 everybody this is Dan Giles welcome to the podcast in today's episode visited today by my brother Doug Giles he's all the way from New Orleans what's going on Doug oh not too much in town to get married married yeah oh that's right that's right I didn't forget I knew that's coming up Friday we're gonna be getting the boy hitched so what kind of feeling is that well I'm glad you didn't forget I mean since seeing as how you're standing in the wedding yeah yeah well how's that feeling for you feels pretty good doesn't yeah know no for about 30 years now actually on the night the day we get married we will have known each other 30 years exactly you finally committed 30 years I should be committed I didn't go there I didn't go there you did well this is the third time so oh my fortunately not to the same girl you know I learned my lesson on the first two yeah you know that was the same girl no no okay two separate okay this third third girl third girl there you go well third time's a charm that's what they say it won't be a fourth there won't be oh well hopefully this one will stick you throwing it against the wall it's gonna be a good deal like spaghetti well you know I just thought we'd get together and have a little time of some chat and see what's going on and find out what's going on going on in both of our lives your life my life as a maintenance supervisor and both of an apartment community and you you're in you get your hands in all kind of things what kind of stuff do you kind of dabble in and to make a living in life oh let's see started off doing pool tables 27 years ago uh you know did did pool tables for the longest time and kind of got kind of morphed over into doing well hang on now pool tables you're meaning like what kind of moving recovering service work on pool tables I did I do everything well I have I've done everything from moving and recovering pool tables to full-blown restorations on them I actually used to work for for the largest pool table manufacturer in the world as a pool table designer yeah and so you actually designed a few pool tables haven't you I sure have built them from scratch I sure have that's pretty unfortunately they never did make it to make it to market the company I was working for bought out another company that was going out of business so well they were they were not really going out of bankruptcy I couldn't I had a brain fart this morning so it happens to all of us but yeah they were going out of business or going through bankruptcy and the company I was working for actually bought them out so they ended up with all the pool table designs from the previous company all of their equipment the employees and everything so they just didn't have a need for me at that point but if that hadn't gone through then yeah my pool tables would be all over the country by now sweet that would have been cool would have been would have been so pool tables and there's a few other things you're into yeah let's see I do a lot of leather work well the pool table when I started off doing pool tables it kind of morphed over into doing upholstery work and then from upholstery work into doing finish work and you know dad was a was a sign painter for 45 50 years something like that yeah and I learned all about finish work from him dealing with chemicals and the paints and everything so it just it just it was kind of a natural flow to move from moving and recovering pool tables to doing restoration work on them and you know again same thing with dad he did a lot of woodworking and I picked up on all that stuff from him so it like I said it was just a natural flow to move from moving and recovering pool tables to doing full-blown restorations to you know the cabinetry work on them all that kind of stuff and then you know from from there that kind of morphed into doing restorations on furniture and I got together with a business partner that that used to do pianos refinished pianos so we refinished I mean I couldn't tell you how many pianos were we refinished in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina yeah we actually we picked up the contract for refinishing all well the the Steinway and Sons distributor in New Orleans we picked up their contract so if there was a Steinway and Sons that was going to get refinished through the distributor it was going to my shop to do it so lots of pianos that's a lot of high gloss oh yeah oh yeah we've really superior finishes yeah we we we've specialized in high-end finish work some of the some of the pianos that we worked on were well over 200 years old make them look like brand new again you know between our cabinetry work and and the piano technicians work doing the interior of the piano and the the guts of it and the and the keyboard of it and everything come out with almost a brand new piano so you know a piano inside Anna pretty much that's cool that's cool and in the last what five six years you've gotten into another little venture two others two others well the main one manufacturing and and sale of sharpening stones for straight razors and the other is leatherwork I do a lot of high-end leatherwork as well yeah that's cool but you know it's kind of strange how all of these things kind of morph into each other you know yeah they're kind of related and it's it seems as though our family we're definitely a service oriented type family oh yeah we're working with our hands absolutely one of us actually well I don't know about our sister but you know now not not so much not so much her but all of the rest all of us boys yeah and there's four of us yeah and out of the four boys in our family three others are actually doing some serious handwork yeah and creativity stuff yeah fixing things repairing things it's that's that's pretty wild that we all kind of doing the same thing and I think we all learned it from dad where he was a jack of all trades and a master of none he could fix anything yeah you know and from fixing the lawnmower that we would go out and break well I gotta tell you you had moved out by the by the time that this that this happened but dad I guess I was probably maybe 12 or 13 years old maybe a little younger than that but you had already moved out and dad had bought this boat and it was a fiberglass boat and it it just didn't suit him the way that he wanted it to be so he pulled the thing around into the backyard and he started cutting away on it and I mean gutted the thing all the way down to the the hull itself and mom comes out there and she's looking at it and she you know she said this for years afterwards I didn't think I'd ever see him get that boat back together but he did it you know he did all