The contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. On this episode, we're going to be talking about Speak Now or Pay Later. I love this title because it summarizes the entire issue of the two things that we're going to talk about today. Actually, three. two problems and one solution and why this is so rampant in construction. It blows my mind. It literally blows my mind. I see this every single day in Facebook groups, contractor Facebook groups, every single day. It's the exact same question wrapped in a different wrapping paper. And it goes something like this. Hey guys, This is the post in the Facebook group. Hey, guys, I just had this situation. We were almost done with the job. We didn't have all of the plumbing tied together. And the customer went in there and turned on all the water. And it caused a bunch of damage because it leaked everywhere. And now they want us to pay for it. What should we do? And I read that. And I just want to reach through the computer and smack these people. I really do. Because this is such an easy thing to prevent. It's so freaking easy to prevent this stuff. And yet it's so hard for contractors to comprehend this. It blows my mind. The two things I'm talking about is making assumptions and not setting expectations. And those two can be, you know. intertwined or replaced. It doesn't really matter. Yes, they're two different things, but at the end of the day, if we don't set an expectation, then we're making an assumption that either they are on the same page with us or that they understand what we're doing. So they're kind of intertwined, but they're not quite the same. So an assumption can be made anything during the process. Expectations need to be set in the beginning. So when you're meeting with a new client and you sell that job, before you take that deposit to get started, you need to set the expectations of the job. This includes things like change orders, how a change order works, what's the process for a change order, what's the cost of a change order. It can be picking out selections. This is the process for making selections. If you don't make selections by a certain date, it holds up the job. If that happens, there could be additional costs associated with that. If you don't make a selection, what pulls us off the job, then we may go start another job and your job gets put on hold. It's making a clear statement. It's clear communication of what that expectation is that you have of them and that they should have of you, but also so that you understand what their expectations are. And really their expectations of what they have for the project should be found out and discovered. during what we call the discovery call, which is the sales call. That's why it's called a discovery call, because we want to discover all of the expectations, all of the, you know, their needs and wants and desires and motives. We want to discover all of that before, wait for it, before we get in bed with them, right? We want to make sure they're not packing some extra you know, packing some extra activities down below before we get in bed with them. Okay. I'm going to leave it there. Hopefully you can, you can disseminate what that means. So you guys are going to the street corner, picking up people, getting in bed with them. And then surprise, something's different. That's how you sell jobs. Well, yeah, I mean, we have a contract. I mean, we have a contract that's, you know, we have a 35 page contract that outlines every single thing that we do. in business, in our expectations of the customer, it's their fault if they don't read it, Brad. And that's, again, I want to smack you in the face because that's not true at all. The thing that you're not taking in consideration here is human behavior. See, you guys assume that your customers go to customer school. They don't. They don't know how to be your customer. And even if I ask a client, hey, have you ever done a project like this before? And they go, yeah, we've done four or five projects. That does not mean that they are now a seasoned professional customer so that they know how to do work with contractors. It does not mean that whatsoever. That's an assumption. If you assume like, oh, they've done work before. They've worked with contractors. They know how it works. They know we've got to get money up front. They know that we've got to collect money during the job. They know this. They know that. No, they don't. They don't know that because they've never done work with you. And you're making the assumption that every single contractor does things exactly the same, which they don't. That's one of the beauties of owning your own business is because you can do things differently than other contractors. You have certain things that you do that nobody else done that separates you. This is how you can separate yourself from other contractors is through the process. And so if your process is totally different than everyone else's, They're not going to know how to be your customer. If they've hired four other shady contractors and got screwed all four times, guess what? They're going to be skeptical of how you do business in the beginning. Does that mean that they're a terrible customer? No. Does that mean that you have to make sure that you set the expectation in the beginning that you're different and what it's like to work with you and then back it up with action? Yes. You have to do that. And it blows my mind. This is one of the easiest things to get right in