Claire: Hi everyone, welcome to Billing and Chilling, the show where we get real about construction billing and what it actually takes for subcontractors to get paid. Every episode I sit down with people who live and breathe the business of subcontracting to figure out how subs can avoid risky moves and get paid what they're owed. Today we're going back to the moment where most of that risk actually gets decided when you're staring at a contract deciding whether or not to sign it. My guest is Tara, co-owner of Total Glass, a Glass and Glazing subcontractor where she oversees the business's finances. Before joining the industry, Tara spent 15 years as a teacher, giving her a unique perspective on many of the practices construction insiders have learned to accept. That perspective led her to start The Subcontractor Project, a fast-growing movement encouraging subs to speak honestly about payment, risk, and everything the industry tends to dismiss as simply the way it is. So, Tara, welcome to the show.
Tara Cristel: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Claire: We are so happy to have you. So tell me, how'd you go from the classroom to running the financials at a glass and glazing subcontractor?
Tara Cristel: So I was teaching, I'd been teaching for quite a while. It'd been about 15 years and COVID hit and I made it through COVID and that was brutal because we were teaching online. And when you have about 60 students, some of them had special needs, some were general education students, and when you combine them all into a group meeting on a computer long term, It was a disaster. And so I stuck through it. I loved my students. I loved being a teacher. I still miss my students very much. But once I came out of the backside of COVID, I was just super burnt out. And I probably had the best class that I had ever had in my whole entire life. And I still found that I was pulling up to my job every day and it was hard for me to get out of my car. And I had promised myself if I ever got to a point that I didn't want to be there anymore, I would quit because that's not fair to the students. It's not fair to their families, and they deserve better than that. So I asked for a leave of absence. The district that I worked in at the time, they denied my leave of absence. I think it was because so many people had taken off during COVID and they were trying to nip that in the bud a little bit. And so I said, you know, I quit. I cried for about three months. And I just I really didn't know what to do. And my husband at the time had started Total Glass, but he was running it on his own. So he was doing the field stuff. He was coordinating the guys. He was doing the financial side of it. And he is very good at what he does in the field and the coordination of the guys and the estimating part of it, but the financial side was just really hard for him. And so he said, Why don't you come help me run this part of the business at least for a little bit of time until I can find someone else, So I did. And I truly thought at that time I was going to go back to teaching once that school year was over. But once I jumped into it, I realized that he truly did need a ton of help. He said to me, if you think that you can stick with this, I think I we should make you co-owner and I think we should do this together. I think we'd make a great team. had to do a little soul searching, but then I realized that I come from a very blue-collar family. I have so much love and respect for the guys in the trades and the work they do. I found that I was just so proud that the company that I was working with and could potentially own. had a hand in helping to build the buildings in America. And I love when I see our guys out there doing the really hard work, it just it there's such pride that I have in it. So I ultimately decided that this is a much quieter life than teaching will ever be. And even though there's struggles in the commercial construction world, that it was really the direction that I thought that I was going to take. So here we are today.
Claire: Yeah. Well, I think you're one of the few people that would say construction is a much quieter life than what they were doing before. and
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: it's so awesome to see like you come into this industry with the passion that you had for the education space as well. you came into construction with genuinely fresh eyes, what was the first thing that really made you stop and go, like, wait, this is backwards, like this is how they do things.
Tara Cristel: I think it was when I realized how long it took to get paid on any pay application that we submit. So it took a while because it took me a bit of time to kind of figure out the ins and outs, just even what is a pay application. I truly didn't know. I knew nothing about this world when I jumped into it. I didn't really have anyone to teach me. I was just learning as I was going and relying on the general contractors offices that I worked with to help me to kind of know what needed to be submitted, how it needed to be done. I would say I was probably about six months in when I really realized how the pay applications work And I was not good at my bill collection efforts either. So it was very routine for us to get paid in 90 plus days at that point.
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: And I was like, this cannot be right. Like, and I I would always relate it to if someone comes to my home, if I pay a plumber to come to my home, I'm paying him the same day that he comes to my home. That like I don't understand why we are 90 days past when we're applying for a payment and that just doesn't happen.
Claire: And I'm sure when you first started, you were like, hmm, maybe this is just us. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. then you slowly realize like, Whoa, this is the way the industry works because the industry average is actually above ninety days. Like you guys aren't, an outsider. Like this is this is how it is for everybody.
Tara Cristel: we were working on a a project for a a store that is very well known across the country, and we had not been paid at all on it. And there were people shopping inside of the store. So the store was making money and we still
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: had not been paid on the glass that was in. it like put onto the store. And I that to me was just that blew my mind. And that was when I really first started saying, I've got to figure something else out because that just cannot be true. You can't be making money if you haven't paid me for what I've done for you to be able to make money. You know, so
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that was that was a really a hard pill to swallow whenever I saw that happening for sure.
Claire: Yeah. and something that's like interesting for me in talking to subcontractors across the United States is oftentimes, you don't necessarily feel like you have a leg to stand on from a negotiation perspective. you're in a position where there's pressure to sign the contract as is, or you lose the job and they're gonna find someone else to do it. And you've reframed it to me in our previous conversations as like, if you're gonna sign that contract, it's gonna have long-term negative effects for the business. So walk me through that gap and how you kind of approach contracts and partnerships with your clients now.
Tara Cristel: I do really believe that what you just said about you're signing away your business if you're just signing the contracts that you get. So we have been in business for five years almost, and I just started negotiating my contracts within the last four to five months. So I was definitely in the you better sign it or you're not getting the job group of people. And I did it for a long time. What changed it for me was at the beginning of this year, we had been on a project for a school. It was the largest project we have had to date. and the general contractor just wasn't paying us. We had been on the job, there was no issues with the work. our guys had been on it for months and months at this time. There had been no payment for materials, no payment for labor, no payment for anything. And I did not know what to do. So I grabbed my contract and I looked at it and I was like, no There is nothing in this that is gonna save me. And I signed it. Like, what, what am I doing? Like, how did we get here? This is a, this is a lot of money. And if they don't pay us, I have no recourse And I very quickly realized in that moment that we would be silly. And very naive to believe that every contract that we ever sign is always going to go just exactly as plan. at some point something's gonna go wrong on a commercial construction project. It's just the way it's gonna go. And if you sign a contract
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: without understanding your risk, you definitely are putting yourself in a very, very, very bad position because what I've learned through this whole thing and since I've started negotiating my contracts, I have a much better. understanding of what the clauses mean, what's happening, what they're asking you to sign. And I to this date have not had one that I feel is fairly written, that everyone on each side of the the coin takes
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: equal risk. especially in the area that I work with, the general contractors that I work with, the risk is pushed down onto the sub. So when you sign it, you're essentially taking up the bulk of the risk on a project, So that definitely really changed my whole mentality at as I looked at contracts. And it really took me to kind of be Not paid from a contractor to realize how much risk I was assigning to our company without even realizing it.
