A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business. You can find Hammer and Grind on all the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Now, if you're looking for more help, you can check out our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group. I do free trainings in there and it's a great community to be a part of. Now, if you're serious about making more money, saving more time, and creating a business that supports your lifestyle, check out my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. I've put together a proven system for creating a winning business. Now listen, I'm so confident that you will succeed in my program. I'm now offering a 10x ROI guarantee. That means if you don't make at least a 10x return on your investment within a 12-month period, I will refund you the full amount. You can find out more information about The Profit Club at hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. All right, on this podcast, we're going to be talking about why customer service is the path to success. Now, a lot of my other podcasts, I've talked about different components of customer service, like minding the time, things like that. But we're going to be talking about customer service as a whole. And this can be, you know, this is a very wide topic. But I want to talk about three different things in regards to customer service. And that is why customer service is dead and why that's important. What kind of problems arise when you aren't good at customer service? And then lastly, the three critical areas that you need to win in customer service. So sit tight, buckle up. We're going to dive into this. It should be a good one. So why customer service is the path to success? I've preached about this for a long time. I've talked about it on all my channels. A lot of the things that we deliver that equate to value are intangible items. It's not the physical product that you deliver. you know, in your product or service. It's not the landscaping that you put in. It's not the shrub that you install. It's not the drywall that you hang or the finish that you put on it or the bathroom that you remodel or the roof that you install. It's not the shingle. It's not the actual product that you do. Yes, those are important. But as I said before, quality, right, what you actually deliver. is the minimum entry into the business. You should be delivering a quality product or service, depending on what you do, as the minimum barrier to entry. And a lot of you hang your hat on quality and you totally neglect the service. But what I'm telling you is that people remember the service far longer than they remember the quality of the product. When you go and do a new project, like a kitchen remodel, and the job's over, and they come in and they see it, and they're, oh my gosh, Brad, this looks so beautiful. It's better than we could ever imagine, blah, blah, blah. That's great. That's a great reaction. A month later, they don't have that reaction. The emotion of the actual product is gone. But what they remember six months, a year from then, is the experience that they had working with you. So whenever someone they're talking to says, hey, didn't you have a Kitchener model? How was that experience? Or who did you use? And they say, oh, we use Brad. It was a great, they did a great job. They were wonderful to work with. They communicated every step of the way. You know, you hear all these horror stories like contractors not showing up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we didn't have that. We didn't experience that at all. They were a phenomenal company to work for. They're not talking about, oh, the mitered corner was perfect. And, you know, the seams in the countertop were perfectly seamless and that you can't even tell they're there. They're not talking about that, guys. They're talking about the experience. They're talking about what it was like for them to work with you. So if you don't understand, if this is the first podcast you've listened to or maybe the first few and you don't know where I stand on this, the quality is the bare minimum to entry. Stop hanging your hat on quality. and start hanging your hat on the customer experience. Okay, so let's dive into this. Customer service is dead. Everywhere we go, service is dead and it's going to get worse. But that's a good thing. Why is it a good thing? Because it gives you a further gap, a further distance between you and your competition to demonstrate why you're that much better. And it's a low-hanging fruit of what you deliver. It is extremely easy to deliver good service. It's actually harder to deliver a good product, believe it or not. But for some reason, we leave this off. And here's what I believe to be the reason why customer service gets left off. Now, I call it the sacrificial offering to the pricing God. Customer service is the sacrificial offering to the pricing God. What does that mean? That means whenever you are cheap, whenever you're not charging what you should be charging, a 50% gross profit or better, what ends up happening is you get into the job and you realize that you're underbid, right? You're too cheap. I'm sure nobody listening to this has ever said, hey, guys, we got to hurry up and get this done. We're running over. That's probably never happened to any of you. But this is exactly what happens. Customer service is the first thing on the chopping block of your business when you underbid jobs, especially if the customer requires extra attention. Maybe they're a little bit more difficult to deal with. Maybe they have a little bit higher expectations of what you're delivering. When you couple high expectations from the customer with a low-priced job, customer service goes out the window quickly. And what ends up happening is you have two people with very bad taste in their mouth. And that is a terrible situation to be in. So this is why it's super critical to be pricing your