the fiberglass work although you know rebuilding the boat and and it looked it looked like a factory made I remember that boat because he had actually built in all these little hidden compartments oh yeah so that when he went out fishing and he caught over his limit he had a place to hide the extra fish oh absolutely yeah I remember all that they would they would stop in some kind of cut back in uh in the marshes and and they would clean the fish and take all the the filets yeah and hide them yeah you know in case the game were back yeah ziplock bag them pack them up throw a little ice in there and then put them in all of his little compartments well dad's gone now so we so we can get away with saying yeah yeah nobody's gonna come back on him now exactly you know what mr. jiles you uh we gotta take you in buddy your son's done squealed on you the rat patrolers showed up yeah I believe that I think I went fishing on that boat with him a couple times and I remember all those little hidden compartments there was a there was a camp that him and his buddies from church from church had well it wasn't dad's camp no it was all their camp that a couple of those guys had gotten together on and I remember us going out to that camp out the middle of the marsh and you know tying the boat up to the dock and sitting out there and filleting fish after fish after fish oh yeah well that's back before they had limits on fish now listen you know I know that it doesn't really sound right but whatever fish dad caught dad ate oh yeah that was if he only got to go fish once he had enough fish that he would eat for the rest of the year yeah so that fish didn't go to waste oh no and the thing was is that uh yeah he did go fishing more often than just once a year you know he went fish almost every almost every sunday he'd go off fishing but they would use that fish I mean we'd have people coming over to the house we'd invite people over to the house for fish fries we would have well they were big in the church they always that's coming over from church well that but they would also bring the fish for church fish fries as well yeah you know so people were getting fed from dad's fishing yeah he was one of the I know we're getting a little off topic from the service side of it but he was probably one of the best fishermen I have ever known mm-hmm that man could go out with six other men and only one to catch a fish well you know you talk about that camp that they had down and it was actually in port sulfur yeah and you know dad was not one of the he was not one of the co-owners of the camp but the reason why he got to use that camp as often as what he did was because every time that they had some kind of work that needed done on that camp that's true dad was down he was Johnny on the spot yeah yeah not only helping them out but directing them as to what needed to be done yeah yeah how to go about doing it he did a lot of work on that so he he was sort of like the caretaker so by rights he had a oh yeah yeah had free use of it whenever he wanted to and when we're talking about a man that that you know he got his GED you know dad didn't graduate high school he got his GED and I think he was probably in his late 40s when he got that it may be yeah um and then uh although he did go to college his the what he went for was actually sign painting this is back when when you know lettering signs by hand was the thing to do this is before computers and yeah some of the signs are still on walls and oh yeah I see them all the time and billboards and all over the place where these vinyl signs and I remember him talking about the vinyl when it started coming in and people using vinyl for signs and he was he just couldn't believe it right you know but uh yeah he was definitely a jack of all trades the man could fix anything and he couldn't fix it he learned exactly how to fix it and fixed it or build it and most of the time whatever he built he overbuilt it yeah yeah you knew that thing 20 years 30 years 50 years from now it's still gonna be there I think that's probably where I got a lot of my you know and I stress in all of my youtube videos uh the podcast is new so a lot of people that might be listening to this show don't haven't really experienced my mentality and my mantra you know that much but I do have a youtube channel as well for fixing things around your house how to videos but my credo in doing anything is to do it right and do it right the first time you know I don't believe I have gotten in trouble at work for not doing a job that when they wanted me to do it because I want to be sure in my mind that I'm going to do it right before I'm going to just jump in there and start doing it so I've always and they always people at work think that I'm procrastinating but I'm not I'm actually working out this problem in my head first before I jump in and because I don't want to have to go do it twice I'm a strong believer and you know if you don't do it right the first time when are you going to have time to go back and do exactly and my motto is do it right do it right the first time and if you can't do it right find out how to do it right and then do it right so just do it right yeah and and I put that across I try to in almost every video that I do you know is to make sure you do that job right because I believe that and I think I got that from dad because dad was dad's was a perfectionist when it came to doing things but dad also would uh I really don't understand where he came from where he would do a project but he would always leave something unfinished and I have yet to figure that one out you know if he was putting crown molding up in his in his house there was always one piece of crown molding missing somewhere but what he put up was beautiful yeah but he would you know and I and I remember mom she was she would fuss about that often you know because he would do all these projects and everything looked great but there was always one piece of it unfinished well you know in the house that they had right right before they passed they agreed on every other room in the house except for the kitchen how the kitchen was supposed to be done so every other room in the house looked fantastic looked beautiful yeah except for the kitchen that couldn't come together on the kitchen so it never got done so it never got done and that was their rule if we don't agree we just don't do it that's what they did and that's exactly what they did I remember that because that that that kitchen had like plywood countertops I think that house was like an old camp that they bought I mean it looked like an old camp well actually that was a that was a