Dennis Oz: Welcome back to the Remodeler Success Podcast, where we dig into the real systems behind profitable remodeling and custom builds. Today we are in New Orleans folks, New Orleans. You know Orleans with the hurricanes and custom historic districts and heavy permitting where the tight real tight operations and cash control are not really optional, right?

So today we are going to be talking about this interesting market and surrounding areas. So our guest today. Yes, that is the most interesting part of today. That is why I am so like shaking with the excitement today, he leads both a renovation company and a commercial construction company with more than 20 years in the field.

You name it. Best of Houzz, Angies List Super Service, local mentions and features, and even Professional Remodeler 40 Under 40 award I am talking about. So it is so much to cover. And what we are going to unpack here, we are going to be talking about how to keep projects profitable and how to deal with unpredictable projects.

Many more. So please welcome to the show, Machi Medrzycki. Welcome to the show.

Machi Medrzycki: Thank you, Dennis. I appreciate you having me. And I am blushing a little bit. You giving me all those compliments. I do not feel that serious about myself. But I am going to take it. I am going to take every single wonderful word you put in front of me.

Dennis Oz: Machi, I was really blown away with the things that you have done in the industry and the things that you have given back to the community. So it is amazing to have you here today. For the ones who did not even read your background on what you have done in the field, how would you introduce yourself?

Machi Medrzycki: I am an immigrant from Poland. I came to this country in 2002. I have been inclined to do stuff with my hands since I was a young child. I like Legos, I like models. I had a very wild running imagination. I remember when I was 5, 7, 9 years old, I would take two pieces of lumber and some old rusty nails, and I was building a sports car or whatever was going on in my head, right?

So these things were running wild, which helps when you are running a construction business, especially renovation business, because there is a lot of stuff left up for imagination, interpretation, and a little bit of design touch and also almost like an artist touch, right? So how would I introduce myself?

Answering your question is I worked in the business, I know what it takes to put projects together. I was always happy to do business as business itself, so that was a successful path to elevate the construction as a trade into actual business. And I kind of went from one end to the other, from one project to another.

Kind of scaling, growing, making all the mistakes in the world, and then not giving up and doing it again and doubling down and putting stuff together the old fashioned way. No blueprint, so to speak. You kind of try your own ways in our market, which is a little different than any other market that I have ever been in.

So remodeler, general contractor, both residential and commercial. That is my introduction.

Dennis Oz: Thanks so much. Thanks so much. And I am so excited to talk about all these scars on your faces and all these kinds of mistakes that you have done in the past because world class people share and folks, you know that our show is all about learning from these mistakes.

So this is going to be an amazing episode. So Machi, you are in New Orleans and just like we mentioned it is a place where the historical districts are there and also sometimes weather is not really helping. There are hurricanes that happen over there. So you are running a crew in that area.

What decisions really kept your business really predictable when the market and also the weather are not really helping?

Machi Medrzycki: That is a great question and we are going to unpack it a little bit over the time because there is an unpredictability related to macroeconomics related to the United States. Then we are going to shrink it down to Louisiana. Then it is going to be almost a microeconomics related to New Orleans as a metro area. And then we are going to sprinkle that a little bit with mother nature that likes to throw kinks into my business model.

I can tell you that New Orleans market is fairly predictable as far as the construction cost of goods unless there is a hurricane. Hurricanes are a good and bad thing. I am talking purely about business. I am extracting any type of emotional attachment to those by people losing lives, people losing their homes. I am talking about business itself. It spikes up business a lot when a hurricane happens because you all of a sudden have all the work in the world.

The problem with that is to fill that work, you have to have manpower in order to do that. Cost of manpower goes up, right? So essentially our cost of doing business goes up, the materials become scarce, and then the cost of material goes up. So yes, it is maybe a good thing for remodelers and contractors that struggle and do not have enough business to spike up the amount of work that they can gather up very quickly. It is a double edged sword because you are attracting a lot of people that should not be in business, and all of a sudden everybody becomes a contractor.

And then a lot of people, consumers, get hurt because they are trusting people that come in with lower price points, or maybe they have crews available and materials available to perform the work, so they think, and then they cannot finish, or they misappropriate the money. I have seen a lot of it in the local construction industry less than after Katrina, but certainly more than we should experience.

To me that is unpredictable. That is not predictable business because markets, just like any markets, they like nice and peace. They do not like volatility. So for me, those things throw a big kink into our larger broader business model. And we navigate through them just like anybody else. It is kind of chaotic. You have to pay people more to attract the people to work, the labor force. You have to be upfront with your suppliers and explain that you are willing to pay upfront instead of putting them on the commercial lines of credit.

And you have to make it lucrative for everybody in order to be first in line. And it is hard. People, consumers, they are a little bit more restrained, they are not willing to pull the trigger as fast, which they should not. So it is not a good scenario. The good news is it does not happen very often and truthfully we do not need any more because insurance costs will go up again and that is another reason why construction would suffer.

So that is how I feel about hurricanes. As far as your regular daily business model, you just grind. You find the work, you close the jobs and you fulfill the work. So I hope that answers in a roundabout way your question.

Dennis Oz: That was amazing because you also talked about something that I am going to ask you in the next question. I would like to ask you those preparations because especially when you are contacting and talking to the prospects or even they become your customers after that.

We know that when you have complex remodels they really fail without really tight scopes. You have to be so systematic about your approach to these kinds of complex remodeling projects. You have to have clear sections and also really disciplined change management as well.

So you have to be flexible too. Then let me ask you, how do you restructure this preconstruction phase so the jobs that you have, they all stay on budget and also on schedule?

Machi Medrzycki: That is a million dollar question. This is my favorite part of the job, preconstruction work, because it is fun.

We get to pick materials with our clients as a team. We get to advise them what they should or should not do in the meaning of construction elements. They get to chime in with their vision for the project, and the best part of it at that stage is that there is no stress of actually performing any work yet.

So there is no additional pressure of fulfillment. Clients get to pick and choose at their own leisure. They do not have to be stressing out over time. They can go over the weekend and pick some items and they can bring selections back to us, or they can work with the interior decorator or designer.

We can make changes to the drawings. We can massage it. We can make the cake before we bake it. The batter itself. That is what we like to say. And that is the most fun. And I always encourage every single client of ours to take time through that process. Now, there is a fine line between taking time and taking too much time.

We have to remember that our prices of construction go up every year. Typically it is midyear when the construction is high and booming, June, July, and then right after New Year. So if you are taking too much time and you are budgeting on the front end of things before you go through preconstruction, those numbers may get elevated very quickly and you are going to be out of your budget and you have to start over. That is why some projects will get benched. They do not go to production.

But in order to maintain the schedule, we put people on schedule. So when we build our schedule in Buildertrend, which is our go to project management software, we do preconstruction schedule and then we put it into construction. This way everybody feels accountable. This is where I need to pick my fixtures. This is where I need to pick my selections. This is where my last revisions on my floor plans are. This is it.

