Working Smarter Not Harder

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Working Smarter Not Harder episodes

October 22Fix Salon No-Shows: Deposits, Confirmations & One Booking Link
Rowan and Rye is a two-chair color and cut salon in Asheville, North Carolina losing two to three slots a week to no-shows — and they're always the three-hour balayage, never the bang trim. We diagnose why it's really a confirmation and tracking problem, and lay out the all-in-one ops platform fix.
In this episode:
Why "booked solid" doesn't mean booked: the expensive slots are the ones that flake

The real diagnosis — a confirmation and tracking problem, not a no-show problem

Why texting clients from your personal number at 9 PM makes appointments feel like suggestions

Funneling Instagram DMs, texts, and link-in-bio clicks into one booking page as the single back-door system

Card authorization vs. upfront deposits: asking for accountability, not money, changes client psychology

The automated SMS reminder cadence: three days out, one day out, morning-of, with a tap-to-confirm

Using Notion for SOPs and client notes while the ops platform runs bookings, SMS, and payments

How a card-on-file booking flow self-filters flaky clients before they hit your calendar
Sources:
Working Smarter — show home
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...so you're texting them from your actual personal phone? Like, your number number?
Marcy Delacroix: My number number. The same one my mom texts me on. The same one my ex texts me on, honestly.
Eric: Okay.
Marcy Delacroix: And I'm sitting there at nine at night, after a nine-hour day on my feet, thumb-typing "hey girl, confirming tomorrow at ten," and then half of them don't even reply, and I'm just supposed to guess if they're showing up.
Eric: And how often do they not show up?
Marcy Delacroix: Two a week. Roughly. Sometimes three.
Eric: Two slots a week.
Marcy Delacroix: Two slots a week. Which, for a two-chair salon, is... it's not nothing.
Eric: It's a LOT. Okay, back up for a second for people just tuning in. Tell me about the shop.
Marcy Delacroix: Yeah, so, Rowan and Rye. Two chairs, Asheville, North Carolina. I've been cutting hair for about eleven years, I've owned the place for the last four. It's me and one other stylist. We do mostly color, some cuts, a little bit of extension work.
Eric: And you're booked solid?
Marcy Delacroix: On paper, booked solid. In practice...
Eric: In practice there are holes.
Marcy Delacroix: There are holes. And the holes are always the expensive ones, right? It's not the twenty-minute bang trim that cancels. It's the three-hour balayage.
Eric: Oh, of course.
Marcy Delacroix: Of course.
Eric: Okay. So walk me through what you tried before you threw up your hands.
Marcy Delacroix: Honestly? Nothing systematic. I'd think about setting up deposits and then I'd get busy and forget. I'd read some thing online about charging a no-show fee and I'd think, I don't want to be THAT salon, you know? The one that charges you fifty bucks because your kid got sick.
Eric: Mhm.
Marcy Delacroix: So I just... absorbed it. Which is a nice way of saying I bled money for four years.
Eric: Can I diagnose something for you?
Marcy Delacroix: Please.
Eric: You don't have a no-show problem.
Marcy Delacroix: Okay.
Eric: You have a confirmation problem. And underneath the confirmation problem, you have a tracking problem. The no-shows are a symptom.
Marcy Delacroix: Say more.
Eric: So, the clients who flake on you, you said you can't tell which ones are repeat offenders.
Marcy Delacroix: Right. I THINK I know. There's a woman, I will not say her name on this podcast, who I'm pretty sure has stiffed me four times. But is it four? Is it three? Is it five? I have no idea.
Eric: Right. Because it's all in your head.
Marcy Delacroix: It's all in my head. And in my text messages. Which are a graveyard.
Eric: So here's what I'd argue is actually going wrong. You're doing the work of a front desk, a CRM, and a booking system, all with your thumbs, at nine at night, with no memory of what happened last time.
Marcy Delacroix: Yeah. When you say it like that.
Eric: And the clients can feel it, by the way. A text from a personal number at nine PM, no link to confirm, no deposit on the line, no gentle reminder the day of... that doesn't feel like an appointment. That feels like a suggestion.
Marcy Delacroix: Oof.
Eric: Sorry.
Marcy Delacroix: No, you're right. It feels like a suggestion. And people treat suggestions like suggestions.
Eric: Exactly. Okay. So let me tell you what we did at the agency, because we had a version of this. Not haircuts, obviously, but we had clients ghosting discovery calls, which, same problem, different industry.
Marcy Delacroix: Okay.
Eric: We moved everything onto the all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. Booking, reminders, deposits, follow-up, everything.
Marcy Delacroix: What is it?
Eric: I'm going to just call it "the platform" for the whole episode because I don't want this to turn into an ad, but it's an all-in-one ops platform. It handles the calendar, it handles the SMS, it handles the payment, it handles the tagging. One tool.
Marcy Delacroix: Okay.
Eric: And then we use Notion for the stuff behind the scenes. SOPs, client notes, the actual docs. But the client-facing automation, the "did you confirm, did you pay the deposit, did you get the reminder" piece, all one platform.
Marcy Delacroix: So what would that even look like for a hair salon?
Eric: Walk me through a booking. How does it happen today?
Marcy Delacroix: Instagram DM, usually. Or a text. Occasionally someone finds the little booking page I set up two years ago and never updated.
Eric: Perfect. Three different front doors.
Marcy Delacroix: Three different front doors.
Eric: And none of them talk to each other.
Marcy Delacroix: None of them talk to each other.
Eric: Okay. So the first thing I'd do, before deposits, before fees, before any of the scary stuff... I'd give every one of those front doors the same back door.
Marcy Delacroix: Meaning?
Eric: Meaning: whether somebody DMs you, texts you, or clicks the link in your bio, they end up on the same booking page. One link. One flow. And THAT page is where the real system lives.
Marcy Delacroix: Okay.
Eric: On that page, when they pick their time, they put a card down.
Marcy Delacroix: Here we go.
Eric: Here we go. But hear me out, because this is where people get it wrong. You are not charging them to book. You're authorizing a card.
Marcy Delacroix: What's the difference?
Eric: You're saying, if you no-show, this card gets charged a fee. If you show up, no charge, no...
12 min
October 20How a Davenport Salon Fixed Its Rebooking Problem — Rowan and Rust
Marcy from Rowan and Rust — a two-chair salon in Davenport, Iowa — joins Eric to unpack how her rebooking rate quietly fell off a cliff, and the simple three-part automated system that put it back together. If you run a local service business and your follow-up lives in your head (or on sticky notes), this one's for you.
In this episode:
The pink/yellow/blue sticky-note "system" Marcy used to track rebookings — and why "I'll text you" was the kiss of death

How a slow Tuesday turned into a diagnosis: it wasn't a client problem, it was a memory problem — and she was counting on the wrong person's memory

Why asking clients to call a small business every six weeks is a losing strategy in 2026

The move to a single all-in-one ops platform (one login for calendar, texts, reminders, review requests, and client notes) instead of duct-taping separate tools together

Fix #1: a hard rule that every client gets rebooked at the iPad at checkout before they leave the chair

Fix #2: an automated text follow-up sequence for anyone who won't book in person — one tap to book, no stylist action required

The 11pm Thursday booking from a couch-bound client Marcy would have definitely lost — and why "making money while asleep" finally clicked

