A few years ago my wife and I completely rebuilt our house. A down to the studs and build back up effort. It started because we couldn’t find the type of house we wanted. And what we wanted was captured in an ever growing shared Pinterest board full of pictures of kitchen islands with marble double waterfalls looking out to wide open living spaces with big windows opening to decks and fabulous backyards. Bathrooms with awesome showers and exquisite tiles. Pinterest is amazing for that. ‘Oh my God, wouldn’t this type of walkway be incredible…’
Our daydreaming turned into reality when we hired an architect who took the Pinterest board, delivered some plans and we used those plans to hire a GC who built the house.
In truth, the architect took our budget and delivered a plan that would cost 2.5X our number. The GC thought he could get it done below that number with some changes and when the financial roller coaster was over, we ended up a little more than 2X the original budget and a couple months late. Everyone said that’s how it always goes - longer and a lot more than you planned. But we loved the house.
Selecting the builder was a big part of the process. We scheduled a bunch of builders and the architect would share the plans and we would walk around the site and the builder would ask questions.
A moment from that process still stands out to me. A prospective builder was looking at the plans for the master bedroom and he turned to the architect “you want this wall moved six inches?” The tone was slightly incredulous. The architect launched into how it was important for getting something about something. And the builder looked at us and laughed. “Your guy wants to light your money on fire for six inches” and he laughed again.
I was too naive to know what this meant. But in hindsight, it became painfully clear. Our architect had made a plan way beyond our budget because he hadn’t prioritized what was really important in delivering the vision. That blithe disregard was spread throughout the plans in cool blue ink. What looked awesome to us looked like a nightmare to the experienced eye. It wasn’t just one instance of six inches, it turned out it was everywhere. Those wide open rooms? Totally possible with enough steel which was totally possible with enough supporting posts up from the basement. Those big huge walls of glass? Completely doable but required the framers putting glass all the way to the corners, which because it’s rarely done, would slow the framing by days.
And that builder who laughed about the six inches? He didn’t even bother submitting a quote and instead just said there’s no way he could come close to our budget with that plan so he was going to pass. But we pushed ahead anyway and came to the stomach churning moments of massive cost overruns and an emergency session of the builder, architect, engineer and framer to figure out how to complete the framing with the money we had in the bank.
Building a business is similar to building a house. As a founder you have visions of what can be informed by what you see others have done. Your visions far outstrip your budget. And most importantly, unless you have done it before, you have little idea of how to actually build it. So you have little idea of how flaws in your plan compound throughout the process to create big financial issues.
I think this is one of the reasons why I enjoy consulting with brand builders so much. I have the scars from building companies so I can recognize red flags and help think through scenarios. Having experience to avoid missteps and financial disasters is valuable to these founders. And helping bring founders’ visions into reality is exciting. But as an outsider, I can also bring an objectivity which founders appreciate. I’m not an employee; I’m not an investor or board member. They can speak freely. I am just there to provide the best counsel I can and then help them get shit done.