8 First Choice Builders Client Questionnaire: Critical Questions for Understanding Our Clients Vision

In this podcast episode, Drew and Landon discuss a customer vision questionnaire for house projects. They emphasize tailoring the questionnaire to individual preferences, as each situation is unique. They value input from customers who have experience with custom home building, as it helps improve their processes. Drew highlights his focus on creating custom dream homes for those who've bought houses before. Worries include budget overruns and time delays. Landon stresses First Choice Builders commitment to quality. They inquire about specific project ideas and products desired by customers, encouraging visual inputs like pictures and sketches.

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Transcript

You. All right, well, let's roll. Yeah, let's see.

Let me pull this up here. Our customer vision questionnaire. Are we did what quick? You got a nice shirt on today.

Well, obviously, yeah, it looked like you just came out of church. That's good, though. Yeah, I'll take the compliment.

I'll take the compliment. No, I wanted to talk about this customer vision questionnaire, this client vision questionnaire, however you want to word it for a few reasons. One of them is maybe I'll just read these questions off.

We can kind of talk about them as we go through them. Yeah, well, first of all, what's the point of the questionnaire? The point of the questionnaire is this. We're trying to get inside a potential client's head and see what they're after.

We want to know what they want. We want to know without getting into the weeds either, because it's easy to this is very common. Oh, well, we're looking at this kind of trim and this kind of DA DA DA DA.

And there's all these details, and they sort of deviate from the entire vision right out the gate. And so you just burn a bunch of time trying to figure out what you want and chasing this idea, and then a rebuttal on that idea. And it's like, let's start with the overall concept.

Okay, let's start with the overall concept, and then we'll break it down from there. But we have to start with something more general, particularly for budgeting reasons. Right, right.

And then we can start breaking it down into more pieces. And the more we talk, the more we can kind of break it down. So the idea of this questionnaire was to try and pull out the main things that we're really looking for from a builder's perspective, to understand what their idea is in their head, what their vision is, and at what point is this or we're doing it before we have a house plan.

Yeah, this is before anything. This is something that maybe I get a call. Hey, we're thinking of building a house.

We're going to be coming down there from Cincinnati here in a week. We'd love to meet up with you guys, talk things a bit over, whatever I'd say. Great.

I'm going to send you this questionnaire. I'd love for you to fill it out because it's really going to help me understand ahead of time where you guys are coming from. So the first question here, obviously, some basic information, their name, email, whatever.

Have you visited our website? Have you looked at getting your plans professionally drawn? Do you have land? Are you pre qualified with financing? Well, here's I have a question. Why do you think we care if somebody has visited our website? Yeah, I bet you a lot of people wonder that. Like, why would this be next to my professionally have you had professionally drawn house plans? Box? You know what it really is for us is a lot of the questions that they might have are already on our website.

And so if they've already visited our website, it's safe to assume that some of those FAQs have already been answered. It's just another layer of the onion that, okay, this guy has already visited my website. In fact, I can track where you've been on the website or which pages you've viewed.

Right. What do you think about? So here's a question, and this is something that I think is if we know somebody has already seen our website, then they also know what kind of work we do as far as the styles and the common things that they see in the fixtures. And if somebody's looking for, let's just pretend $200,000 house and they go on our website, they're probably going to say, oh, well, these people don't build $200,000 houses.

And so it would kind of vet them a little bit before they even spend too much time. Right? It's like a qualifier. Almost like, okay, if I'm looking for a starter home and I'm looking at this website and there's all these big custom, fancy, beautiful homes with high end finish or whatever, not saying that's exactly what we do, but that's going to weed out quite a few people because really, that's not what we're about.

We're not about the cookie cutter. I mean, we're a custom builder. We'll build you whatever you want, but really, we're not necessarily tailored to the bare bones starter home.

That's just not what we're you get the most value out of us if it's a higher end home because the costs and the overhead of our management systems get spread out over a bigger price tag. Right. And so it really pays off more on an expensive house.

Also, it's a lot more efficient to have a management system or systems and team in place on a complex product. That's where it really shines. That's where you really need it.

There's a lot of details that can go through the cracks. Back to your point there them visiting our website. It can be a qualifier.

It can be perhaps answering a few of their questions. They can see some testimonials. Maybe they can gain a little bit of confidence.

This is why a website is so important and that's why it's one of our questions. It really can tell us a lot. Yeah.

What a simple question. And we could actually keep talking about this, right? But simple question, and there's a lot behind it. Absolutely.

