Morgan Friedman: Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. Very excited to have Jodi with me today. How are you doing, Jodi?

Jodi Koch Peterman: I’m doing so well. Thank you so much for asking.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, we had a bunch of countering confusion, but the day is finally here, and this has made me even more excited to hear your client horror story building up to the excitement.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Oh my goodness. Yes.

Morgan Friedman: So, let’s jump right in. I have my drinking hand that may or may not have vodka inside. Tell us about your craziest client horror story.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Oh my gosh. Okay, so I was working with a new builder in town and they gave me a lead for a client, and I was super excited to work with it. It was actually my first project since I moved the company to the area of Florida that I’m in.

And when I started, the contractor—I think I might have overshot what I needed to have happen. Usually we get it going on the design because that’s the way we protect the client’s budget. If we get all the designing up front, then we create documents and they can take it and go get projects spit out. And so that’s great.

Well, then they kind of just went MIA. When we got into it, they were busy working on stuff and they were just letting me do my thing, which I was appreciative for, but we really needed to get an engineer in to get a wall to come down to see if it was feasible and we could get it into the budget.

Because taking that wall down, I’m always about function first. So you’ve got to, like, walk in, and there was a—everything was open except for this big wall that was blocking the kitchen off. And they were like, “Well, I think we really just want to keep this wall here so we can keep up all the cabinets.”

And then I showed them in my design, if we remove the wall, we can actually put in a double island, which will actually give you more cabinet space than what you have now. More intentional.

So they’re like, “Yeah, let’s explore it and see if we can get it into budget.”

And, you know, everybody’s on island time here in Florida. And I’m not—I wasn’t used to that when I moved in because I’m from Iowa. I grew up on a farm. It’s go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and go even harder.

So trying to get people out there was crazy. I was trying to find an engineer, and everybody was like three to four weeks out before they’d even come and look at it to tell us whether or not they could, you know—how much it would be. Is it going to be $50,000? Is it going to be $10,000? Is it going to be somewhere in between?

We had no idea, and we couldn’t go forward with the design until we got one.

So that kind of started everything off rocky, and they’re like, “Okay, we might want to look at another contractor. They don’t know anybody who can send out.”

So I met these other contractors that had an engineer that they worked with somewhere pretty close. And so we got him involved, and he was like, “Yeah, okay. We can do it. It’ll probably be about $10,000 to $15,000.”

So they’re like, “Okay, that’s what we want to do.”

So, we started off rocky, and then now we decide that we can go ahead and go forward with the plan and redo everything and take down that wall, which was great because I’m function first, and I knew it was going to make such a huge impact. And it did in the design.

So, we’re like, that wall is coming down. We’re going to move forward with it.

And then it became the contractor’s like, “Okay, well, now you got another contractor involved.” And so we let them both bid it out, and they ended up going with the original contractor, which I think was the right choice, even though the clients might not agree with it.

Because then things just started to go sideways.

They had—it was a family-owned business, so the daughter was involved, working on all of the ins and outs and getting the project rolling. And then midway they put somebody else in it to project manage it, but I don’t think that they were really, as much as the client needed them to be, on top of their subcontractors because then things just started falling apart.

And then on top of that, the client decided to blow the entire budget, saying, you know, it was going to be a $400,000 remodel, which is huge, but we’re talking about a whole, about 3,000-square-foot home, and we’re talking about taking walls down and things like that.

So it then became a conversation of, okay, she wanted to not use LVP, which was a practical application for the project. She wanted it to look and feel like a hotel spa, the whole entire house.

So we decided to go with large-format tiles from Italy that were shiny and beautiful and gorgeous.

But, you know, that really took the budget. I mean, the flooring was already going to be around $24,000. It took it to like $75,000. It was over $50,000 or $60,000 just for the tile floor.

Morgan Friedman: So, she on purpose wanted to just make everything much more expensive.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes. Yes.

Morgan Friedman: This is interesting. I usually hear stories that go in the opposite direction where they—I thought we had it all done and designed. Like, we went and we picked everything out.

Jodi Koch Peterman: And I—I think this is where I needed to slow it down. It was a good learning experience, slowing it down to understand what the client was doing.

I think she was kind of like, you know, a little bit about me. I tend to be a little bit of a people pleaser and just saying yes when really I’m not 100% sure and just communicating that together, right?

Like, when she was saying yes, I took it as face value. Like, yes, I love this design. Yes, I love all these tiles. Yes, let’s move forward.

So, we would spend hours working on documents and renderings and all of these things.

And, you know, I bid it out by time, and I bid it out thinking it would be about eight months of my involvement and then, you know, that’s it.

So, I mean, getting the engineer took three months of that eight months.

Morgan Friedman: Yikes.

Jodi Koch Peterman: To get that done, going and certified. Yeah, that was crazy.

So then it was, we love all the things. And then all the selections became, “I’m not sure about that tile. Let’s backtrack. I’m showing this to my neighbor. I’m showing this to my friend. I’m getting all these people involved.”

And so then it became questioning everything, right? Not just one thing. It became questioning everything.

