Andrew Comrie-Picard recalls a West Hollywood customer's Yelp review praising punctuality and respect. He argues that showing up on time and treating everyone equally are rare enough to be competitive advantages, and that scaling without losing that culture requires clear rules, consequences, and hiring for fit.
Our first review is a girl in West Hollywood who said. First review on Yelp, said gave us a great review that I didn't expect. Was one of our early customers. So I was in the truck for the first six months. I was Mountain tires going around town. And she said, a. So polite and so on when they dealt with me, but showed up on time. A lost art in la. And.
It'S very hard sometimes, and sometimes we can't. We screw it up, but always want to be on time. Like manage people's expectations and fulfill them. Right. Because people appreciate it. Even in la, where everybody's late all the time. Right. A, and then B, she, she. She wrote that and you know, I've gone to places and I'll name them Pep Boys and Costco. She. She named them that talked down to me because I'm a woman. Right. You know, I, I didn't like the experience and, and. And these guys didn't. Right. And so those two things alone like that, that to me are just like two things that you should be doing as service, just as a basic thing. Like you got to treat everybody equal. You got to show up on time. Right. And that's just part of. Woven into our brand that it blows my mind that other. That other people aren't like that. So that it's a differentiator. In LA especially, it's like thinking anything it is anymore.
Like, it's so everybody thinks that they can automate it. And customer service is the worst it's ever been, but the expectations are the highest it's ever been.
I think that's right. That's a good point.
I mean, it's nuts. So if you can execute on just empathy and customer service, you're. You're ahead of your competition right there.
Thanks. Well, I think we are.
I think. Right.
You know, what I'm scared about is actually keeping that with the scaling because it relies so much on the people that you have to bring in. Great people.
Well, you just have to kill and shoot people that aren't.
I wanted to.
Sometimes you got to fire fast. Like fire fast, you know? Yeah. I think the thing that people mess up is that they misunderstand what culture is. So a lot of times people think, like, they get this idea that Google and Apple and like, culture is like having a chef there feeding them. And we want. We want to have happy employees. Right. But that isn't culture. Culture is, you know, the opposite of chaos. So culture's laws and rules and consequences, like the reason why Canada or America are such great places to live is because if you kill somebody, you go to jail. And so you can kind of walk around assuming you're not going to get killed. Like it does happen. But, you know, we're were oddly safe. Like it's the safest any country's probably ever been in history. Right? Because we have that. But there's consequences. So I think the thing to understand as you scale is culture isn't making everybody happy. Culture is having strict laws and then attracting the people that like that. So, like, if I go into a company and their culture's broken, the expectation of the owner of the company is that I'm going to put this magic dust on all these idiots that don't want to perform. And what it is, truthfully is I'm going to get rid of all them and I'm going to attract people that want structure, want fair. You know, they want to be in a place where they get paid on time. You don't change their pay plan. But the expectations for that are that you're going to show up on time, you're going to care about customers, and so you almost have to have the law and the structure first. And then you attract the right people. If you have the wrong people and you try to flip it, you're never going to make those people happy.
That's a great point.