So this way we can not only plan for your project as your client, but also plan around other projects so we do not overwhelm the pipeline, our flow of construction internally, and then deliver with A class crews and project managers for you as a client.

So it is a fine line and it is really difficult to walk it because we are working with a lot of individuals and truthfully every project is a prototype because we are not building subdivisions where we are in full control of the floor plans. So no matter what we do, it is one off.

But that is part of it. And then once we go through preconstruction, we like to consult with our trade partners, subcontractors, and suppliers as we go through the process to make sure we are tracking the numbers. Once we finalize the reflected ceiling plan, power plan, and all the layouts, we submit it to the electrician and plumber and they give us hard bids based on the drawings and site visits.

So our quotes, I can tell you by the time we go through the full preconstruction services process, our quotes, we are very comfortable giving our clients guaranteed maximum price. We say this is what it is. We are so confident in our pricing because we took so much time and effort and put so much into it that we have no unforeseen conditions that we can see.

Now, if it is a renovation, there is always that part of construction where we open up the walls. There is termite damage, there is water damage, there are code violations, electrical, plumbing. Those things are unpredictable and nobody can really tell how much these things will cost. However, based on our experience from previous projects, we like to put contingencies on those items and we say, look, we are doing full home renovation. It is three bathrooms and a kitchen. This is a 3000 square foot home. We know that there are going to be a couple of bathrooms that will require some repairs to the galvanized pipes that need to be replaced to copper or whatever that might be.

And we add assigned numbers to those, so the clients know, okay, my budget is 500,000 dollars for this renovation, and I am going to have another 75,000 dollars as a contingency for my particular project just in case. We do not even put it in a contract, but we advise them so this way they do not get hit and do not plan for it. We want to be transparent. We want to lead them through the process.

And then once we move from preconstruction to construction, it is fun. We can name the projects with the clients, we can have real fun building it rather than be stressing out once the production starts.

Dennis Oz: This is amazing because I am sure that all the way through the preconstruction to construction I am sure that you need an amazing team in place to do this. That is why I was going to ask you this next question about that. We know that hiring A players is not really easy and even keeping them in the team is another thing.

So companies like yours are successful because you have great success hiring these A players and also vetting them and keeping them in the team. What has actually worked for you for finding and vetting these A players to build your team?

Machi Medrzycki: You have to make every mistake in the book and then double down and do it again and hope that you are not going to make the same mistake and just keep doing it until you find somebody that is working out for you.

I can tell you that when I used to hire through key performance indicators, I never found success hiring those individuals. They were great on paper. But there is something to say about company culture. I know this is a hyped up term and everybody talks about company culture like this is some sort of we are all family and yes.

But there is something about it that is intrinsic value that makes people want to come to work. If and look, I am not saying that I am not making mistakes right now. I am still a business owner. I still have to balance the budgets. I still have to make the payroll. I still have to make sure that we are actually profitable. So I have my own stresses and sometimes they surface in front of my teammates, and I am not proud of it, but I am working it out of my system. It is on the record, everybody. If you are listening or watching, I am admitting to it in front of everybody.

But what I am trying to say is I have to treat them like real family in the meaning of friends. I cannot imagine working with somebody that I do not like or even you do not have to like somebody from the beginning, but at least have some sympathy and feel that as a mutual feeling to where you know you can build on it and make it flourish, make it better, make it stronger. If you cannot come to the office with a smile on your face and joke around and feel like anybody can come to you and say, hey, listen, this was a problem for a project, let us not do it again because this client is really difficult. If they do not feel comfortable coming to me saying that, that is not a company culture, that is a job.

And that is the biggest difference maker. Now they have to have the likability and all that chemistry has to be supported by knowledge.

Historically I can tell you it takes about a year, depending on the individual, between a year and two years to fully develop the individual into a really strong team player. And what I mean by that is not only autonomy, but full independence to where they can go out and do what they need to do within their area of responsibility.

There is no silver bullet. When you are hiring these people, yes, there are DISC assessments and all these different elements that you can go through. That is great. I give you an example of project management. Project management is one of the most difficult positions to fill in my opinion in construction because you either have people that are complete newbies and they do not have enough experience, expertise, and time on the job to be self sufficient, and you have to put a lot of time and effort to train them to be how you want them to be.

Or on the flip side, you get experienced guys that can fill the job pretty much tomorrow, but they come with the bad habits that they acquired through the last 10 or 20 years that may or may not be able to be changed because ultimately they are a reflection of who I am. When they go out there and they are managing the project, it is a reflection of me, my ethics, what I believe in, what is important to me on a finished project, how we are going to handle the clients.

So it is a difficult thing to do and a lot of times you have to go with your gut. This person is good, has good experience. You feel that this person could be something more than what they are right now and the vision they have to have something. And this is for every contractor that is listening right now. If you are hiring a project manager, give them and anybody really a path to a career, not just a job. They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and if they are not going to sense it or feel it, they may be good for a year or two, but they are not going to stick around for a long

Dennis Oz: time. That is amazing. I would say thanks for dropping these golden nuggets because we know that team building starts after you grow your business.

Of course there are some pretty much sole owners among our listeners, but I am sure folks, if you are really good at what you do, one day you are going to ask yourself, how should I hire and what should I look at. Just like Machi said, this company culture is one thing that you have to consider.

Just like you said, this is a very vague term when we say company culture, but I believe that you already really understood from Machis statements about how important it is when it comes to your companys future. So thank you so much for sharing.

Machi Medrzycki: I want to throw one more thing that I just thought about as you were building on my statement. Another element that is a potential problem, but also worth considering while you are hiring anybody for any position. If all your team members are working hopefully out of one office building or one office space, and they are sharing spaces.

Imagine hiring somebody and they are really friendly with you and you are loving them, they are doing the job. Everything we just talked about is fitting in, but they do not fit in with other team members. You have to think of that because once you introduce that type of cancerous relationships, they can burn down the ship figuratively speaking, right?

Even though you might be having the most excellent relationships with each one of your team members, they have to be okay with each other and be super meshy. I do not know if that is a word, but I guess I just made it up. They have to mesh with each other. It is like football. You have to have the chemistry, you have to have the momentum, you have to have the team spirit. This is what it takes.

Dennis Oz: Exactly. This is also another point, and thanks so much for giving this even clearer view about that too. Having these office spaces, folks, this again goes back to the company culture and this is also another thing to consider when you are considering long term growth. And thank you so much for that Machi. So let us go to sales because most of the time we are getting a lot of questions about sales, Machi.

There are so many different approaches to remodeling sales and also not in the commercial side. I am not talking about industrial kind of sales B2B sales, but talking about B2C sales, especially working with homeowners. I have another question about marketing, but let us consider all leads that we are getting are great leads and sometimes these great leads are not turning to great customers. And too many remodelers get stuck in that endless quoting and sometimes you just feel like it is a good project, but you end up quoting a tire kicker, something like that. So what does your sales process look like from the first contact to signed contract.

How do you keep that momentum?

Machi Medrzycki: This as a division within companies in construction at least in general construction when we are talking with home builders and general contractors. When you go to the sub trades, it is a little less difficult. From my perspective, this is a never ending changing almost morphing organism, the marketing and sales, which go hand in hand.

I can tell you from three years ago, we used to spend a ton of money, over almost 2 percent of our total revenue on marketing. Google Ads, Google Displays, SEM, SEO, mailers, billboards, 30,000 cars view per day, rotating billboards, marketing billboards, putting signs on local baseball fields, you name it. Benches, wrapped vehicles, unwrapped vehicles, we did it all. And yes, we had a ton of stuff coming our way, the phone was ringing and if you like that as a person.

When I was younger, I used to feed off the energy. Stuff happening. But then at some point we collectively, Lindsay, who is our business development individual, a really good friend of mine, we sat down as she got hired two and a half years ago. We sat down and said, look, let us audit and try to figure out our ROI on all these leads. What is it that we are really spending our time on? What is the cost of our time catering to those leads and really sifting through the good ones and the bad ones.

When we did that, and I was focused mostly on this almost on autopilot, the marketing campaigns, and I was focusing more on building and project management, which still I focus on more than any other department because that ultimately is what we do. We sat down and she did a beautiful audit of the whole strategy. She took two years. She not only did two years of marketing, but also per lead stream per dollar. She did phenomenal work auditing it.

The hair on my back stood up because we were spending so much money, hundreds of leads coming in, and our conversion rate was, for lack of a better term, bad. I was like, we are spending all of this money, all this time, just spinning our wheels. That was an aha moment in my life. I thought, well yes, that is great, we are spending X amount of dollars. Our ROI is not rendering that, so we might as well scale back because we are really not getting much more than we used to. Because when we really dove into the jobs that we were actually closing, they were either strong referrals or repetitive clients, or super strong leads that were from the architect or the engineer, or a friend that happened to see us on Google or marketing efforts of whatever we are doing.

So it was a multi pronged approach. I thought, let us focus on what we are really doing right here. So we revamped it and we took a completely different approach, and I can tell you this, we have probably five to seven percent of the leads coming in that we used to. But out of this five to seven percent, if I would take five to seven percent to be 100 percent of our leads coming in, maybe two percent, maybe five percent, I am going to say maybe one in a blue moon is a non credible lead.

The phone is not ringing with leads that we do not want. That is what you really want. You want solid laser focused leads that you can close, you can convert into jobs. Now that does not stop right there because we still have to vet for the

Dennis Oz: PI process. Yeah.

Machi Medrzycki: Right. PITA, pain in the ass. I am sorry that I am cursing on your podcast twice, but

Dennis Oz: No, go ahead, you are good.

Machi Medrzycki: You will get clients that want the job and they have the money and they know what they want, and they may even come with the architect and the drawings. Through the preconstruction services, as you are going and you are spending some time with them and you are selecting, you get to know these people. You get to know them pretty well because you are having good conversations or not so good conversations.

If you are not having good conversations, you better take some notes. Why not. If the conversations are not good and there is no stress of construction attached to it, trust me, it is not going to get any better when the construction comes along. Clear yellow flags. If somebody has a really short temper or they have no patience, or they literally question why you are doing this or that in not a good way. We are educators. We have to make sure people understand why we are doing what we are doing.

But sometimes they say, I do not want to do it, that is stupid. When you hear stuff like that, you run because this is our process. It is proven. It works. We can be flexible to the 20 percent degree, but we cannot just change it for you as one individual because then the process is broken and we cannot deliver, and then we politely say this is probably not a good fit.

We will finish what we started, but we are probably going to redirect them elsewhere. Out of that I can tell you that some want to come back and say, listen, I was out of line, I still want to do business with you. I personally caved in. Do not do that. Do not do it. People are who they are and you are not going to change them over one project.

If it does not feel like a right fit, you might as well not go with it because the money is not worth the morale. And then the team suffers. I am maybe not as involved during the production or preproduction or any of those processes on a day to day basis, but my team is, and my people that I love are, and when they suffer, I suffer. When their morale goes low because they have a difficult customer, we all suffer.

So it is not worth it. Historically speaking, those difficult customers drag everybody toward them. So the good ones suffer. It is a slippery slope.

Dennis Oz: I believe that is a really sharp point that you have just touched because I also have a follow up question here. Let us dig a little bit deep in there. So when you look at the marketing, since I already was thinking about asking this question, if you restart your business today, how would you play the marketing game?

Machi Medrzycki: Grassroots. Essentially what I would do, I would go and knock on every architect, interior designer, interior decorator door. Introduce myself, and then I would go to supply houses of any sorts.

Depends on what you want to really start with. If you like laying tile, you go to supply houses with tile. The more high end, the more high end clientele you are going to get in front of. You start this way, you cast your net very wide and you try to do it without much financial investment other than some business cards, maybe a couple of brochures.

The problem and funny that you mention that because I was thinking about it the other day. I do not even know how I started. I was really digging deep, how did I start. Because when you have no portfolio to show, it is really difficult to do. Somebody has to trust you.

So with that being said, you have to play the money game. You have to come in low to gain somebodys business. That is what I did. I stripped it back down to where we were just very competitive, and because of that you still have to do a good job. You cannot just be competitive and do a poor job because you are going to bury the business.

But if you do that, the point of entry in construction is very low. There is not much investment you have to make. There are tools, there is a reliable vehicle. If you do residential work, you can request deposits and cash flow the projects through somebody elses money.

Just do not spend it on new tools and a new truck because that is when stuff goes really bad.

You can be very successful quickly, especially that you can compete as an individual that does the work against somebody like us where our overhead is much greater so we cannot possibly compete with the individuals that do great work. Now I am giving away all the secrets. Now I am going to take the jobs away from myself.

But that is what I would do. And I can assure you that if you are going to do what you say you are going to do and do it, underpromise and overdeliver. If you think the job is going to take six weeks, do it in five. If you think it is going to take 20 grand, do it in 18.

Even if you are going to have extra money, let us say you agreed on 20,000 dollars. There is always going to be change orders. If you are tracking to where you are going to make more money than you should have and there is a 500 dollar change order, write it down for 0 dollars if it is a good client and say, listen, it is okay. I made extra money here, I can absorb that 500 bucks.

Be careful because some people will take advantage of that. This is a game time decision. You have to really know your client, but it is going to go such a long way and people will not only trust your ability to do the job, but also they are going to know you are a good businessperson who means well and wants to do well for them as well.

Dennis Oz: Then when you look at today, when you highlight today how Machi is planning the marketing game as of today. What are the changes of today. I am sure you are not knocking doors today because you have a great reputation in the area. I am sure that you are like a rock star in the area. People are there for you.