And then I’m like, well, if we’re redoing this, if we’re going to redo it, then, you know, when you walk in, they had this office that really wasn’t getting used, and it was a very substantial amount of square footage, and then the wall angled.

I’m like, you know, if we straighten that wall out in this little sitting room there, we could put in a little bar area because we would recoup some of that space. We would make a niche in the wall if we made that angled wall straight there, and we could put in like a little bar area because it was a fireplace and just enough for like two chairs where you’d sit and have like a little conversation area, right?

But we could do a little cabinetry with some glass, a little bar area. It’d be so cute.

And she’s like, “Okay.”

And I’m like, “All right, now don’t kill me. This is where I kind of just start out-of-the-box thinking because if somebody’s going to redo their whole floor after we already designed it, like let’s start thinking about all the things.”

Because I had gotten to know her a little bit more, right?

Yeah. So, I was like, “Okay, so when you walk into the primary bedroom and you turn the corner to go to the bathroom, there’s a his closet and a her closet.”

The his closet was on a wall that bordered that awkward office space that I wanted to straighten out that wall on.

So, I was like, “What if we knock down his closet and make you a big, huge her Barbie Dreamhouse closet?”

And the contractor isn’t really involved at this point. So there’s nobody like wanting to strangle me yet.

The client, she’s like, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Except for her husband, probably, because then it became, you know, I’m an all-inclusive designer. So if we’re going to need to put an Airbnb in the budget, if we need to put that, you know, because you can’t live there doing a whole-house remodel, if we’re going to do furniture, all of that needs to be in the budget.

And so it ate away at a lot of the furniture budget, but she still wanted what she wanted, you know, which we’ll get into that part of it.

So, okay. So now we decided we’re going to make a huge closet. And then when we’re doing the bathroom from Italy, now we’re starting to get underway.

They’ve accepted the bid. They’re starting the design project. Everything’s flowing.

The subcontractors got their bids and, you know, did their due diligence. And then we get out there.

And a boo-boo we made was that the paint color that I had my assistant pull for the project—she was a lead designer, not assistant, excuse me. She was a lead designer.

I had a feeling like it was going to be Sherwin-Williams colors. Sorry, Sherwin-Williams, if you’re listening. They tend to come off a little too bright or a little too pink or a little too orange. Like, there’s Benjamin Moore just has better colors that way.

I feel like Sherwin-Williams is doing a really good job, though. They do have a new designer line out that’s great.

But at the time of the project, it came off—it was, and it got painted.

And I asked the contractors, you know, I said, “This is my involvement in the project. This is what the client paid me to do. So before you paint, call me so I can come out and approve it.”

They ordered all the paint. So when I came out to approve it, and it was—I’m like, “This is too pink. We need to change it.”

So I went to change it, and they’re like, “Well, that’s not what your chart said. So, you’re going to have to buy all this paint.”

So, I bought like—I don’t know how many gallons because it was going throughout the entire house.

Morgan Friedman: Well, okay. So, disastrous frustrations of emotions piling up. On that last point, yeah, this I’ve seen this sort of situation a bunch of times also where you’re working with someone who might be competent and good, but they’re like so eager and excited. “Okay, this is the color. Great. Go, go, go. I’m going to go get it now.”

And sometimes, like you said, you don’t want to be an island. You want to move fast. But sometimes moving too fast leads you to not get the verification or double-checking that prevents these situations.

Jodi Koch Peterman: It was really—I mean, and I tried to work with the builder to say, you know, after the fact, I’m like, let’s do a rehash of what went right and what went wrong in the project that we could do better on because I really wanted to work with them again.

But it never—we never had that sit-down, and that was really frustrating.

But also, I kept saying I need notice. Like, during peak season, to get out to these clients it was two hours one way. Like, normally it would be like 35–45 minutes, but we’re now in peak season when they’re in the middle of the remodel.

So it takes me—I’m like, I might as well just get a hotel and just stay over there instead of drive, wasting six hours driving back and forth, sitting in traffic, in the gas.

It’s just frustrating.

So, but it was fine. So I’m like, if you could just tell me, like, I can come approve things, I can be on site. Like, I don’t know why they didn’t just call me.

Anyways, so that wasn’t happening.

So everything’s good. The plan’s done. We finally worked through a million rounds of edits and got the right tiles and got everything going on.

And it’s been a little bit since we did this project, so I’m going back and trying to remember.

At one point we hit such detriment everywhere. It was almost like—and I hate to say this—but you know how, like, when we get in a negative mind space, everything just starts going negative?

Okay. So my client was under a lot of stress with a multiple of personal reasons, family reasons and everything else. And I knew this.

And so they moved to an Airbnb down the street so that, you know, it just happened to be open, but I think that it worked out.

And I think they would say to their benefit, the contractors would say to their detriment, but they were two blocks away, so they could just drive or walk down at any time.

Morgan Friedman: But that’s another good risk factor to keep in mind. Sometimes when a client is too close, on the one hand, you need their feedback, but that’s a thin line between feedback and micromanagement.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Well, it is. Well, and also, she was a manager of a huge hotel chain. She was really high up at this hotel. Her skill set was amazing, but she’d never been through a remodel before, and she’d never been to a remodel, you know, of her own home.

