Concrete Reviews

I run the phones and the schedule for my husband Hank, which mostly means I am the one who apologizes when the plant tells him a truck is loaded and it is not. Hank believes them every single time. Twenty years of this and he still stands a whole crew around a set of forms saying any minute now, any minute now. The homeowners do not call the plant. They call me, at home, at night, wanting to know if anybody is coming tomorrow at all. After we hired Launchbarr, the confirmations started going out on their own. The day before a pour, the customer gets reminded, the cars get moved, the gates get left open, and I stopped being the warning system. One lady wrote in her review that she knew more about her own driveway job than her sister knew about hers, and her sister used another company. Hank read that one twice. He still argues with the dispatcher every morning. That will never change. But he told our oldest last month, I do not live on that phone anymore, Carla does not either. He is right. Supper is just supper now.

I am the son, I finish and I run the saw cuts, my dad still thinks a website is something a big company has. Last winter a homeowner told us she picked us off Google because our reviews kept naming the crew, said it sounded like the same three guys on every job. It is the same three guys. Dad asked her what a review could possibly know about concrete. She said, enough. He has told that story at the supply yard twice.

I am 58 and I bid jobs the way my father did, walk it, measure it, give a number standing in the driveway. Writing things down was never my strong suit, which is a polite way to put it. I lost track of a tear out and replace bid from June, figured the man went cheaper, forgot him completely. In September his name came back up because the follow up had gone out from Launchbarr, just checking in, no pressure on it. He had not gone cheaper. His mother had gotten sick and the whole summer went sideways. We poured that driveway in October before the cold came. He paid in full, shook my hand, told me I was the only one who ever called him back about it. I still bid standing in the driveway. Some habits are mine to keep. I just do not lose the ones I already earned.

Winter used to clean us out. Pours stop, the truck payment does not, and I would spend January telling two good finishers to hang in there while they quietly looked for steadier work. I lost a man that way three winters ago and I told myself it was not happening again, without any real plan for how. This year, through the site Launchbarr set up for us, people put deposits down online in February for spring driveways and patios. I did not have to chase anybody with an invoice book at their kitchen table, which I always hated, it makes a good job feel like an argument. The money just came in, the dates filled in behind it, and both my finishers stayed on through the slow weeks doing tear outs and prep. My wife asked what changed. I said we finally look busy in the winter, so people book like we are busy in the winter. She said that is the first true thing you have said about business in ten years. She might be right.

I am on a slab at five in the morning half the year, bull float in my hands, and that is exactly when homeowners decide to call about a driveway. Used to be those calls went to voicemail and then to the next name on the list. Now the voice Launchbarr set up answers, asks about square footage and tear out, and books the site visit. A man told me at his kitchen table he almost did not hire us because the girl on the phone sounded too organized for a concrete crew. Then he watched us work and said, no, it fits.

I have finished concrete for twenty two years and I still flinch when my phone buzzes in my pouch mid pour, because stopping to read a text with wet concrete behind you is how a broom finish gets ruined. Now when a call comes in and I miss it, which is most calls, the person gets a text back in about a minute saying we got it and asking what they are looking to pour. By the time I strip my gloves off at the end of the day, half of them have already sent me pictures of the driveway and their address. I am not faster. I just stopped losing people in the two hours I could not talk.

I co own the company with my brother in law. He finishes, I sell and schedule, and for years my selling day ended with me squinting at the voicemail light. My brother in law says the computer asks better questions than I do. He is not wrong and I hate it a little.

My husband pours concrete and reads nothing on a screen if he can help it, so every Facebook message, every text, every email used to land in a different place and most of them landed on me at nine at night. Now it all comes into one place and I can see it from the kitchen table in one sitting. A customer wrote in her review that we answered her on a Sunday evening like it was nothing. It was not nothing. It was me, in one chair, with everything finally in front of me instead of scattered across four phones.

I never asked for reviews. Felt like begging, and my dad, who started this company with a wheelbarrow and a pickup, would have called it begging too. The ask goes out on its own now a day after we finish, while the driveway is still curing and the homeowner is still walking out front to look at it. A lady down the road left one that named my two finishers and said the joints were cut straight as a ruler. I read that standing in her driveway. Dad would have had an opinion. I think even he would have read it twice.

I run the office for a man who thinks a stamp is a personality. Reviews would come in and sit there, good ones and the occasional crack complaint, and nobody answered a single one because nobody had the password, including me. Now the replies go out on their own, polite, naming the job, thanking people or telling them to call us about the crack so we can come look. Our one grumpy review got an answer that sounded more professional than the man has ever sounded in person. He asked who wrote it. I told him the truth and he just nodded, slow, like a man respecting a better finisher. The fellow with the crack complaint told me later he almost did not call, figuring we would dodge him. The answer invited him in before I ever knew his name. He is on the spring list for a patio now.

