Solving Home Renovation Problems

Solving Home Renovation Problems In Fort Saskatchewan

Hey all. Welcome back to our YouTube channel. We’re doing another video here for you today, and this one is entitled The Problem We Solve. I’m Jim Beaulieu . And I’m Tom Beaulieu.

So what’s our quote of the day, Tom? Our Quote of the day is, your most unhappy customers are the source of the most learning Bill Gates.

Yeah, that’s a great thing to keep in mind for sure. And how that’s important to us is that we definitely, we talk to our clients nonstop as we’re going through the job. We don’t wait till the end to find out if they’re happy or not. And that’s what’s really important is that communication. And so we want to find out if things are not going well, we want to, we tell them that right up front, like, please let us know if there’s any, anything that’s not working well for you. And so we can improve our services if we don’t know those things, we can’t improve.

Yeah, for sure enough, the customer feedback definitely helps us. Yeah, a hundred percent.

We got a statistic for you here in 2022, there was almost a hundred thousand job openings and they Canadian construction industry.

Yeah, that’s that is a big factor for us and anyone in the industry currently is the ability to hire tradespeople, skilled, qualified people, people who fit our our needs. And yeah, that’s an ongoing challenge. We’ve got a good team right now, but we’re always hiring accepting resumes. So if you yourself or anyone you know is a trades person looking for work, you could always send a resume in through to info@fortsasreno.com.

So today’s story, so in renovations problem solving is key. Like every single job we do is slightly different than the last one. So that’s what keeps it interesting. And every job is its unique puzzle. And so when we go in and we’re talking to the clients, find out what’s most important to them, what problems are they trying to solve. And there’s many things as a homeowner, if you weren’t involved in the trades, you’d have no clue.

So we’ll offer our honest advice. And basically how I run every single opportunity when I go into a client’s house is I find out the exactly what’s important to them. And I, I filter that through my own perception and what I would do as a, as a homeowner.

And I’ll give them that honest advice. A lot of times it’s, you don’t need us or maybe you for what you’re doing at this point in time. You don’t want to complete rental. Maybe only want to do just the exterior ’cause that’s all that’s really necessary. Or your windows are really not that bad. Maybe you should just cap them instead of change them. So that’s, that’s the key for us in that way is to ensure that you know, we are giving the client exactly what they want.

Yeah, we’d like to treat our client’s house just like it was our own house.

Absolutely. So we’ll go on to the questions for today and I’ll be shooting some questions to Tom.

And so what are Fort Sask Reno’s primary services? What do we do?

Well, our primary services are mainly residential. We do a considerable amount of renovations. We do new construction as well, but 80% of our work are mowers targeted at renovations. Anything from soffits, fascias, TROs zone works we do. And then pretty much everything inside of the roof too. Kitchens and bathrooms and those are the big ones for us.

Yeah, for sure. That really, really anything residential and in the fort and area is, is what we’re going for. And we prefer the renovations to new construction just ’cause we really enjoy working with homeowners directly. When you’re working for builders, it’s not quite as much fun ’cause they’re always wanting just the job to be done faster and cheaper, not caring so much about the quality and the the connections that you make with the people in the community, the homeowners.

And that’s what really makes it good for me personally, is that level of, of community that you get in dealing with the clients. So, yep. Okay. Tom, tell me why is there a need for Fort SA rental and the op services we offer?

Well, a lot of customers are having older homes. We’ve worked on some houses up to over a hundred years old. So when you’re starting to have a home with that kind of a age, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. So the main main area we do is a lot of renovations, specifically making older homes look new again. And there’s a lack, lack of trusted contractors in the area. So the bar’s set pretty low. So when we set the bar very high, we tend to shine or shine our competition.

Yeah. How do we do that? Like, what’s, how are we better than anyone else you’d say, like, compared to our local competitors or the guy off KG or Facebook, like how, how are we better than any of those? Why should they go with Fort Sa Reno?

Yeah. Well, we got over 105 star Google reviews, so the proof is in the pudding a little bit there. Another top thing is the communication we offer. We like to stay in direct contact with our customers. Doesn’t matter if it’s late at night, we still like to give ’em updates and keep them posted on the, the progress of the project as we go. Yeah. And we also have a very high need for quality since this is a family run business and we’ve been doing it for almost 17 years now. So we have a track record in the community that we’re trying to maintain. Yeah.

For for sure. We, we have to offer high level of service. We can’t call ourselves Fort Sa Reno and then start messing up jobs and messing over our clients. Bad news travels faster than good, right? Yeah, A hundred percent. Yeah.

What is the biggest problem that we solve for people? What is the most important thing that people are looking for solutions on?

