Our annual Pacesetter Awards issue is reassuring for several reasons. The first is to learn there are still custom home builders out there building custom homes! And they’re doing so in innovative ways that continue to strengthen their businesses in the face of hard times. Although this is an extraordinarily bad economic stretch we’re going through (some are dubbing it “The Great Recession”), our discussions with custom builders attest that sticking to core values is still the best answer for most of you.
But that doesn’t mean sticking with the status quo. It means sharpening every component of your process: marketing, customer service, management, design, and building innovation. Our Pacesetter winners will give you some fresh ideas, certainly. And I think they’ll underline the key message of survival here: they absolutely love what they do. Their passion translates into commitment and motivates them to take action—to strive constantly for improvement. The builders who never had any core values to begin with—who were in the game simply because it was the biggest game going—are not likely to weather this storm. They’re the ones who cynically churned through the jobs without regard for the quality they delivered, turned a deaf ear to service calls, and burned through the good will of their unfortunate clients.
They’re especially vulnerable, because it’s good will that’s seeing many custom builders through right now. Most of you are taking on remodeling work and other smaller jobs, even if that isn’t your primary focus. And many of those jobs are coming from previous, satisfied clients. The longer you’ve been in business (not just the go-go years of 1999 to 2006), the longer your word-of-mouth list and the deeper the well of contacts for your outreach efforts.
Among the essential lessons of the downturn is a renewed and deepened appreciation for authenticity and enduring quality. If you’ve already made a name for yourself through craft, honesty, and fairness, you have the strong foundation in place. From there, you can shore up other aspects of your business in the ways that make the most sense for your region, your specialty, and your client base. However, if your heart isn’t in the art and craft of building beautiful, solid, and singular custom homes, there’s little chance your head for business will see you through on its own.
