Working Smarter Not Harder cover art

Working Smarter Not Harder

Working Smarter Not Harder

By: Jaycub's Jammin Media
Listen for free

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 24 August 2026.
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 tool — and walks you through it like a friend at a coffee shop.© 2026 Working Smarter Not Harder. All rights reserved. Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Stop Losing Bids: One Inbox, Auto Follow-Up for Trades

    Stop Losing Bids: One Inbox, Auto Follow-Up for Trades
    Aug 4 2026
    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 bathWhy leads coming from Facebook, personal texts, the shop line, and referrals create four inboxes no one can run cleanThe real cost of losing two to three measured jobs a month — leads you already paid for with your timeWhy "follow up harder" fails: decision-making is the most expensive thing you do all dayInstant-reply texts from a number that looks like yours, sent in under a minute whether you're on a roof or asleepAuto pings at 48 hours and soft customer check-ins written once in your voice, then forgottenThe roofer case study: two crews, one job a week lost, fixed with three ordered movesThe 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 ...
    Show More Show Less
    11 mins
  • Working Smarter - August 04, 2026

    Working Smarter - August 04, 2026
    Aug 4 2026
    Practical business automation, AI tools, and productivity strategies for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Cut through the noise and work smarter — not harder. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.
    Show More Show Less
    5 mins
  • How Reilly Overhead Door Stopped Losing After-Hours Garage Door Leads

    How Reilly Overhead Door Stopped Losing After-Hours Garage Door Leads
    Jul 30 2026
    Marcus of Reilly Overhead Door in Wichita walks through how a single missed after-hours call at his kid's baseball game cost him an $800 spring job — and the simple ops playbook that plugged the leak. A candid conversation about why speed beats quality in home services and how a notebook-in-the-truck system finally hit its ceiling. In this episode: Marcus's origin story: nine years from a pickup bed to three techs and two vans at Reilly Overhead Door in WichitaThe 7:15pm broken-spring call that rolled to voicemail — and the 9am competitor who booked the jobWhy homeowners with broken springs call three companies minimum, and the fastest text-back winsStep 1: A 10-second missed-call auto text that sounds human, not "your call is important to us"Step 2: Turning every missed call into a tracked lead so you can finally see after-hours volumeStep 3: A five-column Kanban pipeline — New Lead, Contacted, Quoted, Booked, DoneWhy the customer-facing FAQ, pricing sheet, and SOPs live in Notion while calls and calendar live in the ops platformStep 4: The follow-up nobody does — the "let me talk to my wife" leads that quietly disappear Subscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com Full transcript Eric: So it's like seven fifteen at night, phone rings... Marcus Reilly: Phone rings. Broken spring, garage door won't open, guy's car is stuck INSIDE the garage. Eric: Oof. Marcus Reilly: Yeah. And I'm at my kid's baseball game. Third inning. I don't even hear it. Eric: You don't hear it. Marcus Reilly: I don't hear it. Phone's in the truck. So it rolls to voicemail, and my voicemail says, you know, "leave a message, we'll get back to you first thing." Real friendly. Eric: Sure. Marcus Reilly: I call the guy back at seven thirty the next morning. Seven thirty ON THE DOT. And he goes, "oh, hey, yeah, thanks, but I already got somebody coming at nine." Eric: Someone else got him. Marcus Reilly: Someone else got him. And that's a spring job, that's an install, that's probably eight, nine hundred bucks out the door. Gone. Because I was watching Little League. Eric: And how often was that happening? Marcus Reilly: That's the thing. I didn't KNOW how often. That's what killed me. I'd see the missed call in the morning and half the time I wouldn't even bother, because I figured, well, they already found somebody. Eric: Right. Marcus Reilly: So for anyone who's, you know, just picking this up, I'm Marcus, I run Reilly Overhead Door out in Wichita. Garage doors, springs, openers, the whole deal. Started nine years ago out of the bed of my pickup, and now we're three techs, two vans. Eric: That's a real business. Marcus Reilly: It's a real business. And the leaks were killing me. Eric: Okay so let me play back what I'm hearing, because I've seen this exact pattern probably a hundred times with home service guys. It's not that your marketing is broken. Marcus Reilly: No, the phone rings. Eric: The phone rings. That's the hard part. You already did the hard part. The problem is what happens in the sixty seconds AFTER the phone rings when nobody picks up. Marcus Reilly: Yeah. Eric: Because a homeowner with a broken spring at seven pm is not gonna sit and wait. They're gonna call the next three names on the Google list. Marcus Reilly: They're calling three. Minimum. Eric: Minimum. And whoever answers first, or whoever gets a text back first, wins. It's not the best company. It's the fastest company. Marcus Reilly: That's hard to hear but yeah. Eric: It's hard to hear but it's freeing too, right? Because you don't have to be better. You just have to be there. Marcus Reilly: Huh. Eric: So how were you tracking any of this? Like, missed calls, callbacks, none of it? Marcus Reilly: Uh. Notebook. In the truck. Eric: Okay. Marcus Reilly: Don't laugh, man. I had a system. Eric: I'm not laughing, I'm... I'm laughing a little. Marcus Reilly: Fair. Eric: But look, that's most guys. That's most guys at your stage. The notebook works until it doesn't, and then you hit a ceiling and you can't figure out why the business feels stuck even though you're busier than ever. Marcus Reilly: That was me exactly. Busier, more stressed, not really making more. Eric: Right. So here's what we did, and I'll walk you through it the way we did it at my agency, because we run this same playbook for a lot of trades clients. We use an all-in-one ops platform, it's the thing we run the agency on, and the first thing, the very first thing, is you have to close the after-hours gap. Nothing else matters until that's closed. Marcus Reilly: Okay. Eric: So step one. Missed call, auto text back. Within about ten seconds. Marcus Reilly: Ten seconds. Eric: Ten seconds. Homeowner calls, you don't pick up, they get a text on their phone that says something like, "Hey, this is Marcus at Reilly Overhead Door, sorry I missed you, what's going on with your door?" Marcus Reilly: Just like that. Eric: Just like that. Human. Sounds like you. Not "your call is important to us." Marcus ...
    Show More Show Less
    11 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet