Don: Well, what I see a lot of times is a lot of people collect a lot of stuff through time, whether it’s at the home or office and there’s a lot of clutter. There’s a lot of things and whether or not it’s important to them, they’re struck with the fact that they have to put together some type of organization to empty the space. They make a lot of these projects more stressful because they’re more concerned about stuff than how it’s going to impact their time and their life and everything else. I tell folks don’t make it a big deal. We can move what we need to move. We can help you out with whatever it is; don’t make it a big deal. And most importantly don’t make it like a strict timeline. That’s the best advice I can give to people entering into the decorating. Don’t make it a strict time frame because what you’re doing is, ultimately, you’re undermining the project. “Speed it up, hurry. It’s got to get done” and all that does is create stress; put a realistic time frame together. Pick out your colors; figure out the areas whatever remodeling you want to do; and just go step-by-step and don’t be in a rush. And if you got everything together, everything comes together so quickly. So there’s no point in rushing your organization for the project. So if that makes any sense to you Marcus.
Markus: Absolutely. That’s great. Can you describe a situation that you had recently with a client that actually was going through that and you really helped them to turn their thinking around on how they were so stressed out about their project?
Don: Sure. Absolutely. So for instance, there was an elderly couple and they were going to be moving. I don’t know if they’re moving into a downsizing or they are going into a nursing home or a health care facility. I’m not sure. But anyway, they had a home and they needed to sell it and they only needed a few pieces of their furniture and they didn’t need all their stuff, and they were just absolutely sweating it, didn’t know how to go about it. And so they came to us and we actually referred them to somebody that we work with that can go in and help them with the move, de-clutter; they can have an estate sale. They can help them market the house. Tell them how to decorate the house so it will sell easily and help them with all of those things. And then they were able to put it in perspective. They weren’t able to, but somebody else was able to put it in perspective for them and then it was a very simple project. And we figured out what we needed to do to make her home saleable, so they could move on. They had their home ready for sale and they didn’t have to worry about moving and de-cluttering and selling or giving away. Because what happens is our homes become a huge collection of stuff from our lives. You know we get to the tail end of our lives and it’s like what do we do with all this stuff. And it gets really overwhelming for a lot of folks.
Markus: That’s perfect; that’s exactly what I was looking for. Not only did you create a seamless project for them with the painting, but you found services that actually help them to de-stress and make the project as smooth sailing as possible. That’s fantastic. I love it. So what would be the first thing that a listener should do if they’re ready to improve their lives, whether it’s painting their home, painting their office, painting their business, and how do they get started with this process?
Don: Well I think the first thing is to figure out exactly what they would like to do and how that would improve their life. And then secondly, I think that they should sit down and try and figure out what type of budget they have for it. And it’s easier to formulate a project around a budget, than a budget around a project, because what happens is things fall through the cracks and then the budget is never really what the budget is. So if you put together a certain amount of money or time or whatever, it may be for that project, then you work around that because those are the known variables. And if they do that, then they can call us up and we can put together a good plan whether it’s remodeling or whether it’s painting. Put together a plan, kind of figure out what they what they want to do with it, they can look through the web or they get good pictures from some magazines and come up with some colors and some ideas and then figure out kind of where they’re at with their budget and then try and get together a project that really fits for them. And then I think they’re ultimately happy because a lot of times people don’t put those together before they move forward with the project.
And then it seems sometimes they don’t wind up with the contractors that they necessarily would choose because they have a different style of buying. A lot of people, what they’ll do is they’ll get a couple of prices and then that’s their budget. If they don’t speak with the right people in the first place the budget is going to be unrealistic. And so that’s the problem. And the other problem is a lot of folks, a lot of contractors, will feel as though they can’t sell a particular project because they feel as though they know what a person’s budget is. So what they’ll do is they sell them something less than what they need and maybe that’s not what the person was looking for or the opposite, so I think it’s good to have your own criteria down before you actually talk to folks and try and put together a project that’s going to really make you happy and not be stressful. And at the end of the day you’re going to be really happy. And my theory is if the client is happy and the workers are happy and if the business owner is happy it’s a win win win. So we want to make sure that we give them the end result that they’re looking for.
