Home Design That Solves Problems (ft. Peter Ranney)

00;00;07;00 – 00;00;29;17
Logan
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser and today I’m joined by Peter Ranney who is one of the founders and managing partners of Ranney Blair Weidmann. Peter and I, we’ve worked together for two and a half years at this point. They have their stuff super dialed in.

00;00;29;17 – 00;00;33;28
Logan
And today we’re talking all about, their design, but really their, their.

00;00;33;28 – 00;00;34;24
Peter
Pre-Construction.

00;00;34;24 – 00;00;54;11
Logan
Process. Peter, you know, like, I know you guys have worked a lot on it. We’ll talk through it and stuff, but I know you sent over like a pretty it’s a 100 page doc that you basically walk prospects through. It says, this is everything that we go through on RBW. And I know when I showed this to my team, they watch it and at the end of it I was like, what do you guys think?

00;00;54;11 – 00;01;15;27
Logan
Like, how would you feel about RBW? And everybody was like, oh, we would trust them instantly. So it’s a super well thought out doc. So, today’s all about that doc. So let’s do this. Let’s jump into, the doctor. Yeah, 100 pages. So it’s pretty in-depth. It’s very well thought out. Did you start the business in day one?

00;01;15;27 – 00;01;22;16
Logan
You said, let’s do a very lengthy preconstruction doc, or how did that all come to be?

00;01;22;18 – 00;01;38;00
Peter
Not day one. Day one was how can we get our first check? And, actually, remember we drove away from our first job like 5000 bucks. We got the check and start looking at you’re like, oh my gosh, we did it. Someone gave us money to come on our house and do project. So certainly didn’t start like that.

00;01;38;00 – 00;02;00;10
Peter
Transitioned over the years. Yeah. And early on it’s like just trying to build a business, build the brand, figure out who we are, who we want to be, how to even, you know, kind of pay for everything, so to speak, out of price, jobs, all that kind of the foundational pieces of any business, really. And assemble that together, you know, got systems got got at the time builder trend now job red which is much better.

00;02;00;12 – 00;02;23;26
Peter
But you know just kind of some of that together and really through the years, designers were kind of feeding us work and the transition for us ultimately Design Build came about where we found frustration for a client from a client experience perspective because we were the, you know, the contractors, the designers of bringing their people, their countertop guy, their plumber, etc. pick the trade.

00;02;23;28 – 00;02;48;12
Peter
And we were kind of stuck in the middle. And the client, ultimately we felt like did not get the best possible experience because there really wasn’t one person in charge. And so we transitioned then to a design build, kind of another learning curve. We’re just like, oh, we design, build. That’s a whole thing, right? How do we how do you be design known, how to build value for your prospects to say, please hire us and give us a bunch of money more than other people?

00;02;48;15 – 00;03;11;08
Peter
Are charging because we’re doing something different. And so that took some years of iterating. And, Dan Weidmann, who came on board with us about two years ago, he I’ve been in business for about 30 years, been a design build for a long time. And the experience and the like, the way that he approached design and pre-construction in general, was a whole different thing than we’d ever seen before.

00;03;11;10 – 00;03;24;17
Peter
And I’m sure we’ll get more into the details of it here. But that really transition kind of where we are today of this, you’re describing as a 100 page document, of how we would go through our approach with our clients. Well, when you.

00;03;24;17 – 00;03;45;10
Logan
First started and you had like an interior designer, basically creating a design and then referring you out and you said, like, nobody was really in charge, I guess what was was there, just like they were designing things that were not realistic was it? It was a design. And they were like, this should cost 80 grand. And you’re like, hey, just the materials are 80 grand.

00;03;45;10 – 00;03;51;29
Logan
I guess what was what was happening that made it not be a great, scenario for the customer?

00;03;52;02 – 00;04;10;12
Peter
Well, there’s certainly aspects of things get design and they’re not achievable from a build perspective for a variety of reasons, price being one of them. But it really does seem to be because they were the they were the point of contact initially for the client. They were de facto in charge. Right. And so it’s kind of like, well, that was just kind of the weird thing.

00;04;10;12 – 00;04;29;18
Peter
And certainly I know other contractors should set up a good relationship with designers. We just never found that groove here. And there weren’t the Atlanta market, northern Atlanta market. There’s a lot of competition. There’s a lot of guys. So we found a hard time like how we prove our value to a client when we’re just part of the, you know, the bidding process.

00;04;29;18 – 00;04;50;01
Peter
We’re just another, you know, you know, think about for, you know, you store your resume to a, job or a company, right. Here’s another resume on the stack. And there wasn’t really a way for us to, like, provide just what we want, what we wanted for the client experience. It was less about like, oh, how do we you know, what’s what’s what’s the process for you?

00;04;50;01 – 00;05;09;03
Peter
Blair is more of the client is suffering, and it’s no one’s really fault per se, but it’s like, basically there’s no one in charge and the people should be in charge. Really? On the authority to be in charge. Says that was a frustration with Sean and frankly, we really got tired of building other people’s bad designs.

00;05;09;06 – 00;05;38;29
Logan
I know, like, so with my dad doing, like, you know, koi ponds and stuff like that every, every year, about one time he would have somebody call him up, say, hey, I’m working with the landscape designer, and part of what they built in was a koi pond. Can you come out? And then, like, my dad would go out and he would walk, you know, the on site consult with the homeowner, the landscape designer and him, and he would always walk away like, man, that person is just trying to prove their, their worth to the homeowner, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.

00;05;38;29 – 00;05;58;08
Logan
And I’m like, what do you mean? He’s like, you know, how you at the for our koi pond? For it to function and not be all green. You got to have plants and you got to do this, this and this. While the designer is telling the homeowner, hey, that’s going to mess up. You know, if we actually have to build in shelves within this pond, then that’s going to mess up the esthetic of the whole thing.

00;05;58;11 – 00;06;16;05
Logan
But but the landscape designer has no idea about is that without shelves, you can’t have plants. Without plants, the pond is going to turn green if you want fish. So it’s like stuff like that where, you know, it just I funny, I was grew up like having like a negative taste in my mouth just from what I heard.

00;06;16;09 – 00;06;41;16
Logan
But I also know that my dad is very rigid with like how things are to be done. And if somebody comes in like, he’s not, he’s not willing to play ball as much. So, I do know there I have we have clients that they work with, interior designer and it works out well, but it seems like it’s not like a hey, day one where yin and yang, it’s a lot of like, they have to kind of push through the frustrations and learning curves together.

00;06;41;16 – 00;06;57;16
Logan
And it sounds like with you guys, you really just said, screw it. We just want to control the process because ultimately we’re the ones who have to do it. We want to have way more say in what’s going to be built versus, you know, having somebody else’s tell us what to do.

00;06;57;19 – 00;07;16;02
Peter
And really work and work. And we’re, you know, we’ve transition’s on builders. Who’s the who’s the advocate for the client. Right. If that’s in work of a designer and the contractor and they’re they are both advocating on the client’s behalf, it can probably be, you know, more likely a successful scenario, but oftentimes it’s not right. There’s a lot of infighting.

00;07;16;02 – 00;07;32;14
Peter
It’s, you know, we’re being blamed for things. And it’s kind of like, maybe it is our fault, maybe it is our fault, but it’s we’re just in this battle the whole time. And that’s just again, we got we’re here for the client. We’re here to give them the best possible experience and and make sure that they get the end result that they’re looking for.

00;07;32;16 – 00;07;34;14
Peter
And when you guys.

00;07;34;17 – 00;07;56;28
Logan
Just decided, hey, we’re going to do this on ourselves, like, design is a different beast than the actual, like, production and like, I mean it, you know, we have like a website developer in our office who also a website designer and our office and their skill sets, they can they can do each other’s jobs, but their skill sets and their really like enthusiasm towards what they’re doing is very different.

00;07;56;28 – 00;08;13;21
Logan
One is all about like the user experience and the esthetics and the other ones like how can we build this thing out efficiently, effectively, where it’s not going to break. So like there there are different skill sets. When you guys jumped into like I was going to do design as well, what was that like for you guys?

00;08;13;24 – 00;08;34;18
Peter
Well, definitely is transition, right? Because where you’re trying to figure out what this model even looks like, we had a lot of peers in the industry that were, you know, we’re looking at as kind of, you know, to guidance and help how they structured their business. And then we first really focused, like the initial designers we brought in were much more like selections based calm interior designer types.

00;08;34;20 – 00;08;58;06
Peter
And we quickly transition to we need people who can draw and pick, which is not you know, it’s it’s sort of it’s kind of a unicorn, like skill set maybe like you’re describing, you know, the of the designer and the other person. But that’s, that’s really the focus on because of, for us as we got more in is on building really how do we, properly solve the client’s problems?

00;08;58;09 – 00;09;09;29
Peter
We have to draw that first. And that really on starts to untangle and get into the approach that we take. So again, quickly, just quickly, we have a draw on how we just couldn’t outsource that.

00;09;10;02 – 00;09;25;23
Logan
So did you first hire people that were more like interior design focused that like it would look great, but when it came to like using chief architect or actually being able to like create the renderings or the aspects or stuff like that, they’re like, oh, I’ve never done that, but I could crush it on Pinterest.

00;09;25;25 – 00;09;44;12
Peter
Yeah, a lot of the projects at the time were called more polymer place type of thing, so there wasn’t a lot of moving parts in the times we had those types of jobs, we were just outsourcing to, someone here, you know, locally, she’s part of Mars, community now. And Thomas really talented coworkers on. So we’re outsourcing to her.

00;09;44;15 – 00;10;07;05
Peter
And again, the outsource model is fine, but we just like looking at the control, the client experience. And then also the quickness. Right. Design build companies we suffer greatly from, cycle times. Right? You sign someone and they’re excited or pumped. 60 days later you might have pricing. It’s kind of like at a house scale. So we’re just, you know, monitoring those timelines all the time.

00;10;07;07 – 00;10;20;10
Logan
So what did you know moving forward up until two years ago? What did your design and pre-construction process look like before bringing Dan on for? You know, RBW.

00;10;20;13 – 00;10;38;22
Peter
So we were focused maybe more there’s only like two ways to solve a problem or design an approach. Right. Hey, what’s the budget? And then we take the budget and we do a design from that. And that was really the model that we followed at the time. We call it a good, better, best kind of principle. That was really lean toward the selections, things we picked and what we did.

00;10;38;22 – 00;10;54;25
Peter
We created a spreadsheet. It was really quick. We could build out estimates like really fast, but it was like we built this give better, best estimate in this range. And it was like it could be here, could be there. So that was the idea. Also what happened was you said, hey, we think your projects. One 8250 what happens?

