How to Find a Contractor Without Getting Sold

William Reid (: 00:00

All right, so let's picture this. It's a Tuesday night, kids are in bed, you've been thinking about this project for two years at least, and tonight's the night you finally do something about it. You open up your laptop, you type general contractor near me, you click the first result, you fill out a short form, the name, your phone number, your zip code, and what you're planning. Four minutes later, your phone rings. Most homeowners feel like a little thrill in that moment. Wow, that was fast. These people are on it. And I want to tell you what actually just happened because it really isn't what you think. Your phone number was just sold, not shared, sold to somewhere between three and eight contractors at the same time. And the reason your phone rang in four minutes is not because the contractor is attentive. It's because he's in a race.

Every one of those pros paid for your name. And the only way to make that money back is to dial faster than the other four guys. So the contractor who reaches you first isn't necessarily the best builder. He's the fastest dialer with the emptiest schedule. And nobody tells you really this next part. That lead costs them money, real money for the kind of project most of you are planning.

Buying one homeowner's contact information. For the kind of project most of you are planning, buying one homeowner's contact information runs into the hundreds of dollars for a builder. And that cost doesn't evaporate. It lives somewhere. It lives in the bid you're about to receive.

In my book I call it the Abyss of Google Search, and tonight I want to pull you back out of that.

So here's what we're covering. Six segments. First, why the search box structurally can't show you the best builders in your town. And I mean structurally, not because Google is bad at its job. And then second, which end of the rope to pull first, the contractor or the designer? And then third, referrals and the four questions that separate a real referral from a nice story. And then fourth, the stealth move here. How to borrow the construction industry's own line of sight and see what the pros see. And then fifth, the public record. Three doors in your own city that almost nobody really opens. And then at the end, I'm going to pull back the curtain on something we're building to make the whole process a lot less lonely.

So, quick note on where this sits. The last two episodes gave you the paths you can take to assemble your team. Episode 68 was the owner-builder path, where you became the general contractor. Episode 69 was the representative, your guardian angel, the pro you hire to run all this for you.

And in between that, in the earlier episodes, we talked about the guided and self-guided path. So there's these four paths that you can take. The guardian angel or owner's representative one kind of blankets all of those depending on the amount of help you need. But today is the other half of that conversation because whichever path you pick, somebody has to go find those people. And if you've hired a rep, this is what you're paying them to do. And now you'll know whether they're doing it well. If you're going alone, this is your job. So let's grab a notepad and listen in. And don't forget, this free download, I usually do it at the end of each episode, will help you right along with this process.

William Reid (: 03:37

Okay, let's start with a number that reframes this whole thing. Every year, the Trade Press surveys the largest and most successful design build remodeling firms in the country. The top 500. And these are the companies you'd actually want on your project. The ones doing whole house renovations, running real project management systems, carrying real insurance, employing real carpenters. Ask those firms where their work comes from.

And here's what you usually get. Roughly a quarter come from referrals, roughly another fifth from repeat clients, people who hired them once and then came back again and again, and about another fifth from their own website where somebody found them on purpose. So add it up, that's close to sixty percent of the work at the best firms in America coming from three channels that share one thing: trust that already existed before the phone rang.

So now, the online lead platforms, the pay per lead services, the ones you land on when you type contractor near me for full service remodelers, that entire category accounted for under 5% of their leads. Under 5%. So think about what that means for you as a searcher. When you go to a lead platform, you are not searching a directory of the best builders in your area. You are searching a directory of the builders who need to buy work. That is not the same list. Sometimes it overlaps. A good young firm building a client base will absolutely be in there. But the top of the market, the firm booked out six months with a waiting list, has no reason to be there and typically isn't.

