In The End, We All Fruit

Today's Guest: Owner of Jigsaw PMR (Property Maintenance & Restoration), top notch property damage remediation company in the North Jersey Area. Emergency 24/7 response, Jigsaw PMR has years of experience with flawless customer serviceJIGSAW PMR [phone] jigsawpmr.comOn the show, we discuss customer precautions, dealing with insurance companies as a homeowner, and staffing your business with quality workers

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, folks, welcome to Plum Bums podcast, the blue collar talk show where we kind of

(00:11):
attack running a small local business, navigating entrepreneurship in this in these trying times.
What's your opinion? How we've been doing with that lately in general?
We've been expanding and the types of jobs that we've taken. It's been really hot though.
It's gross. It's nap time at 12 o'clock. So my expansion spirit is a little low lately.

(00:36):
We do have a guest on today. So we have on the show today we have our cleanup guy who
remediates mold, water damage, everything. We got Otto from Jigsaw PMR. PMR stands for

(00:58):
Property Maintenance Restoration. Otto, you're out of Auradel, New Jersey, right?
Yep. How long? How long you been in Auradel?
Lived in living in Auradel for 12 years now. And we that's it. 12 years.
I thought it was longer than that. No, we're 12 years. We were in TNIC before and we moved to
Auradel in 2011. How old is the business? We'll get into how it started.

(01:22):
Right. This specific business, I started it seven years ago. I had a partner prior to another
we had another business. Same field? No, it was actually in the foreclosure field. It was in the
maintenance side. But I just it was just crazy in the foreclosures. So I started this business.

(01:44):
Well, you got you got you do residential, commercial, industrial. I know you're doing a
big commercial job, which we'll get into right now that you got slaughtered with a couple of them.
Two of them. Yeah. But are you on social media, right? You got I see you on Instagram.
Yeah, we're on Instagram. Facebook. Facebook, but it just connects from Instagram.
Okay. TikTok? No. No TikTok account? No. All right, we wanted to welcome to you the show

(02:10):
efficiently by Autos, our Greek cleanup guy. So we were so we were driving around the truck today.
And just listening. We're like, okay, we need it. I suggested the big fat Greek wedding theme song.
Okay. But this one had more spunk to it. So I was like, let's use this. So everything that

(02:32):
you've seen at the my big fat Greek wedding. It's actually true. That's what it is growing up with
immigrant parents. That's exactly what it is. It's not just Greek. Yeah. Listen, I love that movie.
And I tried the the Windex. It works. The Windex on ailments from from a stubbed toe to me and

(02:52):
him, we're going back and forth on the truck on jokes that we can tell and we're like,
and at one point I'm like, we're making too many Greek jokes. He's going to hate us.
He's not going to find it funny anymore. No, you know what it is? Growing up, I was always
in the United States. I was the Greek. And when I used to go back to Greece on vacation,
I was the American right. So I really don't know you were born there. Right? No, I was born here.

(03:17):
Well, listen, my first question for you is on this show, will you denounce Yanni officially? Yanni?
Yeah. The composer. I don't like that guy. You don't like that guy? No. He's got a great head
of hair, though. Well, I don't. Anyway, listen, our you've you've been one of I'll tell you,

(03:38):
Jigsaw has been one of our most faithful, reliable contractors that we use. You're always there.
You always show up. Thank you. Always. And it's funny how we got hooked up. I'm
outside cleaning the truck one day a couple years ago and you pull up, you're like, hey,
let me give you some business cards. Yeah. And I think two days later, I needed a cleanup guy.

(04:00):
Right. And that was it. And then you had what the other girl that was working in the office,
Nancy's daughter. My cousin. Yeah. Yeah. My cousin was answering. That's how short of a time that
he's been around with us. Yeah. Nicole answered phones for us a long time ago. It's been two,
three years. That's not a long time ago, though. Well, in this fast paced business of plumbing.
I feel like I was been around for a lot longer than that. Wow. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's crazy

(04:24):
how that happened. Yeah. But listen, like I said, you've been super, super reliable. And we've
given you some big ones. Yep. We've given you some nasty ones. But you've been in business.
You've been in business. Yeah. No problem. Anytime. You've been in business for seven years with Jigsaw.
How did you get involved in that? In this whole industry?

(04:48):
So in 2012, after Hurricane Sandy, I started seeing what a lot of other restoration companies
were doing and how they were taking advantage of people. Okay. So a lot of these companies,

(05:09):
which I don't like talking about other companies, they use a fear tactic to the customer customer.
They try to scare people. They use a scare tactic. I don't like when people try to scare you.
I mean, just look at you. Just imagine your industry when you go, somebody goes in there

(05:31):
and like, oh, you need to change this boiler. It's going to blow up. Yeah. You know, no, we did.
That's a bother. That's a bother to me, too. What do I tell people all the time when we go
look at everything? I say, listen, we're going to look at everything in your house. I find,
we find a sewer line that doesn't look great, but it's not a disaster. I tell them, listen,
this isn't an emergency. I just want to bring it to your attention. Something to keep an eye on.

(05:55):
There's no point in lying to the customer. No, it's always going to catch up to you.
Always. And since 2012, when I started seeing, so in 2012, I only did mold remediation.
And in the previous company that I had, I had a partner. And there were a lot of things that
were being done that were very sketchy. I don't like doing sketchy stuff. Yeah.

(06:19):
I really don't. You say Greek guilt. Besides the Greek guilt. I mean, you know,
we're going to keep bringing it up. No. So I believe in karma. So if what you do comes back to you,
you reap what you sell. So I believe in karma. So if you're going to do something,
do the right thing and be able to sleep at night knowing that you did the right thing.

(06:43):
And in your industry, even in my industry, it's very easy to just manipulate the whole situation.
When someone calls you, I mean, we got called for a toilet valve one time that wasn't, it was just,
it was just overflowing into the tank. And the toilet was slowly running. And she calls us in
a panic. We could have completely manipulated it. You got to change the toilet. You got to do this.

(07:05):
You could, we could have walked in there and completely demolished the person. Because people
don't know when they have water coming through the ceiling, you could tell them that they have to
rebuild their house. They'll be like, whatever has to be done. I have young kids. I don't want to be young.
Yeah. That's what it is. So, and it's easy in this area for company. There's just so much,
there's so many companies, it's easy for them to just go in and completely take advantage.

(07:28):
Especially in your business, because you can technically jack up the price because you would
deal with insurance. It's not a, it's not something that comes out of the customer's pocket
necessarily most of the time, you know? So that's a good point. People try to do that,
but we're held accountable to the insurance company also. Yeah. Just because it's,

(07:49):
insurance is paying doesn't mean that I can go in and say, well, this is going to cost a million
dollars. Well, that's what those shady companies do, right? Well, so we, we are, we're doing a,
a fire loss right now in Wayne. It's an 80,000 square foot building. That's big.
Lightning. For people who don't know that's big. So 80,000 square feet is roughly half of the

(08:15):
bergen mall. Yeah. Yeah. So we get called in, lightning struck transformer. It was smoldering.
Long story short, we took care of the customer adjust. We met with the adjuster yesterday
and the adjuster goes, well, don't send me a bill that you're going to have a hundred people working

(08:36):
here to raise up your bill. Even in an 80,000 square foot building, we got it done with 12 people.
Oh really? Yeah. Well, yeah, a hundred obviously, of course. I don't blame them for saying that.
Right. So that's what people do. They think, oh, it's, it's insurance. But if we start
doing that to insurance, then let's not complain when you're pre, our premiums go up. Yeah. Well,

(08:59):
it's, let's take car insurance for example in this state. There's so many scammers and
there's so many scammers per capita and illegal drivers who are kind of piggybacking off the
insurance. All the time to my dad. They have, that's what's, that's why car insurance in this area is
so expensive. Correct. And the more people that are scummy in any industry, it's going to destroy

(09:22):
everything else for the people who are doing everything right. Correct. How did this big
building find you, this 80,000 square foot? How did they find you? I got lucky. Really,
really lucky. So I heard the fire over the scanner, the fire, the fire scanner. Really? Yeah. Scanning
your truck. I was home and I was running late for, for another meeting and I just said, you know,

(09:46):
I'm, I'm running over there. No, no, I actually went like four or five hours later. Oh, wow. And
I get there and I pull up and an electrician's there's like, come in. Oh, I follow the electrician
in. So as I'm walking in, you know, and they're taking me to the electricians,

(10:10):
there's a guy with his back turned to me and he turns around and he was the town electrical engineer.
Turns around. It's like, he's a buddy of mine. Really? Yeah. I'm like, well, he's like, what are
you doing here? He's like, what are you doing here? You know, are you here to clean up? I said, no,

(10:31):
I'm just trying to see if I can get the job. He goes to me, okay, come with me and introduce me
to the owner and said, you know, this is the guy that you're going to use. Wow. And you know,
good for you. Three hours later, you know, we had, I had equipment coming in and things like that.
Three hours later from that meeting, you had equipment coming in, you started.