jobs correctly, because it gives you the freedom. It gives you the ability. It gives you breathing room in how you deliver and how you show up for your customers, how you deliver that customer service. So that's why I say that the customer service is the sacrificial offering to the pricing God. Stop bidding your jobs cheaply. If you continually run into problems with your customers of expectations not being met, because honestly, that's the only problem that arises after the sale. When you sell a job and then you have problems that arise during the project,99% of the time, it's because expectations were not met. usually from the contractor to the customer. The customer has expectations of what's going to happen, what that experience is going to be like, and you fail to deliver that. And then what ends up happening is you guys go on to the public Facebook groups, the contractors, you know, contractors for contractors and all those other groups, and you start bitching about how the customers are terrible and how do I get good customers and blah, blah, blah. In reality is that you just suck at customer service. And you're hiding behind that and blaming the customers. I was on a group yesterday and I talk about this all the time. I probably should delete Facebook just for the purpose of not reading these comments because I get so frustrated with the quality of the contractors that are out there who are giving the industry a bad name, all in the sake of getting people to rally behind them and saying, yeah, you're right, customers suck. You got to watch out for them and blah, blah, blah. That's what most of those posts are. They're complaining. And there was a post in another group yesterday where they said, you know, my husband and I own a handyman business and we've been doing this for a long time and blah, blah, blah. And we had a customer and we sent him to the website and told him to read our pricing and to read over the contract and all that stuff. So we start the project and they work, you know, he works nine hour days, three days in a row. And they refused to pay the overtime, the three hours of overtime, because they said it should have been an eight-hour day. And this person that was complaining was the wife. And I said, if you're sending your customers to your website to review your contract, and then they agree to it, but then have a problem with the pricing later on, that's your fault. And I said, how many of us actually read all the fine print when we sign contracts? I don't know a single person, unless you're an attorney. When we get a mortgage, when we buy a truck, when we get a credit card, when we sign up for stuff and there's three pages of fine print, nobody reads that. Nobody. You might skim over it and see a couple titles and dig into it, but nobody reads over that. So what happens a lot of times is that contractors hide behind contracts. Because they suck at communication, which was the last podcast, by the way. Go back and listen to Effective Communication, number 79. But when you suck at communication, you tend to hide behind contracts and let the contracts do the talking for you because you're not good at it. Now, communication is part of customer service. That's why I'm bringing this up. So if you're hiding behind your contract, if you say, here, customer, you want to do work with us? Here's a five-page contract. Make sure you read all of it. And then on page three, subsection two of, you know, clause number 47, it says, if we work overtime, then you have to pay us overtime hours. You have to pay us time and a half. If you give someone a contract like that and expect them to read every single line, and then you sell the job, and then you go out and start working. and you just work overtime and expect them to pay it and they push back on that, that's not because you have a cheap customer or because they suck. It's because you suck. Guys, you suck at communication. You suck at running a business. The good news is that you can unsuck. You can actually get good at this. You can get better at it. And that's the purpose of these podcasts. I know it always seems like, you know, coming down on contractors and beating contractors up and talking about all the things that we do. But the key point you need to understand is that I've done all of these myself. I was the sucky contractor in the past. Although I've never hit behind contracts, I have done things where customer service sucked, different aspects of that. Now, I've done a pretty good job of customer service from the get-go, but there's definitely been times where I sucked at it. I've been in customer service and sales for almost 25 years. So I've had a lot of experience talking to people, communicating with people, dealing with people. I've completed over 2,500 jobs in my own business, plus all the other jobs that I've done for other people that I worked for. I've done door-to-door sales. I've done all of it. Anything that has to do with sales and customer service, I've pretty much done all of it. So I understand why this is so important to deliver a high-quality experience. So when you hide behind contracts and then you expect the contract to do talking for you, you're opening yourself up for major problems later on in the process. Now, if you have a big contract, that's fine. You should protect yourself. I know contractors that do a lot of work. They've been doing it for a long time, like 10,15,20 years, and they still do it on a handshake, a verbal commitment and a handshake, and they never have any problems with customers and not paying and stuff like that. I also know contractors that have very well done contracts, professionally written by attorneys and all, you know, like rock solid contracts. And they get into problems a lot because they hide behind the contract. 