And in my practice for well over thirty years operating a design build business, my goal was to spend zero dollars on any kind of marketing or advertising other than my own website. And after about the first decade in business, I didn't spend anything on advertising. Why? Because I invested my money in my existing clientele. In other words, if there was a misunderstanding or somebody wasn't happy with something during the process, or we wanted to give the client a little extra work or materials or details, then I did that and it made them satisfied. And guess what? Word of mouth is still to this day the most effective form of marketing. And I'd rather invest in my existing clientele to foster that than to pay some random online service money. And to this day, I get text messages, email messages every single day, more than one, about companies trying to sell me leads. And I've never purchased one in my entire life.

So this is what I'm talking about today, and in a big part of this episode. Be cautious of what you're typing your name and number into. And I'm going to show you, like I said at the end of the episode, how we avoid all of that. So let me be fair because some contractors make those platforms work. So if you've got an office manager answering the phone inside of five minutes, you can run a real business off of them. And I'm not calling anybody a crook, but you need to understand the mechanics because the mechanics decide what shows up on your screen.

So here's the model. A contractor pays an annual membership, then he pays again per lead. Depending on the trade and the market, that's anywhere from fifteen dollars to well over $100 or even more for a service call. So for design build remodeling work, the kind most of you are planning, or even building a new home, the industry's own numbers put the median cost of one qualified lead north of $400. And that same lead, your name, your number, your project gets sold to several pros at once. And I gotta tell you, I have a real problem with companies trying to skim money off of my business and selling me leads for clientele. Now I get it. If you're a brand new business, you're just starting out, I get it that you might want to do that to get the ball rolling, but your goal as a home builder or a design build company or remodeling contractor or a trade contractor is get the hell off of those lists so that you can pay attention to your existing clientele.

So these leads are getting sold to multiple people at once. So think about that business model from the lead company. A lot of them anyway, not all of them, are selling these leads to more than one builder or remodeling contractor. And that's why that's become a huge business. And you fellow contractors out there, let's get rid of that.

So this isn't speculation either. A few years back, the Federal Trade Commission brought a case against one of the biggest of these platforms over what it had told contractors about lead quality. And it settled up for up to seven point two million dollars in refunds. More than a hundred and ten thousand checks went out to service providers. So, what does that tell you? I'm not telling you that to pile on a company. I'm telling you because it establishes the thing I need you to hold on to. In that transaction, you were never the customer, you were the inventory.

You weren't searching for a contractor. You were being sold to one. And every dollar spent acquiring you comes back around. It's in the overhead. It's in the markup. It's in your number.

All right, so now I'm not telling you to never use the internet. That'd be ridiculous. A contractor's own website is one of the strongest signals you can find. Houzz is genuinely useful. That's houzz.com. And I'll tell you exactly what it's useful for. And what I'm telling you is that typing four words into a search bar and filling out a form is not a search strategy. It's the end of a funnel somebody else built. So the rest of today is about building your own.

William Reid (: 10:00

Okay, so before we get to the different channels you can use, we've got a structural question to answer because it changes who you go looking for first. So your project has two lead players. Your designer, your architect, residential designer, whoever's drawing it and documenting all of the design work and scope and specs and details. And then you've got the person that's going to build the project, your general contractor. And almost every homeowner assumes there's a correct order. Designer first, obviously, you need plans before you can build. And that's mostly right. But there's a second path, and it has real advantages.

So let's talk about option one, contractor first, then the designer. So you start conversations with builders before there's a single line drawn. Two things happen. One, you've got a contractor candidate warming up on the sidelines instead of starting cold 18 months from now, when you've got plans and designs in hand. And then two, and this is the bigger one. A good builder will hand you a short list of architects he actually likes working with. And that list is really worth a lot. That's a professional telling you who he trusts to draw something buildable.

But now the catch. You can't actually hire a contractor without plans and specifications, or you better not. You need drawings before anybody gives you a real number. So even if you start with a builder, you'll circle back and begin the real work with a designer and then loop your contractor in at prescribed points. And I've talked about that in the past episodes during the design process episodes where a builder can help you along. And you may have to pay them to do it, and that's okay. They're worth it.

Back in those episodes, I called them budget and design checkpoints, and we walked through those in the design process episodes. And that's where your builder earns his keep before he even swings a hammer.

