The Tim Faller Show

On this episode of the Tim Faller Show, Tim and Steve discuss the client experience and how to turn clients into raving fans. The client experience is all about how the client feels and not what you do. Tim differentiates the customer service a company provides from how clients perceive that service. Not only do salespeople have a major role in the client experience, but the production team and le...

Tess Jezek joins the show today to discuss the importance of your company’s reputation in the reputation economy.  In fact, Forbes reports that 60% of consumers are willing to pay more if they believe they will receive a better service.  Tess discusses how an accurate description of your business online is smart business practice.  In addition, good social status leads to robust pricing powe...

Many business owners and certainly production managers feel alone in their business at times, and want and or need some kind of external input.  So, where do they turn? Trade associations provide some input but are typically limited to whatever the “topic of the evening” is.  Remodelers Advantage President, Victoria Downing, saw this issue and took action through the creation of the Remodelers Adv...

Do you struggle to maintain relationships with subcontractors and experience your projects not being handled with urgency or priority? If so, you haven’t built a team, you have built a contact list.   Guest Daniel Carrero joins Tim and Steve to talk about how he has built a solid team with little turnover and kept tradesmen that have been with him for over 15 years. Daniel Carrero, President of  H...

While having a family-like culture is a well-intended premise, it is oftentimes impractical. Companies may notice that one or two employees are intolerant of the family-like culture in place and leave the “family” dysfunctional.  Creating an environment where there is a structure that resembles a team, rather than a family, is a way to avoid intolerance, and grow as a company.  In this episode, gu...

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Chris Stebnitz joins the show to discuss building a culture in a remodeling company and the impact it has on the client experience. Chris talks about how building trust with your employees can enhance the company culture. While building a culture is important, there are also ways you can destroy your company culture including gossip or being a demanding leader. Chris...

Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas rejoin the Tim Faller Show for a follow-up from their last episode, Design and Production: Can we really get along? In this episode, Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas join the show to discuss what happens once the job is started. They discuss challenges at the job site, whether it is unforeseen circumstances or supply chain delays. Candice and Morgan discuss how they...

On this episode of The Tim Faller Show, Mitch Gray joins the show for the second week to talk about culture and how you can improve your company’s culture. Mitch says that many employers don’t know how to vocalize culture, and employees don’t know how to connect with it.  He defines a good culture as how we live, move, and exist within a family or company. When a company creates a good culture, th...

Mitch Gray joins the show to discuss hiring and keeping great people.  He talks about the importance of understanding interpersonal relationships and getting intentional about finding people with passion, as passion feels energy.  Understanding that everyone wants to feel valued, empowered, and a part of something larger than themselves, no matter what level of employee.  This is core to the succe...

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Christine Miles joins the show to discuss how better listening skills lead to better communication. Christine explains why listening is so complicated and suggests some easy ways to listen better. She also highlights the importance of communication in creating trust between co-workers. Christine is an author, professional keynote speaker, consultant, executive coach,...

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Tim and Steve go solo to discuss production system shifts and the changing world of the lead carpenter and project manager. Tim talks about the most significant challenge facing the remodeling industry: increasing sales with the lack of skilled labor. The challenge comes from controlling growth with a limited number of people to handle that growth.  This is causing ma...

On this episode of The Tim Faller Show, Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas join the show to answer the question: Can design and production get along? While the production and design teams have the same overall goal of completing a project that will delight their clients, they do it differently. Morgan and Candice talk about their struggles with time constraints, delays, and change orders and how they...

Jordan Smith joined the show to discuss partnering with another remodeling company to complete a job two hours outside his service area.  He discusses the benefits, risks, and challenges associated with the job type and the steps he took to mitigate problems. Jordan and his wife Veronica started the Smith House Company four years ago to create beautiful and functional spaces that harmonize with th...

Tim and Steve welcome Doug Horgan to the show to discuss the role of a lead carpenter. Doug talks about his responsibilities, including research, being an internal “help desk,” managing people internally and externally.  He also manages scheduling and explains the meaning behind the saying “make ready planning” and why it’s essential for a lead carpenter. Doug Horgan is Vice President–Best P...

Jesse DeBenedictis joins the Tim Faller show to talk about emotional intelligence. Jesse tells us his definition of emotional intelligence and how he, as a leader, uses it to better his business. He discusses how being self-aware is the most critical piece of emotional intelligence. He also talks about how having good emotional intelligence can help your clients. Jesse DeBenedictis is the proud ow...

Today on The Tim Faller Show, Aimee Cianfarani discusses how her company has made concierge services (a/k/a handyperson services) a successful part of the overall business.  In this high-failure segment of the industry, Aimee and her team have overcome significant odds to find great success by applying a strategic approach and using marketing as a key part of the process.  Aimee said hiring the ri...

Today on the Tim Faller Show, we welcome guest John Vendafreddo to discuss time management. John talks about how to organize jobs based on importance or urgency, and how planning can help with time management. John also discusses how to handle in-office meetings while working on job sites. John finished the show by giving some advice to new project managers. John has been interested in building si...

Season 4 Starts With This Special Episode Recorded Live at The Remodelers Summit! Listen to this episode and get tips on creating an effective and highly functional relationship between company ownership and the production team.  Clark Harris and Eric Bain of Innovative Construction discuss how they have built an open, trusting, and team-based relationship that allows them to work effectively toge...

Raise your hand if you are a salesperson… Maybe a few business owners raised their hands, but most likely, our production people and our Project managers, Lead carpenters, and Production managers all kept their hands down. Not so fast! In this episode, we step out of our comfort zone a little and talk about your production teams’ impact on sales and marketing. For this discussion, we bring i...

In the interview process, actively listening is key. But how? And how do we change if we “really need someone”? Then, of course, there are all the other times that when we look back at a difficult situation, whether a client or an employee, we see all the signs of the challenge were there, but we did not listen. Guest Christine Miles is here to share some insight and answers on how to avoid that s...

On our  third episode , in March of 2018, we talked with Mike Barkhouse from Amsted Design Build about achieving “Zero Punch List” production . We heard from a few listeners about that episode, and the concept of Zero Punch List, so we wanted to revisit it. We are now evangelists pushing to see the term “Punch list” eliminated from the remodeler’s vocabulary.  In a zero punch list scenar...

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d do differently when starting your remodeling business if you only knew then what you know now, you’re not alone.  Tim and Steve do, too.  In this episode, the guys talk about what they’ve learned in their time at Remodelers Advantage and from their podcast guests that they wish they knew when they were running their own businesses. They each identified the five b...

Many remodelers, builders and business owners make resolutions or commitments to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and then they get caught up in the daily grind and it never happens.  Another challenge for many companies we work with is attracting and hiring people, especially new people to the industry, and getting them trained to “do things our way.” Our guest today, Nick Slavik, has...

When we discuss the labor shortage, we are often talking about how to find or develop good talent. What we are now hearing from our  Roundtables members is that they are finding people, getting them on the team, and then they fail. In many cases, these aren’t catastrophic failures, but slips in net profit or schedules or proper estimates, etc.  We can write this off to “they misrepresented themsel...

Howard Prager joins the show to talk about how memorable leadership can help retain good employees, increase productivity and improve customer service.  He outlines his VIP model of leadership, which is easy to apply, proven effective, and will help create a company with which customers will want to do business and employees will want to work. Howard Prager is president of Advance Learning Group ,...