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Marisol of Cedar & Stone Cabinetry in Boise lost $4,000 on a mid-project hinge upgrade that never made it to the PO. Eric breaks down how custom shops bleed money in the gaps between quotes, texts, and shop tickets — and how an all-in-one customer record fixes it.
Marisol runs Cedar & Stone Cabinetry, a six-person custom shop in Boise, and recently ate a $4,000 loss when a mid-project hinge upgrade slipped between a phone call, a shop ticket, and the PO. Eric and Marisol dig into why the problem isn't change orders — it's that the customer lives in four different systems.
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Eric: So four grand. On one kitchen. Just gone.
Marisol Rentería: Gone. And the worst part, Eric, the worst part is I didn't even know it was gone until the install crew was already standing in the customer's house going, "uh, these aren't the hinges on the sheet."
Eric: Oof.
Marisol Rentería: Yeah.
Eric: Okay, back up for me. For folks who don't know you, who are you, what do you build, what's the shop look like?
Marisol Rentería: So I'm Marisol, I run Cedar & Stone Cabinetry, we're a six-person custom shop in Boise. Took it over from my dad about eleven years ago. We do mostly high-end residential, some built-ins, a little bit of commercial millwork when it makes sense.
Eric: Six people. So you're not a giant.
Marisol Rentería: No. I mean, on a busy week it's me, two guys in the shop, a finisher, an installer, and whoever's answering the phone, which is also usually me.
Eric: Right.
Marisol Rentería: And that's the thing. That's THE thing. I'm the quoter, I'm the project manager, I'm the person who follows up with the homeowner about whether they want the soft-close drawers. All of it.
Eric: So walk me through the hinge story. Because I have a guess about what actually broke, but I want to hear it from you.
Marisol Rentería: Okay. So the homeowner upgrades. Mid-project. She calls, she's lovely, she says hey I was at a friend's place, I want the nicer hinges, the European ones with the dampers. And I'm in the truck.
Eric: Of course you are.
Marisol Rentería: I'm always in the truck. So I scribble it on a shop ticket, I think I tell my lead guy, Danny, and in my head it's handled.
Eric: But the quote doesn't get updated.
Marisol Rentería: The quote doesn't get updated. The PO to the supplier doesn't get updated. And nobody pulls the upgraded hinges because as far as the pick sheet knows, we're using the standard ones we already had in the rack.
Eric: Yeah.
Marisol Rentería: We ate the difference. Because what am I gonna do, call her and go, "hey, remember that thing you asked for a month ago, I forgot to charge you"?
Eric: You can't. I mean, you CAN, but you won't.
Marisol Rentería: I won't. And it's not the four grand, Eric. It's that I know it's not the only time.
Eric: That's what I was gonna say. That's the part that should bug you.
Marisol Rentería: It bugs me a lot.
Eric: Okay. So here's what I'm hearing, and tell me if I'm wrong. The problem isn't hinges. The problem isn't even change orders. The problem is your quote lives in one place, your shop ticket lives in another place, the conversation with the customer lives in a third place...
Marisol Rentería: Texts. It lives in texts.
Eric: It lives in texts. And there is no single record of "this is the current version of this job."
Marisol Rentería: Yeah. Yeah, that's it.
Eric: So every time something changes, you're the human bridge between four systems. And humans in trucks forget.
Marisol Rentería: Humans in trucks forget. Put that on a shirt.
Eric: I will. So let me tell you what we did, because we had a version of this. Not cabinets, obviously, but at the agency we had quotes in one tool, the client conversation in email and text, the project board in a third place...
Marisol Rentería: Sounds familiar.
Eric: ...and every time something slipped, it slipped in the gap between two tools.
Marisol Rentería: Right.
Eric: So about two years ago we moved everything onto one platform. The all-in-one ops platform we run the agency on. And the unlock wasn't any one feature. The unlock was that the customer record and the quote and the conversation and the pipeline stage are all the same object.