Fix #3: the "we miss you" winback message for lapsed clients, and why it moved the needle most
Sources:
Rowan and Rust — two-chair salon, Davenport, Iowa (as discussed on-air)
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...so wait, back up. Sticky notes. You were running the whole rebooking system on sticky notes?
Marcy Holtkamp: I mean, when you say it out loud like that it sounds insane. But yeah. Little pink ones. I had a whole system.
Eric: A system.
Marcy Holtkamp: A SYSTEM, Eric. Pink was six-week cuts, yellow was color, blue was anybody who said "I'll text you." Which, by the way, is the kiss of death.
Eric: Oh no.
Marcy Holtkamp: Oh YES. Blue sticky note? Never seeing them again. I should've just thrown them straight in the trash and saved myself the paper.
Eric: Okay, so for anybody just finding us, tell them what you do.
Marcy Holtkamp: Sure. I own a little two-chair salon in Davenport, Iowa. It's called Rowan and Rust. I've been cutting hair for about eleven years, and I've owned the shop for the last four.
Eric: Two chairs. So it's you and...
Marcy Holtkamp: Me and one other stylist. Her name's Jo. She's great. She is not the problem.
Eric: So what WAS the problem? Because you reached out and the subject line was basically, like, "I think I broke my own business."
Marcy Holtkamp: Yeah that's about right. So here's what happened. My rebooking rate just... quietly fell off a cliff. Over about a year.
Eric: Quietly how?
Marcy Holtkamp: Quietly like I didn't notice. That's the whole thing. I was busy, the chair was full, I felt fine. And then one Tuesday was just dead. And I thought, okay, weird Tuesday.
Eric: Sure.
Marcy Holtkamp: And then the next Tuesday was dead. And then a Wednesday. And by the end of the month I was looking at my books going, where did everybody GO.
Eric: And they didn't go anywhere, right? Like, they didn't leave town.
Marcy Holtkamp: No! That's the part that hurt. I'd see them at the grocery store. Hair looking rough. And they'd go, "oh my gosh I've been meaning to call you."
Eric: Oh, that's brutal.
Marcy Holtkamp: It is SO brutal. Because they still love you. They just forgot. And I had nothing in place to remind them.
Eric: Okay so let me diagnose this a little, because I think a lot of folks listening are going to recognize themselves. You didn't have a client problem.
Marcy Holtkamp: ...no.
Eric: You had a memory problem. And it wasn't your memory, it was theirs. And you were counting on it.
Marcy Holtkamp: Yeah. When you say it like that.
Eric: Right? Like, every six weeks you need someone to remember on their own that it's time for a cut, in the middle of their actual life, and then ALSO remember to pick up the phone and call a specific small business.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which, nobody calls anymore.
Eric: Nobody calls anymore. So you're asking your clients to do a thing they don't want to do, to solve a problem you forgot to solve for them.
Marcy Holtkamp: Yep. That's it. That's the whole thing.
Eric: And the sticky notes, I want to be fair to the sticky notes...
Marcy Holtkamp: Please defend my sticky notes.
Eric: The sticky notes were a follow-up system. They just only worked on YOU. They were a reminder for you to remember to text them. Which means every follow-up had to pass through the single most overloaded person in the business.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which is me. On a Sunday night. With a glass of wine. Going, oh no, I forgot to text Linda.
Eric: And Linda went somewhere else.
Marcy Holtkamp: Linda went to the chain by the Target. I will never forgive the chain by the Target.
Eric: Okay. So let's talk about what we actually did, because I don't want this to just be me going "yeah that's hard."
Marcy Holtkamp: Please. Fix me.
Eric: So, full disclosure for the listeners, Marcy and I had been chatting for a while, and we moved her onto the all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. Same thing we use with every local service business we work with.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which I was scared of, by the way.
Eric: Why scared?
Marcy Holtkamp: Because every time someone says "software" to me I picture six browser tabs and a password I can't find.
Eric: Totally fair.
Marcy Holtkamp: Like, I don't want a CRM. I want to cut hair.
Eric: Right, and that's actually the whole pitch of why we picked it. It's one login. The calendar, the texts, the reminders, the review requests, the little client notes, all in one place. You're not duct-taping five tools together.
Marcy Holtkamp: That part sold me. Because I had tried, like, a booking thing, and a separate text thing, and they didn't talk to each other, and I just stopped using both.
Eric: Classic. So here's what we actually set up. Three things. Just three. I want people writing this down.
Marcy Holtkamp: Three things.
Eric: Thing one. At checkout, every single client gets rebooked for their next appointment before they walk out the door. That's not software, that's a rule.
Marcy Holtkamp: That's a ME rule.
Eric: That's a you rule. But the platform makes it easy because the calendar is right there on the iPad at the front, you tap, you book, done.
Marcy Holtkamp: And if they say "oh I don't know my schedule yet"?
Eric: Then thing two. If they won't book in person, they get dropped into a little follow-up sequence. Automatically. A text goes out a few days later. Hey, want to grab your next spot? Here's the link. One tap.
Marcy Holtkamp: And I don't have to send it.
Eric:
11 min
October 15Fix Salon No-Shows: Card-on-File, Reminders & Cancel Policy
Maggie, owner of Birch and Bramble salon in Duluth, is losing one Saturday chair in six to no-shows and late cancels. Eric walks her through why it's a systems problem, not a policy problem, and the three things to set up Monday morning.
In this episode:
Why "I know the repeat offenders in my head" is the actual root cause of chronic no-shows
The four-system trap: paper book, salon app, notes app, and your brain — none talking to each other
Step 1: require a card on file at online booking (not a deposit) as a flake filter
Step 2: automated 48-hour and morning-of text reminders with a confirm/reschedule button
Step 3: a written late-cancel and no-show policy (50% within 24 hours, 100% for no-shows) baked into the booking confirmation
Using an all-in-one ops platform for client-facing work and Notion for internal SOPs
Why the clients who revolt against a cancel policy are the ones already costing you the chair-day
How a 4-hour balayage no-show equals a car payment — doing the real math on empty chairs
Sources:
workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...so wait, back up. One in six. That's your Saturdays?
Maggie Thorsen: One in six. Sometimes worse in January. I did the math on a napkin last winter and almost cried into a cold brew.
Eric: Okay, for anyone just dropping in, tell them who you are and what we're actually talking about.
Maggie Thorsen: Yeah. I'm Maggie, I own a little salon up in Duluth called Birch and Bramble. Four chairs. Been open eleven years, cut hair out of my basement for like, basically my entire thirties before that.
Eric: Love it.
Maggie Thorsen: And the thing that is slowly killing me is no-shows. And late cancels. The "hey girl so sorry something came up" text that lands forty-five minutes before a balayage.
Eric: Forty-five minutes before a balayage.
Maggie Thorsen: Forty-five minutes before a four-hour balayage, Eric.
Eric: Okay.
Maggie Thorsen: That chair sits empty. I can't fill it. That's a car payment.
Eric: So how many a week, on average, right now?
Maggie Thorsen: Saturdays, I'd say one to two. Across the whole week, probably four or five that are either full ghosts or so-late it may as well be.
Eric: And you've been eating that for how long?
Maggie Thorsen: Eleven years. Give or take.
Eric: Okay. And no deposit policy, no card on file, nothing like that.
Maggie Thorsen: Nothing. I know, I know. I just... I started in my basement. Everybody was a friend of a friend. It felt weird to be like, give me your Visa or you can't get bangs.
Eric: Right.
Maggie Thorsen: And now I have actual clients, actual overhead, and I still haven't done the thing.
Eric: Can I diagnose for a second?
Maggie Thorsen: Please. That's why I'm here.
Eric: So you said something that really stuck out to me. You said, "I know exactly who the repeat offenders are in my head."
Maggie Thorsen: Mhm.
Eric: In your HEAD.
Maggie Thorsen: Yeah...
Eric: That's the whole problem. The problem isn't actually "I don't have a deposit policy." The problem is you have no system that remembers for you.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh.
Eric: Because every Saturday morning, you are the system. You are the one going, "oh yeah, her, she did this last time, I should've asked for a card." And then it's seven a.m. and you've got coffee and you just... book her.
Maggie Thorsen: I just book her. Every time.
Eric: Every time.
Maggie Thorsen: Because I like her. She tips well when she shows up.
Eric: Right, when she shows up.
Maggie Thorsen: When she shows up.
Eric: Okay so here's the thing. When we started running our agency, we had the exact same shape of problem. Different industry, same shape. Clients who'd ghost a discovery call. Prospects who'd book and bail. And I kept thinking it was a policy problem.
Maggie Thorsen: And it wasn't.
Eric: It was a memory problem. It was a "nothing talks to anything else" problem. My calendar didn't know who my repeat flakes were. My intake form didn't know. My texts didn't know. It was all in my head and in like, four different tabs.
