Chimney Reviews

My husband Earl has swept chimneys for twenty two years and he still picks up the phone like the person on the other end already owes him an apology. He is not mean. He is just usually thirty feet up, covered in soot, with a brush in one hand and somebody's creosote in his face, and the phone is the last thing he wants to think about. I used to be the one calling folks back from our kitchen at night, saying sorry we missed you, sorry he has not rung you yet, while his supper went cold in the microwave. After we hired Launchbarr, the reviews started talking about the girl who answers. One lady wrote she was the nicest part of the whole job. That girl is not a girl. She is the voice that answers when Earl cannot, and she books the sweep, takes the address, and asks about the fireplace like she has done it before. Earl did not believe me till I read him three reviews out loud on the porch. Now people get called back without me doing the apologizing, and reminders go out before burning season without me writing a list on the fridge. Earl told our son last week, "I do the dirty part. She can have the talking part." That is the closest thing to praise that phone has ever got from him.

Every year I told myself the same thing in July. Call last fall's customers, get them booked before the rush, do not wait for the first cold snap. Every year September came, and by the time the phone started ringing I was up a ladder wishing I had done it. I am a one truck shop. If I am sweeping, I am not booking, and if I am booking, nobody is sweeping. This summer the reminders went. Past customers got a nudge with my name on it, and the book started filling while I was out doing masonry work I used to turn down in the slow months. By the first cold front, half my October was spoken for by people I had served before. Nobody new and fancy. Just my customers, called back before they called the next name in town. My fall did not start in a panic this year. That has not happened since I started.

I took over the phones from my dad two years ago and the first thing I learned is a chimney company lives and dies in about ten weeks. Dad never advertised. He said word of mouth was enough, and for him, working alone, maybe it was. I have two techs to keep busy and a January that does not care what October looked like. Last winter I sat in the truck between jobs doing the math on a napkin, trying to figure out how a company can be booked solid and broke in the same year. What changed for us was the Google side of it. Our profile finally had the right stuff on it, the inspection photos, the certifications, the towns we actually cover, and people started finding us for the jobs I wanted more of. A realtor in the next town called about a Level 2 inspection for a house sale and said she picked us because we were the only sweep whose page looked like we knew what a Level 2 even was. Two more realtors called that month. That work comes in all year, not just when it gets cold. Dad still will not touch a computer. But he asked me last week why the phone rings in February now, and I just let him wonder.

I am certified, I carry the camera, I take pictures of everything, and I still lose sweeps every fall to a coupon outfit that charges ninety nine dollars and finds a cracked liner in every house they walk into. Used to burn me up. Now the review requests go out after every job, and folks write the stuff I could never say about myself. One wrote that I showed her the flue on the screen and told her what did NOT need fixing. That sentence has sold more sweeps than anything I ever paid for.

I have swept chimneys for twenty six years and I still climb like a man half my age and answer a phone like a man twice as grumpy. That was the problem. In October I am on a roof across the county with soot in my ears and both hands on a brush, and every call I miss is a neighbor booking the next name on Google. My old system was a notebook in the truck and my daughter calling people back on Sundays, apologizing for me. She was good at apologizing. She had a lot of practice. Launchbarr put a voice on my phones that answers day and night and talks like she works here. She asks what kind of stove, when it was last swept, whether they smell smoke in the summer. A man one town over wrote in his review that the lady on the phone talked him out of burning until we could look at his cracked flue tile, and he thanked her by name. She is not on my payroll. She just never sleeps, never gets soot in her ears, and never snaps at anybody. I still do the climbing. She does the talking, and October stopped leaking.

My husband Pete has run our chimney company for eighteen years and he could not have found our shop on a map app if you paid him. Folks would call the wrong number, an old one from a church directory, and give up. Launchbarr cleaned up our Google listing, put the right phone number and our real hours on it, and added the services Pete actually does, the Level 2 inspections and the caps and crowns. Now people find us when they search. Pete says the phone rings smarter than it used to. I say it finally rings for us.

I never asked for reviews because it felt like begging. Now Launchbarr asks after every sweep, polite as can be, and people write things I could never say about myself. One lady wrote that I showed her the camera pictures and told her the liner was fine. That review has sold more work than my truck lettering ever did.

I am the partner who does not climb. My brother in law Jeff runs the truck, I run the books and the guilt, and for years the guilt was June. Every summer I meant to write to last fall customers before the rush, and every summer the list sat in a drawer while we chased masonry scraps to keep busy. This year Launchbarr sent the reminders for us, in our name, while it was still warm enough that folks could pick their day instead of begging for one. Our old customers filled September at a walking pace. Jeff started the rush with a route he knew, houses where he already knew the flue, the dog, and the gate code. He told me it felt like cheating. I told him it felt like June finally doing what June was supposed to do.

I miss calls. That is the whole confession. I am up on a roof in the snow belt with gloves on, and a man whose furnace room smells like a campfire is not leaving a voicemail, he is calling the next sweep. Now the second I miss one, Launchbarr texts him back before I am down the ladder. Most of them answer the text and book right there. A fellow two towns over told me he was halfway through dialing my competitor when the text landed. I still miss the calls. I just quit losing the jobs.

I am the daughter, the one who got handed the office because I was the only one in the family who could type. Our old website was a single page my cousin built in high school, one blurry photo of a fireplace that was not even ours. Launchbarr rebuilt it with our real work, the stone chimney Dad rebuilt across the county, my brother on a roof in the next town, the wood stove installs we are proud of. People call now and say they chose us because the site looked like a company that actually does this. Dad thinks websites are nonsense. Dad also asked why the phone rings in April now.

