Episode 103 - Losers are Winners: Ashley Ortiz vs. the Client From Hell
Episode #103 | Losers are Winners | Ashley Ortiz vs. the Client From Hell
Ashley Ortiz joined the podcast with a client story so fresh the paint was still wet, and somehow it only got worse from there. She and Mark swap war stories about nightmare clients, whether specifying coat counts in your contract actually protects you, and why the painter always gets blamed even when it is the drywaller's fault. It ends with a mutual agreement that some jobs you just have to get out of as fast as possible and count the lessons instead of the losses.
About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
Support the Show:
-
Ashley Ortiz 00:03
A lot of times, if they're like, "Well, I do it myself, or "I could do this myself, but I don't have time, or you know, "Oh, it's so easy. You just need to do this or that. Kind of tell me how to do the job, and it's like, "Then, then do it yourself. Then why are you calling me if it's so easy? Like my actual brother-in-law, when they bought their house. Told us, I'm like, oh, any idiot can paint. We're like,
Mark D. Williams 00:30
welcome to Here's Builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, a host today. I've got Washingtonian on bright and early since we're two hours time difference. I've got Ashley Ortiz with Bella Vista painting and drywall. Thanks for coming on, Ashley.
Ashley Ortiz 00:42
Thank you for having me.
Mark D. Williams 00:44
So we're kind of done with the West Coast tour. You had reached out, I don't know, maybe a month or two ago, and I said I didn't have room in the schedule to bring you on for our Monday episodes, but I've always got room for Thursday's losers or winners. So the audience is very well queued up for some trauma and some relatability. Let's hear some stories in your career, whether it's on the job sites, at home, in the office. What are some painful lessons that you've encountered in your career?
Ashley Ortiz 01:12
Ours is still very fresh right now because this one's like literally happening, happening now.
Mark D. Williams 01:17
All right, this is hot take.
Ashley Ortiz 01:18
Okay, most basic 2000 10s two. hardy board siding basic house done in two and a half days right half day wash two days paint done get out of there bed for 70 hours this lady was a walking red flag not the first time I went out well let me back up a little bit I have an estimator who goes out there who maybe she can't read people as good, or maybe this lady just did not give these vibes at all. But it's definitely one that we should have said, yeah, nope, we're gonna double bid that one because, yeah, she's definitely gonna be a pain. Didn't get that vibe when we initially bid it, so we bid it like we normally would-70 hours. That's all it should take, you know, the amount of gallons, all the things, right? Well, there is quite a bit of dry rot. There are some initially were like, you know, it's just window trim. We can replace that. That's fine. But then there was a bunch of belly bands, and it was a lot more than than we want to handle. So we went out there, and I got the vibes from her. I'm like, oh man, this is going to be a fun one. My husband went with me, who's my business partner, and same thing. He's like, no, let's not. Let's not do this job. Let's back out of it. I'm like, how do I back out now? We already bid it. Like I can't just be like, yes, sorry, we're not going to do your job. I don't like your vibe. Like I can't do that. Like it doesn't work like that. You know, in this real world of Google reviews. So, but we did hand off the dryer repairs to somebody else because it was just she was asking for stuff we weren't familiar with, and we're painters. Let us apply the paint. Let somebody else apply the the new wood trims. We're over 45 and a half hours. 45 and a half. We bid for 70. We're at 118 and five because of her, because of her nitpicking little things. She has rough cut wood trims, standard on this type of house. Very normal. She's like, it needs another coat. It has two plus some backbrush in there doesn't need another coat. She would walk the house like 10 times a day. Took us over a week to do this job, and then we still had to go back because she still is not understanding and comprehending. You have iron ore, which is black on your gable ends, and you have it in satin, so it's reflecting the sun. What you're seeing up there, plus the texture of the siding, is all reflection of from the sun, its texture, all the things. I explained that to her, still not accepting of it. So my husband went out there Saturday, did a fourth coat, a fourth coat on that, more additional hours to be added, and she still has not paid yet because
Mark D. Williams 03:37
she paid her down her deposit.
Ashley Ortiz 03:38
Yes, she did pay a deposit absolutely, and that was another hard lesson I learned.
Mark D. Williams 03:42
Do you do 50-50? Do you do 50-25-20-five? How do you do
Ashley Ortiz 03:46
it? 5050-50, That was a lesson we learned years ago collecting deposits.