I would say the biggest problem is turning dated spaces into new enjoyable spaces for the customer. Anything from the an old exterior that the customer has to see every time they get home for work and kind of dread getting home sometimes because they, they know they have to see this ugly looking house and something like that. Turning it into a nice beautiful front of the house with some stoneworks that they really enjoy coming home to and enjoy bringing their, their family and their friends over to show them that. Yeah.

And then anything from in Canada, we spend a lot of time inside, so having a nice kitchen that definitely makes you person feel good and definitely helps.

Definitely. Yeah, there’s, there’s so many homes in Fort Saskatchewan that were built in the sixties and the seventies, and you think about building those houses throughout those years and the workforces that were involved in building those, you don’t have the same workforce in re residential renovators that are maintaining those homes. For example, even right now when they’re building new homes in the fort, there’s, you know, hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people all from the city, from Edmonton, from all over the place building these new homes. Yeah. You know, you drive through new area, every second house, you know, under some form of construction and you’ve got hundreds of people doing that.

Well, you don’t see the same thing in the, the upkeep of the older homes and there’s hundreds of those that do need that maintenance. So we like to offer that service working in the older heirs of town or is a little nicer too, to be honest with the extra space for parking and all that. We like taking those old homes and those beautiful neighborhoods and making them look like new. Yeah, definitely. And,

And sometimes we get started on one house and of course the neighbors are out there checking it out and pretty soon you’re working on the neighbor’s house. For example, in in Bruderheim we ended up doing four, four duplexes down the entire street. Yeah, right in a row. Yeah. One after another. We’ve done that time and time again.

You start out on one end of the street and the neighbor sees what you’re doing, sees your signs, like, oh, I’ve seen you guys around and next thing you know you’re quoting the neighbor and then you move straight down the street. So yeah. Yeah. We’ve done so many homes in the fort. So, Tom, tell me,

What was the primary factor that pushed our company into becoming experts in full home renovations rather than just exteriors?

Well, we started out with pretty modus roots just doing siding and from there we ended up getting an e trough machine and then slowly expanded our services. We did exterior stoneworks and then the fir one of the first jobs we ended up doing the interiors for was a full exterior that we started with, and the customer just seen what we were capable of and she asked, oh, do you mind if taking, taking on a tile shower for her?

So that was one of the first interior jobs we did and we ended up doing three tile showers for that customer as well as a bunch more stone work on the inside of our house. And ever since there, we never really looked back. We’ve always, always got our feet wet on the interior sides and fast forward to today and often we end up doing more interior work than exterior work.

Another factor that was important a decision point for us to go into the interiors is the fact that often from January till February March, people are not outside looking at the exteriors of their homes. We do that work all year long and we’ve done it for, this will be the 17th year in the row that we’ve done exteriors in the fork, but mostly people don’t care because it’s out of sight and out of mind when it’s dark at four 30 in the afternoon, you come home from a hard day at work, you’re not wandering around the outside of your house looking at how it’s falling apart.

No. You pull into your attached garage straight in the house, you’re straight in the house, and you don’t come out until those first days of spring. In March when you get a real nice day, plus 15 people are out there chipping ice, they see all the water dripping off their eaves troughs. Yeah. And they see siding falling off and they go, oh my God, I gotta phone Fort Sask Reno. Yeah. And so that, that’s what how we combated the, that lull, the winter lull was by getting into the interiors and, and it’s been really good for us as well.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yes. Yep. There’s a lot of cold months here in Alberta, so to have some inside work during the January, February months, it really makes a big difference. A hundred percent. So tell me, Tom,

Do we get a lot of repeat customers?

Yeah, we certainly do get a lot of repeat customers. Often we do a job and everything goes well, and then maybe a year later the customer has us back, if not sooner. Especially when they find out we do interior and exterior work. Sometimes we’ll be doing a project and for example, just an trot job, and then later on they find out, oh, you guys do windows. So then we do a window for them and then they find out, oh, you do interiors, and then we do a kitchen. Yeah. So

Nice to have a one stop shop where we can take care of everything for our clients and they don’t have to look for a roofer necessarily, and then a separate outfit doing Eve’s trough and a separate outfit doing windows or bathrooms. We can handle it all. True. And what once they’ve dealt with us once and see that we we’re gonna deliver what they need and fully understand their issues and tailor a solution for that, they’re more than happy to keep us busy. So that’s been great.

Yeah. Once customers find a, a qualified contractor, they’d like to stick with it because we hear it all the time. People who’ve been burned by other contractors. So once they find a good contractor, they really do wanna hold onto them and there’s a, there’s a big level of trust between the contractor and the homeowner. So

Yeah, Once, once you find that person that’s a right fit for you, you don’t, you don’t really wanna shop elsewhere.