Claire: Yeah, you're lucky that so many of your projects went swimmingly and it took like
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: a while for you to realize like how important these contract terms are because I would say like in most cases you wanna expect worst case scenario when it comes to construction. and I had a boss that used to say, if you're pulling out the contract, like it's too late, the problem has happened. but I think it is really important for folks to be paying close attention to their contract terms and revisiting them every couple months. So you have it fresh in your mind because if you did take on more risk than you're comfortable with, you wanna remember that and keep a close eye on that specific project to make sure that you're doing everything you can to protect the business. You know, you want to be really aggressive with collections on those clients where you have nothing in your contract to protect you and you aren't getting paid. yeah, go ahead.
Tara Cristel: Yep. Well, and I I realized one of our contractors, they will take our proposal and we would put in there that like holding 10% retainage on materials is unacceptable. You know, we would we put all these things in there that we thought were terms that we were agreeing to. And this contractor would take our proposal and put it in the contract. So I would see it in there. So I assumed that everything I had on my proposal was what we were agreeing to. And when I really started digging through my contracts and I had my attorney looking through them and all the good things. They had a little clause that was somewhere completely different in the contract, not even anywhere near the proposal, that said that any terms on the the subcontractor's proposal were null and void upon signing of this contract. And I did not even know that. So I thought I was signing a a document
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that's saying that, you know, what I the terms I had proposed in my proposal were being accepted. And they literally had a line that totally negated all of that. And that really kind of shook me in a way because that's really, unfair. A GC will say, Well, you should have read the contract. Well, yeah, I probably should have. But that also is not fair, especially when you're using, you know, contracts use language and terms that The average person can't understand. We're not trained le with a legal background. We don't sometimes know. And there's so much in there. Some of our contracts are 50 pages. That's a lot of reading to do. And you
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: know, just one little line that you can easily miss. And that's when I really
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: realize it's so important to look at the contracts.
Claire: Yeah, totally. so it sounds like you guys have, a lot more confidence going into these contract negotiations. And I think a lot of our listeners are hearing this and being like, Man, I feel like I have zero leverage to change terms. Like, where do you feel like you actually have more room than you think.
Tara Cristel: Well, I think you always have leverage before you sign a contract. So if they have called you and said that they are awarding you a contract, they need you in some some level. So it they could potentially go to the next glazer or the next contractor, and that's great. But the reality is if they've already given you a contract for you to go over, you're already far enough along in this that you do have a little bit of leverage. since I've been negotiating my contracts in the past few months, most of the general contractors that I work with, I feel like they actually have more respect for me because I do look like I know what I'm talking about, if you're just signing things because people are giving it to you just to get the work. I I think especially with larger GCs, they realize that you can be taken advantage of. Your company probably isn't as strong. So you have way
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: more leverage, especially if you are a sub that has a good reputation. if you're in a specialty trade. So for us, there aren't a ton of glass and glazing companies around us. So for certain specialty trades, I think you have way more leverage than you realize. And if they're already giving you the contract, it would take a lot for them to move on to somebody else. we just have to have more confidence. because, you know, we need to make money. We need to keep our crews going. We need to keep our company afloat and there's always a financial struggle, especially at the beginning. And so you're like, I just need more money. If I can get this contract, I'll do it. But it that's the worst thing that you could possibly do, in my opinion. I think that you just need to have the confidence. And the truth is if you try to negotiate and a contractor walks away from you, I think you should count your blessings, to be honest.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. So I think thinking about like who you're gonna partner with and viewing the GCs as true partners and not just clients is really, really important. you've seen a clear pattern of, clients that are great for you guys to work with that you want to consider continue pursuing jobs with and maybe clients that you might want to avoid. Can you usually tell early like who's gonna be a good partner for your business? And like what are those signs?
Tara Cristel: 100%. I would say red flags for us, especially if we have new contractors, if they ask you to bid or rebid multiple times that generally is a big sign for me. And if they are a
Claire: What do you mean by rebid? Like you submit your bid and they're asking you to revise it
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yeah. So it might be different for other trades if you're on the project a little bit earlier. We're more finishing work, like say the GC gets awarded the contract for building like a hospital, right? Well, sometimes for their finishing guys, like for us they won't necessarily award the work to anybody for a while because they have a few months until they really need to agree to. who they're gonna give the contract to for whatever trade company they're gonna give it to. They will not assign it, but then they will try to get it as cheap as possible. If they are starting to work on it and they are starting to lose money or they're starting to realize that the project's costing them more than they thought. A lot of times we'll get them, well, can you rebid it but take this out of it? Can you rebid again? let's do this different type of glass. So that for us has been a huge red flag. And it happens quite a bit. And it's usually after they Yeah.
Claire: Yeah, 'cause there's also a lot of time and money that goes into actually putting together these proposals as well internally.
Tara Cristel: Especially on the large projects. You know, we have a school
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: right now that we've done and my husband had rebid it I mean, he's probably rebid it six or seven times. And the only reason he did at first was because it's a contractor that we worked with for a long time. And you know, you don't realize it the first couple of times, you're like, yeah, we'll change this, we'll change that. But it's a lot of work. And so hours and hours and hours of time that's already on the project before you've even signed a contract for it, you know, So that's one of my biggest ones. And then I'm starting to realize that all the contracts are not great, but there are some that are a lot better than others. And so if you really get to know your contracts well you can usually tell if they are a better company to work for than someone else that doesn't have great terms in their contract
Claire: What would be some of those terms that you would look out for to know that that client isn't necessarily one you want to consider working with?