This is one of my favorites. I was referred to first choice builders by a friend or family member. This is one of the options.

Check all that, apply one of the questions. I like that one because I would love to know who that person is. If I get a referral from somebody, I want to go out of my way to call them up or maybe send them a text, whatever.

Hey, I heard that you referred so and so over our way. Even if nothing happens or whatever, even if it's just a talk or poke an idea, I appreciate that very much. We love that.

And so seeing who that person is, show your appreciation for that man. I mean, a referral is a big deal to us. Oh, yeah.

So I want to show my appreciation, and I'll make it a point to go out of my way and show my appreciation. And another cool thing about if somebody came to us as a referral, then they are more likely to use us because we already built the trust with whoever gave the referral. Right? Yes.

So we built a house for so and so, and they told the new client, the new client already trusts us because their friend trusts us. And we did a good job for them. Everything went smoothly.

They sent the referral on, and they're like, well, they did a good job for my buddy, so now I like them too. Right, yeah. You can definitely get it's like, you jump past a lot of little layers when it's a referral, rather than meeting somebody, spending the time with them, engaging in conversation, going back and forth, kind of building this trust, building this relationship.

It's like a fast track when they get a referral from a friend. Yeah, big time. This is a big one.

I have an idea of what I want. By the way, I'm not reading these in any particular order. This is just the top question here, and it's a series of yes or no's.

I have an idea of what I personally don't it doesn't really matter personally for Landon, from a sales perspective, I don't care if you are clueless on what you want or you already know exactly how it's going to go. Having an idea of what you want is more about what your dream is. It's not necessarily.

Well, I want this wood, and I want that wood. To me, it's more of a I would really like to have an open concept, or I'd really like to have this at least. Having that idea is what's crucial.

Yeah. A lot of times, people build the story in their head before they ever yes. And, oh, I want to live on ten acres.

I want a horse barn. I want to drive four wheelers on my property and have a pond. And if a person has that vision and they can share it with us, they don't need to know all the specifics of their house.

Right, right. It's helpful. I shouldn't say they need to.

Yeah. But it's helpful when somebody already has that, because we can build off of that. Right.

Otherwise, we go through some other questions to help build that for them. Right, exactly. Having the idea, having sort of that dream, and I think that maybe that's something that I should word better in this questionnaire, because I could see a lot of people interpreting that as, oh, well, yeah, I want wood trim.

I want that. And now you're in the weeds. What I'm really asking is what's, like, the big picture if you're a bird flying overhead, right? Third person view, what do you want to see? Yeah, not to say that I don't care either.

Of course I care about those details, but yeah, I just wanted to double check that you shut that breaker. What's that? I say the breaker. Okay.

We would be hearing the dog thing if we I already have financing. Financing in place. Or I'm pre qualified.

That's a big one. Because to me, when I hear either a yay or a nay on that, my initial thought is, okay, we could be launching in two months, or it's going to be a year or it's unknown. Well, we're waiting for our house to sell on Corpus Christi, but first we have it's like, well, okay, that's fine, happy to help you.

But when they're asking when they can break ground, it's like, look, if you don't even have financing in place, you're contingent on your property ways. We're a ways out on yeah. It really sets our yes.

And sometimes that's a good thing because it requires a lot of planning, getting a house going. And if a person is maybe more of a researcher type person, they want to get all their plans in place. They find their land and get all these things going and then sell their current house and all that process might take a year.

Yeah. And if that's what the best route is, then great, that's what it should be. I'm not here to rush anybody.

The idea is that I understand what their situation is. That's the critical part. And if I hear they don't have financing in place and it's contingent on fill in the blank, I'm already like, okay, let's really back it up a bit.

We're looking at a very broad plan at the moment, very preliminary. I'm not going to start sending them door options. I'm going to try and think like, oh, okay, broadly speaking, you guys are looking to move into the area.

Maybe I can get you in touch with a realtor a banker. Do you guys need help finding a rental? You know what I mean? Suddenly my entire line of questioning shifts so understanding their situation and by the way, I genuinely believe we're really good at going above and beyond in that sense. We're always like, doing random stuff.

Like, heck, one time we had half a team down at a client of ours, has a goofy situation with a U Haul, and we were over there unloading this stuff for him or like, hey, where do you want this couch to go? That's not necessarily in our job description, but we'll do anything for our for the people that we care about or helping them find a rental or hooking them up with someone, whatever here to help. Kind of moving on here, I'll get past this next question some more, say, generic information like the future location of your project. Maybe they don't know.