00;10;54;28 – 00;11;15;16
Peter
They get the design and the project. 350 so that’s the battle. We just kept fighting. And it’s just the relationship with the clients was just always. Add was not always, I should say always. But like this always seemed to lead to some adversarial position, you know, with certain clients because we’re saying we can do it for this, but ultimately we can’t.

00;11;15;18 – 00;11;36;21
Peter
And so what we shifted to with Dan is this idea of not that we don’t care about the budget because there’s always a budget, but it’s really it’s a value driven, solution driven approach. And let’s figure out your problems, your objectives, the backgrounds, the project first, then design solutions that can solve those problems. And then we price those solutions with optionality, shopping cart kind of ideas.

00;11;36;21 – 00;11;43;13
Peter
So people can choose. They’re always in control and what they want to cut, what they want more. Proceed with.

00;11;43;15 – 00;11;56;15
Logan
And when you’re going through this like what on the other side, two years later, you’ve implemented it. What has been the change that you’ve seen in the eyes of the consumer?

00;11;56;17 – 00;12;19;07
Peter
Oh, trust sector, I mean, instantly, like the way and it’s I can’t like put my finger on like, oh, this is the one thing that, you know, made that happen. I think it’s a lot of things, I think over the years of branding that Scott and I did previous to Dan joining the branding of our, you know, the logo and the colors and just the look, the feel, the, you know, the showroom that we built, like is is all part of that.

00;12;19;10 – 00;12;40;09
Peter
But I think showing people how we work and the way that we document our, for example, we do a project summary letter. So when they come to the showroom, I write a letter old school, right. And has letterhead and that we kind of laughed. And Dan was like, we’re getting letterhead. And it’s like we’re getting, you know, this is weird, but it’s like there are certain personal touches.

00;12;40;09 – 00;12;57;28
Peter
I feel like it just like everything’s just a stair step up to this level of trust, and we become truly an advocate. And, they view it’s like you’re talking to your friend, right? Where your friend, and that’s where you want to be, is you have a problem, you call your friend. They’re an expert. Hey, I’m trying hard.

00;12;57;28 – 00;13;13;24
Peter
This company, that’s where we want to be. So we’re talking about solution to different ideas. How we can help save you money, how we can help, you know, not only save you money. Here’s a ways. If you’re looking to expand the project to help solve your problem. And I think the the biggest thing is let’s solve the problem right?

00;13;13;24 – 00;13;32;21
Peter
Like money is it’s relative, right? Like you go buy a stick of butter and you’re like, oh, that stick butter is $3. This one’s a dollar, right? It’s three bucks. Like, who cares? But it’s value. Like there’s value in things. That and the solution driven approach really seemed to like really affect that in a positive way.

00;13;32;24 – 00;13;53;03
Logan
So before just just to make sure I’m on the same page or for what you’re talking about is good, better bass, there’s three different options. And ultimately what you were finding out was as you then went into design, your way off, because basically the what you needed to do to actually get a more accurate number just wasn’t getting done at that point.

00;13;53;03 – 00;14;15;00
Logan
And then you were getting to like the very end of this and saying, hey, I know we said 180 to 250, but we can’t even touch this thing for, you know, less than 350. And that was, I’m guessing either people were moving forward but they weren’t as happy as before, or they were going, look, that’s we were closer to 180 and now you’re double that.

00;14;15;00 – 00;14;18;04
Logan
So we’re going to scrap this overall.

00;14;18;06 – 00;14;38;15
Peter
As a design build, right? We’re saying we’re experts in design and building as a necessary. We love building. That’s how we make our money. But at the same time when the typical setup is you get a phone call as a contractor and I go, hey, I want to remodel my kitchen, right? And you go over to their house and they tell you all the things that they want to do, their kitchen.

00;14;38;17 – 00;14;57;24
Peter
And then as a contractor we go back and oh yeah, okay, we’re going to put the numbers together. Why are we letting the client dictate and control what they think they need or want? They’ve never remodel their remodel once, twice I don’t know. They don’t even know what the hell is possible. Next possible. My large sets are all cost, but it’s okay.

00;14;57;24 – 00;14;58;07
Logan
This is big.

00;14;58;07 – 00;15;13;04
Peter
It’s like I get, like, so fired up phone. It’s like the. They don’t know what’s possible. So they’re, you know, there is a sink in all this. I have a kitchen problem, you know, have a kitchen problem. You have a garage problem and a mudroom problem, a laundry problem and a hallway problem that all dry around your kitchen.

00;15;13;11 – 00;15;31;25
Peter
We can do your kitchen for sure. We got to fix these other things. And that’s where we come in to figure out again, this idea of if we’re going to. Because if you tell me a project, I have a project in my head that’s 100 grand, you have a project in your head that’s 50 grand, right? So like, this is where it’s this, like, expectation thing, right?

00;15;31;25 – 00;15;51;29
Peter
We’re just we’re on two different planes. It’s nine. So we’re it’s going to collide at some point. Might be fireworks might be okay I don’t know. But the transition to and oftentimes we go to the house. It’s I don’t want to be in the kitchen. I want to sit in your living room. I ask politely to sit in our living room, take my shoes off, all good stuff, but.

00;15;52;01 – 00;16;05;26
Peter
And tell them why I want to be in your kitchen. Right? I want to understand, like because I’m in your space. Something get distracted or I’m gonna look all the stuff. We’re going to be looking at the solution. We’re not to the solution yet. We have to diagnose like what is actually going on. What is wrong with your space?

00;16;05;26 – 00;16;22;05
Peter
Why is it not functioning properly? What are the problems that you face? You know, trying to cook dinner for your kids or, you know, the two people trying to, you know, entertain a lot? You’re always like, all the different things. Let’s figure out that first. Then we can apply solutions to your problem. So when when.

00;16;22;05 – 00;16;38;12
Logan
You’re this is like you walk you go out. This is like your first, like onsite consultation. You’ve already kind of vetted out a little bit just to make sure, like you’re on the same page for what the looking for. So let’s say they’re wanting to redo their kitchen and you say, hey, let’s go sit in the living room.

00;16;38;15 – 00;17;01;28
Logan
It might like we’re not when I know when Dan was first explaining to me, I was like, oh, that’s kind of a unique sales tactic. But then I realized it was more about like, the imagination of instead of getting bogged down or feeling like, constrained. If the main issue in the kitchen is it’s too small, when you’re in the kitchen, you’re just going to basically look around and just in the confines of that kitchen, not know what’s real or what’s not real.

00;17;01;28 – 00;17;16;20
Logan
But if you’re in the living room, it allows them to be a little bit more out of the box with what their frustrations are. Am I? Am I off. Is that is there something different also?

00;17;16;20 – 00;17;36;23
Peter
For sure a part of it is we like, you know, I don’t want to look like a contractor. Right. I wear slacks or tennis shoes. I drive a car. You know, we’re a collared shirts. I do wear a hat. Yeah. Just because my head gets called because they’re all hair, you know, it’s 90 degrees, so that’s not really a good reason now, but so part of it is like just to be to be different.

00;17;36;23 – 00;17;55;07
Peter
Not for the sake being different, but being different to show we are listening to you. And, frankly, I don’t want to be paraded around your house and you telling me what you want me to do, because in that case, I work for you, which is not the I. You work for people that know more than you. They can teach you things.

00;17;55;10 – 00;18;13;25
Peter
How can. And it’s not like I’m, I’m not it’s not about ego. It’s more of hey we’re in partnership together and if we’re impartially together it’s important for me to listen to you and describe to me. Because if they’re not excited about what that is like, what there’s definitely not a project for sure. But yeah, walking to walk me through your every day.

00;18;13;25 – 00;18;32;09
Peter
How do you enter the home? Where do the kids come through? How is your husband come through? What’s the what’s the day? As they leave, you start unpacking that. It’s like we’re not talking about the kitchen anymore. We’re talking about life and how they live. What’s the good, the bad. And it really just. And we use notepads not against I, I don’t use I for this.

00;18;32;09 – 00;18;52;03
Peter
I have a yellow legal pad. I write it down and I want them to see me writing it down. So again, this idea of we you’re you’re telling me things, I’m listening to you and I’m documenting what you’re telling me. Certainly we will go into the kitchen space in this example. But now that now I have contacts, I context of why why this doesn’t work, why that doesn’t work.

00;18;52;06 – 00;19;15;24
Peter
And I can look to say, hey, this, you know, hallways biggest challenge in every house in America. Hallways. How can we reduce and eliminate hallways? You can solve 98% of your problems by that. And so now I have context and we’re walking through your space. You’re not parading uranium or now the table is turned. I am now the expert because I can apply my experience and expertise to your project based on what you told me.

00;19;15;26 – 00;19;26;25
Logan
And when you do this to people, ever push back or go like, hey, like, let’s go into the kitchen or, you know, it’s like, well, this is like a very unique approach. Like, I don’t love this.

00;19;26;25 – 00;19;27;26
Peter
Or everybody pretty.

00;19;27;26 – 00;19;33;14
Logan
Much like, hey, like play ball. And they’re like, hey, let’s just sit down and have a conversation around this.

00;19;33;17 – 00;19;55;06
Peter
98% of the people just go along, hey, because I told a mess what’s going to happen, but we’re going to, you know, what we’re going to do on the phone call, I tell them, is what what’s going to happen? And most times they’ll just lead me. And if they don’t, I’ll make sure that, hey, you know. So I’ve had a few that just I want to take you a that’s an indication to me they’re not our client.

00;19;55;06 – 00;20;14;13
Peter
First. But what. But this has to be fun, right? This it’s like this idea, like, like Sandler is always like, quit to the. No. It’s like, well, okay, maybe not that part, but it’s more of like, let’s figure out, like what their approach, what their, what they think this approach should be like. And I’ll ask them sometimes if, if in that case those does do.

00;20;14;16 – 00;20;33;04
Peter
Hey, can we stop for a second and they, you know, like, yeah. Hey, you know, can be like a little frank with you. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Okay. I’ve done this, like, thousands of times. All right. And so I just it’s fun. Like, it’s it’s like flipping it around and go, can I tell you why we do this?

00;20;33;07 – 00;20;48;06
Peter
And obviously it doesn’t work. Okay. You’re not a client, but it just opens up other interesting conversations. But again, we’re telling them as a any upfront agenda agreement would have happen or just explaining what’s going to happen. And I think most of them like it.

00;20;48;09 – 00;21;04;20
Logan
So you, you sit down and it’s almost like you’re a therapist where you’re basically like, I mean, I know, I know, my parents talk to me about this when they built their, their house 30 years ago. They said the architect said, you close your eyes and they close their eyes and like, okay, great. You’re in your garage.

00;21;04;20 – 00;21;26;10
Logan
Look around. What do you see? And they said it. And he’s he’s okay. Great. Take ten steps forward. Now what do you see. Got it. Take. And they said they did it for like two hours straight. And by the end of it like they open their eyes and the guy just has like a dozen pages of notes. And that’s how he then, created the the whole planes and everything like that.