Maggie Thorsen: That's me. That's literally me. I've got a paper book, I've got the little salon app, I've got my notes app, and I've got my brain.
Eric: Four systems. None of them talking.
Maggie Thorsen: None of them talking.
Eric: Okay so what we did, and what I'd want you to try, is we moved everything onto one platform. The all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. I'm not gonna name it on the show because that's not the point, the point is the SHAPE of it.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay.
Eric: It does your booking, it does your texts to clients, it does your intake, it holds the card on file, and it does the little automations between those things. One place. One brain.
Maggie Thorsen: One brain. God, that sounds nice.
Eric: We also use Notion for the sort of internal, SOP-level stuff. Like how do we actually run the thing. But the client-facing operation lives on this one platform.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay.
Eric: So here's what I would set up if I were you, Monday morning.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay hold on, let me actually get a pen. Hold on.
Eric: Take your time.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Go.
Eric: Three things. That's it. Not twelve, not a whole rebrand, three things.
Maggie Thorsen: Three things.
Eric: Number one. Online booking goes through the platform, and the booking form requires a card on file. Not a deposit necessarily. Just a card. The client enters it, it's stored securely, nothing's charged yet.
Maggie Thorsen: Just the card.
Eric: Just the card. That alone, in our experience, cuts a huge chunk of the flake traffic. Because the person who was gonna no-show doesn't want to enter the card.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh that's sneaky.
Eric: It's not sneaky, it's a filter. You're letting the system filter for you so you don't have to.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Card on file. Got it.
Eric: Number two. Automated reminders. Text goes out, I'd do forty-eight hours before and then again the morning of. And the morning-of one has a confirm button. They tap "confirm" or they tap "need to reschedule."
Maggie Thorsen: And if they don't tap anything?
Eric: If they don't tap anything by, say, two hours before the appointment, the platform flags it and sends YOU a little notification. "Hey, Jamie hasn't confirmed." Then you can decide what to do.
Maggie Thorsen: That is... I didn't know that was a thing.
Eric: It's just a workflow. It's a little if-this-then-that. The platform has that stuff built in, you don't have to code...
11 min
October 13Stop Losing Leads: One Inbox for Contractors Juggling Calls, DMs & Forms
Marisol runs Benavides Tile and Stone in Round Rock, just north of Austin — six people, eleven years in business. Leads are coming in from four disconnected inboxes and going cold before she can call back. Eric walks through how to fix it without boiling the ocean.
In this episode:
Why calling a homeowner back on day six makes you the "guy who finally remembered," not the hero
The four-inbox trap: voicemail, Instagram DMs, Thumbtack pings, and website form submissions that don't talk to each other
Diagnosing the real problem — it's not work ethic, it's the lack of a single pane of glass
Step one: consolidate every channel (website form, Facebook, Google Business, missed calls) into one inbox
The missed-call auto-text that opens an easier door than voicemail — and the exact human sentence to send
Step two: give every lead a status (new, contacted, quoted) in a simple pipeline
Nudges that poke you when a lead sits too long so you stop relying on memory
Why you should start with the ONE channel leaking the most leads instead of setting up everything on a Saturday and never opening it again
Sources:
No external links cited in this conversation — advice drawn from Eric's agency experience and Marisol's shop.
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...so wait, back up. You said a week. A WEEK before you noticed?
Marisol Benavides: Yeah. Sometimes longer, honestly.
Eric: Oof.
Marisol Benavides: And it's not like I'm lazy, Eric. I'm up at five. I'm on job sites by seven.
Eric: Right.
Marisol Benavides: But by the time I'm back in the truck checking messages, there's a voicemail, two Instagram DMs, a Thumbtack ping, and somebody filled out the form on my website.
Eric: Four different inboxes.
Marisol Benavides: Four different inboxes. And they don't talk to each other.
Eric: So tell folks what you actually do, before we dig in.
Marisol Benavides: Sure. I own Benavides Tile and Stone. We're based in Round Rock, just north of Austin. Six people counting me. We do flooring, backsplashes, shower surrounds, a little bit of fireplace work when it's pretty.
Eric: Eleven years, right?
Marisol Benavides: Eleven years this spring. I left a bigger remodeling outfit because I wanted to actually, you know, LOOK at the tile before it went on the wall.
Eric: Fair.
Marisol Benavides: And the work side of it, that part I love. The paperwork side has always been the thing that eats me alive.
Eric: And the lead follow-up specifically.
Marisol Benavides: Lead follow-up specifically. Because I'll be honest, by the time a homeowner is reaching out to me, they've already texted three other contractors.
Eric: Yep.
Marisol Benavides: So if I call back on day six, I'm not the hero. I'm the guy who finally remembered.
Eric: And that's margin. That's real money walking.
Marisol Benavides: It's warm leads going cold. And then I feel bad, so I offer a discount, so now I'm doing the job for less AND I waited a week.
Eric: Worst of both worlds.
Marisol Benavides: Worst of both worlds.
Eric: Okay so let me diagnose what I'm actually hearing. Because I don't think your problem is you.
Marisol Benavides: Go on.
Eric: I don't think it's work ethic, I don't think it's intention. You just described four different channels, no central view, and a person whose actual job is physical.
Marisol Benavides: Right.
Eric: You can't be on the tool and in a CRM at the same time. Nobody can.
Marisol Benavides: Thank you.
Eric: You're welcome. But seriously, the issue isn't that you're bad at follow-up. The issue is you don't have a single pane of glass.
Marisol Benavides: A what?
Eric: One place where every lead lands, no matter where it came from. Website form, DM, Thumbtack, missed call, voicemail. All of it, one list.
Marisol Benavides: That... would change my life.
Eric: And it exists. We've been using an all-in-one ops platform at my agency for I think three years now. We run everything through it.
Marisol Benavides: What's it called?
Eric: I'm gonna just keep calling it the platform we use, if that's okay. I'm not here to sell anybody anything.
Marisol Benavides: Fair enough.
Eric: But I'll walk you through what we actually did. Because we had a version of your problem.
Marisol Benavides: You did?
Eric: Smaller scale. Our stuff was coming in through a website chat, a Facebook page, and like, people emailing me directly because they had my card.
Marisol Benavides: The card people.
Eric: The card people are the worst, I love them, but they're the worst.
Marisol Benavides: So what did you do first?
Eric: First thing, and this is almost boring, we just hooked up every channel to the one inbox inside the platform.
Marisol Benavides: Every channel.
Eric: Every channel. The website form became a form that fed into it. The Facebook messages piped in. The Google Business messages piped in. Missed calls on our business line triggered a text back automatically.
Marisol Benavides: Wait. Say that part again.
Eric: A missed call triggers an automatic text.
Marisol Benavides: What does the text say?
Eric: Ours says something like, "Hey, this is Eric at the agency, sorry I missed you. What were you calling about? I'll get back to you within the hour."
Marisol Benavides: That's it?
Eric: That's it. No pitch. Just a human sentence.
Marisol Benavides: And people reply?
Eric: People reply so much more than you'd think. Because here's the thing, a lot of folks don't want to leave a voicemail anyway.
Marisol Benavides: Oh they HATE voicemail.
Eric: Nobody wants to leave a voicemail. So the text gives them an easier door.
Marisol Benavides: Okay I'm already... yeah. Keep going.
Eric: So that's step one, consolidate. Step two, we gave every lead a status.
Marisol Benavides: Like new, contacted, quoted?
Eric: Exactly like that. In the platform you build what's basically a little pipeline. New lead comes in, it sits in the "new" column. The second you reach out, you drag it to "contacted."
Marisol Benavides: And if I forget to drag it?
Eric: That's the beautiful part. You can set it up so that if a lead sits in "new" for more than, say, fifteen minutes during business hours, you get a nudge.
Marisol Benavides: A nudge.
Eric: A text to your phone that just says, "Hey, you have a new lead waiting."
Marisol Benavides: I need that. I need that yesterday.
Eric: And then if it sits in "contacted" for two days without moving, another nudge. If it's been quoted and they haven't responded in four days, another nudge.
Mar...
13 min
October 08Halverson Tile: How One Inbox Saves Two Kitchens a Month
Marcy Halverson of Halverson Tile and Flooring (Eau Claire, WI) joins to unpack why great installers still lose jobs: the leads are hiding. We rebuild her intake into one inbox, one pipeline, and automatic follow-up so kitchens stop slipping through the cracks.
In this episode:
Meet Marcy: 11-year-old tile and flooring shop in Eau Claire, four installers, mostly residential kitchens, bathrooms, and mudrooms.

