[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home. There is a lot to know, but we got you covered. This is around the house. Welcome to the round the house show. The next generation of home improvement. Thanks for tuning in today to our weekday special. This is the podcast only version that hits the airwaves out there for everybody.

[00:00:37] Eric Goranson: And you know something? Welcome This is what didn't happen in last weekend show and isn't going to make it into this weekend show. Happy 1st of May, everybody, or whenever you're tuning into this, boy, I tell you what, it's been a crazy news cycle over the last 24 hours with all these kids breaking into places and everything else.

[00:00:55] Eric Goranson: And I'm not going to get into politics here, but I tell you what, I am just happy out there that there are great [00:01:00] trade schools. The parents can send their kids to get a good education that are going to put them to work and probably make much more than some of these kids out there getting these spending 150 grand to get a humanities degree just so they can go work at Starbucks.

[00:01:15] Eric Goranson: And I tell you what, I think the kids going to the trade school can go make 150, 000 a year being an electrician or plumber once they get good at it. So parents out there. Careful where you send your kids. If you're seeing it on the news and nobody's dealing with it, you know where the problems are. So there's my two cents.

[00:01:34] Eric Goranson: Let's keep those kids going on to trade school so they can get a real education and not get into the hot mess that all these kids are like in New York, where they're going to jail, or at least hopefully they are. So breaking, entering, still breaking and entering today. We're talking about, we're going to be talking about how to find that right contractor, how to hire a contractor for that project.

[00:01:54] Eric Goranson: And I tell you what, I can tell you a few places. That you don't go. And this is where I see a [00:02:00] lot of illegal contractors going on out there. And what I mean by illegal contractors, these are the non licensed bonded insured ones. Like in my area, even a handyman has to be licensed bonded insured. Because here's what happens if you hire somebody to come over your work, your house, no matter where you're at in the country.

[00:02:15] Eric Goranson: And if they're not, they're And they get hurt. Guess what? You're their employer, which means you're responsible for their medical bills. So if some guy falls off the roof and gets paralyzed, that's your new kid, because that is your new dependent. You'll be taking care of them for the rest of your life. So you just got to be careful out there with that kind of stuff.

[00:02:35] Eric Goranson: You always want to hire people that are licensed, bonded, insured, and follow up to make sure that they are. There are no savings here hiring that unlicensed contractor because they're unlicensed for a reason. And maybe here's the thing. Maybe you don't have don't have contractor licensing in your area.

[00:02:51] Eric Goranson: Maybe you're out in the Midwest someplace. You're out on the East Coast where you're in a small area where they don't do it. Just make sure they're [00:03:00] bonded and insured if licensing isn't an issue. You still need to make sure that they're protected and that you're protected. So that way you have a contract, you have an agreement, and that liability falls on them, not on you.

[00:03:14] Eric Goranson: So that's the first one there. Some of the worst places I've seen to find contractors are going to be on social media sites like Book Marketplace. And the next door is one of the worst ones. I see criminals on there lurking all the time. And you'll have somebody in a neighborhood. That's a buddy or a friend.

[00:03:31] Eric Goranson: God, all this person just did this work at my house. Go find them and you'll see that whole loop and all of a sudden people are getting taken and two, three, four people get taken. I see it every single week on next door in my neighborhood. People are trying to take advantage of people on that. So here's what I would do.

[00:03:49] Eric Goranson: Do your research. First off, ask your friends and family that are in the neighborhood around you who did work on their own. Find out who did the great work. If you're driving by [00:04:00] somebody's house and beautiful work being done, ask them. See what's going on. Know your neighbors. And then next here's another tip right here is talk to your local state agency or local agency and do your research on who's around you.

[00:04:14] Eric Goranson: Now, here's one thing, and this is something that I'm going to try to help contractors with this next year. We're going to talk a little bit more about it and some of our exclusive content. Contractors can be some of the worst offenders of having bad websites or no websites at all. And it's something that we've run into year after year, because.

[00:04:31] Eric Goranson: Contractors are out busy. They're working their 50 60 hours a week trying to get the job done. The last thing they have time for is to sit back and to spend money and design their own website. And so many times contractors spending all their effort and get the job done spending on that, but they're hoping the phone calls and the referrals come in.

[00:04:50] Eric Goranson: But they don't spend a lot of times, there are exceptions, of course, but many of them don't spend the time to come up with the right website to tell people exactly what they're doing. So you as a [00:05:00] consumer goes out there and starts to really search and go, ah, that website's horrible. And you move on to somebody who's got a better website.