Maybe they have some ideas. So what do you mean by location? Does it mean up? Before you said, do you have land? Right. So location is that what if somebody says I have land? Is this a doubled up question? Because maybe they don't.

That's a valid point. It kind of is the location you could sort of hear with parentheses around it. What is the future location of your project? And the idea is that we're trying to ascertain where exactly will this project not where you have land per se, but where is your product going to go? And yes, I already have land, but is it in Sheridan? Is it in Cody? Is it in so what's the location of the project? My next two questions here are, I think, everyone's favorite questions to hear.

I think some people can actually get kind of, like, a little bit on guard when I ask these questions. The questions are this number one, how much do you wish to spend on your property? And number two, how much do you wish to spend on your house product? In other words, how much do you want to spend? Yeah, right. And I know it's kind of like a bold question.

Hey, what are you looking to spend? And for some people, they're like, oh, well, I'm trying to keep it under a million for this or that or the other. Or some people are like they hesitate. And my feeling is that people, they feel like if they give me a number, in other words, if they say, oh, 800,000, now they're anticipating that I'm going to be like, AHA, I'm going to go walk back to my office, scribbled on 800,000, and we're going to get them for 800,000.

They're good for 800,000. Let's maximize this. No talking to people.

I've gotten that vibe. They're kind of like the husband and wife kind of glance at each other like, well, maybe we'll keep that confidential. It's not that I'm trying to capitalize on your well, and actually the funniest thing is how are we supposed to do a bid without knowing what we want to spend? Yeah.

Can you build us this? Sure. Can you give me a budget on what you're trying to stick with? Well, we'll keep that confidential. Okay, so we go bid what it is, and it's a Taj Mahal, and they come back shocked.

What on earth? This isn't our budget. This is what it costs. It's not going to afford.

It's not even close to what we can afford. Well, it would have been kind of nice to know that. That's why I asked the question.

If someone says, hey, look it, and I get this question all the time. Time, all the time. I get this phone call probably once a week from someone out of town looking to move into the area.

They want to build a house. Hey, we're looking at building 2500 to 3500 square foot home. It needs to have X, Y and Z.

Other than that, we're not too particular. We have some land that we're looking to move on to and our budget is 600,000. And right away it's just like, yeah, so what is 600,000 going to get you? What's 600,000 going to get you? It's not going to get you a 3500 square foot plus a piece of property.

There's no way. There's just no way. Maybe about 1500 square foot, right.

So that's why I asked that question right out of the gate. What are you looking to spend? Because otherwise you start delving into this and you're delving into that. And here I'll hook you up with a realtor and let me get back to you on some house plan ideas.

And you do this for two days or over the span of a week, and then you get back and suddenly it's like, oh, what are you actually looking to spend? 600,000? Well, we've been wasting all this time. I've been wasting your time and we haven't wasting my time. We haven't been able to guide correctly.

Right. I need more information so I can properly guide you for your specific situation. And a humongous component of that guidance is knowing what you need to spend or what you need to keep your budget at.

I like how you have it separated from project to property. Yes. Because I know for sure, we've dealt with individuals in the past that have said, oh, I want to spend a million dollars, and then they go find land for $300,000.

And then they come back and say, well, we got $700,000 left. We thought you were talking about a million dollars for the house because we generally don't supply the land. Right.

So in our minds, we're thinking of the build itself. We're not generally thinking about the cost of the land. That's actually happened.

A lot of people you're absolutely right. A lot of people, they're looking at it from their perspective, going, hey, we so and so the Joneses, whatever, we're spending X amount on this whole thing. The builder is going to say, oh, the building project, we're spending X amount on the building project.

Yeah, we run into that a lot. That's exactly why we break it out, project and property, so then we can be on the same page. Yeah.

Or even to help guide them. Perhaps they're looking to spend a bit more on the property and they don't really care about the house. Hey, I'm looking for just a dinky little I'm retired.

I just want to have a bunch of land. I'm going to get a 1200 square foot home built with one bed, one bath, or whatever. Right, moving on to the next question here.

I love this. I like, I enjoy reading the answers on this next question because it and I know there's still some improvements that can be made on this questionnaire and how it's phrased and worded, but it's certainly better than what it once was. The question is, regarding your house project, what is the most important? And there's a bunch of boxes here to check.

One of them, I'm not going to read them all, but one of them is, hey, energy efficiency is my top priority, or I love fancy finishes and high end appliances, or I have a specific design that I'm trying to build that's specifically tailored for my needs, or a design that keeps furniture or future expansion in mind. So there's a little bit of overlap on some of them, but the idea is that which phrase is going to kind of fit them best? Or phrases. Right.

