Appliance Repair Business Start-Up Training

Professional Secrets Revealed

Following is the text of a sample of a long discussion I had with my son, Reid, concerning his first few service calls. Listen >>
You can also hear the entire interview. Listen >>

Speaker 1: Now, how would you suggest to a student, read the books and look the videos cause you haven't managed and you haven't? Speaker 2: How would I suggest? Speaker 1: Would you suggest it? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I went on calls with you. Speaker 1: Now, that's true. Speaker 2: To see these things first hand instead of reading about them in a book, but I would have read the books prior to going into people's houses because then I would feel like I would know what I was doing instead of just. Speaker 1: Fumbling. Speaker 2: Yeah, just going on your direction or the customer's direction. Speaker 1: Or the customer's direction, right. Even you know I would say my batting average is reasonable as far as sending you out with good advise, but 1 time out of 5 you were getting in trouble anyway because it was different then what we thought. Speaker 2: Yeah, I ran into a lot of snags when I first started, and it wasn't that you were wrong or that I was doing anything wrong. It was a weird problem that, I don't know if they're in the books or not. Just weird things that you would never think are the problem. I can't think of any off the top of my head except the bunny in the blower. Speaker 1: The bloody bunny. Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but when I first started I think half of the first 10 calls that I went on I had to go back 3 or 4 times with different parts and different tools to fix a fridge, a washing machine, a dishwasher, and I hadn't really run into anything like that since that oven. Speaker 1: What oven? Speaker 2: The oven from hell. Speaker 1: You talking about **** Speaker 2: ***** and Miller. Speaker 1: Right, right. Speaker 2: Miller **** rushed it up, but those are the things you can't really do anything about. probably 3 or 4 months ago I would have called you and said come help me. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: But where I am now, I knew there wasn't' gonna be anything you did that was any different from what I was doing. Speaker 1: Right. That's exactly right, and that's a matter of confidence. Well, you're not really seeing anything that's particularly difficult. It's just stuck. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You're stuck no matter how good the mechanic is. Speaker 2: Right. Well, whatever appliance you are going at. It's just simple logic and following the logic. Nothing bizarre, and if it is, it's usually computer board that needs to be replaced. Speaker 1: Right. We've seen a reasonable amount of that too. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And some of the guess work that's involved. Speaker 2: There is some guess work involved, but usually only with computers. Speaker 1: Right, that's the *****. Speaker 2: Everything else you can trace with logic if it's doing something very illogical than it's got a brain of its own and it's screwed up.