And they were on the fence of deciding whether or not to move or whether or not to stay in their home, you know, so they were teetering back and forth, and they just couldn’t find anything they really liked, which led them to do this remodel.

And it was a huge investment. I mean, $400,000 to $600,000 can buy a whole another house in a certain price. So that’s a huge investment.

So we’re to the point where we’re getting all that. We got past the paint and we’re getting through all that.

She’s having issues at her rental house. There’s like mold issues, lawyers involved, a lot of stuff going on there as well.

And while that’s going on, I remember we got to this point where the person doing the tile—it’s because the tile came from Italy, remember? And we did the entire bathroom.

It went from painted walls to all every tile everywhere. The shower tile was on every single wall except for where the commode was. All behind the—the every wall was this marble, beautiful, gorgeous tile. It was beautiful. It came out stunning.

But because of that, the tile installer, the owner wanted to install it himself.

Well, his wife ended up getting diagnosed with cancer, and so he had to take time off, and then nobody else could really take over that project.

So that kind of puts some things behind.

So then we start seeing a negative mindset pattern happening on, you know, going with the clients, and rightly so.

They just didn’t understand. And I don’t know if it was—there was just a communication. You think you’re speaking clearly to somebody, but it doesn’t mean they’re always understanding you.

So you have the contractor, all of their subcontractors, myself, and then them, and she and I had been working together almost for a year at this point.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah. It’s—by the way, you’re saying that reminds me of a dynamic I noticed when I was single and dating, where there’s often a point in a relationship—it’s natural in relationships, you fight a little bit. No one is 100% compatible, but what I’ve noticed is any relationship in the last months before it ends, every little thing turns into a fight.

Things that when energy was good early on, whatever, it’s fine, but they all become triggers. So it’s interesting that there’s this client equivalent of that dynamic as well.

Jodi Koch Peterman: It is. Well, and just think about it. It’s the trust that breaks down, right?

So I wasn’t really seeing everything. I wasn’t on site every day because that wasn’t my job. She thought that that’s what would be happening, but that’s not what was in my contract or communicated.

Up until a certain point, I just started getting heavily involved, which then I think caused problems with the contractor.

But anyways, so we’re to the point where the tile guy’s wife gets cancer and they’re behind in finishing.

And then what happens is the guys doing the kitchen—the kitchen cabinets were a huge point of contention.

So the kitchen cabinets were getting done. They were ordered. They were taking forever. It was like the guy was like another week, another week, another week, another week.

And then he said—he told the contractor, or somehow it got conveyed to the client—that the factory that was making the cabinets got hit by a tornado in Kansas and their cabinets were about ready to ship and got decimated.

And as that was happening, the closet for her beautiful Barbie Dreamhouse closet, right, those cabinets were getting delivered and installed, and they came in sage green when they were supposed to be white.

The reason they came in sage green is because the person who was doing the closets—they hired a new office assistant, and that office assistant ordered Barbie Dreamhouse closet in green, and then another client wanted green and she got white.

Two different closets. All had to be reordered.

Morgan Friedman: All had to be reordered.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Okay. So we’re dealing with that.

Then we’re waiting and waiting and waiting for the cabinets. There’s still kitchen cabinets still aren’t coming. Still aren’t coming.

And those cabinets that just ended up being a disaster.

Then the guy—the cabinet guy—stopped getting involved. He stopped communicating with the contractor or the client and went MIA.

And I knew something was very wrong because the first time I met them, he and I think it was his wife or significant other or partner—she was kind of like the designer for the cabinets and then he was the person.

And so we met on site and I had all of my samples, my fabric samples, everything. I was looking at everything. We were fine-tuning everything. We were fine.

And she started questioning everything. She started getting the client like, “Oh, are you really sure you want that grout color?”

And I’m like, “What are you doing?”

This is another sign of, like, real breakdown in the end of a relationship, when every little thing, even the most minor stuff, becomes questioned.

Morgan Friedman: Well, I know. Well, she had no reason to be questioning me. She was a cabinet designer. I was the interior designer, and I had been on the project for a year and a half now. And she’s coming in and this is her first day meeting everybody. Who is she to tell us what she’s not even involved in the tile? Like, I don’t even understand where all that came from.

Jodi Koch Peterman: I guess it was just a lesson for me to learn and grow and just cap it.

But yeah, anyways, we worked through the designs. He stopped communicating.

Turns out that he took the money and ran. The contractor was doing legal stuff against him. He ended up getting thrown in jail, from what I know.

Morgan Friedman: Whoa.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah, it was crazy.

And then now the closet Barbie’s Dreamhouse closet cabinets are coming in. But then all of a sudden he went MIA and we couldn’t get a hold of him.

Come to find out he had had a heart attack.

Morgan Friedman: Oh my goodness.

Jodi Koch Peterman: I know. It goes on and on and on and on and on.

So at this point now she’s really got mold in the place she’s staying in and everything’s a mess, and I just feel so bad.

And she has a—calls me breaking down, and it just sets my nervous system on edge because I don’t know what to do because it’s out of my control.

And I’m like, okay, what would you want to have happen to you?