business. And that's why the title is Speak Now or Pay Later. Because you almost always end up paying more money through lost wages, through repairs, through lawsuits, through material replacement, through warranty work. Those almost always cost you money later on. If you don't speak up today and use effective communication, which is the answer. And we're going to get into that here in a minute. But I want to go back to assumptions because this is everybody goes, oh, yeah, I know what assumptions mean. I totally understand what assumptions mean. No, you don't. You may think you may understand the concept of what assumptions are, but I guarantee you, you make 15 to 20 assumptions every single day that you're completely unaware of. When you make no assumptions, that means you have extreme clarity on anything in that given day. This goes back to communicating with your employees and your subs that I've talked about before. Your employee sub text you a message, hey, Brad, how far off the wall are we supposed to frame this? It's not on the plans. And you respond back because you're annoyed, because they, quote, should know this. Or because you, quote, gave them the information, but you really didn't give them the information you thought you did. And so you're annoyed. And so you do a quick response of, it's five feet off the wall. You know that. And then they go and do something different. They waste half a day. You show up later on, and it's five feet off the wall. And they figured off the finished wall, and it's supposed to be rough framing. Right? You wanted rough dimension. They figured finished dimension. Now it's an inch off or whatever. and you get pissed off because you have, quote, incompetent or incompetent employees and subs, the reality of it is it's 100% your fault because you made an assumption and you didn't effectively communicate that. That's your fault. It's not your employee's fault. It's your fault. That's effective communication, right? You made the assumption that they knew it was rough opening because they're doing rough opening framing right now. You made that assumption. Now, we could argue that they also made an assumption that you were talking about finished framing or finished dimensions, right? They made an assumption. You made an assumption. The problem is it costs you money. It doesn't cost them money. So therefore, it's your fault and it's your responsibility to make sure there is 100% clear communication on that. That's just one tiny example of how you make an assumption and it costs you money later on. Now, back to customers, which is where we're talking about here mostly. This example that I read today about the, to go on a little more on it, he said that they were nearing the completion of construction. They had to do a punch list. The guy was motivated to get done. He wanted to get done so he could pay him. Everybody's happy because, you know, they want to get paid. and they went to get the job done. And so they had to go back and finish a few things. And the wife stopped by, and she turns on the water on the two bathrooms back to back, two faucets, two tubs and showers, and then proceeds to go get the mail, which is like a quarter of a mile trek from the house, comes back. The water's running for 15 minutes, and the contractor says that the drain was not completely connected. which I don't understand that at all. I have no idea why you would put a drain on and then not connect it. Can't understand that. But let's just assume that on purpose, the drain was not connected for whatever reason, right? And so it's not ready to test. That makes sense. If the drain is not connected, you can't test the drain. Now, the customer is wanting them to pay for damages because it leaked through the ceiling and drywall got wet. The customer wants the contractor to pay for tearing out the drywall, fixing all that, you know, repairing it, painting it, making it right again and doing that. Now, right now, who do you think is at fault here? Honestly, ask yourself this. Is this the customer's fault because they turned on the water when the contractor told them that they weren't done yet? Or is this the contractor's fault for not clearly communicating the situation? You guys, in your mind, answer that question. Some of you will say it's the customer's fault, clearly. If I tell them we're not done yet, then they shouldn't be in there doing anything. And he goes on to say that this was a vacant house. They weren't living there. So they had no right to go in and test all that because he told them they weren't done yet. Guys, if you don't understand human behavior. Seriously, if you don't understand how to work and prevent human behavior and curiosity slash ignorance, you should not be a contractor. This idea that you hand someone a contract that's 25 pages long, that has all the clauses in the world that no one's ever going to read, and you just assume they're going to read that whole thing, and then six months into the project and something happens, you go, well, it's in page four, paragraph 34, subsection. B, it says this and this. They're not reading your contract. Well, that's their fault then if they don't read the contract. Yes, it's their fault. But guess who's going to pay for it? You are. You're paying for it. You are paying for them not reading the contract. And you're going to be like, well, I'll just sue them. I'll just sue them if they don't pay me. Great. Now you're going to go to court. You're going to waste 30 hours of your