EP21: Don’t Be an Order Taker

Yeah. Yeah. They're just like one big doormat to everybody. And that's what being a business owner is. Isn't it just being a doormat, making everybody else happy?

Well, listen, this one's really more like a mindset podcast because that's... That's really what it is. And I think a lot of contractors don't, for whatever reason, they can't grasp this idea. They can't grasp this concept of, this is your business. And we already did a podcast on that called It's Your Business. But this is about going to, this is about getting in bed. This is about marrying customers, right? When you're bringing on new clients into your business, it's a marriage. If you're going to go remodel a bathroom for three weeks, a kitchen for six weeks, eight weeks, a room addition for three months or whatever it is, it's a marriage. You're marrying someone. Wouldn't you like to know who you're marrying before you just go and say, yeah, I can do that for you?

Listen, people think that if a lead calls you, if a client calls you, then it's your job to go give them an estimate and do the work, right? So in other words, if they're calling you, then you have to give them an estimate, almost like an obligation of, oh, if I own a lawn care business and every person that calls in that wants their grass cut, that doesn't mean that I have to go and service every single person that calls in. Am I making sense or am I just way over your head?

I told him like two minutes before we started.

Yeah. It makes perfect sense. This is probably more prevalent with newer contractors starting out because they just need money, right? They need money coming in the door. And so if somebody called, if they're a landscaper and somebody calls them and wants their bathroom remodeled, yeah, I can do that. Yeah, we can remodel a bathroom because they just need money, right? So it's like, has nothing to do with landscaping, but I want to do it anyways.

Yeah, I'm not doing a very good job of trying to explain this. If you're a cashier or if you work at McDonald's and your job is to take orders when people come up, right? You don't care. what the people are wearing when they walk in. You don't care what job they have. You don't care anything about those people. Your job is to take their order and then give them their food. It doesn't matter if they want a Big Mac or chicken nuggets or whatever it is they want. Your job is just to take their order and give them their food. And a lot of contractors run their business that way. They just take orders. And it doesn't matter if someone comes in and is like, hey, I want to... a Big Mac. He's like, well, this is McDonald's. I don't care. I want a Big Mac. Okay, well, we'll try to make it work for you. We'll go next door to Burger King and get a Big Mac or whatever. I don't even...

What's wrong with you? I don't eat at McDonald's. I haven't ate at McDonald's in five years.

they're not

That's what I'm trying to say. I messed it all up. Can we start over?

If you worked at McDonald's and someone wanted a Baconator, which is from Burger King, is that better? That's better.

I don't know their burgers at different places. I screwed that all up. My point is, if you want something that's not on the menu, they're not just going to be like, okay, run next door to the restaurant and get it for you. So you can't do that. You can't be a landscaper and do bathroom remodels. But even more importantly, that's pretty easy to point out. You shouldn't be doing things outside of your scope of work. That one's pretty easy. What I want to really dive into is finding the right customer and working with the right customer. And let me just tell you where this is coming from. Because there was a post in another contractor Facebook group that I'm in. And a guy had a serious problem with a customer. And it was like, we've done this entire bathroom model. We're like 95% done. And then I get a call from the customer and it's like, you're not going to finish. We're not going to have you finish. I'm documenting everything you're doing. I have another contractor documenting everything. You're going to have to pay me $5,000 for whatever reason and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's coming in the group asking for advice. Now, anybody can get into a situation like that, right? I mean, that's possible for anyone, but there had to have been red flags in the beginning, in the courting process of this marriage. There had to be red flags that were going off. People don't just put, you know, they're not just perfect from the get-go. And then the day after you get married, turn into an axe murderer. Like that just doesn't happen.

Well, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You put your foot down where other contractors don't. It's the thing where you provide the materials and then the customer wants to provide the materials. And you're like, okay, well, leads are a little slow. Money's a little slow. I need the work. So yeah, we'll go ahead and do that. It can't be that bad. And then the next thing you know, you're in a legal battle over something stupid.