It's interesting because you go back and read these questionnaires and I look at someone who checks off, energy efficiency is my top priority, or maximum size for minimal cost. So can people click on more than one of these yes options. Okay, so what are the chances that people say, oh, I really care about the energy efficiency, the design, and the cost? Well, we have a little bit of a conflict, right? Yes.

Because you can't have everything all in one. Right. For example, spray foam insulation.

It's way more expensive than anything else, but it's also more energy efficient. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I can see how it would be reading these.

There's a lot of conflict in some of the answers. You're absolutely right. But what that does, what this method does for me is now I know what questions to ask when I go meet them.

Hey, I noticed you checked you're looking for a high efficiency build, but you're also listing here that you're on a tight budget. You want the best bang for your buck, you want whatever. Tell me more about what exactly are you trying to go for? And a lot of times they'll say, oh, well, I just saw that and I checked it on there and they didn't really think it through.

It's like, okay, fine, we can talk about that. Our last home, typically it's like a problem or experience. Our last home was just super inefficient and our heating bill was high.

And we're not looking for anything fancy. I don't want that to have happen to me again. Right, so it's a pry bar.

It's a pry bar to pull out what their experiences are, what they're looking for. It's just another way of understanding their vision. Yeah.

And sometimes you get I love fancy finishes, energy efficiency design, and all these things are top priority. And then, you know, that one is either they have champagne taste or they are going to end up building an expensive house. Right, exactly.

The amount of variables here, let's look at it from a nerd aspect. We got like what, six, seven, eight boxes you could check. So what would be like eight to the 8th power? That would be the combination.

That would be the combination of varying angles. To look at this set of questions here, right. You combine X with X or X with Y or whatever.

That's why it's interesting, because every single combination, every single situation is very unique. And so this here, this is sort of worded almost, almost for my benefit as I read these. Why they're worded the way they are.

Well, ultimately all these questions in the questionnaire are for first choice's benefit. Right. We can understand what they're after, which is then better for them, better for their benefit.

The better we can understand their situation, the better it is going to be for them. Moving on here, have you ever built a custom home before? That says a lot. That says a ton.

If a guy says, I've built many custom homes before, hope I'm already going to assume a lot and maybe I shouldn't, but at least it'll come up in conversation. Maybe I meet the guy and say, oh, you built quite a few custom homes. Sounds like how was your experience with oh, yeah, it's one bill went really good and X, Y and Z.

The other guy, the plumber, didn't show up. So they start sharing their experiences. You can really get a feel for.

I love talking to customers who have already built before because then we can build our processes towards the weaknesses that the others had already had. Yes. Oh, so and so left the job so messy.

We know off top of our head, okay, they're very particular about a messy job. And we're going to try even extra hard. I mean, we try to keep a clean job, but we're going to try extra hard to ensure that the job is clean.

Yes. These little tidbits of intel right. That are really nice for us to know up front, and it's going to really benefit the client.

There's so much like, wow, I remember mentioning way back when, when we started this project, that I hated the dirty job site. You guys have just been on top of it and I really appreciate it. That to me is like, yes, that's what we're going for.

They're so happy about it. Yeah, exactly. And then in return, we feel good about it.

Exactly. The other side of that, the flip side. Oh, this would be my first custom home.

It's like, all right, I'm going to completely guide things differently now because there's so much to building a home, even a normal, simple, cookie cutter home. There's a lot, let alone a custom build. And this being their first time and there's so much involved, again, this is a guidance thing for me.

Like, okay, they've never built. That's the most common question. People usually don't just do this all day.

That's why they're coming to us. Right. Okay.

I'm going to set them up with the basics first and let's look at the broader pictures, help them understand. I'm not just going to start diving into all this complex stuff and just overwhelm them with details. Exactly.

We want to start on the bottom level, especially if we get a feel for them beyond what a you can think of it as like going to kindergarten, right? I mean, kindergarten, you learn the ABCs and one, two, threes, right? Yes. And someone who's already built multiple homes, they've gone through that stage. And so we can start out a little bit higher, but our systems are actually tailored towards that person who maybe they've bought a few houses in the past and they want to really get their custom dream home, but it's their first actual build.

That's actually how all of our systems are tailored the way right now. And so we love building for those types of people. Yes, it's streamlined.

This next question here kind of applies to the previous I'm sorry, what are some worries or unknowns that may concern you about building a custom home? And I love this question because even for the people who say, oh, I've built many custom homes before, they still have they're not in the business. Let's say they still have worries. I built in several custom homes.

