Adam (00:17):
Welcome to Masters of Home Service, the best podcast for home service pros like us. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester, and I want you to crush it in business. Do you want to create buzz around your business? Do you want your clients to rave about you at the dinner parties? If you do, then you have to give them a reason to rave. You have to give them a wow experience, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was awesome.’ Blow their mind kind of thing. One of the best ways to do that is with transparency. Over are the days of holding the cards close to your chest. Now, clients want to know. They want to see, they want to be behind the curtain on what you’re doing. And I have two guests today. They’re really good at doing that with their clients, Erica and Marco. They’re both really good at letting their clients behind the curtain, communicating with them, and being honest and transparent with them. So I’m going to let them speak today about how do you create this wow experience through transparency on the job. So, Marco, Erica, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. 

Marco (01:12):
No problem. Thank you. 

Erica (01:13):
Thanks for having me back. 

Adam (01:14):
Yeah, welcome back, Erica. It’s good to have you back. Erica, you’re crushing it in poop scooping. Why don’t you tell our audience who you are? 

Erica (01:21):
Well, my name is Erica Krupin, and I’m the owner of Kroopin’s Poop and Scoopin, which is a dog waste removal business located in Westland, Michigan. I’ve been in business for almost seven years at this point, and I couldn’t imagine my life without the pooper scooper industry. It’s been epic. 

Adam (01:37):
Bingo. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks, Marco. How about you? 

Marco (01:39):
That is an awesome name for your business. I just wanted to make sure I said that. So I’m the co-owner of Balance HVAC. We’re out of Vero Beach, Florida. We’re a newer company. We’re starting year two. Transparency is kind of the whole reason we started something new. It’s just really important, and excited to talk about it with you.

Adam (01:54):
Yeah. Well, you guys are both good at this and so I want to get your perspective on this. Today, we’re talking about working smarter, and our clients want to have more transparency than ever before to relate to a different industry. Car shopping, you used to have to rely on the salesperson. Now you don’t. You can find out what everyone find out about the car and the salesperson can’t hide things from you anymore. The home service industry is the same way. And so what would you guys say is the worst thing that we’re doing as small business owners in the trades to keep our clients in the dark and not providing them that wow experience? What do you guys think we’re doing wrong? 

Marco (02:29):
I think the big thing, and again, like I said, I think the transparency is why we started this whole Balance thing is that the whole interaction, especially with HVAC, is we’re going to show up at your house early in the morning. You didn’t sleep well because your air conditioning didn’t work, and now there’s a guy up in your attic making a ton of noise. He comes down and gives you a handwritten invoice for a lot of money, and that’s a horrible experience. So the value is gone. It is frustrating, it is annoying. And if you’re able to communicate with them very well, exactly, this is what we did today, recommended next steps, is it working? And then show them all the pictures and the craftsmanship and the expertise of your technicians. Now you’re able to add value to this thing that before was like essentially we’re going from a closed kitchen to an open kitchen and now people can see what we’re actually doing and they can appreciate how hard those guys are working and the environment they’re working in and actually the craftsmanship, and I am going to say that word probably 10,000 times, but it’s what it is. 

(03:24)
And I’ve seen ductwork and all the stuff that they do for probably 15 years, and you really don’t get over how much skill and effort and attention goes into those types of things. And the customer’s never seen that. And I’ve seen it for 15 years, and I’m still impressed by it on a daily basis. And it’s nice to be able to relay those things with Jobber to the homeowners after every single call that we go on. 

Adam (03:44):
Erica, if we cut someone’s grass or we pick up their poop, they can see it. The poop’s gone or not. Right now, in Marco’s situation, they can’t really see the HVAC, but with you and I, we have to wow our clients in ways that others may not. What do you think? 

Erica (03:59):
Oh, absolutely. Here’s the thing is I’ve had a lot of work done in my house, and the communication by these contractors it’s been terrible. They say they’re going to show up. They don’t show up for the job that they said they were going to do, they didn’t. Or if they needed to do a change order, they didn’t communicate. And so I took all that in with my business, and I’m like, all right, how am I going to over-communicate with my customers? Because like you said, they can see it. If there’s a pile left over, we’re high volume. I mean, there’s complaints. It happens. Even if there’s one pile missed, a kid’s shoe will find that pile and we’re going to get a complaint. So what I like to do is personally, a complaint rolls in. I acknowledge that there is an issue immediately. I’m going to get in contact with them. I’m going to validate their feelings because they’re upset. I’m going to offer a solution and we’re going to rectify this as fast as possible, within 24 hours if possible. 