How competitive is the industry?

The industry is quite competitive, but mainly if people are price shopping, if if the person has a high, high need for quality, then that’s where we start to set ourselves apart. There’s a lot of people who will do it cheaper than us, but there’s not that many people that will do it better. So

Yeah. You said it like you, there’s always someone going to come in with a lower bid and you may get lucky and, and you might get this guy who’s been laid off from his job wherever and he is just starting up and Yeah. And ’cause I was that guy at one point and we did good work back then, but there’s a lot of people that got laid off from their job and they don’t know what they’re doing at all and didn’t go ahead and take the courses and the training and like we’ve done.

So you could get burned and you could get burned bad if they don’t have WCB yet. Or liability insurance, all those things. Are they gonna be around in a year or two or three or four or five? We’ve got almost 17 years, so we’re not going anywhere.

Yeah. Often we unfortunately do have to do a lot of rework because someone had their, their uncle try to side their house for them and the end result was not what they had anticipated. So unfortunately we do have to do a lot of rework because people were mainly focused on the price instead of focusing on quality. So it’s, it’s not the best situation for the customer, but they’re always happy when we get in there and they can tell straight away that we do have 16 years experience and it shows in the, the work we provide them.

Yeah, you got it. That’s a big difference between us and a lot of our competitors is that we’ve got that longevity, we’ve got the multiple five star reviews and so they can Yeah. They can trust that we’re gonna do a good job for ’em.

Yeah. And we have a good warranty too. If we’ve ever had any issues pop up, we’re usually back within a day just to take care of a quick fix and a lot of fly by night guys can’t do that there. It will come see you in a few weeks when they have time and no one wants to wait, wait to have a warranty issue fixed. So yeah, anytime we have a warranty issue, it’s solved immediately,

A hundred percent. Like we will come back and take care of your warranty issues. We offer lifetime warranty on our workmanship, and of course we keep documented records of the all the products used, so there’s always a record of those warranties that we keep for our clients as well. So without those warranties, you are taking your chances.

Yep. True. So tell me, Tom,

Why are we motivated to be the best in the industry?

Well, I would say we’re motivated to be the best in our industry due to a few facts, but one is we just always had a need for quality. Being a family run business we know that it’s not like I’m just in this position for a short period of time. We’re planning to be running Fort Sask for a long time and it’s a generational company.

Having Jim started it and now that I’m in it full time and then we have my youngest brother and it’s a generational company, so we’re trying to maintain, maintain that good quality and Yeah, those high standards of service and yeah, so we can continue on being the most successful renovation company in the fort

And it’s very important us to have good review. So we’re always trying to, to go above and beyond for our customers with the communication and with quality and with backing the products that we offer. So, so we can get those five star Google reviews that we’re after.

Yeah. That’s really important to our business for sure.

You know, we always tell our customers too that we’re, we’re aiming to get 505 stars so they can see that we have high a aspirations. They can see that we, we aren’t just satisfied with being mid middle of the road contractors. We’re looking to be the top contractor inside the sketch. And you’ve got, You’ve got it, Tom.

So what are, what are you doing to reach that goal? Like what actions are we taking to be the number one in the industry?

Well there’s a million different things we’re doing, but we’re doing training for our guys, like the siding courses. We’ve put our, our crews in, we’re starting to do more YouTube videos like these. We’re doing business boot camps and we’re doing marketing courses and just a little bit of everything to

Yeah, con continuous improvement. But like there’s, there is no end line where you’re gonna be, this is, this is as good as we get. There’s always opportunity for improvement. And we’ve done that from day one to start out with humble beginnings and keep adding services, keep improving processes, keep bringing people on with high level of skill. Yeah. Whether that’s employees, subcontractors, and just continue to grow. There is no end point for quality. It’s a continuous process and we’ve got 17 years down the road with it and we’ve done very well with it.

And a lot of the time you just, you are learning on, on every job. There’s something new when you bring a new guy on and he has some new ideas. So a lot of the time in this job, you you learn as you go. So the more jobs we do, the more experience we have.

That’s true. So true. Like you can learn from even people who’ve had no experience in the past, everybody’s got a voice, everyone’s got a different perspective. So it’s important to listen to those folks. Even the homeowner, they might have no clue really what they’re talking about, but they might see something just slightly different than you do. And so just that communication with all parties involved is really important. And continuing to grow. Yeah. Learning new methods and solving each new PR puzzle.

Yeah. And customer feedback. It definitely helps us grow as a company. Yeah. You got it.

Well, thank you so much for joining us on this YouTube video and don’t forget to like and subscribe, see more videos coming up soon.

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