But still. Do you do more than that or do you require to do more than that or just keep it with the ones that are predisposed to buy. Would you do any other things to attract people who do not even know about you. How do you play the marketing game today?

Machi Medrzycki: We like to focus on recognition. So we put effort into local and national awards. We want to be recognized not only for what we do day to day, but also for projects that we were collaborating on with other individuals. It could be homeowners or business owners or architects or other professionals in the industry.

Believe it or not, we still knock on the doors. We are on the quest always of introducing ourselves to everybody. Part of it is not only business itself. We want to do projects with people. I like people. I like what I do. I like architecture. I like talking to architects.

Just like contractors, every architect is different. They have their own niches and their own ways about doing certain things on the drawings that sometimes we like, sometimes we do not like.

You do a couple projects with them, you understand how they function, and you may like it or dislike it, and then you can price it in for the next project. So there is a learning curve that you work with professionals within the industry as well. But you need to be able to do that.

They have to know who you are. Even though you gave me an awesome compliment and I am blushing and my ears are turning red, I do not consider myself a superstar rock star. I like people and I want to do projects with them.

That is probably why I still knock on the doors, figuratively speaking. I like to invite them for a coffee. I like to know what they are working on. If they are working on something cool, I will ask them, I have seen you on LinkedIn or on Instagram. You are working on this awesome project. I know we have not done a project together. When you are there, can I come and see it.

I am really interested in how it looks and I want nothing in return. Hopefully we do projects down the road, but it is awesome to see what other people do. I tour other contractors projects all the time and I love doing it because I get better by looking at it, by talking to my competitors.

I become friends with them and we share resources. It is a big network of people and by closing that network within people that you like and who are good, meaning ethical, they do good work, they do what they say, you purge out the ones that are bad apples and protect the basket from spoiling.

Dennis Oz: Got it. Thanks so much for this. I believe that we have a really detailed marketing speech here, and I asked you the early phase, late phase. Folks do not even expect more than that. We are not letting Machi go by the way.

I have more questions to him today, but I am sure that you enjoyed this conversation as much as I do for today. This is a great time. Our listeners, whoever is watching you today, are getting the most of it. And this is amazing stuff.

Let us take the conversation to AI talk. There has been a lot of buzz about it. Just like we started the websites back in the 1990s and then social media and now it is AI. There are different use cases in the company for AI, but how do you approach the AI tools or implementing AI to your business.

How do you play this game?

Machi Medrzycki: I think it is very useful. I believe it is something that if used smart can be very efficient and for the lack of better term can cut out some of the human resources and really allow for you as a business owner to balance the budget, especially on the marketing end of things and PR and even administrative part of it as well.

You still have to proofread it. You still have to understand what you are doing. Do not just prompt ChatGPT or whatever other AI is being used to help you and trust it a hundred percent and go with it. We use it. When I have a difficult client and I get into conversations, I use ChatGPT to craft emails based on my prompts. It is not that I cannot do it myself. I am just very direct and I know that about myself and I can come across condescending when it comes down to project management, and I do not want to do that.

So I will use ChatGPT to clean up my email and make it more palatable for a homeowner. I do not do it all the time, but when there is a situation that calls for it, we use AI to help us build schedules. We prompt the schedules and then we figure out what we are missing within our schedules. We are talking minutia. We have the big blocks, we have framing and inspections and stuff like that.

Then we say, special order material ordering takes three weeks. When we plug it in, it shuffles things around for us to second check ourselves. So we use that.

Marketing, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google pages. Any of those, we use AI. We use AI because even positioning keywords within the content. We have a company that does SEO for us, but a lot of times we have to craft some sort of blog and we will craft it, but then we will ask ChatGPT to revise it using local keywords so we can be positioned better.

Those things are very useful and the best part is they save a lot of time for us, for our team, so we can do more with less.

Dennis Oz: Amazing stuff. Thank you so much. We also hear a lot of different ideas about how to use AI. I think it is going to create its own use cases in the upcoming years because it has been almost two or three years since it was first introduced and it is part of our lives right now.

Just like you do Machi, I never let an email go without having ChatGPT proofread. What do you think. Should I make my approach pretty direct, just like you. I like direct emails and sometimes I complicate it.

We do it, right. Sometimes we do it, but it has to be direct. You have to eliminate. And I am sure everybody who is tuning in today sometimes overcomplicates things for the clients. They would like to hear. They are not really construction educated and trained people. They do not understand what a soffit height or crown moldings or toe kicks are. They have no glossary, no verbal understanding. You need to create those emails and the scope of projects and even your quotes in an easy fashion.

Just like Machi explained, try to do that, have a look at it and try to adjust the way that your prospect can understand. And I am sure it is going to help you get even better responses. It is going to increase the response rates when you are writing back. And thanks so much for sharing that one.

Machi, before wrapping up, I just wanted to say it is an amazing session today and it is going so well. I do not want to let you go, but I have one last question for you. Machi made great things in the area and you built a business that is resistant in a tough area over the years, and you expanded even beyond Louisiana.

What is the one piece of advice you would give a remodeler who wants to build a company, a sustainable company that lasts?

Machi Medrzycki: One piece of advice, grind. One word advice. You have to be able, and I think that applies for everything. If you are going to grind and look, I am not saying when I was younger, grind to me meant 16 to 18 hours a day every single day for indefinite.

That is great. You will burn out and then you are going to crash. I did not know that. I had to learn it the hard way. But grind in the meaning of wake up every day and do your thing and have a plan for the day. Have a routine for the day and just one day at a time put your head down and do whatever has to be done.

The key is not to be busy, but to be effective. What is the one thing that I can do that renders the most results. Whatever can be done by others, I like to offload it and delegate it because ultimately my time is better spent somewhere else.

That is something that you have to learn about yourself to know exactly which parts are suited best for you. In the beginning, when you are a remodeler, you are going to be doing all of it. You are going to be your accounting department, your estimating department, the production department, the project management, the supervision, and the delivery guy. Everything is going to fall on you.

Based on what I see with the subcontractors, the mistakes that they make, they underbid the jobs to get the job, then they try to change order their life through the cycle of the project, which is already not good because I will question your ability to deliver the next project on budget. That is a problem.

And then account. Be able to know how much money is coming in, how much money is coming out. Do not spend the money until you get fully paid and do the basic math. What is really yours and what was deposited to your account because you need to buy materials.

Those are real practical day to day pieces of advice. Those things, from what I am seeing, do not take priority in a lot of contractors lives. They feel like they are technicians. They have to do the job because the job pays. That is true. I still look at it like that. I still dedicate the most time to production, to actually constructing the projects. I spend the most time in that area.

But I am not letting the accounting lapse. I want to make sure that we are profitable. Just because you are getting 100,000 dollars does not mean it is yours.

Those are the areas that you have to be careful with and it is going to be long hours. Pace yourself. You do not have to build it to a million or 10 million dollar company tomorrow. It is going to take some time, but there will be a hockey stick moment. You are going to keep going and then boom, you are going to level up. Then you keep going and boom, level up.