(10:53):
So I was asking you this before 60, 60, no, 62 air scrubbers. Wow. So I was asking you this
before we were talking about, because we usually use it for water damage, but that was fire damage.
So fire damage has three, three components to it. The actual fire where the material was ruined

(11:17):
and charred, the smoke smell and then the soot. So to get rid of the smell, you have to remove
all three. You can't remove just one or two of them. All three have to be done. So fire jobs are
always more expensive because it's actually you take like, imagine your kitchen sponge,

(11:43):
maybe about an inch bigger and the walls, you wipe it with a sponge. What? Yeah, it's called
a chemical sponge. So that sponge removes the soot off the wall. So imagine now, imagine now your
office here. Why don't you just take down the walls and replace them? They won't pay for it.
Are you serious? Right. Because if there's no physical fire damage to it and it's only smoke

(12:08):
and soot, you can clean it. All the insurance companies have those little, those little rules
that are, that just, they don't make sense. Yeah, but that's the way insurance is. In my
head, it's more work to clean that up than to knock it off. No, actually, it's easier to clean it.
Oh, it is? And I'll tell you why. So you said, knock it down. You have to do demo. Right. Throw away

(12:34):
the garbage. Clean. Then you need to bring in a sheet rock. Then you need to bring in a painter.
Then you need to bring in a carpenter. So all of a sudden, it's just cheaper. It might be a little
bit more expensive, but in the long run, it's cheaper. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, what is,
let me ask you something about a residential, residential, someone has a flood or something

(12:57):
coming from the ceiling. What is the most important thing the customer needs to know about their
insurance company as far as when they have damage that happens to their house? And this may be,
this may be a tricky question to answer. We can come back to it if you want. No, I'm actually
glad that you brought that up. A lot of people in our area are underinsured. And the reason being,

(13:23):
they're underinsured, they just call their insurance agent and they said, give me a policy. Right.
And I don't want it to be expensive. So when your policy is inexpensive, you don't have all the
writers, you don't have all the coverages. It's just like, which job did we do that there was sewage?

(13:48):
I mean, how many? Okay. What the most recent one? Just, let's just pick one. Okay. If you have
a sewer line that breaks, and you have live feces on the floor, as opposed to dead feces, got it?
No. It's so contaminated that anything it touches needs to be thrown away. Yeah.

(14:12):
So when somebody has an inexpensive insurance policy, the insurance company is only going to pay
five, $6,000. You could have $100,000 worth in damage. You're only getting that $5,000
minus your deductible. Oh, wow. Did you ever have a case? Yes.
Like you had a case where somebody was out of pocket. What's the worst out of pocket case you

(14:37):
saw? Where somebody had such bad insurance that it didn't cover the majority of it. Like you had
a $100,000 job and they only covered $5,000. So two years ago on Soldier Hill, a friend of mine,
her sump pumps failed. She has two sump pumps. She had seven inches of water in her basement.

(14:59):
The basement was about 1,000 square feet.
The, I go to her, are you covered? Oh, I have the best insurance. I go, okay. Do you want us to
proceed? Oh, yeah, I can't live like this. I have kids. All right. So we start doing our thing.
My bill came out to 9,500. And then her build back bill was another 20. We ripped out carpets.

(15:36):
We ripped out doors. We ripped out sheetrock. We ripped out insulation. So everything had to
put back. So her total damage was 30,000. Let's say 30,000. She was only covered for five
because she didn't check her rider. So she's on the hook for 25 grand, correct.
And then when she pulled out her insurance packet, it's literally the name of the company's best

(15:59):
insurance. She told you had best insurance. Yeah, that's the one thing that I've had.
No, Mrs. Mendelssohn. That's not what I meant. A lot of people get underinsured and the things that
they don't realize is like a sumpum failure. Most insurance, like I'm not going to say names of
insurance companies. Yeah. But they all cover up to 10,000. I'm not, for all intents and purposes,

(16:24):
I am not an insurance agent. You know what? And I'm glad, here's, let me tell you one thing that
shocked me when I got into plumbing. The percentage of people that are legitimate hoarders.
Are you with me on that one? Awful. How many people actually are hoarders?
Awful. It was just, I couldn't believe it. Like when you go into people's houses, now we're accustomed

(16:46):
to it. Like, nope. Well, the really bad ones still not. Still awful. But let's say a disaster
happens in a hoarder's home where every square inch of that, because we've had that, we've had that
over in Paramus. I had, it was one of my first jobs. Worst hoarding, I haven't even seen anything on
TV like this guy. And he had water coming down from the third floor all the way to the basement.

(17:10):
What is the deal with insurance companies versus hoarders? We want to know if you cover their
garbage. If they cover their garbage. It's a very tricky situation. And the insurance company will
cover for the garbage to be thrown away. Oh, I didn't know that. They'll cover for the, if it's
a legitimate, so if the water's coming from on top, you usually cover. So an instantaneous break,

(17:38):
like freeze, freeze damage water lines. That's an instantaneous break. Anything that that creates,
the insurance company will cover. You just have to prove it was instantaneous and that you were,
that you did everything in your power to avoid it. Right. Like in the winter time, like the
freeze that we had was the heat on. Right. Well, how can you prove if the heat is on?

(18:02):
The insurance company will ask you for your utility bill. Oh, wow. That's why they make the
monies. Yeah. That's why. Well, I'll go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, and then they'll cover everything.
Okay. Pretty much. Sometimes. How long are people usually waiting for payout? What's the average?

(18:24):
So on larger jobs, like we did a job in, in Oradell in February. We finished it mid February.
Yeah. Me as a contractor, I have not been paid yet from the insurance company.
Wow. Six months, huh? Yeah. So a lot of people think, oh, you're making so much money. Yeah,

(18:46):
but I can wait up to, I can wait up to, you know, 40, 50, 60, like in this case, 180 days.
Then the insurance company takes your bill and says, oh, we're not going to pay this.
Yeah. We're not going to pay this. We're not paying for this. Yeah. Then why am I doing the job?
Yeah. Well, we don't, you know, we're not paying. So you got to, you got to wait. I mean, you got

(19:08):
to, you're holding a lot of overhead. Tremendous amount. Yeah. Yeah. That's different than our
industry for sure. Right. If we were doing commercial, we'd probably be on the same page.
But residential, we get in and out and paid, which is good for us, obviously.
But even with residential, we have to wait sometimes up to 60 days. Well, we're not.
I'm never going through an insurance company for anything. No, you don't have to. Yeah.

(19:29):
But we do. Yeah. What's the seven years? What is the worst job you've ever walked into?
The worst job. Just you walked into your like, holy cow. Walked into it and you're like, I'm not
doing this. Or you did it. I mean, like the worst disaster, because I'll tell you mine.

(19:52):
And so my worst in all my years of doing all my years in construction and in recovery services,
right before COVID, there was, we were called in by a property management company in Englewood.

(20:12):
Mm hmm. It was a single bedroom apartment, 730 square feet. Okay.
We took out 730 yard dumpsters of garbage. Wow. The trash, the trash was seven feet high.

(20:35):
Oh my gosh. How many guys did you have with you at that time? We brought in, I had seven people,
six people, including me. And we were hustling for five days, carrying the garbage out.
Yeah. And then once we were able to get a headway, we were in full Tyvek suits.

(21:03):
It was a hoarder house. Right. Respirators, the whole nine yards. So as we were cleaning and
finishing up the roaches, they were about maybe two inches. And all over the place. Besides all
over the place, the roaches, as we were working, they were crawling on our suits. So I'm okay,

(21:26):
I'm okay with that. But the guy that I was working with was not. So at one point, he had like about
15 of them on him. He couldn't realize what was on him. So I just, you know, I just wanted to see
his reaction. So I'm like, Hey, Alex, why don't you just shake yourself off? And he looks down,

(21:46):
and he saw the roaches on him. I have never, ever, ever, ever seen. He just disappeared. Never
mind freaked out. He was like out the door. Like Looney Tunes, why are you? Yeah, exactly.
Well, it's like when I started with Roger Rabbit with his body shape in the window,

(22:07):
I started working with him and I was like, well, he would send me into the crawl spaces. And I
like, well, you're small. Yeah, I mean, I still go into the crawl spaces. But when he was, when
I was first starting, I was like, listen, I don't really, I don't do spiders. I don't like spiders.
Well, at first, you were like that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. In the beginning, the little ones.

