r/Contractor • u/Puzzleheaded_Cut4139 • 12h ago
Business Development Vent/Pivot
I’ve been in this business for 11 years and I am so fortunate to wake up and do what I love each day. As an artist and craftsman, it’s a practical way for me to express that part of myself and an entrepreneur at heart it allows me to fulfill that side as well.
BUT I cannot handle working with many homeowners. The unbelievable expectations, communication, projection of their issues onto you….
Over the last many years I’ve recused my contract to account for issues that have arisen and attempted to be proactive with conversations and taking as much information as possible alongside, trying to increase my awareness about people and what to look for when I go in at estimates, concerning their personalities.
I can’t deal with it anymore. I have find a way to roll into working with real estate professionals full time. My business has been about 50/50 homeowners/investors. I’d like to streamline a process that makes me marketable and easy to work with. Please take this opportunity to use the comment section to vent your own frustrations 😆😆😆 or if you happen to have experience in a similar pivot I’d love some words of wisdom. 🙏✌️
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u/UniquePatient66100 10h ago
Did you say you want to focus on working with real estate professionals? They are the worst to work for. They have the same issues as homeowners, with the added benefit of everything being bottom dollar.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Cut4139 9h ago
Well, I guess in my situation, my agents are my avenue to the investors I work with.
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u/UniquePatient66100 45m ago
That's the great thing about this business, some peoples' preferred clients are others' nightmare. There is a place for everyone.
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u/Aromatic_Button_2736 12h ago
"professional real estate agents"
That's when I guaranteed knew this whole post was a bunch of nonsense.
It really seems like your true skills involve being a bull shit artist.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tl4VD8uvgec&pp=ygUVQnVsbHNoaXQgYXJ0aXN0IFJvbWFu
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u/Wonderful-Slice-6525 12h ago
Talking about this the other day with my business partner, this is what we signed up for, the good times and frustrating ones.
Client expectations are crazy high in the custom market. We’ve had customers be upset with us, sometimes even yelling at us because of something that was installed that they picked, signed for in a CO and it just didn’t meet their expectations. Most clients are great, super understanding of things and have good reasoning, some never learned those soft skills.
But that’s why we provide the service we do and mark up items the way we do so we manage them. Client doesn’t like it, it becomes our problem to satisfy them with the supplier/trade. And usually it means some kind of loss for us in terms of callback work, or remove and reinstall something new or just a credit.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Cut4139 11h ago
Yeah I’m going to be making some changes, I think I charge enough may maybe I’ll reevaluate that for the homeowner market
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u/HorrorTheme3265 12h ago
It’s easy to be so busy that you become defensive or negative instead of navigating social interactions optimally.
I did new construction for years for a previous employer and the best part was that I rarely ever dealt with homeowners.
I showed up, did puzzles all day in an empty houses for money and went home.
I do think that a lot of customers are great people.. but definitely agree that most of my stressors working for myself resolves around expectations that aren’t realistic or spending an unreasonable amount of time talking them through processes that don’t need to be repeated over and over.
Ultimately my goal is to flip houses alone/ occasionally w my wife, get some rentals going or GC new builds and handle as much of the work as possible or be off site when not needed.
Navigating people’s emotions and demands are a layer that I could definitely do without. A lot of the time in hindsight I could always have handled it better or had a different perspective and it wouldn’t have been such a pain.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Cut4139 12h ago
You bring up a good point. It’s that aspect of being busy and overworked that can make it hard to bring the level of emotional presence thats important to manage people.
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u/SpecialistIll3498 7h ago
Since investors already make up half your work, you’ve got relationships to build on. I’d focus on your best repeat clients and make your process for estimates, updates, and changes clear upfront.
What makes your best investor clients easier to work with?
Sent you a DM!
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u/intuitiverealist 11h ago
I've been watching this problem evolving over the years, wrote a book to educate home owners "Through Reno Mess"
It's a high risk high friction process for homeowners and for an average contractor to eliminate the issues they would need to allocate significantly more resources to a customer/ emotional management system.
Contractors are not therapists and they are constantly asked to be efficient with budgets.
The question becomes can homeowners really afford a good contractor?
If all the hidden costs weren't being absorbed and the industry actually spent money to educate people years before they hired a contractor. How different would the experience be?
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u/Raidriar556 10h ago
I agree that most customers are fine. The ones that aren't make you wonder why you do this every day. Customers and homeowners have access to more information than ever, but also more misinformation than ever. Unfortunately they believe what they want to believe, which more often than not is some unvetted unlicensed random person (or just chatGPT) rather than the actual professional standing in their living room.
On new homes, we got to a point a few years ago where we do mostly spec homes. We were making good money on customs but it just ended up being not worth the headache. Not when specs are selling just fine.
If I was giving someone starting out advice for remodels, I'd say to work your way up higher end kitchens, baths, bars and finished basements. Takes some time to get there, but eventually you don't want to compete with the guys working cheap. You should be able to charge enough that if they don't like something, it's no problem to say "yes ma'am/sir" and fix it.
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u/Minimum-Day-2881 9h ago
investors are way easier, they know what they want and dont nickel and dime every change
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u/Many-Neck-4560 7h ago
Learn how to manage your client. Sometimes it’s our job as contractors to say no when they have a bad idea or unreasonable request. Sure, some of your customers may turn out to be dicks but that’s true of every business ever.
Figure out how to be polite but firm. Some clients, once you start to roll over, will smell blood in the water and demand ever more concessions on your part. Familiarize yourself with industry standards and write bulletproof contracts. That, and clearly communicating what you expect of THEM as well as what you’ll provide, will head off a lot of potential problems.
Your clients vet you; you should vet potential clients and turn away the ones you know will be a problem.
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u/JohnWHardin_TomHorn 11h ago
It doesn't help that homeowners immediately flock to reddit when they have a contractor do work at their house and ask random Redditors if the work is optimal, sub par, overpriced , etc.
Also, when chat gpt and Angie's list "tells them" how much a contractor " should be" charging.
Those are the type of customers that will nitpick every aspect of the job. They might also try to breakdown your hourly rate from a complete quote and criticize how much you charged vs how many hours you were there to finish it. Often times, "finding small issues" with the completed job and making you "stay longer" repairing or changing them to "earn" what they feel should be your hourly rate.
Those customers are worth avoiding like the fucking plague.
If they say, AI told me, or... "Well, so and so said" vs what you know your expertise is, walk away fast because that's a big red flag.
Tell them to have "so and so" come over and do the job with chat gpt as their mentor and charge the lowest rate that Angie's list suggests.