dairy farm and the people that lived there had that house and the shop was actually the dairy barn yeah and they would bring the cows in there to milk the cows and everything but the but the house I mean yeah it was kind of like a shack and dad turned it into a really beautiful home yeah everything in the house was beautiful when he got done and as he got older he got where he couldn't do a lot of stuff anymore I remember talking to him on the phone it's like well dad are you gonna get out there and do some more work on the house no son I don't think I can no I don't think so yeah and it was sad to see that happen but yeah and even in that I remember he laid all the the ceramic tile throughout the whole house dn did that oh dn did I did that dn did all the ceramic tile okay well it was still an unfinished house it was it was but again like I said he he everything he did in there that he did finish was beautiful and it was done right yeah you know and that has been in my mind since I was a kid you know to do the job right regardless of what it is you're doing yeah you know you could be doing your leather work I could be out there fixing the stove shortcuts come back to bite you in the butt now there the business partner that I had when I was when I was doing furniture restoration and doing a piano restoration he did tell me something one time that that has always stuck with me you know you want to do you want to do as good a job as you possibly can on something but you reach a point of diminishing returns on some things yeah so you know it is entirely possible to do a job and continue to try to perfect it and perfect it but once you reach a certain point nobody's ever going to appreciate those extra things that you do and then there is a there is a point where you have to recognize where no mountain whatever extra effort that I put in no one is ever going to appreciate it and I have I have I'm trying really hard to get that through to my fiance now with the leather work because now she's starting to do the weather work and there are there are things you know she'll have one stitch that's slightly off on on on a project yeah and it's on the inside and she's beating herself up over and I'm like look even if you got it if you got it perfect or if you got it slightly off nobody's ever going to see it yeah it will still be 100 completely functional the the quality of it is still exactly the same it's just you know sometimes I guess what I'm saying is sometimes you can end up being your own worst critic yeah and you have to be able to to step back away from it and say you know look at the look at the overall big picture and say this is it's not that it's good enough it's that it really is really good and anything more that you go to do is you're not going to make any extra money off of it you're not going to save yourself any any hassle from returns on an item or anything like that you know it's just stuff that nobody will ever appreciate but you and yeah you know you can get to a point where that ends up costing you money especially when you start getting into manufacturing stuff yeah a little bit different subject but kind of in the same vein because I don't know if we could call ourselves a perfectionist I'm not a perfectionist by any means but you know I do believe in doing the job right and and you and I've talked about this before when it comes to talking to people about the things we know oh yeah and we're I know where this is going yeah we're convinced of what we know is the proper right way and and we're so sure of it because we've done it for so long that when we talk to people we can come across now I don't say it and but people have told me and frankly I don't care you know that I can be an arrogant SOB because and when I'm talking to people about a certain subject and I know that you've gone through this too that you come across as arrogant and conceited and talking down to people down to people you know that's that's the big thing for me that I hear he talked down to me yeah and I hear that too you know and and the fact that a matter is we're not talking down to to to anybody right we well I think you described it when we talked about this the last time you know well I had said I had said you you know imagine for a minute and you know a little bit about physics I think everybody knows a little bit about physics how things physically work you know you put a ball on a table and if the table has a slant to it the ball is going to roll off well we all know these things right but imagine for a minute that you go to talk to Albert Einstein about physics he has no clue as to where your knowledge of that subject now this is a subject he's you know he's brilliant on yeah but he has absolutely no clue where your knowledge begins and where it ends yeah so the only thing that he can do is start at the beginning and try to get you up to speed to where he is or at least to a point where y'all can communicate and at least be talking the same language yeah and I find that that's that that's the where we you and I and and other people that are that are extremely confident extremely knowledgeable about the the subject matter that they're talking about they get into the exact same trap where you know we are extremely knowledgeable about something and we're not it's not that we're talking down to a customer we're trying to get you to where we're trying to we're trying to educate you and get you to the point where where we can at least be talking apples and apples and not apples and oranges right you know and that can be construed as arrogant and talking down arrogant yeah but you have to realize that that's if you're a customer if you're somebody listening to this and and you're a customer you have to realize that 99.9 percent of the time whoever you're dealing with if you perceive that's what they're doing take a step back and just listen to what it is they're saying yeah leave leave egos leave everything out of out of it and just listen to what it is they're saying and chances are they're trying to get you on the same page yeah and if that's the case too it also lets you catch up sure you know so you're giving them time to I think that in my case residents because I do apartment maintenance you know and I've done it for 40 plus years so there's almost nothing that I've not seen right you know so when I go in and a customer wants to try to explain a certain situation you know and in my mind as soon as they started speaking I've almost figured out what it is and so then I would go into an explanation of it but I think the best thing to do would probably be to sit back listen even more to what they're