(22:27):
Yeah, even the little ones. Now, I mean, I'm, I hate spiders, especially before I started.
I'm okay with a spider up to the size of a dime. Or a nickel. This is not three men talking.
A nickel is pushing it. A spider with a body bigger than a nickel or the size of a nickel are up.
Like those videos of them in Australia, where they look like they can eat one of our dogs.

(22:51):
Yeah, those I'm not good with those either. What really freaks me out is snakes.
Snakes. Snakes. We don't have too many of those over there though. So snakes freak me out. And
then I mean, and then a lot of times we'll go into rats and stuff like that. I see them all the time.
I mean, we're basement dwellers too in our industry. The worst job I was ever on,

(23:12):
we had a guy up in Anglewood, beautiful house, but they've been there for a long time,
but they maintain the house very well. They've been there for 40 years. And maybe four or five,
even maybe six years ago, we had a freeze that came in for a week and a half straight.
Okay. I remember that one. Yeah. They were on vacation at the time. And before he left for

(23:35):
vacation, he turns his heat down to 50. Never do that. Yep. He turns his heat down to 50.
A pipe freezes and then the house starts getting cold and the boiler kicks on and punches a hole
into the break and melts the ice. And for the next three weeks while he's gone is pumping,

(23:57):
boiling water from his hot water boiler into his living room from the break in the first floor.
The entire house, all the sheetrock was melting off the walls because it was all steam. The entire
house was in one giant steam room. Every single inch of this house was completely destroyed.
Everything, all the way down to the basement. Cool. I mean, it was pretty good. I have some,

(24:22):
I have old videos of that, that still, but that was one of the worst, worst, worst cleanup jobs.
And then two years later, it happened to him again, because he didn't listen.
He didn't, he won't, he turns his heat off every time he goes away.
I know what is he now. He's just a plumber. Every time, and even when like with the freeze
that we just had like in January, December. Yeah. Always raise the heat. Yeah. Never drop it. Yeah.

(24:49):
Just, I mean, you spend a couple extra bucks on gas while you're gone. Like just, you don't,
trust me, the alternative is worse. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we dealt with it. We dealt with
it. That was, that was one of the worst jobs. And it was sad because I mean, you talk about someone
being in the house for 45 years, that's their home. And everything got destroyed. Everything.

(25:10):
It was good work. Everything. The sheetrock behind the tile in the bathroom was melting off the wall.
And it was literally drooping. Wallpaper, everything was destroyed. And it was just,
it was, it was 180 degree water that was pumping in there. And three weeks. Yeah. And it was like
negative two. So the steam is freezing on the windows outs. It was awful. It was absolutely

(25:32):
terrible. But that was brutal. Okay. What was, this is kind of an oxymoron. But what was,
you know, I don't even know what that is. I was going to say, well, what was, what was like the
best job? But I can't even answer that. Best job in my industry. The best job. I don't think there

(25:52):
is a best job. Yeah. Because we're always getting called in when something really bad is happening.
Yeah. Bear of bad news. And you know, you're walking in either somebody's house is getting,
there's a fire, somebody's house is flooding. You know, they have five feet of water in their
basement. Yeah. You said this lat, the last job you just talked about, you said you had six,

(26:15):
seven guys with you on that job, right? Which one? The hortic job? Yeah. Okay. So you had six,
seven guys with you that was back in 2012, you said? Right. No, that was 2020. It was 2020,
right before COVID, a week before we got shut down. And how many guys do you have with you now?
So as a company, we've grown as a small business, I've, I'm constantly reinvesting

(26:40):
into my company constantly. Of course. So right now, I can say that I have a crew of nine.
And I can take over a country with these guys. That's good. I'll go to war at any time. That
is hard to find in this day and age. Yeah. But they're, I take care of them. You have to. Right.

(27:04):
I take care of them. And you got job openings? Go ahead. I can't be my guest. You're going to be
the crawl space guy. Yeah. By Felicia. You're going to be the crawl space guy anywhere you go.
So if you don't take care of your people, your people will not take care of you. 100%. And this
is what customers don't understand. So I'll pay. So the guy, the job that we did over the weekend,

(27:32):
the warehouse, they worked on a Saturday and they worked on a Sunday. If you don't take care of these
people on a Sunday. Absolutely. And they came out, they did their thing. We were all having fun.
The customer was ecstatic, which that's the bottom line. Well, that's, of course, that's who has to

(27:55):
be happy. And then we went, we all went out to dinner. We all went out to dinner. I said,
thank you very much. It's like Chick-fil-A. All the workers over there are super happy.
And now tomorrow I'm getting every single one of them a bottle of Good Bourbon.
And just to say thank you. And you know what? If you're, if you, if you want people,

(28:20):
quality guys, quality workers in your home as a customer, the company has to pay for that.
And you have to pay the company for the company to be able to pay their guys to be good guys,
good quality guys. It's going to go down the line. You cannot expect

(28:42):
Dom Perignon service with a lemonade budget. Right. You can't. It doesn't, it doesn't happen.
Yeah. I mean, and you can, these, a customer can go to the cheapest guy, but he's going to get the
cheap. Like when we say, when you, but here's the thing. It's, that's, that's absolutely true
statement, but people don't realize the depth of that because, oh, I get, I pay for this. I get

(29:05):
cheap work. You're getting cheap work. You're getting cheap workers. You're getting cheap
material. You're getting cheap scheduling. You're going to get thrown on the schedule whenever,
because you're not taking priority for these guys because they're running around like, like
the Mad Hatter. Yeah. So if you want to get in there and I hear horror stories about these people

(29:26):
going in there and I'm sure that I'm sure the customers, they're, they're pissed that it's
nothing's working out. Right. It's like, well, you didn't pay for anything to work out. Right.
You know what I mean? You paid, you went for the cheapest people. You, companies who are
coming in there, presenting you with a good price, they know what their numbers are. They
know what it's going to cost for us to get good guys in there and give you good work. So it's

(29:49):
the numbers part. Up until two months ago, I think I knew what my numbers were. Yeah.
They're not the same. They changed because a roll of tape that we were buying at
$15 a roll is now 28. Oh yeah. Since COVID. Forget about it. So we were, we constantly buy, you
know, we're constantly buying consumables. Our numbers changed dramatically. Yeah.

(30:13):
Drastically, weekly. It's like, it's like the stock market. Yeah. 100%.
So if you hire a company that's, you know, cheap, they show up in a minivan and not in a truck.
Yeah. They're wearing cheap, they're wearing dirty, they're wearing dirty ripped clothes.

(30:36):
Mm-hmm. They're the meaner, they're carrying their tools in Home Depot buckets.
I don't want somebody like that. No, my house. They have a bad attitude because they're not
getting paid right. Correct. They're constantly complaining. Yeah. They don't care about the
customer. They're not going to clean up, right? We were talking about this the other day, the

(30:57):
vans that you'll see on the road, you can tell the, just the bad workers. Yeah. You can tell the
bad companies, I don't want to say bad companies, but you can tell the companies that are on the
lower end of the spectrum versus, you know, better companies just by their vans. Yep.
And I'm not talking about like just beat up fans. I'm talking about like, uh, like one of those

(31:17):
magnets, a white van or just a magnet plastered to the side of the van that you can take off
and put on your car the next day or whatever, you know? I'm okay with magnets because I have
magnets on my trucks. No, I totally agree. Cut his mic. Cut his mic. I totally agree,
but there's certain, there's situations that I have to have magnets. I don't like it,

(31:40):
but I have to have magnets. Yeah. So people make fun of me or I'll drive, I'll pull up to a house
and we have sprinter vans. Everybody thinks because it's a Mercedes, it's expensive.
It's just as similarly priced with a Ford. Yeah. But people, you pull up in a

(32:04):
sprinter and they're like, oh, you're more expensive than anyone else.
How am I supposed to have an emergency vehicle that has to run 24 seven in any type of circumstance?
If Rolls Royce made a truck and it was better than every single one, that's what I would have
on the road. Well, here's the beauty about these businesses with us and with you. You don't have

(32:30):
to explain yourself to the customer. You don't have to explain your prices.
Yes, I do. You're not supposed to explain the prices because that's what it costs. That's what
it is. I'm going to be here for you. I'm going to give you good service. Well, even we have to
sometimes explain. But you're not, the point is you're not supposed to. You can go with me,
you can not go with me and you have enough work where you can turn people down. Now.

(32:53):
Now. Okay. Yeah. Maybe it didn't start like that. But now you have enough work that you can turn
people away, you know, because you feel like they might not be the most cooperative customer.
The best customer that I've ever had is the customer that I never did a job for.
What do you mean? The best customer. The best friend I've ever had was someone I haven't met yet.

