hey guys, this is glen sweitzer, jr. with regal renovations we're at the office today starting a newvideo blog series and i just wanted to throw out a couple of things that i feellike the industry could use. one of the first things that i've been thinking alot about that something that we don't talk about a whole lotta about in ourbusiness and our industry is doing due diligence before you contact acontractor. from my perspective there are two different ways that youcan actually contact a contractor and help them to earn your business. one of the ways that you can do that isto get three quotes. that's what
everybody talks about, right. that's whatmy parents told me to do whenever i'm going to do anything. get three quotesand that's kind of the traditional way of handling things. i think that's good in some ways if you're doing a roof job or you're doing something that's reallycut dry and you have all the information all of the specs for the scope of workthat you want to do. then you can give three different contractors the exactscope of what you want to have done and they can bid off of that. that's fairthat's easy but in a lot of cases and in fact in most cases from what i'vediscovered, that really doesn't apply. most scenarios, most projects or more ofa design-build type project. that would
be kitchens, bathrooms, additions, remodels.all of these different components of a construction project really have tobe taken into consideration. so if you're doing a project like the one of thesedrawings are in front of me right now it's a complete remodel that we'vecontracted king grant. they're going to be redoing every space in the house andhow can you as a client as a consumer really get a handle on all of the insand outs of how this project with work in order that you can get threecompetitive bids for the same scope of work. it would take a long time to beable to put all of that together and maybe you don't have the education inthis industry to be able to do that to
begin with. so what's another way that you cantackle this without having to use the three contractor mindset? for myperspective again you know in my opinion the best way that you can really choosewho's going to do your project is to interview somebody. we interview ourclients. we have prerequisites. we send a survey out you know aquestionnaire whatever you want to call it. so that we can better understand yourproject. we want to know how did you hear about us? what is the scope of work? what phases?what's your timeline? what's your budget?
you know these sort of things and ithink a lot of people take that for granted and they just fill it outshoot it out and just say hey you know come on out and you know tell me what it'sgoing to be. tell me how it's going to happen. but really we use that as aninterview process to make sure that clients are the right type of clientsthat we can serve because we're not good at everything. if your expectation you know is uphere and the contractor that you're talking to is down here, how do you know that without wastingyour time are wasting their time
bringing them out to your house. so onething that we want to focus on that we want to help clients to be able to do, isto do your due diligence and educate yourself before you actually evencontact a contractor. there are some really cool websites that are out there one ofthem is homewyse.com and you'll be able to see that right here on thebottom of your screen. that will show you exactly the type of projects that areout there. the materials, labor whether it's a repair and you can even put your zipcode so that you can get a competitive idea of what different things cost andhow that would work before you even have a contractor come to your house. so nowyou can start to interview the
contractor instead of having someoneconvince you of a certain way to do your project now you can interview thecontractor and find out if you like a certain person if you want to work withthem and if you do and you have a connection then you release your scopeof work in your budget and you really have him build a project around yourbudget. it's impossible to do that withouthaving your homework done from the beginning and from another perspectiveif you're going to go let's just say that you want to buy a car right. so yeahi want to get a beamer. that's what my family needs you know i deserve that.this is what we want to do so you go to
the bmw dealership. you test drive to bmw.you run through all the ins and outs with the salesperson. you spend an hourtwo hours with the salesperson and then you say well my budget is only20 grand. so you've gone through all of thisprocess you've worked with the salesperson. you've taken their time.you've also taken a lot of your own time and you have mismanaged expectations. soyou leave out of there disappointed that you didn't get the beamer andinstead of being excited about a car that would actually serve your purposereally well now you're disappointed. the same concept kind of applies in whatwe're doing. if you have a volkswagen
budget let us know that you have avolkswagen budget. we can still provide you with a really nice volkswagen. againnot every contractor is for every client. not every client is for every contractor.so do your homework ahead of time. do your due diligence and i think you'regoing to find that it's going to make this process a lot easier on you andpossibly a lot more fun, as well.