She’s panicking, like—so then I got more involved, and I never—I’m just like, I’m not even going to charge you. I’m just going to get more involved.

So, I was involved for another eight months without even getting paid because we went almost two years by the time furniture and stuff was installed, by the time we were finished with the project.

But like, then the tile from Italy—and they didn’t order enough, or they wanted it in an extra space, and so we had to get more, but then nobody was carrying it in the United States.

So then they had to order it from Italy and have it created and kept.

I mean, it just—it literally went on and on and on and on and on.

Morgan Friedman: By the way, I want to say I think you did something good to stay on so much longer without getting paid. I know a lot of contractor types that I’ve hired who would be more like, “Nope, it ends at this stage.” So, like, sorry. Oh, you want me to do more? Sure, but you have to pay me more as well.

Jodi Koch Peterman: I felt bad for them, and I felt bad for the contractor because the trust and communication had broke down.

I was not there, but there were—the contractor did the best they could to hold. It was just a miscommunication. She—they didn’t understand, and the contractor, I don’t know whatever the contractor was saying. I can’t really say because I wasn’t there for all the back and forth, but both of them called me at their wits’ end, and I’m in the middle like a sandwich.

And I’m like, the client paid me, so I have to, like, you know, help and call out.

But then the client started doing things like—I would say, like, this is questionable. Like, I would ask him about this, and then the contractor called me in for a meeting and said, “You said all of these things.”

I’m like, “I never said it like that. That’s taken out of context.”

Like, the client was telling them I said they had to do this and that. Like, she was using some of my words maybe in a different way, or at least that’s what the contractor said.

I never had a call with the client. I was just very careful about my moving forward.

Morgan Friedman: So, what do you think is the subtext of all of the miscommunication problems? Because miscommunication is normal, but usually it’s fixed, or like where it has some fights and, okay, you understand each other and so on. But why do you think it got so out of hand?

Jodi Koch Peterman: I think it just—the trust issues. It just sounded like excuse after excuse after excuse.

Like, I went through this during COVID with some of my clients. Like, it sounded completely made up, right?

Okay, so we’re in the middle of COVID. My companies were doing like maybe 500 orders a day before COVID, right? Like, that’s their average daily, you know, that they would get those orders in.

During COVID it went up to 2,000 to 3,000 orders a day because people are sitting on their crappy furniture thinking, “I need a new sofa. I need new chairs.” Everybody was buying furniture because there was nothing else to buy. You weren’t spending it on going out. So everybody was buying new furniture.

Then you have this—in February they had a huge snowstorm in Texas, and that’s where they make the foam. 90% of the foam in the United States was made in Texas.

The weight of the flat roof, the weight that was on there because of the heavy snow, crushed the roof in and destroyed not only the stock of foam, but it destroyed the machines that made the foam.

So now you’ve got people with all these orders backed up, backed up.

One client, it took a year and a half to get their sofa because it was custom-made, and every little thing that happened—if your fabric you picked was discontinued, your project got pushed to the end. Then you had to start all over again because they were just trying to crank out as much as they could.

It was like—it was so crazy.

So people kept thinking I was, like, taking the money and going on vacations or something.

I’m like, “No, that’s not how it works. You have to pay for the furniture before you before the order goes through, otherwise it’s not going to make it.”

And so I would have to call my reps and say, “Email me. Email me what’s going on so I can send it to the client on your letterhead.”

Like, I got a check in the mail one day during COVID for like $3,500.

I’m like, “What is this check for?”

And I called the company, and it was based out of Canada, and I’m like, “What is this for?”

They’re like, “Oh, your stuff’s at the bottom of the ocean.”

I’m like, “Pardon me?”

What?

They’re like, “Yeah, all the ports in California are closed.”

So they were coming around with all the stuff on a container, you know, on a ship, and the ports were closed.

And they’re like, “We can’t keep sitting this on a ship.”

And so it was cheaper for them—this is why I won’t use this company anymore—cheaper for them to dump it into the ocean and take their ship back to Canada than it was for them to just wait it out or figure out another route to get it here.

Morgan Friedman: This detail is my favorite detail in your story so far. I never even imagined anything like that.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah, COVID was crazy crazy.

Yeah, that’s why I’m like, I don’t—I try and do everything with the highest integrity. I am definitely not perfect. I am human, and I just try and do what I can to make it right.

So, we got to the point—maybe you’ll like this detail.

So all these things are going wrong. The client’s losing it. Like, we still have months and months to go.

And I’m like, listen, I’m a very spiritual person, and I’m like, there is something going on that we need to get out. I’m pretty woo woo. So I will show you. I have my little smudge sage stick right here.

I’m like, we’re gonna go sage you, your house, and your dog. Like, I’m going to sage your whole house.

So I went over. I’m like, is it okay?

She goes, “Do whatever you need to do. I don’t want to continue this way anymore.”

So I literally saged the house. I tried to infuse so much love and remove the negativity and whatever was blocking her to have her open her mind up.

She just—it was just—there was no changing her mind.

These contractors were evil. And then in the end, I became evil somehow.

I still don’t know what I did wrong, but the house looks beautiful.

Morgan Friedman: You got a good story and a beautiful house.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah, there was more stuff, little things that happened, but those were the major, major ones.

I’ve never been on a project where the contractor has the cabinet person go to jail, or the cabinet person lying, saying that, you know, it got hit by a tornado and that’s why all the cabinets were lost.

I literally for the longest time thought that’s what happened until they told me the truth.

The contractor’s like, “Nope, they took the money and ran, and yeah, he’s got a warrant out and he’s in jail.”

I’m like, “Awesome.”

So then, you know, the clients are like, “Well, who are you hiring?”

You know, and like, yeah, I don’t know.

Morgan Friedman: Okay, so wow, so many amazing details here. Let’s see if we can get some lessons out of this, because sometimes just so many different things go wrong, but usually it’s just like this one little thing, that one little thing. But here, it all came together.

Jodi Koch Peterman: No, it was—there are some good lessons.

I would say the first one that I learned, and I credit her to it, and I told her this: I started offering a concierge service because of what she went through.

I started offering—so that’s how I kind of came up with my 5D process, Designing in 5D.

So the first D is like the conversation we have. Are we a good match? Do you like my personality? Because we could be together for two years. Who knows? So you’ve got to like who I am and what I stand for, right? And what the company stands for.

So that’s 1D, having that conversation.

2D is where we’re showing you plans in 2D. Do you want that wall? Do you want to remove that wall? Do you want to put this sliding door here or do you want to put a barn door? Those are the type of conversations in 2D.

And then in 3D, we’re taking the 2D and putting it vertical, showing you renderings and how it’s going to look and feel when you walk through the space, right?

And then she helped me create 4D. That’s what her—that’s what going through everything with her.

4D is the compassion and the bridging the gap of communication between the client, contractor, and designer. We’re along for the whole ride, so we will show up on all the things, the big meetings, going through.

That’s that lesson that I offered. But that comes at a price. You know, if you’re going to pay for me to be on a project for six months, that comes with a— but I have your back. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it’s a concierge-level service.

Morgan Friedman: Yes, it is. And then?

Jodi Koch Peterman: And then the 5D is the transcendence part.

And that’s where I would—I wish we would have got together with the contractor.

That’s where we talk about what went right, what went wrong, how we could do better, how can we do better next time, what can we do to help, you know, with the client from here on then, you know, here on out.

Morgan Friedman: I love the process, and I love how you not just learned from it and you changed how you did it, but you created your own process and came up with a clever name.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes. And I tried to do a much better job upfront communicating with clients, like what to expect.

And I think maybe some of that got lost in translation of the excitement of doing my—I think it wasn’t my first project, my second. It was my first big remodel project here, but working on that with them because it was so much fun.

I had fun and I really, really liked her a lot. We got along great. I felt like she cared for me. I probably got a little too, you know, personal and friendly, but that happens when you’re two women working together, you know.

I got to know her a lot better.

I think I could have even done a better job if I would have asked some more questions in the beginning and give her the freedom to do it.

And that’s another thing I offer.

So now when I ask questions, I’m like, do you want to be involved in it?

Because some people really love the process of the design. Okay, they want to be there to help pick things out. Not just like, here’s two options, but they want to maybe have like four or five options and then discuss it.

They’re that personality of the Virgos. They need all of that detailed information before they can make a decision and just kind of talking it through rather than us using our design brains and design—here’s what we think you should do and why.

You know, they want to be more part of the process.

So, we’ve also developed something where we can, you know, slow the process down a little bit and get people more involved and like give them a little homework, and then we come back and we meet again just to make sure we’re on the right page.

Because it all stems from getting your true north, right? Like finding that one spot that you can move forward with.

And that finding that spot can’t be rushed because a lot of people know what they don’t like, which is what she did. She knew what she didn’t like.

But then it was like, okay, I kind of went off of like our budget’s only $400,000, but they think they ended up spending like $700,000 or $800,000, you know?

So, a lot of people don’t want to share their budget, the B-word, with the designers because they think that we’re going to take it crazy.

I think if we would have started out with crazy, then they could have backed down a little bit more easily and really went in because I thought we’re set with LVP flooring throughout the house, you know.

But now you’re adding $75,000 or $50,000 more onto the budget.

So, just asking some basic, basic questions.

Morgan Friedman: By the way, clients—

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah.

Morgan Friedman: Every industry, clients don’t want to share the budget because they think that you’ll take advantage of them.

I like this approach of basically building up a trust with them in the beginning and saying, “Hey, if you’re upfront with me about the actual cost, it’s much easier to plan around that as well.”

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. Well, actually, then I can probably credit her to helping me—or the situation or the project—to building what I call it was a cumulative of a lot of clients.

A lot of clients like—so for that design service to work with them, I think it was like $24,000.

So a lot of people don’t have that money to sink into a designer up there, even though I tell people you’re going to pay close to that anyways by the time you take all of your time out of your day that you’re going to have to go in and pick and do and create and all that and be there for every meeting and detail everything out.

Because they’re not going to know, how high do you want that trim? Or do you want the hole in your sink? All those things need to be detailed out.

