All Forum Posts by: Keith Bloemendaal

@Keith Bloemendaal  I watched your vids...good job. I just wanted to ask you if you had considered trying to sell the trees on the lots as firewood? Maybe they aren't any good for this, it was hard to tell just from the video. Also, you probably didn't want to bother with it due to time concerns. Just wondering, since in some circumstances, it could be a way for someone to basically pay you to clear the lot or clear it for you with the firewood being the payment.

@Keith Bloemendaal Great post topic!

I run a paperless office and have whittled everything down to a few basic tools.

Evernote

Evernote is the cornerstone of everything I do. Every piece of paper that comes into my office gets immediately scanned then shredded. I use Hazel on the Mac to OCR, auto-name, and file the the regularly sent stuff (like invoices from vendors, etc). They are named using the main words that I would search for the document by. 

For example, if I have a receipt from the company that supplies my doors, instead of naming it the company name only, I name it, "Company Name Receipt Doors" and it gets filed in a notebook for that particular project. If there is also trim in the order, I name it "Company Name Receipt Doors Trim." This makes finding things super easy with minimal thinking on my part.

I'm also a big fan/believer/user of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. I have stand alone cabinet setup just for that in Evernote with my to do lists, tags, and locations.

Recently I've been asked by several folks to do a video and screencast of my paperless office system in action, accompanied by some videos showing how to set it up. These are in the works and I'll share on BP Nation once they're done.

Drop Box

If I have docs that need to be regularly edited, they live in Drop Box. There is always a reference to them in an Evernote note though, since that is my main system.

As a side note, I also use Drop Box to back-up my ridiculously large photo archive. I'm moving all of my permanent backups away from random hard-drives, CDs and DVDs and to the cloud.

SmartSheet

All timeline management is done here. It's like Excel on steroids. The reason that I like it is that it's simple. As a nerdy person, I've tried and setup many, many project management systems but discovered that most of them fail because they're too cumbersome to use. Apparently some companies missed the memo that managing a project via software should never be more complex than actually managing the project, itself. I've got a public SmartSheet that I'm using as part of my Video Diary post. You can see it here:

http://publish.smartsheet.com/087c5862de4748299010...

I use BuilderTrend for my projects. I love it not only for spec builds but for my retail clients as well. Let's them have their own "page" to follow the process see the schedule share pictures etc. Integrates directly into my website. You know, all the bells and whistles people love.

Easy to use cloud based system.

@Keith Bloemendaal thanks for the reply, I was thinking more along the lines of plumbing and electricl. do you submit that option for the permit pull?

@Keith Bloemendaal I really like the "in law" suite option. Are you roughing in the mechanicals for this option and letting the buyer determine to have you finish it or not?