Working Smarter Not Harder

Working Smarter Not Harder

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Working Smarter Not Harder episodes

  • Cabinet Shop Quoting Fix: Vega Custom Cabinetry Wins Back Evenings

    The owner of Vega Custom Cabinetry, a six-person shop in Tucson, spends two evenings a week rebuilding bids from notebooks, spreadsheets, and text threads — and eats hundreds of dollars in forgotten hardware on one in three jobs. Eric walks through the systems fix: capture once, quote in minutes.

    In this episode:

    • Why bids scattered across a notebook, a spreadsheet, and a text thread (and once, a Home Depot receipt) force costly rework
    • The real problem: no single place where a job lives from first call to signed bid — your brain does the integration work
    • Forgotten line items that quietly eat margin: knobs, pulls, hinges, drawer slides, soft-close, and glaze upcharges
    • Building one mobile intake form (~40 mostly tap-to-answer fields) covering every question you've ever forgotten to ask
    • The "before the truck moves" rule for capturing job details before they decay
    • Turning form submissions into pipeline cards: lead, measured, quoted, sent, signed, in production, installed
    • Getting eleven years of pricing out of your head into a pricing sheet with line items, upcharges, and finish tiers
    • How the intake form feeds the pricing sheet to produce a draft quote in about ninety seconds

      • Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com

      Full transcript

      Eric: Okay so two evenings a week. Just... gone. To quoting.

      Marisol Vega: Gone. Tuesday and Thursday, every week, I am at my kitchen table until like eleven, rebuilding a bid I already half-built on the job site.
      Eric: Rebuilding from what though? Like where does the first version live?
      Marisol Vega: Oh you're gonna love this. A notebook. Sometimes a spreadsheet. Sometimes a text thread with my lead installer. One time I found line items on the back of a Home Depot receipt.
      Eric: The receipt is doing a lot of work in that story.
      Marisol Vega: The receipt was load-bearing, Eric.
      Eric: Okay. Back up for me. Tell folks what the shop actually is.
      Marisol Vega: Sure. So I own Vega Custom Cabinetry, we're in Tucson, six of us including me. Been at it eleven years. We mostly do kitchens and built-ins, mid-range remodels, so not the two-hundred-thousand-dollar showpiece, but not the flat-pack stuff either. Real wood, custom sizes, the client picks the finish.
      Eric: And the bid is where it all breaks.
      Marisol Vega: The bid is where it all breaks. Every single time.
      Eric: What breaks specifically? Because "quoting is hard" is everybody. I wanna know YOUR version.
      Marisol Vega: My version is I walk a job, I take measurements in a notebook, I sketch the run of cabinets, I write down what the homeowner said they want, and then I go home. And then some time in the next four days I sit down to turn that into a real number.
      Eric: And by then...
      Marisol Vega: By then I don't remember if she said soft-close on all of them or just the pantry. I don't remember if we agreed on the inset doors or the overlay. And I definitely, DEFINITELY forget to price the hardware.
      Eric: The knobs and pulls.
      Marisol Vega: Knobs, pulls, hinges, drawer slides, the little bumpers. And then finish upgrades. Somebody wants a glaze on the stain, that's real money, and I'll just... eat it. Because I quoted before I remembered.
      Eric: How often are you eating it?
      Marisol Vega: Honestly? Probably one in three jobs I'm giving away a few hundred bucks in hardware I forgot to line-item.