Yeah, listen, I got a story about that because I had a contractor friend of mine. He was doing work for this customer. I think he did their master bathroom or another bathroom or something. And then they wanted him to do two other bathrooms. They had three bathrooms. But he was moving out of the way. I mean, moving out of the city. And so he recommended me. And so it was a good lead because it was a recommendation. This was prior to charging for consultation. So I drove all the way outside of town, you know,45 minutes one way to get there, way out there to middle of nowhere. I meet with them. We go over everything. They told me they wanted to provide the plumbing fixtures, the faucets, basically just the faucets. And I said, well, that's, you know, okay, that's fine. Whatever. That's not a big deal. In my contract, I told them that we would not warranty the plumbing fixtures. You know, I put in there a customer providing, you know, plumbing fixtures. You know, warranty is not included in the plumbing fixtures. which why would you warranty something that you're not installing or providing, right? And so she called me and she's like, I got your contract. I mean, everything's fine on price and all, but it says in here that you're not going to warranty the plumbing fixtures. And I said, yeah, we're not providing them. And she's like, well, but I want the warranty on it. She couldn't grasp this concept. And I said, we're not going to provide something that we didn't provide because I have no idea that, you know, if two weeks after we install it, it starts leaking. Like that wasn't our fault. If it wasn't an installation problem, if it, you know, there was something wrong with it. And she said, well, if you're not going to, if you're not going to warranty it, then you're not going to get the job. I said, okay, well, I appreciate your time. And that was the end of it. Bye-bye. But how many contractors would go do that job? How many contractors would kneel down and say, okay, yeah, what's the probability of something like that happen? I mean, install hundreds of faucets, they never leak, blah, blah, blah.

That was another person who posted in the group that had that scenario. And not only did the customer provide the faucet, it was a used faucet.

An old used faucet.

It's staggering. This is what I'm saying. You're just trying to collect orders. Don't be the contractor who's trying to collect orders in order to keep his funnel full. That's where it took me this long to finally put it into words. You're not just trying to collect contracts. You're not trying to just collect jobs and put on the board. Every single job is a marriage and it requires due diligence to figure it out. Now, we teach this in our group in the profit sales system to find out a lot of these things before you even go out there. You can discover red flags, right? If you're talking to them and they say, well, we've had six other contractors come out and give us estimates. Okay. That's kind of a red flag. Yeah. What's going on there? Like what, what's happening? Why is there six other contractors? I mean, I can understand three because that's what everybody has been brainwashed into thinking they need to have three estimates, but why six? You know what I'm saying? So that's just one small aspect of that, of, of getting into that marriage.

But again, there's this... There's still a mindset there about, I need to collect orders. I need to collect orders. In order for me to stay in business, I have to collect orders. And I don't care if it's a bad customer or a good customer or if it's what we do or not do or if it's in our area or outside of our area. It's just, I need to collect orders. I need to get numbers on the board. I got to get jobs. And it's not like that. And when the customer calls in and they have a special request, that's... beyond what you normally do. And you're just like, okay, yeah, sure. Yeah, we can, you know, I've never done that before, but I'm sure I can figure it out on your job. You know what I mean? It's like, no, stop. Take a step back. Again, it's a marriage. And I don't care if it's a two-hour job, right? Like, if all you're doing is cleaning their gutters out, there's still a certain level of marriage that's going on, a certain level of courting that's going on there. I mean, if they have an unrealistic timeframe, if they have unrealistic expectations of what you're going to deliver, there's an issue there and you got to be able to weed through that and figure it out.

Listen, even a one night stand, I mean, you want to, you got to make sure it's the right. You can't have your beer goggles on and then go out and do a one night stand.