00;21;26;10 – 00;21;46;06
Logan
I mean, like, they walk me through just the whole process of, like, what it was to, like, build a house. And they went through this. I was like, wow. It’s actually like like odd. But it’s also like for the right types of people that are not like, hell bent on, hey, this is exactly what I want. And more about like, hey, I want this solution and I want you to kind of help me get to it.

00;21;46;09 – 00;22;02;06
Logan
It allows the the dreaming of it all. And they ended up going forward with the design that that architect put together. Because of basically, it was their design. They’re the ones that dreamed it up. He just articulated it into renderings and drawings and stuff like that.

00;22;02;08 – 00;22;24;00
Peter
So because it’s it’s their it’s their dream right now, it’s our dream, but it’s their idea, right. Like if you’re, you know, the big Fat Greek Wedding, right? The whole movie plot is based on, we got to get the dad to, like, think it’s his idea right now. That’s the whole sales process is shifting that idea instead of us, me showing up and mansplaining, you know, as it could be described to like, this is what’s going to happen.

00;22;24;00 – 00;22;44;11
Peter
This is what we do. I’ve got to hear what the I don’t know, we’re even the right fit for each other yet. That’s what we’re still trying to figure out. I have to be the right company to help you, right? Just because I can role model doesn’t mean I am. And so that those conversations also, it’s like the idea of like, no, no, I called you like you have to work for me is like, if we’re good for each other.

00;22;44;11 – 00;22;50;05
Peter
Sure. So, yeah, it’s, I like I like that. That’s cool. Kind. Close your eyes. Swim down that one. But.

00;22;50;08 – 00;23;00;19
Logan
Yeah, I think that’s like. I think you really got to be eccentric and, like, you got to have, like, a, like, a handlebar mustache or like, you got to really live that level of, like, you know, hey.

00;23;00;21 – 00;23;04;21
Peter
And like I said, like, is there likes for us? Like, yeah, yeah.

00;23;04;26 – 00;23;20;25
Logan
We’re like, say on the room and do like, you know, clear the air before we start. And. Yeah. So, no, but they loved it. So. All right, so you go through this, you have a whole conversation with them. And then what happens next? Like let’s move forward to step two.

00;23;20;28 – 00;23;46;03
Peter
Yep. So after the homework is concluded I typically try to schedule that at the at the home visit. Otherwise I sent them a link. That’s fine. I was probably like anti sales you know strategy or whatever. But we’re not pushy. So they come to the showroom. What I described to them is really a couple things. I, I’m going to we’re going to go walk through the project summary letter together again showing them that I heard and documented their concerns, tour them around the showroom.

00;23;46;10 – 00;23;50;29
Peter
I mean, you’ve been to the my showroom, right? I’ve been told. I think it is super nice.

00;23;51;00 – 00;23;57;22
Logan
Yeah. It’s like if you want to see, it’s on. Rennie blair.com. We’ll just link to it. It’s a great showroom.

00;23;57;25 – 00;24;16;25
Peter
Right. So we tour the showroom show on the space. A lot of working examples like, you know, hey this does that I do that with the big award wall. So I just casually walk by I look at these awards kind of thing introducing the designer. But really the important thing that happens is that meeting again, it’s like all this stuff, but a we’re going to walk them through previous projects.

00;24;16;25 – 00;24;41;10
Peter
So this is the like the real ness of like, hey, we did this job. It’s literally your house now. All we did may not be for you. You may not like the style or not really looking at, but right. These are how we solve their problems. And we also walk through, as you described, this Hunter page, it seems like very onerous, but it’s actually, I think, most informative for the clients as we walk through the approach together.

00;24;41;12 – 00;24;59;16
Peter
And that’s a lot of the conversations we’re having. The sales process with the client is we want to make sure we are the right company to help you, and you want to make sure we are the right company and are. And this is all all this is part of the due diligence. They would, references all good stuff, but the the prior page not long jump ahead of, you know, the in January thing.

00;24;59;16 – 00;25;15;20
Peter
But it’s just walking through the approach together and it’s I’d say it’s interactive. I’m doing most of the talking but it’s it’s highlighting different things and opportunities to bring out objections that they may be having that they haven’t yet got answered.

00;25;15;23 – 00;25;38;27
Logan
So as you’re going through this, I mean, it’s it is 100 pages, but it’s a lot of it’s like, you know, 30 the pages is like a previous person’s like punch list where each page is just like a photo of, like, I don’t know, an outlet that just shows, like there’s some paint on right out that, you know, so it’s like, it’s not that crazy.

00;25;38;29 – 00;25;52;18
Logan
But it is. I mean, like, if you were to just like, put the stack of paper on the desk, it’s like, okay, we’re going to go, it’s like when you buy a house and you have to sign 400 pages that they’re like, this just means that you know that you’re not in a, you know, flood zone.

00;25;52;18 – 00;26;12;18
Logan
Great. And then this pages that you acknowledge that you just signed a page, that you’re not in the flood zone. So some of it is like there’s a lot of like, you know, but it’s all great stuff. And it walks. You do everything, when you’re going through this. Because the one thing that I want to like, just kind of set expectations or get out of the way is like a lot of this is not necessarily like, hey, I did this.

00;26;12;24 – 00;26;17;05
Logan
You know, I created 100 pages.

00;26;17;08 – 00;26;18;23
Logan
Did the camera die?

00;26;18;25 – 00;26;23;14
Peter
Sure, yeah.

00;26;23;17 – 00;26;28;01
Peter
There you. You got it? Yeah. It shouldn’t do that. It.

00;26;28;02 – 00;26;42;06
Logan
Plug in. Okay, I’ll keep you on. So one of the things I want to set is, like, the expectation around, like. Yes, it’s 100 pages, but what I don’t what I want to avoid is people going, oh, well, I made 100 page document and it didn’t make the client sign. So can you talk through when.

00;26;42;06 – 00;26;43;14
Peter
You’re when you’re.

00;26;43;14 – 00;27;04;22
Logan
In their living room, when you’re bringing them to the show? I mean, you’re walking around, there’s a level of like showmanship that I think if you just wrote like a transcript of this, you would not understand it. But like, there is a lot of finesse in like, what you said, have fun. Because if you walk into someone’s house, you stop.

00;27;04;24 – 00;27;27;26
Logan
Let’s sit in your living room like they’re gonna be like, whoa, dude. Like, get out of my house. So can you talk a little bit about that of as you’re going through this, like the showmanship involved with this? Because ultimately you’re trying to get them excited about this project. But if you just come in with straight facts monotone, like, I can’t imagine they’re going to be like, great, we can’t wait for the next, you know, 40 pages to go.

00;27;27;28 – 00;27;54;23
Peter
Yeah, for sure. It all blends in with the approach and the number one thing for our ideal client. And if this is not true, they’re not our ideal client. Unlike other things, you know that may not be true if they’re not open to options for seeing options within their space. Not our client. But if they are, all the conversations are leading to, hey, this is how we go about our approach to understand what the what we can show you.

00;27;54;25 – 00;28;13;18
Peter
So it’s, we used to have it in a binder like on paper. And what we found is we were all like this, right? We’re looking at like. So it was like is very head down the interaction. We’re trying to build a relationship. Right. This is not a transactional thing. We’re talking two, three, 4 or 500 plus thousand dollars.

00;28;13;18 – 00;28;35;03
Peter
Right. This is we’re going to know your kids, your dogs. We’re I mean we’re in the family. And so it’s all part of this relationship building, part. And so the context is all laid out. This is how we’re going to work together and how we’re going to ultimately and successfully. So it just really highlights the two design phases, the conceptual design.

00;28;35;03 – 00;28;54;02
Peter
You were going to do these things. We’re going to do three options. You know, get to the one option and and do the pricing at all repeatedly stop through stop and go. Just to summarize where we are on the process and look at them. Right. Because looking for any visual cues. Right. This isn’t just me presenting, you know, at a seminar.

00;28;54;02 – 00;29;17;27
Peter
This is, you know, like all the Spidey senses on the salespeople, you have to be like, this is the whole time, like, interaction. So we’re highlighting the design and then we’re highlighting the build component, like how we build. Here’s our dust protection, like here, you know, the porta potty, all the stuff that permeating the, and a lot of these things are based on things that we’ve been asked before.

00;29;18;04 – 00;29;36;10
Peter
That’s kind of well, everybody, you know, like we get asked repeatedly, like, do you guys, how are the inspections? And it’s kind of like, duh. Yeah, of course we do. So well, we put in the presentation. But then to cap off our, the Hunter page, we go through what we call, closed the closeout or something like that.

00;29;36;10 – 00;29;56;28
Peter
Maybe better name. Can’t remember, but it’s highlighting how we close out a project. What I would advocate it’s not really about that this podcast, but closing on a project strong and we showcase to them this is how we do our panelists. Right. This is what happens next week. I come back out and make sure you’re 100% like what we need to have accomplished.

00;29;56;28 – 00;30;27;13
Peter
Like it’s not this, but again, it’s is opportunities everywhere to me to tell a story, right? This this thing, this thing. And it’s like, oh, can I take oh say, can I tell you a story? But it’s like, again, like these story times, these scenarios because, you know, it’s like a salesperson scenarios or like excellent, awesome strategies and tools to ask people what would happen if you gave us $15,000 for phase one, only to figure out you’re going to move?

00;30;27;16 – 00;30;48;04
Peter
Right. So like those, like we can run through that. But the closeout is is totally awesome though. We run through it and then we end it with, we have our whole client list and like all the repeat clients were highlighted in blue and there’s a lot of blue. So it’s just it’s it’s dead then. And I talked about this for like a you and the presentation of people like that was the most professional presentation I ever seen.

00;30;48;04 – 00;31;09;09
Peter
Sometimes that’s like the kiss of death. Like, well, they’ve also been talking, you know, whatever. Not us people, but everybody ends it. It’s like, well, you guys really know what you’re doing. Well, yeah, we do, because we’ve done this a lot. So you get an opportunity to just like put yourself out there again as the expert and confirm to them, yes, I am the we are the expert.

00;31;09;11 – 00;31;11;13
Peter
So when so when you.

00;31;11;13 – 00;31;22;04
Logan
Said that like you don’t used to have it in a binder but they’re just looking down and I’m sure they’re just like scrolling through it like like yeah. So how do you do it now? Are you having this up like a screen.

00;31;22;06 – 00;31;47;20
Peter
Yeah. So we have like, we, we made we made our own table. So it’s not just like our, it’s a, I don’t know what the shape is, but where I want us to look each other. Right. So we’re not sitting, like, again in the school room presentation. So there we have a nicer design room that we’re in and wallpaper and roll slat walls and all the cool stuff and have a frame TV, so I’m, I should I throw up on the frame TV and we just kind of scroll through it together, okay.