You’re either going to pay for it by having to do it yourself, or you’re going to be like, “Oh, whoa. I don’t know if I like that. Please change that,” or “I want to do this,” or “Let’s change that wall.”

A lot of changes happen mid-construction that are not planned out. Even if you have a detailed plan, you’re walking through, you’re like, “This feels awkward.”

Because looking at a plan on 2D isn’t the same as walking it in real life.

So a lot of changes happen that way.

And then also, if you’re working with a builder that—or, you know, a contractor that goes off of allowances, if you’re doing a house remodel, the first thing they’re going to have you do that includes the kitchen is pick out your appliances.

And you’re going to go over because they don’t know what you want for appliances.

Appliances range from a package of $5,000 to $200,000 if you want a walk-in freezer fridge. Do you know what I mean?

Like, so, options there.

And they don’t know that you have all these things stored on your Pinterest board and your Instagram, and then everything that matters to you might not matter to me.

Some people really want the light fixtures and the backsplash. They don’t really care about the floor or this or that.

So when you do it the way that we do it, which is everything gets designed up front, the builder can then give you a budget and say, the flooring you want is $30,000. If you upgrade to tile, it’s going to be $75,000. And then your light fixture package is this.

So somebody can say, “We’re $100,000 over budget. Let’s spend less on the light fixtures and really do that tile floor I want.”

But until a client or a human being sees a dollar amount assigned with each thing all in a row, so you can say, like a menu, “That’s not important to me. I don’t want the lettuce and tomato. I don’t need to pay $2.25 more for lettuce and tomato on my burger. I’m fine with a plain hamburger. But what I do want is I do want the cheese and I do want the tater tots instead of the French fries.”

I don’t know. You’re custom creating what you want, and you can see it because you have dollars and cents.

And that is an emotion, because people would rather spend X more on this than that.

So, fundamentally, the client budgets are always limited, but they’ll always want everything. Therefore, part of the game is to figure out the right tradeoffs.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. And that’s why I designed everything the way they want it, which is I tell them it’s going to be over budget. It’s going to be over budget, but there’ll be ways to cut back.

Do we need to put that wallpaper right now? Maybe we just paint an accent color right now and hold off on that wallpaper, and then you can get everything else you want.

Or maybe we don’t do—we do the window treatments, but we don’t do all the new furniture right now. Maybe we budget that in and order in phases that furniture.

I mean, there’s always ways to rob Peter to pay Paul.

It’s just, you can’t go back and add geothermal if you want it. Like, that’s something we’ve got to budget in right away.

You can’t go back and, you know, add a whirlpool jet tub if you really want that.

Or now you want to add a pool to your backyard, but we already put the water on this side, and if you wanted a pool, we needed to put it on that side.

You know, those things all need to be talked about.

But that’s why I’m like, dream big and then you can always dial it back.

And it doesn’t mean you have to give up everything. It just lets you see what matters most to you to move forward with what you want.

And some people just want what they want and they’re going to figure out the budget.

But I would rather know going in what it is than be surprised.

I don’t like surprises. Budget surprises are never good.

So that’s why I like, let’s get it all planned. Let’s get it all detailed. Let’s see how much it is, and then dial up or dial down however you want to.

Morgan Friedman: Question. A couple of the incredible disasters, many disasters within the mega disaster of this revolve around poor contractor choices.

How have you—So, obviously, you have to work with someone to really see what they’re like, so it’s just, okay, I’m not working with that guy again. But did this lead to you changing the companies or subcontractors that you choose and recommend?

Jodi Koch Peterman: Well, at this point, I don’t know if it’s so much the contractor. These contractors I love. And if they wanted to have a conversation with me and work out how we could communicate and take care of—

Morgan Friedman: Actually, hold on. I know nothing about construction, so I used the wrong word. I didn’t mean contractors. I meant vendors. There’s like the cabinet guy that disappeared. There’s the thing on the boat where they sent it back from the port. So I meant like, there’s an issue not with your work, but with the vendors that you chose. Sorry, I didn’t use the right word.

Jodi Koch Peterman: No, no, no, no. It was good.

No, because sometimes it’s just communication between the contractors, but I would work with those contractors. We got to sit down and figure out how we work together, but I don’t get the energy that they want to do it.

But as far as subcontractors go, my vendors, I usually only take care of furniture. The contractors, the general contractor, does all the ordering for flooring and tile and all of that. So they’re in charge of the people that are actually going to do the work themselves.

Morgan Friedman: I see. Yeah. I see. So basically, the general contractor that you work with hired these other vendors that then—

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes.

Morgan Friedman: Like, the boat turned around, disappeared with the money and so on.

Jodi Koch Peterman: The boat—the boat people, that was my vendor for some furniture and fixtures that I bought for somebody during COVID.

The tile installers, they buy all the tile, and the tile—they pick the people they want to do the install. They pick the cabinet people. They buy all of the stuff. That’s what the general contractor does.

Morgan Friedman: So, actually, I think the interesting lesson from this particular point is when a client hires someone, they’re not just relying on you being hired, but all the other people that you delegate to and hire. So part of the game is making sure that, okay, these guys will deliver.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. Part of it is making sure that the contractor and designer—I think the best way to do business is to let the designer and the client design, but there’s—the contractor has to be involved at some point in the beginning to get the 2D plan working.