Tara Cristel: pay if paid, pay when paid, which most of them in our area are pay when paid. I
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: always negotiate that. I have started to also negotiate suspension rights. So If we're not paid within 60 days of a pay app being submitted and accepted, then we can walk off the job. So one of the things that we found in our job that we were working on when we weren't getting paid is I had no recourse to stop the work. So I would have been held accountable legally had we stopped working
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: to get our money. So we were forced to still work while not getting paid long term. And that's wild. So if their suspension rights are heavily in favor of the general contractor, I would say that is a red flag I think indemnity and hold harmless clauses can can really hurt a company. And I think that's one that's really important to look at. Retainage, is a big one too to look at. And then price escalation. those are my five top five ones that are my favorite ones to really focus on, because those are the ones for us specifically that I think would hurt us the most. I think there's more. And I think but it's really hard to change every clause in a contract. So I think you gotta
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: kinda find the ones that mean the most to your company and stick to them. And there are some where they really do assign the risk so heavy on you. And I think that it's pretty obvious when those exist.
Claire: When you push back on the pay when paid terms, what are you able to see there? Because I feel like clients typically aren't really willing to budge on that one.
Tara Cristel: Yeah, that's a hard one. So I actually had a general contractor agree to not pay if paid or pay when paid. And it we agreed to a forty-five day payment. And
Claire: Wow, that's amazing.
Tara Cristel: he was yeah, he was upset about it and he really griped about it, but he agreed to it.
Claire: Ha ha.
Tara Cristel: And so I was like, sweet, this is nice. We're gonna get paid in forty-five days. This is so cool. And then comes forty-five days and he didn't pay. And when I approached him about it, he was like, I'm not doing that. And I was like, it's literally in our contract. And he's I'm not doing that. He knows though that it would take a lot of money and a lot of time on my end to push that in a court of law, So even though he agreed to it and I we both signed the paperwork, he definitely did not follow through with it. So it is hard and it doesn't always work. But the suspension rights is really what I think is the best for us currently. So I try to do the forty five days, but then I put in there if you don't pay within the sixty days of the payout being, you know,
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: accepted, then we are walking off the job and we have not had to do that yet, but I have had to threaten it. I start threatening it at the forty five day mark. And usually within fifteen days we'll get a check So yeah.
Claire: It's nice to have the leverage to threaten that.
Tara Cristel: Yes. recently we got a contract. I could not believe it. And it's not a general contractor that lives in our area. I think they're based out of Alaska and they just happen to be doing some work in this area. But I did get it a contract that said net 30. they proposed a net 30. And I was like, heck yeah, I was signing it. I was so excited. And they
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: really did pay a net thirty and it was incredible. And I would do anything for that general contractor at this point. I mean, really I would, because that's
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that is so unheard of, but it is possible, obviously, because they did it, you know.
Claire: it's a good message for general contractors to hear. how much of an impact that can make for subcontractors, especially ones that are, in their fifth year of business. Like cash flow is really the constraint. So being able to pay in realistic terms, like we're not asking for anything crazy here. net 30
Tara Cristel: No.
Claire: is seems pretty reasonable.
Tara Cristel: It does.
Claire: yeah, and so pushing back on these terms too, Can be eye-opening in a way because you mentioned when we first chatted that there was a general contractor that you spoke with that you pushed back on retainage terms because the law protected you guys in terms of how much they could hold. and their lawyer was in the room and had to look it up and didn't actually know this clause. So what did that teach you about who's actually like reading these contracts and did it give you a little bit more confidence pushing back?
Tara Cristel: It gave me ton more confidence, Because I think sometimes for us subs, you assume that attorneys know the the law inside and out. When you pay an attorney, you are thinking that they really have a good base of knowledge that you need. But what I have found, especially larger general contractors, they have in house attorneys and some of them have worked for them for a long time. And the law can sometimes change, but they don't necessarily keep up on it And so that really gave me a lot of confidence because I knew the law better than they did. And I feel more confident in now speaking out on it just because I do know that it is possible that they don't understand it. Yeah.
Claire: Yeah. And I think also construction law changes all the time. We have a lot built into our product around like state specific lien laws and what you have to do to protect yourself if you're not getting paid. we have content around, you know, state specific retainage laws and things like that. And we are checking every week to see if any changes come out, and there's like pretty much always something. so it's not surprising that people can't keep track of these things. But the most important thing is to make sure that you go into these conversations, like that you've done your homework, that you're knowledgeable, and you will get that respect, like you said. They want to find trade partners that are gonna be long-term partners for the business and build that relationship for them too. They they wanna have that glazing sub that they can go to that they know is gonna do really great work. They don't want you to go out of business. So when you have those negotiations and you look like you don't really know what you're doing, it definitely gives them pause of like, hmm, these guys gonna be around in five years. so I think it's it's a good thing to call out.
Tara Cristel: Yep, and the truth is the laws are different in every state and they
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: are operating in Illinois. They're oper operating in Nevada and they're operating in North Carolina. So they have three different states that their attorneys are, looking at contracts and doing the legal stuff for them. And I I can guarantee that all of our states have very different laws that pertain to retainage and liens and that kind of stuff. So, it really is important to know your state and just advocate for yourself. You know, I know it's hard for us to pay for attorneys sometimes because money is short a lot. The materials are expensive to get, The money flows in slow, it's tough. But hiring an attorney and educating yourself on the laws in your state will save you so much money in the long run. I wish I would have done that when I first exited teaching and I came into this. I wish I would have spent a few thousand dollars to sit down with my attorney and just hash out what it is, what can I expect, what can I do, how can I hold them accountable? because it would have saved me so much time, tears, and money over the past few years for sure. So
Claire: Yeah. And I feel like it's easier than ever to also educate yourself a little bit on some of these topics using the AI tools that are all available to us now. Like you can
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yep.
Claire: say to Claude, like, take this section and explain it to me like I'm a seven-year-old and it will walk
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: you through everything. And then you can come to those conversations with your attorney like a little bit more knowledgeable and prepared to have the back and forth and push them on certain questions. So yeah, I think it's We have like so many more resources at our fingertips than the last generation did. So gotta take advantage. And
Tara Cristel: Yep, we do.