      Eric: Okay so let me play back what I think is actually going wrong. Because I don't think your problem is quoting.
      Marisol Vega: Okay.
      Eric: I think your problem is you have no single place where a job lives from first phone call to signed bid. The notebook is one place. The spreadsheet is another. The text thread is another. Your brain is doing the integration work.
      Marisol Vega: My brain is TIRED, Eric.
      Eric: Right. And the two evenings a week isn't you being slow, it's you rebuilding context that should've been captured once.
      Marisol Vega: Huh.
      Eric: Like the reason you forget the soft-close is not a memory problem. It's that there was no field on the intake for "soft-close, yes or no."
      Marisol Vega: Oh.
      Eric: If the field existed, you'd have filled it in at the kitchen. On the spot. And then Thursday night you're not remembering, you're just reading.
      Marisol Vega: That's... yeah. That's the thing.
      Eric: So can I walk you through how we'd fix this at the agency? Because we had a version of the same problem. Different industry, same shape.
      Marisol Vega: Please.
      Eric: Okay. So we run everything on this all-in-one ops platform. I'm not gonna name it, it's the platform we use for basically the whole business, CRM, pipelines, forms, follow-ups, all of it. And Notion is our workspace for the writing and the SOPs.
      Marisol Vega: Got it.
      Eric: The first thing I'd do for you is build one intake form. That's it. One form. And that form is what you fill out on your phone while you're standing in the kitchen with the homeowner.
      Marisol Vega: On my phone. Not the notebook.
      Eric: Not the notebook. And the form is boring on purpose. It's every question you've ever forgotten to ask. Soft-close yes or no. Inset or overlay. Finish, and if finish, glaze upcharge yes or no. Hardware count, roughly. Toe kick style. All of it.
      Marisol Vega: How long is that form?
      Eric: Longer than you want and shorter than you think. Maybe forty fields. But it's mostly taps. Yes, no, pick one.
      Marisol Vega: Okay.
      Eric: And the second the form submits, that job becomes a card in a pipeline. So now you have a visual thing. Lead, measured, quoted, sent, signed, in production, installed.
      Marisol Vega: Oh.
      Eric: And you can SEE the bids that are sitting in "quoted" for four days that you haven't sent yet.
      Marisol Vega: Which is all of them.
      Eric: Which is currently all of them, yes. But now they're visible instead of living in your head at eleven pm.
      Marisol Vega: Okay wait, back up. The form on the phone. When I'm standing there with the client, is that not weird? Am I just on my phone the whole conversation?
      Eric: Fair question. Two ways to run it. Some people fill it in live. Some people fill it in in the truck right after, before they drive away. Either works. The rule is: before the truck moves, the form is done.
      Marisol Vega: Before the truck moves.
      Eric: Before the truck moves. Because the second you're on the road, the detail decays.
      Marisol Vega: Yeah.
      Eric: Now here's the part that would give you your evenings back. The form doesn't just capture the info. It pre-populates the quote.
      Marisol Vega: How.
      Eric: You've done, what, hundreds of bids over eleven years?
      Marisol Vega: Thousands probably.
      Eric: So your pricing isn't a mystery. A linear foot of upper cabinet in a certain species with a certain finish is a number you already know. You just have never written it down in one place.<...