Because designers, we know enough to be dangerous, or at least I do, but they might say, “Hey, if you move this wall, we need to do this and let’s get an engineer.”

Like, they’re going to have more input on the—if it’s a remodel, tearing down, you know, type.

So it’s good to have them involved up front.

And what a lot of contractors get frustrated with is they’re not going to give you detailed information because they’re not getting paid for it. They haven’t even been hired yet. We’re just working on the design.

So I said, I am—if anybody out there is a contractor and is looking to—this sounds good and they want to partner, I’m looking for a contractor who will partner with me so that we can go in together and do projects where they get paid.

They have a flat fee to go on the design side to go so far with me, and then they drop off, and then I’ll just keep them abreast when we get everything done and design. Then they can come and bid it out.

But they just need to get paid for that.

There’s a value of having a contractor involved in the first part of the design. But there’s a huge value in having a designer in the beginning, getting it all done before the contractor really bids anything out or tells you, “Sure, I can do that kitchen for $100,000.” Or, “Yeah, we can redo that.”

Because it’s just a number in the air to get the job.

And that’s why everybody’s so frustrated in this business coming from a consumer standpoint, because they know they’re going to go over budget 20–30%.

Because that number—they gave you—is not based on anything other than that job that they did. It doesn’t know what you want, that you want really fancy built-ins or a sound system downstairs or anything. It has no idea.

It’s just a number.

Morgan Friedman: I could just make up a number and then go over budget.

Jodi Koch Peterman: I had a client who was building a house. She was from New Jersey. She had a business in New Jersey, and then she moved to Des Moines, Iowa and had a business there.

And I was one of her clients. Told her what I did. She’s like, “I just need help. I’m just so buried. I have like 50-some light fixtures to pick out.”

And I’m like, “Well, what’s your budget?”

She goes, “I have no idea.”

She goes, “But I cannot go over $1.2 million for this house. I just know that.”

I’m like, “Okay.”

She gave me her contractor’s name. I called the contractor, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to help her pick out light fixtures. She’s hiring me. How many light fixtures do I have and how many for each room? Like, what do I need to pick out and what’s my budget? What’s the allocation for this?”

Because at this point, she’s doing it the old way by allowances. You’re picking out the stuff.

And he goes, “What do you mean, budget?”

And I go, “Well, she said she couldn’t go over $1.2 million for this house. So, I’m assuming you have a budget or an allowance for me to pick out these light fixtures.”

He goes, “She’s already at $2.5 for the house.”

And I go, “Excuse me.”

He goes, “She’s probably at $2.5 million for this house.”

And I go, “What? Are you going to break this news to her or do I? And how much do I have? I don’t even know how much money do I even have to pick out 55 light fixtures?”

He goes, “$5,000.”

And I’m like, “That’s $100 a light fixture, less than for a $2.5 million house. I have less than $100 a light fixture.”

So I had to call her and say, “We really need to stop what you’re doing and get with your contractor.”

She’s so busy going coastal, like doing her business, doing her thing.

One of the things was she didn’t realize that she okayed a glaze, which was very expensive. Glaze to go on—

Morgan Friedman: What is a glaze?

Jodi Koch Peterman: A glaze that goes on top of cabinets to give it that antique look.

Morgan Friedman: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Not a glazed doughnut. That’s what I was thinking.

Jodi Koch Peterman: That’s what I was thinking. How did I know?

So, she picked this glaze out and she thought it was just going on the kitchen island, and she approved it, but what they sent her was everything.

So this expensive glaze went on everything in her house.

She probably spent $26,000 more than she needed to just on the glaze alone.

And right then and there she could have hired me to do the whole design for her entire house.

That’s what I’m saying. People make these mistakes and they don’t understand.

Morgan Friedman: It’s an incredible lesson in business that still surprises me. You really have to be on top of every little dollar because if you’re not, it just gets so out of hand easily.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. Well, that was just a miscommunication.

She thought everything that she was sending the contractor that she picked out was just in budget, that he would let her know if it wasn’t.

And he was just like, she wants what she wants. I’m just going to get whatever she wants.

So she ended up having to sell, I believe, a family place in New Jersey to take—to cover it.

Morgan Friedman: Wow. Awful situation.

Earlier in our talk, you used the words to say that in the earlier part of the story that the woman was a people pleaser.

And there’s this interesting thing when people are people pleasers. What happens is they don’t want to say no. They just say yes, yes, yes. Oh, and then I’ll change my mind later.

But this sort of attitude is, say, “Okay, she wants that. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I’ll just do it,” rather than saying, “Hey, this will go over budget.”

And you see this on both sides, the vendor side and the client side.

Jodi Koch Peterman: No, no one wants to be the bad guy to say no.

Yeah, it’s a whole thing.

And I know we got to be pretty close friends towards the middle of everything, and she would be texting me at 11 o’clock at night, and I’m like, my nervous system was shot.

I’m like, because that’s when she’s up and that’s when I’m dead asleep.