time. You're going to be extremely pissed off for the three months that this is going on. You're going to have court fees and everything else. And at the end of the day, you may win. But then you just pissed off a customer who's going to go on social media and completely bash you against everybody they know. And at the end of the day, you're going to pay twice, even though you win the court battle based on principle, because it matters to you more about the principle of it. Simply because you couldn't communicate effectively during the process and it's your fault and you don't want to take responsibility. You win the court battle. You lost money because expenses to win the court battle offset what you actually won. Plus you add in all the time wasted, all of the duress, the stress and duress of going through this process. Plus you're not focusing on the stuff that you should be focusing on. And at the end of the day, you still get destroyed on social media. And you think you win. And you think that's the solution right there. I've done well over 500 jobs with no contract whatsoever. Over 500 jobs with no contract, just a handshake or an email with zero problems. 100% paid, five-star review at the end, no issues whatsoever. Because I understand human behavior and I compensate for it. through communication and nonverbal communication, which we'll get into here in a second. When you guys understand human behavior and you work against it, or in other words, prevent it, in other words, you put policies, processes in place that prevent human behavior from interfering, that's when you have a good business that wins. That's when you have clear communication. And I'll give you some examples of that also here in a second. This isn't about hiding behind contracts, guys. This isn't about expecting common sense. F that word, common sense. This whole common, it's common sense. It's common sense, Brad. You don't turn the water on before the job's done. I told him that we weren't done yet. If I walk into a bathroom and it looks like it's done, if you say, yeah, we got a few things left to finish. If you're the contractor, I'm the customer. I call you up. I say, hey, Mark, how much longer we got on this job? And you say, well, we got just a few things left to finish up. We'll be done there by tomorrow afternoon. It's all yours. Awesome. I go home after work or my wife goes there during the day. And for whatever reason, you're not there working or maybe it's at the end of the day, right? Like you just got done that day. You got to come back the next day to finish a few things and you're done. I get there at the end of the day. I walk into the bathroom and it looks completely done. It looks 100% finished. And I'm like, well, what, what does he got left to do? That's weird. Well, I want to be able to do this for that. So I'm going to go ahead and turn the water on. I want to see how this does. I want to flush the toilet. I want to see how the shower works. I'm excited. I want to see this. I just spent 20,30, $50,000 for this. And I want to try it out. I want to, I want to mess with it. That's human desire. That's human behavior. And you don't say anything or you don't do anything to prevent that from happening. And then I come in there and I turn the water on. It doesn't matter if she turned the water on for five seconds or 15 minutes or five hours. The point is the water shouldn't be turned on and you did nothing to make sure that that could be prevented. That is your fault. That's your fault. You assume that they know better. Human behavior dictates that people are going to be curious. Always. At any given time, they are going to be curious. So, communication about this. The easiest thing you can do. It's so easy, it blows my mind that people don't do this. I mean, it just, I get so dumbfounded sometimes by some of the things I hear and see. All you have to do is put blue tape on there. It says don't turn the water on. That's it. You put blue tape on the faucet. If the shower is not connected underneath, you put blue tape on the faucet and the handle. You wrap it around the handle so that you physically can't turn it. And you put on there in black Sharpie, do not turn on until date. Do not turn on until removed. If you just put tile down on the floor. And you don't want the customer walking in there. You put blue tape across the doorway and you say, stay off until the next day or stay off until this date or stay off until this time. Then you put a date and time. You don't put Monday or Tuesday. You put a date. Why? Because what if it's a situation where they have to be off for a week? Is it this Monday or next Monday? And you say, well, Brad, that's common sense. Is it? Is it common sense? This is what I'm talking about, about effective communication. If I put on there, stay off until 926,8 a. m., is there any communication breakdown there? Stay off tile, even better, or stay out of bathroom until 9,6, or if you want to put a date on there, until Monday, whatever the date is used today. I'm recording this on 926. Stay off until Wednesday,927,8 a. m. Is there any, could there be any possible confusion about that? Stay off tile, stay out of bathroom until 927, until Wednesday,927,8 a. m. There's no room for confusion. And then you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put two pieces of tape across the doorway. Not just one, because if I put it across the middle, Guess what? They walk in the room and they don't read it and they duck right underneath it