Adam (04:53):
Yeah, just listening to them, repeating back their problems so they know that you heard them is all really important. Marco, how have you integrated communication into this whole process to make sure that they feel like, wow, that job was so well done because communication was so clear? 

Marco (05:08):
You can’t talk about transparency without talking about communication. It is the same exact thing. So the way that we do it, we use Jobber, we use the forms, and if we’re doing a one-off job, you’re going to get a visit review form. And it’s really critical that we’re not going to overwhelm you with HVAC jargon because no one cares, right? So our interaction with the customer after we’re done, this is what we did today, these are the recommended next steps, or any recommended improvements that we have, is it working, yes or no? What’s going to happen next? Are we reaching out with a quote? Is everything done? Are there any additional notes? But it’s something that it’s very important to answer those questions, and that visit review form is meant to be black and white. It’s supposed to be boring. We work on making them boring, and we’re all going to kind of write them the same way because we want the information to be uniform and something anybody would understand. 

(05:55)
And then, along with that visit review, we always include a CompanyCam link, and that’s when we kind of get to flex what we did today, we’re going to be able to use CompanyCam, put little arrows and show them the issues, why we’re improving things, call things out that maybe they wouldn’t see. And that’s what we can get into more of the technical aspect of it, but we want you to know, here’s what we did and here’s what’s actually going on up inside of your attics. If you’re not doing that, you’re just missing value. And then you have to compare your price to everybody else, and that’s not fair. I think especially it seems like in Vero Beach, Florida, undercutting, it’s easy to be fast, it’s easy to be inexpensive, it’s really hard to be the best. And I think that attention to detail and communicating and being transparent is what kind of gives you that edge, and it helps you kind of maintain that edge as well. 

Adam (06:39):
Yeah, I think that one thing that we do in our business is we like to use a three-step process. Hey, this is what’s going to happen next. We’re going to do X, Y, and Z. And because if you’re about to cross river, Don Miller uses this analogy a lot. If you’re hiking and you’re about to cross a big stream, and people say, ‘Oh, it’s too big, too deep, too wide, we can’t cross it,’ But if you give ’em plans, say, well, if we jump to that rock and that rock and then that rock will be across, oh, okay, great, let’s do it. But the only thing that changed was the plan. And so I think that if we give our clients, because they’re always thinking, ‘ What happens next? ‘ What happens if I approve this quote? What happens next? Are they going to schedule? Are they going to call me? 

(07:13)
Am I going to be home? Am I going to be away? They have all these questions, and you can simply set their expectations: ‘We’re going to come on Tuesday.’ If it changes, we’ll let you know ahead of time. When we come, we’re going to park in the driveway. Can you move your driveway out of the way when we get there? Oh yeah, that’d be Friday up the night before. I’ll move my car. Great. And then it’s going to take us three days, maybe four. Is that okay? It can be whatever the plan needs to be, but I think at that point then the client has expectations and they fulfill those expectations. You keep your promise. Wow, they came on Tuesday morning, they parked in the driveway and they took three days. Bam, mind-blowing. And so Erica, how else have you used communication in your business to make sure the client just felt like, wow, they’re just really on the ball? 

Erica (07:54):
The two-way text messaging through Jobber has been huge for my business, our main form of communication. So we send out that 8:00 AM text message: ‘Hey, today is your service day, your scooper will text when we’re on the way.’ Then guess what? When we’re on the way, the scooper sends the message, then we use the Jobber forms at the end of the visit to say, ‘Hey, your gate has been closed and secured.’ We attach a closed gate photo, and we let them know their service has been completed, and then we leave, and it’s rinse and repeat. It’s super boring, like you were saying, keep it super boring, but it’s super effective. And I have over 400 Google reviews and a mass majority of them talk about the strong communication, the closed gate photo, on the on-the-way text messages. The customers lose their minds over this stuff, and I love it.

Adam (08:42):
Yeah, it’s a simple thing to get right, but it’s also easy to get wrong if you’re sloppy and don’t really care that much. 

Erica (08:47):
That was the thing is we got it wrong. We didn’t do the closed gate photos and dogs got out and was it us? Was it the homeowner? We don’t know, but now we know that we’re sending that photo, so we’re eliminating that from our business, and lessons have been learned. 