The key with those leveling up moments is going to be that they all have their own obstacles that you never experienced, and then you are going to crash, hopefully not burn. Then you have to double down and do it again. You gotta make every mistake in the book and then double down and do it again, and hope that you’re not gonna make the same mistake and just keep doing it until you find somebody that is working, working out for you. I can tell you that when I used to hire through key performance indicators, I never found the success hiring those type of individuals. They were great on paper. But there is something to say about company culture. I know this is like a hyped up term and everybody talks about company culture, like this is some sort of we are all family and yes. But there is something about it that is intrinsic value that makes people want to come to work, right? So if, and look, I am not saying that I’m not making mistakes right now. I’m still a business owner. I still have to balance the budgets. I still have to make the payroll. I still have to make sure that we are actually profitable. So I have my own stresses and sometimes they do surface in front of my teammates, and I’m not proud of it, but I’m working it out of my system. It’s on the record, everybody, if you are listening or watching, I am admitting to it in front of everybody. Right? But what I’m trying to say to that is I gotta treat them like real family in the meaning of friends, right? I cannot imagine working with somebody that I don’t like or even. You don’t have to like somebody from the beginning, but at least have some sort of sympathy and feel that as a mutual feeling to where you know you can build on it and make it flourish. Make it better. Make it stronger. If you cannot come to the office with a smile on your face and joke around and feel like anybody can come to you and say, Hey man, listen, this was a prop for a project. Let’s not do it again because this client is really difficult. If they don’t feel comfortable coming to me saying that, that’s not a company culture, that’s a job. Right. And that is the biggest difference maker. Now they have to have the likability and all that chemistry has to be supported by knowledge. And historically I can tell you it takes about a year, depending on the individual, between a year and two years to fully develop the individual into a really, really strong team player. And what I mean by that is not only autonomy, but full independence to where they can go out and do what they need to do within their area of responsibility. And there is no silver bullet, right? Like when you’re hiring these people, yes, there are DISC assessments and all these different elements that you can go through. Yeah, that’s great. I give you an example of project management. Project management is one of the most difficult positions to fill, in my opinion, in construction because you either have people that are complete newbies and they don’t have enough experience, expertise, and time on the job to just be self sufficient and you gotta put a lot of time and effort to train them to be how you want them to be. Or on the flip side, you get experienced guys that can fill the job pretty much tomorrow, but they come with the bad habits that they acquired through the last 10, 20 years that may or may not be able to be changed, because ultimately they are a reflection of who I am, right? Like, when they go out there and they are managing the project, it’s a reflection of me, my ethics, what I believe in, what is important to me on a finished project, how are we gonna handle the clients? So it’s a difficult thing to do and a lot of times you kind of gotta go with your gut, right? Like, this guy is good, he’s got good experience. Feel that this person could be something more than what they are right now, and the vision, they have to have something. You know, and this is for every contractor that’s listening right now, if you are hiring a project manager, give them and anybody really give them a path to a career, not just a job, right? They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and if they are not gonna sense it or feel it, they may be good for a year or two, but they are not gonna stick around for a long

Dennis Oz: Time. That’s amazing. I would say thanks for dropping these golden nuggets because we know that the team building starts after you grow your business. Of course there are some pretty much sole owners among our listeners, but I’m sure folks, if you are really good at what you do, one day you are going to ask yourself, how should I hire? And what should I look at? Just like Machi said, this company culture is one thing that you have to consider. Just like you said, this is a very vague term when we say company culture, but I believe that you already really understood from Machi’s statements how important it is when it comes to your company’s future. So thank you so much for sharing,

Machi Medrzycki: I wanna throw one more thing that I just thought about as you were building on my statement. Another element that is a potential problem, but also worth considering while you are hiring anybody for any position. If all your team members are working, hopefully out of one office building or one office space, and they are sharing spaces. Just imagine having somebody you hired and they are really friendly with you and you are loving them, they are doing the job. Everything we just talked about is fitting in, but they don’t fit in with other team members. You gotta think of that because once you introduce that type of cancerous relationships, they can burn down the ship figuratively speaking, right? Even though you might be having the most excellent relationships with each one of your team members, they have to be okay with each other and be super meshy. I don’t know if that’s a word, but I guess I just made it up. They gotta be, they gotta mesh with each other, right? It’s like football, right? You have to have the chemistry, you have to have the momentum. You have to have the team spirit. This is what it takes.

Dennis Oz: Exactly. Well, this is also another point, and thanks so much for giving this even clearer view about that too. Having these office spaces, folks, this again goes back to the company culture and this is also another thing to consider when you are considering long term growth. And thank you so much for that Machi. So let’s go to sales because most of the time we are getting a lot of questions about sales Machi. So many different approaches to remodeling sales and also not in the commercial side. I’m not talking about industrial kind of sales B2B sales, but talking about B2C sales, especially working with homeowners. I have another question about marketing, but let’s consider all leads that we are getting are great leads and sometimes these great leads are not turning to great customers. And too many remodelers really get stuck in that endless quoting and sometimes you just feel like it’s a good project, but you end up quoting a tire kicker, something like that. So what does your sales process really look like from the first contact to signed contract. Now, how do you keep that momentum?

Machi Medrzycki: This as a division within companies in construction, at least general construction. When we are talking with the home builders, general contractors, when you go to sub trades, it’s a little bit less difficult. But from my perspective, this is a never ending, changing, almost morphing organism, the marketing and sales, which go hand in hand. So I can tell you from three years ago, we used to spend a ton of money, almost 2 percent of our total revenue on marketing. Google ads, Google displays, SEM, SEO. I can keep going. Mailers, billboards, 30,000 cars view per day. Rotating billboards, marketing billboards, putting the signs on local baseball fields, you name it. Benches, vehicles wrapped, vehicles unwrapped, we did it all. And yes, we had a ton of stuff coming our way, the phone was ringing, and if you like that as a person. When I was younger, I used to feed off the energy, stuff happening. But then at some point we, collectively Lindsay, who is our business development individual, really good friend of mine, we sat down as she got hired two and a half years ago. And we sat down and said, look, let’s audit and let’s try to figure out our ROI on all these leads. What is it that we are really spending our time on? What is the cost of our time catering to those leads and really sifting through the good ones and the bad ones? And when we did that, and I was focused mostly on building and project management, which still I focus on more than any other department because that ultimately is what we do, we saw that the marketing campaigns were almost on autopilot. And we sat down and she did a beautiful audit of the whole entire strategy. She took two years. She not only did two years of marketing, but also lead stream per dollar. She did a phenomenal work auditing it. And the hair on my back stood up because we were spending so much money, hundreds of leads coming in, and our conversion rate was, for lack of a better term, shit. And I was like, we are spending all of this money, all this time, just spinning our wheels. And that was this aha moment in my life. I was like, well, yeah, that’s great, we are spending X amount of dollars. Our ROI is not rendering that, so we might as well just scale back because we are really not getting much more than we used to, because when we really dove into the jobs that we were actually closing, they were either strong referrals or repetitive clients, or super strong leads that were from the architect or the engineer, or a friend that happened to see us on Google or marketing efforts of whatever we are doing, right? So it was a multi pronged approach. So I was like, well, hold on. So let’s focus on what we are really doing right here. So we revamped it and we took a completely different approach, and I can tell you this, we have probably five to seven percent of the leads coming in that we used to. But out of this five to seven percent, maybe if I would take it five to seven percent to be one hundred percent of our leads coming in, maybe two percent, maybe five percent. I’m gonna say maybe one in a blue moon is a non credible lead. I mean, the phone is not ringing with leads that we do not want. That is what you really want. You want solid, laser focused leads that you can close, you can convert into jobs. Now that does not stop right there. Because we still have to vet for the

Dennis Oz: P I process. Yeah.