and now they're on the tile and now it's squished everywhere and guess what? You pay for it. So what do I do? I put two blue tapes across here. One at waist height where they can read it. One at knee height so they can't just step over it. If there's any confusion, I may put three pieces of tape on there. I may put entire plastic across the door. I'm putting some kind of visual control. to make sure this doesn't happen. That's the part of nonverbal communication is visual controls. You create visual controls, meaning you're controlling the situation visually with something visually. This is so simple, yet nobody does this stuff. Even if you text your customer at the end of the day, hey, Mark, we're done for the day. Be back tomorrow at 8 a. m. Stay off the tile until we get back. You know, stay off the tile until tomorrow morning. Perfect. I did it. Pat me on the back. I sent him a text. This guy on the podcast, Brad, dude, says, you know, you got to have great communication. I just did it. I just did great communication. I texted him to stay off the tile until tomorrow morning. Recovered. Perfect. I come in tomorrow morning. Tile's messed up. Hey, what? I don't understand who was on there. I text the guy. Hey, Mark. Or Mark texts me. Whatever. If I'm the contractor now. I text the guy. Chris. Chris, did you guys walk on the floor last night? Yeah, why? What's up? Well, I sent you that text that said not to walk on the tile until this morning. Huh. When did you send it? I sent it at 4.30 when we got done. I didn't get anything. Here's a screenshot of my phone. I didn't receive any text from you. You see what I'm talking about? This is the level of communication you need to break in. You need to understand. Technology fails. If I don't pick up the phone and talk to that person verbally and get a verbal confirmation from them, it did not happen. You assumed that the text went through. And why wouldn't you? Because 99% of... 99.9% of the time, the texts go through. So why wouldn't you assume it? Because you didn't get a confirmation. If you wanted a confirmation, you would put on that text, hey, don't walk on the tile until tomorrow morning. Can you reply and let me know you got this? That's a little add-on there. Can you reply and let me know you got this? If at 9 o 'clock at night, I haven't got a text yet, I'm concerned. Honestly, if I don't get a text in the next 30 minutes, I'm concerned. Because if I'm leaving at 430, they get home at five. I want to make sure they got that text. Maybe they left the phone in the car. Maybe they left their phone at work and they didn't get the text. There's any number of reasons that could have happened. But if I sent a text and said, hey, stay off the tile until tomorrow morning, they don't get the text. They come home. They walk in their room. They're super excited to see their bathroom. And there's blue tape across there. There's two pieces of blue tape. And it says on there, stay off tile until Wednesday morning,927 at 8 a. m. Guess what? Now they're visually and physically stopped from doing that. This is what it takes, guys. This level of intention, intentionality, this level of detail in communication is what it takes to prevent you from pain later. This is what effective communication is. So you guys think that is over communicating. And I'm telling you right now that over communication is actually effective communication. Hey, just a quick timeout from the show. In the next 30 seconds, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can transform your contracting business. Imagine being part of a community of winners where you can find out exactly what they've done to be successful. That's exactly what you get when you join the Profit Club. But it's not just a community. You get lifetime access to all of my course-related material, including all future material that I add. But wait, there's more. Each week, you'll get access to three group coaching calls to talk about sales, marketing, and business problems and answer any questions that you may have. Still not convinced? How about personalized one-on-one coaching to help you overcome your limits? And here's my promise to you. I guarantee you will double your investment within 90 days or I personally will work with you one-on-one until you do. So don't wait. Elevate your game with The Profit Club today. Now let's get back to the show. What you think is micromanaging is actually effective communication because your version of what micromanaging is is incorrect. Micromanaging is not making sure that people understand what they're supposed to do. Micromanaging is you telling them every single thing to do along the way. But making sure they clearly understand what they're supposed to do is not micromanaging. This is why some of you guys get in so much trouble, especially those of you that are doing like five or six jobs at a time, because you're running around like crazy and you're, you don't, in your mind, you don't think you have enough time. to do this stuff. In reality, compared to the damage and lost time that you're going to pay later, you have plenty of time, plenty of time. I'd rather spend an hour over communicating than $3,000 two weeks from now fixing an issue every single time. I don't know anybody that says, man, I wish I wouldn't have spent as much time communicating. I don't think it's ever been said. I wish I would have spent less time communicating the stuff to the guys. Plenty of things have been said. I wish that the guys knew