00;31;47;20 – 00;32;06;14
Logan
And that’s like the stuff that like, I know, for example, like, you know, for our like trade show booth, like most tradeshow booths are just like, you know, the background and that’s it. But like, it’s the like we went for on our hours specifically like the experience of like, how do we want people to experience our products. And that’s where we’re like, okay, we want to make sure we have iPads.

00;32;06;14 – 00;32;27;05
Logan
And that way if we’re doing video, we can show off the video, but we want to make sure that they can hear it. So what do we do? We get headphones. Cool. We have gotten $20 headphones from CVS, sure, but we went out and got the nice ones that when you put, you know, these, Apple AirPods Max on your ears, it sucks the air out of the, out of the actual headphones.

00;32;27;08 – 00;32;48;22
Logan
So half the time people put them on, they immediately then take like one of the ears off and go, man, these are really good headphones. So it’s like the experience of that stuff that’s like, now if you’re going to spend a bunch of money on, you know, video marketing and we spent all this time promote, you know, creating these cool videos, we don’t want to then just be like, oh, yeah, like just, you know, here’s like a really crappy screen with like, bad headphones.

00;32;48;22 – 00;33;06;02
Logan
I mean, it’s the same that you guys are doing where it’s like, it’s all this show. And, you know, even going back to the fact that, like, you know, you roll up not in like a lifted truck, but like a Tesla, like my like, I had my house painted a year ago and they were very tech forward company.

00;33;06;04 – 00;33;22;25
Logan
And what did they do? They they showed up in a wrapped Rivian where I’m like, wow, okay. Like that’s actually like like that. And my wife made fun of me because she’s like, that is the exact type of painting company that you would hire. And I was like, she’s like, are they even good at painting? I was like, yeah, like, you can’t have a really good song, right?

00;33;23;00 – 00;33;42;12
Logan
So but it’s like, but it’s all that stuff that’s like very small. But I know, like when you show up in that or and you’re in a more casual outfit versus like, we’ve, you know, if you’ve seen the meme of like the, the pants where it’s like, if your long pants look like this, you’re going to jail or it’s like very, you know, two big a pants.

00;33;42;12 – 00;34;01;12
Logan
But like, if you show up, like not looking stylish and you are a design focused design build firm, like what’s that going to look like? So you’re going through this. It’s 100 pages. But this is not their actual like, hey, this is your scenario. This is you simply showing previous examples.

00;34;01;19 – 00;34;02;06
Peter
Of.

00;34;02;12 – 00;34;16;03
Logan
Punch layers and, renderings and as builds and stuff like that, just to show them, hey, when we work together, this is ultimately what you’re going to kind of have for your own stuff as well. Correct.

00;34;16;06 – 00;34;37;05
Peter
What’s conditioning them to our approach? Because again, our approach is for us, that’s the only way we can have a successful project. If they are trying to follow their approach, we’re going to end, you know, crashing the ground in flames. Right. And we’ve all been through that. You hire, you get clients on. So and they want to follow their approach.

00;34;37;05 – 00;34;57;06
Peter
They want to be in charge. They never want to relinquish control to the expert. So a lot of us like part of the presentation, we say we show them how we charge. And we’d say we have a 28% margin. And we and that’s an that’s a great opportunity to talk about that. So when we go back to present the pricing, you know, weeks later or whatever, oh we got extra fee.

00;34;57;08 – 00;35;18;17
Peter
Hey Joe, we talked about this at the showroom presentation. So it’s like the whole thing for us. We do not want to look like contractors I don’t care tape measure. I don’t measure anything at the home visit. Like the way we dress, the way the way we the language we use. Right. Like the people we’re trying to target.

00;35;18;19 – 00;35;39;09
Peter
We don’t want to look. We want to look different than everybody else. So talk to this is just part of that, right? Not a lot of other people invite people into their space, if they even have one, to showcase how we’re going to do this together. But again, it’s all about condition. I want to make sure they’re going to they want to follow our approach and they don’t want to follow our approach.

00;35;39;11 – 00;35;42;07
Peter
I tell them we are not the right fit for you.

00;35;42;09 – 00;36;10;19
Logan
And one of the things just again, back to the nuance stuff, is that you’re not doing this in a closet. You’re doing this in a space that’s beautifully decorated, right? That looks really like that. That’s like the social proof around them instantly that it’s like, I know Alex Ramirez. He talks about this with the gym stuff, but he’s like, you know, if somebody enters the gym, like, and there’s a waiting room, like, your whole thing should be before and after photos of people that have been at that gym losing weight.

00;36;10;19 – 00;36;35;07
Logan
So like if you come in and say, hey, we have a very specific training program that maybe you’re not used to or the proof is all around you that that stuff works. And that’s something that like, I want to make sure that we’re not losing that in this conversation because like all the stuff that’s around them, as you’re basically just saying, this is the process, but you’re really setting expectations and saying, this is if you want a successful project, this is what it takes.

00;36;35;07 – 00;36;51;15
Logan
You’re not. It’s like the people that like, you know, they oh, I could do a really good job. Let me text you some photos of what it’s like. Well hold on. Like this is like your iPhone photos. Like. Right. It’s a lot of money for you just to, like, only be able to text an iPhone photo over to me.

00;36;51;15 – 00;37;11;04
Logan
Like, this thing needs to be presented in a really nice way. So as you’re going through and setting expectations like they’re looking around and seeing if I want something like this, this is what it’s going to take. And that’s like, I think a big difference here that a lot of people, especially as they’re, you know, trying to level up the types of clients that they work with.

00;37;11;04 – 00;37;30;23
Logan
When you start to get to these bigger projects, like recognizing that this is not just, hey, you put the other 100 pages looks nice, I got some showmanship. You got to be able to, like, have a space that looks nice. And when they walk around, I mean, you guys have done a great job with. It’s not just, you know, here’s 50 different cabinets on this, like turnstile.

00;37;30;23 – 00;37;44;09
Logan
It’s like actually on the wall and like you have. Right. Like I was talking to somebody the other day and they were like, yeah, we have like a live working kitchen. I was like, that’s like that kind of stuff that just shows the next level of like what it looks like. So.

00;37;44;12 – 00;38;00;24
Peter
Yeah, the personalization. What happens all the time and are so I’ll invite in and we’re just chatting about things. Oh, let me show you this. Right. It wasn’t on my Gen I, I have a loose time. My agenda. Right. It’s like, oh me show you this or even a project. They’re describing something to me. We’ve already gone through a couple.

00;38;01;01 – 00;38;21;25
Peter
Oh, I just thought of this other project and I show you this. So it just shows like the breadth of knowledge and it’s very personal to like their project. And we have a vibe board as you walk past our meeting room. And if we don’t like oftentimes you’ll have a meeting there before. But if we don’t actually pull it up and like pull up the meeting that we had yesterday with all the notes.

00;38;21;28 – 00;38;44;02
Peter
Oh, hey. Yeah, we just had a meeting. And this is kind of what we do. And this and the other just got an almost, like, nonchalant kind of like, yeah, you do this. I mean, you know, this will happen and all the jobs and move just so like, it’s just every little thing. It’s like marketing, right? You got, like, you got to cover all your bases and it just everything culminates to this idea of, I have to work with this company, right.

00;38;44;02 – 00;38;48;02
Peter
They they are the experts. So you, you.

00;38;48;02 – 00;39;03;12
Logan
Get to this package like, oh, I want to talk to you like, what’s in it because basically is the process that they’re going to go through. But for you guys, they, they go through, they see the hundred pages and they’re like, man, you guys like this sounds great. Like what’s next? Where you go from there?

00;39;03;15 – 00;39;19;24
Peter
Right. So, after the show, is it right? That’s, you know, really talking about balls. Balls kind of in your court, you know, as far as finish your due diligence, you know, ensuring, you know, if we are the right company. Great. If that’s the case, I’ll send you the project development agreement. Sign it. And the retainer.

00;39;19;24 – 00;39;37;08
Peter
Our retainer ranges from 6 to $20,000. So just for kind of context that we do and we do two retainer payments. So if they, you know, they call you typically about a week or two. And I always ask, hey, you know, what wouldn’t be appropriate time for me to follow up with you? So I, you know, make sure I notate that, put that on my calendar.

00;39;37;11 – 00;39;54;02
Peter
It was a Grant Cardone. Right? The money’s in the follow up. Right? So gotta do the follow up, you know, because anyway, so they engage us and then we kick it off. So we come back, do all the digital documentation, we scan the space, take all the pictures. About a week later, we’re meeting internally as a team.

00;39;54;02 – 00;40;18;08
Peter
And this is all things. I’ve told them what we’re going to do. We meet an internal. We call it a charrette. So myself, one of the designers, and Dan, who heads up our design department. Dan, my business partner, very talented space planner. We’ll meet at the vibe board. Will, we’ll just sit there and, kind of, you know, freestyle a bunch of different ideas and concepts, all based off the letter, again, where I’m telling the client the letter is what springs forward into design.

00;40;18;08 – 00;40;34;26
Peter
This is this is the the boundaries, the, constraints that we will work within. As far as what we’re going to, we’re going to design together. So we’re showing again, we listen to them and this is what we’re actually to be producing for them. So we’ll do the design. Yeah.

00;40;34;29 – 00;40;51;15
Logan
And real fast. The letter is when you went to their home and you acted as like the remodeling therapist, you wrote all that stuff down. And then when they came in the showroom, you then presented the letter and said, this is everything that I wrote down. What do we need to basically add or subtract from it? And then that way, you know, everybody’s on the same page.

00;40;51;15 – 00;41;00;29
Logan
So then when it comes time to like, okay, great, we’re going to move forward with design. And you go to the vibe board. You have an approved letter from them basically.

00;41;01;01 – 00;41;19;16
Peter
Yeah. But again it’s another opportunity in sales process. Hey I wanted to review this with you just to make sure I heard and recorded exactly what you were thinking as well, and that it’s so powerful. And several people told me, you know, it’s like, wow, this is really good. I mean, who who else is doing a letter?

00;41;19;19 – 00;41;39;27
Peter
We weren’t doing a letter before, and just a couple chicken scratch notes here and there. It’s like, so it’s it’s nice. Some of it’s, you know, summarization of the whole project. But so we’ll do, we’ll come up with our concepts. Well we typically show we show a minimum of three. So it could be more I schedule a time of the client, they come back into our showroom and we present the layout to them.

00;41;39;27 – 00;42;01;25
Peter
No pricing, has been discussed up until this point. Typically. And that’s, I think, important point. Like in our process, we are not designing to a budget. Our clients do not have unlimited budgets. Our saying is they can afford to do it right. Not twice. So it’s again, during the approach we’re describing them. This is how we work together.