Adam (09:02):
Proactive. Yeah, that’s great. Marco, I want your thoughts on this because I recently had an HVAC guy in my house, and he talked over my head for 20 minutes. It was the worst experience. I don’t know how it works. You’re not going to teach me how it works in 20 minutes. You’re not good at it. Anyways, there’s all these, I think people just hate being talked over and the technical jargon, and Oh, this valve uses that. No, I don’t need to know all that to hire you to fix my HVAC. How have you trained your people, and how do you make sure that you’re not just boring your clients with all this technical jargon? 

Marco (09:32):
It is something, and I think anytime you go the course of, ‘Hey, we want to be transparent,’ we take the time to make sure that we’re all talking. We sit down every morning at the family table, and we will go over, we’ll pick a day of the week, and we will go over, Hey, let’s go over some scenarios, some verbiage that we want to use in the common way, like mold, mildew, what are we going to use? We’re going to use growth. We’re not mold experts. That’s use the word growth. And like I said, I think it’s so much easier to show you what a capacitor is than to tell you what it just, Hey, we fixed your capacitor. Great. I have no idea what that is. 

(10:04)
It costs me $200. Unfortunate. But also, if I’m able to show you the picture of the one that’s bad, that’s oozing, whatever’s inside of those things outside of the top, it’s blown into 10 different pieces. Now you understand what’s going on. So we don’t need to show you how smart we are. 

(10:20)
You need to be able to trust that we’re fixing things that are broken, putting in new parts and doing the jobs that we were able to tell you we were going to do. Like you said, we’re going to set this expectation and then deliver on that expectation. Another really big thing that we do, we call it we don’t want to chase ghosts. We’re dealing with air. You can’t see it. So if somebody’s telling me their bedroom is hot or humid at night, part of this transparency is that we need to know how humid is it? How hot is it? When is it getting hot, when is it getting humid? So we’ll leave things like data loggers, give them actual data from their bedroom at night, and now we can start to fix a problem because we’ve identified what’s actually going on. Because if we’re going by the old hand-dometer, it feels good up here, or it doesn’t feel good, that’s chasing a ghost. 

(11:02)
I don’t know how to tell you that’s comfortable or not, but there are specifications of where we should be, and we should know how to get there, and we don’t need to bore you with all the nitty-gritty of it. You just want to be comfortable when you sleep. So I think that’s the really big thing is just being able to make it something where this is a tangible thing. This is what we want at the end. This is our expectation, and if you want to get into the weeds with it, we can go that route, but I think you really just want to be able to sleep through the night and not wake up sweaty. So I think that’s really kind of keep it streamlined in that respect. We don’t need to speak AC to you. 

Adam (11:31):
Yeah, I love the numbers thing because if you’re talking about a specific technical jargon thing, but you just say, Hey man, this number is 85, it’s supposed to be 10. Oh, that’s bad. It’s so easy. It’s simple. But I love that over-communication is better than assumptions. Do you want to talk about that some more? 

Erica (11:52):
I’ve learned this in marriage. I don’t know, you’re married, you’ve been married for a while, men, women, everybody thinks differently. So, I don’t want to assume that my customer knows what’s going on in my business. I just want to make sure that all the i’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed when we’re going to come. If, say for instance, if their trash can isn’t outside, where are we going to put the double bag of waste at so they’re not like, Why is this bag of poop by my garage door? 

(12:20)
Well, because we talked about that, we’re going to set it there because your trash can wasn’t outside. So I enjoy just having the conversation, and if I can’t for the most part, do it via text message, but if I can get them on the phone, just so I can find out Why did you hire us? 

(12:34)
What’s the reason? Is it a pain point? It matters so much. Do you want your kids to be able to play outside? Did you hurt your back? That way, we’re able to have that conversation. I’m able to speak that language to you so you can understand the value. Everybody that hires us values something different with the service. It’s not very just cut and dry. And so I’ve been really learning through sales to speak to that and understand my customer. 

Adam (12:56):
How transparent are you guys with pricing? Let’s talk about pricing, job scope, all the factors that go into pricing. There are sometimes people will call and say, I need an itemized list of every part you’re paying for, and everything labor charges, how much the poop scooping, how much is the sanitation, all these different line items. It’s like I don’t want to get that detailed in my quote or do you guys say, no, that’s important, that gives trust? Where do you guys stand on that? 

Erica (13:22):
I’ve actually never been asked for an itemized bill. 