Mark D. Williams 03:52
We'll talk about that one next. So where? Okay, let's stop here. Where do you go from here? You're, you're, there's, you still haven't been paid. My guess is my spidey senses of business for 22 years tells me you're unlikely to get paid in full, no matter how it works. And my guess is you'll have to go to her and just say we're not coming back. She said she's going to probably say I'm not going to pay you. You're going to say we did the work. You have two options: she's either going to pay you 50% of that last deposit and you walk away, or she's not going to pay you at all, and you're going to file a small claims court deal, and this just keeps getting dragged out for a couple more months.
Ashley Ortiz 04:28
And not even worth it. My job today is to do the job costing on it to see how much we truly lost, or did we even at least break even? That's my job today. All the numbers, all the information's in the system, so I got to go in there and actually look at that. Yeah, she was leaving Saturday evening for two and a half weeks with her kids, but my guess is she wants to wait because she's like, you can only see the issue at like 11 o'clock in the morning on a sunny day, and I'm like, doesn't that further prove my point that this is a reflection from the sun?
Mark D. Williams 04:54
You're dealing with what every I mean, I've had a client, I've everyone that I know has been in business has had a client. Like this, and they are so hard.
Ashley Ortiz 05:02
Yeah.
Mark D. Williams 05:02
Um. I mean, I know from a building point of view, like I have to keep working with them continually. Like as a painting coming in for a remodel or at the top fresh. Like you basically can choose to walk away, or I mean, you're doing the best you can. I guess my question is, and for the audience is, how do you prevent this from happening in the future? Is there something you can put in your contract? You change your terms to like 5025, 25. Like, how do you what what are you telling yourself right now?
Ashley Ortiz 05:28
Right now is the SOP is going to change. Do we need to specify the coats first of all? Because I've never I've never actually specified. Because to me, it's we're going to paint for coverage, which should be two coats. But sometimes you get those whites that just don't cover, and you don't know what client's going to choose a white until you're already contracted side. And so I'm going to specify in there the bid is included two coats, which is you know standard per the specs of the paint two coats. Anything additional or requested, you're then going to have to be paying for that or paying for that because it's it's ridiculous. There's another side of her house, same thing. It's just the way that the the texture and the sheen hits the reflects the light. That side has four coats as well, so we went way over on our gallons and way over on on our hours. And I had my son there who just graduated high school. He was working there at that job, and my husband, of course, during the job was out of the country, so he couldn't be there to like stop her in her tracks for all of her crap because she was there all day long, just going out and watching them paint, and then she'd find something. Hey, can you come fix this? Hey, can you trust the process and let us paint the house, and then we'll do the touch up? She stopped them like every hour to go and do a touch up, and then we had it. The other thing is, I think we need to start once they give us their colors, so we have that written proof. And she did our final color. She wanted the shutters, the trim color. But then after they had been painted for two days, she then comes back and said, "No, I wanted those the black gable color. But we and but she's not the person that's going to accept that she's wrong in an argument. So I think I need to have them sign off.
Mark D. Williams 06:55
Do you have that written down though, or
Ashley Ortiz 06:57
it is written the the last message? And because we'll do like ChatGPT mockups for them, so they can kind of see a rough idea how it's going to look. So with that, we have the written proof, and we have the last mockup, and she's still denying. She's still denying it. So I'm going to start having. I'm going to send them. Here's your selections. Here's your mockup. Sign off on this because anything that deviates from that, you're paying for.
Mark D. Williams 07:18
How can she argue? Like, in what form is it? Is it an email thread, a text thread? Like
Ashley Ortiz 07:22
I think that one was a text. I think it was a text thread. So it's like I, and she's just one of those people that will never accept it. My my husband's a massive soccer fan, and he's like, she's like a Messi fan. They'll never ever ever accept when Messi's not right or doing something wrong. And I'm just like, oh my god, you're such a soccer guy.
Mark D. Williams 07:40
Something tells me you're not Argentinian.
Ashley Ortiz 07:42
No, no, no, absolutely not. And I, I never. So my husband's a massive like Ronaldo fan. I've never cared, but after watching the World Cup and seeing how Argentina behaved, I'm like, oh God, okay, husband, maybe you're right.
Mark D. Williams 07:57
Oh, we got some World Cup drama here. It's over, but we're just we're bringing it. We're bringing it. Maybe we should do a World Cup tour with the Curious Builder.
Ashley Ortiz 08:04
Yep, in construction. You know, there's probably quite a few.