Machi Medrzycki: Right. PITA, pain in the ass. I’m sorry that I’m cursing on your podcast twice, but

Dennis Oz: No, go ahead, you are good.

Machi Medrzycki: So you will get clients that want the job and they have the money and they know what they want, and they may even come with the architect and the drawings, and through the pre construction services as you are going and you are spending some time with them and you are selecting, you get to know these people. You get to know them pretty well because you are obviously having good conversations or not so good conversations. And if you are not having so good conversations, you better take some notes. Why not? Because if the conversations are not good for whatever reason, and I will give some examples in a second, I will come back to it, and they are not good at the time when there is no stress of construction attached to it, trust me, it is not gonna get any better when the construction comes along, right? So clear yellow flags, right? If somebody has a really short temper or they have no patience, or they literally question, why are you doing this, why are we doing that, not in a good way. Because we are educators, we have to make sure people understand why we are doing what we are doing. But sometimes they are like, I do not want to do it, that is stupid. When you hear stuff like that, you run because this is our process. It is proven, it works, right? We can be flexible to the 20 percent degree, right? But we cannot just change it for you as one individual, because then the process is broken and we cannot deliver, and then we just politely say, this is probably not a good fit. We will finish what we started, but we are probably gonna redirect them elsewhere. And out of that, I can tell you that some want to come back and say, listen, I was out of line. I still want to do business with you guys. And I personally caved in. Do not do that. Do not do it. People are who the people are and you are not gonna change them over one project. So if it does not feel like a right fit, you might as well just not go with it because the money is not worth the morale. And then the team suffers. Because I am maybe not as involved during production, or pre production, or any of those processes on day to day operations. But my team is, and my people that I love are, and when they suffer, I suffer. When their morale goes low because they have a P A customer, then we all suffer. So it is not worth it. And I can tell you that historically speaking, those difficult customers, they are dragging everybody toward them. So the good ones suffer. It is a slippery slope.

Dennis Oz: Got it. I believe that is a really sharp point that you have just touched, because I also have a follow up question here. Let’s dig a little bit deep in there. So when you look at the marketing, since I already was thinking about asking this question, if you restart your business today, how would you play the marketing game

Machi Medrzycki: Grassroots. Essentially what I would do, I would go and knock on every architect, interior designer, interior decorator door. Introduce myself, and then I will go to supply houses of any sorts. Depends what you want to really start with, right? If you like laying tile, you go to supply houses with tile, whatever that is. The more high end, the more high end clientele you are gonna get in front of. And you just start it this way, you just cast your net very wide and you try to do it without much financial investment other than some business cards, maybe a couple of brochures. The problem if, and funny that you mentioned that, because I was thinking about it the other day. I do not even know how I started. I was really digging deep, like how did I start, because when you have no portfolio to show, it is really difficult to do, right? Somebody has to trust you. So with that being said, you gotta play the money game. You gotta come in low to gain somebody’s business. And that is what I did. And I kind of stripped it back down to where we were just very competitive, and because of that, you gotta still do a good job. You cannot just be competitive and do a crap job because you are gonna bury the business. But if you do that, the point of entry in construction is very low. There is not much investment you have to make. There are tools, there is the reliable vehicle. If you do residential work, you can request deposits and just cash flow the projects through somebody else’s money. Just for God’s sake, do not spend it on new tools and a new truck, because that is when stuff goes really bad. And you can be very successful very quickly, especially that you can compete as an individual that does the work against somebody like us where our overhead is much greater so we cannot possibly compete with individuals that do great work. Now I am giving away all the secrets. Now I am gonna take the jobs away from myself. But that is what I would do. And I can assure you that if you are gonna do what you say you are gonna do and do it, under promise and over deliver. If you think the job is gonna take six weeks, do it in five. If you think it is gonna take 20 grand, do it in 18. And even if you are gonna have extra money, let’s say you agreed on 20,000 dollars, there are always going to be change orders. And you know you are tracking to where you are gonna make more money than you should have. And there is a 500 dollar change order. Write it down for zero dollars if it is a good client and say, listen guys, it is okay. I made extra money right here, I can absorb that 500 bucks. Now just be careful because some people will take advantage of that. But this is a game time decision. You have to really know your client, but it is gonna go such a long way and people will not only trust your ability to do the job, but also they are gonna know you are a good businessman that means well and wants to do well for them as well.

Dennis Oz: Then when you look at today, when you highlight how Machi is planning the marketing game as of today. What are the changes of today? I am sure you are not knocking doors today because you have a great reputation in the area. I am sure that you are just like a rock star in the area. People are there for you. But still. Do you do more than that or do you require to do more than that or just keep it like the ones that you are dealing with, the ones that really come to you prepositioned to buy. Would you do any other things to attract people who do not even know about you? How do you play the marketing game today?

Machi Medrzycki: We like to focus on recognition. So we put effort into local and national awards. We want to be recognized not only for what we do day to day, but also for projects where we collaborated with other individuals. It could be homeowners or business owners or architects or other professionals in the industry. But believe it or not, we still knock on doors. And we are on the quest always of introducing ourselves to everybody. Part of it is not only business itself, obviously we want to do projects with people. I just like people. I like what I do. I like architecture. I like talking to architects. And just like contractors, every architect is different. They have their own niches and their own ways about doing certain things on the drawings that sometimes we like, sometimes we do not like. And you do a couple projects with them, you understand how they function, and you may like it or dislike it, and then you can price it in for the next project. So there is a learning curve when you work with professionals within the industry as well. But you need to be able to do that. And they gotta know who you are. So even though you gave me an awesome compliment, and I am blushing and my ears are turning red, I do not ever consider myself a superstar rockstar. I like people and I want to do projects with them. And that is probably why I still knock on doors, figuratively speaking. I like to invite them for a coffee. I like to know what they are working on. If they are working on something cool, I will ask them, Hey guys, I have seen you on LinkedIn or on Instagram. You are working on this awesome project. I know we have not done a project together. When you are there, can I come and see it? I am really interested how it looks and I want nothing in return. Hopefully we do projects down the road, but it is awesome to see what other people do. I tour other contractors projects all the time, and I love doing it because I get better by looking at it, by talking to my so to speak competitors. I become friends with them and we share resources. So it is a big network of people and by closing that network within people that you like, and they are good, meaning ethical, they do good work, they do what they say, you sort of purge out the ones that are bad apples and protect the basket from spoiling.