(33:15):
We still don't talk. No, the best. I blocked them. So imagine your most horror story of a customer.
Okay, I have three. Okay. Any which one of them? Wouldn't you have been better off if you were said
no? Yeah, three of them. 100%. That's your best. I get it now. The best customer. That's actually,

(33:39):
that's right. 100%. That's a good way of looking at it. Okay. Yeah. If they're going to start, well,
I can, you know, and the starting phrases that I will not engage with a customer are three.
The one you remember the one a couple of weeks ago in River Edge? Yes. With the sump pump. Yeah.

(34:03):
All right. I'm an engineer. Okay, I'm done. Or I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. Yeah. Or I'm a general
contractor. Or I've been, you know, I have, or my boyfriend girlfriend is in the trades.
It's like, why don't you lawyer this water out of your basement then? I walk away. Yeah.

(34:27):
I have a brother-in-law that can do this. So get that one to do it. Which I don't understand. We get
that sometimes too. It's like, then do it. Why are you calling me over here? Give me your best price.
Yeah. My best. My best price? Give me your best price. There is no best price. It's going to cost,
this is what's going to cost. This is what it's going to cost. And then I don't know if you guys
get it, but we get it all the time. But you're only here for two hours. Yeah. But I have 30 years

(34:54):
of experience doing this. 100%. I have sweat tears. I have cut fingers. Yeah. I have sprained backs.
I can't get out of bed in the morning. For you, you're welcome, by the way. Yeah. So if you think
I'm expensive, it's okay. Yeah. I'm okay with that. I want to be them. I don't want to be,

(35:15):
I don't want to be the cheapest. And I don't want to be the most expensive. 100%. I'm right in the
middle. Yeah. But if you're right in the middle, you're paying for a service. You're paying for an
experience. Yeah. It sounds stupid, but you're paying for an experience. You walk into a house,
we put drop cloths down. We cover everything that we're walking. Yeah. You guys are extremely clean.

(35:37):
That's what I'll give to you. We'll put up. All your guys. We'll put up containment. We'll put
up plastic. We have air scrubbers running so we can contain that. It gets annoying sometimes when I
come into a job after you're there and it's very clean. And I'm like, everything's
I gotta clean. Everything. I have to be clean now. And everything is zippered up and vacuum
sealed. And I'm like, I have to leave. We have to leave the property better than what we found.

(36:02):
Yeah. My uncle. That's, that's, that was his whole thing. So if I'm walking into a property,
I have to make it better. Yeah. And then how am I supposed to do that?
So all our trucks are equipped with, I think on, we now have like two different types of

(36:23):
vacuums on our trucks. We have brooms. We have mops. We have anything that needs to be cleaned.
Yeah. Everything's in our truck. You've showed me your setup. Your setup is very nice.
Yeah. Your garage is beautiful. Yeah. Your garage is real nice. We've done some work in it and it's
just, what do you think of my garage? Oh, it's gorgeous. Yeah. I mean, he walks in, he goes,

(36:47):
he sits down, he goes, what's that on the floor? Don't worry, just sit down. It's okay. Don't worry.
It's an epoxy from a project we were trying to do. So when, when you're out and you're socializing.
I don't do that often, but okay. When you do, I used to, and you get asked, what do you do?
How do you explain your profession? Oh, I tell people I protect the health of this nation.

(37:11):
Okay. I tell people, I save more lives than doctors.
People don't like to hear that. I told you, I tried to say that to my friends the other night.
They were like, get over yourself. Yeah. So how, so that's what you say. How can I introduce myself
when they ask me the same way? I save more lives than doctors. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a good one.

(37:33):
I'll use it. Yeah. I save, I save more lives than doctors. What of it?
People, people take it for granted. Granted, it's preventative maintenance. The reason why you
get clean water is from plumbers. So the way water sewer. The reason why you get clean air in your
building after a disaster is because of you. And mold. You explained to me one of those machines.

(37:55):
First of all, I want you to explain how you clean mold and to the other machine that you told me,
because I didn't know that you have to clean the air after a fire in a building. But you told me
that you filter the air after a fire. Two separate, two separate. That's same sentence, two separate
questions. How do you clean mold? Never use bleach. Really? Never. So if you take bleach right now

(38:20):
off the shelf, okay? And you pour it on your pants. What's going to happen? You get that sweet 80s
stonewash. That stonewash aesthetic. That people used to pay $100. Bleach is your, it
whiteens your, it takes color out. Okay. Awesome. Take the same bleach, put it in a spray bottle,
and spray it on black, on mold. That's black. And by the way, just because the mold is black,

(38:42):
doesn't mean it's the dangerous mold. Okay. Okay. And spray it on the mold. What happens?
Which just changes color? It disappears. Okay. It just bleaches the color. That's it. That's all it
does. Doesn't kill it. Oh. So it doesn't kill that. No, it does not. Bleach is a corrosive.
So you walk into those 1950s, 1960s bathrooms with a four by four tile. Right. How many of

(39:06):
those tiles have you seen now that they have lost their luster? All of them? Yeah. It's because of
the bleach. Okay. Well, how did, let me ask you this. When someone, when we go into like, we just
did a, that house up in Rivervale that we just did, they do have that white, that white mold
growing up in the ceiling. How dangerous, let's say we're, and what we like to do is we would like

(39:30):
to be honest with the customer. Because people hear mold, they think it's the plague. How dangerous
and at what point does it get where these, where a customer should really be concerned?
Because I've heard you say that everyone does have a little bit of mold around their house.
There's more. No, they're not a little. If we take, on a perfect day, on the perfect day,

(39:56):
if we take an air sample outside, we're going to find mold. Right. Mold is something that's
existent. It will never get rid of it. So when we're taking exterior air samples of, when we're
doing a post, a pre testing, and then a post testing, what we're doing is we're taking an

(40:16):
exterior sample and we're taking it as a control. And then we take an interior sample of air. So
we're comparing the molds. Okay. So any mold that's outside, you're going to find inside.
Yeah. Okay. So if the mold on the, on the outside is higher than the mold inside,
you don't have to do anything. Yeah. Is that good mold, the mold on the outside?

(40:39):
All mold is mold. So it's, it's like saying, you know, I'm allergic to the lactic, lactic
acids, lactose, and you're not. So if you're allergic to mold, you'll be more prone to have.
If you have respiratory issues, mold is going to affect you. Gotcha. Okay. And, and there's like,

(41:04):
there's 130,000 different species of mold and they're all the color. So it's all very, it's
a whole bunch of different variables. Right. Correct. Penicillin. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.
That's the good mold. It's the good fats. So the mold that's the most dangerous that everybody says
that, oh, it's black mold. It's in, in the industry is we call it's, it's the scientific name is

(41:29):
Stachybottres. Or is that a Greek word? No, no, no. Does that come from Greek origin? Hold on.
I'm gonna pull up my song. Wait, tell this story again. Go. Stachybottres.
No, go ahead. I'm sorry. That mold is the most dangerous mold. But that mold to grow,

(41:52):
it has to be constantly moist and constantly wet for a very, very, very long time.
So people who are ignoring their water issues. So that mold, when you touch it,
is almost like a slime. Slimey. That is the dangerous stuff. Gotcha. I had a friend, I think

(42:14):
I told you I did a job for my friend in my friend's house. He had a leak. I think I called you after
two. He had a leak in his kitchen sink and I replaced the water lines or replaced the p-trap.
I replaced the lines behind the one. I went on the outside of the house, so I didn't rip up his
cabinets. I just ripped up the siding, cut up the siding. And we found out that this leak was

(42:35):
happening for such a long time. He was getting that slimy black mold. That's the worst. And I
told him, I was like, this has been happening for a long time. He goes, yeah, I just, I kind of
ignored it. I knew it was happening. And I was like, you can't ignore it. And I showed him it was black
slimy black mold. And I was like, this is bad. You should get somebody to come here and
remediate this. And he goes, don't worry, it'll air out. Mike, are you out of your mind?

(43:02):
What do you know? You're just a plumber. Listen, let's do this. Let's take a quick break. All
right, we'll give the audience a chance to Google what slime mold looks like and then come back all
this does it. But we'll take a quick break and we'll be back in a few minutes.

(44:17):
You ready? I'm ready. Are you ready to come back from the break? Ready to come back from the dead.
Would you like some more magic? I took some more. I snuck it. Okay. Did you? I snuck it. Yeah,
I put it in the, I put it in my coffee. Your closet. Your closet at Chiquilla Fan? No,
I'm a closet of alcohol. Well, we're back again. Oh, we're live. This is what it is. Oh, we're

(44:42):
recording. Yeah. All right. I'm not gonna fall. Well, back again with my name is Max.
My mother genuinely thinks I do. I'm like, I just, I don't, I don't. She thinks you have a lot of
problems. Yeah, I do. And she's, uh, she's right on the money. So we're back here with Otto from
Jigsaw PMR property maintenance restoration in Orodel, New Jersey, residential, commercial,

(45:08):
and industry cleanup guy, junk removal, fire cleanup. Do you do junk removal?
Not as, it's on the DL. No, no, no, we only remove junk that is affected by stuff. Okay.
But you can't like a hoarder can't hire you to clean out their house. We can. Okay. We'll do that,

(45:29):
but a lot of people won't hire us because numbers. It's expensive. Well, if you want the right people
to do it, you're more expensive than somebody else. Specializes in that, right? Right. So if you, if
you're getting cold into a hoarder situation, there's a lot of things going on. There could be
a town could be involved, right? Health department of a town could be involved. The fire department

(45:51):
can be involved because they're shutting off the utilities. I'm certified. I saw, I have a biohazard
certification. So that means that we can work with, we've, we can do crime scene cleanup. We can
do unattended deaths. Oh wow. I've never done one. No, I don't think I have this plumbing for.
So when we did the training, when I did the training, the people that trained us were,

(46:16):
they're actually out of Jersey. They're in Raleigh. In 2012 with Sandy, they were telling us that
they were called in into the morgue of New York City and all the bodies were floating. Oh, no.
Geez. So, you know, they, they, they brought them in and they said, well, don't go in there because.
That is morbid. We have floaters. Oh my gosh. That is morbid right there. Yeah. You might,

(46:43):
you know, my grandfather used to do that. Well, something in that field, he used to,
used to dress the bodies, used to live up top of morgue, above a morgue. Oh, don't get me started
on that. Don't get me started on that kind of stuff. He used to dress the bodies, you know.
What do they call those? Mortician? Yeah, it's a mortician. Yeah. He used to dress the bodies up
and my grandmother used to live there and she's this very proper, you know, prim, trim lady.

(47:11):
And one time she walked in on him dressing up one of the dead bodies and she goes, nope,
we're out of here. And that's why he quit that. He left that job and he worked,
he moved out to Long Island. So she couldn't do it. I'm from an island in Greece called Corfu,
very small island, about 130,000 people. It's small. It's probably beautiful. It is. So one of the

(47:35):
morticians there was a friend. Guy died now, you know, he was older. So in, in the late 90s,
there were a lot of heat waves that were hitting in Europe. Now in Europe in the 90s,
a lot of people didn't have air conditioning. They don't use air conditioning. Right. That's
a thing. They don't believe in it. Yeah. So a lot of people were just dropping dead

(47:59):
because of the heat and it was the older people that were dying. So a friend went into this guy's
shop in town and he knew him and he's like, you know, he needed to use the restroom. Now this
guy was so busy that he had it. Oh no. I don't even want to know where this is. This is appropriate.

(48:22):
He had a dead body standing up leaning against the bathroom. Unbelievable. Just as a like a
ball busting prank. So my friend needed to use the bathroom and this guy wasn't moving.
Oh my gosh. So this guy goes, taps him on the shoulder and says, hey buddy, you done?

(48:43):
He took the top tips over. The body comes through. Oh my gosh, dude.
That's insane.
See people in that area of the world, they have their, I mean, we look at death and we're very,
especially in this country, we're like, you know, it is, it is a daily thing. Yeah. I mean,

(49:06):
geez, that is, that is ridiculous. I still think of that story and I still start.
I almost got a job like that back and I was working at a bank and we had a customer used to
come in all the time. He owned a funeral home and they were hiring and they were looking for guys
to go out and get dead bodies and I was thinking, I actually tossed around the idea, could I do that?
Could I like go to someone's house and take the body out and he said, sometimes, you know,

(49:30):
they get stiff. You got to push them down to get on the table. I'm like, what? I'll stick with the
bank. What do you mean they get stiff? If the rigamortis hits. Yeah. So they die in their chair.
Let's say someone dies in, let's say your great grandfather sat every day, watched TV, the same
chair. He died in his chair. Rigamortis will sit in and him in that position and you have to get

(49:51):
him straight. You got to get him straight. No, because then the house down. So my cousin,
no, we're calling Otto afterwards. My remediation. My first cousin had a friend of his that his,
his parents, his family owned a funeral home. So one night, my cousin was coming home and

(50:11):
he had to borrow one of their cars to get home. Now his friend was a baseball player.
So, but this car was used to hold dead bodies back and forth. So my cousin was driving. So my
cousin is very afraid. So he's driving down a street and every, every three seconds, he's looking

(50:34):
behind them constantly thinking that somebody's there. So all of a sudden he's coming, trying to
come home and then he sees a stop sign and he slams on the brakes. All right. Don't tell me a body
flies forward. No, but the story was, I told you the kid played baseball. There was a baseball in
the car. So the baseball came rolling and it hits the floor. My cousin walked home.

(50:59):
He got so freaked out. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, that's, that's, that's some morbid stuff that
not everyone can deal with. But you know what? Every guy, every funeral director that I've ever
met, they're like the happiest people. The nicest guys. Let me just tell you, you have to be. Yeah.
Because you're dealing with, you're dealing with trauma and law. Constantly. You're dealing with,

(51:20):
you know, they, when we were doing our trainings, I mean, there's nothing like funeral directors.
Right. Right. Of course. But we're constantly dealing with disaster. Yeah. There's only so
much that you can absorb. Yeah. You know, there's only so much. So you really have to be,
you really have to laugh. If they have a certain sense of humor. Yeah. A certain, we were talking,

(51:44):
I remember that time in the truck, me and you were in the truck. We just came off of a miserable,
awful job. And we didn't talk, we didn't talk to each other. The whole job. The whole job,
because it was just anger and frustration. When we did, we were insulting each other and.
Yeah. It was, it was no good. It was no good. And then we got into the truck. We both got into

(52:06):
the truck and we were silent and we put on the radio and some song came on the radio.
It was a Katy Perry song. And we both started seeing the song, started seeing the song. And
afterwards we looked at each other and started laughing. We're like, how did we go from the most
miserable people on this earth? The most unpleasant people to deal with, to the happiest

(52:27):
people. Just from a song. We're driving home last job in the day, literally singing Firework by Katy
Perry together with the two dogs in the between us. Like the lamest, gayest thing you've ever seen.
You have to have a weird sense of humor if you're in a job that's frustrating. But every job has its
own frustrations, I guess. Yeah. This industry is not easy whatsoever. And we could, okay, so let

(52:50):
me give you this, let me give you this example. We have, we're working in a mall. I'm not going to
tell you which one. I don't want to know. But we just started working in a mall. We're working in,
we're putting in, they're doing a new restaurant. And we have to, every day we have to sign in to
the security office, the management office. And the woman we have to deal with, she just,

(53:13):
like, visually you can tell, she's miserable, that there's a stick three quarters of the way up and
behind all the time. She lives her life in hatred toward people. But she works in a beautiful
office that's climate controlled. Now we show up at three o'clock, we couldn't get there any earlier.
To start the job, we're filthy, we're sweaty, we've been working outside all day

(53:37):
in the heat, busting our bodies. You like the heat, don't you?
Do I look like I like the heat? You like the heat, don't you? I don't like anything.
Heat included. But this woman who has this little bit of authority,
because she's the secretary in the management office, so she has a little bit of authority,

(53:58):
because she has a power trip. Just a power trip and like, you just have this attitude about you,
like every time I asked her a question, she would like sneer her lip. It's like, listen.
I don't know what happened to you in your past life, but how come we come in here and we're

(54:24):
nice to you and you return it with attitude? Like just stop. I'll tell you how to, I used this once
and it worked. I'll tell you. So if you have somebody that's treating you this way,
you just turn around and apologize to them. Tell them, I'm sorry that you're having a miserable day
and if you need to take it out on me, go right ahead. I'll be your punching bag.

(54:50):
And then you film it. And then it's like, you know, the reaction is like...
That it's stuff like that that bothers me, because I look at guys who are in our industry,
I mean, I don't want, I'm not trying to be dramatic. Okay? But are you sure? No, I'm really not trying.
Why don't you play some background music? You would know if he's trying to be dramatic.