One of my things I noticed that I just always stress about is this the dirt work was always cost overruns. Yeah, cost overruns or whatever. And of course, this applies to the person who has never built.

I mean, that's like a too open ended question. Almost like we're worried about everything. We don't have a clue over what we're doing.

So what are some worries unknowns? What do you think is one of the most what's the most popular answer for here, do you think? I wish I had this specific question running for a longer amount of time up until right now. But in the last few that I've looked at, there's been one repeater and it's cost overrun. The second most common one I see is time.

Time overrun. So people are real worried about going over budget, which is totally understandable. I go back to the question of that's, why I or the statement of why I asked that question up front, the budget thing.

So if this right here, this is actually, I would say, one of my favorite questions for the sole reason that I know what they're scared of, I know what they're worried about or really what they're concerned their main concern is. And so now if that's the thing that's keeping them up at night, I'm going to work extra hard to make that go away. I'm going to make sure that I can double down on that issue for them.

That's their big problem. I'm going to fix that problem for them. So before we had this questionnaire, I would say just kind of go back to the I would say one of the biggest fears even before the questionnaire was also cost overruns.

Yeah, people are spending a lot of money and it's daunting super scared. I think what can happen is people hear all the stories about how everyone else has gone over budget, how they didn't know that there was change orders for the project and they get to the end of the project and then they have to pay for all these change orders. And there's all these situations where people have heard these stories and builders haven't exactly gotten a good name because of this.

And so cost overruns have always been a huge fear for people, but that also translates right into the time if a person ends up with a whole bunch of cost overruns, it's probably because the house wasn't designed exactly to their spec originally. So then they had to change things, which then adds time. Right.

So now you have cost overruns and an extended time period and they're really actually kind of pretty much the same thing. They certainly work in tandem. I mean, the old saying, oh, you can have quality, you can have it fast or you can have it cheap.

Pick two. Really. How we work at First Choice Builders is going to get quality.

Yeah. Wise man once said, so you're going to get quality regardless. We're not going to cut corners there.

You're going to get a quality product. So you can actually take that out of the equation. You can have it fast, you can have it cheap.

There you go. You can't have both. You can just pick one.

Yeah, that's how I look at it. You're going to get quality. Yeah.

You can sway up and down the spectrum of high end finishes or something more affordable, but it's still going to be high quality. We will not put junk in your house. Just not what we do.

If you want it fast, it's going to cost you money. If you want us to prioritize everything right up front, boom, short notice out the gate. And you want us to get you a whole dug in a month, it's going to cost you a little bit more.

Basically what happens is everybody involved amends their schedule to meet that customer's specific needs, which they might be pushing other jobs off or who knows what they're doing, right? Yeah. We're having to pull in subcontractors now and say, hey, I need you guys to hold off on next. I needed to put a bid in for this.

We're going to get this launched here in a couple of weeks and then need you guys to be scheduled in for that. You're moving a lot of yeah, naturally they're like, well, I mean, we can do that, but it's going to be another whatever. Right.

Hey, look, this one's been on the books for what right. People we get that the desired start date. That's sort of the leading into this.

What. Is your desired start date. This can be very telling as well, which ties into this whole time and cost thing.

If I'm reading this questionnaire and their desired start date is a month from when I'm reading it, it's like, okay, you better have everything ready already. You better have your plans drawn. You're submitted for permit? Yeah, we're applying for permits right now.

Right. Because these things just take time if you don't have financing in place. There are so many boxes that do have to get checked before you can dig a hole.

And part of our job is to guide people and help them understand what the process looks like. Like, hey, I get asked question all the time, so where do we begin? It's like, well, and I'm looking at all their data in front of me and what they've told me, and I say, okay, well, I would start with some plans. I would start coming up with some concepts.

Don't worry about X, Y or Z right now. You guys are very preliminary. Or maybe it's, oh, you have plans.

Oh, you've already done a geotech on your property and you already own your property and you're good for financing. Let's get well, let's get some bids put together and start working on this number and then get this submitted to the bank. Let's get these pushed out for permitting and we can get rocking.

So it all depends on the situation. The interesting thing about this question, too, is they might have a house for sale or about to be listed in Corpus Christi, but their time frame to start is right now. But they have to sell their house first.

Yes, that's exactly it. Yeah, this is why this questionnaire exists. It draws this stuff out.

Right? Because a lot of people, maybe not, they won't even think to tell you that. Or here's an example. I was talking to a guy once, a couple, they were looking to move here and they had purchased a piece of property and they had a house plan, some concepts picked out.

They had like two or three internet plans. They didn't have the actual plan set and their whole idea was, oh, we're going to move to Sheridan, we're going to rent for the time being and we're going to start this whole process even before we get there. All right, fine, we can accommodate that.

What's your desired start time? Well, for starters, they had a really tight budget. Secondly, they wanted to start in like two months and they haven't even designed a set of plans. Yes, they have the land, but it's contingent on beginning their product with their house selling.

There's all these conflicting variables and when they sort of came to me as if just all this could just this is like a normal thing and it could all just happen. And I'm like, we can't, I'm sorry, but no, you need to do X first before we can do this. I can't just start sending stuff out to Bid when you don't even have plans.

I'm not going to start asking my subcontractors to bid and rebid these very preliminary plans. For example yeah, what would happen is you'd send this Internet plan, which has no detail. You'd send it to all the appropriate parties.

Right, right. And they'd say well, they'd start asking you a whole bunch of questions. Well, what about this? What about that? What about this? We don't really know.

Can you just give us a rough number? Yeah. Okay, well, I'm going to pad the crap out of it, and then you get a number back. That's high.

Whoa, that's higher than we thought. That's a rough number. We don't know.

We don't have enough information. Yeah, there's no information, and they don't know any better either. This is not their gig.

So they're relying on sort of a filter. I need to step in and be like, look, I can't just go bid this, right? Oh, really? I know. I'm sorry.

I can't. I'd love to help you out. I'd love to be digging a hole for you in two months.

Yeah, exactly. But let's be realistic here. You guys are still in the process of moving.

You haven't sold your property yet. You stated that you can't get financing until your property sells. You don't have house plans? I would focus on getting the house sold and moved here.

Yeah. Essentially what that does is it allows us to then help them describe the timeline that needs to take place. Yeah.

And actually helping them, not just, oh, yeah, you bet you be in the yes man and charging in, and then the whole thing just flopping down later. We got to be realistic here. We want to be thorough up front and have a successful project.

Yeah. Which, by the way, is a huge trust builder in my eye, the guy who screams yes to me all day long sounds great up front, but then you start diving into it, and it all just kind of falls apart because, man, that's what you wanted. Yeah, but you never told me this.

Why didn't you reveal that to me in the beginning? I would have changed my mind. Oh, I was just trying to help you. You're not helping anybody.

Yeah. A lot of times the nice guy can actually cause himself a lot of trouble. Guess what? I have certainly been that guy.

I have definitely guilty of that. Trying to be the yes man is not always a good well, the thing is, you have this want to fulfill people's needs, and you want to serve them, and so that's a natural thing. So what a person has to learn is to start saying no or gaining more information before you say yes.

Precisely. And that is why I have this questionnaire right. Among others.

Among other things. How are we doing for time? Good here? 37 minutes. Okay, well, I'm going to keep going here on the questions.

Let's see. Desired start date. Okay, here's another interesting question.

By the way, I'm bragging, totally complimenting, Drew, because I think you came up with these initial questions, and then I just kind of spun off and added a little bit. But these questions are pretty cool. The nerdiest thing to brag about.

We have the best questionnaire. It's so cool. It's really a good questionnaire.

Yeah, it's incredible. It's amazing. It's the best questionnaire.

What exactly do you plan on doing in this home? Are you entertaining? Are you raising children? Are you going to use it as a rental? Is it going to be a guest home? Fill in the blank. Holy cow. We've experienced some stuff with that, haven't we, Drew? Oh, yeah, because when they have the intentions for their project being one thing and we're thinking it's for something totally different, you run into some hiccups there.

Really? You guys are going to be using this as an airbnb? Well, we wish we would have known that up front because we would have totally guided you in a different manner. Oh, really? Yeah. I would not have recommended this flooring right here.

Oh, why not? Well, if it's an airbnb, you want something that's really robust. You want something that can get a lot of traffic and people are going to be stomping their boots on it and not wrecking it. And I want to done hardwood floor.

Oh, I just loved hardwood floor. You run into that. That is why that question exists.

Why are you or even it's, hey, we're looking at just simple retirement, but we have several dogs that we like to keep in the house. Low maintenance. Yeah, we want low maintenance.

We're going to shift our guidance that direction. But the beauty of this question is it's not really asking what products they like. Yes, exactly.

It's not about that. It's about how they're using their house so we can help them choose products that are going to work best for how they're going to use it. Yes, exactly.