00;42;01;25 – 00;42;20;06
Peter
That we we are more focused on solutions versus designing to a budget. And it’s great conversation to have when people well, I got to know it’s going to cost. I would love to know what it costs. But we have we have no design, right? So we have to end this back to this like design build how you build value and design.

00;42;20;06 – 00;42;35;00
Peter
Build is right. We got to design something to price something. But then as long as the control is back in their court, right, they there’s, it’s not adversarial. We’re now we’re the trusted advisor for them, but we show them. Yeah.

00;42;35;00 – 00;42;54;08
Logan
And real fast when you say they don’t, there’s no budget like, at this point. Is it like, look, they have nobody has any idea that what this stuff could cost or is there like there’s some where they’re like, look, I don’t like it’s not a hard and fast where it’s, you know, hey, you have to stay within 200 on this kitchen.

00;42;54;10 – 00;43;18;22
Logan
There’s still some like, love, love. Like, they kind of understand that it’s going to cost a bunch and, you know, like, look, they’re they’re probably not looking at an $800,000 kitchen remodel there. They’re probably look like there’s is there some level of like at least understanding of a ballpark around like what they want to spend. And then it’s like, look it may go up 20%, it may go down 20%.

00;43;18;24 – 00;43;24;15
Logan
But there’s some like base that you guys are going off of now.

00;43;24;17 – 00;43;47;04
Peter
So we can do a Hawk or podcast on budgeting or, budget conversation. This is part of our approach. We do not use budget as a qualifier because in the first call, if I can establish myself, you’re not a fit. Who the heck cares what it costs? We’re not right for each other and so I’m I do sales in a company that’s my primary role.

00;43;47;04 – 00;44;12;09
Peter
So I can give my time way more freely, go do home visits. So I am I go on more home visits as I should, but I want batting practice. I want I want time in, you know, the live drill so that it when clients bring it up, it’s it’s a great conversation always. But it’s what we are ultimately asking for is permission to exceed whatever you think it’s going to cost.

00;44;12;12 – 00;44;31;00
Peter
In our design, we will absolutely show you designs that exceed your budget, not because we’re trying to exceed your budget, because there’s multiple ways to solve your problem. And the way we’re solving your problem is all predicated on what’s in the letter. So we’re not moving things to move things based on the letters. We’re. Howard, thinking about your solution.

00;44;31;02 – 00;44;40;03
Peter
Certainly. We always we always design your minimum viable thing with the least amount of stuff we can do, and then we kind of expand off of that.

00;44;40;05 – 00;44;58;27
Logan
But but I know, like, you have pricing on your website, and we have, like, projects in the website that actually have, like pricing associated with it. So it’s not like they’re coming in with no concept of pricing. It’s not like, oh, like six grand for a design. Great. It’s probably going to be another 50 grand to actually do the kitchen.

00;44;58;29 – 00;45;17;19
Logan
Yeah, because there still is some anchoring there. Correct. Because I know like for a lot of this stuff, like most especially your ideal client, I know like this is like when all I like looking at like the, the additions that we’re about to do, it’s like in our head we’re like, okay, maybe 100, 120, it ultimately we have a meeting tomorrow.

00;45;17;19 – 00;45;23;18
Logan
It’s probably going to. Yeah. I mean, they’ve already said it is going to be way, way, way more than that. And we talked.

00;45;23;18 – 00;45;25;23
Peter
And they’re nervous to present it to you.

00;45;25;26 – 00;45;29;07
Logan
Well, he said, hey, it’s a big number. Can I. Yeah.

00;45;29;07 – 00;45;32;03
Peter
So, but they’re going to send it to you before.

00;45;32;05 – 00;45;52;10
Logan
So we actually talked. So he said like, look, can we, can we meet? It’s a big number. And we said, hey, this is the times that we can meet tomorrow. It’s. And actually, this is just over, like, basically like they’re going to do it, live on like zoom because I think, like, the timing couldn’t work out and we’re on a bit of a crunch just with, like, we got a baby in three months.

00;45;52;10 – 00;46;14;20
Logan
So we’re just trying to see if we can get this thing closer. Come, baby number two. But they’re going to present it then and there. Although I feel like we’ve done like we’ve we’ve talked through a lot of, like what the pricing is going to be. But we’ll find out. So it’s not like we have a hard and fast like this is the.

00;46;14;22 – 00;46;27;15
Logan
Yeah, there is a max. Like if, if they come back and they go, hey, this is I know the house is worth this, but we’re going to actually with this addition, it’s going to exceed the the overall price that you pay for the house. Then it’s gonna like I like that point. We’ll just move like it’s not even worth it.

00;46;27;15 – 00;46;34;23
Peter
But that’s a great conversation I had with clients. So should you just move so when.

00;46;34;25 – 00;46;54;25
Logan
So when they go in like you have like this, this pricing comp or like not price conversation, would you build out these three different options at this point you’re simply just presenting like three different floor plans or three different like like exactly like what? Like for the people that are just listening to this, like, what are you showing them with these three options, portion them.

00;46;54;27 – 00;47;15;15
Peter
Essentially, a plan overview, right. The floor plan, the proposed floor plan. And then we’ll, we’ll add, you know, 3 or 4, whatever kind of, rendering 3D renderings to that to each floor plan. There’s no pricing at this point because, again, our view is a we don’t want the focus to be on the budget because we’re trying to solve a problem.

00;47;15;20 – 00;47;35;19
Peter
And if the design doesn’t solve your problem, who cares what it costs, right? Like it doesn’t matter. So that’s that’s where we’re always trying to steer the conversation of does this solve your problem? Now when we get to pricing, it is important to get three layouts. We present those. There’s no pricing. They work with the designer to, get the solution I like.

00;47;35;19 – 00;47;57;22
Peter
Typically that’s done over email, maybe a zoom or two or something like that. Like tweaks. Then we put together, we call the project review stuff or the pricing documents we put together, a more, a little more built out plan set. We also supplement that with a written scope of work. Then we do our pricing by area and we do a selection allowance sheet.

00;47;57;24 – 00;48;13;24
Peter
The whole point of all the pricing is to provide optionality, like in your case tomorrow. Right. Like what I would be doing. And if I was like, guys, I’d be putting together options, right? You can do it better if you know that’s what. Or if you knew these stairs. You mean that stair didn’t do these windows or these other windows, right?

00;48;13;24 – 00;48;33;21
Peter
So you have the levers of control to say, yeah, I want to spend $8,000. That’s not the number. But like right, again, it’s control. If it’s the client’s idea and actually solve the problem, we find most of the time is they go, well that that’s all that chatter, all the boxes right now that the budget never the budget was never real anyway.

00;48;33;21 – 00;48;54;01
Peter
They were afraid you’re going to spend it. All right. So it’s that moving to this trust relationship as an advisor right now we can have really good conversation around, hey you need to shave up 200. Okay, cool. Great. I that’s what we’re here to do. We’re going to help you figure out how we can value engineered this thing or cut back on some allowances to, to get there.

00;48;54;03 – 00;48;55;07
Peter
So so when you’re going.

00;48;55;07 – 00;49;14;27
Logan
Through this you are you cover the three options. They say, hey that let’s say it’s a whole home remodel that that sounds great right. We want option B and you can say okay great, we’ll do it. Then you price it out where a part of the whole home you’re going to do kitchen two bass the living room and I don’t know, one bedroom or whatever it is.

00;49;15;05 – 00;49;30;23
Logan
And each of those things you’re going to say the kitchen is going to cost 150. Bathroom A is going to cost 80, bathroom B is going to cost 65, the living room is going to cost 50, and the bedroom is going to cost 85. And then they go, okay, I add all that number up that looks that’s within our budget.

00;49;30;23 – 00;49;46;28
Logan
That’s worth it. Or they go, you know what, like bathroom B, we don’t even use it any way. Like let’s just nix that one because we don’t want to spend 65 on bathroom B, we’d rather just, I don’t know, keep that money. And then you go, okay, great, we’re going to get rid of that then. Now you you have the rest of that you’re keeping.

00;49;46;28 – 00;50;04;25
Logan
So is that basically how you’re doing? It is you’re just you’re going room by room. If it’s a whole project, what are you doing? If it’s just like a single room, are you still providing like, hey, kitchen. You know, if you want to reconfigure, it’s going to cost 150. If you want to just keep everything exactly the same, it’s going to cost 110.

00;50;04;25 – 00;50;07;05
Logan
Like, how are you doing if it’s a one room thing.

00;50;07;07 – 00;50;27;19
Peter
I mean certainly smaller room project present more challenges, but presenting numbers is an art hundred percent right. This is all part of the sales. It’s like when you buy a car and you go to the finance guys office, you’re still being sold sales, right? Don’t turn it off yet. They pass the key over and it’s, you know, you see the sales mode has to stay through.

00;50;27;19 – 00;50;48;17
Peter
So this is still a sales thing within the context of helping and best serving the client, not just trying to sell you your job, but so in a kitchen like we just I presented kitchen last week. They had a banquette. So we’re doing something windows. We’re building these banquettes and we to move one of the exterior doors and the estimate or put that on the kitchen.

00;50;48;20 – 00;51;02;21
Peter
And I was like, no, no, we got to split that out because that’s going to drive the kitchen up. And I know they I know their neighbor did their kitchen two years ago and they prior knew the new neighbors number. And now we’re going to come back some crazy number. You know that’s not the real number. So again that split that out they worked.

00;51;02;23 – 00;51;19;13
Peter
We’re taking two walls out. Split that out. We’re doing some of the laundry room. Split that out. We’re doing we’re moving the laundry door to add this little mud thing I thought is not a great idea, but it made the design and made it. Okay. Great. Are split that out because I’m. That’s a easy one to pull out.

00;51;19;13 – 00;51;40;15
Peter
So there’s opportunities to like and to to pull these things out. So it’s kind of like when we’re presenting hey what if and just if by the way, if we didn’t move the laundry door, we could say five grand a laundry lawn right there. Okay. So I presented it like one to 12 or 15. I think they’re going to sign on at one seven to.

00;51;40;17 – 00;51;58;07
Logan
So, so and just so we say this because I know I’ve done this before in business, where I like putting like a full package of every single service we provide, set them a number and they’re like, that’s, that’s a lot more than I thought I was going to be. Can you just tell us what each thing is? And then when I do that, then it becomes a little bit more understanding of like, okay, got it.

00;51;58;07 – 00;52;16;20
Logan
So what you’re saying is like instead of just saying if you want everything is 215, here’s the one item price, take it or leave it. What you’re doing is not itemizing it, but you’re just kind of breaking it out a little bit more so they can it’s a little bit of value engineering at that point, because basically you just want to make sure that they have.

00;52;16;20 – 00;52;21;26
Logan
I mean, it’s almost like more just transparency into what they’re actually getting.