No, we are on there, but that's what I'm saying. They're not even looking for the red flags. There's a whole subset of contractors that think that their job is to please the customer. I actually, in my applications or interview process, I ask customers, not customers, I'm sorry. I ask potential employees, what do you do if the customer is wanting you to do additional work? If they're like, I always... I'll do whatever it takes to make them happy. My number one goal is to make them happy no matter what. That's a red flag. No. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

There's a certain level of deliverables, right? Here's the scope of work. Now, don't get me wrong. I tell my guys to look for opportunities to fix a door that's sticking, to little five-minute repairs here and there. Because a lot of times we might be working in a house. on a certain part of the house and the front door lock sticks and you got to wiggle it or you got to push really hard. And if we're going to be going in and out of that door a hundred times during the project, I just fix the door. I don't tell the customer. I don't ask them, hey, would you like us to fix it? I'll just fix the door. I don't even tell them. And then it makes it easier for us to go in and out. And I'm sure at some point they'll recognize like, oh, wow, they fixed the door for us. So we look for those opportunities. But when you're there working and they go, oh, by the way, while you're here, can you fix the door too? And can you unclog the toilet for me? And can you replace the garbage disposal? And can you clean my gutters? You know what I mean? Like these people that are out there, it's usually the people pleasers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can do that. No problem. Yeah, for sure. So that's on the back end. I'm talking about people on the front end that do this whenever they call in. Hey, Eric, we really want you to build us a pond, but you can't work in our backyard on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Well, we work swing shifts and stuff, so we're sleeping during the days on Tuesdays and Thursday. We don't want all that noise. So if you could just come and work on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that would be awesome.

No, I know, but you know your business. And so you're going to make the factors work out of that, right? But that's a red flag of someone who may be being ridiculous. So obviously... a 10 second role play, you're not going to find that out. But if you're having a 30 minute phone call, you're going to dig into that. Yeah. You're going to dig into like, why is that an issue? You know, what's going on there? How can we accommodate that? And you may be able to accommodate that, but that just may be the beginning indicator of more red flags as to what's going on. You know what I'm saying? So if someone's calling in and it's like, I don't want you starting before 10 a. m. You can't start before 10. Well, how are you going to work six hours a day if you only work eight to five or whatever your hours are? You can't just automatically make your guys work later in the day. You can ask them. But I mean, these are just like red flags that are happening in the discovery process. And people aren't digging into this. And then it's on the back end. I see it on a post somewhere. Hey, I had this problem. Everything was going great until the first day when we got there. And then they turned into crazy Karen. It's like, no, no, they didn't turn into crazy Karen. She was already a Karen before you started talking to her. You just didn't pick up on all of the indicators. Yeah.

Well, there's endless amounts of scenarios, right? Obviously, you have enough intelligence and enough experience because literally we teach this. But you know to ask the questions, to find out, to dig deep, to figure out what's happening, why they want this done. there may be a very legitimate reason and a real concern that you have to work around it. Right? But then you also get the crazy people out there that are just like, you know, one of the things that this guy said on the post was like, from day one, they were complaining because there was dust on the dresser. Now, a lot of people wouldn't even pick up on this. But my question to him was like, why was there dust on the dresser? Don't you put up... Don't you put up wall, you know, barriers, dust barriers. Don't you cover the furniture and plastic like this? To me, it's a no brainer. Like what's all these red flags for the contractor that's happening. But, and he's like, no, it was just a tiny little speck of dust, which, okay, that's, you know, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. That can happen. Matter of fact, today, literally today on the job, we were doing some work and my new guy, my intern. He was sanding some stuff and didn't have the vacuum on. And so a little bit of dust got over onto the dining room table right next to where we were working. And I could see it, right? So immediately I went and got my Swiffer dusters and started dusting everything and cleaning up all the dust that was caused from that little area, that few minutes of dusting. But if someone comes in and you're not picking up on this stuff, on day one, if someone's complaining about the dust on their dresser, Okay, you've already gotten in bed with them, right? You got to have a serious conversation right then because it's not going to get better. It's only going to get worse throughout the process. If day one, they're complaining about dust on your dresser, you need to address that. You need to, like, what's going on? Why is this? Right? But it's already too late is my point, Eric. It's already too late at that point. All this stuff should have been addressed before they even went out on the first date.