I write good estimates and then I bury them. That was my system for thirty years. I would camera a flue in October, quote a liner, shake a hand, and never follow up because the phone was ringing off the wall with sweeps. Launchbarr follows up on the estimates now, gentle, spaced out, in my name, until the person answers one way or the other. A lady in the next town over answered on the third try in January and said she had been meaning to call since November, her husband just kept putting wood in a stove she was scared of. We lined that flue in the quietest week of my year. I did not pester anybody. I just finally heard back from the work I had already sold once.

My husband Denny sweeps, I do the money, and the money used to mean chasing checks through ski season. Now folks pay the deposit on a little link before he ever loads the truck. A man paid for his cap install from his deer camp. Denny says the paying part got so easy he is suspicious. I am not suspicious. I am caught up.

Up here the first cold snap is not a metaphor, it is a wall. Everybody waits, everybody calls the same week, and half of them forget the appointment they begged for because life moves on. The no shows used to kill me. Now Launchbarr reminds them the day before and texts when I am on my way, and folks are home with the dog put away and the fire out. My route stays a route. I have not sat in a cold driveway wondering if I had the right day in two falls.

I answer the phones and run the schedule at our shop, which means I used to also be the marketing department, the review department, and the lady who took pictures of chimneys with her own phone and never posted a single one. Launchbarr takes the finished job photos now and puts them out for us, regular as a route, with the neighborhood named and the work described the way our lead sweep describes it. A woman across town called and asked for, and I am quoting her, the chimney from the green house picture, because hers was the same shape and the same age. I knew exactly which job she meant. I still answer the phones. I just quit being the only person who knew what good work we do.

My calls came to my cell, my texts came to my cell, my Facebook messages went to a page I checked at Christmas, and my email went wherever email goes to die. A lady messaged us about a smoke smell in June, I found it in August, and she was somebody else customer by then and not shy about saying so. Launchbarr put every bit of it in one place. Call, text, message, email, one screen on my phone. I am not a computer man. I am a man who got tired of apologizing in August for June.

Brian is my partner and he is the best sweep I know and the slowest man alive at writing an estimate. He would camera a flue, find the cracked tiles, explain it beautifully at the kitchen table, and then the quote would come three days later after the homeowner had already called the coupon outfit. We send the estimate now from the driveway, by text, while Brian is still coiling his cords. Launchbarr built us the format, he punches in the liner and the labor, and it lands before he is home. A homeowner across the river told Brian she signed ours at her kitchen table because it arrived while she still remembered what the camera showed her. Brian still explains beautifully. He just does not give the coupon guys three free days anymore.

Marla owns the company, I married into it, and my job is mostly carrying things and keeping my opinions about marketing to myself. So I kept this one to myself too, until the jobs started showing it. Launchbarr runs small ads for us in the towns we actually cover, and the calls changed shape. Fewer people asking if we drive two hours north, which we do not, and more folks two towns over needing exactly what Marla prices best, Level 2s for house sales and liner work. Marla says the phone finally knows where we live. I carry things. I can carry more when the jobs are close together.

My company used to live on sticky notes on a dashboard. Sweeps here, a liner quote there, a lady I owed a call since October. Launchbarr put every job on one board on my phone, who is booked, who owes a deposit, who waits on parts. One note blew out the window on the interstate once. That was a whole Tuesday, gone.

I book for my dad, who has swept in this town since before I was born and still thinks a calendar is something on a feed store wall. His customers used to call, get his voicemail in the middle of a kiva fireplace, and hang up. Now they book themselves on the calendar on our page and pick a real open slot, and it lands on the same schedule I run. A man booked a cleaning at midnight for his rental one town over and Dad had the address and the gate note at breakfast. Dad asked who took the call. Nobody did. That is the point.

I was against the sticker idea and I will admit it in writing. Launchbarr put a code on my invoices and on the back of the truck, the kind a phone reads, and told me folks would scan it and leave a review or book next year cleaning right there. I said nobody scans anything up here in February. Then a customer scanned the invoice off his fridge in March, booked his fall cleaning in about a minute, and wrote in the notes that the code on the fridge beat digging for my number. His neighbor scanned the truck at a gas station and left a review about a crown repair while I was inside paying. I do not argue with the fridge anymore. The sticker outworks my old business cards, which mostly became shims anyway.

Hank is my partner, he does the climbing, I do the talking, and the talking used to stop the day the job ended because I felt awkward asking people to remember us. Launchbarr sends a thank you after the work and checks in down the road, in our voice, nothing pushy. A lady we swept for in October sent her sister in November and her pastor in December, and told us the check in note made her think of us when her sister mentioned a smoke smell. Three jobs from one polite note I never wrote. Hank says I finally learned manners. The system learned them for me.

I am a woman running a chimney company in a town where callers still ask if my husband will be doing the work, so my customers paying on time matters to me more than most. Launchbarr put my regulars on an annual plan, the sweep and inspection billed steady through the year, and the rest pay by card from a link. My Sundays are mine again. The last man who asked for my husband watched me reline his flue and paid through the link before I was off his roof.

Brandon owns this outfit and I run a crew for him, and Brandon will tell you his address was wrong on half the internet. Google had us at our old shop, one site had a 2016 number, and customers showed up at a warehouse we left years ago. Launchbarr fixed the listings everywhere so the name, address, and number match. Drivers stopped getting lost. So did customers.

My reviews used to live on Google and nowhere else, which meant a homeowner reading about us on our own website saw a lot of promises and no proof. Launchbarr put the reviews right on the site where people are deciding, the real ones, with the neighborhoods in them. A man in the next town told me he read three reviews from his own side of town, one about a cap, one about a Level 2, and booked without calling anybody else. I did good work for years before anybody could see it in the right place. That part was never the sweeping. It was the showing.