00;52;21;28 – 00;52;42;14
Peter
I would advocate everybody to go to transfer price the theory or idea that I mean really push more towards that versus away from that, because again, if we are truly the advocate of a client, I want the best deal for the client, like, you know, whatever the job is. And so that’s we present again presenting as an art.

00;52;42;17 – 00;53;05;29
Peter
So we presented on this on the summary level and tell them we’re looking for, like not not materiality but like order of magnitude. To your point. Hey, that bathroom be now. Okay, let’s order magnitude now. Okay. The kitchen is still 192. Okay. Well, is there any what what do you think we do there? Well, let’s look, shall we go with with the allowance.

00;53;05;29 – 00;53;27;28
Peter
See. Right there we go in the allowances. You know could get some cabinets do this that. So I like having the ability to go. Yes. We’ll open the book up but we don’t we don’t. We’re transparent. We we rarely have to go to that level of detail because the trust, the stair step of trust has been built to the point where, right, they they’ve they feel like they’re getting a fair deal and also describe that to them.

00;53;27;28 – 00;53;40;18
Peter
And our show and presentation, we use unit pricing. And we will go to a bid process to ensure the fair price possible from our trade. And so again, it’s like this reassurance to them that they are getting good numbers.

00;53;40;20 – 00;53;55;21
Logan
So on this like when you’re showing, the different options upfront, I mean like is this when you’re like busting out chief architect and they can actually like walk through the space or is it at this point it’s simply just like an overhead floor plan layout.

00;53;55;23 – 00;54;12;29
Peter
So to when we present the layout to them, we do the three options to say all three options, right? I’ll really like all three. Not really sure. Okay. So great. We sent them all the, the the plans and the three days. And we also send them a viewer link through a chief architect. They can click on the link and they can be on their iPad, iPhone.

00;54;12;29 – 00;54;30;08
Peter
They can walk around however they want when we get to the ad. So all that to say, by the time we get to pricing, they’ve already been back and forth. A designer, they know their plans way better. It might not. Their plans, and their, their their their in the nuances. And we try not to state we don’t get in the weeds on our first stage.

00;54;30;08 – 00;54;52;20
Peter
We want to say pretty high level, just moving kind of blocks of space around stuff like that. So what we present the package is the plans that were in scope of work and then the pricing documents. I also just added a couple weeks ago, putting together a, project schedule for the rest of design to still show we still have a 30 days plus worth of work to do.

00;54;52;22 – 00;55;06;05
Peter
And so, you know, you may feel like we’re almost there and we are, but, you know, showing kind of how what we’ve done together and what we’re going to be doing going forward is to reinforce this, like next step, like the presumptive sale idea again, kind of thing.

00;55;06;08 – 00;55;19;25
Logan
One of the things that we’re looking through is like, they’re actually like walk through the space so they can kind of envision it. It’s, you know, from a graphics perspective, it’s it’s, you know, it’s not like you’re having like these finishes. It’s a little bit more.

00;55;19;28 – 00;55;23;05
Peter
Than finishes yet at all at this point, nothing stuck.

00;55;23;07 – 00;55;45;15
Logan
But it’s just meant to be like you can kind of like understand how the space is going to be laid out. It’s a little bit of like late 90s and 64 graphics, a little bit nicer than that. But it’s like, but it’s enough that you can, like you’re not killing yourself to like, come up with all this stuff without at least having like a, you know, a closer price for the homeowner to agree to.

00;55;45;20 – 00;56;06;24
Logan
So it’s not like, you know, you’re spending ten grand just to break even on this thing. You’re really just getting them to say, okay, I can now visualize and understand this is the space, these are the rooms, this is ballpark. What it’s going to cost. And then at that point they say yes or no, let’s keep going.

00;56;06;27 – 00;56;28;08
Peter
Yeah. I mean, we have to have emotion and passion. We are song emotional thing. This is totally irrational to spend this kind of money on a space that works. So it’s like we need passion. So I definitely not I want to strip that out, but the the plans are enough to drive that. And we, we’ve changed our, 3D coloring techniques.

00;56;28;10 – 00;56;42;27
Peter
I think we’ve gone a couple those ones I’ve seen recently are more, I guess I’d call them water based. I’m not really sure. Like the elements like a water coloring. And they’ll and they’ll just do light things like change if they want like a blue kitchen. That’s kind of not true anymore. But like, you know, they’ll. Yeah. We’re like my kitchen the cabinets blue.

00;56;42;28 – 00;57;01;16
Peter
So they’ll they’ll do splashes of things like that to really help, you know a drive again the emotion, the passion. That’s the most important thing to keep at a high level. They’re through this whole thing and I want the members quick. Yeah. Right. We don’t want to be spending months and months, like getting to numbers.

00;57;01;19 – 00;57;22;04
Logan
Yeah. And just kind of like on that. Like it. I. Yeah. I just want to re-emphasize out of like it is the excitement has to maintain because I, you know, it is a very expensive thing. It is a very invasive thing that people are going through. It takes a while. So it’s it’s a lot that is about to endure to get this thing happening.

00;57;22;04 – 00;57;47;29
Logan
And if you’re losing passion at the beginning and then saying, hey, look, we’re still 30 days of designing this, I know you caught us wanting to get this thing going. And that’s like when they call you. It’s like when excitement is kind of the highest because they’re like motivated to finally reach out, carrying that through. So I don’t want to like, say, like what you have is like, as I’ve seen it, it’s not, it’s not amateurish where it’s like, hey, we just we had this software called Microsoft Paint and we just put some stuff together.

00;57;47;29 – 00;58;02;21
Logan
It’s it walks you through it so you can, like, actually envision the space and you can see the overhead. So it’s obvious there. So let’s say they say yep, this sounds great. We want to go with this option. This option, this option. Let’s keep going. What happens next?

00;58;02;23 – 00;58;24;18
Peter
Well important note I was present in person I didn’t know I was I shouldn’t say like really strongly against presenting numbers. Not in person. I will send them the information, a day or two before, as far. So they they’re not walking cold. Right. And I don’t like that because that’s a whole different meeting. So what do you say?

00;58;24;22 – 00;58;27;11
Peter
Before everything, I want to present to them.

00;58;27;14 – 00;58;36;00
Logan
Really? So you’re saying, hey, here is everything. Check this out. I can’t wait to see you in two days.

00;58;36;02 – 00;58;52;09
Peter
Well, my my closing statement is. And we use Job tread and have Eric listen to this. This is not totally true because it’s not. But I tell them, hey, the system can be a little weird sometimes. If you could just confirm on me that you receive the documents.

00;58;52;11 – 00;58;53;11
Logan
So you want them.

00;58;53;12 – 00;59;13;26
Peter
Just yet, right? Yeah, I got them. Great, great. Well, then I’m a big surprise. I don’t right now. But again, I’ve already asked them permission to blow their budget. How can you be mad at me now? I’ve already. You gave me. You said yes. And that’s not our goal. Like that’s why I’m not trying to be like, you know, like some whatever.

00;59;13;26 – 00;59;33;23
Peter
It’s just like we’re designing to solve your problem and that problem may just cause the solution may cost more than what you want to spend. So I want them to walk in prepared because it’s a different meeting versus, hey, it’s, you know, 100, it’s, $1.3 million nurse like, and then everything you say after that is gone, but it’s up.

00;59;34;00 – 00;59;52;23
Peter
All right. That was quick. Side note. Yeah. So they say go present person some stuff before they say you they. And just that later this morning the client texted me we’re ready to go forward. Yeah. Great. And again I told them what’s going to happen is I’m going to send you the second payment. So if the first payment was six, I send another payment for six.

00;59;52;26 – 01;00;09;29
Peter
And just like in this case, send or another. So I’m going to send you the invoice. Now also our designer will be reaching out to you to schedule your next meeting. So they’re getting something out of it, not just me going, hey, give me more money. So it’s give me money and I’ll give you that. You know, the designer is going to contact you to schedule the first appointment.

01;00;10;02 – 01;00;20;26
Logan
And then at that point is that when designer steps in, is able to do, more finishes and like, actually get it more dialed in, like what the final project’s going to look like.

01;00;20;28 – 01;00;39;11
Peter
So it’s the same designer. So they are the continuous relationship there. Yep. Same designer. And what we focus on first is lead time items. Again they know all this half of the time I don’t know the exact number but nor probably they are regurgitating the process back to us. And I, I would say less of a process, more just the approach.

01;00;39;11 – 01;01;07;20
Peter
What’s the next steps? They’re referring to us. So what we’re really focusing on is the lead time items first cabinets, doors, windows. Any other you know, we have a tile coming from Italy or something ridiculous, right? Like let’s get those solidified. Once we have those solidify, we have the numbers more firmed up. At that point, we’ll contract, the contracting is important because that’s going to allow us to, forecast and put your start date on the schedule.

01;01;07;23 – 01;01;10;17
Peter
So when you’re going through this.

01;01;10;20 – 01;01;33;00
Logan
Like you have a lot of the pricing starting to get down, it’s not like you design everything. Client says, okay, everything looks great. Then you like, okay, give me two weeks to actually like price everything out. You’re doing it like as you go. So it’s not like you get to the end and then you’re like, now we’re chat with you soon and figure it out.

01;01;33;02 – 01;01;49;25
Peter
If we present the price, at the pricing review and they say, yep, do it all and you pick everything for me and just make sure it’s on budget. Okay, great. That’s the price. That’s there’s no there’s no deviation from that unless they ask us to do more work. Of course.

01;01;49;28 – 01;02;08;10
Logan
So you’re so at that point though, like in that first pricing thing, that’s when you’re you’re having allowances within it. So you’re like look just as long as you know, if you want to do this type of tile, you’re good. But if you want something coming in from Italy, it’s it’s probably going to make it go up another 20 grand because we got to go through all that.

01;02;08;10 – 01;02;18;08
Logan
But basically it’s not going to fluctuate a crazy amount unless they totally switch something on you guys or add stuff on.

01;02;18;10 – 01;02;19;13
Peter
Correct.

01;02;19;15 – 01;02;21;03
Logan
Got it. Okay.

01;02;21;06 – 01;02;40;08
Peter
And so yeah. So I go ahead I’ll say by by identifying the three time bottoms, those are typically the bulk of the number of the allowances. So if we can finalize those right it’s much more comfort for the client to go okay I feel good because what’s the horror story. Your contractor gave you a low number and your contractor is looking to get you.

01;02;40;15 – 01;02;56;10
Peter
And they’re going to raise the budget as we go forward. Right. So that gives them comfort as was pick the stuff lead time items okay great. We’re on budget. Awesome list contract. Now we have a couple grand of things to pick. You know not not real budget movers.

