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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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.
In our line of work (poop scooping), even though there are some clients who truly need it, I have to treat it as a luxury service. At the end of the day, if the bills need to be paid and the kids fed, most people will pause the scooper lol. So once I made that mind shift of being on the high end compared to some of the lower cost providers in this industry (franchises or people wanting to undercut), it's very rare that I get someone who wants services from us and not expect to pay more than if they went to one of my competitors.
That's the sweet spot! In the higher end, it's much more about the relationships you cultivate than the competition's price.