Mark D. Williams 08:07
Oh yeah, for sure. What? That's okay. That's interesting, man. Yeah, all I can say is, well, a, I'm sorry because yeah, it really stinks for our industry when you have people like this are just honestly miserable. The hard part is, is like your spidey sense didn't go off. And if you're going to scale your company, depending how big you are, it's not like you can be in every location
Ashley Ortiz 08:30
exactly
Mark D. Williams 08:31
for all these bids. So you know, inevitably, sometimes they just get through.
Ashley Ortiz 08:35
They do.
Mark D. Williams 08:36
We have written into our contract actually that there's no we won't take except texting as a form of communication, so that's been a real game changer. And it's a little bit different for us as a custom home builder. You know, we might be building a house for eight to 14 months.
Ashley Ortiz 08:51
Right.
Mark D. Williams 08:51
You know, my team can't be bothered at nights and weekends and show up on a Monday and expect to be excited about working. So it's a little bit different scenario, but it is hard because when people have, if she's walking around the house at night or in twilight or whatever time of day she's doing it and sending all these pictures, your phone is just getting lit up. It's just not a fair. Like, what other business operates that way?
Ashley Ortiz 09:15
Normally, they don't have my phone number. Nobody has my number unless you're like an agent that I work with all the time. Like, I don't give my phone number to everyone, but by the time I met her, I knew she was gonna be one of these, and so I'm like, let's get ahead of it. So I created a group thread, and we use Job Thread. I don't know if you're familiar with that. So there's very well we can communicate through the system, but she just would not respond through the system. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna create a thread. Me, the project manager, we're all going to be in it, so we can just get ahead of it. Let me over communicate. Let me overly be involved, and I'm not usually in this involved in the job sites anymore. Like I'm behind the scenes, I'm doing things like this, and the advertising side of things, networking. I'm not usually hands on on a job anymore, and this one I knew I needed to be, and it was like almost worse. It was almost worse, and I think she took. Advantage also of the crew, she would go and stop them and tell them this. She never told me stuff like, "Hey, this side looks funky. Can we do another? She never, she never communicated to me. She would go grab the guys. It's like for you, for instance, like you've got the scope of work for the sub, but then the owner goes and talks directly to the sub
Mark D. Williams 10:17
to
Ashley Ortiz 10:17
do this or that. And if the sub doesn't communicate to to you as the builder, the
Mark D. Williams 10:23
hardest part about all of this is most of the people that work on the homes are just they're just trying to do the best they can. They love their job, hopefully, and they're really trying to do a good craft. And you know, part of hospitality, which I do think our industry needs a huge dose of. The problem is, our industry is trying. So I've never seen it yet, where a homeowner walks on site that the painters, the drywall, the landscapers, the cabinet shop, whoever it is, of course they smile. They understand that that the person that is inevitably paying them is on the job site. They want to show them they're working hard. They've got a good attitude. They often I love it when they engage with them. Like as a builder, I love it when you know my homeowner, like when it's good, it's great, and when it's bad, it's terrible. And so it's like you know I've seen homeowners bring donuts and coffee and lunch, or like it's today is brutally humid here. It's like 84% humid, which is like one of the highest it's been in 15 years. And it's like you know like if the if a homeowner showed up today with like an ice cream truck to hand out ice cream, like people notice those things. It doesn't happen very often. Maybe one out of 10, one out of 20 clients are that thoughtful, but most of them are not disrespectful or rude either. And the hardest ones are the ones that come and engage, and then especially if I'm not there, and then ask people to change, especially if it's a greener sub or someone who's younger, and they're like, "Well, man, the homeowner's asking me to do something, and they don't really have the wisdom or the time on site where they're like, "Hey, I need a check. I mean, because because the you and I would know how to run interference with that client. We'd be like, "Hey, you know what, Johnny? That's a great, you know, no problem. Let me run it by my boss. Let me get a written change order, and I'll get back to you by the end of the day. And who's going to say? But if a client, sometimes you have two clients, one that does this on purpose, and they're the that's the real bad one. And I'm guessing the second one, which is someone who just is not aware of their own ignorance and just kind of feels entitled. I'm guessing yours is the latter. Is that true?
Ashley Ortiz 12:19
She's very much knows what she's doing because oh she does she's the first one yes oh that's even worse that's the worst she knows because I walked the job with her the Monday that we were starting we went out to do a wash and we clarified what goes where like I mean we didn't talk about shutters but we did talk about the beams in the back and then I guess she went back and forth with the crew okay painted this painted that painted this painted that and I'm like, what? Nobody, nobody said anything to me about this. I said I specified you guys what she wanted. Like nobody said to me. And I'm just like, she knew what she was doing. She knew what she was doing.
