I remember the first time that I was dealing with Americans. Whenever I met people on the street that I knew, they said, “Hi, how are you doing?” I stopped there in the middle of the road “Well, now that you asked…” but they didn’t stop neither looked back they just kept on walking to the opposite direction. I wondered why they pretended to be interested but then just walked away?

That above memory came to my mind when I was reading an article at Seth Godin. He tells an example about corporate communication that sets expectations high. If you listen to the customer but don’t act accordingly, you will leave them standing on the street wondering whether to keep on walking or running after a real communication.

For few times I have sat in a development meeting where customer feedback has been the topic of the day. Just as many times the conclusion of those meetings has been that we need to change our marketing communication to better fit the image that customers have on us. We promised to deliver in seven days, but too often the delivery was few days late. Solution: we started to talk about two weeks as a delivery time. Problem solved. My experience is that customer feedback rarely changes business operations.

I have noticed that many people start to chase their log home dream from the wrong side of the street. What these people do is that first they are mesmerized by some of those stunning pictures at log home magazines. The second thing they do is to start shuffling through some floor plans, because those log home magazines are all about floor plans and log home dreams.

Together those trends put people in situation where they have high hopes, possibly unrealistic budget expectations and tentative contacts with log home dealers about the price of building a log home. Inexperienced and inspired are two adjectives that make sales people think about money.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t be inspired, after all, burning desire and passion are often the last two resorts, which keep any project running while facing hardships. However, I would like you to decide between – are you a log home owner-buyer or are you a log home owner-builder?

If you envision yourself as a buyer then you don’t have to worry much, just be careful while choosing your realtor and follow normal home buying process. If you want to have the whole big log home dream of building the log home on your own land with your own hands, boy, are you in a heap of trouble…

Long gone are those days when it was possible to quickly build a half decent log home. Nowadays log homes incorporate modern utilities and technology and given the special nature of log construction – well - log homes are more difficult to build than normal timber frame or element houses. Prepare yourself! I’m going to write a series of articles that will get you started, but as you will see, it is a long road.