The real diagnosis: it's not a follow-up problem, it's a four-places problem — Facebook messages, Marcy's email, website form going to her husband's inbox (checked on Sundays), and a notepad by the register.

The cost: 15-20 quote requests a week in spring, and a minimum of two kitchens a month lost because nobody circled back inside a week.

Step one is not a CRM — it's collapsing every channel into one inbox so leads stop being invisible.

Auto-text on form fill: inside four minutes the lead gets a text from Marcy's business number — "Marcy here from Halverson, I'll have a real number for you within 48 hours."

Why speed-to-lead wins the job in the trades before you ever call back.

Building the pipeline buckets: New Lead → Quote Sent → Follow-Up Needed → Booked → Done, with cards that move themselves.

The 3-day timer: quotes that go quiet auto-move to Follow-Up Needed and auto-send a check-in text — set it once, never remember again.
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: So wait, go back. You said there's a notepad by the register?
Marcy Halverson: Yeah. There's a notepad by the register. There's my email. There's the Facebook messages. And then there's the form on the website that goes to my husband's email which he checks like... Sundays.
Eric: Sundays.
Marcy Halverson: Sundays. If the Packers aren't on.
Eric: Okay. And how many of those are quote requests in a given week? Ballpark.
Marcy Halverson: Oh man. Fifteen? Twenty if it's spring. Everybody wants their kitchen done before Easter and then nobody wants anything done in August.
Eric: Right.
Marcy Halverson: And I know... I KNOW... we lose at least two kitchens a month. Easy. Just because nobody circled back inside a week.
Eric: Two kitchens a month.
Marcy Halverson: Minimum. Probably more. The ones that sting are when I run into them at the hardware store and they're like, oh yeah, we ended up going with somebody else, you guys never called back.
Eric: Yeah. That one hurts.
Marcy Halverson: That one hurts.
Eric: Okay so Marcy, before we even get into what to do about it, just... tell people what you actually do. Who you are.
Marcy Halverson: Sure. So I'm Marcy, I own Halverson Tile and Flooring. We're out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Me and my husband started it about eleven years ago, right after he left the union. We've got four installers now including him, and I do pretty much everything else. Quotes, scheduling, materials, payroll, you name it.
Eric: And the work itself, kitchens, bathrooms...
Marcy Halverson: Kitchens, bathrooms, we do a lot of mudrooms up here because of the salt and the snow. Some commercial, not a ton. Mostly residential remodels.
Eric: Got it. So the work is good.
Marcy Halverson: Work is great. Guys are busy. That's not the problem.
Eric: The problem is upstream of the work.
Marcy Halverson: The problem is the inbox. Three inboxes. And a notepad.
Eric: Right. Okay so here's what I want to do. I wanna diagnose this before we fix it, because I think most people in your spot think they have a follow-up problem and they actually don't.
Marcy Halverson: Okay.
Eric: You don't have a follow-up problem. You have a... everything-lives-in-a-different-place problem.
Marcy Halverson: Hm.
Eric: Follow-up is downstream of that. You can't follow up on something you can't SEE. Right? If a lead comes into Facebook on Tuesday and you don't look at Facebook till Friday, that lead is already cold, and it has nothing to do with your discipline. It has to do with the fact that the lead is hiding.
Marcy Halverson: Oh that's... yeah. That's it. It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I don't know they exist.
Eric: You're not lazy. You're on a jobsite for ten hours. The idea that you're gonna come home and go hunt across four places for people who want to give you money, that's insane. Nobody does that.
Marcy Halverson: Well I don't.
Eric: Nobody does. So step one isn't a CRM. Step one is just... one inbox. All the leads land in one spot. I don't care where they came from. Facebook, website form, somebody texting the business line, somebody emailing you... they all show up in one list.
Marcy Halverson: Okay.
Eric: And that's actually the thing that we solved for our agency a couple years ago, and it's the same thing we end up setting up for most of the trades people we work with. We run everything on an all-in-one ops platform. Lead capture, texting, email, pipeline, calendars, invoices, all of it in one window.
Marcy Halverson: One window.
Eric: One window. One tab. So when a form fills out on your website, it doesn't go to your husband's email anymore. It goes into the platform, it pings your phone, and it also fires off an automatic text to the lead that says, hey Marcy here from Halverson, got your request, I'll have a real number for you within forty-eight hours.
Marcy Halverson: Wait. Automatic?
Eric: Automatic.
Marcy Halverson: And it's from me.
Eric: It's from your number. From your business number. Says your name. Reads like you typed it.
Marcy Halverson: Okay. That alone...
Eric: That alone changes the game. Because now the lead doesn't go find another tile guy on Thursday. They got a text back inside four minutes. In their head, you already won.
Marcy Halverson: Yeah.
Eric: Even if you don't call them back till the next evening. Doesn't matter. They heard from you.
Marcy Halverson: Everybody else is still radio silent.
Eric: Everybody else is still radio silent. In the trades, speed of response is almost the entire ballgame. The folks who get back to the lead first, they win the job something like... I don't want to throw a specific number out, but it's a LOT.
Marcy Halverson: Yeah I've heard that.
Eric: Okay. So that's the capture piece. Now the second thing, and this is where it gets good for you specifically.
Marcy Halverson: Mhm.
Eric: You said at least two kitchens a month slip because nobody circles back inside a week.
Marcy Halverson: Right.
Eric: What if you literally never had to remember to circle back?
Marcy Halverson: Oh sure, Eric.
Eric: No, hear me out. Inside this platform there's a pipeline. Think of it as a row of buckets. Bucket one, new lead. Bucket two, quote sent. Bucket three, follow-up needed. Bucket four, booked. Bucket five, done.
Marcy Halverson: Okay.
Eric: And every lead is a card. The card mov...
14 min
October 06Kolb and Co. Cabinetry: Fixing Lead Intake and Follow-Up Leaks
An 11-year-old custom cabinet shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan is losing kitchens not on craft or price, but on speed. We rebuild the intake and follow-up layers around the quote so leads stop dying on the desk.
In this episode:
Kolb and Co. Cabinetry: 6-person custom cabinet shop in Grand Rapids, MI, 11 years in business