Dennis Oz: Got it. Well, thanks so much for this. I believe that we have a really detailed marketing speech here, and I asked you the early phase and late phase. Folks, do not expect more than that. We are not letting Machi go by the way. I have more questions to him today, but I am sure that you enjoyed this conversation as much as I do for today. This is a great time. Sure. Our listeners, whoever is watching you today, they are getting most of it. And this is amazing stuff. Well, let’s take the conversation to AI talk. There has been a lot of buzz about it. Just like we started websites back in the 1990s and then social media and now it is AI. There are different use cases in the company for AI, but how do you approach AI tools or implementing AI to your business? How do you play this game?

Machi Medrzycki: I think it is very useful. I believe it is something that if used smart can be very efficient and for the lack of a better term cut out some of the human resources and really allow for you as a business owner to balance the budget, especially on the marketing end of things and PR and even administrative part of it as well. You just gotta, I do not like to blankly trust it, right? You still gotta proofread it. You still gotta understand what you are doing. Do not just prompt ChatGPT or whatever other AI is being used to help you with whatever you do with it to trust a hundred percent and just go with it, right? We use it. I can tell you this, when I have a difficult client and I get into conversations, I use ChatGPT to craft emails based on my prompts, and it is not that I cannot do it myself, I am just very direct and I know that about myself and I can come across condescending when it comes down to project management, and I sure as hell do not want to do that. So I will use ChatGPT just to clean up my email and make it more palatable for a homeowner. And I do not do it all the time, but I can say when there is a situation that calls for it, we use AI to help us build schedules. We prompt the schedules and then we figure out, okay, what are we missing within our schedules, and those, we are talking minutiae. We have the big blocks, we have the big tabs, we have framing and inspections and stuff like that. But then say, okay, special order material ordering, it takes three weeks, we are plugging it in. It kind of shuffles things around for us to second guess, second check ourselves, right? So we use that. And then marketing, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google pages. I do not even know, but we use AI. We use AI because this is something we like, even positioning keywords within the content. We have to, I do not know algorithms. We have a company that does SEO for us, but a lot of times we have to craft some sort of blog and we will craft it, but then we are gonna ask ChatGPT to revise it using a local keyword so we can be positioned better. So those things are very useful and the best part of it is they save a lot of time for us, for our team, so we can do more with less.

Dennis Oz: Amazing stuff. Thank you so much. We also hear a lot of different ideas about how to use AI. But I think it is going to create its own use cases in the upcoming years because it has been almost two to three years since it was first introduced and it is part of our lives right now. Just like you do Machi, I never let an email go without having ChatGPT proofread it. What do you think? My approach is pretty direct, just like you. I like direct emails and sometimes I complicate it. We do it, right? Sometimes we do it, but it has to be direct. You have to eliminate, and I am sure everybody who is tuning in today sometimes overcomplicates things for the clients. They are not really construction educated and trained people. They do not understand what a soffit or crown moldings or toe kicks are, they have no glossary or verbal understanding. You need to create those emails and the scope of projects and even your quotes in an easy fashion. So just like Machi explained, try to do that, have a look at it and try to at least adjust the way that your prospect can understand. And I am sure it is going to, just like Machi said, it is going to help you get even better responses. It is gonna increase the response rates when you are writing back. And thanks so much for sharing that one Machi. Well, before wrapping up, I just wanted to say it is an amazing session today and it is going so well. I do not want to let you go, but I have one last question for you. Machi made great things in the area and you built a business that is resistant in a tough area over the years, and you expanded even beyond Louisiana. So what is the one piece of advice you would give a remodeler who wants to build a company, a sustainable company that lasts

Machi Medrzycki: One piece of advice, grind. One word advice. You gotta be able, and I think that applies for everything. If you are gonna grind, and look, I am not saying, when I was younger, grind to me meant 16 to 18 hours a day every single day for indefinite. Well, yeah, that is great. You will burn out and then you are gonna crash. I did not know that. I had to learn it the hard way, but grind in the meaning of wake up every day and do your thing and have a plan for the day. Have a routine for the day and just one day at a time, put your head down and do whatever has to be done. The key is not to be busy, but to be effective. So what is the only thing that I can do that renders the most results? And whatever can be done by others, I like to offload it and delegate it, because ultimately my time is better spent somewhere else. And that is something that you have to learn about yourself as a person to know exactly which parts are suited best for you as an individual. In the beginning, when you are a remodeler, you are gonna be doing all of it. You are gonna be your accounting department, you are gonna be your estimating department, you are going to be the production department, the project management, the supervision, and the delivery guy. Everything is gonna fall on you. So I can tell you that based on what I see with subcontractors, the mistakes that they make, they underbid the jobs to get the job, then they try to change order their life through the cycle of the project, which is already not good because I will not necessarily not want to work with you, but I am questioning your ability to deliver the next project on budget. Which is a problem. And then, account. Be able to know how much money is coming in, how much money is coming out, do not spend the money until you get fully paid and do the basic math. What is really yours and what was deposited to your account just because you need to buy materials. So those are the real practical, day to day pieces of advice that you are gonna have to follow. And those things, I can tell you from what I am seeing, do not take priority in a lot of contractors lives. They feel like they are technicians. They gotta do the job because the job pays. And that is true. I still look at it like that. I still dedicate the most time for production, for actually constructing the projects. I spend the most time in that area. But I am not letting the accounting lapse. I want to make sure that we are profitable. Because just because you are getting a hundred thousand bucks, it does not mean it is yours. So those are the areas that you have to be careful with and it is gonna be long hours. Just kind of pace yourself. You do not have to build it to a million or 10 million dollar company tomorrow. It is gonna take some time, but there will be a hockey stick moment. You are gonna keep going, keep going, keep going. And then boom, you are gonna level up. And then you keep going, keep going, keep going. Boom. Level up. The key with those leveling up moments is going to be that they all are gonna have their own obstacles that you have never experienced, and then you are gonna crash, hopefully not burn. And then you gotta double down and do it again. And that is the only way. There are no shortcuts, there is no glamor. It is very mechanical. Nobody is gonna come and pat you on your back about how great of a job you are doing. It is lonely. And I know I am not advertising very well right now for you to be a contractor or a business owner. But unfortunately that is the truth. And then once you stack those little profits one over another over a long period of time while doing good work, you are gonna get a compounding effect out of it, both financially and workwise. Because people will know about you. They have friends. Friends of friends have friends, and what is it, Dennis? I said one person talks to two. Two talks to four. Four talks to sixteen. Right? It is

Dennis Oz: I know, it is like a power factor. You are just

Machi Medrzycki: Absolutely. Right. It may take a year, may take 10 years, and it is okay. You just enjoy the journey.