Adam (13:24):
Okay, that’s never. Congratulations. Wow, that’d be nice. Fantastic. 

Erica (13:29):
I mean, because our overhead really, I mean, our supplies aren’t super expensive. My main overhead is, oh, the insurance is so expensive for these vehicles 

(13:40)
And the workman’s comp, so that’s really where my overhead is and payroll. So for the most part, I just let them know, hey your bill is going to be 120 for the month or 110 for the month. Your first clean is going to be this. And I just tell ’em I don’t try to offer a smaller rate. Some other companies will be like, okay, well, let’s tell them what the weekly rate is going to be. So it’s a lower price. So then it’s not so big, but they’re not getting a weekly price. They’re getting billed on the first of every month. So they’re going to look at me and be like, well, you said it was 27.50. Why did you charge me 110? Oh, well, because 27.50 times two divided by 12. So that’s actually a rate. I’m not interested in that. I just want to give them the number upfront, and then we can have the conversation about the pricing afterward. 

Marco (14:25):
I love when people ask for the itemized breakdown and I have no hesitation giving them. I’m not obviously giving them the receipts of everything that we buy, but I am going to let them know at the beginning that we’re not going to be the least expensive, and that’s okay, and we will show you why. Give me a minute. But I do make sure that I explain to them any air conditioning company can go by the exact same air conditioner I’m going to sell you. So that’s not marking that up a ton. 

(14:51)
Where we want to make sure that we are able to get our value out of our technicians is the labor. We’re able to do that and back that up is because we’re able to show them the videos, show them the photos, and we just have really smart guys that really get that aspect of it. And I wish I was smart enough to come up with these ideas, but the guys do this on their own because they’re able to kind of create their own content and show their value. If you’ve had AC guy over your house and there’s a refrigerant leak, we’re going to show you a video of us doing the refrigerant leak with our electronic leak detectors. No. Is there a leak? Yes, the leak’s right here. You can see it on your own whenever you want to go and look at that video. 

(15:28)
Then another guy, when we’re adding refrigerant to your system, we’re going to weigh it in, take a picture, weigh it out, take a picture, so you know how much it is. And we’ve gotten a lot of really positive feedback with that. We did have one person, Hey, you charge this for two and a half pounds of refrigerant, why would you do two and a half? Are you nickel and diving me? I’m like, no, because the alternative would be to make it three, and that’s what everybody else is going to do, but we can show you it’s two and a half pounds. Charge you accordingly, and that adds the value. And I say it all the time, you’re paying for the best employees. The air conditioners are, everybody gets the same one. We have the best employees. Here’s here’s why 

Adam (16:01):
I really like that. I had the HVAC guy that came out mentioned earlier at the end, I was mostly having fun at this point. I said, who are your competitors? And I named a couple of them who I knew they were, and he didn’t like that question. And he was, well, we’re just so good. They’re not really our competitors, they’re just like ankle biters or whatever he said. And I was like, well, whether you call them your competitors or not, they are absolutely. The reason I bring that story up is because I like how you’re honest. Hey, look, the HVAC unit that I’m going to install is probably the same one that guy’s going to install. That’s not what sets us apart. Let me tell you exactly what’s going to be different. Our service, our technicians have, our average training is five, seven years, whatever, and rattle off three or four things that truly are unique to your business, that matter to the client, and that’s what people think about, and that’s how they base their decision. Not like a hundred dollars here and there on an HVAC unit. It’s much bigger than that, don’t you think? 

Erica (16:54):
Yeah, absolutely. When I have had those conversations comparing me to other companies, the industry is getting a lot more populated these days. 

Adam (17:02):
That’s right. It is.

Erica (17:03):
It is. And I had a customer that said, Hey, I want to move my service day from a Wednesday to a Thursday or whatever the day it was. And I was like, I can’t do that right now. I don’t have the room in my schedule. We have tight routes. And she made sure to mention that there are a lot of competition and that their prices are lower and that she would hate to have to leave my company. And so I was like, oh, okay, alright. And in my mind I’m just thinking, I’m like, okay, how do I want to handle the situation? And so what I did was I offered her a couple of resources for other companies that might be a good fit for her that could service her. And she was actually very offended. She’s like, You want to lose a customer? I said, I can’t accommodate your needs right now. So I want to offer you the resources to be able to find somebody that can accommodate you. And it is tough when we have our prices higher, but we want to pay, like you said, a respectable living wage to our staff. 