And then I would be on vacation, and I’m like, “Look, can you call my office?”

She didn’t trust anybody in my office, so she was calling me while I was on vacation. I couldn’t relax.

Like, every single time I wanted to go somewhere, it seemed like another catastrophe was happening.

And I’m like—and she didn’t like, because she thought we were friends, that she could call me.

I felt like I was supposed to be at her backend call when we were friends.

And I’m like, “No, we can still have boundaries.”

Or like, if when she ordered furniture, she had a question about something, I’m like, “Can you call Deb?”

Because Deb is my procurement manager and she handles all that. I don’t handle it.

But she just wanted to tell me and have me tell Deb.

And I’m like, I’m in the middle of 50 projects right now and I’m driving, and you know, like, there’s so much going on. I’m going to forget it, and I want you to have the best customer service possible.

If you could just let Deb know on that, that would be great.

But anyways, yeah, unfortunately, like, I don’t know what happened with it.

They—I know they had their one-year review and she had some things fixed, but I think at some point either the contractor was blaming me and it maybe made sense to her on something.

But I’ve reached out to her four or five different times in the past two years to try and see because I really loved her. She was really special.

And she made me laugh. She was so funny and she was there.

She was amazing. She was amazing.

I was going in the middle of going through my divorce, and she invited me at New Year’s Eve because my ex-husband—not ex-husband at the time, but he was my husband—he left and he was somewhere else.

I think he was in Iowa because we might have been separated at the time.

Anyway, she invited me with her and her husband on New Year’s Eve.

And then she was so sweet. She booked a little hotel so I could wake up fresh at a new—a new year, a new start.

And I just thought that that was so, so sweet.

But then I don’t know what happened.

Morgan Friedman: There’s this interesting relationship when you actually become friends with a client where sometimes it’s unequal like this, where from your eyes it was actually a true friendship, and that’s shown not just by what you’re saying, but like now that the project is long gone, you’re still trying to reach out to her.

But from her point of view, it’s more, okay, someone I’m working with. Hey, let’s be friends. Let’s be nice. Okay, oh, we had a fight. Hate friendship, over.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. You know, everybody’s in your life for a reason or a season.

I definitely learned a lot from that project and just about the area here and the people and everything else.

I just—I wished it was a better experience for her.

That’s where it hurts, because I feel like that was just the contractor and I not getting on the same page or not, you know.

Like, I’m like, I want to be there to approve these things. I want to be there for the electrical walkthrough. The client paid for all these things, but then they just do it and then call me when I was in the middle of somewhere or on an airplane saying, “Hey, where does this switch go?”

And I’m like, “Follow the electrical plans. You had the electrical walkthrough without me.”

Like, I’m supposed to be there for that, you know.

Or, you know, the trim walkthrough.

It’s just the communication side of things just kind of broke down, and they’re used to doing things their way.

You know, everybody’s just used to doing and handling it their own.

I’m a little bit more involved because I really care about my clients and my projects, and I want them to go well, and it’s my name.

And yeah, in the end, I think it came out really, really beautiful.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, it’s a—it’s one of the emotionally harder parts of working, that sometimes even with the best intentions, things just go wrong in a way that you can’t—you can’t save it.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah.

Morgan Friedman: The door is always open in case she’s listening.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes.

Morgan Friedman: And my woo side would say life has different acts, and you pointed out that everyone’s in your life for a reason.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Absolutely.

Morgan Friedman: I would point out everyone’s in your life for a reason at a particular moment, season, for a particular reason. So you needed to learn those lessons at those times.

Jodi Koch Peterman: There were so many lessons learned on that project for sure.

There’s so—in every account of life, in every part of this—I’ve been in business for 22 years—in every phase there have been lessons learned.

And then you get to a part of your life where you’re like, hey, this feels familiar. You know, this feels like the same pattern.

And then you start looking at things and saying, this doesn’t work for me anymore. This is not the person that I want to be or who I want to become.

So what is it that’s causing me to go in these loop patterns?

And then just trying to heal and move on from that and using different modalities to do that.

Like, I went to a retreat in Costa Rica. I mean, there’s just so many different things you do to go heal and move and grow to become the best version of you as humanly possible.

Morgan Friedman: Yes, those are beautiful words and perfect words to end our little podcast on. Wonderful.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah, this was a great story. So many lessons.

Morgan Friedman: And my favorite lesson here—just to end with—is I love the story, or the substory, of the furniture being thrown overboard and them sending you a check.

And what’s great about that, not just the great imagery, but people who are good at organizing and managing often say, “Oh, I’ll help with the house. I’ll organize everything. I’m good at organizing things.”

But this story really shows there are problems and things that can go wrong that you can’t even conceive of.

I would never have imagined that would happen.

Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking of all that stuff just sitting in our ocean just rotting right now.

It makes me disgusted. Like, the integrity of that is just gross.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah. And for so many different reasons. There’s environmental reasons, but also trying to do good for the client and keeping your contracts and so on.

So, so many great lessons.

Thank you, Jodi, for your time, and everyone who’s watched this, thank you for making it to the end, and we hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we had.

Until next time.