99% of customer service is communication. Okay. So I did effective communication last week. to tee it up for customer service this week. You have to be good at communicating with your customers. That is the key component of customer service, setting expectations from the get-go about what it's going to look like to work with you. And these are all intangible things. These are things that don't cost you money to deliver upon. It's part of the experience. This is why it's so important. Okay, people have totally forgotten what customer service is. We see videos and posts all the time on social media. Social media has destroyed customer service because we see how people act whenever they don't get what they want immediately. I saw a video yesterday of a homeless person that was on TikTok complaining about the food that they got for free from the soup kitchen to help them out. And they were complaining about it. And actually, it looked like okay food. It did. That's where we've gotten to in this world where we just complain about everything and we don't have to deliver service and everything sucks. This is your opportunity to be the purple cow. It's your opportunity to stand out amongst a thousand other cows in the pasture whenever you're a purple cow. And the way you do that is through customer service. And that is why I say it's the path to success. Some of you hide behind contracts. Some of you hide behind LinkedIn business. Some of you hide behind quality. Some of you hide behind referrals. And you think because you have these things that you don't have to deliver a good service. It's not true. You have to deliver a good service always. So let's jump into the three critical areas that you need to win in customer service. There's three different areas. One is the sales process. And that is from very first contact or really before the first contact up until... You've sold the job. Okay, that's the sales process. Before contact until you've sold the job. The second one is the project management side of it. That is from whenever you start the job or really from when it's sold, you're scheduling stuff, you know, starting, picking the date and all that and getting the project started and the project management, collecting payments, communicating things that need to be communicated throughout the project. That's the project management part of it. And the last thing that we'll talk about is the production team or the actual deliverables, what's being delivered. And we're going to talk about that last, but I'm going to tell you that your staff, your team, your production team represent about 80% of the customer service. So it's very important. And we're going to dive into that here in a second. So let's go back to the sales process. What do I mean by before the first contact? Now, people don't, they don't typically associate your branding and your online and your presence, your marketing presence as customer service. But it is because it's part of the experience. So if I go online, let me back up. If I'm at work, if I work for a big corporation and I find out Sandy had their kitchen remodeled last year and I want to get my kitchen remodeled. And so I go to Sandy and say, hey, Sandy, I know you had your Kitchener model last year. We're looking to have ours done. Who is the contractor that you use? And they say, oh, we use Brad, Brad's construction. And he's going to, he did a great job. I highly recommend them. Awesome. Do you have a contact form? Well, here's a number or go online or whatever. Like maybe you don't have the exact information. So they go and they research you and they go on Google and they type in Brad's construction and nothing pops up. There's no website. There's no Facebook page. There's no Google reviews, nothing. It was a referral, which is a good lead. It's a good solid lead. But now I've had my first taste of a little bit of disappointment. I've gone online. I've searched for Brad's construction, and there's nothing to be found. Well, that's a little disappointing. Now, you don't have a website or any online presence because you're old school, and as long as you do high-quality work, you'll have referrals forever. And that's fine. You know, that did work back in the day before internet and technology existed, back whenever people still, you know, had horses and carriages before cars were invented. You know, quality was super important and referrals were super important. And so you've managed to last this long, right? But today, people are going to go and social proof you. So they go and they check out and there's nothing on Brad's construction. Okay, it's a little disappointing, not the end of the world, just a little disappointing. So they call you. and you answer the phone or don't answer the phone or whatever. You answer the phone. Hello? Yeah, is this Brad's construction? Yeah, this is Brad. How can I help you? Oh, well, we were wanting to get an estimate on a kitchen remodel. Okay, yeah. Well, we're booked up for a year, so it's going to be a while. I can give you a call back here whenever I'm taking on new business. You're like, oh, okay. Right? That's how a lot of service, like literally how it goes. You think you're pre-qualifying people. You're not. You're not pre-qualifying anything. You're pre-eliminating people, right? It's two totally different things. Pre-qualifying and pre-eliminating are two different things. So compare that to, I go talk to Cindy and I say, or whatever, whoever name I said, I go talk to Cindy. Hey, do you have a project? Yeah, I had Brad did it last year. Great. They did an awesome job. Highly recommend them. They have a Facebook page and their website you can go to. Awesome. I go back and I type up Brad's construction and immediately I see Google reviews that say 150 reviews. They have a 4.9 star rating. There's a couple of bad reviews in there from people that were just Karens and never actually did work for them. And then it looks a little more legit and they have a link to a website and the website you click on and it's phenomenal. Very well done. It's got a pricing guide on