In this eye-opening episode, Bill Reid takes a hard look at the overwhelming world of home renovation checklists, systems, and digital tools flooding social media and the internet. With over 15,000 home improvement influencers selling everything from $8 PDFs to $250 "comprehensive systems," homeowners are more paralyzed than ever.

What You'll Discover:

• Why the current fragmented approach to renovation planning is failing homeowners
• The psychology behind decision overload and why it's worse in home renovation
• How to identify credible vs. marketing-driven renovation advice
• What to look for in a true "guided thinking system"
• How strategic preparation transforms professional consultations
• The difference between reactive tools and proactive guidance

Key Topics Covered:

• The fragmentation problem in home renovation advice
• Creator credibility - who's actually qualified to guide renovations?
• Why generic solutions fail for unique custom projects
• Strategic preparation vs. information overwhelm
• How to attract quality design professionals
• Building collaborative relationships with architects and designers

Resources Mentioned:

• The Awakened Homeowner book - Discovery Section methodology
• 47 million kitchen images on Pinterest (and why that's a problem)
• Strategic thinking frameworks for renovation planning

This episode is essential listening for anyone feeling overwhelmed by renovation planning or considering downloading yet another checklist. Bill provides a clear path forward that emphasizes strategic preparation over information collection.

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Free Story: The Tale of Two Homeowners https://the-awakened-homeowner.kit.com/09608e1727

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Contact: Email: wwreid@theawakenedhomeowner.com

Mentioned in this episode:

The Awakened Homeowner Book

Another one displayed 40 different checklists that appear that a homeowner could buy and use to navigate their [00:01:00] project. I went onto YouTube. I went everywhere. I just went all over the place, and now I know why you are just paralyzed, because there's just, it's just fragmented out there. What are you expected to do? Download 15 different YouTube channels, purchase six different sets of checklists because they each cover different things. How do you even know what you need to checklist off of? I'm also noticing that some of the people that are selling this stuff aren't even experienced professionals in the world of construction and managing projects.

We're going to move into the studio and talk about this because although checklists on the surface may look great, I don't know, man, if I can't figure them out, I'm sure somebody who's never remodeled a home before can figure them out and it's spurred a whole idea that I have, that I'm already actually working on. And you need one home to go to. Let's talk about it.

And the amount of information out there is just confusing homeowners, I believe, more than ever, and scaring everybody about where to start, what they need to know, where do they, what do they do first, second, third, and I just think it's becoming too much. And a big instigator of this is the web and social media influencers that are selling checklists, systems, different consulting services, all over the internet and social media, and it's getting concerning because I think it's not helping, even though the [00:03:00] individual checklist may help for specific areas.

I think as a whole, it's just creating more and more information that a homeowner needs to really get through. And I really don't think that's helping. So I want to talk about that so that you know what you're up against before you start downloading and buying checklist after checklist and subscribing to different paid blogs and consulting services because not all of them are going to be a good fit for you.

I went ahead and took a look at how many social media influencers are out there across different platforms, and I came up with 15,000 different social media influencers specifically in the home improvement space. And then not to mention all the people on DIY blogs and Pinterest creators, and they're all selling stuff from $8 to $250 for a remodel planner, quote unquote, on Etsy and all different types of websites. And they're all claiming that it's the only thing that you as a homeowner will need, and they're quote unquote foolproof.

The psychology behind decision overload starts with excessive information. When you have excessive information your tendency is either to not make decisions and therefore procrastinating and dragging out the process, or making the wrong decisions and having negative results and specifically in remodeling and building. One of the things that's contributing to this fatigue is the fact that when you make a remodeling or home building decision, it feels really significant and [00:06:00] permanent and it's not easy to back up from that once the foundation's poured or once the walls are built.

Although it's not impossible, it feels a lot more permanent. So this fatigue that's happening and why people are overwhelmed is you've got the fact that there's a lot of decisions you have no idea how to make those decisions and afraid to make the wrong one and know that they're really a permanent situation. And then you've got all these people throwing things at you from all different angles. How to design, how to build, how to hire, and all the different design ideas. And you've got all that. Next thing you know, you're sitting in front of your computer, you've paid for three different checklists. You have 15 different YouTube channels you're subscribing to, and you've got 50 browser tabs open.