Three kitchens lost this year to slow quotes — one client said she preferred the work but got numbers from a competitor by Tuesday

Four inboxes problem: website form, phone calls, Instagram DMs, and designer referral texts each spawning different spreadsheets

Why quotes die on the desk as "Henderson maybe kitchen final v2" Google Sheets

Reframe: it's not a quoting problem — it's an intake problem and a follow-up problem

The one-pipeline fix: every lead lands in one place with stages (New, Measured, Quoted, Follow-up 1 & 2, Won, Lost)

Automated nudges when a lead sits too long, plus pre-written follow-up messages that send in your voice

Killing "final v2": one Notion-based quote template as the single source of truth for the team
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: So three kitchens. You actually think you lost three this year just on speed.
Marissa Kolb: At least three. One of them, the woman literally told me. She said, "I liked your work better, but the other guy had numbers to me by Tuesday."
Eric: Oof.
Marissa Kolb: Yeah. Oof is right.
Eric: And when was Tuesday for you? Like, when would you have gotten back to her?
Marissa Kolb: Honestly? Maybe the following Monday. Maybe. If I remembered.
Eric: Okay. Back up for a sec, for anyone just dropping in. Tell me what the shop is.
Marissa Kolb: Sure. Kolb and Co. Cabinetry. We're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Six people including me. Custom cabinets, mostly kitchens, some built-ins, the occasional whole-house job if the designer is somebody we love.
Eric: Eleven years?
Marissa Kolb: Eleven years in June. Which is wild to say out loud.
Eric: And the quoting thing. Walk me through what actually happens when a lead comes in. Like, right now. Today.
Marissa Kolb: Okay. So. Someone fills out the contact form on the site. That goes to my email. Which, fine. But then I also get calls, I get Instagram DMs, I get referrals that come in as a text from a designer I've worked with for years.
Eric: So already four inboxes.
Marissa Kolb: Four inboxes. And every one of those turns into a different spreadsheet. Because the way I quote a referral from Jenna is different from the way I quote some guy who found me on Google.
Eric: Different pricing or just different template.
Marissa Kolb: Different template. Different questions. Different everything. And then I go measure, I come back, I'm supposed to write it up, and that's where it dies.
Eric: Dies how.
Marissa Kolb: Dies on my desk. Dies in a tab. Dies because I'm back on the floor finishing a job and the quote is a Google Sheet I named something stupid like "Henderson maybe kitchen final v2."
Eric: Final v2.
Marissa Kolb: Final v2. There's always a v3.
Eric: There's always a v3. Okay. And follow-ups. You said half of them never go out.
Marissa Kolb: Being generous. Probably more than half. I send the quote, I feel great about myself for twenty minutes, and then I just... don't check back in. Unless they email me.
Eric: Right.
Marissa Kolb: And the ones who don't email me, I just assume they went with someone else. Which maybe they did. Or maybe they were waiting on me to nudge.
Eric: Yeah. Okay. Can I tell you what I'm actually hearing?
Marissa Kolb: Please.
Eric: You don't have a quoting problem.
Marissa Kolb: I don't?
Eric: You have an intake problem and a follow-up problem. The quote part, honestly, you're great at. You've been doing this eleven years. You know what cabinets cost.
Marissa Kolb: Okay.
Eric: The part that's leaking money is before the quote and after the quote. Lead comes in, it goes to a different place every time, so you can't see your pipeline. And then after you send, there's no system reminding anybody to nudge.
Marissa Kolb: Yeah. That's exactly it.
Eric: And here's the thing. The person who answered her by Tuesday? I promise you he's not faster than you. He's just got a system that doesn't let leads sit.
Marissa Kolb: That's annoying to hear.
Eric: I know.
Marissa Kolb: But fair.
Eric: So let me tell you what we did at the agency, because it's the same shape of problem. We had leads coming in from the website, from LinkedIn, from referrals, from a podcast guest form. Four, five inboxes. And we were losing people the same way.
Marissa Kolb: Okay.
Eric: We moved everything, and I mean everything, onto one platform. The all-in-one ops platform we run the agency on. I'm not gonna name it because honestly it doesn't matter which one, there's a few of them. But the shape of it is what matters.
Marissa Kolb: What's the shape.
Eric: One place where every lead lands. Form on the website, DM, text to the business line, email to the sales address, all of it funnels into one pipeline you can actually look at.
Marissa Kolb: One screen.
Eric: One screen. And every lead has a stage. New. Measured. Quoted. Follow-up one. Follow-up two. Won. Lost.
Marissa Kolb: Okay.
Eric: And the magic, honestly, is that when a lead sits in a stage too long, the system yells at you.
Marissa Kolb: I need something to yell at me.
Eric: Everybody does. That's not a you problem.
Marissa Kolb: Okay.
Eric: So for you. New lead comes in Monday. By Tuesday morning, if you haven't booked a measure, you get a nudge. Measure done, quote not sent in forty-eight hours? Nudge. Quote sent, no response in four days? That one's even better, because the system can send the follow-up for you.
Marissa Kolb: Wait. Send it for me, like, actually send a message?
Eric: Actually send a message. A real one. In your voice. Something like, "Hey, just circling back on the kitchen quote, happy to walk through any of the line items." You write it once. It goes out every time.
Marissa Kolb: And they think I wrote it.
Eric: You DID write it. You just wrote it in advance.
Marissa Kolb: Okay. That's a reframe.
Eric: It's the whole game, honestly. You wrote it when you had time. It sends when you don't.
Marissa Kolb: Huh.
Eric: And then on the quote itself. This was the other thing we did. We stopped having fifteen versions of the same document. We built one template. Lived in Notion. One source of truth.
Marissa Kolb: Notion like, the Notion.
Eric: Yeah. Notion as the workspace. The quote template lives there, every project gets its own page, pricing blocks you can drop in, line items, scope notes, all of...
12 min
September 29Sticky Notes to Signed Jobs: A Tile Contractor Stops the Lead Leak
Marisol runs Trevino Tile and Stone in San Antonio — five people, eleven years, backsplashes and shower surrounds. The phone rings plenty; the problem is what happens between the ring and the quote. Here's how she plugged the leak without forcing her installers onto software.
In this episode:
The sticky-note system: yellow (or pink) notes fringing the office monitor, pulled "whenever I remember" — usually too late

Why whoever quotes first wins in tile, stone, and small remodel work

Where Trevino's leads actually come from: Nextdoor, yard signs, and designer word-of-mouth — almost nothing from Google

Two abandoned CRMs and the real reason they failed: installers with glue on their hands were never going to tap on a phone

Reframing the fix: it's a follow-up problem, not a project management problem

Auto-logging every inbound call — answered or missed — before the sticky note gets written

The missed-call text-back that had a customer sending kitchen photos and dimensions by 8:15 a.m.