Claire: another topic in the last discussion that we had was that you found that you can actually run credit checks on general contractors before you work with them. How does that work? And where did this idea come from? And what did it confirm to you once you started doing this?
Tara Cristel: So that this is actually pretty cool. this has changed a lot of things for us. And this is actually one of those red flags Like if you start running their business credit, that is one of the first things you should do when you start working with a new contractor, in my opinion. And this will tell you a lot whether you should work with them or not. But the way I came about it was earlier this year when we were not getting paid from the general contractor we were really at a moment of thinking that we were gonna have to close our business because it was really damaging our company in such a way that I just did not know that we were gonna make it through. And so I was looking for alternative lending options, things that we could do to kind of just keep us afloat. And I started talking to people who do invoice factoring and I started talking to people who do contract funding. And I don't use them at this point. I tried to do the invoice factoring for a bit. I'm not saying it's bad. I just for us personally, it just isn't something that I think is effective. but those, well, the
Claire: W why do you say that? Like what are the things that turned you away from it?
Tara Cristel: fees are pretty expensive.
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: And I have found, I don't know if I should say this, but I have found that the people I've talked to a few different companies and the lenders that work for their companies. are very aggressive and they're
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: very salesy and not really trying to help you make sure that it's the right fit for your company. And also they I can't remember the right terms that they use, but basically they make it to where if we were to like default on our our loans, that they get the first rights to any of the income in our company. Well, I can't go get a traditional line of credit from my bank because they are getting the
Claire: Mm.
Tara Cristel: first, you know, right to pool the money that does come into the company. But those two companies did run credit checks. They asked me for a list of the GCs that we work with, and they called me within like an hour and they were like, all right, this is the deal. These guys will loan you X amount of dollars for each of like we'd loan you
Claire: Huh.
Tara Cristel: $500,000 for a contract if you needed to. and both of them had the same answer. I had three GCs that they said, we will absolutely not loan you any money for this general contractor, like for any of invoices, for anything, any contract with them. We just absolutely would not, they don't pay their bills. And I was like, what? And they were all three, believe it or not,
Claire: Ha ha.
Tara Cristel: were the ones that are the hardest ones to get money out of, of course. You know, and the ones
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that they said that they would loan for were all the ones who pay. I'm not gonna say timely, because none of them, besides my net 30 friend, but none of them pay in a timely manner. So, they wouldn't even loan on it. And I was like, that's crazy that I'm doing work for somebody that somebody wouldn't even loan me money because I'm doing work for them. But then I researched it a little bit more because I don't want to, have to lean on an invoice factoring company to run
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: business credit. So I did a little bit of research and it's different than personal credit. So you know, personal credit, we have to sign something that says you can run my personal credit. Business credit isn't like that. So you can go through Experian or Equifax Business and run a company. you can do Dunn and Brad Street. But then also something that I'm really starting to consider. I have not done it yet, but I'm very close to doing so on the next new general contractor we work with, is they pre-qualify us all the time. I'm gonna pull a reverse pre-qualification. So you wanna know about me and if I can handle this project, but I also wanna know if you're gonna pay your bills. if they can ask us those questions because I want to protect their company, then I should be able to ask the same questions because I want to protect my company. So we as subs have to get Just more confident in and understanding that we are here for the same purpose as a general contractor. And there's no reason that they get to do all of these things and ask all of these questions and get our banking and our finances and everything, and then to expect us not to do the same back. So I haven't done it yet. And I don't know how that's gonna go when I do. But I'm gonna
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: assume though, based on my experience so far, that the good general contractors will not care. And the ones who I probably don't want to work with are probably going to care. And that will probably be another red flag if I want to work with them or not.
Claire: Yeah. That's something I always encourage contractors to do as well is to ask your general contractor for their prime contract. So the contract that they have with the owner so that you can understand like, hey, if we're truly partners in this and we're both hoping to make money off of this project, like I'd like to understand your contractual obligations and how are you incentivized. And if they're unwilling to give that to you, I think that's a huge red flag. you know, and it might come back redacted, which is okay, but like you guys should be partners and you should be aligned and you should understand what retainage is being held on their contract, what are their payment terms, all those types of things.
Tara Cristel: So that's interesting. So have you I've not done that and I actually am probably going to do that, but have you had some of your customers had good luck with doing so? Yeah. Yep.
Claire: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a huge red flag if they're like, No way. Like, why? It's usually in
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I
Claire: your contract that you are beholden to the terms in the prime contract.
Tara Cristel: It is. You're actually that's actually very true. I'm gonna do that. that gives me a little more confidence because it is something that we need to know. That is something that if
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: we're being held to it, that we should understand their terms and conditions as well. Okay.
Claire: Absolutely. And it gives you also the leverage to understand, like, okay, they're they have five percent retainage held and we have 10. Like that there's an opportunity for us to push back on that. Like they shouldn't be holding our retainage up to 10%. But if you understand like their retainage is also 10, like it's not worth your time pushing back on that specific term because you're probably not gonna get anywhere.
Tara Cristel: Claire, you're such a smart lady. I can't wait to do that. I'm gonna I'm gonna work on that a good point.
Claire: And I think with retainage, there's always like opportunities to try to push on certain things, like what you mentioned of not r holding retainage on materials or maybe like general conditions or, reducing it to five percent at 50% complete, like those types of things. So I think there's ways to get creative versus just like shooting for the general retainage percentage to be decreased, hearing no and then giving up, you know. Yeah, okay, so to close things here, if a specialty trade contractor takes one thing from this whole conversation and runs with it, what do you think it should be?
Tara Cristel: Think it should be have more confidence in your company. decide what you will and will not tolerate in a relationship with a GC and stick to it and negotiate your contracts, you know. I think it's so important to know that you do have a voice in it and you don't just have to sign something because a general contractor says that this is just the way it works. I think that is something that has been said in this industry for so many years, but I think things are changing. And I think that if subcontractors would have more confidence and we all generally started holding GCs to a better standard. I think it would change the dynamics for us across the board.
