Bigger jobs vs smaller jobs
Interesting shift I’ve noticed over the years: the larger the projects get, the less the challenge is actually construction. The harder part becomes communication, scheduling, selections, revisions,...
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I’ve noticed something similar in our business, although in a different way. For us, commercial accounts are usually much easier to manage operationally than residential customers.
Not necessarily easier physically. Easier administratively.
A lot of our commercial properties:
- have clear scopes of work
- predictable schedules
- fewer emotional decisions
- fewer last-minute changes
- fewer day-to-day communication needs
Once expectations are established, the relationship tends to become very process-driven.
Residential clients are different. Even though the individual jobs are smaller, they usually require much more communication and handholding:
- schedule questions
- gate concerns
- dog concerns
- billing questions
- vacation pauses
- text messages
- one-off requests
- expectation management
You can have 50 small residential customers create more administrative work than a single larger commercial account. One thing scaling taught me is that larger jobs often expose operational weaknesses faster. At a smaller level, you can sometimes compensate with hustle and responsiveness.
Because once multiple people, properties, timelines, and moving parts are involved, memory and improvisation stop working very well. I also think bigger clients usually expect more professionalism and structure, but less constant interaction.
Smaller clients often expect more accessibility and personalization.
Yeah, I’ve found the same thing.
Some of our smaller residential jobs have honestly taken more daily communication than much larger projects, just because it’s someone’s actual home and they’re living with every decision.
A commercial client might ask for a schedule, a clear scope, and proper updates.
A residential client might ask about the schedule, the dust, the dog, the parking, the neighbour, the sink they saw online last night, and whether we can “just take a quick look” at something else while we’re there.
I don’t even mean that negatively. It makes sense. Renovating your home is stressful.
But from the business side, it definitely taught us that job size and admin load do not always match.
Obviously it depends on the type of customer too, but if you're working with a residential client and you are charging them something that's stretching their wallet passed what they're comfortable with, you're literally making them spend a large % of their income and their expectations will be so high that it's difficult to make them truly happy.
Compared to a commercial account where the dollar amount may be larger than a residential client, but it's a small fraction of their revenue. It's more palpable for them to manage.
100%. That's a valid point. I feel like with commercial the stakes are always lower because nobody really needs to live with it. Residential clients take everything very personally.
In my years I've realized that on the lower end of the spectrum, with very small projects, some clients are never happy. No matter how many gimmies you pass along, discounts, freebies, reworks, etc. It almost feels like some people try to use a renovation to fill a hole and no matter what you do, you'll never fill it.
I feel like there's a sweet spot where you're not too high-end but not dealing with the type of people that would scour social media for deals. There's a big middle range there where you can do some nice work, make a great living, and have very happy clients.
