Straight from the Heartland

At the Remodeling Show in Las Vegas last month, 2007 NAHB Remodeler of the Year Bob Peterson sat for an interview in the convention center food court. There he discussed the growth of his $6.5 million business. An overview of the Fort Collins-based enterprise was communicated in encyclopedic fashion. From the synergies of the firm’s overall structure, to the rationale for individual policies and procedures — the broad strokes as well as the details came forth with cool clarity.

What emerged was the story of a talented couple, Peterson and his wife Rita, an interior designer, who teamed up and built a company over 17 and a half years that is among the most respected companies of any kind in its local community. They accomplished this through a commitment to doing things right, learning from mistakes and improving every step of the way.

But as Peterson coolly told the story of the company, the human touch behind the commitment to excellence emerged in a surprising moment. It came during a description of a detail on the company’s checklist for preconstruction meetings, specifically: ensuring that family pets are secure during the day.

“One of my fears in this industry is to have to face a customer and let them know that we lost their pet,” says Peterson.

“Think about that. You are at their house all day. They are at work and they have this little special dog or cat and we let it out of the house somehow.”

There it was. After covering remodeling business topics from A to Z — from contracts to customer satisfaction — Peterson somewhat inadvertently showed that to a large measure the extra ingredient to his success is caring about what the customer cares about. In fact, it can be argued that nowhere in the construction world does empathy for customer needs more directly translate to success than in remodeling.

On top of the requisite drive to build great sales, estimating, design and construction operations, one of the keys, it seems, to running a $6.5 million design-build remodeling company is about how you perform as a temporary member of a customer’s household. Remembering to care for a customer’s home and everything in it is one thing. Truly taking responsibility for their things with great feeling for how bad the downside could be is totally another.

“So we set the rules,” continues Peterson. “We call them ‘darters.’ If the pet is a ‘darter,’ it has to be secured somehow. If we are not working in a bedroom, we will agree that the cat stays in that bedroom. We put a sign on that bedroom door: Do not open this bedroom door. I just don’t want to face the customer one day saying we lost your cat.”

‘I can do that’

As important of a factor a good touch with customers is to the success of Associates in Building Design Ltd., an equal measure of internal drive to be at the top of the remodeling industry, to be a leader among the best in the business, helped get Peterson where he is today.

Peterson, who grew up “building things” on a ranch in northeast Colorado, spent much of his early career being “one of those guys in a pickup truck.” He would build additions, decks, etc. Eventually he switched to a “real job” in corporate America for several years, hating every minute of it. It was then that he went to work for a remodeling company where his wife Rita was working as an interior designer. By the time that company in 1992 was taken over by the IRS, Peterson and Rita felt ready to go out on their own. “We looked at each other and knew that we could do it,” says Peterson. This same can-do approach became evident at several critical junctures in the years ahead.

Peterson describes the time he went to his first Remodelers Show in Indianapolis in 1995 as a seminal juncture. It was the same year he helped found the Remodelers Council at his local Home Builders Association. Attending the education sessions at the show, he met remodelers whom he really came to admire: Jud Motsenbacher, Mike Weiss, Tom Swartz, among others.