there. It's got case studies. It's got blog articles with all different things that I should know about. Kitchen, it has a PDF downloadable worksheet, how to set up for your kitchen, how to plan for your kitchen. Or maybe you have a PDF worksheet on the seven questions you should ask every contractor before you hire them or whatever kind of free giveaway you have for your customers. And they download that and they consume it. And then now they're ready to call you to schedule it and they call you and you have someone that answers the phone, whether it's an office manager or you or a salesperson and you answer the phone and you say, hey, great. Thanks for calling. Super excited to do work for you. Here's our process. It's a little bit different than a lot of contractors, but most of our customers really seem to enjoy it. Here's the process. We collect some pictures from you. And then we'll actually schedule another time where we can go in depth into your project. And then we'll even be able to share on that phone call, you know, what the investment will look like to do that project for you. Oh, great. Yeah, that sounds perfect. When I get home tonight, I can send you some pictures. Yeah, if you want to email them over, I'll just go ahead and email you right now. And then all you have to do is reply to that email and upload your pictures. Oh, that'd be fantastic. Thank you so much. So you send over an email or whoever's doing it sends over an email with the subject line, you know, reply with pictures. And then they go in, they attach the pictures. You get them, you send them an email back with the discovery call link to your Google calendar so they can schedule a time that's convenient for them and not you. And then you get on the phone and you talk to them and you go through the sales process and you really dig in and you find out what's important to them. And you get all this information and then you share with them what the investment looks like. And they're super excited because it's in their budget. And it's just a great experience, right? And then you do a consultation for whatever amount that you charge. They're on board. Because so far, to this point, the experience has been phenomenal. So they're willing to spend $250, $500, $1,500 on a consultation. Because it's not a matter of are they going to get a project done. It's a matter of, are you going to be the one that does the project for them? Because you've already talked about everything else ahead of time. And so you schedule them a $1,500 consultation with a $1,000 design, actual design,3D design as well. And you go out and you meet with them and you go over everything and you do the contract and they sign it and everything's grand. And that is how you deliver a great sales experience. Most of you listening probably don't do half of what I just told you. And then I hear these people, these same people that don't even do half of that, complaining that they can't find good leads, complaining that there's not good customers out there. Experience is what sells, people. It's not quality. Pictures, quality is what gets their attention. The quality grabs their attention through pictures and videos. The experience is what sells them. I can't say this any clearer. Experience is what sells. Quality gets their attention. That's it. Okay? So that's the sales process, right? That's how you deliver good service. Up until that point, it's phenomenal. I can't tell you how many times I've been told by clients. How many times my clients have been told by their customers and their clients how much they thoroughly enjoy the sales process. That's how you win before you even start, by the way. All right. And it has to do with your sales process, your estimate delivery process, and your follow-up process. That's all part of sales. So once you've met with them and now you're going to deliver the estimate, do you just shoot them over an email? And that's it. And you don't follow up or do anything. You just send them an email. And then if they like it, they approve it. If not, then you just keep on going. Like there's more to it than that, right? You're following up with a phone call or an email or you're going in person to deliver it. Whatever that looks like for you, it's going to vary depending on the price of the project and the scope and size and all that. I'm not going to go deliver an estimate in person if it's a... $800 project. There's not a requirement to do that. If it's an $80,000 project, I'm going to go in person to deliver that estimate if I need to. So that's the sales process that you need to work on to get better at. What's the project management? Number two, the project management is like mining the time before. So you sell a job, it's six months before you actually start the project. Are you communicating with them throughout the process? Hey, Mary, I just want to let you know we got you on the schedule for six months out from now. We'll be keeping you updated every Friday. We'll send you a little update through the email. We'll also send you some blog posts and articles that we'd like for you to take a look at to kind of get you ready for the experience, ready for us to start. And every Friday, we're going to communicate with you. Sound good? Awesome. And then you're sending little things along the way. You're using apps like Bonjaro and other apps or Vidyard or something like that or sending them a Snapchat or however you want to do it, whatever tech you want to use, you're sending them little updates. Hey, Mary, just wanted to let you know we just got the materials ordered and everything's on schedule. We're going to be good to go for your project to start here in five months. Hey, Mary, just want to let you know your materials came in. Everything looks great. We're getting closer. Super excited. Start your project in four weeks. Blah, blah, blah. Right. You're, you're, you're communicating with them through the project. Hey, Mary, we're a week out. We're going to, uh, looks like we're going to end up starting your day, your project on the second, uh, Monday, the second. So we're getting super excited. And, uh, here's some final things for you to take a look at before we get started to kind of get you oriented and what it's going to look like on the first day when we show up and you're sending them emails and blog posts and stuff. This is the service that's unstoppable. 