(55:13):
You would know if he's trying to be dramatic. Let me pull up sad violin music. But no, and it's not
that we sit here and complain about it all the time, but we're abusing our bodies to do what we do.
Yes. For you. Yes. Okay. Now, I'm not going to denigrate or say we do what we do,
or as worse off, but at least a lot of people that we deal with that have the worst attitudes

(55:36):
and just treat us like garbage are the ones that have it so good where like, like we, like I'm
saying with this commercial office, like this woman is in a climate controlled comfortable
office and just filled with hate. He doesn't like that she has working air conditioning.
But us and other companies like us, we're, we're always nice. We have a nice custom attitude.

(56:03):
Anyone in the trades, anyone in the trades, you know who I feel for like, well, not anyone. There
has been, there are jerks in the trades, but generally, right? You know who I feel for right
now. Who's that? The HVAC guys. Oh, yeah. My AC is not working. And I have to go into an attic.
That's 130 degrees. And the person downstairs like, well, you know, it's hot in here. Yeah.

(56:27):
Yeah. I was in an attic the other day. I was in an attic the other day and I said to myself,
I don't know how, how HVAC guys do. I couldn't do this all summer. Well, you know what I read
recently is if four times a week, if you spend 20 minutes in a sauna, you lower your risk of heart
attack by 51%, risk of stroke by 62%. So what do you tell me? Sit in my attic. We're all going to

(56:49):
an HVAC. We're all going to live longer. So the worst besides being an HVAC guy, is being a
mold remediation guy that has to treat mold, that has to wear a water, a weather, a waterproof
Tyvek suit that is just like wearing a garbage bag on you and you have a respirator and then you go

(57:13):
into the attic and as long as you're up there, you walk out and you take off your suit and there's
a pot of the water. Yeah. You have to like, you have to be in communication with that guy. Don't
you or something? Constantly. Constantly. Constantly. Constantly. Constantly. Constantly.
Like, are you still alive? So. It's like the NASA space missions. On jobs like that. On jobs like
that, you always, my biggest fear in jobs like that is what happens if somebody passes out.

(57:39):
Right. What do you do in the instance of somebody getting fainting? Yeah. You have to be certified
for certain things in your field or no. So in the state of New Jersey, the only thing I need
as a company is insurance and they HIC license. Okay. That's the only thing that I need.

(58:04):
I'm certified though. I have all the certifications that I need to have to do my job. I would like
to see the state of New Jersey making mold remediation to have a license. Yeah. I would love
to see that. So I'm licensed in New York for mold. You don't have to be licensed to remove mold.

(58:25):
Not in New Jersey. So some schmuck can come in and just spray bleach over the place.
Correct. So that's why, so in a lot of instances, we're not doing, I don't do mold anymore
because it's just a constant competition on who's the cheapest. Gotcha. So we tried avoid doing
mold because of that. People think that, oh, you're making a lot of money. We avoid doing it. If I

(58:52):
don't have to do it, if I don't have to give an estimate for mold, I won't even go. Because is
it just a waste of time to give the estimate? No, it works out sometimes, but most of the time,
it's who's the cheapest? Yeah. I mean, listen, that's that we have to deal with that too. We get

(59:12):
we get competitive people shopping all the time, which is fine. They're going to do that. Competitive
the I wires. Well, yeah. Well, listen, here's the thing about all these YouTube channels telling
teaching homeowners how to do their own work is they never do it, right? And we get called in and
we have to charge them to rip out what they put in and then put it back correctly. And they're

(59:33):
like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're gonna, I mean, you're gonna gouge me on this? Like I already
suffered because I could have shark bite at that. That's a you problem. Yeah, you should you should
hire a professional. This is not my house. It's your house. My big my my reaction to that is, well,
sucks for you. Yeah. You know, it's like, what do you want me to do? Yeah. What do you do? Whatever

(59:56):
you want. What would you like me to do? Yeah. Well, you can do whatever you want. It's your house.
You can do whatever you want. But this is this is what I do. So the biggest thing that I have with
a lot of customers is like, well, what if you only do this? Oh, yeah. We yep. I can't just do this.
It's like, why? No, because I can't sign off on it. Yeah. Yeah. I can't sign off on this being

(01:00:22):
done right. Well, and then you know, when they change their story. So we have waivers that we
have customer sign. So miss, miss Johnson, Mr. Smith, whatever you want to say. You need to
remove this carpet because it's full of sewer water. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

(01:00:46):
We can clean it. Okay. Sign this. What's this? Well, it's saying that you don't want me to remove
that. And if you get sick, you can't you can't sue me because I told you that you need to remove it.
Oh, okay. They change it out. Xeno. Yeah. Xeno with a toast family. Xeno on them. Xeno with a toast.

(01:01:08):
What does that even mean? Xeno foreigner. Foreigner. Yeah. So where's domestic?
If there's foreign and domestic. We were watching clips of that movie today.
You know, that is, you know, it's so funny. Neither parents have a foreign accent whatsoever
in that movie. The fact rewetting. The father is so funny. Yeah. I haven't seen the second one

(01:01:30):
and I'm not going to. That was my uncle. Yeah. That was exactly my uncle. He had a story for
everything God rest his soul. I haven't seen my big fact rewetting to because the first one is
the perfect romantic comedy. Yeah. And I don't want to ruin it. Yeah. It was still funny, but yeah.
No, we what you were saying before, can you only do this? Can you only can we stop here try to save

(01:01:54):
money? It's like you can now in three months when the pipe that you didn't want me to touch that
is already spouting a crack breaks and we have to reopen the ceiling. Like it's just like I can't
have I can't have my contract to come in here and close up this wall with confidence. I can't

(01:02:15):
because when this when the pipe breaks down the line, you're going to blame me for it anyway,
even though you wanted to opt out now. And then you're going to blast me on Google reviews and
say I'm a horrible plumber like no, we're coming in here. Listen, here's your problem. This is what
we need to remove and replace to fix this problem. And if you don't want to do that, there's plenty
of people that'll come in here and fly by night your job in a heartbeat for half my cost. What do

(01:02:41):
you want to do? Yeah. And if they don't want to do it? That's it. So we have people that say, well,
if what if I go and what if I do this? Do it. Go right ahead. But I'm not going to follow right
behind you. Do it. Here's my card. And I'll be waiting for your call. Yeah, I just walk away.

(01:03:04):
We get the same thing. Just walk away. We're both an emergency based industry. Yeah, we are.
We're both of our companies are emergency based, which also the problem we run into is I scheduled
this and you guys were supposed to be here three hours ago. It's like, listen, you have nine toilets
and one of them is not flushing. You're going to have to wait. This other lady has no hot water.

(01:03:24):
And he should have told your son to go to trade school. All right. Don't get me. There might be
more plumbers out there. Don't get me started on that. Do you? Well, your son, does your son work
with you now? He works with me now. 100%. He's still in school. Okay. He's still in college.
He has another year left. Let me ask you some. Go finish. And he wants to,

(01:03:47):
he's going to start working with me full time. Why do you even bother
following finishing college? So who's paying for it? I am. So get him on the phone. No,
so no, I growing up, I grew up in a Greek household that everything was, you know,

(01:04:11):
we could do it ourselves. We can save money doing this, save money doing that. I have to go to the
hospital just spray windex. I can build my my my father was he came. He came in 1955 to the states
and that's being a word of English. He put himself through college and became an electrical engineer.
Wow. All right. I started working in the restaurants. My parents own the diner. Typical Greek.

(01:04:40):
Okay. So in the early in the early nineties, I I went to have an associate's degree
from Bergen. Then I went to work in the restaurants. And then in 1992, I graduated culinary school.
What? Really? Wow. I didn't know that about you. Yeah. You never invite us over to your house for

(01:05:02):
dinner. I don't cook. My wife, I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed. I can only barbecue because it's
outside. Okay. Also, you went to culinary school. You didn't graduate from culinary school. No,
I finished. I actually worked in in Europe. You gotta make some baklava and bring it over, man.
He's not allowed to cook in his house? No, because I need 10 people to clean after.

