Updated 11.20.25

All right. Now let’s talk about the top five myths of customer home happiness I’ve seen as a home builder coach. Myth number one is I’m known as the guy that will do all the changes the big guys won’t do.

 

Okay. Did you ever stop to think about the fact that the big guys got big by being smarter than you? Oh, that’s the first time that occurred to you. You know, here’s the thing. If you build for the classes, you will live with the masses. If you build for the masses, you will live with the classes. So you build the big, you know, super custom high end home that’s building for the classes.

 

You’re going to live with the masses. You don’t make that much money doing that. You really want to make money. You build for the masses. You build the smaller, more affordable stuff and you will live with the classes. There’s much more money in the smaller, lower end homes. So, you know, if you’re the guy who you know, the guy that always make the changes, the big guys won’t, well, you’re likely too small for anyone to even know what your brand is anyways.

 

And so, yeah, nobody even knows who you are. They don’t know you as the guy that will make all the changes. You know you as the guy that will make all the changes. And the reason is you never say no to anything. You say yes to everything. You’re the yes man because you don’t want to miss the deal.

 

You don’t have enough leads coming in. So you say yes to everything. No to nothing. And then you run around with custom building madness, never really doing it. Well.

 

And you know what? If you’re known as the guy that’ll do all the changes the big guys won’t do, then probably this poster right here describes you really, really well, right? Let’s start in the top left here. This is how the customer explained what they wanted, right? This is the custom home builder. This next picture. This is how the superintendent understood it.

 

And then how the architect drew it, how the purchasing bid it, and then. Oh, wait, how the sales executive described it. I mean, the sales executive always makes it, you know, flowery beds of ease and rosy, you know, sunrises, but they’re not very good at documenting it. If we drop down to the bottom left here, how the project was documented by sales, it’s always like, oh, nothing was documented.

 

Yeah, okay, that’s going to be a problem. And then what the construction team actually installed, how the customer was billed. Oh, you better bet that the accountant, you know, sent out all the invoices and then how the warranty department supported it. And then ultimately, what the customer really needed is in the bottom right corner. And none of those things match, right?

 

So that’s the problem with custom home building, is that none of the images match and everything’s just chaos. Let me show you the right way to do it. And a production doesn’t mean all we do is mass produce homes. It just means we have a process for everything so that all of the departments are communicating correctly and everything lines up much better.

 

This is what a home builder coach teaches you how to do so that every image, how the customer explained it, how the superintendent understood it, how the architect drew it, everything matches up all the way through the entire process and ultimately by setting the right expectations, your customer has a good experience because let’s face it, most customer conflict comes from improperly set expectations.

 

And because nothing is defined in your world, you can never set any proper expectations. But maybe. Maybe you’re the person who you can understand this guy because this is how your customers come to you. Then they can explain what they’re thinking because they’re very visual. They have something in their mind that they think they want, and verbally they explain it to you and maybe you can interpret what they saw in their mind.

 

Like this guy.

 

So so the most important thing, you gotta remember is, you know, okay, so, so, so some, some people were, you know, they were doing some stuff and then and then other people were like, hey, we’ll do this stuff. And then other people like, hey, yeah, they should do, you know, that stuff. It’s good that they’re doing that stuff.

 

And then they’ll be like, oh, we we should be doing that stuff. And and then, and then and it’s just sitting there, you know, thing, the, the, the, the so things are like. So, like the word what I’m trying to say is that, in conclusion.

 

I have I have no idea. So maybe you’re the guy who, you know, you can understand that guy because most of our customers come to us and they explain it. One way, and they’ve got this image in their head, and then you go build it. I’m sure you’re not one of those builders who’s ever had to tear out something you put in your home, because the customer walks in and goes, that’s not what I wanted.

 

That’s probably never happened to you before, right? I see that all the time as a home builder coach. And they come in and they go, that’s not what I wanted. You’re going to tear that out and you go, well, that’s what I understood. Well, you’re the professional. You should have known. These are always the phrases they use. You’re the professional. You should have known what I wanted right?

 

And now you’re tearing stuff out at your own expense because they couldn’t explain it very well to. That’s what custom home building is, right? Myth number two is I get all the business from my business from word of mouth. Everybody knows me as the custom guy. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. And if I had a nickel for every time I heard a custom home builder say word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

 

No it’s not. It’s not the reason so many builders end up offering everything under the sun is that they don’t have a strong enough marketing program to be able to say no to anybody. That brings them some crazy crap that they want to build. They never say no to anybody. Therefore they end up being the guy that does new homes and additions and remodels and the shops, outbuildings and does commercial, and I do decks and I do barn dominions and I do accessory dwelling units.

 

Oh, and I do dog houses right. So that’s the problem with word of mouth, is that you don’t have enough leads to say no to the people that you really don’t want to build for, and instead you say yes to everything, and you’re not focused in on your ideal and likely buyer. That’s the stuff you actually want to build.

 

And that’s why you can’t just do word of mouth. I mean, you know, the famous quote, word of mouth is not a good form of advertising. That’s a quote from Google. So yeah, I mean, this Google thing apparently is catching on. And guess what? A lot of people search for their home builder on Google. In fact, the word search has now been replaced with in the English language.

 

I googled it instead of I searched for it. So word of mouth is not the best form of advertising. That’s stupid for you to think that Google is the place everybody goes, you know, had on there, as well as ChatGPT. As a home builder coach I see that it is a very, high form. If you’re under 30, you’re searching on chat. So, you know, 97% of all new purchases are made after searching Google this is an article here from the National Association of Realtors.

 

Some research that they did.

 

you want to create a Google canonically compliant website and we can do this for you. You have to follow all of Google’s rules when you set up that website. And then Google will reward you with showing you to clients who are looking for it. You cannot cheat Google, you just have to follow their process.

 

And that is how you get found. And that is how your ideal and likely buyer comes to you and you start doing more business with the people you actually want to build. For now, a lot of times people are like, well, you know, I don’t want to build a model home because it might cost me fill in the blank, whatever the dollar amount is of whatever you build.

 

Maybe you’re building in the 3 to $500,000 range, or maybe you’re in the 1 to $2 million range, whatever that is. If you’re going to build a model home, right, you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build it in the first place, and then you’re going to spend many thousands of dollars every month servicing that debt to hold on to that model home, keep it open, advertise it, all those things.

 

Right. So the thing is, is that people do judge pieces of jewelry by the packaging, right? If a home builder coach were to bring you a Tiffany ring and I was going to propose to a woman with a Tiffany ring, and I put it in a Walmart bag, probably have a different, reaction that I would get from her than if I showed up with the ring in a Tiffany box.

 

Right. So packaging is very important, and we want to brand our business to make people get excited about it. You want to put some money into the packaging so people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a model home, but then they don’t spend very much money on their website, right? So they they don’t want to spend money and make a beautiful website that looks great.

 

Now I can tell you that I can do a website for you for pennies on the dollar. Compared to anybody out there, our website will literally be the most cost effective and the best running website you’ll ever have. But it doesn’t cost you. It doesn’t need to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. That’s ridiculous. But that being said, we want to keep it updated all the time.

 

We want to make sure that all the information is correct and we want it to wow our ideal and likely buyer. Your model home today is your website, so you should spend some money on it. A bad looking website, bad looking websites definitely hurt your wallet. Just like if you had built a model home in, a rundown neighborhood.

 

Right? It’s not going to help your business. So, you know, spend the money, get something that looks good, and let a home builder coach help you with that.