Again, just another little piece of the vision that they have. You know what else, too? All this whole line of questioning is it's sparking the thought for them as well. Like, I'll bet you a lot of people read through this and go, what exactly do you plan on doing in this home? And they go, what are we? I guess it's just retirement, isn't it? Yeah.

And that's as far as they think. Maybe to us, that's like, oh, okay, they're the retirement people. We're going to go low maintenance.

We're going to make sure we try to do low step shower or no zero entry or zero step into their shower. We want to make sure things are one level so there's no stairs. Like, we're totally changing the guidance than the design and everything or, say, work from home.

We need an office in a quiet corner of the building and maybe have easily accessible from outside. Like if they have clients coming and going or all kinds of design things, maybe we can tailor that for the view. If she's going to be spending most of her time in this office, maybe we can design that so it's capturing the good views.

Exactly. Make sure we get some low voltage, some outlets and stuff configured for the office so she can just plug in her Internet. And these are all things that just pop in our head as soon as somebody says, I'm using my house for work.

Right. Like I'll be working in my house. It's like, oh, well, we already know we have to do all these things.

It's an automatic thought. Right. We don't even have to spell it all out to each other.

We just already know because we deal with this all the time, right? Yeah. But the customer won't. Chances are they're not going to think through all those things.

Well, they don't know what they don't know, right? Yeah. This is a big one for me. For first choice, do you have an architect or designer that you're working with? That tells me two things.

One, you probably got some plans. You probably already have a set of plans, maybe at least started that's right? Or and two, you're actually serious. You're actually moving the ball forward.

You have moved the needle in some aspect. You're actually working. You sat down with a designer or an architect, you've paid some sort of a deposit and you got your plans going.

You're actually serious. So that there to me it's just a straight up yes or no. Yes or no? Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.

If somebody takes the initiative to start the design themselves, then they've already decided they are going to build. Right. And we know when somebody says that, then we want to address them in that way.

They're serious. They're ready to take action, they're down to business. Hey, it's sort of part of the qualifying or the vetting.

Absolutely. Like, hey, all right, you're actually serious. And you've proven that because you're sitting down with an architect and you're getting your plans drawn up.

Better yet, that I happen to know the architect or we work with them. Right. That's usually an added bonus as well.

And in a small town or a smaller community like this, that's pretty common. Right. So it's nice to know, hey, I already know what they're about.

Boom. We're already five steps ahead now. It also it also is sort of an ease of mind in the sense that they are at the very least willing to take on some guidance.

It shows that they're willing to learn. Be coachable. Be coachable.

Thank you. Because obviously, if they've hired an architect, they have basically stated, all right, we're not exactly sure what we're doing here. We know that we probably got to get some plans, put together.

Let's start with that, and let's just start following the guidance of whoever. And if it's just Joe Blow scribbling down some random design on a napkin and then walking into your office, hey, can you start? I can only take you as seriously as you're going to take this product yourself. One thing is, we don't want to misconstrue this in the way that people have to take that step before they come to it 100%.

Right. So if somebody says they already started with an architect, that's an added bonus for making the project start sooner. But if somebody has not, we'll get them set up with that.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's not to say that, hey, you need to go to an architect before you come.

Absolutely not. But like I said before, it just shows that they're serious. And personally, we love that they've committed something.

Get a little skin in the game already. This next question here, it's actually not that important. It's just another little tidbit to kind of get inside people's heads a little bit.

And the question is, what style of home are you looking for? And then there's a list of it with a little image next to it. Contemporary, modern farm craftsman mountain style, traditional whatever. And there's so many more categories that a guy could put in there, but those are kind of the main ones.

There's more categories than you could yeah, where do you start or stop? So I figured, you know what? We got some kind of the main ones in there that people might think of. Maybe we could have, say, Barn Dominion in there or something. But it doesn't really matter because everyone defines it differently.

Right. Craftsman. That's totally not Craftsman.

Oh, well, it's kind of the same. I just wanted the farmhouse deal or whatever. Everyone kind of understands it differently.

What's funny is you go on those online websites, like a plan website, and you can click the option of what kind of plan you want to look for. And you'd click on, say, Craftsman, and you look through to some of the houses, and then you click on, say, Modern Farmhouse, and it'll show you a lot of the same plan over exactly what is it? Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in this quote unquote design. You can't just throwing it in a box like that.

I think it's kind of dumb. Well, see, what happens is originally there was these specific styles, colonial, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But people wanted to get more creative because evidently this is my take on it.