Automated quote follow-up so proposals stop dying on the vine after day one
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: So walk me through it — the sticky note thing. Like, literally a sticky note?
Marisol Trevino: Literally. Yellow ones. Sometimes pink if we run out. My office helper, bless her, she answers the phone, writes the name and the number and what they want, and then she sticks it on the edge of her monitor.
Eric: On the monitor.
Marisol Trevino: On the monitor. And by the end of a good week there's like a little fringe of them, and I'm supposed to come through and pull the ones I've quoted.
Eric: And how often does that pulling actually happen?
Marisol Trevino: Whenever I remember. Which is the whole problem, right? I'll get to a lead on Thursday that called us Monday morning, and by then the lady already had two other guys out to measure.
Eric: Right. And in your world, whoever quotes first —
Marisol Trevino: Whoever quotes first, usually wins. Or at least gets the shot. Tile and stone, backsplash work, small remodels — people are ready. They've been staring at their kitchen for six months and they finally called somebody. They're not gonna wait four days for me to feel like doing paperwork.
Eric: Okay, before we go further — tell folks what you actually do. Like, the shape of the business.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. So I'm Marisol, I run Trevino Tile and Stone out of San Antonio. Five of us. Me, an office person part-time, and three installers. We do backsplashes, shower surrounds, some floor work, a little bit of outdoor patio stuff. Been at it eleven years.
Eric: Eleven years, that's real.
Marisol Trevino: Real enough that my knees know it.
Eric: And where's the work coming in from? Because that matters for what we're gonna talk about.
Marisol Trevino: Mostly Nextdoor. Some yard signs — we do a nice sign, people notice. A little bit of word of mouth from designers. Almost nothing from Google, honestly. I know I should care about that. I don't.
Eric: That's fine. That's actually kind of the point. You've got a working top of the funnel.
Marisol Trevino: The phone rings.
Eric: The phone rings. That's the hard part and you already solved it. So the leak isn't at the top.
Marisol Trevino: No. The leak is between the phone ringing and me actually sending a number.
Eric: And you have a guess at how bad the leak is?
Marisol Trevino: I think I'm losing a third. At least. Maybe more. I don't wanna know maybe more.
Eric: A third is a lot of backsplashes.
Marisol Trevino: It's a truck payment. It's two truck payments.
Eric: Okay. And you told me before we started — you've tried CRMs.
Marisol Trevino: I've tried two. And I abandoned both.
Eric: Why?
Marisol Trevino: Because my guys wouldn't touch them. I'd set the thing up on a Sunday, all excited, watching the YouTube videos, and by Wednesday I'm the only person putting anything in it. And then I'm doing double work — I'm doing the job AND updating the software about the job.
Eric: And at that point it's worse than the sticky notes.
Marisol Trevino: It's worse than the sticky notes! Because at least the sticky notes are honest.
Eric: Right.
Marisol Trevino: The software was lying to me. It said we had eleven active jobs and we had four.
Eric: Okay. So let me tell you what I think was actually going wrong, and you tell me if I'm off.
Marisol Trevino: Please.
Eric: The problem wasn't the CRM. The problem was you were trying to solve a follow-up problem with a project management tool.
Marisol Trevino: Hm.
Eric: Those are different things. Your installers don't need to log anything from the truck. That was never gonna work. They've got glue on their hands.
Marisol Trevino: They've got glue on their hands and they're forty-five years old and they don't wanna tap on a phone.
Eric: Right. So asking them to update job status is the wrong ask. What you actually needed was something that grabs the lead the SECOND the call comes in, and starts the follow-up for you, without your office person having to remember, and without your installers having to touch anything.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: Does that track?
Marisol Trevino: That tracks. That's exactly it. The installers were never the problem. I was making them the problem.
Eric: You were making them the problem because the tool made you.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: Okay. So here's what we did with you — and I'll say up front, we run everything at the agency on one all-in-one ops platform. It's the same thing we set you up on. I'm not gonna keep naming it, it doesn't matter what it's called, what matters is what it does.
Marisol Trevino: Sure.
Eric: Step one was the phone. Every call that comes in to your business line now gets logged automatically. Missed call, answered call, doesn't matter. It's in the system before your helper even reaches for a sticky note.
Marisol Trevino: And that part I didn't have to train anybody on. That was the thing.
Eric: Nobody had to do anything.
Marisol Trevino: Nobody had to do anything. The phone just... did it.
Eric: Step two — missed calls. This was the big one for you, I think. When somebody calls and you don't pick up, within about a minute they get a text back. From your business. Saying hey, sorry we missed you, what are you looking to get done, we'll get you a number today.
Marisol Trevino: And they REPLY. That's what killed me. They actually text back.
Eric: They text back because they were already holding the phone.
Marisol Trevino: They were already holding the phone!
Eric: Right.
Marisol Trevino: I had a lady text back a picture of her kitchen before I'd even finished my coffee. She called at seven forty-something in the morning, I didn't answer because I...
12 min
September 24One Source of Truth: Fixing Salon Double-Bookings
When a salon owner's paper book and online scheduler stopped agreeing, the fallout was a comped bridal trial, a four-hour color correction booked in the same chair, and an ugly cry in the parking lot. We unpack the real fix: stop being the human API between your systems.
In this episode:
Why double bookings are an intake problem, not a calendar problem
The "human API" trap: what happens when the owner is the only sync layer
Cedar and Steam's breaking point: a bride and a color correction in the same hour
Onboarding a second stylist (Steph) without a shared source of truth
Day-one triage: pick one calendar, funnel every channel into one inbox, turn on automated reminders
Killing the "I'll log it after" habit — where double bookings actually live
Client records that carry the formula card AND the "every client has a Doug" note
Getting an hour a night back by ending the from-bed confirmation texts
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...so wait, back up. You said you drove home crying. Like, actually crying in the car?
Marcy Halvorsen: Oh yeah. Full ugly cry. I had mascara on my steering wheel.
Eric: What happened, though? Walk me through the actual day.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay so. I own a little salon up in Duluth. Two chairs. Cedar and Steam. And I finally, FINALLY hired a second stylist last spring after doing everything solo for way too long.
Eric: Congrats, by the way. That's a huge step.
Marcy Halvorsen: Thank you. It should've been a huge step. It turned into a huge dumpster fire.
Eric: Okay.
Marcy Halvorsen: So I've got the online scheduler that clients book through, right? And then I've got the paper book at the front desk that I've used since I was twenty two years old.
Eric: Oh no.
Marcy Halvorsen: Oh YES. And they never agreed. Ever. Like, one would say ten thirty, the other would say eleven. My new girl, Steph, she'd write someone in the paper book, I'd take a booking online from home at night, and boom. Double booked.
Eric: How often was this happening?
Marcy Halvorsen: Every week. Sometimes twice a week.
Eric: That's brutal.
Marcy Halvorsen: The day I lost it, I had a bride come in for a trial. Sweet girl. And at the same hour I had a full color correction booked. Like a four hour service. Both women sitting in my tiny waiting area staring at each other.
Eric: Oof.
Marcy Halvorsen: I comped both. Full comp. Told them I was so sorry. Smiled the whole time. Got in my car and just... lost it.
Eric: Yeah. Okay so let me diagnose this for a second, because I think what you're describing isn't actually a scheduling problem.
Marcy Halvorsen: It's not?
Eric: No. I mean, the symptom is the double booking. But the real thing is you had two systems that didn't talk to each other, and you were the human API in between.
Marcy Halvorsen: The human API. Yeah.
Eric: And when you're behind a chair for eight hours, you can't BE the API. You've got your hands in someone's hair.
Marcy Halvorsen: Right, and Steph's brand new, she's not gonna cross reference two systems either. She's just trying to not mess up a balayage.
Eric: Exactly. So the fix is never "try harder to keep them in sync." The fix is one source of truth.
Marcy Halvorsen: See, that's the thing nobody told me. Everyone said, "Oh just use the online calendar." But my regulars still call the shop. My mom books for her friends. People text me. It's not just one channel coming in.
Eric: That's the piece most people miss. It's not a calendar problem, it's an intake problem. Everything that comes in, phone, text, DM, walk in, web form, it all has to land in one place.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay so what did you do? Because I know you had a version of this at your agency.
Eric: Yeah, so at the agency we run everything through this all in one ops platform. I won't get into brand names because honestly the category matters more than the logo, but it's the thing that gives us one inbox, one calendar, one client record, all wired together.
Marcy Halvorsen: One inbox for everything?
Eric: Everything. Texts to the business line, emails, web form submissions, the little chat widget on the site. It all drops into one place and it's tied to that client's record.
Marcy Halvorsen: Oh, that would've saved my LIFE.
Eric: And the calendar piece is the part I think would fix your exact issue. Because when someone books online, it blocks the slot in real time. When Steph books someone at the front desk, she's booking into the same calendar. There's no paper book fighting the digital one.
Marcy Halvorsen: But see, I love my paper book. I know that sounds insane.
Eric: It doesn't sound insane, it sounds human. But the paper book is the thing that made you cry.
Marcy Halvorsen: Fair.
Eric: You can still print the day. Every morning, print it, tape it to the station, whatever you want. But the source of truth has to be one place.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay. Okay, I hear you.
Eric: And here's the other piece. The platform we use, it also does the reminder texts. Automatically. Client books, they get a confirmation. Twenty four hours out, they get a nudge. Two hours out, another nudge.
Marcy Halvorsen: I was doing all of those by hand. At night. In bed.
Eric: I know you were.
Marcy Halvorsen: How did you know I was in bed?
Eric: Because every salon owner I've ever talked to is texting confirmations from bed at ten pm.
Marcy Halvorsen: Guilty.
Eric: So imagine that just... goes away. That's an hour a night back.
Marcy Halvorsen: An hour a night. That's every episode of Real Housewives I've missed for three years.
Eric: Priorities restored.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay so walk me through what you'd actually do. If you were me, day one.
Eric: Day one, I wouldn't try to boil the ocean. I'd do three things. First, pick one calendar and delete the concept of the other one. In your case, the paper book becomes a scratchpad, not a system.
Marcy Halvorsen: Ouch. But okay.
Eric: Second, funnel every intake channel into that one inbox. Your business phone forwards to it. Your Instagram DMs, if you can, pipe in. Web form goes there. Even if a regular calls, you or Steph log the booking in the system while they're on the phone. Not after.
Marcy Halvorsen: Not after. Because "after" never happens.
Eric: Never. "After" is where double bookings live.
Marcy Halvorsen: I'm putting that on a mug.
Eric: And third, turn on the automated confirmations and reminders. That's the one that gives you your life back the fastest.
Marcy Halvorsen: What about the actual client info? Like, I keep formula cards in a little box. That's seventeen years of color formulas.
Eric: Yeah, and that's precious. So the client record in the platform, you can store notes on every client. Formula, allergies, the f...
10 min
September 22How Northline Cabinetry Fixed Its Operations After a $2K Walnut Mistake
Marta, co-owner of Northline Cabinetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, joins the show to walk through the moment a bounced check — buried under 11,200 unread emails — led to a $2,000 walnut slab becoming firewood, and the systems overhaul that followed.
The walnut incident: Fabricator Danny cut an irreversible piece after a deposit check had already bounced — three days earlier — with no signal reaching the shop floor