Dennis Oz: This is amazing stuff, folks. That is a mind blowing session with Machi today. And I cannot thank you enough Machi. One last question. I was just gonna go out of the books a little bit because, let’s be honest, we usually create those questions and we give them to our speakers just to be able to prepare a little bit. But this time I am gonna go a little bit out of the books. And I would like to ask you a question just like a homeowner, because sometimes not only the business owners in the area, sometimes the homeowners, they just tune in, and when Machi shares this information, they would like to learn more about what they offer. So I would like to ask you, just like a homeowner, the MLM specifically. Let’s say if I have a project, a kitchen remodel or an additional project or something like that. What makes your company special? This is your pitch moment. Please give us something that makes your company special. I am sure that is going to be a gold standard for our B2B listeners too.

Machi Medrzycki: What makes us special, makes us different from any other contractor. I can tell you this, quality between the contractors at the top tier will be about the same, right? Because we all use subcontractors. We have a certain amount of in house crews that perform certain tasks. The difference is the experience, and by the experience I mean from the time that you are gonna call us through the initial interview, through the pre construction process and selections, through finalizing your drawings and specifications book to hand off to production, through production and then to the warranty period. I can assure you that you are gonna have an experience like you never had before in construction because we treat it as a business. We have standard operating procedures, we have a company manual that we all follow. So you will come in to the setting of we have done it before many times. We worked out the kinks out of all those little elements that we are introducing and putting in front of you, and all you gotta do is follow the process. So how lovely would it be when you just literally go with a mouse? Again, this is not going to be like that because we do not live and build in a virtual world, but just imagine you go in a video game and you are just clicking. You are putting those little houses where you want them and you are adding those little elements. This is essentially what we do, but in the real world. So we are trying to simplify so much for you that you are on cruise control. You are just watching what is happening through the construction because you did all the selections ahead of time, you did all that heavy lift, and it is done. You are just watching it. You are following the daily logs, you are following the schedule updates. You may have a question. I say, look, there is air conditioning that is shown right here. It is gonna be six inches off to the left because we are encroaching a little bit of a property line. Is that okay with you? Those are the type of questions you are gonna get. It is not gonna be a question, Hey look, in bathroom one we are missing a faucet, and we need it by the end of today because we have a plumber on site. And by the way, if you do not get it to us today, then it is gonna be a remobilization fee for the plumber because he has to come back. That is not how we do business, and you certainly do not want to do it. The problem is it costs money to do it this way, because the incubation process of our project is very long, so we are going to be more expensive than individuals or even smaller construction companies just because we give you an experience that is bulletproof, and that is why we are so sure and so certain that we can offer a guaranteed maximum pricing at the end of our pre construction services, because we spend a lot of time doing it to make sure that you have a pleasant experience and you talk to your friends. Look, Dennis, at the end of the day, I have a very simple metric that I implemented a couple years ago because I was like, man, every construction company talks about quality and the best prices. And I was like, everybody has the same talking points. And I am like, I do not want to be another saint because I am not differentiating myself as a company, of course, because I am not the one doing all those things. My team is a killer team. I love these people. They do a great job and I want to give them credit for everything we do because ultimately without them, I am nobody. But I implemented a very simple strategy. I take a selfie with my clients before the project. I want to deliver to where they and I feel comfortable to take a selfie at the end of the project. And I can tell you we are batting one thousand right now. So it is a good thing because we keep on taking selfies at both ends. It is a very simple, non scientific metric. But I feel like if people are willing to do it with you, you did something right.

Dennis Oz: Amazing stuff, especially when you are talking about paying the price of making mistakes in the past and creating those SOPs in place. Machi, I have a really good friend that is one of our best family friends in the area. They hired a super cheap contractor for their renovation project for a house that they previously closed. I looked at their invoice price and I said, this is not the market price and you are not that rich to pay this cheap, and the project failed. Bingo, folks, do not make this mistake. Pricing may look really appealing in the beginning when you see the invoice, but you have to look at people like Machi, people like, I do not want to say that word Machi, but rock stars that already have done many projects in the field, and just by homeowner viewpoint, I am totally sold about what you said. And Machi, thank you so much for the things that you have shared today for the business owners and also for the homeowners. At the end, I believe this was a great speech and a great conversation, and if someone really wants to come back to you, it could be a homeowner or a business owner, it does not really matter. What is the best way? Is your website your point of contact?

Machi Medrzycki: Yes, you can visit the website. We have one for residential construction, one for commercial construction. So residential one is mlm hyphen inc dot com. Commercial one is mlm hyphen commercial dot com. You can also shoot us an email at info at mlm inc dot com or give us a call, 504 322 7050. We are on LinkedIn and all different platforms. We are not very hard to find. We do not like to hide. We like to actually showcase our work. So we are welcoming all the questions. If you want to ask us questions or you want to give us a follow, that would be great too. I do not really ask for it, but any following. And if I can inspire you as a homeowner through some of our portfolio that you are gonna see on Houzz or websites that you like, good for you. Do not make a mistake of hiring somebody that should not be in construction. Do not spend your hard earned money and make somebody rich by embezzling you. Just do your due diligence, for sure. References. This is something I want to close out with. Selfishly, not selfless, I would say. I want to make sure that we are protecting you as a consumer. It is not that hard. The board for contractors will have licensing for any licensed contractor. You can check it out. You can check the complaints as well on the licensing board for contractors in any state. You can go to Better Business Bureau, see if there are complaints over there. Google the person, not only the business, but the person also. Because they change business names. But the name is the name, like the first and last name. Yes, that is right. So do that and then talk to some previous project homeowners. Request five references. Talk to them and ask them, did they show up on time. Was the estimate different from the final invoice, and if it was, which a lot of times it is because there are unforeseen conditions, why was it. Were the crews consistently showing up, or did you have one week gaps between different crews and your project took nineteen months instead of ten. Those are low hanging fruits. You can Google how to screen a contractor. You can look at our YouTube page, you can look at our website. We have how to screen contractors all the time, because guess what, we do the same thing for subcontractors. We work with subs, so we want to screen them as well. We want to make sure that who we are putting in your project really is representing our business model. It is somebody that is representing us like we would ourselves.

Dennis Oz: Folks, that was another amazing session and Machi Medrzycki was with us today. Thanks so much Machi and thank you so much for all the things that you have shared. We know that you are a person who really shares all the things that you have learned along the way, and I really appreciate it for today, for sharing with our community and thanks so much.

Machi Medrzycki: My pleasure, Dennis.

Dennis Oz: That was another episode of Remodeler Success Podcast folks, we are gonna see you next time. Goodbye.