When we look at some of these digital tools that are being promoted out there, a couple things that are concerning to me. Number one, some of these are being created by people who have never managed construction projects before, never designed anything, or have very little experience, and they're more of a marketer. They're like selling things because they've been designing kitchens for a year or two years or they haven't built anything. They've just designed stuff and haven't been involved in the construction side of things. To me, if you've got somebody telling you how to design something, they really need to have an understanding of how it's built and implemented.

Now, that said, there are some good ones out there that can be valuable. And some of them are expensive, but it's because they're worth it. You've got architects that have been in business for 20, 30 years that are coming up with systems and how to tackle a project. You've got home builders like myself that coordinate the design and construction of projects that are coming up with more comprehensive, cohesive systems for people to just go to one location. So that's my biggest problem.

Frankly, I got overwhelmed. I went scrolling through some of these applications, and it took me just on Instagram because I was starting to follow all these people and taking me 30 seconds just to scroll through the list of services [00:10:00] clearly trying to sell me something, and I was not interested in being sold something. I really wanted to understand the solution and how it's going to make my life easier. There's a lot of those like that, and I was really surprised, and it's because although they may profess that they know what they're doing and they, maybe they do, but it came from a marketing and sales approach, which to me is a big red flag. That's a big part of what we're talking about today.

So therefore you're tasked to go through all of these lists and try to figure out what you want and what you don't want. And half the time you don't know what you don't want. You don't know what you don't know. So that is the biggest concerns with this whole checklist. And I want you to be really careful about how much money you spend downloading. And be careful that some of these are old. They're not really that current. Some of them are, but a lot of them have been around for a while and are outdated, and that person is not updating them, and therefore the value of those goes down.

So they're going to have to stop everything and work with you. And that's okay. They do that, they're used to doing that. But there's a way that you can do that on your own with the proper tools. So like in the book that I wrote, the Awakened Homeowner in the discovery section, which is the very first part of the book, I take you through some steps that are good. Now, there's no checklist, there's no systems that I'm selling you. It's a book that's a tenth of the cost of some of these checklists that you can go through on your own and create. Just, at least you understand the methodology there so that you can share [00:13:00] with them your personal profile, your property profile, your inspirations and ideas and your budget.

So the professional consultation is an important element. You can't forget about that in order to guide you through the process.

It's about who can help you or what can help you start thinking about your project. Think about a platform that does the cognitive work for you. So it's asking the right questions in the right order and explains why the questions matter. So you are learning, you're answering, and you're building up the information that an architect or a contractor's going to need. It's going to walk you through budgeting exercises, at least something so that you can build some kind of budget and financial analysis so that you can understand how much you want to invest in the project or in the property before you engage with anybody, because you can talk all day long and have 400 Pinterest pictures and be as excited as all get out.

So that's what we're talking about is strategic guidance, not just empty templates. It's having an experienced project manager guiding you, sitting like right next to you, guiding thinking, step by step.

Design and construction, or at least a design professional that oversees construction or is involved in the construction somehow because the design's just part of it. It's the implementation that's just as important, if not more important to make sure it actually gets built. So verifying the creators design and construction background look for real project management experience. Have they actually managed a construction project? Have they done project scheduling? Do they know the critical path elements of a project, and most importantly, avoid these digital marketers posing as experts.

It does exist that there's people out there to make money just to make money, and they might aggregate information. They might be a curator of information, but if you're not talking to somebody who's actually done it. Skip them. Don't even go there or skip that checklist or skip that application that you've downloaded and just get to the people that actually have done it. And that could be a real person or it could be an application.

So that is how you use your space the non-negotiables versus the nice to haves, things like that. How is a checklist? Tell me. Going to figure that out. I can't figure it out, so it's probably not going to happen. I don't think a checklist, a human being with a system together. Is how it can work out.