Claire: Well, thank you so much for your time today. I am so grateful that you're bringing your passion and energy to the industry. And for all of our listeners who haven't followed you on LinkedIn, please do check out what she's doing with the subcontractor project. I think it is so amazing. We need more people like this in the industry. And for subcontractors listening, be confident. Be confident about your business and push back. thank you so much.
Tara Cristel: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Tara Cristel: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Claire: We are so happy to have you. So tell me, how'd you go from the classroom to running the financials at a glass and glazing subcontractor?
Tara Cristel: So I was teaching, I'd been teaching for quite a while. It'd been about 15 years and COVID hit and I made it through COVID and that was brutal because we were teaching online. And when you have about 60 students, some of them had special needs, some were general education students, and when you combine them all into a group meeting on a computer long term, It was a disaster. And so I stuck through it. I loved my students. I loved being a teacher. I still miss my students very much. But once I came out of the backside of COVID, I was just super burnt out. And I probably had the best class that I had ever had in my whole entire life. And I still found that I was pulling up to my job every day and it was hard for me to get out of my car. And I had promised myself if I ever got to a point that I didn't want to be there anymore, I would quit because that's not fair to the students. It's not fair to their families, and they deserve better than that. So I asked for a leave of absence. The district that I worked in at the time, they denied my leave of absence. I think it was because so many people had taken off during COVID and they were trying to nip that in the bud a little bit. And so I said, you know, I quit. I cried for about three months. And I just I really didn't know what to do. And my husband at the time had started Total Glass, but he was running it on his own. So he was doing the field stuff. He was coordinating the guys. He was doing the financial side of it. And he is very good at what he does in the field and the coordination of the guys and the estimating part of it, but the financial side was just really hard for him. And so he said, Why don't you come help me run this part of the business at least for a little bit of time until I can find someone else, So I did. And I truly thought at that time I was going to go back to teaching once that school year was over. But once I jumped into it, I realized that he truly did need a ton of help. He said to me, if you think that you can stick with this, I think I we should make you co-owner and I think we should do this together. I think we'd make a great team. had to do a little soul searching, but then I realized that I come from a very blue-collar family. I have so much love and respect for the guys in the trades and the work they do. I found that I was just so proud that the company that I was working with and could potentially own. had a hand in helping to build the buildings in America. And I love when I see our guys out there doing the really hard work, it just it there's such pride that I have in it. So I ultimately decided that this is a much quieter life than teaching will ever be. And even though there's struggles in the commercial construction world, that it was really the direction that I thought that I was going to take. So here we are today.
Claire: Yeah. Well, I think you're one of the few people that would say construction is a much quieter life than what they were doing before. and
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: it's so awesome to see like you come into this industry with the passion that you had for the education space as well. you came into construction with genuinely fresh eyes, what was the first thing that really made you stop and go, like, wait, this is backwards, like this is how they do things.
Tara Cristel: I think it was when I realized how long it took to get paid on any pay application that we submit. So it took a while because it took me a bit of time to kind of figure out the ins and outs, just even what is a pay application. I truly didn't know. I knew nothing about this world when I jumped into it. I didn't really have anyone to teach me. I was just learning as I was going and relying on the general contractors offices that I worked with to help me to kind of know what needed to be submitted, how it needed to be done. I would say I was probably about six months in when I really realized how the pay applications work And I was not good at my bill collection efforts either. So it was very routine for us to get paid in 90 plus days at that point.
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: And I was like, this cannot be right. Like, and I I would always relate it to if someone comes to my home, if I pay a plumber to come to my home, I'm paying him the same day that he comes to my home. That like I don't understand why we are 90 days past when we're applying for a payment and that just doesn't happen.
Claire: And I'm sure when you first started, you were like, hmm, maybe this is just us. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. then you slowly realize like, Whoa, this is the way the industry works because the industry average is actually above ninety days. Like you guys aren't, an outsider. Like this is this is how it is for everybody.
Tara Cristel: we were working on a a project for a a store that is very well known across the country, and we had not been paid at all on it. And there were people shopping inside of the store. So the store was making money and we still
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: had not been paid on the glass that was in. it like put onto the store. And I that to me was just that blew my mind. And that was when I really first started saying, I've got to figure something else out because that just cannot be true. You can't be making money if you haven't paid me for what I've done for you to be able to make money. You know, so
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that was that was a really a hard pill to swallow whenever I saw that happening for sure.
Claire: Yeah. and something that's like interesting for me in talking to subcontractors across the United States is oftentimes, you don't necessarily feel like you have a leg to stand on from a negotiation perspective. you're in a position where there's pressure to sign the contract as is, or you lose the job and they're gonna find someone else to do it. And you've reframed it to me in our previous conversations as like, if you're gonna sign that contract, it's gonna have long-term negative effects for the business. So walk me through that gap and how you kind of approach contracts and partnerships with your clients now.
Tara Cristel: I do really believe that what you just said about you're signing away your business if you're just signing the contracts that you get. So we have been in business for five years almost, and I just started negotiating my contracts within the last four to five months. So I was definitely in the you better sign it or you're not getting the job group of people. And I did it for a long time. What changed it for me was at the beginning of this year, we had been on a project for a school. It was the largest project we have had to date. and the general contractor just wasn't paying us. We had been on the job, there was no issues with the work. our guys had been on it for months and months at this time. There had been no payment for materials, no payment for labor, no payment for anything. And I did not know what to do. So I grabbed my contract and I looked at it and I was like, no There is nothing in this that is gonna save me. And I signed it. Like, what, what am I doing? Like, how did we get here? This is a, this is a lot of money. And if they don't pay us, I have no recourse And I very quickly realized in that moment that we would be silly. And very naive to believe that every contract that we ever sign is always going to go just exactly as plan. at some point something's gonna go wrong on a commercial construction project. It's just the way it's gonna go. And if you sign a contract
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: without understanding your risk, you definitely are putting yourself in a very, very, very bad position because what I've learned through this whole thing and since I've started negotiating my contracts, I have a much better. understanding of what the clauses mean, what's happening, what they're asking you to sign. And I to this date have not had one that I feel is fairly written, that everyone on each side of the the coin takes
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: equal risk. especially in the area that I work with, the general contractors that I work with, the risk is pushed down onto the sub. So when you sign it, you're essentially taking up the bulk of the risk on a project, So that definitely really changed my whole mentality at as I looked at contracts. And it really took me to kind of be Not paid from a contractor to realize how much risk I was assigning to our company without even realizing it.