Mark D. Williams 12:50
So what do you? So what are you gonna do now?
Ashley Ortiz 12:52
I get out of it as fast as I can. I'm like, I just want to be done at this point. My husband's like, let's just not go back. Like we'll just lose the money. I just tell her we're done. Keep her money. We're done. Like I'm like, no, we're not gonna quite do that. I was like, just go back, address her concerns, and she's like, come this way. You can see it right here. And I'm like, no, you you can't because it's a reflection of the sun. And today's a cloudy day, so that's my guess. Is she's waiting for the sun to come back out.
Mark D. Williams 13:24
This episode is brought to you by Pella Windows and Doors. I've used Pella for 21 years as the exclusive window company on every one of my builds. When people ask me who I trust for Windows and Doors, it's Pella every time. Their craftsmanship, their innovation, the top-tier service make them a no-brainer for any custom home builder or designer who demand the best. Whether you're designing something bold or building something with timeless elegance, Pella has you covered. They're also the only window company that has a lifetime warranty on all of their windows. I've gotten to know all their people at Pella Corporate as well as locally here at Pella Northland. I'm proud to call them our partners and our friends visit Pella.com to learn more and connect with your local reps today. For more information, you can also listen to episode one, where I interview the Pella Northland founders, as well as episode 109, where we talk all about their latest innovation with the steady set window. Would there ever be something in your contract for painting where you could say, like, I think it's really smart that you would specify the number of coats, but then you would. I mean, like I have interior designers that do flat fee, but then it tells them how many hours they include. So they'll say, "Hey, my flat fee is whatever 15 grand, and once you exceed 100 hours, it's 150 bucks an hour, whatever it is. Could you have something like that in your contract where you're like, we have 75 hours planned. Anything beyond that in hours or material will be charged at X rate. So you could sort of. The problem is your contract's only as good as the person who's willing to pay it. And unfortunately, in your case, depending on the scope of the job, it's likely none of the stuff is worth. While suing for because the amount of money that you the only thing you could do is small claims court, which I don't know how it goes in Washington, but it's like 15,000 or less in Minnesota. Yeah, it's kind of a pain in the butt. You end up splitting the bill anyway. It's just man, you get bad clients. It's a bad experience for everyone. That's funny.
Ashley Ortiz 15:16
Oh, just frustrations that you just banter with other people about. It's just like this is insane. I have thought about that. There's some. I had another paint contractor I talked to years ago, for and for a 2010s hardy port siding. That's the most you could do that in your sleep. Basic house to paint, the easiest house to paint. But when you've got like a lead paint house appealing really bad, what that contractor does is they specify, hey, I think it's going to take 80 hours of prep work, not in addition to you know like the actual you know masking and painting, but like 80 hours of scraping. If we exceed that, then it is X amount of dollars or X amount of per hour in addition. So if we have to go over the 80 hours of scraping in your contract, it will be extra. So I'm like, I kind of like that, but then I kind of don't. I you know I don't know how I feel about it.
Mark D. Williams 16:01
I don't know. I mean, ultimately, your contract is only there for the worst case scenario, and unfortunately, in a worst case scenario, doesn't really help you anyway. So I, I don't know the answer on this one. This one's that's a tricky one. I think you just, I think you're right. I think you just got to get out of it. Well, you'd mentioned before about Google reviews. Everyone is afraid of a negative Google review, have you heard of one-star reviews? Like in terms of like the marketing side of
Ashley Ortiz 16:27
it, how you respond?
Mark D. Williams 16:29
That there's that, but actually, like in Utah, it's actually really smart. It's still a big skiing town, right? They have one-star reviews, so it'll be like on the way up to Snowbird, which is a well-known ski resort. It'll say one star. The snow was too deep, which, if you're a skier, like that's what you want, or like this one star review, you know, something like basically is negative reverse marketing, essentially. Yeah, I've seen and and so it's kind of interesting because most of us want five star reviews, but what do all of us do? We I'm not much of one, but my wife, anytime we go to a restaurant, she always looks at the lowest ones, but how the people respond, because if honestly, it's almost a red flag. If you had 100 reviews and they're all five star, that's almost a little fishy, right? Yeah. And so you'd you almost want one that's like, hey, whatever, and then you would respond. This would be a great, great, you know, a great response, right? Yeah. You know, we if she end up doing anything other than or a review, you could even ask her for her a review. And I know this is counterintuitive, but like she, like right now, she writes a review. She'll probably say, "Hey, they didn't do what I wanted. Blah blah blah. But it offers you a chance to respond and say, "In our contract, we had two coats or whatever, 75 hours. We did 150 hours. We did four coats, and no matter what we did, we could not make her happy. But at the end of the day, we could leave the job site with our head held high, knowing we did an outstanding job. And if I read that, I'd be like, "Dang, I'm hiring that company. That's how I would respond if I saw something like that.