better. I wish that this happened. I wish the customers that. I wish this and this. I wish, I wish, I wish. If you're saying to yourself, I wish, you have a communication problem. So visual controls prevents this from happening. Aligning expectations from the get-go. prevents this from happening. I'll give you an example. I did a bathroom, master bathroom remodel. This was, I don't know, five or six years ago. And it was a couple that moved from, I think, I think they moved from Boston. They had a, you know, Eastern accent, New England accent, right? They had that accent. Maybe it was Michigan. I don't, I don't remember. Somewhere up North or East. They moved here for work, corporate guy. You could just tell from the communication that they had a kind of a, I don't want to say we're better than everyone else attitude, but they had an attitude of like, we get what we want. Like we always get what we want. And so when we sold this job, it was right before Christmas. It was a bathroom model and they wanted it done right before Christmas. I told them I can't get it done before Christmas. We can get it mostly done before Christmas, but I can't get it all the way done. And I had on there like the total time to complete was like eight weeks or whatever. I don't remember what it was. Six weeks or something. It was a bathroom model. It wasn't that long. So maybe it was like four weeks. We started it at like the beginning of December. I made sure that the husband understood that we weren't going to get it done. And he was perfectly okay with that. He said, that's not a problem. The wife, however, who was not involved in the communication, wanted it done before Christmas. And day one, when I showed up to start, she goes, hey, I just want to make sure you guys are going to be able to be done before Christmas, right? Or maybe it was New Year's, one of those two. And I said, no, no, it's in the estimate. And I told your husband that. And he said it wasn't a problem. And she got upset. She kind of stormed away, kind of like a big baby. Like I said, you could tell she's used to getting what she wanted. Stay at home, mom. why the husband made all the money and she just always got what she wanted. I said, no, it's in the estimate that you guys signed the timeframe. It's like six weeks. There's no way we're going to get it done before then. And she got upset. But I had already got the husband confirmed that. He's like, no worries. So those two did not communicate to each other. Again, this is an assumption. I assumed that they were on the same page. Here's an idea that may blow your mind. Husbands and wives and partners don't always communicate with each other. I know it's crazy. I know you're talking crazy now. It's true. Husbands and wives and partners and spouses do not communicate with each other about every single detail. They will communicate large. chunks of information they will communicate things at 30 000 foot but they don't communicate every single detail that you have with one of those people that's why it's always important to have both people on the phone they're all parties involved on the same call and in the same meeting to get started so everyone's on the same page there's no assumptions being made she made the assumption we were going to be done that was my fault for not clearly making sure that both parties We're on the same page. That is what I'm talking about with communication and assumptions and expectations. Her expectation was that it was going to be done by the end of the year. The husband's expectation was whenever it's done, I don't care. She made the assumption that because her expectation was to get it done by the end of the year, that that's what we were doing when we showed up. Right. I made the assumption that she was on the same page as her husband. She wasn't. Expectation not met. Right off the bat, I have an upset wife who I'm going to have to deal with every day, all day, because she's a stay-at-home mom and she doesn't leave. The husband, who is always gone because he works all the time, I never have to deal with him. Right? So now, right off from the first day, day one, we're in the hole. We're in the negative. Because expectations and assumptions were made. Expectations were not met. Assumptions were made. Problem arises. We were there on New Year's Day, or maybe it was New Year's Eve. I think it was New Year's Day, actually. We were there working on their bathroom when they had family there because she wanted it done. She didn't care. She didn't care if we were there working. But we're going up and down the steps 100 times a day. And their family's in the living room and we're walking by them like every single time all day long. They're having, you know, it was like six of them that flew in and they're having a family time. And here we are, the guy impeding on their family time. She doesn't care because she wants to work done. But, you know, the people there are thinking, man, these guys are working on holiday. Wow, that's crazy. And it was just one extra day. We didn't get the job done. Like it didn't allow us to finish the job. It was just, hey, we're going to work one day so that we can get it done one day earlier. Right. There was really no benefit to us being there that day. But again, expectations, assumptions, that's how you get in trouble all the time. I would rather speak up now than pay for it later. You do what you want to do. It's your business. You do whatever you want. But I've learned all these lessons, and that's why I have these podcasts is to try and share with you guys all of the mistakes that I made so that you don't have to make those mistakes. Unfortunately, I can't reach, you know, all several hundred thousand contractors that are out there. It's just, I mean, obviously it's a reach problem. It's a numbers problem. I mean, you guys could help out by sharing this podcast with somebody you know. You could help out by sharing this episode or my podcast with other contractors to help get the word out there. And I appreciate it. But I hope that this drives home this idea that all of the problems that you have in your business, are because expectations weren't met or assumptions were made. And if you start eliminating those two, you will have so much less stress, headache, problems, less financial cost, all of that. And it's rampant because this comment that this guy made about the bathroom, half of the responses are, dude, own your mistake and fix it. Move on. The other half of the mistakes are, oh, it's totally their fault. They should have known better. And one guy even says, don't they know that it's my job site and they're not allowed on there until the job is finished per our contract? I'm like, I bet you are fun at parties, bud. I bet you are a blast at parties. Because you think, it's cute that you think. That a piece of paper that says, hey, this is our job site, stay off until it's done, is going to keep someone who owns the actual property, who's paying you the $50,000, it's going to keep them from going on to their job site. It's cute that you think that's what actually happens. Because I guarantee you, even if you put stuff on there that says, hey, stay out until we're done, they're coming in there. You can't even keep freaking nosy neighbors from coming in. When they're building a house, there's a house in our neighborhood that burnt down. A few months ago, now they're reframing it. Right now, they're actually framing the house. What do people do in the neighborhood when there's a new house being framed? I'll give you a second to guess. They go in and walk the floor plan. And guess what? You don't have those stringers secured. You got them sitting up there because you were just testing to see if it's right. Alarm clock goes off for the day. Whistle blows. It's time to go home. You leave the job site. You leave those stringers sitting up there that aren't attached. Nosy neighbor comes by, starts walking up the stringers halfway up. The stringer falls. They break their leg. Guess who's at fault? Even though it's not your fault, you're at fault. You're going to pay for it. Stuff like that happens every day. Why do they have orange plastic caps on top of rebar? Why is it a requirement that when you have exposed vertical rebar, you have to have orange caps on it? Because at some time, somebody fell and got impelled and killed them. So guess what? You're paying the price from somebody's mistake from 10 years ago. You pay the price. Guys, if you don't want to have these issues, you have to over-communicate. You have to over... What's the word I'm looking for? Not prepare, but it's not playing either. I wish I knew the word. It's like when you overdo something. Right. Anything you do in your business has to be overdone when it comes to communication. If you do that, if you learn that skill, most of your issues will go away. This applies to your employees, your subs, your vendors, your wife, your kids, your friends, your customers, literally everyone you will meet in life. Effective communication will solve and make your life so much better. So much better. I'll share another story real quick. One of my clients, I know he'll probably get a kick out of me sharing this, but he just posted it this morning in the Profit Club. Because in the Profit Club, we talk about everything. Nothing's off the limits, really. Even if it's personal stuff, they can message me directly and we'll have personal conversations. And nobody's scared to share that because nobody's going to make you feel like crap or stupid. It's just pure... That's one of the things I love most about the profit club is that it's just pure, good-hearted people wanting others to succeed. So there's no negative comments. There's no belittling. It's always what's the learning lesson here and what's the silver lining, right? And so he commented this morning that he did a job for one of his LTL carriers. You know, the people that deliver materials, they usually have a lift gate on the back. unload pallets and stuff. So one of his carriers that he gets a lot of materials delivered from had a door at their facility they needed installed. And they had the door. The carrier had the door. They wanted him to install it. They knew of him because they delivered a lot of materials for him. And so they reached out and he said, well, it's $250 for the consultation to come out and make sure that the door's right and everything's right. And so we don't have any issues. They didn't want to pay that. They couldn't see the value in that. And he put in this contract that if we come out there and the door's not correct and we can't install it, any lost time can be penalized. You know, you could be charged for lost time. Sure enough, he goes out there to install the door. The door's not right. The guys spend like two or three hours trying to fix this door because they're trying to do the right thing. The contractor is trying to do the right thing. and give them a solution, even though it's not perfect, so that they don't have a major problem. And it comes from a good-hearted place of wanting to do the right thing. But this is also where wanting to do the right thing does not negate effective communication. It also doesn't negate non-negotiables. One of the non-negotiables I always had, especially for doors, is we do not install customer-provided doors, ever, under any circumstance, unless we come out first. and check and make sure the door fits. And they have to pay for that. If they don't pay for it, we don't install it. Period. End of discussion. And it's because of the lessons I learned. And sure enough, they get out there, they can't do it. And then he tries to send them a bill for the additional charge and they say, we're not paying that. Now, here's a newsflash, guys. If you think that having in a contract that if something goes wrong, they have to pay more. If you think that in writing that they signed the contract, that's going to get people to pay you the difference, you are sadly mistaken. Because very rarely will someone ever pay you a penalty for something that they feel like they don't deserve. And here's the thing with feelings. You can't justify feelings with logic, even though we try every day. So no matter how much logic you apply, Brad, it says right here in the contract. You signed. If the door's not right, we're going to pay this. They say, I don't care. Nobody else does that. I'm not paying you. What are you going to do? You're going to take them to court over, you know, four or five, six hundred, a thousand dollar job. Insert conversation I had earlier. You will lose in the end. You will always pay later if you don't speak now. So the speaking of that is, hey, customer. Love to do this project for you. From experience, this is what happens. And because of X experience, we won't do that. If you want us to do that, you have to meet a requirement, i. e. a consultation charge. The benefit, though, is that you get that money back. So you're not paying extra. It's just going to allow us to make sure it's done right. It's your job to make sure they understand why that's important. You have to over-communicate the value of that conversation. The contract is not going to save your butt. My former boss, who was a developer, he got screwed by his partner. I've talked about it before. He got screwed out of like $50,000. They went to court. This went on for like a year. Like lawsuit went on for like a year. It bankrupted my owner. He lost the lawsuit. And it bankrupted him on legal fees. Plus it ruined, wrecked his marriage all because on principle, he was a very principled person and his ego got the best of him. His ego said, you screwed me. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to take you to court. And at the end of the day, his partner won and got to do exactly what he wanted to do. Now his partner is a piece of crap. Don't get me wrong. He's a piece of crap human being, but his partner won. It bankrupts my boss, put him out of business, cost him a marriage, and he ended up moving to another state on one project because he assumed that his business partner was not going to screw him. And his business partner knew from the very beginning that he was going to screw him. That was his plan all along. They had over $200,000 of change orders. We were building a... duplex condominium down on the riverfront. There was a $1.2 million project. This was like, I don't know,15,20 years ago. It's a lot of money back then. And beautiful project, one parade of homes, all that stuff. His partner, they were building a duplex and his partner was going to move into one side. So his partner is like co-project managing this because his partner showing up is like, yeah, this is what we want. We want this. We want that. We want that. Blah, blah, blah. His business partner, my boss was like, why would I doubt my business partner? He's in on this transaction together. His business partner had the plans from the, from the very beginning to not pay the final invoice, go to foreclosure and then buy it back at a discount. And that's exactly what he did. And he got away with it. Over $200,000 worth of change orders on this $1.2 million project. It put a cabinet guy out of business. it put several people out of business because there was money owed to these people and my boss didn't have the money, right? Because they weren't using change orders. Why would you use change orders when it's your business partner? I mean, you should trust your business partner. That's an assumption. Just because it's your business partner doesn't mean you change the process. Doesn't mean you change the communication. Just because you're doing work for your employee at his house doesn't mean you change the process. Doesn't mean you change the communication style. Everything has a process for a reason. And when you deviate 100% of the time, I know it's for a fact,100% of the time when you deviate from your process, you always pay later. Always. That's a bonus tip there. When you are deviating from your process to make an exception, that's when you get burned. When you have the sweet old lady who's like, I don't want to pay the consultation, Brad. We're going to hire you because we know you're good and blah, blah, blah. And you go out there and you spend three hours with them. And then sure enough, they don't hire you because you waive that consultation fee. Right. Hey, my brother is an electrician. Can we use him on this job? Oh, man, I have an electrician. We don't we don't