Are they able to help you at the beginning, establish a budget, not just gut instinct, not just words, but an actual formula, an actual system or a process to come up with a budget for the project you think you want to build, there's ways to do that. It's still at a high [00:21:00] level, but it's much better than just saying, ah, it'll probably be a million dollars. What is that? What is that based off of? What does that mean? It, on the other hand, it's hard to price out a job before it's designed. This is the biggest problem in this business, but there's got to be a way to get a little bit closer so that you can make informed decisions about where to go and who to hire. So that's a big part of this project development aspect of these checklists or these systems, is the project definition, the inspiration management, and the budget development, so that you are assembling all of these components in a way for somebody to serve you.

The next component that we want to talk about, whether it's from a human or for from a checklist, is what type of design professionals do you need? Do you even know? If you're building a home, do I just need an architect? Do I don't know? Maybe you need an interior designer. Maybe you need a civil engineer, a structural engineer. Maybe you have to hire him. Maybe you don't have to hire him. Maybe you need to understand the trees, maybe you need an arborist. There's just, there could be upwards of 10 to 20 different designers and consultants involved in a large scale custom home project. So is this checklist helping you with that?

The budget of the project can directly relate to the matching of the professional to help you. If you're on an extremely tight budget and have lofty goals, some of the better architects are probably not going to be available to help you because they're busy with other projects that are better aligned. Who's helping you with that? Aligning the budget with the scope of work that you want to do and balancing that. So that's what I call the budget balance. You're budgeting the project with the value of your home and your neighborhood and the budget, and then your budgeting, your desires and your dreams and wishes with the budget. Who's doing that for you? Do you know how to do that? Is the checklist helping you [00:24:00] with that? Is the home system helping you with that?

It's clear to the designer where we're going with this project. It's the people that show up and say, I don't know what I want and I want a 4,000 square foot home and I have a $300,000 budget. You're not going to get anywhere. You're going to get garbage results from a designer, if you can even help find one for that.

Okay, so now we've talked about how to attract professionals and then let's talk about the power of the strategic preparation. So we're taking a generic list and generic criteria, and we're converting them into strategic conversations with professionals. So you're giving them a jumpstart with all the information that you've [00:27:00] gathered, and hopefully you've found a solution for it. But again, this whole podcast episode is about, it's not about a mound of checklists, so what is out there that's going to help you get there?

I think you can see where I'm going with this is you can create a partnership, collaboration experience with architects and designers that are going to ultimately take all of your ideas and transform into something. It turns into more of a collaborative relationship versus a dependent relationship, right? So you're now informed and you're now working together with the professional. They see you as a serious client who respects their expertise. You need that expertise. No matter how many checklists you download, you still need somebody to help you through the process. So [00:29:00] that is one of the biggest benefits of the human interaction combined with the preparation that we're talking about today and today's about how are you going to prepare and what are you going to use to prepare.

It's simple as that professionals can focus on strategy instead of basic education. I know that's easier said than done, and I know you're trying hard to become educated, but I'm really concerned that it's going the wrong direction. With all of the information out there, with the checklists and everything you're going to get better advice, better matching with your professionals, you're going to have more confident decisions. The consultations that you have are going to be more productive and you're going to find the best fit for your professional.

So the platforms you want to be looking at is to see if there's a guide there for you to ask, and answer questions. That helps you organize and do some of that cognitive work for you, and they take you in this stepping stone approach. Prepare strategically develop your project's, clarity, inspirations, and budget framework. So that you can be empowered to have [00:32:00] that information, talk to design professionals, and then use this information to connect and have professional conversations with design professionals.

Everybody has their own idea of that. And go in prepared with your personal profile, your project profile, your inspirations and ideas, and your budget. And that first section talks about how to do that. And you don't need to download checklists to do that and start there. Then the following chapters, the World of Design teaches you all about design professionals and how to deal with them. The world of construction, same thing. And then the last chapter is how to go about building your team some ideas about how to do that.

So that's what I have for you today. Sorry for the rant, but I just, I'm worried about you. I'm Bill Reid with the Awakened Homeowner. Back to the Discovery Series. Next episode, we'll be talking about design consultants. Thanks for listening.