01;02;56;12 – 01;03;13;26
Logan
So they move forward. You go through design. Are you guys doing like mood boards or is it simply just. Hey, I saw that, you know, then you guys figured, I guess, what is the actual like then? Like the beauty esthetic side of things coming in with the finishes, like, what does that look like from a design perspective?

01;03;13;28 – 01;03;14;06
Logan
Yeah.

01;03;14;07 – 01;03;32;08
Peter
Great point. So what we started doing was when I go to the sales call, I did start taking pictures because when I would go to talk to Dan, who joins me at the showroom, is it he was trying to like understand the context. But in addition to that, I’m taking pictures of their stuff, not weirdly, you know, nothing picture, underwear drawer, anything.

01;03;32;08 – 01;03;33;19
Peter
But like.

01;03;33;22 – 01;03;37;10
Logan
It’s like grandma’s photo on the wall. You like snapping a photo of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01;03;37;14 – 01;03;55;00
Peter
I’m trying to capture their style is the intention. And so the designer can get an idea of what it looks like, what’s their house style like, you know, all that kind of things. But when we get to when they give us a second payment, the designer will go back and reference those. And they’ve already been in talks about the layout.

01;03;55;00 – 01;04;02;23
Peter
So they’re getting in tune with the client. And so they’ll lead with a mood board. When we start design.

01;04;02;25 – 01;04;14;29
Logan
And is this, is this like a digital mood board or is this like you actually have. So I know when we did our bathroom, it was an actual like physical like nice wood tray. And they had it for materials. Is it like that?

01;04;15;02 – 01;04;30;15
Peter
We have real samples that we initially do as a Canva board. You know, drop put some stuff together. And I think the designers are working on kind of like this templating idea. Right? This is a gray kitchen. There’s a blue kitchen is a brown kitchen type of thing. So it’s a little more standardized, but it put in some personalized together.

01;04;30;17 – 01;04;41;14
Peter
And so when they come in they might send before I’m not real sure, but they can. We have real samples in the showroom so we can assemble all that stuff together. We’re just looking for the direction of the space.

01;04;41;17 – 01;05;05;00
Logan
So with that, like, I know we do this with like branding. We have like color palettes that like, certain colors are just, you know, black and navy blue. And then royal blue is like three colors probably would make the most sense. But it’s kind of like you have, you know, like in that green kitchen of yours, it’s, you know, green tile, brown can like, just making sure that things go cohesively.

01;05;05;03 – 01;05;16;07
Logan
That’s what you’re talking about. It like, have, like if, if this is the primary color that you want, these are the other things that you want. You don’t want to just have gold tile, gold fixtures, gold countertops.

01;05;16;10 – 01;05;35;26
Peter
Well, again, we want the client to understand and feel like the designer gets their style right. So they’re going to tell us, I hate modern, I hate craftsman, no whatever good things. All right okay. Great. So but that helps us not get bogged down in like, little things, you know, with our getting bogged down on the handle color, it’s like, oh, we’ve heard got the mood board.

01;05;35;26 – 01;05;45;04
Peter
The hammer color is going to be this kind of thing like. So that’s it’s again, just iterate, reiterate like making the client feel heard.

01;05;45;06 – 01;06;00;20
Logan
So you’re doing this, you say Canva like Canva, like the digital like graphic design. Yep. So you are so are you doing it there to say this is what we’re thinking. And and when they come in the showroom again, that’s where you’re actually able to pull some of the sample. So they could see and touch and feel and all that stuff.

01;06;00;20 – 01;06;06;27
Logan
The exact act or close fixtures that you guys are or, or finishes that you’re going to use.

01;06;06;29 – 01;06;24;16
Peter
Yeah, we basically have cabinets stuff in here, Swedes decor out of Canada, amendment cabinets, campfire, all the cabinet stuff, countertop stuff, and then a whole bunch of tile. Tile is hard because there are so many different tiles. But we have the main things here. What we found is all the fixtures, plumbing, like, plumbing fixtures, logical fixtures, something like that.

01;06;24;18 – 01;06;41;24
Peter
We just pull out the manufacturer’s website and then send them a PDF and we it’s option. Some people say I don’t want one auction. They’ll give me more. So it’s typically like one, 2 or 3 and kind of like we think this is the best one to make confirm or not. On the smaller stuff on those things.

01;06;41;27 – 01;06;56;11
Logan
So at this point though, it is because at the beginning it was almost like, hey, we’re not going to go into the kitchen, we’re just going to dream this whole thing up and you talk through it. But now that you’ve gotten past that with the finishes, it seems like you guys are doing a lot more of like the guiding and saying, this is what goes together.

01;06;56;11 – 01;07;15;07
Logan
These are some of like not the options because I’m guessing if ultimately if they want all grain because they just love the color green, you’ll do it. But as far as like best practices go, you are starting to now guide them because I’m sure from a finishes perspective, you know, there’s 4000 different tiles that they could choose from.

01;07;15;07 – 01;07;18;28
Logan
If you give them 4000 options, you’re going to be here all year.

01;07;19;00 – 01;07;39;17
Peter
Yeah. Well, I mean, in the conceptual development phase, we are we are applying our expertise in guiding the solutions out there. I mean, certainly there are some things they want us like that just doesn’t make sense. But whatever we well, we don’t want to show them every option. And when I think I’m conflating design because this is like what design.

01;07;39;24 – 01;07;59;13
Peter
But like phase two, like the selection, the finish selection is just again the mood board you to set the stage for what it is. And then we are just presenting 1 or 2 options to them, maybe three options to them and go. And we want, we want to feel like we’re guiding them versus like you start, I’ll be an order taker.

01;07;59;13 – 01;08;11;23
Peter
You just tell me what you want. And we have you had that, told to us in our previous kind of version of design build like you guys aren’t really users or taking. That’s not good.

01;08;11;25 – 01;08;29;18
Logan
Yeah. I remember, when I was like nine, I got a I went to, like, the haircut place, and I got a terrible haircut and it looked like Lloyd Christmas. And my mom was like to the barber like, hey, his hair looks terrible. And she’s like, what is what he asked for? And she goes, he’s nine.

01;08;29;20 – 01;08;31;22
Logan
He has no idea what he wants.

01;08;31;24 – 01;08;33;20
Peter
So yeah.

01;08;33;23 – 01;08;43;01
Logan
So it’s like that where it’s like look like, you know, we’re going to guide you ultimately, I guess if you want this, we can physically do it. But so well.

01;08;43;06 – 01;08;58;26
Peter
This great thing is the clients love the designers more than anybody else. And I’m sure I’m the bad guy. I’m the numbers guy. You know, they like me at first and then I turned. So they have like, I give this, like, ladder of trust or step to trust, I’m sure. And I don’t know if that’s a thing or not.

01;08;58;26 – 01;09;17;20
Peter
But like they have such trust and the designers this guy, you know, they’re like waffling, you know, should I do this wire that white and sky and that, you know, we’ve trained designers be very like tell your opinion. And no, I like this one. Okay. Great. So that’s as part of that. So when they.

01;09;17;20 – 01;09;39;07
Logan
Present the design at that point, as long as everything is within reason, do you then say, great. Now with all this said, we’re going to present the final proposal with the exact numbers, which is based off of the selections and stuff like that. It goes up a little bit or goes down a little bit, because if you gave, ten grand towards tile, they wanted the cheapest options.

01;09;39;07 – 01;09;43;15
Logan
This is what they want and only cost five. You then take five grand off.

01;09;43;18 – 01;10;06;20
Peter
Right? So what will we do? Before contract is the lead time items. And so tile could be part. That might not be. It might be part of an idea. Sure. But, like cabinets, we gave them 30 grand. They have 20. We’ll adjust our contract number to 20 of what they actually picked. And then it’s a designer’s job to keep them within the budget.

01;10;06;23 – 01;10;24;24
Peter
And if the client wants to succeed, it’s our job to tell them you’re going to exceed. And if you don’t know the number right now, that’s fine. So, I don’t know the number. I’ll figure it. I’ll find out for you. So it’s it’s that’s it’s a harder park. It’s like everyone wants to, you know, clients want pink rock, Amazon where you can, like, add into the car, take from the car.

01;10;24;24 – 01;10;42;15
Peter
It’s obviously it’s not that simple in some things, but it’s it’s their job to keep them on track. But once we get just call this car cabinets, doors and windows, we get there. I call the client, hey, guess you know we’re five K under. All right, we’re ready for contract again. We’ve already told them this is exactly what’s going to happen.

01;10;42;17 – 01;10;52;23
Peter
We’re gonna go through this, and I’m sending the contract. And so they’re waiting for it there. It’s just a it’s a formality within the schedule. Within the design schedule at this point, sign the contract.

01;10;52;26 – 01;11;06;20
Logan
So at that point then everything’s good to go. You present the final design. Are you presenting this back in the showroom on that frame TV? I guess. What is the presentation of the final design look like?

01;11;06;22 – 01;11;29;16
Peter
Well, so the designer is doing all the back and forth with them. So they’re basically solidifying the selections. There’s, there’s not really like a formal way we’re doing that now. And as you mentioned, that is like, well, I probably a good thing to kind of, you know, incorporate maybe just like a little mood thing, but I think at that point and as we just rounded the clients, we were jogging and now we’re, we’re, we’re ramping up to a full sprint to build.

01;11;29;18 – 01;11;46;01
Peter
And so I think the like not those are less creativity. They just start. They it’s like it gets a little more real. So it’s like they’re not floating in cloud as much. It’s much more about the numbers. They talk to the designers what it looks like they’re good with all that. So.

01;11;46;04 – 01;12;07;18
Logan
So so there’s no final, like, hey, we took the renderings. We actually applied the exact tile, the exact fixtures, the exact this so they can see, like, exactly what it’s going to look like at the end. It’s the back. And forth and the designers, so they know what it’s going to look like. But you still have like, more of that original like set up from a space perspective.

01;12;07;19 – 01;12;27;15
Peter
Yeah. I mean, how do you say that? Thinking about oh, so we call it the contract set with the build sending something later. As you know, revisions might happen, but at the contract set, the one they’re going to, you know, legally sign off on, they will go back and make it a little more personalized. We’re not it’s a visual reference only.

01;12;27;16 – 01;12;39;13
Peter
Right. This is not the thing that we’re going to be building, but it can be very helpful for the field crew as well because to look at it. But it’s it’s not like some hyper realistic thing.

01;12;39;15 – 01;13;00;06
Logan
That’s nice because I know for our bathroom, like that was like it was taped up of like a hyper and then like at least for like my wife and I was nice to be like, okay, the flooring or the tile or the, you know, painting company like if they somehow put something in incorrectly when all like the planes and like the visuals are right there, like, that’s crazy.