Northline Cabinetry's setup: Six-person custom cabinet and built-in shop, 12 years in business, running on a spiral notebook, a whiteboard Monday schedule, and one shared Gmail login for three people

The real problem: Bank, supplier, and communication systems that never talked to each other — money moved in one place, work got ordered in another, info lived in a third

Rule #1 from the consultant: Don't rip out the existing system first — keep the notebook running in parallel for three weeks to avoid dropping live jobs mid-transition

Notion as shared brain: Every active job got its own page — client, address, deposit status, materials ordered, template date, install date — filled out live in the office, not emailed as a template

All-in-one ops platform: A second layer sitting between the client and everything else — quote form, estimate signing, deposit collection, and real-time payment notifications all routed through one place

The referral: Marta's accountant flagged that a $2M business shouldn't run out of a notebook and connected her with the host, a consultant who sets up systems rather than just recommending them
Sources: Notion
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Full transcript
Eric: ...so wait, back up. You cut the walnut. You had already made the cut.
Marta Kowalski: We had already made the cut. My guy Danny is standing there with the router in his hand, and I'm on the phone with the bank, and they're telling me the check came back three days ago.
Eric: Three days ago.
Marta Kowalski: Three. Days. Ago.
Eric: Oof.
Marta Kowalski: And walnut slab, the piece we used, that was a two thousand dollar piece of wood before we touched it. After Danny's cut it's firewood, basically. It's a very expensive cutting board now.
Eric: And you found out because... what, you were just doing the books that night?
Marta Kowalski: I was doing deposits on a Sunday like I always do, and I'm scrolling the Gmail, and I see the notice from the bank buried under like forty other emails, half of which my brother had already deleted from his phone because he thought they were spam.
Eric: Okay. Okay. So for people listening, tell them what Northline actually is, because I think the shape of the business matters here.
Marta Kowalski: Yeah. So Northline Cabinetry, we're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Custom cabinets, custom built-ins, the occasional big kitchen remodel. Six people counting me and my brother Marcus. We've been at it twelve years this fall.
Eric: Twelve years. That's not a startup problem, that's a...
Marta Kowalski: That's a "we should know better" problem, is what it is.
Eric: I wasn't gonna say it.
Marta Kowalski: You can say it. I say it.
Eric: So how were you tracking jobs before the walnut incident?
Marta Kowalski: Spiral notebook. One notebook. It sits on the corner of my desk. I write the client name, the deposit amount, the date, whether the countertop template is done. And then the Gmail inbox, which is shared, meaning me, Marcus, and our office person Steph all log into the same account.
Eric: All three of you, same login.
Marta Kowalski: Same login. And Marcus deletes stuff. Steph archives stuff. I star stuff. It's chaos, it's just... it's chaos with a system, I guess.
Eric: Chaos with a system. I love that.
Marta Kowalski: It worked for eight years. Then it stopped working.
Eric: Okay so let me play back what I'm hearing, because I want to name the actual problem before we get into what you did about it. It's not really the notebook, right? The notebook is fine for six people. The problem is you've got money moving in one system, the bank, work getting ordered in another system, your suppliers, and communication happening in a third system, Gmail. And nothing talks to each other.
Marta Kowalski: Nothing talks. Nothing talks.
Eric: So the deposit clears, or doesn't clear, and there's no signal that reaches Danny before he picks up the router.
Marta Kowalski: Right. Danny works off the shop schedule my brother writes on the whiteboard on Monday morning. Whiteboard doesn't know about the bank.
Eric: Whiteboard doesn't know about the bank. That should be a t-shirt.
Marta Kowalski: Please make it.
Eric: Okay, so how'd you find me? Because you didn't call me, someone sent you my way.
Marta Kowalski: My accountant. She's the one who, after the walnut thing, she sat me down and said Marta, you need to stop running a two-million-dollar business out of a notebook.
Eric: Bless her.
Marta Kowalski: Bless her. And she said there's a guy who does this kind of consulting, small shops, blue collar mostly, and he'll actually set the thing up, not just tell you to go set it up.
Eric: Which is the whole trick. Because most people, if I just tell them "go get software," they go get software, they open it, they close it, and it sits there.
Marta Kowalski: It sits there. Yep.
Eric: Alright so tell them what we did. Or, actually, let me tell them what I saw when I first came in, and you tell me if I'm remembering it right.
Marta Kowalski: Go.
Eric: You had, I think, four kitchens in progress. You had somewhere between eight and ten deposits sitting in various states of "did it clear, didn't it clear, is it a check, is it a wire." You had a Gmail with I want to say eleven thousand unread.
Marta Kowalski: Eleven thousand two hundred and something. Yeah.
Eric: And the notebook. Which honestly, the notebook was the most organized thing you had.
Marta Kowalski: The notebook was the crown jewel.
Eric: So the first thing, and I want listeners to hear this because it's counterintuitive, the first thing I did was NOT rip the notebook away from you.
Marta Kowalski: No.
Eric: Because if I take the notebook, you have nothing. You're flying blind for a week while we set up new tools. That's when jobs get dropped.
Marta Kowalski: That's when the next walnut gets cut.
Eric: Exactly. So we kept the notebook for the first three weeks. What we did instead, we set up two things in parallel. One was a workspace in Notion, just for you and Marcus and Steph, where every active job got its own page. Client, address, deposit status, materials ordered, template date, install date. Just the page. Not fancy.
Marta Kowalski: And you made me fill it out for the current jobs, sitting there, in the office, with you.
Eric: I made you fill it out with me watching, yes, because I...
13 min
September 03Why Contractors Lose Leads: 90-Second Response Times & Follow-Up Fixes
The owner of Trevino Tile and Stone in Corpus Christi is drowning in 20-30 leads a week from Instagram, Angi, his website form, and the "cousin channel" — and tracking them on a legal pad in his truck. Eric explains why three failed CRMs weren't the answer: the real leaks are first-response speed and post-quote follow-up.
In this episode:
Why leads go cold in the first four hours — the homeowner on the couch fills out four forms, and whoever engages first usually wins the job

