The Commercial Builder Comes Home

In our last blog with Marcus Golding (which obviously you’ve read, annotated and committed to memory) he mentioned off-hand that Optimum is expanding their work within the custom homes market along the coast of Maine. In case you don’t recall the exact wording we wrote that, 

Urban flight is ramping up the Custom Home Building market fast. And Marcus believes Optimum is well positioned to answer the rising demand. “The same things that make us good at commercial work will help us thrive in residential too. And that is clear comms, solid work, and relationships.”

Nice sentiment, but what a tease! Residential and Commercial Construction may sound like cousins, but they have about as much in common as do baseball and basketball. Sure, they’re both ball sports, but come on Jordan, hang up the cleats and get back to shooting jump shots! 

Here’s how it plays out: a purely residential builder would have a very tough time with the PACE and PROCESSES needed to be successful in the commercial space. Sticking to budget and timeline is essential to success. The flipside is that the EMOTIONALITY and TRUST required to succeed in home building is off-putting to the binary thinking of a commercial builder. Kendrick puts it best, 

When we got started, I wouldn’t touch home-building with a 10-foot pole. The commercial builder is trained to see  in straight lines to speedy solutions. What they are not trained in is the emotional finesse required to put home clients at ease. Lucky for me and for Optimum, that is precisely what Ryan is phenomenal at. As a co-founder of the company, Ryan has that steady trust that says, ‘It’s possible. I have your best interest in mind. I’m the right guy for the job.’ Yes, the two spheres of building are totally different, but honestly, we’ve seen this as the natural progression of our business for a long time.

The Emotionality of Building...

...an unlikely turn for a call between four grown men. As you can imagine, the psychological analysis of the relationship between builders and their clients was razor-sharp. Basically Brene Brown and Oprah riffing. Not really. We did; however, arrived at a roundabout but true conclusion: there’s a BIG difference in buying a home, and building your home. Kendrick synthesizes again,

It’s like a wedding, right? It’s that feeling of ‘I’ve been dreaming about it so long! + Please don’t screw it up! + Am I making the right decision?’ all adding up to a large lump-in-the-throat feeling of anxiety and excitement. 

That feels true. The Anxiety Angel sits on your shoulder and says, “These numbers are huge! Did you hire the right guys? Do they really have your best interest in mind?” There’s just no getting around it: the Anxiety Angel has a place in the home-building process. And then there is the other shoulder where the Excitement Angel sits. The Excitement Angel is doing a happy dance and shouting “Let’s gooo! I’m getting my dream house! I’ve always wanted pineapple bathroom tile and long-leaf pine floors! This is SO cool!”  What most general Contractors miss in the equation is that the process and journey are just as important as the end result. A final outcome will never receive the highest mark if getting there was frustrating at every turn. No one cares about great construction they felt marginalized as a person along the way.

And honestly, I’d be telling half-truths if I omitted that Kendrick and Ryan’s emotions are in it as well. “It’s just incredible to build totally custom homes on the freaking coast of Maine!”, Ryan quips. The construction details in trimwork and cabinetry; the imaginings of people moving through the space at holidays and parties; the window-seats for mornings and the nights by a crackling fire. Turning dreams into wood and steel reality.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, already gazing seaward from the porch in my imagination before the real porch has been built. And the building itself can be a briarpatch. It’s routine to find beautiful homes that owners would never want to build again. For the process to suck the joy from the job. In no uncertain terms, Optimum stands against that as Kendrick details,

“This process isn’t going to suck for you. We work really hard to recruit and attract subcontractors who enjoy relationships and that gets passed along to the client as value. What we are at the core is simply a competent group of people who care about relationships. So when it comes to the little things, say straightening a cabinet door 1º to make it plumb level, it’s no burden because we aren’t just rushing to finish your project and collect a check. We are about caring for you as a person and doing it for the relationship. It’s a servant’s attitude.”

Here’s what Ryan says:

It really comes down to getting the little things exactly right: bringing on dependable  subs, considering lead-times on hardware, pre-making decisions. These things allow Optimum to say “Yes” where other builders would say, “No” or “Yes, but it’ll cost you an arm and a leg.” I think that the level of professionality we bring from the commercial space really surprises our home-building clients. And honestly, clients often end up as friends. We get to know their kids and meet their neighbors. It’s somewhat vulnerable to build a home and they trust us to create something meaningful for them. 

As Kenrick and Ryan talk about their workflow, I can’t help but call to mind a combat philosophy of the Navy Seals, which teaches that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” How often does a jobsite sit idle as the result of poor planning? Could the systems from the commercial world be the palliative so needed in homebuilding?   

What about Time?

I don’t ask the guys much about the results; about what the homes they build will look like. The truth is that they’ll rise from the imaginations of clients. It’s also true that Kendrick and Ryan have repeatedly shown their work is of bonafide quality. The proof in the pudding. We do speak about time though and how a house becomes a home. The tenet held by the company is called Dura-beauty, Optimum’s very own proprietary hyphenation. Essentially, it means that work done well should improve with age. Young saplings maturing through the kitchen window into brilliant maples. Wind and rain spattering on the graying roof. The home becoming more and more of your own. Isn’t that fun to imagine? Even more fun to turn the dream into a reality!