[00:05:07] Eric Goranson: Sometimes the scammers are the ones out there that have the slickest websites. And that's unfortunate. So I'm going to really spend some time this next year, working with contractors in my area, trying to help them out and get them on the right path of making it easier for people to find them. Because I think that's one of the biggest problems we have in the world of construction right now is having.

[00:05:27] Eric Goranson: The tool for people to find that's not some like Angie's list or whatever else tool referral thing. Cause here's what happens. And this is why this is a bad deal for contractors. So you see all these lead referral services, what they're called out there. So what'll happen is the contractor remodeling contract, I'll get ahold of these guys and say, Hey, my budget to market with you guys.

[00:05:47] Eric Goranson: And to get leads is like 5, 000 bucks. They'll take a month from these guys. So you, as a consumer jumps on this website, gives your information, and then you get three, four, five, six, 10 people call you. [00:06:00] And the problem is each one of those people are paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Just to contact you.

[00:06:05] Eric Goranson: So you as a homeowner gets all these phone calls. You had all this high pressure stuff because these people just paid a couple of hundred bucks just to get your name. And this is where it gets expensive for them. And they're hoping that you're going to buy through one of these people. And so that's why many times when you jump on and ask, Hey, what's this project going to cost?

[00:06:25] Eric Goranson: They start asking you address email, because they're going to send contractors your way and they're selling you. To that. So that's where the problem is with these. So just pay attention to those kinds of things. I'm not the biggest fan of those. Cause a lot of these companies do not do the research. They do not do the background checks.

[00:06:43] Eric Goranson: They say they do, but they just look and say, Oh, we checked once they had a contractor's license and off they go. And so there's not a lot of policing here in some of them within the review service, you can definitely pay to keep a good review and pay to put a bad review in the back of the [00:07:00] line to hide it.

[00:07:00] Eric Goranson: So. This is where I want you to do your research. And I'm not a big fan of those lead referral services because you're just, you're just piece of meat getting thrown out to the wolves. And you want to be able to control that situation yourself and talk to the people that you've done the research for, not random people looking for work.

[00:07:18] Eric Goranson: That's my theory. Now, the other thing here is too, is there's one thing that I don't rely on, and that is the better business bureau. Now, if they have a bunch of complaints and stuff like that's one thing. But I tell you what I had a bad experience and you've probably heard me talk about this on the radio show before Where I had a c minus for my design or modeling company in seattle through the bbb And I had been in business for a few years and I had absolutely No complaints.

[00:07:45] Eric Goranson: No one had contacted there had been nothing through the bbb and they asked me to pay 750 bucks to be accredited And they would give me an a plus once I told them That I was media and I worked part time on the [00:08:00] radio all of a sudden I had an a because they didn't want that bad press But I could have had an a if I would have paid the money So anytime that you can pay to have a good rating that is not reliable in my book And those guys are there to make money.

[00:08:17] Eric Goranson: So that is a For profit business. And I tell you what they are not, they're like Yelp. I don't rely on them either because usually it's just an angry bunch of people doing their thing. So take a look out there, like in the state of Oregon, where I live, I can actually call up our construction contractors board.

[00:08:37] Eric Goranson: I can get them on the phone and say, I'm looking at these three contractors. What can you tell me? And you can have an honest conversation on their background. They'll go through and say, yeah, this one had a complaint three years ago, but they've been in business for 20 years. So that's a stunning record to have one complaint in 20 years.

[00:08:55] Eric Goranson: So they will help you many times go through and suss out [00:09:00] and figure out what the record is and how good they are. Sometimes people make mistakes. It'll say, Oh, their license was suspended. Their license was suspended because they forgot to inform the state that they changed insurance companies. And in my state, the moment that insurance runs out, they suspend the license automatically.

[00:09:18] Eric Goranson: Boom. They're gonna make a phone call. It's just done until we figure it out. So that's one of those things that little mistakes like that happen, but you need to know why those mistakes happen. And that's the key right there. All right, guys, if you have any questions about this kind of stuff, feel free to email Email me over to round the house online.

[00:09:35] Eric Goranson: com. And if you want to get ahold of me here for the show, we've got a lot of stuff going on. If you've got questions, if you've got comments, I'd love to hear from you. The phone number here at the studio is 8 3 3 2 3 9 41 44. That number again is 8 3 3 2 3 9 4 1 4 4. Happy midweek, guys. I hope everybody's having a great one.

[00:09:55] Eric Goranson: We'll see you on Saturday's episode. Thanks for tuning in to Around the House. Have a great [00:10:00] rest of the week.