And then option two, the designer first, and then the contractor. And this is probably the more conventional path, and it also works. It just depends on your situation and who you may or may not already know or don't know. So you engage your architect, you develop the design, and when you get to the point of needing pricing, you ask your architect who he'd bid this to. Same logic, basically in reverse. A designer's contractor list is a curated list. Architects have long memories about which builders made their drawings look good and which ones fought them for eight months.

So which one is right? And really the answer is both. Work both ends of the rope at the same time. So start collecting designer names and builder names simultaneously and watch where the two lists overlap because the overlap really is that prize. So the single strongest predictor of a smooth project is not how good your architect is. It's not how good your builder is. It's how well they work together.

So when an architect and a contractor already have a working relationship, you get things you cannot buy any other way. They coordinate schedules without you playing telephone tag. They find cost savings together instead of blaming each other. The design gets pressure tested against what can actually be built before it goes to permit. And when something goes sideways at 11 o'clock on a Thursday, and it will, they pick up the phone and solve it instead of writing letters to protect themselves.

So I've watched projects with mediocre design and a great team come out beautifully. And I've watched projects with a brilliant design and a team that couldn't stand each other turn into a two-year grind.

So let's make this concrete because it sounds soft and it really isn't. Two projects, same year, similar size. On the first one, the architect and the builder had done four houses together. When the framers opened up a wall and found something nobody expected, the builder called the architect directly. They sketched a fix on a piece of plywood that afternoon. Two days, no drama, and yeah, there was a small change order because that's just the way the ball bounces in the world of remodeling in that case. But on the second one, the architect and the builder had never met. Same kind of surprise. That one went to email, then it went to a meeting, then it went to a revised drawing, and then a revision to the revision, then a request for additional design fees. And that took 11 days. And the homeowner paid for every one of them in the schedule, in the change order, in about four months of not sleeping well.

So you can see the same problem, same square footage, completely different bill. The only variable was whether those two had worked together before. So as we go through the next three segments and you're building your list, keep a column on the right side of the page. And every time you learn that a builder and a designer have worked together before, flag that one, write it down. That column will be worth more than any review you have ever read.

William Reid (: 15:31

All right, so let's build this list of channels. And channel one, and it's the best one, and it's gonna seem obvious, but we're gonna pull through all of the details and peel back some layers on this one because it's not all what it seems, and that's referrals. So a referral, a recommendation from a neighbor or a friend, is the most direct line you have to a good professional. And nothing really beats it. Somebody you trust lived through a project with this person and came out on the other side willing to say their name out loud.

But I need to hand you a warning that a lot of people don't talk about. Don't let a referral be your only qualifier. And here's the trap. Your friend had a kitchen remodel, loved the contractor, raves about them, and you're planning a whole house renovation with a second story. And you've got a foundation problem on one end that has to be resolved. And those are not the same kind of job and therefore not necessarily the same type of contractor. And a guy who runs a flawless $80,000 kitchen may have never held a structural project, and never coordinated six consultants and never carried a nine month schedule.

And here's the part that stings. He probably won't tell you that. Not because he's dishonest, because he wants the work, because he thinks he can figure it out, because it's a big job and he's got payroll on Friday. So I've watched good people take a job one size too big and damage their reputation and somebody's house at the same time.

So your job isn't to accept the referral, your job is to interrogate it. And we're gonna do it gently over coffee with your friend, not with the contractor. So four questions. And just take note of these once you've got the referral name in your hand.

So number one, tell me about your project. Not was it good, tell me the scope. How big, how long, how much movement did you do inside the house as far as the walls and gut and stuff. And you're checking whether their project resembles yours.

And number two, how did you find your contractor? Their answer hands you a channel you may not have thought of. And if the answer is he was already working next door, you just learned something about your own neighborhood.

And number three, how did you find your architect? Same reason here. And now you're building both lists at once.