(17:56)
And we just have to be able to figure out how to articulate that and hold our ground. But I still feel like I respect our customer. 

Adam (18:03):
Alright, this is great conversation. I’m going to pause for just a minute to talk about Jobber and how Jobber has helped you increase your transparency with your clients. So Erica, from your perspective, how has Jobber helped you increase your transparency, especially through communication? 

Erica (18:17):
When a customer reaches out to us, we’re able to get back to them so quickly through the text messaging feature. We use that all day, every day. So if a customer has a question, if they have a complaint, or if they have an attaboy, which those come through, the whole team is able to see that. So everybody knows what’s going on. If Ms. Betty is upset, we all know if she is happy, we’re riding high. We’re like, yeah, this is amazing. And so getting back to these customers very, very quickly is what allows us to, I feel like, charge a higher dollar amount because we’re answering the text messages, we’re responding back to whatever needs to be responded back to. And let’s face it, a lot of the home service providers are not even answering their phones, let alone texting their customers back, and we need to do better. 

Adam (19:04):
So true, my mosquito company, they text me, but I can’t text ’em back. It goes to a black inbox and Jbbers two-way, Marco, what about you? 

Marco (19:12):
I want to set that black inbox up for text messages and phone calls on my phone sometimes. I think that’s a great idea. My favorite thing with Jobber is that it integrates with so many apps that we use, and it’s not just for me, it’s for the guys that are in the field, that are in the attic performing the work, doing the tasks. It’s nice that we can integrate CompanyCam into our Jobber, and it makes it almost seamless. It makes it really easy to recall notes and look at these pictures, get these pictures out to the homeowners and there’s just no app fatigue from the guys. They have enough to be fatigued about, and 10 different apps and having to integrate them all at the same time separately is very frustrating, cumbersome, everything integrates. It’s really nice, and it keeps everything streamlined and easy on the guys who are doing the hard work. 

Adam (19:52):
In terms of transparency for us, I like how clients can go in and pull up an invoice from last year if they wanted to, or payments, or quote,s or it’s all right there in their account, and so they don’t have to call us. They could go see it themselves before they call us. If they want to download an invoice, they had a question about it, they go look at it without relying on us to send it to ’em. It’s just one less step that they have to rely on us for transparency. If there’s a dispute, they can go access that stuff on their own to payment information, invoices, quotes, that kind of stuff. If you think that you need any of that stuff, which you do, if you’re like, oh man, I need two-way texting, I need that. I need quotes and invoices and integrations, then you need Jobber. You need to sign up today, go to jobber.com/podcastdeal an exclusive discount and start using Jobber to run your business today. 

(20:35):
Marco, I want you to share an example that you shared with me earlier about kitchens and open concepts. How does that relate to transparency? Tell us that story.  


Marco (20:43):
Yeah, so one of the guys that work from us, he always says that when you have a contracting license, you have this license to just write invoices. And when you’re hiding in the attic all day, there is this layer of where there needs to be this honesty, there needs to be a trust, and what we’re doing, because it is big ticket items, things can get expensive really fast, and everything works a little different. So we have to make sure we’re articulating that and explain that to the customer. So again, I think I’ve hammered it to death, but we are really high on taking a ton of pictures and photos and videos, because we want you to see what we’re actually doing. We want you to see what your money’s going towards. We want you to see that the guys are taking the time and attention, but a lot of it also goes back to us spending time and training the guys because again, with that open kitchen concept, you can see everything being made and that’s great, but every risotto that comes out of that kitchen is going to look like the last risotto that just came out of that kitchen. 

(21:34)
So it’s nice to have this new business, is that we can start everything with these. This is our (standard operating procedure) SOP for recovering refrigerant. This is our SOP for adding refrigerant for charging unit, for installing a new flexible ductwork. Whatever these things are. I know how Miguel will do it, how guy will do it, and how Carlos will do it, and I can explain that to the customers. And then when they get those pictures from the technicians, I don’t send them the guy send ’em directly to the homeowner. It’s going to be exactly how I was able to tell it and sell it to the homeowner. 