(01:05:23):
I'm the same way. It's a nightmare. Right. So
I noticed because all the like these industries are all very hard industries.
They're very difficult industries. Right. So at some point you change. You want to change your

(01:05:45):
your your lifestyle. I mean, when my daughter was born, you know, the first time that I actually
went to the beach with her, you know, it was like four years later. Yeah. She was like four years old.
So I thought that if I would have had a degree, it would have helped me

(01:06:06):
make it easier. Make it easier. So both of my kids, my it was very simple. You need a four year
a four year college degree. I don't care if you don't use it. If when you graduate, but you need
a four year degree, you still you still think the same way? No. So so both of my kids went to

(01:06:29):
Rivendell High School in Oradell. Right. Great school.
Supposed. Okay. All these schools are just pushing high end colleges. Yeah. They're brainwashing kids.
Right. So when my son was a junior and we were having a conversation with the guidance counselor,

(01:06:51):
we I got into a fight with her. And I asked her, why are you pushing colleges for liberal arts?
And I don't hear any one of you saying, why don't you become an electrician? Why don't you become a
plumber? Right. In the next 10 years. Okay. Maybe sooner. Plumbers and electricians will be the new

(01:07:16):
millionaires. I hope so. And the reason being is nobody wants to do it. Yeah. Right now. I mean,
I had I had attended a Kuken Brothers had a thing a couple of years ago up in Mawa.
Right. There were Sam. They were showing their, you know, new products and things like that. They

(01:07:39):
had like an expo. And there was a few guys talking. And they were saying, for three years ago, four
years ago, that there's four and a half million positions in the United States right now, well,
four years ago, that cannot be filled because people are not there. HVAC. There's just no one.
Right. HVAC plumbers. Right. HVAC plumbers, electricians, carpenters. Yeah. These are

(01:08:05):
professions that I mean, everybody wants an electric car. How are you going to charge this?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's I mean, don't even get me started. I've for as far as college goes,
listen at this point, and this isn't even a political view or whatever, these kids are coming
out of colleges brainwashed into social justice activism. And they're not even getting real

(01:08:29):
educations anymore. No, they're not. So and I look at you and you made the point that no one's
coming up into the trades. And these these kids are tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands
of dollars in debt at some point with with a useless piece of paper that's going to that's going to
give them nothing. But they keep their it's like they're manipulated and brainwashed into go to

(01:08:52):
college, go to college, go to college. And I honestly believe that they're being brainwashed
into doing that because the education system knows that they'll be brainwashed into social
justice activism in the long run anyway. So what I see what I see in in this country right now,
I mean, I don't I don't want to take it into a political no, I don't yeah. But everybody

(01:09:17):
do thinks everybody thinks that socialism is great till you live in a socialist country. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody's fell apart. There's still there's still socialist and it's
still going to fall apart. I mean, if you talk about socialist countries, the tax rates like 52%
right. And what happens when when the tax rate is a is 50 or 51% you no longer own nothing yourself.

(01:09:44):
No, you know, when you're paying out more than half of what you're making and what you're worth.
Correct. The government owns you. Correct. That's why you go to those countries,
we're at the Europe, I go to those countries and they don't make anything. You just sit down at
cafes on beautiful beaches all day long. They don't there's there's no they're not producing
anything anymore. Nope. You know, that's the and people think that that's the way of doing it.

(01:10:08):
Oh, they live such a nice life. Yeah, you live a life where you own nothing. So you just have to
compensate for having a nice beach and having nice old architecture. And listen, I'm not going to
say that those countries aren't gorgeous. They are beautiful. And it's nice to go to vacation. But
as a country itself, there's no substance anymore. Because if you don't make things,

(01:10:31):
if you don't create, you don't have anything. Right. True. So going back to the worst customer.
Yeah. You remember the rainstorm that we had in May?
April the eight the last it was like May 1. It started the last day of April and everything

(01:10:51):
in the area got flooded. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. We get called into a customer at 1130 at night
in Alpine. Okay. So it was a call that came in from one of the lead services. Pick up the phone.
Please come. Our house is flooding. So my first question is, do you have a sump pump?

(01:11:16):
And the response was no, we don't. I said, you're not covered by insurance.
Please come anyway. I get there. After this customer, I changed my demeanor on the way
I walk into customers homes now. We walk inside. My first gut reaction is, okay,

(01:11:41):
let's just drop everything and let's help these people. Get our pumps, get everything to start
getting them out. Well, I didn't sign. I didn't get a work authorization signed.
Two days later, they called their builder. They threw me off the job. They did not want to pay me

(01:12:05):
for the 12 o'clock in the morning call that I went to their house. And I literally stopped
the rest of the basement from flooding. Do you have any recourse for that? What do you mean?
Not if they didn't sign anything. Nothing. So now I won't go to a job. I won't go to a job. It was

(01:12:28):
the most expensive, one of the most expensive lessons that I've learned. I've learned that lesson
of trying to help. You're sitting under a waterfall. Please sign this before I stop.
You have to do that. I know. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I can't do that
anymore. I know. You're right. We had the same thing. We bailed a beautiful house in Franklin

(01:12:49):
Lakes, bailed them out. And you know what? And this is going to sound harsh, but it's our fault.
It's our fault. It is. You can't blame, listen, the customer knows we have no recourse.
Right. And the fact that we have no recourse, it's our fault that we don't cover our own ass.
That is correct. You know what I mean? I totally agree with you. Yeah. So it's almost like you
can't like curse the customer to hell because I went in there stupid and thinking, wow,

(01:13:14):
they sound so desperate. Let's get them up and running. Let's take care of them. We'll worry
about signing contracts later. Nope. They people will see that and they'll hone in. So customers
like that are the customers that make us bitter. No, I don't want to say the word bitter,
but right now if somebody calls me at 1.30 in the morning and I have to get there because

(01:13:39):
they're flooding. Yeah. If they don't, if I ask the questions that I need to know what's happening,
if they're flooding and they don't have a pump and it's not a pipe and it's groundwater,
I'm going to ask for a $2,000 deposit. Yeah. You've honed in your questions to the point where
you're like, if I'm coming out at one o'clock in the morning, I know that it's going to be worth

(01:14:01):
it for me versus correct. I know that I'm right. I do the same thing with emergency calls when we
have emergency calls and I didn't do this for years, but now when we have an emergency call
and we have to dispatch somebody, Nancy takes $200 sometimes $250 depending where they're at
over the phone just to get a guide and knock on your front door and all that $250 covers is for

(01:14:26):
you to get a technician to get there and knock on your front door. Correct. That's what, so we're
starting to take deposits like this. That's $2,000. I'm mobilizing. I'm mobilizing. I'm coming to your
house with fans and all the stuff. I'm coming there with everything that I need to do to get this
job started. If you think that that's too much money, then sorry. It sounds harsh that we have

(01:14:52):
to do this. It's not. In the way it is, but let's look at it this way. We know what it takes.
We know what it takes to stay in business. We're not an 501c3 charity here. This is a business.
We're feeding families. We're paying employees to come in and work for us and work well for you.

(01:15:14):
The only one feeding a family is him. I have a dog to feed and you got Frankie,
which is like feeding a family. Are you minimizing my family? Frankie's like feeding a family.
But no, it really comes down to it that asking, we should have full confidence in saying that you
have to pay this deposit. I'm not coming over. It doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. That's what I do

(01:15:37):
now. The other thing that we get a lot of is like, well, I have mold. Can I send you a few
pictures? Can you look at him? No. No. I'm coming over there. No. It's like, well,
and we get it mostly from real estate transactions. Oh, yeah. I got you. I'm buying the house and

(01:16:00):
the inspector says that there's mold. Can you come and give me an estimate? Sure. It's $350
for me to come and give you the estimate. And if he decides to go with me, I'll credit you
with that amount. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that because that costs money for you to get over
there and do that whole thing. You're going to charge me to come and give me an estimate?
Yeah, because you just needed it for you. Yeah. That's it. And you got to be able to see through

(01:16:25):
these tricks. And people may think you're a jerk or an a-hole for doing it. But you know what?
When we get in there and take care of a customer that utilizes our services properly,
we will take the best care of that person we possibly can. And I can say that with confidence.
And we were talking about pricing too. When you go in there and if you're middle-high of the road,

(01:16:46):
on the higher end of the middle road, let's say, if you sell yourself, sell yourself with confidence
and know why you're charging what you do, because if you believe in your ability to do the right
job and charge the right amount and you believe in the fact that you're going to be the best
plumber or remediation or cleanup guy for these people, you should have plenty of confidence

(01:17:10):
to sell your pricing. It should be no question. And confidence in selling yourself is probably
one of the biggest convincers to a customer that you know what you're doing and you're worth bringing
in. Yeah. And then they reward you with a good tequila. Yeah. There you go. But it all works
out in the end. Which Otto brought for us. So I don't know if it's happened to you. I have gotten

(01:17:33):
jobs because I picked up the phone. Oh yeah. 100%. I hear it from Nancy all the time. It's like
I called five people and no one's getting back to me. You picked up, just come and do it. I don't
care what it's going to be. We get that all the time. You sure? Yes. Just come and do it. No,

(01:17:53):
we get that all the time. Why don't people pick up the phone? It's beyond me. You know why? You know
why? This is, it's because a lot of companies, small businesses are one or two man operations.
That's not an excuse. But it's not an excuse. They don't have an office person. I didn't have an
office person up until six months ago. I picked up the phone. I pick up every single call.

