The Quality Tax: What Growing Too Fast Cost Me

I used to think growing meant choosing between more projects and perfect builds.

Author

Keith Bloemendaal
December 08, 2024

Here’s what we have this week:

  • Quick Tips: FP Client List, Pics, and Buying Cheap Tools

  • Story: How a builder almost tanked their reputation during rapid growth.

  • FREE Download: QC checklist we used for our homes (FREE)

Let's dive in.

3 Quick Tips:

  1. Keep a "FP Client List".

    • Yes, that stands for “FirePlace” Every time you have a client that almost burns the entire process down, keep track. Biggest red flag? When they tell you all about the contractors they fired right before they called you.

  2. Pics of All Rough Ins:

    • Take photos of your mechanical rough-ins before drywall. Saved my ass countless times when we needed to locate something later.

  3. Buy cheap tools: 

    • Yes, I just said that, you don’t want to loan out your good tools do you? Sounds petty, but it works - and it's cheaper than replacing Milwaukee/Dewalt (Your Fav Color) tools every month.

 The Quality Trap

When you're growing fast, quality usually gets hit first. A builder I know learned this the hard way back when they jumped from building 4 homes to 12 homes a year.

They had just landed three spec lots in a prime location. Great opportunity, right? He made a mistake though. Tried running all three builds with the same crew and processes he used for single builds. Started all of it at the same time.

First house, everything was fine. Second house started showing little issues. The third house, he had legitimate problems piling up.

❝

Quality isn't about working slower, it's about having the right systems in place before you grow.

Keith

Here's What Saved Them: 

He stopped everything for two weeks. Complete pause. Gathered his crew and they mapped out every single quality issue they were finding. Found out they were missing basic QC steps because everything got rushed, and they didn’t have systems and processes in place.

They got things back on track and implemented some simple checklists for each phase. He also brought more help on.

What Can You Do?:

  1. Break down your quality control into specific checkpoints

  2. Document your standards before you scale

  3. Hire leadership positions ahead of growth, not during it

  4. Track warranty items religiously - they tell you where systems are breaking 

Your reputation is built on your worst job, not your best one.