      12 min
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    • Stop Losing Bids: One Inbox, Auto Follow-Up for Trades

      Marisol lost a full master bath job — herringbone floor, zellige shower — because the estimate sat in a notebook in a truck that wasn't with her. Eric argues the problem isn't discipline; it's a system built from four inboxes and a whiteboard nobody opens.

      In this episode:

      • The "I lost another one" text: how a broken saw and a borrowed truck cost a signed zellige master bath
      • Why leads coming from Facebook, personal texts, the shop line, and referrals create four inboxes no one can run clean
      • The real cost of losing two to three measured jobs a month — leads you already paid for with your time
      • Why "follow up harder" fails: decision-making is the most expensive thing you do all day
      • Instant-reply texts from a number that looks like yours, sent in under a minute whether you're on a roof or asleep
      • Auto pings at 48 hours and soft customer check-ins written once in your voice, then forgotten
      • The roofer case study: two crews, one job a week lost, fixed with three ordered moves
      • The five-stage measure-to-quote board: Contacted → Measured → Quote Sent → Won/Lost, plus keeping your personal number personal

        • Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com

        Full transcript

        Eric: So you texted me last week and the message just said "I lost another one." And I knew EXACTLY what you meant, but for people listening... tell me what happened.

        Marisol Trevino: Okay so, a woman calls me on a Tuesday. She wants a full master bath redone, herringbone floor, the whole shower in this beautiful zellige. Nice job. I go out Thursday, I measure everything, I write the numbers in my notebook, I tell her I'll get her a price by Monday.
        Eric: And Monday comes.
        Marisol Trevino: Monday comes, and I'm on a job in Portland, the neighborhood not Oregon, and a saw goes down, and one of my guys cuts his hand, not bad but bad enough, and by the time I get home it's Wednesday and the notebook is in the truck and the truck is at my cousin's because he was borrowing it.
        Eric: Oh no.
        Marisol Trevino: And I remembered her on SATURDAY. Saturday morning. I called, she was very nice, and she said they'd already signed with somebody else.
        Eric: How much was that job, roughly?
        Marisol Trevino: It would've been one of the bigger ones this quarter. I don't want to say the number because my husband listens to these things now, but... it hurt.
        Eric: And this isn't the first one.
        Marisol Trevino: Eric. It is not the first one. It's not the fifth one. I lose two, sometimes three good ones a month like this. And the crazy part is I HAD the lead. She called ME. I went out. I did the work of measuring.
        Eric: Right, you paid for the lead with your time already.
        Marisol Trevino: Exactly. The marketing worked. My referrals work. Facebook works. It's the part AFTER that's broken.
        Eric: Okay so before we get into what to do, let me just say back what I'm hearing, because I think a lot of folks listening are nodding right now. You've got leads coming in through, what, three or four channels?
        Marisol Trevino: Facebook messages, texts to my personal phone, calls to the shop line, and referrals which usually come in as a text from whoever referred them saying "hey my friend's gonna call you."
        Eric: Four inboxes.
        Marisol Trevino: Four inboxes.
        Eric: And then the estimate lives in a paper notebook in a truck that sometimes is not with you.
        Marisol Trevino: When you say it like that.
        Eric: I'm not making fun, I'm just... this is the thing I want people to hear. The problem isn't you. The problem is the SYSTEM is four inboxes and a notebook. Nobody could run that clean.
        Marisol Trevino: My husband says the same thing. Nicer than you though.
        Eric: Fair. Okay. So here's what I think is actually going wrong, and then I want to walk you through what we did with a client who had basically your exact situation, different trade but same shape.
        Marisol Trevino: Please.
        Eric: The thing that's going wrong is not that you're forgetting to follow up. It's that "follow up" is a decision you have to MAKE every single day, on top of running crews, on top of your kids, on top of the saw breaking. And decision-making is the most expensive thing you do all day.
        Marisol Trevino: Huh.
        Eric: So the fix isn't "try harder to remember." The fix is you take the follow-up decision off your plate entirely.
        Marisol Trevino: Okay, but how, because I've tried spreadsheets, I've tried a whiteboard in the shop...
        Eric: Yeah, and those all put the work back on you. Every morning you have to LOOK at the whiteboard. Every morning you have to open the spreadsheet.
        Marisol Trevino: I never open the spreadsheet.
        Eric: Nobody opens the spreadsheet. So here's what we do at the agency, and it's what we set up for this client I'm gonna tell you about. We run everything, and I mean everything, through one all-in-one ops platform. It's the platform we use for our own business and for clients. All the inboxes feed into it, all the follow-up runs out of it, and the estimate lives in it.
        Marisol Trevino: One place.
        Eric: One place. And the important part, the part that would've saved you the zellige job, is that the second a lead comes in, the platform sends them a text. Not from a robot number, from YOUR number, or a number that looks like yours.
        Marisol Trevino: Saying what?
        Eric: Saying what YOU would say. "Hey, this is Marisol from Trevino Tile, got your message, I'll be in touch within the day to set up a time to come measure." That goes out in under a minute, whether you're on a roof or asleep.
        Marisol Trevino: Okay.
        Eric: Then, and this is the part, if you don't move that lead forward in the system in, say, forty-eight hours, it pings you. And if you still don't move it, it pings you again. And it drops the customer a soft check-in on your behalf. "Hey, just circling back, still want me to get you that number?"
        Marisol Trevino: Wait wait wait. It sends the check-in FOR me?
        Eric: For you. In your voice, because you wrote the template once, six months ago, and then never thought about it again.
        Marisol Trevino: Oh my god.
        Eric: Yeah. So let me tell you about this guy. He runs a roofing outfit, similar size to you, two crews, his wife does the books. Same problem. Different notebook, same problem. Leads coming in from four places, estimates getting lost, and he was losing, by his count, about one job a week that he'd already gone out and looked at.
        Marisol Trevino: One a week is brutal.
        Eric: One a week is the business. So we sat down with him and we did three things, and I want you to hear the order because the order matters.
        Marisol Trevino: Okay.
        Eric: One. We pointed every inbox at the platform. Facebook messages, the website form, the shop line, and we got him a business texting number that forwards to his cell but logs everything. So now when a lead texts, it's in the system whether he sees it or not.
        Marisol Trevino: My personal number stays personal.
        Eric: Your personal number stays personal...

        12 min
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      About Working Smarter Not Harder

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