Ashley Ortiz 17:55
Because everybody knows if you worked in customer service, you're either the best customer ever or you're the worst. Yeah, so you're one of two. There's no middle ground, and everybody knows that there's always going to be somebody that you can never satisfy, never, never. And this, she made my project manager feel so uncomfortable standing in front of her. So my project manager was there, my son was there, in front of her husband, her best friend, everyone. She's like, my life would be so much happier without my husband and kids. And I'm like, she said that in front of everyone. My kid, my son told me he's like she was arguing with her husband 24/7. I'm like, I think she's just miserable in life. Honestly, like that's insane. That's actually insane to me. The same.
Mark D. Williams 18:32
That is pretty. That is pretty actually insane. Yeah, yeah. There's a. I had. Um. I remember one time. I think Brad Levitt was sharing the story where he was interviewing a couple to build a custom home, like a big home, like 10, $15 million, like massive. Yeah. And the Mister was so rude to his wife on the call that Brad stopped the call, and he said, "Anyone that would talk to anybody, much less their spouse, the way you're talking to your spouse, I would never work for. I'm sorry, this interview's over, and I won't build for you. And the guy, of course, blew blew as you'd imagine, blew up at Brad of all people. And he's like, "No, I mean, you've kind of shown me who you are. He's like, "Building a home is super emotional and very stressful over a couple years, and if you can't talk civilly to each other, much less our team, like I have to protect my team, and I, I think something that's not shared, and hopefully we don't have to experience something that overt like that. But I think the hardest part is if you see red flags, like if that client had said that on your bid estimate walkthrough, you got the team would report it back to you and said, "Hey, we're steering clear of this. Yeah, you would have made up an excuse. Hey, our our schedule's full, quadrupled the number, whatever it would have been. You just would have you know couldn't do it.
Ashley Ortiz 19:46
Pain in the ass, baby.
Mark D. Williams 19:48
Yeah, but the hardest part is, is very few people have do ever present full on red flags right away. Exactly, they're very good at it, and so that's what's hard for all of us because you know we're all in sales and entrepreneurship. For a reason, we're optimistic, enthusiastic. We love the sale. We want to do good work, and you just and you know finding this ideal client. We're not the only industry that is constantly looking for it. It's really hard, and then there's also just the nature of it. It's not every client is going to be your best friend ever. Right. I mean, I don't know how many jobs you guys do a year, 100, 1000, whatever it is, you do more quantity than I would build homes. But regardless, not every one is a 10 out of 10, and sometimes you just got to take the jobs to you got to pay the bills. You got to you just got to paint some homes. It just is what it is. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, how how have you sort of identified orange flags? Because you know, it's like ah, one orange flag. It's like have you ever had a situation where they presented red, and you're just like, I'm out.
Ashley Ortiz 20:42
There's yeah, we'll just way overbid it, just way overbitt it when it's like that. A lot of times, if they're like, well, I do it myself, or I could do this myself, but I don't have time, or you know, oh, it's so easy. You just need to do this or that. Kind of tell me how to do the job, and it's like, then then do it yourself. Then why are you calling me if it was so easy? Like my actual brother-in-law, when they bought their house, told my husband, "Like, oh, any idiot can paint. We're like, "Cool, go for it. Whoa! Guess who called my husband to go paint that? Oh
Mark D. Williams 21:10
my word! Did you paint it or did you steer clear?
Ashley Ortiz 21:13
My husband went to only go cut the edges and let them do everything else. My sister's ceiling still looks like crap.
