, I'm like this is us, this is on us. Yeah, we accepted the job because we saw, we saw the dollar signs and it's going to be a great job. Yeah, we're. I don't think we're in danger of this job going south. I want to preserve the experience. So much so, because I feel like it's going to be a great project, yeah, and so every conversation I'm having I'm like timeline with a timeline, like we cannot. We're not going to hit this timeline at this point and I just keep harping on that, like hoping that we can, uh, hoping that we can get still actually make that timeline.
Speaker 2:And no matter how much you point out the customers messing up the timeline, it's still it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, it's still going to be in their head like you didn't get the job done.
Speaker 1:James, I promise you. I promise you timeline will come up and I will need to remind her multiple times about I totally get it. I wish we were done too. Look at this email March 21st. Do you remember that it took us five weeks to land the cabinetry when we had it's? The frustrating thing is, five weeks ago we could have had this landed and we'd really. It's not changed. We're back to yeah, pretty much what it was. Yeah, and it's gonna go forward like that and it when we were telling her five weeks ago, this is the guy to go with. No, it's gonna look great, it's gonna be, it's gonna match everything of the day we made a decision. We decided to go against our processes to land, to land the job, to make sure that we just got it going and it made sense at the time. I'd I'd go back and redo it the same way, except I would have spent probably three hours at myself just figuring out okay, what are the new parameters up to this point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and maybe even setting some drop dead dates, like if cabinets aren't picked out by next Friday, your timeline slipping. Yeah, right, and preemptively telling the customer you might be changing your mind, but if you change your mind you're moving your timeline. I'm going to put that in writing so we have that in writing in the future when you're blaming me. Yeah, but I think that's a couple of things with that, one being the amount of tension for you and the customer on job running. Like that is how most guys live, and if you go back a few episodes to our burnout conversation and where we talk about you know people who are burning out and contractors are burning out, it's because they're living in that tension on four or five, six jobs at a time where it's nothing. But I'm just gotta.
Speaker 2:There's so many fires burning right and the goal of our processes and procedures and everything pro struck does is if we can lay it all out and eliminate 90 of the fires you got capacity to deal with 10%. It's the guys running that are dealing with 100% right, and so you've got things so smooth in the processes in the different cities that when that happens, when you feel that fire sneaking up of reactive instead of proactive. It's just so. It's sandpaper. It's like this isn't how things run, this is how we do things, and it's so frustrating because it's like this is you live there, you're getting burnt out, you're just getting so frustrated. So you know the call that comes in the text message at nine 30 at night. They're like oh crap, I gotta get on my computer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I gotta sit down and get out of bed and go do this right, and it's hard, it's hard to to stay consistent with your, with your boundaries in those situations, but it's important to because, like, even still, she'll text late at night because she's in ireland, yeah, or wherever. Uh, she'll text late at night and it'll be like I could answer that because I'm sitting here on the couch. But I don't want to set that precedent and I'm going to and one answer is going to get four more questions, right, and like I don't want to commit to that, like if I knew it was, just if I could say, nope, that's tomorrow, great, I know it's going to be followed up, and so I have to reserve that because I will resent her If, six weeks down the road, she still texting me at night. But it's my fault because I allowed her to break that boundary and that's on me.
Speaker 2:Yeah where, where. If I asked a customer in the middle of this, when all that was happening before you all getting a grip on it, one to ten on happiness, where do you think they would have been at? Uh?
Speaker 1:probably 10, honestly, the whole time. I I think I think she is uh very happy. Still I think that the timeline is going to become a problem when it becomes a problem, yeah, and so we're just going to keep making sure that that's understood, like where we're at, very clearly, and have that in writing so that we can point back to it and all that. But I think she sees how much is changing. I think she sees how hard we're working, yeah, and she's she's not, she's nice and she's like a reasonable person and she's direct.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a lot of times they don't give you that credit. A lot of times it's not that way to where they're not reasonable or they don't feel reasonable because all they see is their need and how much you're putting them out. And I think that that goes back to the relational stuff where we started this of. Even in all of this identifying, it's our fault for saying yes to start this before we had all of this organized. Yeah, it's not the client's problem that that you guys are out of control of this job. Um, well, I wouldn't say that the, the, the customer, is in charge of whatever you set them to be in charge, right, the, the cea. This is what I expect out of you. This is what you should expect out of me. That's the only thing you can hold them accountable to, because I set down what they are and are not going to do. I need you to pick out your materials and your finishes by this date. Well, if you don't have a date and don't have, don't hold them to it. That's on you, even though they didn't do it Right. And so I think that's something that when we're looking at that relationship, it is a constant. I don't care what's fair At the end of the day, I'm the professional, I'm running this job, I need to be in charge of it and everything lands at my feet. There's not. Well, the crew didn't show up, this didn't happen, that didn't happen. Well, it rained, so I can't. Those are reasons, but those aren't excuses. And so you know sticking with.
Speaker 2:How do I deal with this person? Differently and understanding and I've said this on probably every podcast. But we aren't selling the renovation, we're selling the customer's experience of receiving it and understanding. Spending those three hours to organize so the customer can understand what you need from them is your job. Your job's not. Well, they know that they need to get me the cabinets. Well, your job is to get the cabinet order from them and to set those. Hey, can you get that picked out by Tuesday? If not by Tuesday, your timeline is going to slip. Which one do you want? Do you want to spend time figuring out your cabinets or do you want to push the timeline a little bit? Your job is to bring that to them, even though they're dragging their feet.
Speaker 2:Now, this person wasn't, but if your customer is dragging their feet on a decision, it's still your problem because you need to. You're going to get blamed for that timeline shift Unless you say in writing hey, if this isn't chosen by Thursday, we are going to lose our timeline. This is going to be slipping. Now you've got to be organized enough to be able to look at your timeline and say that, right, if you have all that stuff organized, you can look at it and say that then the customer now has a decision to make. Am I going to get you that stuff organized? You can look at it and say that then the customer now has a decision to make. Am I going to get you that stuff by thursday or is it going to slip in on thursday afternoon at four o'clock? I'm sending an email, hey, just so you know.
Speaker 2:Still waiting on those cabinet selections? Uh, it looks like, if you know, we're going to have to push this trade and this, this, whatever's going to happen, down the down the domino effect. So it looks like we lost about a week on this job. Yeah, wait, you lost a week. I'll get it to you by in the morning. I understand that, but, like we talked about, we lost a week.
Speaker 1:Listen don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't go down this road, or dogs dead the dog's dead.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, again, it's it's. I think that I think it's it's the proactive. I've got my processes. I will operate outside of my processes, but probably in hindsight, we should have had a little bit more front end. This is deadlines. This is when this is what happens, if type conversations to where they know that this is the expectations that we have and this is what you're choosing not what I'm causing, but what you're choosing by not giving me that information. Yeah, cool, all right. Well, thank you so much for listening this week and we will talk to you next week. Is that quick? Was that too quick? No, all right, you want to do it. You can do the outro.
Speaker 1:Hey, hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us, and this is NPR. Goodbye, bye, bye, bye, bye you.
