Explore Jody Costello's journey in the Remodeling Industry

Visually, the thing I first thought about was a tree or plant that has no roots. Without those roots, it cannot survive. That got me thinking about my work in the construction industry because I have a connection through my husband who has a background in this industry. I personally don’t have any connection. I was sort of thrown into it, “baptism by fire” if you will. It all began when we got into a situation that was very devastating in terms of renovating our existing home, that’s kind of where that whole thing started. – Jody Costello

I’m Portuguese. Portuguese was my first language; I couldn’t speak English. My parents are from the island of Madeira which was where I ended up getting married. My husband fell in love with the island and the people there. Growing up, for me, I also grew up in a Portuguese community. Tradition was for girls to get married. A lot of us didn’t go to college, some of us did. I had a wanderlust to travel. I started college but decided to drop out and travel. I went through just living and working, I was in medical device sales. I had a background working with physicians, medical assistants and also working in the fitness industry for a while, it’s all related. Was also working with different marketing companies that specifically marketed doctors. I did that for quite a long time. I traveled a lot during that time and got tired of it, especially in Los Angeles. So, that’s my history, what I’ve been doing. – Jody Costello

No, I didn’t. All of my experience and expertise is not something that can be taught, it’s something you really need to experience. I’m somebody that has been in the trenches that knows. I have experience working with attorneys in the industry along with the enforcement chief, working for 17 years. When we had the wildfires here in California, there were 2,800 homes that were lost. I was asked to speak at the “Don’t get scammed” panel. I was one of the experts along with the BBB, construction law attorneys and investigators that I had previously worked with. We were there to help consumers and homeowners understand how to avoid getting involved with unethical contractors, what the contracting process is like and what they need to look for. We did four trainings in different parts of the county because different parts were affected by the wildfires. That was a wonderful experience because I worked side by side with some of these people. We came out with some data on what was going on with consumers, what they were doing right and wrong. It’s a school of hard knocks. – Jody Costello

It wasn’t planned. It was not in my horizon; this is what life throws at us. I had decided to quit my job at medical device sales because we needed to renovate our existing home to bring my mother to live with us. She had a diagnosis that she literally had three or four years, I wanted to make sure she spent it with us. I traveled too much and I was the only person they could reach out too. She was getting sick and I was always out of town. We decided to do that addition to our home so my mum could stay there with our caregiver. That was the reason for the renovation. Sadly, I deferred to my husband on the choice of contractors because that’s his background. At that time, in 1999, construction was in the height of it, people were crazy busy, nobody was taking our calls. We couldn’t get any contractor to come out and when we did, the information we were getting too vague. People would look at our plans and didn’t even want to touch it. It was a mess. We ended up choosing a salesperson who was very persistent for about eight months. Long story short, that was not a good choice. The contractor had a history of disciplinary action but hadn’t been revealed to the public, it hadn’t been disclosed yet. When we checked his license, all seemed well and his referrals were fabulous. It was only until we got into our renovation process that we started having problems with contractors, a lot of no shows and my husband was starting to see some shoddy work that was happening. There was little communication, it was very difficult for us to reach that company. That kind of started the downward spiral and all these happened only four months after we signed the contract. According to California’s contractors’ law, you have to start within a certain time and he missed it but we didn’t know that at the time. That’s why I stress that you have to understand contractor laws, what is and isn’t. it’s very important for consumers and contractors as well. That whole thing started falling apart. There was an instance at the turn of the year 2000, while welcoming the new millennia, our contractor took off for a couple of weeks and left our house uncovered. I have a three-story house on a hill and he left it open in December. We were exposed to a horrible rain storm, the house leaked, they hadn’t tethered down some of the wood. There we were at the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve my husband was trying to tie things down, cover the house. It was insane. Their end was the problem and we quickly retained a construction law attorney to see where we were at because they were not returning our calls. When you have a situation like that and the contractors are unresponsive, that’s a real issue. – Jody Costello

