Experience, wisdom, and the whole nine yards

I began to think about what defines a quality contractor the other day and it led me to start thinking about how you define quality. I would say that quality is obtained when you determine exactly what the client wants in a product or service and afterwards you deliver the equivalent amount of service.

This is where wisdom and experience come in because without a combination of these two you really wouldn't be able to deliver quality. I often hear a lot of "experienced" "floor guys" talk about how long they have been in the business. You'll hear companies talk about how between the two or three owners they have over 40 years of experience. That's nice but if you never educate yourself as a contractor then you really only have one year of experience repeated 40 times.

True professionals are judged on multiple facets in my opinion. A professional is someone who is constantly seeking to improve their service by continuing education, adopting newer and more efficient tools and methods, and shares their knowledge with others for the good of the industry. Additionally I would suggest that a true professional wakes up everyday with a passion to do their job and has an empathy towards the vision of the homeowner and their expectation of service.

Well, well, well this leads us to a rarely mentioned word in the blue collar world called wisdom. Everytime you hear the word wise you probably think about some old man in a rocking chair with a head of grey hair talking about his experiences in life. I would say experience is a component of wisdom but not the whole enchilada. An acuity for the details of a process as related to your past experiences would somewhat make you wise in my book. The only caveat is that the person engaged in this process must be guided in a way so that their observation for detail is governed by honesty and genuine empathy for the customer.

I know this blog may seem somewhat esoteric, but when I look forward to every new day in becoming a more wise hardwood flooring professional I have to think about what rules I adhere to in aiming for continued success. If you find yourself a reader of this blog, then I would like for you to know more about the person behind the company than what I do for a living.

What's the value of hiring a professional?

For about a week or so around my home I had a broken faucet in the sink. The sprayer head had simply broken off and it was a little tricky to use but worked. Despite how busy I am I decided to do the task myself and save some money. Well, I must say that the end result was that the sink was fixed, but I almost messed the faucet up by doing the work because I am not a plumber, I am a hardwood professional.

It seems like a fine point, but not really. You see, for a period of time I kept stalling and managing to deal with a less than ideal faucet until I could make the time to fix it. The day that I did manage to fix the sink was quite an adventure. I came home in a rush and tried to install the sink. I sort of glazed over the directions and managed to put the sink in and it took two tries to do improperly. I rushed out the door for a networking event and returned at 8:30pm and tried one final time to fix the sink and was successful this time. Thank you to my wife for being the brains the third time around. During the removal of the faucet the second time I almost stripped the brass threads that connect the faucet to the sink. Through some frustrating moments I managed to get the sink installed after a third attempt. I love the sink.

You may ask why a hardwood floor guy is talking about plumbing and a sink. If I had actually realized what I REALLY should do and call my plumber friend and pay his company to install the new faucet I would have saved time and frustration. In addition I almost destroyed a $120 faucet due to my less than par plumbing knowledge. Sometimes there is a reason to call a qualified professional because they have the tools and knowledge to do things right the first time. I learned on this one and won't make the mistake again.