Surviving Renovations

Renovating your business can be a stressful affair. Unless you're a multinational corporation or have loads of money and are able to hand over the project to a firm that specializes in this sort of thing, chances are you're overseeing the project yourself.

We started renovating our training center a week ago and we were naive enough to believe that we would only have to close for a couple of days, when in reality we should have closed for two weeks. Fortunately, we had the foresight perform the the work during our slow season.

Our business is dependent on memberships so for every day that we were closed we added a day to our members membership; just because you're stressed out doesn't mean your clients have to be as well.

Choosing the right contractor is crucial--not only do you want to get the work done at a fair price but you want to make sure that they really know their craft. If you don't know anyone off-hand ask friends, family, other business associates, and if you can, try to see some of the their finished projects.

It's also important to note that a residential contractor is different from a commercial contractor, so know the difference. Check to see if you need any permits, make sure you get those in order, and get an estimate in writing. We were lucky that I went to school with my contractor, although my memories of Robert when we were in college consisted of him drinking himself into a stupor, putting a garbage can on his head and asking, "who turned out the lights?", but god bless him, he's a great contractor.

When trying to figure out how much this will cost you believe me, no matter how much you sit and rack your brain about all the possible expenses that will arise it's going to cost you more, so whatever number you come up with add a cushion of about 20%--and that doesn't include lost revenue from having to close down operations.

So when performing renovations a little planning and research will help you to sleep better while your business is undergoing a make over.