Marisol Rentería: Mm.
Eric: Like, when the customer texts you, that text lives ON her record. And when you update the quote, the quote lives ON her record. And when the job moves from "quoted" to "in production" to "install scheduled," that lives on her record too.
Marisol Rentería: So there's no version of "I told Danny in the truck."
Eric: There's no truck. I mean, there's a truck, you're still in the truck, but the truck is talking to the same database everybody else is.
Marisol Rentería: Okay. Keep going.
Eric: So the first thing I'd do, if I were you, is I'd stop thinking about software as "I need a quoting tool" or "I need a CRM." Because that's how you end up with five tools.
Marisol Rentería: That's how I have five tools.
Eric: Right. The question is, where does the customer live? Pick one place. Everything hangs off the customer.
Marisol Rentería: Okay.
Eric: Now for you, specifically, the piece that I think matters most is the change order. Because that's where you're bleeding.
Marisol Rentería: That's where I'm bleeding.
Eric: So on the platform we use, you can build what's basically a little form. Homeowner wants to upgrade hinges? You pull up her record on your phone, in the truck, you tap "change order," you pick the hinge upgrade from a list with the price already on it, she gets a text with a link, she taps approve, it's signed, it's logged, the quote total updates, and Danny in the shop sees a notification that the spec changed.
Marisol Rentería: Oh my god.
Eric: And none of that requires you to remember anything.
Marisol Rentería: That's the part. That's the part that gets me. Because I'm not a disorganized person, Eric. I run a shop.
Eric: I know.
Marisol Rentería: I'm organized in the ways a cabinet maker is organized. My shop is clean. My tools are where they go.
Eric: But you're carrying the system in your head.
Marisol Rentería: I'm carrying the system in my head. And then I get a phone call about a backsplash and the hinge thing falls out.
Eric: Right. The brain is not a database.
Marisol Rentería: The brain is not a database.
Eric: Okay so let me ask you something. When a lead comes in right now, a new customer, somebody who saw your work somewhere, what happens?
Marisol Rentería: She calls. Or he. Usually she. I answer if I can. If I can't, it goes to voicemail and I call back that night.
Eric: How often do you not call back?
Marisol Rentería: More than I want to admit.
Eric: Yeah. So that's the other thing this kind of platform does, and I don't want to overwhelm you, but...
Marisol Rentería: No, go.
Eric: Missed call auto-text. Phone rings, you don't pick up, the system fires a text in like ten seconds that says "hey, this is Marisol at Cedar & Stone, sorry I missed you, I'm in the shop, what's your project?"
Marisol Rentería: And it sounds like me?
Eric: You wrote it. It sounds like you. And then when they text back, that conversation is on their customer record already. So when you finally sit down at nine PM with a glass of wine...
Marisol Rentería: It's wine.
Eric: ...it's all there. You're not digging through voicemails.
Marisol Rentería: Okay. Okay, that alone.
Eric: That alone, yeah.
Marisol Rentería: Because I lose leads. I know I lose leads. I had a guy last month tell me he'd called twice.
Eric: Twice and you didn't know.
Marisol Rentería: Twice and I didn't know.
Eric: That's a thousand dollar problem. Minimum. Per lead.
Marisol Rentería: Per lead.
Eric: So now we've got the customer record, we've got change orders that actually flow back to the quote, we've got missed call capture. The fourth piece, and this is the one I'd add last, not first, is the pipeline view.
Marisol Rentería: Like a board.
Eric: Like a board. Lead, quoted, deposit paid, in production, install scheduled, punch list, paid in full. And every job is a card and you can see, at a glance on a Sunday night, where everything sits.
Marisol Rentería: I have that. Sort of. I have a whiteboard.
Eric: The whiteboard is a classic.
Marisol Rentería: The whiteboard works. Until somebody erases something.
Eric: Until Danny leans on it.
Marisol Rentería: Until Danny leans on it, exactly.