normally allow the customers to provide their own subs. Yeah, but he's he's licensed. He's been doing it for 20 years. He'll take care of it. Man, I really need this job. Really need it. OK, yeah, no problem. What happens? Time for a rough end. Doesn't show up. Week goes by. Doesn't show up. Finally shows up. It's done wrong. Now it's got to be redone. And what do you say the whole time? I knew I shouldn't have. I knew I shouldn't have done that. Let me just save you the trouble of pain later. Don't do that. Don't deviate from your process. Develop a very thorough process and then don't deviate from it no matter what. Right. So let's recap here. You making assumptions with your customers is what's screwing you over. You need to, the only assumption you need to make, this is the only assumption I will allow you to make. When you're talking to your customers, you need to assume they don't know anything. They are the dumbest people on earth. That's the assumption you can make. And so that's going to allow you to make space for the idea. that you need to babysit them and you need to educate them. And that means you need to add more time into your estimates to do that. Because when you think you're just going to stop by the job site for 10 minutes to meet with the guys and then run out, you end up staying an hour talking to the customer because they have questions about the process. And you don't factor that into your estimate. And so at the end of the project, you might make money, but you spend an extra 10 hours of your time on that project. that wasn't compensated because you didn't make that assumption. They don't know anything. Now there's ways to get around that. And I've talked lots about this blog posts, YouTube videos, content. We, before you start a job, you send them a series of links. Hey guys, this is your homework before we get started. Let me know once you've watched them all, let me know once you've read these. We can't start the project until you've read every one of these articles, until you've watched these videos. Video number one, what to expect the first day of your job. Video number two, or maybe one is, you know, how to prepare for your remodel project. Number two, what to expect on the first day. Number three, how we communicate during the process. Number four, you know, what, whatever, how we... clean up every day or whatever it is that you think is important. You have all these videos, blog posts, YouTube videos, you share them with your clients. It prevents you from having to go in and tell them all of this information, but you can use that as a communication tool. And then all you have to do is follow up and say, Hey, did you watch that video? Yeah. Yeah, we did. It was very, very helpful and educational. Thank you. And then you could put tests in there. Like I did. My blog post that said how to prepare for your remodel at the very end, I put on there, if you really want to make everybody happy and make this go smooth, the secret is chocolate chip cookies. And I can't tell you how many times we show up on day one and there's a plate of fresh book chocolate chip cookies sitting on the counter for us. Now, do you think that makes the guys happy? Yep. Does it set the tone, the expectation of how the project's going to go from day one? Yep. Does it tell me that they read that article and they understood it? Yep. So those are like non-communication styles. I hope you understand that you need to over-communicate everything in your business. And when there's misunderstanding with your customers, the very first rule there is communicate. It's not to wait. It's not to send text. And by the way, communication, just for argument's sake, is always verbal communication. Yes, you can send texts and emails, but to effectively communicate almost always requires verbal communication, right? So when your customer texts you at nine o 'clock at night and says, I thought we were going to do this tile on the walls, you know, this isn't going to work and they're fired up. It does not require you to respond at nine o 'clock at night. It's like, huh, that's interesting. Well, I guess we'll find out in the morning. And then the next morning you talk with them. Guess what happens? It gives them overnight to calm down. It gives you overnight to calm down. And now you can have a level-headed conversation. Turns out it was one tiny little miscommunication that was only like a 15-minute repair, right? It's easy to fix. You thought they were talking about the entire tile. They were talking about one row. They thought the border was going to go down low or whatever it is, right? And then you get pissed off. You send a text back. No, this is exactly what we talked about. Well, that's not what we talked about. And now you start an argument over text for no reason whatsoever. I know you guys know what I'm talking about because every single one of you have done this. I know you have. You're shaking your head. Yes. Yes, Brad. I've done this. Stop. Stop doing it. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. You know where to find me. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok. Just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. If you want help in your business, just reach out, guys. I'm here. I'm waiting to help you in your business. Stop making all these silly mistakes and have a successful business. Just reach out. I'd love to share with you how we can do that. But until next time, guys, remember, profit is not a dirty word.
