EP19: It's Your Business!

Exactly. Podcast is over. Thanks for listening, guys.

Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the benefits of having your own business. The main thing I wanted to talk about tonight, today, tomorrow, yesterday, is I see a lot of contractors bending over backwards for their customers, running out there, doing free estimates. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff. I know you've seen it too.

I guess that's semantics. Potatoes, potatoes. No, no, no. I mean, to me, bending over it, yes. I provide excellent service to my customers. I don't bend over for them.

Yeah. I mean, again, it's semantics. It's just way of different ways. I don't, I don't consider that bending over. I mean, that's, that's just me and how I say it, but I mean, it's saying, we're saying the same thing. You don't want to get ran over. You don't want to be a doormat for your customer. You don't want to be taken advantage of by your customer. And I see this a lot. It's actually one of the things that I look for when I hire people because some employees, some people in the trades, and it isn't in any industry for that matter, they're people pleasers, right? Which by itself is not a bad thing to have. To be a people pleaser is not a bad thing. But if you have an employee who's like, always wants to go the extra mile, always wants to make sure that, you know, the customer is happy. It turns into the situation where the customer can take advantage of it. Well, Eric, while you're here, would you mind, you know, fixing our door too? It's been sticking. And if you don't mind too, you know, our showerhead's been leaking a little bit. Do you mind taking a look at that too while you're here? And then before you know it, you know, you're spending an hour, two extra hours. on a job site doing all these little things that you're not billing for. It was never in the original contract, whatever it might be, but because you're trying, you or your employees are trying to people please, trying to, you know, get raked over the coals and you think that's what good customer service is. That's what I'm talking about.

Well, that's a good point. And I don't have a problem with this because of that. For those of you that don't know, I'm 6 '5", I weigh about 230, former Marine, very high D personality, very direct. I'm not the type of person that comes off as somebody that you're typically going to take advantage of. I mean, have I had customers not pay their bills? Sure. But as far as getting extra free things and complaining about this or... saying, I'm not going to pay you until you do this or fix that. That stuff generally doesn't happen. Almost never. I see all the time, though, in groups where it's like, I saw one the other day where a contractor was like, hey, we did this job. The customer wanted to provide the faucet, and we installed the faucet, and then it leaked. And then... because it leaked, it damaged the cabinet and the floor. And they had, they called another plumber out and they did all this work and they had to have mold and water damage and blah, blah, blah. And it was going to be like $2,500 to fix everything. And they wanted me to pay, they wanted me to pay for it. And I'm just like, how did you even get in that situation? The first thing is you should have never installed there. It was a used faucet. It wasn't even like the one they provided. It was literally a used faucet.

In this case, it wasn't. But still, there's no warranty on that. You know what I mean? If I provide you with a used faucet and you install it and it leaks, that's not a warranty you're going to claim. Like you're not going to come fix that for free. And not only do they not even call them and say, hey, this faucet's leaking, it's damaged. They just went and had everything fixed and then called the contractor and said, oh, here's a $2,500 bill. We expect you to pay it.

Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. I mean, you got to it quicker than where I was going to. But yeah, it's your business to do whatever you want. don't want to work for a specific customer, guess what? You don't have to. It's your business. It's your business. If you don't want to pay taxes, it's your business.

There's lots of things that you can do. I think that the main reason I wanted to have this podcast was because I see contractors getting railroaded by customers because they think that that's what they have to do in their business. And do you need to provide good service? Absolutely. Do you need to do good work and stand behind your work? Absolutely. We're not debating that, right? But you need to be able to understand that there's boundaries. I don't answer the phone after 5 p. m. I don't answer the phone on the weekends. I don't give out my personal cell phone number. I get mad whenever my friends or other people that are like, subcontractors or whatever, run into somebody and they give out my personal cell phone. I'll call them up. It's like, Hey man, Eric, I appreciate, I really appreciate these, the referrals, man. Can you do me a favor and just give them my office number instead of my cell phone? And they usually go, yeah, man, I'm sorry. I won't do it again. And then they, they don't do it and they forget and do it again. But my point is I go out of my way to protect my time. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's not, it's not the customer's time. Just because they gave me a $30,000 job does not mean that I'm at their beckoning call. Just because the guys left a little piece of trash on the floor when they got done at the end of the day, that you should be calling me at 8 o 'clock at night and complaining about it. That's not important. That's not an emergency. You know what I'm saying? All these things you have to set up and establish in your business so that you're not... being taken advantage of by subcontractors, vendors, customers, whoever it is, it's on you. It's your business.

I'm going to guess because it takes too long.

Yeah, another thing I do in my business, Eric, is I don't do free estimates. Can you imagine that?

Exactly.

You know, there's so many aspects of this. Employees, we've talked about in the last podcast about employees not showing up. I mean, dude, you're not slave to your employees. It's your business. You know what I'm saying? Just because your employee may not like it. I have a fairly new employee. It's a painter. I hired her about, I don't know, five weeks ago. She's a rock star. And because we do a lot of different things, I mean, I hired her to paint. That's it. But because it's a new service that we're offering, you know, I don't have the schedule booked out for months. And we're doing a job. And I was like, hey, tomorrow I need you to go by. And I had her today go by and put some mud, last coat of mud on a little tiny bathroom we're doing. And then tomorrow it's got to get sanded out. And I was like, hey, I know you don't like drywall and sanding, but I need you to go sand this drywall tomorrow. And she's like, well, yeah, I hate sanding, but it's part of the job. My point is, just because you have employees that maybe don't want to do things doesn't mean that you can't make them do it. Now, she was kind of teasing a little bit, but there are people out there. It's like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to get on a ladder. You got to get somebody else to do it. Okay, boss, I'll do whatever you need. Just don't quit, okay? I'll go up on a ladder for you.