The legal pad as "the crime scene": two funnel leaks, front-end response and back-end follow-up

Why three CRMs failed — too expensive, too much setup, or paid for and never opened

Consolidating Instagram DMs, website forms, missed calls, and texts into one inbox on an all-in-one ops platform

The 90-second automated first text — written like you'd text your neighbor, with a question they can answer with their thumb

The post-quote sequence: texts at day 2 and 5, email at day 9, and a day-14 phone task for a human call

Automation that sounds human because you wrote it — the first message is automated, everything after is you
Sources:
Working Smarter
Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Full transcript
Eric: ...twenty to thirty a week. Between everything.
Marisol Trevino: Between everything. Instagram, Angi, the website form, and then whatever my cousin's neighbor texted me about a backsplash.
Eric: The cousin channel.
Marisol Trevino: The cousin channel is REAL, Eric. And I love it, I do. But by Thursday I have a legal pad on the dash of my truck with names I cannot read anymore because I wrote them at a red light.
Eric: So tell me about the business first, real quick. For folks listening.
Marisol Trevino: Sure. Trevino Tile and Stone, out of Corpus Christi. Flooring, backsplash, some shower work. Five of us. I started it nine years ago after I left a bigger contractor because I wanted to actually pick up the phone when a customer called.
Eric: And now you can't pick up the phone.
Marisol Trevino: Now I cannot pick up the phone. That's the whole problem in one sentence.
Eric: Okay. So walk me through a lead. Somebody DMs you on Instagram Tuesday morning. What happens?
Marisol Trevino: Best case? I see it in about an hour, I respond, we book an estimate for Saturday, I drive out, I measure, I quote them from my truck if I can, or the next morning if it's a bigger job.
Eric: And worst case.
Marisol Trevino: Worst case, I see it Wednesday night at nine, I say "hey so sorry, when works for you," they don't answer, I forget, and two weeks later I see they posted a finished backsplash from somebody else.
Eric: Oof.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: How often is it worst case?
Marisol Trevino: More than I want to say on a podcast.
Eric: Fair.
Marisol Trevino: I tried three CRMs. Three. One was too expensive, one wanted me to build my own pipeline from scratch and I don't have a Saturday to sit and do that, and one just... it just sat there. I paid for it for four months and opened it twice.
Eric: Okay so here's what I want to say, and I want to say it before we get into any tools. Because I think this is where a lot of small operators get it wrong, myself included, years ago.
Marisol Trevino: Okay.
Eric: The problem you're describing is not a CRM problem.
Marisol Trevino: It's not?
Eric: It's a response time problem. The CRM is a symptom. You're looking at it going, "if I just had the right database, I would remember these people." But the leads aren't going cold because you forgot them. They're going cold because nobody talked to them in the first four hours.
Marisol Trevino: ...huh.
Eric: Think about it. When somebody fills out your website form at eight PM on a Tuesday, what are they doing? They're sitting on the couch, they just decided tonight is the night they're going to redo the kitchen, they're excited, and they filled out four forms. Yours and three other people.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Eric: Whoever gets back first, in a real way, not an auto reply that says "we got your message," whoever actually engages with them first usually wins that job. Not always. But usually.
Marisol Trevino: And I'm getting back to them Wednesday night.
Eric: You're getting back to them Wednesday night. And by Wednesday night they've already had a guy come measure.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So it's not that I need to remember them better. It's that I need to touch them faster.
Eric: Faster and consistently. Because here's the other piece. Even the ones you DO respond to, what happens after the estimate visit?
Marisol Trevino: Nothing, usually. I mean, I send the quote. And then I wait.
Eric: You send the quote and you wait.
Marisol Trevino: If they don't answer I might text them once. Maybe.
Eric: Right. So you've got two leaks. The front of the funnel, first response, and the back of the funnel, follow up after the quote. And the legal pad is just where the leaks show up.
Marisol Trevino: The legal pad is the evidence.
Eric: The legal pad is the crime scene.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So what did you do? Because I know you run an agency, you must have had a version of this.
Eric: Oh yeah. For years. We had leads coming in from four or five places and I had a spreadsheet, I had a Notion doc, I had sticky notes on my monitor. Same disease, different symptoms.
Marisol Trevino: What broke you out of it?
Eric: Honestly, consolidating. We moved everything, and I mean everything, onto one all-in-one ops platform that we run the agency on now. Every form on our site, every DM, every call, every text, all funnels into one inbox. And then the automations sit on top of that.
Marisol Trevino: One inbox for all of it.
Eric: One inbox. Instagram DM shows up in the same place as a website form as a missed call. And the second something comes in, the platform fires a text back to that person within, we set ours at ninety seconds.
Marisol Trevino: Ninety seconds.
Eric: Ninety seconds. And it's not a "thanks for reaching out." It's a real question. "Hey it's Eric, are you looking at a specific project or just exploring?" Something they can actually answer with their thumb.
Marisol Trevino: Wait but that's you? Or is that a bot?
Eric: It's the platform sending it, but it sounds like me because I wrote it. And the reply comes back to my phone like a normal text. So the CUSTOMER thinks they're texting me. And they are, kind of. The first message is automated. Everything after that is me.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. Okay. That's... that's actually the piece I was missing. Because I was thinking, if I automate it, they're gonna feel like they got a robot.
Eric: They will if you write it like a robot.
Marisol Trevino: Right.
Eric: If you ...
13 min

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A daily 10-minute show for service business owners. AI tools, automated workflows, and the boring-on-purpose tactics that save you 5 hours a week. Each episode picks one niche, one workflow, and one…

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