And number four, and this is sometimes the one that nobody asked. Did they work well together? Had they worked together before? And that fourth question is the overlap column I was telling you about. And you're gonna want to ask that every single time.

So my friends, the McMillans in my story that I keep talking about, Ben and Jane and the McMillans, they did this better than almost anyone I've watched. Before they ever called a single professional, they spent about six weeks just collecting. Every dinner party, every soccer sideline, every conversation with a neighbor. They asked those four questions. They kept a running list on the refrigerator, names, who referred them, what kind of project it came from.

By the time they were ready to start making calls, they had nineteen names. Nineteen. And most importantly, they had context on every one of them. They knew which contractor came up twice, they knew which architect three different people had mentioned, they knew which builder somebody's brother in law had used and quietly regretted. That list cost them nothing but curiosity and six weeks of paying attention. And it's the reason their project went the way it did. And if you recall in the story, if you haven't listened to it in one of my episodes or read it in the book, you'll know that the McMillans were the ones that succeeded and Ben and Jane went through misery.

So let's talk about channel two. And this costs you nothing but attention. Do a neighborhood watch. The moment you start thinking about a project, it's not too early to start looking. And your neighborhood is publishing information about contractors every single day for free on sticks in the front yard, job site signs, contractor name, architect name, sometimes the subs are even listed. Start your list there. Take a picture with your phone. And this is the part people skip, monitor those projects. Drive by, watch what happens over six months.

And here's what that buys you. First, an architect or builder already working in your city knows your city. They know your building department, your planning department, your inspectors, and how long approvals actually take. That's worth real money and real months on a schedule.

And second, you get a free look at an architect's style. Drive by and the addition looks bolted on, you don't dig that, you learn something. Looks like it was always there, you learn something even better.

And then third, and this one I love, you get to see the future. You get to watch how a project actually progresses. Is the site clean? Are there trucks there on Tuesday morning? Or is it a ghost town for three weeks? Does the crew look organized? Or does it look like a swap meet out on the front yard? So you cannot get that from a photograph and a portfolio. A portfolio shows you the finish. The job site shows you the process. And you're gonna be living inside that process for a year at least. And if you're doing a remodel or renovation project, you may literally be living inside it. Not inside the process, but inside the home.

And then the fourth one, there's a homeowner in there. There's somebody that's tied to this project. And when it's done, that's a reference you found yourself, not one the contractor handed you. So knock on the door. Most people will talk your ear off about their remodels. Some of them will tell you things a curated reference list never will.

William Reid (: 21:45

Okay, this next one might be my favorite, and it's what separates the homeowners who find a great builder from the ones who settle. And here's the principle. You might want to write this one down. The best contractors in your town are nearly invisible to homeowners, but they are extremely visible to each other.

So think about it. A builder who's been doing quality work for 20 years doesn't really need to advertise. But every single week he walks into a lumber yard, he orders windows, he picks up tile, he hires the same electrician, he's on a first name basis with the counter staff at four different suppliers. There's an entire layer of people in your town who know exactly who the good contractors are and who the disasters are, and nobody ever thinks to ask them. And you're gonna ask.

So move one, go to the lumber yard, not the big box store, the contractor yard, the one where the trucks are. Walk in. There's almost always a board or a bowl where builders leave their cards. Take a look. Then ask the person behind the counter a very specific question. Not who's good, that gets you a shrug or the old brother-in-law syndrome. Ask this. Who are the most organized contractors you deal with? Who pays on time and doesn't blow up your day? Now you've asked something they can actually answer. And notice what you're really measuring. A contractor who pays his suppliers on time and orders correctly is a contractor with money management and a real process. Those are exactly the traits that decide whether your project goes well.

Now, you may run into some times where the folks at the counter may not necessarily feel comfortable offering referrals to you. It's just gonna go back to how well you can sell them on the idea of helping you. You'll have to use your own character and your own personality to do that. But I know it works. And this cuts through the crap about who's really the best contractors. Because like I said, the ones that frequent and repeat the same lumber yard or the same suppliers over and over and over again have a real track record. Not just with clientele, with customers, but with their suppliers. Which means there's a cyclical thing there that's happening and they'll be around for a long time.