Claire: Yeah, you're lucky that so many of your projects went swimmingly and it took like
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: a while for you to realize like how important these contract terms are because I would say like in most cases you wanna expect worst case scenario when it comes to construction. and I had a boss that used to say, if you're pulling out the contract, like it's too late, the problem has happened. but I think it is really important for folks to be paying close attention to their contract terms and revisiting them every couple months. So you have it fresh in your mind because if you did take on more risk than you're comfortable with, you wanna remember that and keep a close eye on that specific project to make sure that you're doing everything you can to protect the business. You know, you want to be really aggressive with collections on those clients where you have nothing in your contract to protect you and you aren't getting paid. yeah, go ahead.
Tara Cristel: Yep. Well, and I I realized one of our contractors, they will take our proposal and we would put in there that like holding 10% retainage on materials is unacceptable. You know, we would we put all these things in there that we thought were terms that we were agreeing to. And this contractor would take our proposal and put it in the contract. So I would see it in there. So I assumed that everything I had on my proposal was what we were agreeing to. And when I really started digging through my contracts and I had my attorney looking through them and all the good things. They had a little clause that was somewhere completely different in the contract, not even anywhere near the proposal, that said that any terms on the the subcontractor's proposal were null and void upon signing of this contract. And I did not even know that. So I thought I was signing a a document
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that's saying that, you know, what I the terms I had proposed in my proposal were being accepted. And they literally had a line that totally negated all of that. And that really kind of shook me in a way because that's really, unfair. A GC will say, Well, you should have read the contract. Well, yeah, I probably should have. But that also is not fair, especially when you're using, you know, contracts use language and terms that The average person can't understand. We're not trained le with a legal background. We don't sometimes know. And there's so much in there. Some of our contracts are 50 pages. That's a lot of reading to do. And you
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: know, just one little line that you can easily miss. And that's when I really
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: realize it's so important to look at the contracts.
Claire: Yeah, totally. so it sounds like you guys have, a lot more confidence going into these contract negotiations. And I think a lot of our listeners are hearing this and being like, Man, I feel like I have zero leverage to change terms. Like, where do you feel like you actually have more room than you think.
Tara Cristel: Well, I think you always have leverage before you sign a contract. So if they have called you and said that they are awarding you a contract, they need you in some some level. So it they could potentially go to the next glazer or the next contractor, and that's great. But the reality is if they've already given you a contract for you to go over, you're already far enough along in this that you do have a little bit of leverage. since I've been negotiating my contracts in the past few months, most of the general contractors that I work with, I feel like they actually have more respect for me because I do look like I know what I'm talking about, if you're just signing things because people are giving it to you just to get the work. I I think especially with larger GCs, they realize that you can be taken advantage of. Your company probably isn't as strong. So you have way
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: more leverage, especially if you are a sub that has a good reputation. if you're in a specialty trade. So for us, there aren't a ton of glass and glazing companies around us. So for certain specialty trades, I think you have way more leverage than you realize. And if they're already giving you the contract, it would take a lot for them to move on to somebody else. we just have to have more confidence. because, you know, we need to make money. We need to keep our crews going. We need to keep our company afloat and there's always a financial struggle, especially at the beginning. And so you're like, I just need more money. If I can get this contract, I'll do it. But it that's the worst thing that you could possibly do, in my opinion. I think that you just need to have the confidence. And the truth is if you try to negotiate and a contractor walks away from you, I think you should count your blessings, to be honest.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. So I think thinking about like who you're gonna partner with and viewing the GCs as true partners and not just clients is really, really important. you've seen a clear pattern of, clients that are great for you guys to work with that you want to consider continue pursuing jobs with and maybe clients that you might want to avoid. Can you usually tell early like who's gonna be a good partner for your business? And like what are those signs?
Tara Cristel: 100%. I would say red flags for us, especially if we have new contractors, if they ask you to bid or rebid multiple times that generally is a big sign for me. And if they are a
Claire: What do you mean by rebid? Like you submit your bid and they're asking you to revise it
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yeah. So it might be different for other trades if you're on the project a little bit earlier. We're more finishing work, like say the GC gets awarded the contract for building like a hospital, right? Well, sometimes for their finishing guys, like for us they won't necessarily award the work to anybody for a while because they have a few months until they really need to agree to. who they're gonna give the contract to for whatever trade company they're gonna give it to. They will not assign it, but then they will try to get it as cheap as possible. If they are starting to work on it and they are starting to lose money or they're starting to realize that the project's costing them more than they thought. A lot of times we'll get them, well, can you rebid it but take this out of it? Can you rebid again? let's do this different type of glass. So that for us has been a huge red flag. And it happens quite a bit. And it's usually after they Yeah.
Claire: Yeah, 'cause there's also a lot of time and money that goes into actually putting together these proposals as well internally.
Tara Cristel: Especially on the large projects. You know, we have a school
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: right now that we've done and my husband had rebid it I mean, he's probably rebid it six or seven times. And the only reason he did at first was because it's a contractor that we worked with for a long time. And you know, you don't realize it the first couple of times, you're like, yeah, we'll change this, we'll change that. But it's a lot of work. And so hours and hours and hours of time that's already on the project before you've even signed a contract for it, you know, So that's one of my biggest ones. And then I'm starting to realize that all the contracts are not great, but there are some that are a lot better than others. And so if you really get to know your contracts well you can usually tell if they are a better company to work for than someone else that doesn't have great terms in their contract
Claire: What would be some of those terms that you would look out for to know that that client isn't necessarily one you want to consider working with?
