Don't Ever Higher Your Friends
When I say don't ever higher your friends, I would like
to clarify something first. If you enjoy your friendship with these
individuals, you might not ever want to hire them. You could find
yourself with more problems than you ever imagined.
I have known too many people who hired their friends for some type of
home repair or even worse than that, a home remodeling project, only to
find out that their friendship wasn't tough enough to make it through
the nightmare.
Just imagine this for a moment, you hire your best friends son to do
some plumbing work on your home, because they're licensed plumbers and
have been in the plumbing business for over 20 years. You know these
people personally and have heard nothing but great things about them, so
why wouldn't you want to hire them.
Just bear with me for a moment, the plumbing contractor who is your best
friends son, has just given you a $14,000 estimate to re-pipe your home.
You can't believe your eyes, your neighbor just got their entire house
re-piped for $4500. You tell your best friends son that you're not
interested in using him and that there are no hard feelings, but the
reality is you can't believe what just happened.
You hire the other contractor and there aren't any problems, but in the
back of your mind you're still wondering why your best friend's son
tried to gouge you. If you're the kind of person who lets every small
thing bothered them, make sure that you never even think about hiring
one of your friends, but if you're the kind of person who understands
that one contractor charges more money than another contractor, you
could probably work with one of your friends.
If I was going to give anyone any advice, who was seriously thinking
about hiring one of their friends, it would simply be too, treat them
like professionals and pretend like they're not your friends, while
they're working on your home. I don't want you to ignore these people or
mistreat them, just treat them like any other home repair contractor.
The worst thing that you could do is to tell your friends how much money
you paid them, over and over again, until they're sick and tired of even
coming over to your home. I once knew a guy who went out and bought a
brand-new boat after working on one of the apartment complexes that I
was remodeling. A couple of the project managers kept referring to his
boat as their boat, because they sincerely believe that they overpaid
him to install some roof drains.
Sometimes it's better to keep your friendship separate from business.