What Grok pulls up when you type a contractor's name

Today's Tip: Vet a contractor before they set foot on your property

Most people find out their contractor has a trail of complaints after the check is cashed. There is a two-minute check that catches this before you shake hands.

Let me explain…

My neighbor Hollis Barrick had a leak in his gutter. Nothing serious. But he lives in Salem, Oregon, and the rain arrives in October and does not leave until May… so he wanted it patched before the sky opened up.

A pickup rolled down his street on a Tuesday afternoon. Two men. Company logo on the door. They knocked, said they were “already in the neighborhood,” and offered a price that was frankly a little too good.

Hollis is 65. He works part-time as a maintenance supervisor at the community college, so he knows his way around a ladder and a caulk gun. He is not easily fooled. But he was tired, and the price was fair, and the men seemed friendly.

He almost said yes.

Instead, he did what I had shown him the week before. He pulled out his phone, opened Grok, and typed one careful question about the company printed on the side of the truck.

What came back stopped him cold. Two active complaints filed with the Oregon Construction Contractors Board this year. A lapsed license from March. And a small trail of angry reviews from other homeowners who had paid for gutter work that started fast, then stopped, then never resumed.

He told the men he needed to think about it. They pushed back. He shut the door.

Grok saved him from paying a deposit he was never going to see again.

Here is the thing… every single one of those complaints was already public. The state licensing board publishes them. The Better Business Bureau publishes them. Angry customers post them on Google and Yelp and Nextdoor. Hollis did not need special access to any of it.

What he needed was one tool that could read all those sources at the same time and hand him a plain-English summary. That is exactly what Grok is built to do.

Here is the prompt that does it…

You will notice the prompt does not ask “is this contractor good.” Vague questions get vague answers. Instead, you are asking four specific questions with clear checkable outputs.

That is the difference between a five-minute search that misses the important thing… and a two-minute check that catches it.

The report you get back will look something like a short dossier. License status at the top. Complaints in the middle. Review patterns and news at the bottom. Every line will have a link you can click to verify for yourself.

Now, I know what you are thinking… what if the company has no online record at all? Brand new, no reviews, no complaints, nothing.

That is useful information too. A contractor with zero footprint after five years in business is telling you something. Either they change company names often — which is a classic scam pattern — or they are so new that you would be taking a risk being one of their first customers. Either way, you now know to ask harder questions before you write the deposit check.

If you are planning any fall project — gutters, roof, driveway, tree work, heating tune-up — try this before your first phone call. Two minutes. Free. No excuse not to.

And if the report comes back messy… walk away. There are always more contractors.

Hollis is having his gutter fixed next week. By a different company. One that came back clean.

★ Quick Wins

Skill Builder: Knowing when NOT to use AI

I want to talk about the flip side of everything we teach in this newsletter. Because there are a handful of situations where reaching for an AI tool is the wrong move — and knowing which is which is a skill in itself.

Here is the short version. Do not use AI to make a final decision about medication changes, legal filings, or moving large sums of money without a professional signing off. Do not ask it to write to someone in emotional distress on your behalf. And do not use AI for anything that only makes sense if you know the person involved — like whether to attend your niece's wedding or how to make peace with an old friend.

Notice a pattern? AI is fantastic at gathering information, summarizing it, and drafting first attempts. It is a poor substitute for professional judgment, human presence, and hard decisions that involve your own values.

If you are ever unsure whether to reach for AI on a given task, there is a simple prompt you can save. It forces the model to tell you honestly whether it should be the one answering.

The best part of this prompt is that once you use it a few times, you start to develop your own instinct for when to reach for AI and when to call a person.

That instinct is worth more than any specific tip we can give you. It is the difference between someone who uses AI carefully… and someone who gets burned by it.

See you tomorrow.

The AI Advantage Team

P.S. Know someone about to sign a contract for a fall home project? The two-minute background check we walked through today is exactly the kind of thing that spreads by word of mouth. Forward this along.