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  • Fix Salon No-Shows: Deposits, Confirmations & One Booking Link

    Fix Salon No-Shows: Deposits, Confirmations & One Booking Link
    Oct 22 2026
    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 flakeThe real diagnosis — a confirmation and tracking problem, not a no-show problemWhy texting clients from your personal number at 9 PM makes appointments feel like suggestionsFunneling Instagram DMs, texts, and link-in-bio clicks into one booking page as the single back-door systemCard authorization vs. upfront deposits: asking for accountability, not money, changes client psychologyThe automated SMS reminder cadence: three days out, one day out, morning-of, with a tap-to-confirmUsing Notion for SOPs and client notes while the ops platform runs bookings, SMS, and paymentsHow 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 ...
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    12 Min.
  • How a Davenport Salon Fixed Its Rebooking Problem — Rowan and Rust

    How a Davenport Salon Fixed Its Rebooking Problem — Rowan and Rust
    Oct 20 2026
    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 deathHow 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 memoryWhy asking clients to call a small business every six weeks is a losing strategy in 2026The 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 togetherFix #1: a hard rule that every client gets rebooked at the iPad at checkout before they leave the chairFix #2: an automated text follow-up sequence for anyone who won't book in person — one tap to book, no stylist action requiredThe 11pm Thursday booking from a couch-bound client Marcy would have definitely lost — and why "making money while asleep" finally clickedFix #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. ...
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    10 Min.
  • Fix Salon No-Shows: Card-on-File, Reminders & Cancel Policy

    Fix Salon No-Shows: Card-on-File, Reminders & Cancel Policy
    Oct 15 2026
    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-showsThe four-system trap: paper book, salon app, notes app, and your brain — none talking to each otherStep 1: require a card on file at online booking (not a deposit) as a flake filterStep 2: automated 48-hour and morning-of text reminders with a confirm/reschedule buttonStep 3: a written late-cancel and no-show policy (50% within 24 hours, 100% for no-shows) baked into the booking confirmationUsing an all-in-one ops platform for client-facing work and Notion for internal SOPsWhy the clients who revolt against a cancel policy are the ones already costing you the chair-dayHow 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 ...
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    11 Min.
  • Stop Losing Leads: One Inbox for Contractors Juggling Calls, DMs & Forms

    Stop Losing Leads: One Inbox for Contractors Juggling Calls, DMs & Forms
    Oct 13 2026
    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 heroThe four-inbox trap: voicemail, Instagram DMs, Thumbtack pings, and website form submissions that don't talk to each otherDiagnosing the real problem — it's not work ethic, it's the lack of a single pane of glassStep one: consolidate every channel (website form, Facebook, Google Business, missed calls) into one inboxThe missed-call auto-text that opens an easier door than voicemail — and the exact human sentence to sendStep two: give every lead a status (new, contacted, quoted) in a simple pipelineNudges that poke you when a lead sits too long so you stop relying on memoryWhy 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 ...
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    12 Min.
  • Halverson Tile: How One Inbox Saves Two Kitchens a Month

    Halverson Tile: How One Inbox Saves Two Kitchens a Month
    Oct 8 2026
    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 ...
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    14 Min.
  • Kolb and Co. Cabinetry: Fixing Lead Intake and Follow-Up Leaks

    Kolb and Co. Cabinetry: Fixing Lead Intake and Follow-Up Leaks
    Oct 6 2026
    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 businessThree kitchens lost this year to slow quotes — one client said she preferred the work but got numbers from a competitor by TuesdayFour inboxes problem: website form, phone calls, Instagram DMs, and designer referral texts each spawning different spreadsheetsWhy quotes die on the desk as "Henderson maybe kitchen final v2" Google SheetsReframe: it's not a quoting problem — it's an intake problem and a follow-up problemThe 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 voiceKilling "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 ...
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    11 Min.
  • Sticky Notes to Signed Jobs: A Tile Contractor Stops the Lead Leak

    Sticky Notes to Signed Jobs: A Tile Contractor Stops the Lead Leak
    Sep 29 2026
    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 lateWhy whoever quotes first wins in tile, stone, and small remodel workWhere Trevino's leads actually come from: Nextdoor, yard signs, and designer word-of-mouth — almost nothing from GoogleTwo abandoned CRMs and the real reason they failed: installers with glue on their hands were never going to tap on a phoneReframing the fix: it's a follow-up problem, not a project management problemAuto-logging every inbound call — answered or missed — before the sticky note gets writtenThe 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 ...
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    11 Min.
  • One Source of Truth: Fixing Salon Double-Bookings

    One Source of Truth: Fixing Salon Double-Bookings
    Sep 24 2026
    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 problemThe "human API" trap: what happens when the owner is the only sync layerCedar and Steam's breaking point: a bride and a color correction in the same hourOnboarding a second stylist (Steph) without a shared source of truthDay-one triage: pick one calendar, funnel every channel into one inbox, turn on automated remindersKilling the "I'll log it after" habit — where double bookings actually liveClient records that carry the formula card AND the "every client has a Doug" noteGetting 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. ...
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    10 Min.