Know Your Limits Going after the big one “is a standard, classic growth predicament,” says Judith Miller, a San Francisco-based consultant to the remodeling industry. Why do people take on these jobs? “Either it’s a really sexy job or it’s an architect they want to work with or they see the potential to make a lot of money or to eventually become ‘the builder of big houses in Aspen.’ And that’s not going to happen.” You have to weigh what Miller calls the risk-reward ratio. Can you do the work profitably?
The key to that, says Tim Cross of Merrick Construction, is estimating. “This is where the guy who doesn’t know big jobs could get hurt.” For example, he says, “If you get into a big house there’s so much cleanup involved and labor for cleanup that you might not expect. You might estimate it at $4,000 and it’ll cost $10,000.”
To even get to that point, though, you have to ask yourself a lot of hard questions, including why you want the job. Cross does high-end additions and custom homes in a wealthy northern New Jersey suburb. He says he doesn’t care if a job is high status. “It’s just as important to say no to those big jobs as to say yes.”
You have to know how much time and effort you’re willing to put into a job and not be seduced by money or prestige. One recent job Cross turned down was a 15,000-square-foot home built on the side of a hill. “It has more steel and concrete than most commercial buildings.” Because he’d recently finished two 12,000-square-foot homes, he knew he shouldn’t touch the larger one. “At first glance, it just looks like a custom home. But it’s more than that.” Cross would rather do large jobs with which he’s familiar and can handle in a shorter time frame. “You’ve got to take baby steps,” he says. “When you see the big dollars thrown in front of you, you have to control your excitement and think about what you do before you do it. Make sure you’re prepared to take it on and have the manpower and know-how to do it.”
In essence, you want new challenges, but you don’t want surprises. Says Denny Conner of Conner Remodeling & Design in Seattle, “I’ve set aside the idea of going after the big one and have been a little more thoughtful about the talent we have in our lead carpenter mix and what we’re really good at.” Conner’s projects range between $40,000 and $200,000, so while looking at a “fancy million dollar project seems enticing, the logistics of taking on a project that is so much larger than what we’re set up to do just doesn’t make sense.”
Another reason to turn down the job is if the client isn’t right for you. Because you and the staff will spend a lot of time with the client, “you need to be OK to walk away from the project if the clients don’t fit the company’s core values,” says Craig Durosko, president of Sun Design Remodeling Specialists in Burke, Va., whose average jobs run between $150,000 and $200,000 after 17 years in business. Michael Cordonnier of Remodeling Designs in Dayton, Ohio, has gone so far as to terminate a relationship halfway through the design process on a project he was expecting to take a year or longer because the clients were difficult. “I thought about what it would be like for our carpenters to deal with these people, and I thought it wasn’t worth it,” he says. “I didn’t want to subject my employees to it.”
Doing one big job won’t necessarily propel you into the next realm. Schleifer cautions that more often you land a big one and get “two others before finding out the big one wasn’t suitable. You want to isolate [the large job] and complete it” and turn a profit before tackling another.