Yeah, and that leaves you empty, right? It leaves you feeling empty. Listen, I'm going to try one more time.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me try one more angle on this, and I think I might be able to explain this better. When you're dealing with a customer, it's an equal exchange of goods and money, right? This is an equal agreement that you're going into. This is not the customer is better than you because you're just a lonely contractor. You couldn't do anything else. You're just a contractor, so the customer is better than you. No, they need services done. You have the ability and the equipment to provide said services. So it's a mutually beneficial agreement. And you have to have that mindset of you're just as you're an equal to them, right? In the terms of construction, you're actually above them because you know how to do your job. They don't know how to do your job. So there's a lot of contractors that are very meek and they're very yes man and they're very doormat to everything that goes on. And it's like, okay. I have a paying customer. I have to do whatever they want, you know, whatever they want done. I have to do it to make them happy. That's what I'm trying to get across is that no, you don't. It's a mutual benefit. If you don't like something, you bring it to their attention. If they don't like something, they bring it to your attention. You work out the details like adults, you come to an agreement and then you provide said service and you get paid and everyone's happy.

Yeah, that's more of the greedy aspect of it, right? That's more of the, I just want to put money on the board. So, and a lot of times when contractors do that, they just take advantage of it. This is where contractors can get a bad name because they say, yeah, I can build you an outdoor kitchen. Sure. I've never done stone work. I've never installed one. I've never run a gas line. I've never done any of that, but it can't be too hard. So yeah, we can do that for you. And then it turns out like crap. And then the gas line explodes and everything. I mean, it's like, you know, at some point you have to know your limitations and you have to realize that you got to be good at what you're good at. So, I mean, to your point, Eric, we, you know, last month we added painting services because we literally get requests all the time for painting. And almost every job that we do, I have to sub out the painting. Right. So it was a natural progression for us to just bring on our own in-house painter. And so, and that's been great. Like it's, it's been a great addition. And so there's times where, yeah, you can add on new services, but like you said, taking orders just because you see money flashing the shiny, the shiny object syndrome kind of, you know, you see things flashing. Oh, look, there's money over here. Oh, here's a way to make money. Here's a customer. I need, I need work. Here's a customer that's calling. They're, they're breathing. Like, yeah, I mean, they're alive and they need work done. Sure, I can use them as a customer. That's what I'm talking about.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's what I love about you is that you're usually way off on left field about stuff that we talk about. It's always two different perspectives no matter what, Eric.

Well, listen, I want to brag on our group real quick and then we'll shut this down. So I'm in a lot of other contractor Facebook groups. really just to learn for myself and also to try and help others as much as I can. It's different because in this other group where this guy posted this problem, and a lot of people had already gave him his answer. He was wondering how to deal with the situation. And there were multiple, multiple answers that were all very valid responses. And so I wanted to take a different approach and be like, hey, you need to make sure that you address this from the beginning. Basically, I was telling him it was his fault without really telling him it was his fault. And so I had a lot of people start pouncing on me about, yeah, oh yeah, it's always, you know, there's crappy customers out there and it's not always the contractor's fault and blah, blah, blah. Like everybody was kind of bashing on me because I was trying to suggest that maybe he didn't do something right. Maybe he should have done a little bit better in the pre-screening process. that's one, that's kind of what you see in those other groups where they want to pounce on you and they want to give you bad advice and they want to make excuses and they want to play victim. What I've noticed in our group, in the free group, and especially in our pay group is that they're all professionals. And, you know, when I posted, I copied that post and I put it in our group, our free group, and I ask everybody, what's your thoughts about this? And everyone immediately was like, well, it's obviously the contractor's fault. He didn't set expectations from the beginning. And it was just like this totally, it was like a yin-yang experience of this other group where everyone kind of plays victim and then our group where everyone takes extreme ownership. It was just really, I really enjoyed it. And I just want to kind of brag on our group for that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, well, Eric, I think that's all I got. I think I beat the Big Mac and the McDonald's into the ground. So why don't you take us out of here?

Dude, I don't go to McDonald's. I do not go to McDonald's.