Tara Cristel: pay if paid, pay when paid, which most of them in our area are pay when paid. I
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: always negotiate that. I have started to also negotiate suspension rights. So If we're not paid within 60 days of a pay app being submitted and accepted, then we can walk off the job. So one of the things that we found in our job that we were working on when we weren't getting paid is I had no recourse to stop the work. So I would have been held accountable legally had we stopped working
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: to get our money. So we were forced to still work while not getting paid long term. And that's wild. So if their suspension rights are heavily in favor of the general contractor, I would say that is a red flag I think indemnity and hold harmless clauses can can really hurt a company. And I think that's one that's really important to look at. Retainage, is a big one too to look at. And then price escalation. those are my five top five ones that are my favorite ones to really focus on, because those are the ones for us specifically that I think would hurt us the most. I think there's more. And I think but it's really hard to change every clause in a contract. So I think you gotta
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: kinda find the ones that mean the most to your company and stick to them. And there are some where they really do assign the risk so heavy on you. And I think that it's pretty obvious when those exist.
Claire: When you push back on the pay when paid terms, what are you able to see there? Because I feel like clients typically aren't really willing to budge on that one.
Tara Cristel: Yeah, that's a hard one. So I actually had a general contractor agree to not pay if paid or pay when paid. And it we agreed to a forty-five day payment. And
Claire: Wow, that's amazing.
Tara Cristel: he was yeah, he was upset about it and he really griped about it, but he agreed to it.
Claire: Ha ha.
Tara Cristel: And so I was like, sweet, this is nice. We're gonna get paid in forty-five days. This is so cool. And then comes forty-five days and he didn't pay. And when I approached him about it, he was like, I'm not doing that. And I was like, it's literally in our contract. And he's I'm not doing that. He knows though that it would take a lot of money and a lot of time on my end to push that in a court of law, So even though he agreed to it and I we both signed the paperwork, he definitely did not follow through with it. So it is hard and it doesn't always work. But the suspension rights is really what I think is the best for us currently. So I try to do the forty five days, but then I put in there if you don't pay within the sixty days of the payout being, you know,
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: accepted, then we are walking off the job and we have not had to do that yet, but I have had to threaten it. I start threatening it at the forty five day mark. And usually within fifteen days we'll get a check So yeah.
Claire: It's nice to have the leverage to threaten that.
Tara Cristel: Yes. recently we got a contract. I could not believe it. And it's not a general contractor that lives in our area. I think they're based out of Alaska and they just happen to be doing some work in this area. But I did get it a contract that said net 30. they proposed a net 30. And I was like, heck yeah, I was signing it. I was so excited. And they
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: really did pay a net thirty and it was incredible. And I would do anything for that general contractor at this point. I mean, really I would, because that's
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that is so unheard of, but it is possible, obviously, because they did it, you know.
Claire: it's a good message for general contractors to hear. how much of an impact that can make for subcontractors, especially ones that are, in their fifth year of business. Like cash flow is really the constraint. So being able to pay in realistic terms, like we're not asking for anything crazy here. net 30
Tara Cristel: No.
Claire: is seems pretty reasonable.
Tara Cristel: It does.
Claire: yeah, and so pushing back on these terms too, Can be eye-opening in a way because you mentioned when we first chatted that there was a general contractor that you spoke with that you pushed back on retainage terms because the law protected you guys in terms of how much they could hold. and their lawyer was in the room and had to look it up and didn't actually know this clause. So what did that teach you about who's actually like reading these contracts and did it give you a little bit more confidence pushing back?
Tara Cristel: It gave me ton more confidence, Because I think sometimes for us subs, you assume that attorneys know the the law inside and out. When you pay an attorney, you are thinking that they really have a good base of knowledge that you need. But what I have found, especially larger general contractors, they have in house attorneys and some of them have worked for them for a long time. And the law can sometimes change, but they don't necessarily keep up on it And so that really gave me a lot of confidence because I knew the law better than they did. And I feel more confident in now speaking out on it just because I do know that it is possible that they don't understand it. Yeah.
Claire: Yeah. And I think also construction law changes all the time. We have a lot built into our product around like state specific lien laws and what you have to do to protect yourself if you're not getting paid. we have content around, you know, state specific retainage laws and things like that. And we are checking every week to see if any changes come out, and there's like pretty much always something. so it's not surprising that people can't keep track of these things. But the most important thing is to make sure that you go into these conversations, like that you've done your homework, that you're knowledgeable, and you will get that respect, like you said. They want to find trade partners that are gonna be long-term partners for the business and build that relationship for them too. They they wanna have that glazing sub that they can go to that they know is gonna do really great work. They don't want you to go out of business. So when you have those negotiations and you look like you don't really know what you're doing, it definitely gives them pause of like, hmm, these guys gonna be around in five years. so I think it's it's a good thing to call out.
Tara Cristel: Yep, and the truth is the laws are different in every state and they
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: are operating in Illinois. They're oper operating in Nevada and they're operating in North Carolina. So they have three different states that their attorneys are, looking at contracts and doing the legal stuff for them. And I I can guarantee that all of our states have very different laws that pertain to retainage and liens and that kind of stuff. So, it really is important to know your state and just advocate for yourself. You know, I know it's hard for us to pay for attorneys sometimes because money is short a lot. The materials are expensive to get, The money flows in slow, it's tough. But hiring an attorney and educating yourself on the laws in your state will save you so much money in the long run. I wish I would have done that when I first exited teaching and I came into this. I wish I would have spent a few thousand dollars to sit down with my attorney and just hash out what it is, what can I expect, what can I do, how can I hold them accountable? because it would have saved me so much time, tears, and money over the past few years for sure. So
Claire: Yeah. And I feel like it's easier than ever to also educate yourself a little bit on some of these topics using the AI tools that are all available to us now. Like you can
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yep.
Claire: say to Claude, like, take this section and explain it to me like I'm a seven-year-old and it will walk
Tara Cristel: Yeah.
Claire: you through everything. And then you can come to those conversations with your attorney like a little bit more knowledgeable and prepared to have the back and forth and push them on certain questions. So yeah, I think it's We have like so many more resources at our fingertips than the last generation did. So gotta take advantage. And
Tara Cristel: Yep, we do.
Claire: another topic in the last discussion that we had was that you found that you can actually run credit checks on general contractors before you work with them. How does that work? And where did this idea come from? And what did it confirm to you once you started doing this?