99.9% of contractors are not doing this. So if you do this or even like half of what I'm telling you, you will stand out. You will be the person that stands out. You will be the purple cow. And that's just the part of the project management. That's just before you start the project. Once you start the project, now it's about having a transfer of trust meeting where you go to the project and you say, hey, Mary, this is, you know, I'm... I'm Brad, the owner and salesman. This is John. John is my lead guy. Maybe you've already met Tim. He's the project manager, but John's my lead guy on the ground. He's going to be your point of contact for any questions you have regarding the project. In terms of specifics of different things, he'll be coming to you with specific questions about certain layouts and things like that if we need to. John's going to be the man on the ground. He's fully capable. He's been working with me for five years and does a phenomenal job. You'll be very pleased with John. You know, John, this is Mary. She's a great customer, blah, blah, blah. Now you introduce everybody's on board. Tim's going to be checking in on you a couple times a week to make sure everything's going good. And we're going to get your project started. Sound good? Sounds great. Awesome. Everybody's on the same page. Now I've transferred that trust to John and Tim to make sure this gets done. Depending on what you're... setup is. Maybe you're all three of those people. Maybe you're still a one-man show or you're on the tools. It's still going to be the same customer service. Okay. You're still going to deliver this. Now you're going to have, this is what it's looking like. This is our schedule. Week one, we're doing this. Week two, we're doing this. Week three, we're doing this. This, this, this, and this. Plumbers are going to be here on Thursday to do the rough-in. Electricians are going to be here on Monday to do their rough-in. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm constantly communicating, letting them know what's going to happen. Okay. That's the scheduling. I'm getting payments. I have a payment schedule that says, this is the deposit. This is the first check, the second check, third check, whatever, whatever payment schedule you want to use. I'm communicating that. Hey, Mary, just a quick reminder that Friday will be the, uh, uh, will be the time for our third payments or our second milestone or whatever is set up. Just to give you a heads up. So we'll need to collect X amount on Friday. You can just leave a check or however you want to do. That's fine. Blah, blah, blah. I'm communicating. I'm not getting there Friday and at 5 p. m. on Friday saying, Mary, where's our check at? It's Friday. You're supposed to pay us for our second milestone. Where's the money at? I'm not doing that. I'm giving them a heads up of what's coming. You know you've done a good job. This is a little tip for you. A little sidebar tip. You know that you've done a good job in service and deliverable whenever the customer has to remind you that the check is due. Or whenever it's Friday morning and you show up and there's already a check on the counter waiting for you with the dollar amount because you've already set that expectation and they're doing it. That's when you know you've done a good job. If you're calling your customer on Friday and saying, hey, where's my check? And they go, oh, I didn't know there was one due. You didn't do a good job setting that up. Okay. A lot of you guys, you have so much freaking ego and you have your feelings are so butthurt. You're so sensitive. You get butthurt whenever your customers say things like this, that you're missing out on the opportunity to grow and become better, to get closer to self-mastery. That's what this journey is about. Self-mastery is eliminating all of the negative crap in your head. and replacing it with the positive attributes and what you need to be successful. So when someone's complaining to you, that is gold. That is a learning opportunity. But if your ego is so freaking big that you can't fit through the door, you're not going to see that. You're going to get pissed off, butt hurt, cry, complain, go on Facebook, bitch to everybody else about how bad customers are instead of missing this golden opportunity, the golden ticket, if you will, to what you can do to be better in your business. That's customer service. Okay. So let's jump into production. The last one, your production team or the deliverables, your staff represent 80% of the customer service. Why is that? Because they're the ones doing the work. They're going to be on the job site every day for the length of the project, interacting with the customers on a daily basis. And whatever you tolerate in your employees is what's going to be produced in front of your clients. So up until this point, if you have phenomenal service, you've done everything I've just outlined and it's been phenomenal, and then your team gets on site and your team acts like a bunch of idiots, it's going to ruin everything for you. Right? So when I hire people, when I hire for my construction business, character was always number one. I always hired for character and then trained for skill. I don't care if someone had 30 years experience as a carpenter. And they were the best in town. If they had a shitty character, they did not get hired. Because I know the long-lasting effects of what bad character does. I have a kid that works for me. I say kid, he's 21 years old,22 