November 2005 Article from Ontario Construction News

The Rest of the Story

Following the June '05 editorial about my experience as a general contractor, we've been in our house, now, for a good 5 months; starting off without all the essentials for bit. The "only another 2 weeks" to get the ground level finished turned into two full months … but eventually we saw the last of our contractors. Well, almost, anyway.

To capitalize immediately on our 3-acre wooded lot, rather than waiting until we felt "up to" undergoing more construction, we're now installing a woodstove.

A few items had been "overlooked" by our contractors, meaning more work for my husband, for us to get an occupancy permit. We are still awaiting a couple of things, though, which will materialize, given my "never-give-up" nature.

Otherwise, aside from varnishing the window and door frames and painting the already primed baseboards and hanging a few curtains, we're finished. 99.2% finished; leaving only the landscaping.

"How long from start to finish?" most contractors I meet ask. I first saw the property on June 30th. Deed was registered in mid-August. Laneway built immediately thereafter. Moved in on May 28th. Nine months from excavation to move-in. Sounds like a human gestation period.

Through all the battles with the contractors, the anger, the temper tantrums - by contractors, even - the tears and the partings of ways, I kept reminding myself that, after all, contractors are human and I haven't met a contractor who isn't extremely stressed, but their Public Relations skills sure don't earn them much respect.

I've learned so much about contractors - their strength and their weaknesses. Let's face it: most contractors are strong in their trade and know very little about running a business. It's "business savvy" that's lacking ("savoir-faire" - French for "know how to do it"). You're gung-ho to get started … but as time passes, what happens?

Do you under-estimate the number of hours each job will take?

Do you calculate too many hours' work into each week and then suffer a drop in productivity because you're exhausted?

Does family life get in the way where you hadn't anticipated?

Then your next projects are looming out there, which you'd already promised to be working on. Stress mounts - especially if clients are calling.

Or did you suddenly look at your scheduling and see that you're almost finished the work on my house without another project to go to so have to spend time in sales and marketing mode, not showing up to my place as promised?

Communication's the number 1 problem in the workplace - in every industry. Nearing the end of the project, there were several times where we hadn't seen a contractor in days. I asked my husband once "Do you think he's died?" After wondering the same about each of them the closer we got to the end, I made a comment to one of the contractors. He laughed. Did he not remember his promise to be here last Thursday?

I'll tell you, this erodes the trust your clients have for you. Yet, simple, honest and straight-forward "telling it like it is" will earn you a ton of trust and respect. After all, your business would benefit from referrals from these clients, wouldn't it?

As a result of my experience as a general contractor, you may recall if you read the June editorial, I have built a training & business coaching program for trade and building contractors. This means that I hear of all the frustrations and challenges contractors are juggling day-in and day-out. I've learned that it's not only our contractors who throw temper tantrums.

In fact, working with one client, he finds he's now able to much more easily regain control of his emotions when he finds himself in "lively" discussion with a client.

What's the difference between the way he used to deal with these unpleasant situations and today? Today's situations are still compounded by pressure felt every single day

• trying to get every client serviced to whom he's promised a start date;
• dealing with a lack of sufficiently-skilled staff;
• bread & butter corporate contracts needing emergency service; and
• having a soft spot for needing to be helpful in his community.

How does someone of his personality type tell an elder, barely getting by, that he can't help her out because of the workload … knowing she can't afford to pay top dollar to a company that can fit her in?

He knows from the past few months' work we've done together that he can make changes to the way he's been a slave to his business and it won't be the end of the world.

These changes he's making aren't simple to implement, though, are they? Not in today's economy with building still booming. People here and fear of a slow-down in the economy. How much fact is there to that?

Generally speaking, it may be very true. In your industry, however, due to the drastic shortage of skilled trades people and the fact that baby-boomers have the fattest wallets and are now retiring, moving out of the metro-centres to settle down in quieter communities, it won't much matter if the economy slows. Specialists say that over the next 10 years there's more work for trade contractors than they can handle.

Taking time for you and your family today will ensure that you're not like another client who realized that his grandchildren were growing up - and he didn't even know them. One's gone off to University, already. He created a plan for seeing each of them at least once-a-month. Within a number of weeks, he had also gotten his health to be better than it'd been in years. He dared to drastically increase his rates. He took a vacation. He took control over his incoming phone calls. As a result of all these and other changes he tells me he has the best teams he's ever had working for him. He's now putting steps in place to create a lucrative retirement.

I know that not many people have a career nearly as rewarding as mine. Each time I meet with a client I hear of how much more freedom they have from their business' demands. Knowing how that freedom is spent with their families and on themselves, it's so rewarding to me. I would never have known of the dilemma contractors are in had I not been the general contractor for our house. Only because of being a general contractor did I create The Contractors' Business School.

So, was it worth it? Building the house sure was difficult, no doubt about that, but we are so delighted with the end result. Weeks scouring the countryside left me with no house I wanted to buy. It was either a cottage to totally re-do, eventually replacing every bit of it … or the property we chose. We're on a nearly private lake 16 minutes from town, on a main artery-yet we can see nothing but trees and lake and no one can see us unless they're on the water in front of the house.

But was it worth it? I liken it to giving birth. The 40 hours I was in labour I would never want to do again, but I felt a rush of love for that baby that I'd never felt before in my life! I wouldn't want to experience the same difficulties again in building a house, but seriously, I can't think of any way our location or house could be any better.

The quality of the workmanship is very satisfactory and I've never been so content in any house I've ever lived in before. We know the house inside and out. We designed the plans, dug to undisturbed earth for the footings, made most every decision and were involved in almost everything that was done here - including fixing the mistakes made by some of our contractors.

Would we ever build again? We situated the house on the property and built the west side conducive to easily adding on there for the academy I'll be creating - maybe even sooner than originally planned. "Heaven help us!"