Tara Cristel: So that this is actually pretty cool. this has changed a lot of things for us. And this is actually one of those red flags Like if you start running their business credit, that is one of the first things you should do when you start working with a new contractor, in my opinion. And this will tell you a lot whether you should work with them or not. But the way I came about it was earlier this year when we were not getting paid from the general contractor we were really at a moment of thinking that we were gonna have to close our business because it was really damaging our company in such a way that I just did not know that we were gonna make it through. And so I was looking for alternative lending options, things that we could do to kind of just keep us afloat. And I started talking to people who do invoice factoring and I started talking to people who do contract funding. And I don't use them at this point. I tried to do the invoice factoring for a bit. I'm not saying it's bad. I just for us personally, it just isn't something that I think is effective. but those, well, the
Claire: W why do you say that? Like what are the things that turned you away from it?
Tara Cristel: fees are pretty expensive.
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: And I have found, I don't know if I should say this, but I have found that the people I've talked to a few different companies and the lenders that work for their companies. are very aggressive and they're
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: very salesy and not really trying to help you make sure that it's the right fit for your company. And also they I can't remember the right terms that they use, but basically they make it to where if we were to like default on our our loans, that they get the first rights to any of the income in our company. Well, I can't go get a traditional line of credit from my bank because they are getting the
Claire: Mm.
Tara Cristel: first, you know, right to pool the money that does come into the company. But those two companies did run credit checks. They asked me for a list of the GCs that we work with, and they called me within like an hour and they were like, all right, this is the deal. These guys will loan you X amount of dollars for each of like we'd loan you
Claire: Huh.
Tara Cristel: $500,000 for a contract if you needed to. and both of them had the same answer. I had three GCs that they said, we will absolutely not loan you any money for this general contractor, like for any of invoices, for anything, any contract with them. We just absolutely would not, they don't pay their bills. And I was like, what? And they were all three, believe it or not,
Claire: Ha ha.
Tara Cristel: were the ones that are the hardest ones to get money out of, of course. You know, and the ones
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: that they said that they would loan for were all the ones who pay. I'm not gonna say timely, because none of them, besides my net 30 friend, but none of them pay in a timely manner. So, they wouldn't even loan on it. And I was like, that's crazy that I'm doing work for somebody that somebody wouldn't even loan me money because I'm doing work for them. But then I researched it a little bit more because I don't want to, have to lean on an invoice factoring company to run
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: business credit. So I did a little bit of research and it's different than personal credit. So you know, personal credit, we have to sign something that says you can run my personal credit. Business credit isn't like that. So you can go through Experian or Equifax Business and run a company. you can do Dunn and Brad Street. But then also something that I'm really starting to consider. I have not done it yet, but I'm very close to doing so on the next new general contractor we work with, is they pre-qualify us all the time. I'm gonna pull a reverse pre-qualification. So you wanna know about me and if I can handle this project, but I also wanna know if you're gonna pay your bills. if they can ask us those questions because I want to protect their company, then I should be able to ask the same questions because I want to protect my company. So we as subs have to get Just more confident in and understanding that we are here for the same purpose as a general contractor. And there's no reason that they get to do all of these things and ask all of these questions and get our banking and our finances and everything, and then to expect us not to do the same back. So I haven't done it yet. And I don't know how that's gonna go when I do. But I'm gonna
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Tara Cristel: assume though, based on my experience so far, that the good general contractors will not care. And the ones who I probably don't want to work with are probably going to care. And that will probably be another red flag if I want to work with them or not.
Claire: Yeah. That's something I always encourage contractors to do as well is to ask your general contractor for their prime contract. So the contract that they have with the owner so that you can understand like, hey, if we're truly partners in this and we're both hoping to make money off of this project, like I'd like to understand your contractual obligations and how are you incentivized. And if they're unwilling to give that to you, I think that's a huge red flag. you know, and it might come back redacted, which is okay, but like you guys should be partners and you should be aligned and you should understand what retainage is being held on their contract, what are their payment terms, all those types of things.
Tara Cristel: So that's interesting. So have you I've not done that and I actually am probably going to do that, but have you had some of your customers had good luck with doing so? Yeah. Yep.
Claire: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a huge red flag if they're like, No way. Like, why? It's usually in
Tara Cristel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I
Claire: your contract that you are beholden to the terms in the prime contract.
Tara Cristel: It is. You're actually that's actually very true. I'm gonna do that. that gives me a little more confidence because it is something that we need to know. That is something that if
Claire: Yeah.
Tara Cristel: we're being held to it, that we should understand their terms and conditions as well. Okay.
Claire: Absolutely. And it gives you also the leverage to understand, like, okay, they're they have five percent retainage held and we have 10. Like that there's an opportunity for us to push back on that. Like they shouldn't be holding our retainage up to 10%. But if you understand like their retainage is also 10, like it's not worth your time pushing back on that specific term because you're probably not gonna get anywhere.
Tara Cristel: Claire, you're such a smart lady. I can't wait to do that. I'm gonna I'm gonna work on that a good point.
Claire: And I think with retainage, there's always like opportunities to try to push on certain things, like what you mentioned of not r holding retainage on materials or maybe like general conditions or, reducing it to five percent at 50% complete, like those types of things. So I think there's ways to get creative versus just like shooting for the general retainage percentage to be decreased, hearing no and then giving up, you know. Yeah, okay, so to close things here, if a specialty trade contractor takes one thing from this whole conversation and runs with it, what do you think it should be?
Tara Cristel: Think it should be have more confidence in your company. decide what you will and will not tolerate in a relationship with a GC and stick to it and negotiate your contracts, you know. I think it's so important to know that you do have a voice in it and you don't just have to sign something because a general contractor says that this is just the way it works. I think that is something that has been said in this industry for so many years, but I think things are changing. And I think that if subcontractors would have more confidence and we all generally started holding GCs to a better standard. I think it would change the dynamics for us across the board.
Claire: Well, thank you so much for your time today. I am so grateful that you're bringing your passion and energy to the industry. And for all of our listeners who haven't followed you on LinkedIn, please do check out what she's doing with the subcontractor project. I think it is so amazing. We need more people like this in the industry. And for subcontractors listening, be confident. Be confident about your business and push back. thank you so much.
Tara Cristel: Thank you. I appreciate it.