years old. Phenomenal character. Really bad at the actual skill. You have to tell him 18 times how to do something. Just not that great at the skill. Phenomenal character. Always early. Never complained. hard worker, great personality, great values and morals, just a very, very good kid. And I always like, he's in my back pocket. He doesn't work for me anymore. I'm not operating my construction business anymore, but he's in my back pocket. And any opportunity that I have to use him for a side project or use him at my house or any future businesses that I may do in construction, he is the first person I will call. Because he's that good of a person. Because that's way more important than the actual skill set. Yes, you got to have people that have skill. Yes. But if you hire for skill and they have crappy character, it will bite you in the butt big time. Character is what, you know, integrity is what people do when no one else is watching. When nobody's there, are they going to shortcut it? Are they going to not, you know, clamp the... fitting the right way because they're in a hurry and no one's going to see it. And then you cover up the entire thing and then it springs a leak and ruins the whole bathroom, right? Like those little things there can be make or break moments for you. So hire for character, train for skill. So your team, right? Like we had a policy, no politics, no religion, nothing sexual, no sexual content. I heard a horror story one time of a contractor. They did exterior work, right? Like say siding or gutters. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but they have ladders up on the house and they're working outside. Now, many people would believe I'm on the outside of the house. Nobody can hear me. I can talk about whatever I want. Well, this one particular contractor had, and I don't know if it was him or his employees. I believe it was his employees. They had two guys on the outside talking, which we all do when we're working. We're talking. Well, one guy was talking about his sexual escapades and what he did that weekend with girls and all this stuff, like in explicit details about what he did to his girlfriend or whoever it was. And they're talking back and forth. What he didn't realize was that there was a 13-year-old girl in the room on the other side of the window that they were working on that could hear every single thing that he was saying. And she was upset, which rightfully so. because he was talking about all these things that he was doing to this girl. A lot of the stuff she had never even heard before. Now, do you think that she went and told her parents? Absolutely. Do you think her parents were upset? Absolutely. Do they have the right to be upset? Absolutely. Whose fault was it that that guy was talking about sexual stuff on the ladder? It's not his fault. It's the owner's fault because you tolerated that on the job site. No, I didn't know they were doing that though, Brad. I'm not out there every day. I didn't know that bullshit. You know people. People are not that black and white. They're not going to be perfect in front of you and then complete Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde out there when you're not around. Are they going to have a little bit of a difference? Absolutely. But don't sit there and tell me you didn't know. That's bullcrap. You did know. And that's why it's important to hire for character. Don't talk about politics. Don't talk about religion. Don't talk about sexual content. especially today because pretty much anymore, there's cameras everywhere with audio that can record everything. Just because the client's not there doesn't mean they can't hear you or see you. So you have to be on your P's and Q's. You have to have good team, good people. And if you have good people, you don't really have to worry about that stuff, right? You don't have to worry about the contractor that's going through your underwear drawer or looking through your jewelry drawer. or, you know, doing different stuff. You don't have to have to worry about that. So if you don't, make sure you're training your team about what it looks like to deliver a good experience for the clients. And they're the ones that's going to represent 80% of what you do. So training on that is super important. You should be training on customer service almost weekly with your production team. Almost weekly, you should be talking about customer service. What it looks like. why it's important, how to do it. Super critical to talking about that with your production team. Some of the areas that you can win on is starting on time, making sure you start on time, make sure you're communicating through problems and solutions, job site cleanliness, protecting their property. Those are all parts of customer service. So if you're not doing those things in your business, you need to be doing those things. Because it's super important. I have more compliments, more positive reviews, more talk about how clean the job site is than anything else. That is the number one compliment I get is how clean we kept the job site, how much we protected their property. Put up plastic, put down runners, everything. Clean up every day at the end of the day. get our tools out of the way so they're not tripping over them, you know, especially on the weekends. On the weekends, we would take all of our trailers off the job site. Now, if we had a dumpster or something, that's different. But any trailers that we would keep there all week long, we'd remove them on the weekend unless, you know, there was plenty of room and it wasn't in the way. But a lot of times we're parking in the driveway. So during the week, it's in the driveway. Friday, we take everything away. Why? Because I want them to have a great experience over the weekend and not have to deal with our equipment sitting there. It also ensures that stuff doesn't get broken into, by the way. But these are little things, little things