Eric: Now here's the thing I want to be honest about. I'm not telling you to rip out everything you're doing on Monday morning.
Marisol Rentería: Good. Because I won't.
Eric: You shouldn't. The mistake I see people make, and we made it too early on, is they try to migrate everything at once and they end up with the new system half-built and the old system still running and nobody knows where anything is.
Marisol Rentería: That sounds worse.
Eric: That's worse. So what I'd do is pick the one thing that's bleeding the most. For you, that's change orders.
Marisol Rentería: Change orders.
Eric: Just that. Get the customer records in, get a change order form working, get your in-progress jobs onto it. Don't even touch leads yet. Don't touch the pipeline yet. Just stop the bleeding on the four-thousand-dollar problem.
Marisol Rentería: How long does something like that take to set up?
Eric: Honestly? If you sat down on a Saturday with coffee and your existing quote template, you could have a basic change order flow working by lunch.
Marisol Rentería: Really.
Eric: Really. It's not 2014 anymore. These platforms have gotten genuinely good. You're not coding anything.
Marisol Rentería: I cannot code.
Eric: You don't need to. You're filling in a form that says "here's my hinge upgrade SKU, here's the price, here's the description."
Marisol Rentería: Okay.
Eric: And then we keep Notion, by the way, for the stuff that ISN'T a customer. Like your SOPs, your shop docs, your finish recipes.
Marisol Rentería: I love Notion.
Eric: Notion's great for that. But Notion is not where your customers live.
Marisol Rentería: No, I tried. I tried to make it that.
Eric: Everybody tries. It doesn't want to be that.
Marisol Rentería: It does not want to be that.
Eric: Right tool, wrong job.
Marisol Rentería: So can I tell you what's already different? Because we started doing some of this maybe six weeks ago.
Eric: Please.
Marisol Rentería: I haven't lost a change order. Not one. Since we put the form in.
Eric: Six weeks.
Marisol Rentería: Six weeks. And it's not even that the form is magic. It's that the conversation with the customer ends with "I'm gonna text you a quick approval, tap yes if that looks right." And then it's done. It's signed. It's on the job.
Eric: And Danny knows.
Marisol Rentería: Danny knows. Danny gets a little ping. Danny LOVES the little ping.
Eric: Danny loves the little ping.
Marisol Rentería: He used to find out about changes when I'd walk in at seven AM going "oh by the way." Now he knows before I get there.
Eric: That's a real change. That's a culture change in your shop.
Marisol Rentería: It is. And the other thing, and I didn't expect this, the customers like it more.
Eric: Of course they do.
Marisol Rentería: They feel like we're a real operation. Which we ARE, we always were, but now it looks like it from the outside.
Eric: That's the part nobody tells you. The systems are for you, but the customer feels them.
Marisol Rentería: The customer feels them.
Eric: Okay. We're coming up on time. If somebody listening runs a shop like yours, or a small service business, anything where the customer asks for changes and humans are the bridge, what's the ONE thing you'd tell them to do this week?
Marisol Rentería: Pick your bleeding spot. Don't try to fix everything.
Eric: Mm.
Marisol Rentería: For me it was change orders. For somebody else it might be missed calls, it might be invoicing, it might be follow-up after the job. But pick the one place money is leaking and just plug THAT.
Eric: That's it.
Marisol Rentería: That's it.
Eric: Don't buy software for a problem you don't have yet. Buy it for the one that's costing you sleep.
Marisol Rentería: Buy it for the one that's costing you sleep. Yes.
Eric: Marisol, thank you. This was great.
Marisol Rentería: Thank you for having me. And thank you for not making me feel dumb about the hinges.
Eric: Nobody's dumb about the hinges. Everybody's got hinges.
Marisol Rentería: Everybody's got hinges.
Eric: Alright. If you're listening and any of this hit a nerve, do us a favor and hit subscribe. We do one of these every week, real operators, real problems, real fixes. We'll see you next time.
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