01;13;00;08 – 01;13;14;09
Logan
But okay, cool. So that’s the one step that they know from the design perspective. They know everything else. It’s all pretty up there at that point. Is that when this is the final price sign on the dotted line, and then that’s when it goes into construction, they signed.

01;13;14;11 – 01;13;14;23
Peter
More than.

01;13;14;23 – 01;13;15;11
Logan
Likely we’ve.

01;13;15;11 – 01;13;35;01
Peter
Already submitted for permit. So the permits already been kind of working in the background. They sign, we established the start date based on the lead time items, not only the start date and hand. That’s awesome. Now there’s remaining selections to be done as us for our company. We want all selections to be done prior to build, right?

01;13;35;04 – 01;13;51;04
Peter
Paint and grout color might be the two that you know. Okay fine whatever. We can leave that for later. But then the desire needs to go back to work. And what we typically do is we just send them PDFs. We don’t really need to have a more meeting. Some clients. Sure. Right. They want to see us. That’s great.

01;13;51;07 – 01;13;57;19
Peter
But a lot of times we’re just sending a PDF or two and they’re just saying click, click click yes. Yeah okay. Great. Moving on.

01;13;57;21 – 01;14;05;11
Logan
So at that point this is officially when design and pre-construction are complete. Correct.

01;14;05;13 – 01;14;15;09
Peter
Yeah I mean you have mobilization. Maybe you could tag on where we would actually procuring the staff and starting to ramp up in the build. But yeah, that that’s more or less bring it to a finalization.

01;14;15;12 – 01;14;25;10
Logan
But at this point, like they sign like, you know, money’s been exchanged. So like they’re they’re in it. It’s not like there’s still like room to like waffle out and go. Yeah. No, we no longer want to do this project.

01;14;25;14 – 01;14;42;23
Peter
With a two part design. When they give the second payment, that is like a 98% conversion rate at that point because, yeah, so many people are giving us 12, 15, $30,000 at that point. And then when they sign the contract, you know, I mean, we wouldn’t legally make someone stay if they didn’t want to, but legally, we could.

01;14;43;00 – 01;15;01;07
Peter
But also they sign the contract. We’re also taking a material deposit for the lead times. So like the contract I’m trying to get signed to, they’re at about 350. We’re $50,000 of lead times. We have to, get money on. So it’s real, real, real deep. Like so when you.

01;15;01;07 – 01;15;18;23
Logan
Then think, like, explain all this stuff, I need to think back to a few years ago of how you were doing it. Was it a scenario that you just doing it the way that you do it now? If three years ago, if I said, hey, Peter, this is how you’re going to be doing three years, you’re ready to go, wow, I didn’t even know that that was like an option.

01;15;18;23 – 01;15;25;22
Logan
Or would you have gone? You know what? That’s fine. But like, that’s I don’t think that style would work for us. But I can understand how it could work for somebody else.

01;15;25;25 – 01;15;43;22
Peter
The way we tell them, the way we do it now. Correct. The when we merged with Dan, I consolidate is a technical term when we came together with Dan where Tom all our approaches and differences and where I go, we do this isness and he goes, well, this is where I do. And it’s like literally like, I like this guy.

01;15;43;22 – 01;16;09;18
Peter
I was like, yeah, we’re doing that. Like it just it’s just it’s from a design dual perspective. Like I want to build really cool, like things that solve people’s problems. When he solves someone’s problems. Truly. Right. Love may be a strong word, but they love you. Ryan we that’s that’s what we got to. And that’s like I would never turn back and go back to what we used to do.

01;16;09;20 – 01;16;18;05
Peter
It’s just the trust the relationship, the approach. Like we know way better who our client is than we used to.

01;16;18;07 – 01;16;31;06
Logan
So basically the like this, this all works very well for larger projects. But if you’re simply doing like powder rooms and that’s it, this may be a bit of overkill. Yeah. All in all, yeah.

01;16;31;06 – 01;16;49;20
Peter
And again, it goes back to what’s our number one thing for us as a client for I don’t for an ideal client if they’re open to auctions. Well if we’re doing a powder what are you sure is like, you know, green or black or blue or I mean, it’s like, that’s the art, but. So if there’s no options to design, we’re not the best value for the client, right?

01;16;49;20 – 01;16;54;17
Peter
We’re not, we’re not. There’s someone else that’s better better set up for them.

01;16;54;19 – 01;17;18;07
Logan
And last thing on all of this before we wrap this up, when you think through like the personnel that it takes to make this happen, I mean obviously you and Dan, you’ve Scott who does all the production and you know off side of things the designer how how difficult or how easy was it to get the designers on board from a couple of years ago to now?

01;17;18;07 – 01;17;37;20
Logan
It’s like, look, we’re actually going to go way more in depth. We’re going to learn way more about the the clients. I mean, this went from like a hey, you probably came out liking the idea of design, and now you got to like, love the client because you’re about to spend a ton of time with them. So was there like a, a transition period where some people made it and some people didn’t like, what did that look like?

01;17;37;22 – 01;18;01;27
Peter
The hardest thing I think we face in our business is we’re always trying to save our clients money, and that’s the wrong thing to do. It’s not our job to assign value to what they want because yeah, right. Drive down the road like someone’s in a Honda that costs $10,000 right next to them, and they’re in, you know, a Porsche that costs $350,000 does the same thing, but they want different things.

01;18;01;27 – 01;18;19;17
Peter
There’s values there. So what we really had to work on with the clients, they’d be designing something, drawing something. And they wouldn’t they would make the decision for the client that they were going to save them money. That’s not our job. Our job is to present options to them. They may cut it, but now it’s because they don’t see value in it.

01;18;19;17 – 01;18;41;17
Peter
And that’s totally fine. That was a big transition for like we had a case where new kitchen and a designer that we’d kind of like maxed out. The client told us it was like, is all I got. I, we got to make sure you guys scratch down a little bit and, Brett, the designer was like, I really wanted this glass door on the pantry, not a, you know, $800 or something.

01;18;41;20 – 01;19;01;13
Peter
He was like, but. And now was like, tell the client. It’s like, yeah, they’re doing their budget. They did the glass door because it had value to them. They found the $800. So we were trying to that was a big transition. And just being like, let’s think about things differently from design. That was that was probably the other thing.

01;19;01;15 – 01;19;03;00
Logan
What do you mean by that?

01;19;03;02 – 01;19;32;12
Peter
Just look for creative opportunities, right? Like really this is where Dan really brought a ton of value to the company. Like let’s look at spaces differently. Right? Like hallways or how things come together. Different construction details like not just, you know, it’s a kitchen. We design like a beautiful cabinetry. It’s like, how does this link with the, the breakfast areas that link with the the laundry and the powder and a mudroom and, like, how does all that actually work and flow together?

01;19;32;12 – 01;19;45;19
Peter
So it’s that’s like a hard thing to describe I think. But it’s the designers of I think finally kicked into gear. But the first thing for sure was it’s not our job to save the client’s money as contractors or designers. We’re here to present options.

01;19;45;22 – 01;19;59;04
Logan
So yeah, I mean, it really like I know Dan did a lot of like I mean, that was the first thing when I first met Dan, it was the, the backsplash that, you know, the switch and like, the backsplash, like voice activated.

01;19;59;11 – 01;20;01;02
Peter
Oh, is that what it was?

01;20;01;05 – 01;20;20;15
Logan
Yeah, like like it was. It was crazy. But like that stuff that, like, I can’t imagine the homeowner. Well, actually tell me that you know more about it. Like, did the homeowner say, hey, Dan, like, I want this thing to retract up? Or is that Dan’s idea? That’s like, you know, what could be cool is we could bring these spaces together with a retractable backsplash.

01;20;20;17 – 01;20;39;22
Peter
Well, that client had a small kitchen, and they and they were told by other contractors, you have a small kitchen, there’s no good nothing you can do with a small kitchen. This. And yeah, they’re no like, quit trying to save the client freaking money. It’s not our job to save the money job at pride auction. So Dan was like, you got a small space, but you got this weird nook thing in the back here.

01;20;39;25 – 01;20;52;17
Peter
But we don’t always want to be connected. And that’s where that idea sprang from. It’s like, again, this idea of, like, let’s think beyond the just how can we save our money? Stop doing that.

01;20;52;19 – 01;21;02;16
Logan
Cool. So is there anything else where you think through just your design and sales process that we should talk about, that we haven’t yet?

01;21;02;18 – 01;21;11;17
Peter
So we talked about budget. You talked about design options. I, we talked about don’t drop a truck. Ask me don’t don’t drive.

01;21;11;17 – 01;21;14;02
Logan
It lifted like the lifted truck with like but.

01;21;14;02 – 01;21;15;08
Peter
Like off the back.

01;21;15;08 – 01;21;44;12
Logan
And it’s like, I mean that that works in certain trades. But I know like when it comes to, like, you know, remodeling and like, design focus like it is you’re not catering to the top. Ask people that are like, you know, a grizzly guy and a wife beater. It’s it’s more like you’re catering to my wife that like if you show up and like, you are clearly not fashionable, like there is a level of like, okay, well, if this guy doesn’t even dress himself well, like, what’s the likelihood that they’re going to have great design options?

01;21;44;12 – 01;21;48;04
Logan
So like that’s something like that finesse stuff. So that’s I mean yeah.

01;21;48;06 – 01;22;10;20
Peter
I was I would say just general what I hear the most and just just being a listener. Right. Like this idea like on the first call. Whatever. Right. Like if there’s two cups of coffee, the cup, the client has a cup, your cup should be gone first because they’re talking not to you. So just being a listener, like, just I think in our industry we know a lot.

01;22;10;23 – 01;22;31;22
Peter
We’re very experienced in general as people, as contractors. But it’s like we want to tell everyone what they want, what they should do, what can’t be done is listen, like, just listen to the client. So they make sure they feel heard again. We’re we’re selling to women, right? Like it’s we we can’t just, you know, dealing men talking to other different than men talking to women.

01;22;31;22 – 01;22;35;29
Peter
So we got just just this be more sensitive to that call.

01;22;36;06 – 01;22;57;01
Logan
Love it. All right. Peter, I appreciate this, man. This has been great. I mean, like, I mean, you know, I watched the whole video of it. 100 page stock of it. But to, like, go back and forth and understand it more, this is great. So I appreciate it. I think that’s all we got. I don’t think Peter has anything to sell because usually this is like the hey, people want to connect with you more.

01;22;57;04 – 01;23;07;11
Logan
Although if you’re a job trend user, Peter does have some cool stuff with data hacks. So if you want to see better, better automations within Job Shred, he’s your guy.

01;23;07;13 – 01;23;13;11
Peter
You can text within Job Shred now with open from. It’s pretty cool I do all the time to prospects nice.

01;23;13;11 – 01;23;24;29
Logan
All right well cool man. Well I appreciate it everybody. Thank you very much. We’ll see you next time.