What happened was that I started working with construction law attorneys who advised me to file a complaint with the Contractors State Licensing Board. Our attorney showed us a new license with a disciplinary action who wasn’t here seven months earlier because it was still ongoing. There was also a lawsuit he was involved in, which wasn’t disclosed. I teach people how to get around and find out that kind of stuff. Nonetheless, I was shocked. I immediately filed a complaint with the Contractors Board and the response was poor. I had to wonder from a consumer standpoint whether they cared. At the time, the California governor had decentralized all the state workers so they could work from home. They held no accountability to the work they were doing. My case was falling through the cracks and I was fit to be tied. At the same time, the head of the Contractors State Licensing Board was under fire, the media got involved, the biggest newspapers in California wrote articles too. So, the news started coming out and there was so much at stake that I just said l that I had had enough, it is crazy. There’s no oversight, those people had no idea what they’re doing in terms of their staff. I just got on the phone and asked for the person in charge, and was persistent for a couple of days until I got a hold of him. The former guy had gotten fired and they had a new enforcement chief and a new register for the board. Things blew up in San Diego where 47 homeowners got ripped off by one guy, one contractor. I had already launched my website because I was documenting everything for our attorneys. Before you know it, I got in touch with the media locally. People started reaching out. An investigator reporter took us under her wing, approached the contractors board, and set up a meeting. Sadly, we were 80 homeowners who got ripped off mostly by one guy and took the board to task. I remember there was a new chief and they were shocked because people were extremely upset. He had no explanation on why they gave that guy a great rating. What happened is, from there on, I “stalked” the contractors board, went to other meetings, I voiced my opinions. They were surprised a consumer would take the time to do that but when you have over a hundred thousand dollars in construction defects, you’re motivated. I was shocked at the lack of oversight, education and protection for consumers. They didn’t really know what was happening with their contractors. Everything has changed now. For three years, I was in a legal battle, which I won. I was also in a battle with the Contractors Board, which I also won. I became good friends with the new enforcement chief. We worked together for 17 years, I attended their meetings, offered suggestions, was involved in some inside staff meetings on how they could better help the consumer. I learned everything about contracting, both from the construction side and consumer side and where things can fall apart. Along with that, homeowners started emailing me because I was in the media so much. The LA Times and the Sacramento Bee really really descended on the board and made them restructure everything. I was part of that and they listened to me. I gave a lot of suggestions and a lot of my learning, my roots in that aspect were from that experience, working with construction law attorneys, identifying where we went wrong. I also got involved with a legal professor who wrote the legislative bills for the state of California. She wanted to work with me because she was assigned to monitor the board because they were not doing things correctly. I worked with her for a few years, and testified before the State Senate. It wasn’t something I pursued; it came to me. – Jody Costello

It took me a couple of years until I decided to do it. I launched the site in January 2000 after the debacle that left my house leaking and the contractor gone. It was interesting because at that time there were a lot of these kinds of things happening not only around the state but around the country. The economy was booming, banks were giving money for everything, people were going crazy but on the other hand, there were problems happening. The media got a hold of me because they loved the name “Contractors from hell”. That sort of put me on a path of realizing people wanted to talk to me about my experience and what I would recommend. That went on for years. I realized that people were reaching out to me asking for help. I had so much empathy for them because I had already been there, I knew what it cost us and it was devastating. I was able to help a lot of people. I never charged for my services. I just felt that I overcame so much and was successful and despite what happened to me, I went on to do work with some of the people I had had a fight against. I felt like, this was what I needed to do to help other people, I  had been given this amazing opportunity. That was part of it. I wasn’t going to monetize, that was part of my plan until about 2008 when I was getting asked for help constantly. Once you’ve lost money, it’s so hard to recoup it. There are steps people need to take to get themselves out of it. That’s when I decided I had had enough with all that nonsense. I decided I was going to create a bootcamp where I can lead people through the steps, the common pitfalls homeowners don’t know about that they can fall into and get them into trouble. That’s what I decided to do. I created it, launched it in 2009 and that’s when the economy tanked. The construction industry was hit the hardest. We suffered a lot here in California and the whole country was suffering as well. – Jody Costello

There are some main pointers that homeowners don’t realize. I always say: “You don’t know what you don’t know” and that’s what gets you into trouble. I was reading the L.A Times, I was in that particular article and there were some experts that were saying exactly what I teach. People get over their head when they get these free modeling projects. That’s because they don’t really understand the contracting process, the responsibilities of the contractor, what their own responsibilities are, what his and their rights are and they blindly sign things they don’t understand. I had already been dealing with things like this over the years. I identified several things that made people fall into traps. I was working with one construction consultant in New York and one in Texas and we came up with a plan to help homeowners. These two individuals were also contractors who worked with homeowners. They reached out to me and told me they taught classes in their respective cities. I told them I was putting together a boot camp that was going to be national and we pulled together, joined forces and came up with a blueprint. They hadn’t even thought of some of the points I made because they didn’t look at it from a consumer’s standpoint, although they were supposed to. I was able to share with them and they were able to share with me some of the challenges contractors have with homeowners and the project itself. That’s how the whole thing was born. I met up with the enforcement chief, presented my idea, went over it together and asked ourselves whether it was hitting home. From there, it started to take hold. My initial reason for doing that was because I was sick and tired of people getting ripped off because they didn’t know enough. It doesn’t have to happen; you can avoid it. An educated consumer is always a blessing because they understand what the contractors can be up against, know the rights of both sides, and what they need to do. They understand that whole process, are not blind and don’t think everything will just fall into place. – Jody Costello