By the way, I feel like architects write this down. Architects had gotten bored with designing the same things over and over, and so they're like, oh, I'm going to mix colonial and whatever, farmhouse, American farmhouse. And then they start coming up with all these different things, and they don't really fit a specific style.

Arched windows aren't meant to go on a craftsman style. Right. But you see them everywhere.

Not to say that that's some sort of, like a limiting factor. Oh, you don't ever do X with Y. We'll build you whatever you want.

We don't necessarily care about what you put on your house. You can build a modern house and put an arch window on it. Sure.

I don't really care if that's really what you want. I'm just referring to the fact that the styles names don't necessarily match specifically to a style. Right.

Having that image there next to wherever the category is, that's sort of like, this is what they can click on that they can see it. Okay, that's what I'm going for. I thought I wanted modern, but really I wanted contemporary.

Whatever. By the way, I don't freaking know the difference between modern and contemporary. Well, it means the same thing, doesn't it? Yeah.

That's why that one's always been a hang up for me. No joke. This happened one time in conversation.

I said, So it looks to me like you're kind of going for a modern thing. We were looking at some concepts that she had sent over via email, and she's like, Well, I was thinking more of a contemporary, and my brain just kind of broke. Oh, okay.

And I kind of played it off. But the thing is, what the heck is the difference? Yeah. Each person has their own perception of what it is.

And so by putting the pictures on the questionnaire of what we're talking about, then they can be like, oh, yes, exactly. And even for me, off the cuff, I have a hard time discerning, say, Craftsman from whatever. It's hard for me to picture that.

I'm very much of a visual guise myself. So seeing that image there just kind of helps. Another little nugget in getting in last few questions here is, let's see, do you have specific products or ideas that you wish to use on your project? Now, this can certainly go into the weeds, right? People can start pulling out their weed whacker and just diving right in.

But really what I'm after here is more of a conceptual thing. Maybe there's some what I'm what I'm chasing are the big items to them, the features that they just love. So let's say we really want a backup generator or, you know, what our patio needs to feature a Jacuzzi or those types of things.

It's just another little again, another little nugget to help me understand what they're going for. Indoor outdoor living type. Yeah.

Or maybe it's something as specific as would really like to have a Jetted tub in my master bathroom. Or maybe it's as broad as going to do lots of entertaining and cookouts in the back patio area or in a patio area or something. That's awesome.

Yeah, it lets them like maybe they're going through this questionnaire thinking, come on, where's the spot where I can say I really want a Jacuzi. Where can I put that down? Boom. That's the spot.

Another little bit I have here is if you have any pictures, ideas, notes, sketches, et cetera, there's a little spot here. You can click on it and it's just uploading a PDF or a document or whatever. You know, I've had people do quite a few times is bring pictures of their existing house.

Yeah, hey, we brought pictures with us and this is what we currently live in. We like this and this and this. We would probably change this.

We've lived there, we understand this house and these are the things we want to change. This is actually a good spot to upload those pictures. Yes, absolutely.

That is so helpful, by the way, because they've lived it, I know that they understand what the heck they're talking about because they're living in it. It's not like, well, and they're trying to describe it to you and you think you're listening well enough to understand, but you're not really picking up what they're going at. Looking at pictures of someone's house, I can look at that picture and go, okay, I know exactly what that is.

I can see the type of countertop it is. I can kind of judge the grade of the cabinets. I can see what that flooring is.

It just tells me everything. Right. And then to hear them say, hey, we love this, we love that.

In my mind, I'm already going, okay, I know where I can find this. I know roughly what that thing is going to cost there. Or oh, they stated they didn't care for the big island.

More guidance, more info. Absolutely. A picture is worth 1000 words.

That's right. And then lastly, it's just sort of an overarching. Is there anything else about your project that you want to share? Anything else that people want to put in there? And that's pretty much it for the questionnaire.

It's been really helpful. It's been really helpful. So when people don't know where to begin, let's say they're going to go use a different builder, right? Let's say they're looking to build it themselves, even.

Let's say they're completely in the darkest of where to even begin. Anybody could take that questionnaire and download it and just fill out that list of questions. And they already can paint themselves.

They could paint a more clear picture on what they're going for. Right. Imagine everyone being able to do that.

Right? I think it's super critical. That's really the point I'm making here. It's very critical, these questions.

And I know there's lots of improvements that can be made, and there's probably some maybe better phrase questions or more questions that could be added or taken away. But by and large, those are the big items to us. And that's how we get inside people's.

Yeah. Now we have a clear picture and we know how to move forward from there. Exactly.