(22:04)
And it takes time, and it’s something that you have to plan for, and it’s something that doesn’t happen by accident. And it’s something that even once they understand, Hey, this is how we’re going to make our risotto every time it’s coming out this way, we have to come sometimes go back and make sure we’re still making it the way we talked about six months ago, a year and a half ago, however long it was because it’s something that matters every day and every call is different as the company grows, we’re around longer, we get more customers, the expectations there, they’re showing up, we’re showing up now. We’re not new people, expect us to do this now. So we have to make sure that we’re continually growing, continually teaching, and taking time to learn this stuff in the morning. We do little things at the office just to kind of keep it competitive. We’re all a little bit competitive there. So we do company CamFlex Friday, where we’ll come in and everybody can flex their best CompanyCam picture of the week. 

Adam (22:51):
That’s good idea. 

Marco (22:52):
There’s times where we’ll just go over if we have a sticky situation on some service call, we’ll review it and then we’ll all kind of take a time to fill out a dummy visit review form on how we would word these things or what additional notes or important comments we need to get to the homeowner. But it’s really just kind of standardizing your process, make sure it’s repeatable as something that’s always going to happen, and then just really just as much as you can showing them what’s going on. Another great idea, one of the technicians had water leaks is a big thing in Florida. It’s humid. ACs run all the time, AC drain lines back up. What we’ll do at the end is when we’re done, we’ll send you a nice, your lock in the gate thing, a cute little video of just, Hey, the drain’s draining outside and it is such a silly thing, but, Hey, we left your house was draining exactly how it was supposed to? 

Adam (23:34):
It’s great proof that you did the work, right? 

Marco (23:36):
And it really is. And then showing ’em what came out of that drain line, dude, it is growth. And every single time it’s growth. And you show that to the homeowner, and they’re like, thank you so much for getting that snot out of my drain line or whatever it is. But it is nice to be able to show that and just be very transparent and add the value to it. 

Adam (23:52):
This is a great segue into the final thing I want to talk about Erica, and that is, it’s good to be transparent. It’s great to make transparency a part of your business long-term, a consistent result every time, and doing it over and over again. I just think about my business. No one can see inside the gutter. No one can see it. If you cut the grass, you can see a cut, and clean the gutter. There’s no proof. And so we have to be really diligent about that. And so our technicians take photos at every stop, they send the checklist with the photos to the client. Every time we have clients on a pretty regular basis, they basically ignore the correspondence, and then they say, You guys didn’t come clean my gutters. I was home all day. There’s no way you guys clean my gutters. I was home all day. 

(24:35)
Well, man, I’m looking at 65 photos taken at your house from 10:00 AM to noon. Are you sure? We were, oh, okay. I guess I was gone during that time. But without those photos, without that ability, that transparency, Hey ma’am, we were there. In fact, I’m seeing all these photos before and after. Let me send these over to you again. I want you to see this. I want you to see what we did. Our technicians did a great job. Water’s flowing. I want to brag on my technicians. And so we’ve baked that transparency into our culture because it’s really important for our industry. And it’s also clients deserve a really good experience. And they shouldn’t wonder if we screwed them and actually clean the gutter or not. They should know without a shadow of it. Doubt that we clean the gutters and they’re clean and they’re ready to go. So Erica, last thought here. How have you, with your business baked in just systematized transparency? Anything else come to mind? 

Erica (25:29):
Oh, when you were just talking, I thought, well, my camera didn’t see you. You must have not have been here. 

Adam (25:33):
Oh, yes, you know, oh, you probably get that lot.

Erica (25:35):
Oh, I’ve danced in front of a camera the next time, and I’m like, I’m here. Catch me on the camera. Yes, this is really important. That’s why we send those on-the-way text messages, we send the closed gate photo, we send your gate has been closed and secured, and then we double-bag the dog waste and we put it in the homeowner’s trash can or wherever we’re supposed to put it. So then this way, when if a customer says, you weren’t there, I can pull everything up in Jobber. I can look through the text messages, I can look through the pictures, and I have from start to finish exactly how we’re supposed to do our job. And I do quality checks with the technicians, and we run through all of this. So it’s a very easy job. It’s just follow it exactly how it needs to be from start to finish. And nine times out of 10, we’re going to have a good success rate. But then when we don’t have a good success rate and we get the complaint, we handle it accordingly. And I’m actually gone. I’m here recording this podcast, and my scooper is handling biz back home, and he is handling the complaint that we got without me being there, exactly how I would handle it. 

