Bases Loaded

Apart from taking my son to a baseball game, and evidenced by letting him watch obscene amounts of tv and play appalling quantities of video games, I've been a terrible parent lately. He is 9, and I've basically missed his first two weeks of fourth grade while struggling to contain a to-do list that seems to be breeding like mutant aliens.

Some good has come out of the franticness, however -- and not just that my son really doesn't object, one bit, to watching TV, playing video games and going to friends' houses.

eletter sneak peek, sorta

For one, daily5Remodel goes live on Monday. In a week of friend-to-friend, viral promoting, several hundred remodeling professionals have registered to subscribe, and advertisers are showing a real interest. The overall reception, from folks who have toured the site and/or grilled me on it, has been affirming.

Big, big, big thanks to my development team in Oregon for putting all hands on deck to make this happen.

Second, the remodeling market seems to be cueing up for a comeback. I've seen "we're hiring" notices from at least three companies in the past several days. Several remodelers tell me they're suddenly so busy they can hardly think. Financial uncertainty and price objections continue to keep many homeowners on the fence -- remodeling sales have become a courting process, steady and patient -- but Monday I learned of a local favorite who just signed a new project worth $2.4 million.

Three: I'm so happy to be back among remodelers. About that baseball game Wednesday night: my son and I fled DC, and then Baltimore's steaming, belching, traffic-jammed concrete downtown, for the tall glass of water that is Camden Yards: the first (and some say the best) of professional ballparks designed to harken back to an earlier period in baseball history.

Once in our seats, we caught up with many of the remodeling pros I would have most wanted to see at the Remodeling Show, which was in progress across the street: consultant extraordinaire/keynote speaker Shawn McCadden (whom I edited for several years, and who invited us to the game), remodelers Greg Antonioli and Michael Anschel (both of whom I also edited), green remodeling guru Carl Seville, contractor coach Mark Paskell.

I cornered Greg for a minute with my flip camera. 

Amid beer, baseball and my godawful videography skills, which can only get better, this microcosm of the industry -- which also included manufacturers, trainers and more -- revealed a collective power that never lost hope. And then, the Orioles won the game.

Have a great weekend. See you Monday at daily5Remodel.

Leah Thayer

leah@daily5Remodel.com

Giving It Away

"It seems that you keep giving more things to your members," I said. "Do you think remodelers should think of ways to 'give' more and better to their clients too? How do they do this without cutting into their profits?"

"I think every business has byproducts of their service," responded Geoff Graham, president of GuildQuality, which conducts customer surveys for builders and remodelers. "I'm not a big admirer of Henry Ford, but he was a really smart guy.... After he built all these cars, he had all these little chunks of wood, so he started a charcoal business. It's now known as Kingsford Charcoal.

"You end with this thing that you've sold, and you also have this other stuff," Graham continued. "Can you package this other stuff in a way that creates additional value? Some of it, you can charge for. Some you can give away for no other reason than to build goodwill."

In Graham's case, the "other stuff" includes, recently, integrating customer feedback with GuildQuality members' Facebook and Twitter accounts, thus maximizing visibility for the good service they provide. Not only has GQ added such services without cost bumps, but the company has lowered its fees in recent years.

Technology both enables and mandates that kind of change in some industries. Thankfully for GuildQuality -- and for companies like Netflix, whose services strike me recently as infinitely better, at a lower price, than they were a few years ago -- "giving away" more has strengthened the bottom line as well as customer loyalty.

Is Remodeling Different?

We all know that remodelers give away a lot, and that it's not because your cost of doing business is on the decline. Moore's law -- basically, that technology gets better while prices go down -- doesn't typically apply to construction labor, material and overhead costs. And still, you give advice and time to prospects who never hire you. You bid on architects' projects that somebody else builds.

As a homeowner, I plead guilty to having taken advantage of some of this largesse -- but I'll tell you, I've also sometimes wished that you would charge me for your time, to alleviate the guilt I feel for being indecisive or asking for your help without really thinking through the decision I'm contemplating.

My friend, remodeler Greg Antonioli, has some advice. First, his company does not give "free bids." Second, he notes in his latest blog on Remodeling magazine, realize that if you properly estimate and plan your project from the get-go, you can "give away" work that other companies might call change order or "extras." And you can reap the goodwill that will follow.


More than anything, says Greg, the best way to se your company apart is by saying to a client: "No, we should have seen that one coming.... We own this one." How do you afford to donate that? By setting aside funds you would have otherwise spent "on postcards and magazine ads, stuff that returns no value to the people who gave you the money in the first place," Greg says.


So, a question: What stuff have you consciously and cheerfully "given away" lately, remodelers? How did that help or hinder your business?

By the way, I'm giving away an iPad to one person who registers for daily5Remodel. You pay nothing to register for the standard subscription, but don't think I'm just giving it away. I'll ask for your participation and honest feedback, and -- if you're happy so far -- invite you to join the "premium" community too.


Leah Thayer
leah@daily5Remodel.com