So let's talk about move two, go shopping for materials early and ask while you're there. As you start building a relationship with your window showroom, doors or tile or flooring or plumbing fixtures or lighting fixtures, you'll do that by visiting these showrooms eventually anyway. Go now and do two jobs at once. Start your material research, which you're gonna need for your specifications, and ask the showroom staff which contractors they like working with. Those folks watch contractors handle orders, deal with damaged shipments, and manage change. And they know who's a pro.

And I'll tell you what I've heard from the other side of that counter for my three plus decades. Suppliers can tell you without hesitating which builder submits a complete order the first time and which one calls back four times to change the finish, for example. That's an unorganized person. And which one measures before he orders and which one measures after the truck shows up? Which one eats his own mistake and which one tries to send it back opened up? These are the things that a supplier can identify with. It's how you ask the question. It's not who would you recommend? It's what is the experience the supplier has had with a contractor that opens up that dialogue.

So every one of those I'm mentioning here in this number two is a project management question, wearing a materials costume. That's the same discipline that shows up in your schedule and your budget. So bonus also here, you'll start learning what things actually cost, which makes you a much smarter homeowner when the bids come in.

And then move three. And this one takes a little nerve, but can be probably the most valuable. Stop at the job site. You're already driving around doing your neighborhood watch, pull over, walk up to the first person you see and ask if they're the contractor. If they say yes, well, congratulations. You're having a conversation with a builder on his own turf where he's showing you his work instead of telling you about it. If they say no, they're almost certainly a subcontractor or an employee of the general contractor, and they'll point you to the GC. And if the GC isn't there, even better. Now you get to ask the sub the most useful question in the entire episode. How is this guy to work for? Subcontractors know everything. They know who runs a clean schedule and who has them standing around for three days. They know who pays in 30 days and who pays in 90 days. They know who protects them and who throws them under the bus. And here's why that matters directly to you. Subs bid higher for contractors who are a pain to work for. That's not personal. It's just math. They price in the aggravation. They price in the schedule delays. They price in the amount of times they have to communicate. So a contractor the subs like is a contractor with better pricing and a better team. You'll learn more about a builder in four minutes with his framer than an hour in his conference room.

So one note on manners, because it matters. You're a guest on somebody's job site. Stay out of the work area. Don't linger. Don't ask for a bid on the spot. Be brief and be respectful. And if somebody's not interested in talking, move on. Plenty of others will be.

William Reid (: 27:51

All right, here's the last channel set for us. And this one is free. It's public, and I'd guess fewer than one homeowner in twenty ever uses it.

So door one. Your city or your county building and planning department in person. Probably not the funnest plan to walk into a planning department on a Monday afternoon. But an in-person visit does two things here. First, you walk out understanding how your jurisdiction's approval process actually works. Most departments have information packets sitting right there on the counter. That knowledge alone puts you ahead of most homeowners. And frankly, ahead of most contractors.

And second, and be gentle here, the person at the counter has watched every designer and contractor in your city submit plans for years. They know who turns in clean, complete drawings, and who wastes everybody's time on three rounds of corrections. Now, plenty of departments have a policy against making referrals, and you need to respect that. Don't put anyone on the spot. Have a friendly conversation. Ask general questions. Sometimes you'll get nothing, and that's fine. And sometimes you'll get a name. Either way you leave smarter than when you walked in the door.

And then door two. And this is a sleeper. Run a permit search. Every permit pulled in your city is public information. Every city presents it differently. Some have a slick online portal. Some make you ask at the counter, but it's there. And what's in it, who's building what, where, and who pulled the permit. So read that back in your head. You can pull a list of the contractors doing the most work in your area and roughly what size of work they do. Then you take those names to the web and see whether they're worth a spot on your short list. And that is the exact opposite of a search bar. You're not looking at who bought an ad. You're looking at who's actually building.