(01:18:17):
Whether it's a scamming scam call from India or not. This is not to be offensive to you, but are you,
are you getting in there? Are you getting in the crawl spaces like your guys are?
Not anymore. Not anymore. So when you started, you were doing that? Yes. Okay. Yes. So,
so you were answering the phone, you were doing everything. All right. How you have to get up
and go attitude though, though. How can I tell my guy how to do something if I haven't done it? Oh,

(01:18:42):
I have no problem with that. I'll send him anywhere that I would never go. No, no, no,
I'm not saying about going all night long. I'm not saying going into a crawl space. I'm saying,
if you tell Max how to, you need to redo this pipe and reswet it. Oh, and Max will go to you. Well,
how? Oh, of course. Yeah. Absolutely. If you can't show him, right, then he just lost. Yeah.

(01:19:07):
Right. So that's why so I have done it. Yes. I know you've done it. But the point is,
is what I'm trying to say is that are you the guy who's, were you the guy who's selling the
jobs more so versus doing the work? So now, now, yes. Okay. Now, yes. So now, my guys, I'll go set

(01:19:29):
up a job. I'll go set up the job. And then when I set up the job, my goes, my guys go to me. Okay.
Bye bye. Self sufficiency. You have that. Right. But it's taken a very long time to get people to
understand the end result. Right. Yeah. So we will walk into a house. And when we're done,

(01:19:51):
we mop the floors. So when you're walking in, it's spotless. Yeah.
It's because you mop the floors on. You're not going to get that with the cheapest guy. No.
With the cheapest company. You know, it is all this stuff, all this stuff, it costs money. And
we live in a post COVID world right now. With post COVID manufacturing and post COVID shipping costs

(01:20:19):
and post COVID gas prices. So it is a completely whole new ballgame at this point. You know?
Yeah. But you have to do, you still have to do the right thing. Of course. That's not what I'm
saying. Right. But you said when you checked, you used a cleaner and pre COVID, it was

(01:20:40):
whatever it was. It was a tape. A tape. Yeah. You were using that and you weren't paying attention
to the price increase and you realized all of a sudden it's 28. Now, now that we live in this
post COVID world where prices get raised every two and a half months. For a roll of tape. Yeah.
But for a roll of tape. Listen, it's not, it's, there's a lot of companies out here. There's a

(01:21:02):
lot of competition. There's a lot of eyes to be dotted and T's to be crossed on our end to make
sure if you're trying to stay ahead of the pack, you have to, you have to put in all that extra
work. You know what I mean? So that customer that we went to yesterday that you called me in for that

(01:21:22):
ceiling leak. This is what their kitchen looks like today. Oh, wow. Holy smokes. You got to
send me this picture so I can post it. Look at that. Look how all the, look how the dryer
lines are all, it looks like, it looks like an alien pod. Like an octopus. Yeah. Oh my god.

(01:21:44):
So what we try to do is, holy smokes. I mean, that's, you don't, you just don't go in and start
ripping stuff apart. Right. Like we did yesterday. You punch holes and you, you shove tubes in there
to dry out. Correct. So now you can patch the ceiling instead of ripping it up. Yeah, but what
if there was insulation in that ceiling? Then it has to come out. Then it has to come out. Right.

(01:22:05):
But that the good thing is there's no insulation. Yeah. So you can dry it in place. Right. Right.
Right. I mean, we were testing, the way they were describing when they were getting water was
really strange. So we were spraying the outside of the house, hitting the roof and everything,
but it ended up being that one little pipe tucked in the corner and that one little pipe with that
slow drip every 14 seconds did all that damage and grew that mold, you know. So if you notice in the

(01:22:32):
picture, the camera didn't pick up yesterday, the thermal imaging camera, didn't pick up the water
towards the other side. Right. So they got wet almost by their, by their stove also. Oh, wow.
So that's why we have all that tubing going up there. Well, listen, I, there's a reason I call

(01:22:54):
you for that stuff. Cause like I said, you're always there. And if you can't get there, you say,
I can be there in this such and such time. If they want to wait, they can wait. If not,
then I just think it's funny that you just pulled up to my shop one day handing out business cards.
That's how it happened. You said I was selling myself. Yeah. And you know, I sold it. I sold

(01:23:16):
myself to you and now we became friends. That's it. Drinking tequila and doing a podcast, doing a
podcast. I mean, we get calls, oh, I just saw your trucks riding around. On my own slow days,
we'll just drive around and go shopping in the truck. Yeah. You know, but listen, I'm glad you
did this. I'm glad you came on. No, I really, I really, I really, really liked the good. I've

(01:23:38):
heard all the podcasts. I haven't heard the one with your uncle. You gotta listen to that one.
I started listening to it and I just passed out. I was just, I was, he's not the most
interesting person. I know. No, I was, I was, no. So Tuesday, Tuesday at 12 o'clock,
get a call from one of my clients and it's, uh, it's like, I don't know what you're doing,

(01:24:00):
but I need you like yesterday. I'm like, what's going on in the afternoon? Like what's going on?
It says one of the stores that I manage, the roof drain line broke an eight inch drain line.
The, the, the video, did I show you the video? No. I'll show you the video. 32,000 square feet

(01:24:23):
of store was flooded. Clothing store. Yes. The ground. Okay. If you go, if you go to
Jigsaw's Instagram, you can see all the videos from that. It's crazy. You said a 12 inch line.
Eight inch, eight inch, eight inch, 32,000 square feet. Wow. Driving down there, the manager

(01:24:46):
calls me and says, I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know how you're going to do it,
but the store has to open up tomorrow. What? Are you serious? Yes. They opened up today.
This happened Tuesday. They opened up on Wednesday. Holy cow. Wow. How do you,
I mean, how do you, how do you, I told you, I told you in the beginning, I have a group of guys,

(01:25:12):
there are nine guys that I can, we can take over a country. I don't believe you. We went in there.
Let's get, we went, we went in there. There was water everywhere, everywhere. Let's go take over
one of those pretty Greek islands where we could just hang out and you don't have to take over
anything. You just, you just walk in. So we, we got in there. There's water everywhere. Everyone

(01:25:34):
is panicking. Everyone is going on and you just, under situations like this, it's, it's, it's funny.
I don't know if you have it also, but no matter how difficult the situation, it's like, it's like
you calm down. Yep. Take a step back. There's always a way to fix it. Correct. Always. So

(01:25:56):
calm down, you relax, you assess, and then you start saying, okay, do this, do this, do this.
And like I said, I have a team of guys that a lot of times, you know, it's good. I'm, I was
useful, maybe useless sometimes now. It's like, I think I extracted a little bit of water and I

(01:26:17):
was just helping and bringing in fans and dehumidifiers. But that's where you want to be. If you, if you,
if you get a good staff and you take care of your staff, that's where you should be because you're
the brains of the operation. No, you have some guys, man. I, you know, I, even though they're techs,
well, I don't mean that in a bad way to them, but it's your company. Right. It's your company,

(01:26:37):
you're responsible, you're the, you know, so that's where you want to be. Right. And I think,
I think that's great to be able to have a staff like that. I mean, we're trying to build up, I
would like four or five trucks eventually. Do you really want to get that big? I don't think that's
big to me. You think four or five trucks is big for plumbing out for a plumbing outfit?
Yeah. I don't want to grow more than, I don't want to be more than a three-truck operation.

(01:27:05):
Well, let me do this. Since I respect you, I'll give you, I'll give thought to what you're saying
right now. If I didn't respect you, I'd say, no, but I'm serious. Just think about it. All right.
Think about what you're going through right now with two people. You're just, the bigger you get,
the more stress you're having. Because your responsibility grows tremendously. Yeah. But

(01:27:26):
you know what might win? No, I'm different. I don't have a wife and kids. Yeah. But the people
that you're higher might, well, that's, that's, well, yeah, you're right. So he doesn't give a damn.
So if you hire, if you hire many of times, you know, like the owner goes home without a paycheck,
because he has to make sure everyone else is paid first. Yeah, absolutely. But high risk, high

(01:27:47):
reward. Yeah. Yeah. If you do it right. Correct. Listen, I want to wrap, I want to end this right
here because this has been really good. It's been really interesting. You told some stories that I
did not know, which I enjoyed, but I'm glad to have you on. And again, Jigsaw PMR out of
Oregon, New Jersey. Great, great company. Great staff. You guys are awesome. You're always there.

(01:28:08):
You keep your trucks clean. It was a pleasure having you on. It was a pleasure. Thank you for
having me. You got it. I really had a good time. And guys, tequila was good too. Yes, tequila.
That's good tequila. And as always, thank you for everyone who's listening. We really appreciate
it and we'll talk to you next week.