Bright lights and dark places

Tomorrow, a group of renovation contractors are coming to first walk through and then listen to our plans. Based on that, they will put in their tender for the work. We have "hired" a project manager to handle the processes and make sure things run smoothly. I am hoping that he is going to give us a good price and work hard, as based on our hiring him, he has decided to start a business doing this for a living.

Finland has some good tradespeople - and many, many terrible ones. The problem is that unless you personally know which is which, it is very tricky to find ones you can trust. Word of mouth helps.

Thr business model he is setting up looks to solve some of this issue by using people he already has a relationship with and trusts. If successful, the group will have to grow and include more, but got now, a few key people are enough to get started.

What is good about this for us is that while a little more expensive upfront, the group chosen will want to perform well to be included in the next job, and then the next. This means that schedules and budgets need to be kept, as well as standard of work. As said, word of mouth is important in this area and recommendations are how many get jobs, or don't.

The hired project manager is an ex-colleague of my wife from a job that has quite an exclusive and potentially lucrative circle for a team of renovators, which I am guessing they will want as much access to as possible. While not friends that hang out, this gives another point of accountability and incentive to not screw us over.

What I am also quite glad about is that these guys are relatively young and have the opportunity to build a valuable small business that they each own and operate a part of. It is nice to have the possibility to not only help them develop the model, but also give them work at a time that they are potentially getting laid off from other companies due to the lack of work.

I think that people taking some responsibility and starting their own thing is one of the upsides of all of this nonsense in the world. People are increasingly looking to fend for themselves rather than relying on the unreliable. Instead of getting depressed and living in dark places, some are waking up and switching on the lights.

Taraz
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