Well, that's what I'm saying though. Like there's.

The most, the most thing I see it though is with customers, you know, it's, uh, and here's the thing guys, if you're listening, customers don't go to customer school. Let me say that again. Customers don't go to customer school. They don't know how you run your business. They assume that everyone, because they've hired three other contractors that everyone does it the same way, right? It's your job as a contractor to educate your customers on how you run your business. You know why that is, Eric?

Exactly. It's how you do things. There is no industry standard on how you do estimates. There's no industry standard on how much you charge for your labor. It doesn't exist. It really doesn't. There's so many factors on that. Yeah, there are books. I have a book here on my shelf. the repair and remodeling estimator and they give you, you know, the average time it takes to, you know, for a carpenter and an apprentice to install a door and all that stuff. And it gives you national averages, but that's a bunch of bull crap.

I mean, it's good for like time if you need to know how long it takes to do something. But as far as cost and all that, it's not your, your customer is not in charge. This is a, This is a mutual agreement, right? You go to the dentist to get a cavity filled. It's a mutual agreement. He's the expert in filling cavities. You have the money and the need, right? It's a mutual agreement. If a customer hires you, you're the expert in doing X. They have the money and they need you. It's a mutual agreement. You're not their slave. It's not your job to bend over. and get raked over the coals because they're not happy. You know, you told them you were going to build an eight foot pond and the pond came out to seven foot, you know,10 inches. And they're like, no, you said eight foot. I want an eight foot pond. You got to tear it out and redo it.

What I'm saying is you don't have to tear out the entire pond to do that. If something like that were to happen and you screwed up, your team screwed up, whatever, and the customer is not happy, they're not automatically in charge and you have to fix everything to their liking or you can't get paid. That's what I'm trying to say. You can go in there and make the pond three or four inches bigger without tearing the whole thing out.

yeah those are two different i mean those are two different scenarios like the first one i would agree with you i mean if you know yeah that was like a major error right because because i don't know much about ponds but the depth has you know has a lot to do with the temperature and all that stuff for the fish and so yeah i'm with you on that one the second one that's that's a kind of a good example even though it wasn't smaller but it was an example where he may have known that it wasn't you know Maybe he just thought it wasn't 20 foot or maybe he knew it, but they're just trying to like get money off.

And that's my point. Like other contractors would have kept going. Oh, I want you to be happy. You know, yes, it's 21 foot. We gave you an extra foot all the way across, but you're still not happy. So what else can I do for you?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, you know, become a doormat because it's like, oh, I got to make the customer happy. I got to make the customer happy at all costs.

I got a story. This was probably the worst customer as far as getting ripped off because she never paid her bill, which is unfortunate because it was a recommendation from a friend of mine who is in charge of the local Make-A-Wish chapter, and their daughter was a wish child, and they needed some work done. And so I agreed to do it at a discounted rate to help them out because they didn't have very much money, and it was a shower. The shower was installed. The plumbing was already done. It was already halfway done. I don't know if they did it themselves or a contractor did it. I don't remember the situation, but it was halfway installed. I had to finish the job. I finished the job. It wasn't a very big job, but it was like $2,400. They never paid it. Never paid any of it. Then about four months later, I get a call from her. She's like, hey, this shower is leaking. I need you to come back out and fix it. Well, I didn't put the shower in. That part was already done. And I said, well, unfortunately, because you didn't pay your bill, there is no warranty. And that was it. That was the end of the conversation.

Well, I think a lot of contractors have been like, oh, well, I mean, if you, maybe if I go out and fix it, they'll pay their bill.

Yeah. And I, you know, I'm not like bragging about it. I don't like the fact that it was leaking. It wasn't, it wasn't, that part was not anything we touched. Obviously though, because we touched the bathroom, it kind of is our responsibility, if you understand what I'm saying. But we didn't do that part of the job. But anyways. No, I don't like the fact that her bathroom was leaking and that it didn't get done and that I didn't get paid. But I'm not going to bend over backwards. I already lost the money. It was already wrote off in my mind. You know what I mean? And I wasn't going to take her to court. It's not worth it. That type of negative energy is not worth going to court for $2,400. It's a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. And it did hurt at the time. But it wasn't going to be worth my effort. And so at that point, I was like, I'm done with it. I let it go. But she could have like pressed the issue. I could have felt bad. Like I had to go out there and take care of it. But it, it, again, it's my business. So I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna do things like that.

Well, part of it's your business is learning how to talk to customers, right? This all ties in together. All these things that we're talking about in all these podcasts, they all tie together into one big machine. Each podcast is like a cog in the machine, right? You're a machine of the contracting business. And if you don't know how to talk to customers, then you can get taken advantage of. You know what I mean? If you don't have strong clauses in your contract, you can get taken advantage of. If you don't do good work, you can get taken advantage of. I mean, all these things tie in 100%.

Yeah, it's your business. Don't let someone else tell you how to run it for you. Don't let your customers tell you how to run your business. Don't let your employees tell you how to run your business. Don't let your subcontractors tell you how to run your business. I mean, are there certain things that are kind of unspoken and expected? Sure. There's a certain level of customer service. And don't get me wrong here. Eric and I both are very passionate about our business. We're very passionate about providing excellent service. So we're not cutting corners. We're not doing shady stuff. I mean, I would argue that we're the best contractor in our town. Like hands down, as far as quality and work that we do, I would argue that. But I also am not a doormat and I don't let my customers take care, you know, take advantage of me.

So I don't have anything else to add to this unless you do. Why don't you take us out of here?