EPISODE SUMMARY

If you pulled your last 10 change orders and sorted them into two piles — things you truly couldn't have known, and things the client added or you didn't nail down up front — which pile would be bigger? For most design-build firms, it's the second pile, and Greg opens this episode arguing that's not a field problem. It's a design and sales problem that showed up late.

Greg is joined by Will Pritiken, founder of Aforma Design Studio, an embedded design practice built specifically for builders, architects, and developers who need real design capacity without standing up a full in-house team. Will ran construction and did development work before starting his own design-build company in Portland, then built Aforma after fellow Remodelers Advantage roundtable members asked him to bail out their stalled design projects. The conversation covers why design gets treated as a lost leader instead of a profit center, why the 20–30% contingency in your pricing might be covering for decisions that were never made rather than risks nobody could have predicted, and how a structured design partnership protects your client relationship, your brand, and your margin.

RESOURCES & LINKS

Aforma Design Studio: aforma.co

Email Will: hello@aforma.co or will@aforma.co

Book mentioned: Upstream by Dan Heath

Remodelers Advantage: RemodelersAdvantage.com

Learn more about Remodelers Advantage Roundtables, production and design manager groups, consulting services, and other programs at RemodelersAdvantage.com. Questions or episode ideas? Email Greg at Greg@RemodelersAdvantage.com.

If a homeowner asked an AI assistant, not Google, an actual AI assistant to find the best remodeler in the area, would your company even come up?

Homeowners are increasingly skipping the search results page and just asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude for a recommendation — then calling one of the one or two names they get back. Your site can rank great on Google and still be invisible to that conversation.

In this episode, host Greg Wallach talks with Thomas Harpointner, founder and CEO of AIS Media, Inc., a 20-plus-year digital marketing and strategy agency in Atlanta. Thomas breaks down why AI search is the biggest shift in digital marketing he's seen in two decades, why some clients have seen 30–60% drops in organic traffic even as their Google rankings improved, and — most importantly — what a remodeler can do this week to start earning citations and recommendations from AI.

You'll learn:

• Why AI tools act as a new "middleman" between homeowners and remodelers, and how that changes the rules of the game
• What signals AI systems look for before they'll cite or recommend a business (hint: it's all about authority and trust)
• Why the opportunity isn't just Google anymore — Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, and trade publications all feed AI answers
• A simple, three-step plan to start building AI visibility this week, no big budget required
• Why traditional SEO isn't dead — and how it still forms the foundation of AI trust

Notable quote: "The AI has to know that you exist. Otherwise you are just a magic trick in the dark." — Thomas Harpointner

Resources mentioned:

• AIS Media, Inc.: aismedia.com (free AI search guide available now)
• Remodelers Advantage: RemodelersAdvantage.com

Go ask an AI assistant who the best remodeler is in your area and see what comes back — then share this episode with whoever owns your website and marketing.

Learn more about Remodelers Advantage Roundtables, production and design manager groups, consulting services, and other programs at RemodelersAdvantage.com. Questions or episode ideas? Email Greg at Greg@RemodelersAdvantage.com.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Every design-build owner has lived this moment: an early budget gets a client excited, the design gets refined, and the real estimate lands 20–30% higher. Jason Langkammerer, President of AT6 Architecture + Design Build in the San Francisco Bay Area, walks through the system his firm built to close that gap — the “Design (Un)certainty Contingency.” Borrowed from the commercial construction “cone of uncertainty” and sparked by a conversation with Ian Schwandt of TDS Design Build, the approach bakes a shrinking contingency percentage into every budget from the first proposal through final pricing. As the design firms up, the contingency comes down — and the two numbers meet in the middle. Jason and Greg dig into the mechanics, how to present it to clients without sounding like padding, and what it takes to finally stop dreading the final-estimate conversation.

GUEST

Jason Langkammerer, President, AT6 Architecture + Design Build — at6db.com

Design-build runs in Jason's family — his father was both an architect and a contractor. Jason grew up between the Craftsman and Victorian homes of Berkeley and a decade immersed in modern architecture in Los Angeles, a dual perspective that shaped his design philosophy. AT6 started as a design-only practice before Jason brought construction in-house to give clients a smoother, more coordinated path from concept to completion. He still personally guides every project's budget from initial estimate through final pricing.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• AT6 Architecture + Design Build: at6db.com

• Ian Schwandt / TDS Design Build — mentioned for his Substack on production and construction numbers

• Remodelers Advantage: remodelersadvantage.com