As far as the vetting process goes, the bootcamp that I’ve created is the home remodeling bootcamp for women. The reason why it targets women is because going back to all the years people asking for help, it was all women. They were the mama-bears and she-bears. They were just losing it but these women were so receptive to not only rolling up their sleeves in order to know what they could do to fight back and how they could protect themselves. I decided to niche down. I’ve worked with both men and women but I really enjoy working with women. I want to empower them in this because it is a male dominated industry and women have such abilities to manage projects and are very detail-oriented. We are already charged with running our homes and families anyway, it’s just a natural extension. I really wanted to encourage women to step up, understand the contracting process, roll up their sleeves and learn about that. The vetting process is the foundation for having a successful outcome. Most homeowners don’t know a whole lot about construction, they just go on with it and can trust anybody. I’ve heard that happening so much over the years and that’s not a good thing. You might be lucky but we don’t want to run on luck, we want to run on facts. – Jody Costello

So, here’s what I’ve done. First of all, the media has been a great ally for me over the years. Whenever I would do a media mention or I would talk at a board meeting or be at a networking event people would find out about me. Word of mouth was also responsible but when the media got involved, people would come to me. I didn’t actively and aggressively market because I was really comfortable with the flow that I was involved in. I had some other projects I was working with outside of that but it was all organic and I really liked that. I did two things. Firstly, I got a PR coach so I could really understand how to pitch the media and raise my influence and authority in the industry. As a woman, it’s tough, you get prejudiced. That happened a lot in the beginning, primarily by contractors. The good contractors would go right on, understand they had to clean up. Social media has been influential too. I wasn’t really ganged in that aspect, even though that has changed to some degree now but I have a new way of doing things because of the pandemic. We have to acknowledge that angle. It put a halt and people didn’t want contractors on their homes, people were losing jobs, it was crazy. The environment, landscape changed which caused me to think about redoing something. It was time for me to pivot and think how can I make this work and make it better so that I can really reach more people. The truth of the matter is, renovating, especially the outdoors, is huge right now which is great for the industry. That is certainly one of the things that I’ve just done very organically. I was very blessed. I could’ve just done Facebook ads but my coaches’ advised me not to invest on that unless I really knew what I was doing. That’s where I’m at right now, what I’m doing. I got another coach because I believe we all need coaches. I live in an online world, and I have to take a different approach right now because Covid-19 has shifted so many things. I am looking to form joint partnerships with people, influencers, people in the industry. We share the same market and we need to know how can we serve the better, what can we do, what do they need to know, what do we have to offer, how can we help them while at the same time help ourselves to generate income, run a business. It’s a win-win but when you want to give so much more you have to find out how you can do that. That’s the pivot that I’ve been involved in these last few months. – Jody Costello

I want to increase my reach. It is a very noisy world in online business. It’s huge, it’s a multi-billion-dollar business. So, rising above the noise is one of the things I’m being more aggressive at. I did a summit last year; I was one of the presenters and home speakers on “Home sweet home”. It will be launching again in April. The summit was developed by a guy who was a builder who worked in Colorado for seventeen years, uprooted and ended up with his family in Arizona. He is still passionate about the building process and wanted to create a summit to help homeowners so he brought together some experts. I thought that was an interesting thing because I hadn’t seen a summit focused on the home improvement industry. I would have to say that he needs some more work to do in terms of attracting the right market for himself. He did acknowledge that there were some things that needed to be done better but don’t we all learn from our experiences? I’m kind of excited about that, I’m looking to get involved in the other summit. It’s about working with other people, thinking about how you can present what you know and use it to help people. – Jody Costello

For myself, branding was huge. I will tell you that your messaging really has to be clear. Even in the midst of all this stuff, I’m completely redoing some other things. I ended up getting a branding coach because I needed to make sure that my messaging was coming through. I knew there were some areas that needed improvement. You may know your work, what you do but it is important to question whether you are communicating that to the market that you are trying to help. So, I spent probably three months with my coach on a weekly basis, broke down everything and I wish I had done that years ago. It was really helpful but unfortunately that’s when Covid-19 hit. – Jody Costello

I think that the biggest mistake I’ve made is that I just didn’t place enough emphasis and value on what I do. That’s a common mistake with a lot of solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. As soon as I started involving myself with coaches. I have a PR coach, a business coach and a branding coach. They told me I had so much value and was not charging enough. This gets into the mindset. I had a lot of time during the pandemic to think that, whether the mind is fit. Consulting made me realize that after what I went through years ago and what was going on with the Covid-19 situation, I really needed to pay more attention to it. Mindset is really important. You have to come from a place of intention, confidence, value. You have to acknowledge that there are going to be obstacles but you should not allow those things to defeat you, you have to push through, find ways and pivot. That’s been a big thing for me. – Jody Costello

It’s one of the things that I’ve discovered not by myself. People tell me all the time that I persevere. Perseverance is innate in me; I don’t know where I got that. I think I was probably like that even as a little girl. Maybe it’s because I didn’t speak the language as a child even though I was born in this country. Having to go to schools where everybody did speak English was very difficult. There was shaming going on because I couldn’t speak the language. I couldn’t even spell my own name. I vividly remember telling myself that I was going to excel in English and become a straight As student. It all came true eventually. It’s all about perseverance and persistence. If you don’t have those two along with a belief in yourself, it’s easy to fall by the wayside and give up. As a solopreneur, entrepreneur, you’re going to constantly get hit. You have to be creative, rely on yourself and your skills. I always say that you need to have coaches that are going to help you navigate through the difficult times. That has been a great lesson for me. – Jody Costello

It takes some retrospection. I have to stop, walk away, have time to figure out why something happened, why something else didn’t work, why didn’t a particular group want to work with me. This is what I’ve been dealing with. I have to question whether it has to do with my messaging, whether I am not communicating who I am or what I can do. Maybe something didn’t work because I didn’t follow the right approach. Maybe that particular market didn’t have a need for what I offered. I’ll also talk about a very important issue. A lot of homeowners who go into these contracting experiences think they can do it themselves, that they don’t need to pay people like me because they think they know it all and later find out that they don’t. Afterwards, I get the call or email because people don’t know that they need to understand this stuff. One of the biggest challenges is getting the message across that consumers need to get educated, understand how they can navigate that contracting process. They don’t need to understand construction in the trade level per say but have to understand the overall process of what happens because they were involved in it. Money is being exchanged, payments are being made, work is being done, materials are being supplied. They just don’t understand the whole process until they get hit with it and people go crazy. If you understand as a consumer what’s involved, what’s at stake, what the contractor has to do, what your responsibilities and rights are as a consumer, you’ll have control of your money and project. That’s important. People lose it and get frustrated and just go on and blame the contractor. They may or may not be. It’s their responsibility to make sure they don’t get taken advantage of. It’s not the contractor’s but the consumer’s responsibility. – Jody Costello

Right now, I am pivoting and I certainly expect to at least triple what I’ve been doing. That is going to happen through joint ventures, partnerships, doing summits, presentations, training. I’ve been approached by realtors who sell homes to new people and might have to do renovations. I’m currently working with two groups and I’ll do presentations or training. I did training during the summer. They were young investors. You can lose money if you make poor decisions and they had so they brought me in to do some training., I really expect that given the growth of remodeling, it’s going to take until 2022 to harness that growth through partnerships and relationships that I’m looking to create. Everything has changed since the pandemic. I hear from so many different people online that they got blindsided by what had happened and they’ve all had to pivot. They’re trying to figure out what they need to do, what the market’s looking like, what challenges are out there, how can they insert themselves into the new normal and what that looks like. That’s what we solopreneurs and entrepreneurs are dealing with. – Jody Costello

One of the things I was pressed on was Facebook ads. Not every industry needs it. Could it have been beneficial? probably. However, you need to really know what you’re doing. You’re probably going to need another coach for that. For my online business, one of the things that is getting crazy is the funnel everybody speaks of. For example, I have a lead magnet “Seven mistakes homeowners make that lead to a remodeling disaster” which is at the top of the website’s main page. It’s really important because it helps people get in the mindset of thinking what they should do and not do. However, you don’t need to focus on sales, you have to create relationships with people. It’s too salesy. I’m not into that even though I have a background in sales. Even at that point, it’s about creating relationships. I’m not into pushing sales and pressuring the clients. That happens a lot in the online world though. I disagree with the sales mentality. – Jody Costello

I would advise to immerse yourself in whatever industry or calling that you have. Why are you attracted to that? Do some work on what it is that you have to offer with your gifts that can make a difference in the industry you’re so attracted to? I write to some Portuguese gals in some of the groups I belong to and they’re amazing. They’ve embraced things outside of their country that they are pursuing. It’s all about that passion. So, identify it and it will keep pulling you. Pursue it, immerse yourself in it. What do you have to offer? What are your gifts? What’s your perspective? That’s what really creates or kind of gives birth to what you can actually offer to that particular segment. It’s very unique to be doing what we do as entrepreneurs, it’s very scary as well. If you’re cold, surround yourself with people that can help you because you really need that to help you grow and guide you through the path you need to take so you can be successful. You can’t do it by yourself, it’s not a solo thing, you have to surround yourself with people that can help you. – Jody Costello