Mark D. Williams 21:19
Wow, that's harsh. Yeah, people's perception of paint. It's funny because I know I'm a paint snob. I so appreciate good painting. It's funny. It's one of my hot buttons. I don't know if it's always been that way, but I kind of think it maybe it has been because it's the last line of defense. But it's also the thing if not done well, it makes all the other. You know, you might spend 200 like on the homes that we're building. We might have $200,000 of cabinetry. Well, like if I see all the nail holes, it's like no, that's not good. And like nothing is perfect. Like I'm under no illusion that like there's. I could go into any house I've ever been and find five days worth of paint touch ups. It's impossible. It's it's like trying to get world peace. You got to just get to the point where you can feel happy. And I'm not saying that I don't like. I for instance, with my clients, including myself, I don't like perfection. I like precision. I like good effort. And and and if we're good with that, it's fine. Because guess what? After six months and little Johnny and three dogs are running around, that the house is going to look way better. It's going to look way worse than it does right now, and so I think having some some compassion and some mercy. But anyway, I guess my point on painting is I can usually walk up to any home and feel the woodwork, and I can tell you if it has got 343 or four coats on it every time. Yeah, because I also know that's one of the first places that our competition other builders will sort of cut, and that's the spec. That's not really the painter, but because if they're only paying the painter to do two coats, I can feel that difference for sure. But if that's all they paid for, then great. Anyway, I guess my point is you have to kind of know, you know, what your own hot buttons are, what your own blind spots are. And I've told every painter I've ever got, like, I know I'm difficult to work for painting, but I'll tell you that ahead of time, and I'm happy. I've incentivized them with bonus pays, like all kinds of stuff, to be like, especially when you have like deadlines coming up, like show homes and things like that. You know, you want your best because it's your opportunity to obviously sell more homes in the future. And people that are really into building painting is a big thing to them too because they'll. It's kind of like a bad paint job. It's kind of like a bad drywall job. No one ever walks. I shouldn't say that. Drywall is actually the worst because nobody walks into a home and is like, "Oh, this level five finish is so nice. Everyone, you do? Okay, you're the only person I've ever met. My dad was like
Ashley Ortiz 23:36
drywalling for 40 years, and everywhere we'd go, who did the drywall here every single time, and now I'm like, oh god! And now my son, we went to like his soccer tournament. He lays on the couch, goes, oh my god, look at all these patches on the ceiling, like a third generation drywall beast. Like he's grown up with it. So yeah, I I admire good and bad drywall. I I see it
Mark D. Williams 23:58
because well, the point is they only they usually only point out when it's bad. My point is, no one is like, "That's amazing drywall. Usually, just point out the negatives. I think painting is a little bit like that too. I think it's more prone to like being like, "That's a good paint job. No one ever walks into a home unless evidently you do, and like, "Hey, excellent job in the drywall. I didn't notice that thing, but you because you only
Ashley Ortiz 24:17
they blame the painter because they don't
Mark D. Williams 24:19
100%
Ashley Ortiz 24:20
don't know about dry. They don't know all those things, and it gets blamed on the painter. And a lot of times, it goes back to the drywallers or even the the sheetrockers or the framers because you got a crooked wall. Like sheetrock only goes on to the framing. Like you can't. I guess you could shim some stuff, but still, you know, it's only as good as the substrate that it's going to.
Mark D. Williams 24:36
And that's the most frustrating thing for a builder because if you have painting a drywall, the painter will blame the drywall guy. The drywall guy will blame the the painter. And I've had hired companies. I was like, you know what? After 20 years of doing this, I'm tired of you guys arguing. So I I hired a company that had drywall and painting underneath it. And guess the guess what? They still blamed each other because they had separate crews underneath it. It's just a billing. I love it. See, if you were here, I would hire you into heartbeat because finally that I wouldn't have to hear that excuse. Yeah, yeah,
Ashley Ortiz 25:08
our zoo. It's the same. It's the same crew. So then, it is what it is. We, you know, then it's on us no matter what.
Mark D. Williams 25:15
Well, wonderful. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I like to keep our Thursdays tight. We're you know four or five minutes over to the audience and and for your time as well. But thanks for tuning the curious builder and thanks for reaching out and let me know how. Tell you what we might have to actually bring you back on. Let me know drop me a note in a couple weeks. I'd love to know if nothing else. I'll do a little tell you what do a little FaceTime story and we'll post it with this video and we'll see we'll see how it turned out. I'd love to hear it.
Ashley Ortiz 25:42
We'll see. Yeah. Thank you.
Mark D. Williams 25:44
We'll have everything in the show notes if you want to reach out to Ashley. If you're on the West Coast, how close are you to Seattle area?
Ashley Ortiz 25:50
We're about three hours away. We're right on the border next to Portland, Oregon.
Mark D. Williams 25:53
Oh, okay. You're further south. We're down. Okay.
Ashley Ortiz 25:55
Yep.
Mark D. Williams 25:55
Perfect. Well, thanks for coming into the Curious Builder podcast, and good luck resolving your issue, and thanks for sharing your story. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Curious Builder Podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor: share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends, like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in.
This episode is sponsored by:
