Logical, Reasonable people - Our Clients

One of the positive consequences of losing my primary aide de camp is I’m having a lot more interactions with my clients - yes, my clients.  Turns out, I let myself be distanced during the design process, after the deal is done, land cleared, driveway in, foundation in and house framed.  Then, the way it has been structured for a few years is that my project manager/designer took over.  And when I mean ‘took over’, I mean, I never heard from my clients again.

Which was weird - because I never found any emails saying ‘don’t contact Chuck’, but the radio silence was complete, which is weird since someone would at least inadvertent copy me on at least some early emails, but nope, didn’t happen.

So, regardless of why it happened, it happened.  Maybe after 15 years of 24/7 I was happy to work in the background if possible.  Maybe the designer knew I didn’t add anything of value at times (true).  Maybe our unspoken delegation of duties and respective silos worked fine.  Maybe I needed a break.

All true to one degree or another.  But, now that I’m back in a client-facing saddle, I see all the good-will, relation building and general camaraderie that comes with contact.  For the last few years, other than working diligently each day in the background, the times I moved to the front was when there was a problem to be solved, and solving a problem with an arm’s length relationship is not as easy as solving one with a solid, growing, ongoing relationship.

I mean, what we do for our clients is pretty fantastic, so there is definitely something to be said about being more present in the process, and not just the man behind the curtain pulling all the strings.  We hurdle so many problems without even alerting our clients, I’ve said many times we make it too easy, so we lose some of the credit we have earned.  I’ve seen other contractors, pool builders, landscapers just include the clients in every little hiccup that the flabbergasted and frightened client feels so grateful to have this person by their side.  We just take care of and move on, and skip the whole Stockholm syndrome charade of rescuing clients from the precipice of disaster.

So, in the last 3 weeks, I’ve had more phone calls and meetings with clients during their construction project than I’ve had in the last few years cumulatively.   And it’s been great.  I have a lot in common with most of them (definitely more than my ex-29 year old designer), people like my story, and what I’ve built, and I know my stuff.  We talk about kids, and life, and travel and the house.  We build relationships.

A valued client of ours in Stone Ridge and me shoot the shit on occasion - his house will be finished in a few weeks, just 8 months or so after we started it.  It was part of the successful ‘our homes your land’ campaign we launched last year after we ran out of land in County Ulster and couldn’t find anymore to buy.  And he summed it best when he said our home building process is really suited for ‘reasonable logical people’ who know how to collaborate effectively.  And I agreed - and I would add ‘nice’ to that description, because we definitely deliver better results for ‘nice, reasonable, logical people’ than we do for ‘nasty, mean-spirited, entitled, pompous people’ who we avoid at all costs if we can if we can spot it.