Our Google listing for years had a photo of a parking lot we did not pour and one service listed, concrete, like that tells anybody anything. Launchbarr fixed the profile, put our patios and driveways and shop floors on it with real pictures, and the map calls started coming from our side of the county instead of random towns an hour out. A homeowner told me she found us because the photo showed a broom finish she could zoom in on. Thirty years I have said the work speaks for itself. Turns out it needed a better place to speak from.

Somewhere out there on the internet we were listed with a phone number from 2014 and an address for a shop we moved out of in 2019. People would call the old number, get nothing, and decide we went out of business. My son says the phone rings different. It rings, that is the difference.

Our old website was one page with a phone number and a picture of a driveway that was not ours, some stock photo with palm trees, and we do not have palm trees here. I was embarrassed to say the address out loud. The site Launchbarr built is our pours, our tear outs, our stamp work, the ugly before pictures included. A couple told me they drove past a driveway of ours every day for a year and never knew whose it was until they saw it on the site with our name on it. That is the whole business, right there in one sentence.

I am the son. I handle the computer side because Dad handles concrete the way weather handles a picnic, completely and without discussion. Launchbarr built pages on our website for each thing we pour and each area we cover, and people started finding us for stamped patios specifically, not just concrete near me. A woman called and quoted our own page back to me about exposed aggregate. Dad calls the website my generation's yard sign. He means it as a compliment. From him, that is a parade. The first stamped patio call that came off those pages, I rode out with Dad to measure because I wanted to watch his face. The homeowner had a printout. A printout, with our own words on it, and questions written in the margins in pencil. Dad answered every one standing in her yard, and on the ride home he was quiet a long time before he said, the boy's sign works at night too. I did not say a word. Some wins you just drive home in.

Our customers are mostly retired folks and working parents, and asking them to call during business hours to book a site visit meant asking them to remember, which they did not. Now they book themselves on the calendar on our website, pick a morning, done. I wrote that on a sticky note and put it on the shop fridge where it belongs.

I will be honest, I am the reason we needed reminders. I would double book a tear out and a pour in the same morning and find out in the truck. The customers get a reminder the day before now, and they get a text when my crew is on the way, and my no show, wrong day mess has mostly cleaned itself up. A homeowner told me the on my way text is why she had the cars moved and the dog inside before we rolled in. Used to take me twenty minutes standing in a driveway to get that same result.

Winning a job at the wrong price is not really winning, and I did it for years because my estimates went out three, four days after the visit, hand written numbers I had to type up at night. By then the homeowner had two other bids and a favorite. Mailed it. In this decade.

I keep a list, and it used to be a paper list in the console of my truck, of every bid I ever gave that went quiet. Those people were not no's. They were maybes that I never had an afternoon to chase. I do not keep the paper list anymore. It retired.

I lost money for ten years on homeowners who said yes on a Tuesday and had no money moved by pour day, so I floated material and labor and prayed. The deposit link goes out with the estimate now, and the card gets run before we schedule the tear out. My old receipts were, in fact, napkins.

We started offering a payment plan on the bigger stamped jobs and for the sealing we do every couple of years after, billed on a schedule instead of one big bill at the end. I co own this outfit with my husband and I was the one against it, said concrete people pay cash. I was wrong in the useful way. A retired couple told me the plan is why they did the whole patio instead of half. The billing runs itself. I check it the way I check the weather, once, in the morning, and then I go pour concrete.

My contracts used to live in a folder in my truck and get signed on a tailgate with a pen that may or may not have worked, and half the time the customer kept the only copy. Now the paperwork goes to their phone and they sign it sitting at their own kitchen table, and I get it back before I get home. A real estate agent who sends us tear out work told me we are the only concrete crew whose paperwork she has never had to chase. I keep the folder in the truck anyway. It holds my lunch now.

Everything I ran lived in my head and in a spiral notebook that got rained on more than once. Who I bid, who said yes, who is waiting on the plant, who owes me money. If I got hit by a mixer truck, this company was a yard sale. I call it sleeping better. Both are true.

I answer the phones and I am the entire office, so when I say our follow up system was me remembering, understand that I am a person who loses her keys in her own purse. Now the system tells me each morning who to call: the bid from last week, the lady who asked about sealing, the man whose pour is Thursday who needs his cars moved. The customers stopped paying for it.

I have never taken a picture of a finished job in my life. Cameras are for birthdays. I asked my finisher when he became a photographer. He said about the same time I became a man whose jobs sell while he is at the plant arguing about slump.