What Do You Do When You’re Having a Bad Day?

Like most people, I have good days, and I have bad days. Last Tuesday started out pretty ordinary. I completed my morning run, kissed my boys goodbye and then headed out to visit a jobsite. It was raining out. Not really hard at first but we ended up getting a couple of inches by mid-afternoon. Good for keeping the grass green. Bad for construction.

By early afternoon, my day wasn’t going as planned. OK – to be honest I just wasn’t having a good day. And as I sat at my desk looking at all the rain, I decided I would take matters into my own hands because I wasn’t going to end this day on a bad note.

I love being in the field but it wasn’t an option that day because of the rain, and I had already nearly ruined a pair of shoes from my morning visits. I also love to talk to our clients. I especially like to reach out to them while their home is under construction. Mainly just to check in to see how everything is going.

So I decided I would spend the next couple of hours on the phone. We have 33 houses currently under construction. I grabbed my list of those clients and started calling. I was able to make 10 phone calls and I reached 6 of them (pretty good for the middle of the work day!).

Some of the clients were fresh out of the gate. I made a point to call one particular client whose house had just started. The reason I wanted to call her was because there was an unexpected (there’s that word again) site condition that came up during excavation. Unfortunately, when the hole was dug, the soil engineer determined the soil was not strong enough to support the new house. He instructed us to dig out the dirt and replace it with gravel. It wasn’t the entire footprint of the new house but in some spots we had to go down 5’ which is pretty significant.

So I wanted to call and check on her. While we try and prep all of our clients for the unexpected, it’s still often difficult when the unexpected happens. I was able to reach her at her office, and I was so glad I did because she immediately began gushing about how fantastic the NDI staff had been throughout the process and how she feels she is in very capable hands. She made a point to acknowledge each staff member by name and tell me how they have helped her.

How nice. And it reminds me of how proud I am of our hardworking staff. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to have so many wonderful and caring people working for NDI. I know we chose them to work here but in many ways they choose us. Every day they go out of their way to help our clients. Whether it is to answer a question or solve a problem or council them through the process, our staff chooses to honor NDI with their good deeds.

I love that.

So how did the rest of the calls go? All very similar to the first. I did get one complaint by one of our investor clients. We are building NDI home #5 and #6 for him in Fairfax. He told me everything was going great but he was disappointed that the framers didn’t show up to work that day. As I looked out my office window at the pouring rain I replied, “But sir, it’s been raining since 6:30 this morning.”  To which he replied, “I’m just kidding Jennifer.”

Ha. Ha.

Dream Big. Build Smart.