And then door three, your state contractors license board. Every state has one. It's free, it's public, and it takes 90 seconds. You put in a name or a license number, and you find out whether the license is real, whether it's active, what classification it holds, and whether the required insurance is on file. Many states show you complaint or disciplinary history as well.

So do this before your first meeting, not after. Not when something goes wrong, before. And do it for every single candidate, including the one your best friend recommended, especially that one, because a referral tells you somebody had a good experience. It does not tell you their license is current.

So we spent most of an episode on this back in episode 59 on signing your contract, confirming the company and the licenses are even real. And that the name on the paperwork matches the name on the license. So today's version is the front end of that. Verify at the list stage, your short list of contractors, not at the signature stage. So you never waste a meeting on somebody who never was eligible in the first place.

So a couple more resources to round this out. Industry Associations. The design and construction world has professional organizations, and their member directories are searchable. On the design side, there's the American Institute of Architects, which will point you to your local chapter. And the American Society of Interior Designers has a Find a Pro directory. And the National Kitchen and Bath Association has one if your project is kitchen or bath centered. And on the construction side, the National Association of Home Builders runs directories from production builders down to remodeling contractors. And the National Association of the Remodeling Industry has a whole section built for homeowners.

Now, does membership make somebody a great builder? No, absolutely not. And I want to be clear about that. But it tells you something real. It tells you this person spends money and time participating in their own industry. And they're around peers. They're exposed to standards. They're not operating in a cave. And that's a signal, and signals are what we're collecting here.

And then your local chamber of commerce lets you search members by category. And this could just take you a couple of minutes. And you may turn up a local firm that never shows up on page one of anything. And since I brought it up in segment one, let's talk about a builder's own website, not a lead platform. His site. It's one of the strongest signals you can read, and most homeowners skim right past it.

Four things I look at. One. Does the portfolio show projects like yours? Not projects you like, projects like yours. Ten stunning kitchens and zero whole house renovations tells you exactly where this company lives. Two, is there a named team, a real about page with actual people, a project manager, a lead carpenter, an estimator? Means an actual organization. A site with one photo and a phone number may mean one guy and a cell phone. And that's not necessarily automatically bad, but it has to match your project size.

And then three, do they explain their process? A builder who lays out how his design phases work if he is a design build company, and how he handles selections, how he builds, that's a company with a process it's proud of. Vague, glossy, all adjectives and no nouns, that's marketing standing where a system should be.

And four, the one nobody checks. When was it last updated? A portfolio that stops four years ago tells you something. So does a blog whose last post was during a different presidency.

And then there's Houzz. Houzz can be useful, but be clear about what for. Houzz is where you build idea books, you collect images, you figure out what you actually respond to, and then you share those idea books with your designer and your builder. And that's a real tool for communication, design intent. And you can use it for that. It's a research platform first and a directory second.

William Reid (: 34:29

Okay, so I want to close with something a little bit different today because a lot of you have been writing in asking about it 'cause I keep talking about it. It's called the BuildQuest application. But before we do that, let's just be honest about what I just handed you. That was a lot of work. Seven channels, phone calls, drive bys, trip to the lumber yard, a morning at the building department. And at the end of it, what have you got? A page of names and a notebook. No structure, no way to compare them, and no way to hand any of them a clear picture of your project without retelling the whole story from scratch five separate times.

And that gap is what we've been building for. At BuildQuest, we're developing a module called ProQuest. It handles exactly what we've talked about tonight, finding pros and getting ready to actually engage them. And we start with the design decision I'm proudest of because it goes straight back to segment one. In ProQuest, you can browse professionals without giving up a thing. No form, no phone number, no email, nothing. Nobody's selling your name because we've never asked for it. It's not a lead marketplace, and no contractor is racing to dial you first.