Adam (26:36):
Well done. Well done. Bravo. That’s awesome. Sometimes I think complaints usually come in two categories. They’re impossible to please. And two, they broke the system. We didn’t do the thing that we were supposed to do in our system. And it’s usually a broken system. Problem is a complaint. You guys left a mess behind. Well, we’ve systematized cleaning up before we leave, and we have steps for that. So if we didn’t clean it up, that means that we didn’t do a step in our system. And it’s really important. We have to give our clients, every client deserves our best. Not almost every client. 

Marco (27:08):
Absolutely. And going back to the systems is that when we start this thing and we’re all talking about all these great ideas that we have to communicate and all these things we can do, it got a little bit over our skis, so to speak. So that system can be tweaked, and it can be tweaked, and it should always be this kind of work in process. And then when you have those issues where you said, This complaint is a break in the system, can we fix this system? If we’re having this recurring issue, we can identify within our system and see if maybe it might just be this system isn’t that great, and that’s okay, right? We can learn, we can grow, and we can change that. But if you don’t have a system in place, you can’t change anything because it’s different every time. So, having that just repetition, having the same risotto each time, it’s just there’s a million different reasons that that’s so important. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy. And it’s something that does take time to establish and think through and find out where the holes in it are. But once it’s kind of operational and it works and it continually works, it’s nice to have that in place and the customers feel they absolutely do. It makes the technicians look like they’re in sync with what we’re doing back at hq and everything just moves a little bit smoother. And if it’s not, it’s easy to identify why and fix it. 

Adam (28:18):
Erica, Marco, this is great. I love this conversation. I really think it’s helping our listeners get a better understanding of how transparency can really transform their business. A lot of actions, a lot of takeaways. I’m going to boil it down to three main ones. Number one is tell your client what happens next. Ma’am, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do that, and then do this, do this, do that. And you keep your promise. And that is transparency, that’s trust, and that is an awesome business. Number two is use photos and videos. Nothing speaks louder than photos and videos of your work. It brags on your technicians. It brags on how great your company is and is proof that you did what you said. Those things are so important. They’re so easy with technology these days. And number three, if you really want to be transparent, then you have to have your quote match the invoice, and you have to have your quote honest. 

(29:07)
You can’t, can’t be tweaking it, making it look like it’s something else. It needs to be true and honest. Transparency begins with the quote. Guys, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. That was great. One last question for you, both of you. Business is hard, and if it was easy, everybody would do it. And there’s highs and there’s lows and there’s lack of momentum and there’s not enough work and there’s late nights and there’s people who don’t understand my lifestyle and all these things. It’s hard. So why do you guys do it? Why do you guys run your own business? 

Erica (29:40):
Oh, man, the that I get from running the business, it’s almost better than the lows. It’s just, I don’t know. It is actually hard to explain because there are times where you want to cry, you want to give up, you want to go to sleep, and if somebody could take your business off you for a dollar, you’d be like, just take it. I’m so over this. But the gratification that you get to feel and see when you overcome those challenges and you’re able to hold your head up high and be like, yes, I did that. We did that. We’re able to grow this business. It’s something that just can’t, it can’t be done when you’re, I don’t know, working for somebody else. And that’s truly how I feel. 

Adam (30:20):
Awesome. 

Marco (30:21):
I’m going to say some real nerdy stuff. I just love air conditioning. I really do. I think it’s really interesting and it’s challenging, and my biggest thing that I like about it is getting other people excited about it in that same way, whether it’s the employees or whether it’s the customers. It’s an exciting thing to me, and I like sharing that excitement, teaching the technicians and just learning better ways to do things. I’m really big into always trying to just tweak things, make things a little bit better and never getting too comfortable. So I really like the challenge of just getting people excited about something as cool as air conditioning.

Adam (30:53):
We need people that are master craftsmen who are passionate about their field, so that’s awesome. Well, thank you guys. Thank you, Erica. How do people find out more about you? 

Erica (31:01):
I am all over Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, either Erica Krupin or Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin. 

Marco (31:08):
You can get all our information on blancedhvac.com. It has links to all of our socials and all of our fun stuff on there. So check it out. 

Adam (31:15):
You guys are crushing it. Keep crushing it. Keep serving your people. Keep serving your clients, and I keep making it happen. You guys are doing a great job. 

Erica (31:22):
Yeah. Heck yeah. 

Adam (31:22):
And thank you for listening. I hope that you heard something today that’ll make your business more profitable, more efficient, and more systematized and more transparent. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester. You can find at adamsylvester.com. Your team and your clients, and your family deserve your very best. So go give it to them.