like removing the job site trailer on Friday, which you've never probably even thought of, make all the difference in the world. If a customer has to come to you and say, hey, Brad, do you think that you would be able to... remove your job site trailers this weekend because we're having a party and we're going to have a bunch of cars. It's going to be a little bit, not very much parking. If they have to come to you to ask you, then you haven't done a good job of actually preparing for that. You don't have enough experience of what's important to people. You're not listening to your customers. Now, obviously, there's always exceptions. There's always, I'm not saying that if a customer asks you that, that you suck at business. That's not what I'm saying. But if it's a situation where they have to keep asking you for things, hey, do you think your guys could not leave the tools in the middle of the floor because we have to get through there at night to use the bathroom? If you could do that, it'd be great. Really appreciate it. That's not a customer complaining to you. That's you not doing your job. And that is a golden nugget that you need to latch on to and change that in your business immediately. Feedback from your customers, good or bad. is valuable information. It is what you need to hear. You should crave feedback from your customers. You should get to the point of asking so many questions that they kind of get annoyed of you asking so many questions. Hey, Tiffany, we're three weeks into your project. Just kind of curious. Is there anything that we can do to make this experience even better for you? Oh, I don't think so, Brad. You guys have been phenomenal. It's just been amazing ever since you started. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. We definitely put a lot of effort into delivering a high quality experience and product. But I mean, if there was just one little thing, no matter how small, because we're always trying to improve. If there's anything, please don't hesitate. Let me know, even if it's just the tiniest thing. Well, I mean, if you forced me, if you put a gun to my head and said I had to pick something, really the only thing I would say is that some of the trash from the trailer, the dump trailer or the dumpster, we had that big storm that came through last weekend and it blew some of that trash into the yard. And, you know, it was only like three or four pieces and I was, it didn't matter to pick it up. Like it wasn't a big deal and I wasn't even going to say anything to you. But that's just, you know, one thing that maybe have some way of keeping the trash from blowing out because some of it went into my neighbor's yard. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. That's something that I didn't even think about before, but I can definitely see how that would be a little bit of an inconvenience. So I really appreciate you sharing that with me. What am I doing with that information? Now I'm going to figure out, do I need to go buy tarps? Do I need to tarp the trash at the end of the day or on the weekends? What do I need to do? What can I do differently to make sure it doesn't happen again? See, I craved information. I crave feedback. Even within the Profit Club, I'm asking my clients, what can I do to make the program better? I'm right in the middle of changing a lot of things in the program to make it even better because it's not a once and done. It's a never-ending journey of learning and getting better. That is the journey of self-mastery. So if you're listening to this podcast and you hear what I say and then you don't take action, you're not on the journey to self-mastery. If you hear what I say and then you take action, you are on the journey to self-mastery. That's the difference. So this is why customer service is so important to your business. It is the most important thing in your business. More important than the quality. If you think that that's not true, go ahead and comment. Throw me a message. I want to hear from you. I'd love to have a conversation. Matter of fact, I'd even like to have you on the podcast if you want to have a discussion about, or even a debate for that matter, about quality versus customer service. If you think I'm totally wrong on this, let me know. I want that feedback. I'd love to have you on the podcast and we can talk about this in an open forum and really have a great discussion. It doesn't have to be an actual argument. It can just be a debate. It can be a friendly conversation about the two. So if you're interested in being on the podcast, and this applies to any of you listening, if you want to be on the podcast, I'm more than happy to have contractors on the show. especially if you have specific areas in your business that you do really, really well in and you want to share that information with other contractors so that they can apply it in their business and do even better, I'd love to have you on the show. So this is the calling to reach out to me, let me know, and we can get you on the show. Talk about business, talk about whatever you want, and add more value to the listeners. So for this show... That's going to be the end of it. Guys, really focus on customer service. It's going to pay dividends, I promise you. If you want to learn more about how you can get in touch with me, check out our social media platforms, Hammer and Grind Podcast. You can shoot me an email, info at hammerandgrind. com. If you want to learn more about the Profit Club and how I help contractors really maximize their profit, help them get off the tools without burnout or financial ruin by using my proprietary method called the Profit Blueprint, the Contractor Profit Blueprint. Reach out to me. I'll be more than happy to talk to you about that and how we can help you in your business. And for that, I appreciate you all tuning in. And like always, until next time, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