But here's the part I really want you to hear. What ProQuest does is not a search. A search matches words, and we're matching your project. And by the time you reach ProQuest, you've already done real work inside BuildQuest. We know the scope of what you're planning. We know your budget range. We know where you're building. And that matters more than almost anything because a builder who already knows your jurisdiction is worth months, like I mentioned. We know your design direction through our VisionSpec module, how much experience you have, how much time you can give this, and what you're actually trying to accomplish. And all of that goes to work. Instead of handing you every licensed contractor within 40 miles, we trim the fat and surface the pros who are genuinely relevant to your project. And that's the difference between a directory and a match.

And want help narrowing further? Quinn, this guide I've built, has a help me decide option. Two quick questions, and he suggests a path, whether it was the design build path, the guided or the self-guided path, or the owner builder path, or the owner agent path. And you can always overrule him.

And then when you're ready, and only when you're ready, you launch the project. You don't get a blank form. Everything you've already built gets pulled forward and pre-filled. You review and refine it, and you don't author it from nothing at nine o'clock at night. And what comes out on the other side is what we call a project brief. And I want to tell you why that phrase matters, because I've sat on the other side of that desk for many years.

A project brief is a document a professional recognizes on sight. It's what an architect or a builder needs before they can tell you anything useful. Your design intent, your budget range, your property facts, and how you actually live in your house. Most homeowners have never been able to produce one. So the first stretch of every project gets spent building it in meetings on your dime. Walk in with it already done and you fast forward straight past all of that. In one afternoon you become the most prepared client that professional has met all year.

And you hand the same brief to every candidate. So think about what that does. Every pro you're considering is looking at an identical picture of your project. That's a level playing field, and it's the only way you ever get proposals you can honestly compare.

Those of you who sat through our estimating and contracting episodes know that's been my drum to beat for years.

And one more, because it's the thing I insisted on. You control what each pro sees, one pro at a time. Before somebody accepts they see the basics, style direction, project type, location, budget range. The full brief unlocks when they accept your invitation and they engage. And if it isn't a fit, you pull it back. Per professional, never on an all-or-nothing thing. You're the principal here.

So we're nearing completion on the development of BuildQuest, which has been going on actually for a couple of years now. The actual development process is pushing about 10 months now. And it's because it's quite a comprehensive platform that both homeowners and design and construction professionals can use. But what I'm going to be looking at, and if you want early access, you can go to buildquest.co, not com, dot co and get your name on the early access list.

And in the meantime, everything I described today works with no software at all. It worked for thirty five years before I ever wrote a line of code.

All right, let's put a bow on this one. Tonight was about one idea. Go where the professionals are visible, not where the advertising is. The search box shows you who bought the ad. Referrals, job sites, supply houses, subcontractors, permit records, licensing boards, and industry directories shows you who's actually building. Work both ends of the rope, designer and contractor at the same time and watch for the overlap because a team that already works well together is worth more than either one of them alone. And run every name past your state licensing board before you even shake a hand.

And I'm going to pull together a free download for this episode in the show notes, a one-page worksheet to run all of this without losing track of who came from where. Grab it. It's free, no strings attached. And if you want the deeper version of this, sections four point zero four zero and four point zero four one of my book, The Awakened Homeowner, where all of this lives with the full checklist and the association links written out. So here's everything in one place. Get the book, The Awakened Homeowner. It's on Amazon and it's available on other platforms too. And the links are in the show notes and it's a minuscule amount of money investment for people who are thinking about a project. If you really enjoy a fictional story, mine The Tale of Two Homeowners, it's linked in there as well. And you can see that's in the prologue and the epilogue of the book. And then like I said, the BuildQuest platform is at buildquest dot co. And I love your questions, and my email's in the show notes. And you can listen on every podcast platform out there. And of course I'm on social media off and on. The links are in there too.

So if this one helped you, do me a favor and send it to somebody who's about to start a project. That's how people find us. And with that, we're closed out on part four, the whole arc on assembling your team. And next time we're going to start something new, and I think you're gonna like where we're headed. So stay with me here. And as always, I'm Bill Reid, your home building coach. And my mission is to enlighten, empower, and protect you. Now go make it happen.