saying that way you can catch up to where they are even if they are below you in their knowledge and not below you but in the knowledge they might be right you can then proceed from that from the ending of what they said and you know expound on that and but it's tough for somebody that knows what they're doing and is experienced enough to to I don't know well what makes it what makes it even what makes it even more difficult sometimes is the language barrier itself okay and I don't mean somebody one person speaking speaking one language versus another person like I'm speaking English and you're speaking Spanish that's not what I what I'm getting at but there are there are certain terms that you know once you've been doing a certain job for a long time you may not interact with the slang terms that some people use you know now I mentioned before I've been doing pool tables for a long time and you know it's common slang and I understand it when somebody says oh man you know you got a box of rocks you can bring out with you well they mean a box of balls okay yeah I need to see about getting a rag changed on my table well I know that when they say a rag they really mean you know they they want new cloth um but where where it really has a problem is when you start using when one person the layman starts using terms that actually have real meanings like I'll give you an example I had one customer a couple of weeks back she calls me up and she says yeah I need to see about getting my pool table leveled and recovered well getting a table leveled that's a technical term I mean you know it's not really all that technical but it it has a specific meaning in my job yeah um getting a table leveled does not mean getting it reassembled and getting it reassembled does not mean disassembling yeah so when we when talking down to me yeah well when she when she first called me she says well I need to get my table leveled and recovered so I'd given her a price for that and then in talking with her a bit more on the phone come to find out well no it's not you don't need it leveled you need it reassembled she had moved from out of state and the table from the conversation I gathered was disassembled well we given the price for that she agrees we go ahead we order her cloth we get out to her house and then as soon as I look at the table the table is flipped upside down with the slates still attached to it with the cloth still attached to the slate upside down on the floor which that's not the way it's supposed to be moved um so I wonder how they would even move that probably on its side you know and and I and I've been doing tables for a long time I've never seen that before you know this is the first for me so I'm I'm there I'm a little bit exasperated because she told first she tells me one thing that she needs a table level which doesn't include any kind of assembly right right so then come to find out we need it assembled but no it's even further than that we need it disassembled first but in order to do that I've got to take a chance on damaging our floor damaging our wall damaging the table to just to get it flipped back right side up so that I can disassemble it so that I can reassemble it so that I can level it so that I can recover it you know but and that that's the language barrier though I don't know you know and in all actuality looking back on it when she used the term leveling my table she in her mind she may have thought that leveling means reassembly you know but for for a technician leveling means one thing and reassembly means another and that's what I mean by the language barrier yeah and and that's why sometimes it's very difficult to get the customer and the technician on the same page without them saying you're talking down to me yeah and that's what I was gonna say that's where it comes in with when you start to try to correct that language barrier that's when they start getting that feeling of that you're talking down to them and that you're being condescending and when nothing could be further from the truth you're being an arrogant SOB because yeah that's it's definitely an issue but if anybody out there is listening and you've experienced that it trust me it's not a reflection on you it's a it's not a reflection on anybody it's just some people know more than other people and the people that know more than what the other people might know on a particular subject they're not talking down to you they're just talking because that's what they know right then there's no there's no animosity and there's no hidden agenda right most of the time right with people that are being that way so I would say don't take offense to that if that's what you're feeling exactly you just got to realize that these people know what they're talking about you know most of these people are they've been doing this for a very long time and they're so used to doing it that is it's it's almost a I'm not gonna say it's close to being mundane for them but second nature for them well that's probably a better term for as opposed to say mundane because this is what their career is that's what they've made their life is to go out there and do these things so hopefully it's not mundane for them right second nature is a better term that's for sure yeah so well Doug I appreciate you coming in this week and I look forward to Friday when you're getting hitched and married and bringing another Mrs. Giles into the family we all could use those yeah this family needs some more Mrs. Giles so I think we'll go ahead and wrap this up we've taken these people's time well it's been my pleasure to address your audience and talk with them and hopefully they've hopefully I've at least given them something to think about yeah what do you take away from the conversation today what's the overall theme of what we're trying to convey to people personally I think mine is more of a you know I've always said this I'm always going to say it if you're going to do something do your dead level best to do it right absolutely that's don't cut the corners that's that's one thing I would I would take away from it and the the other thing I would take away from it is try to be mindful of your customer their your customer's shortcomings nor your residents or your residents what exactly because a lot of this will will flip it'll transpose from one job to another anything in the service industry yeah doesn't matter what it is and try to be mindful of your customer's short custom your short their shortcomings and not to not to be this isn't a this isn't meant to be arrogant or anything like that but truly their ignorance that they are ignorant of and they don't they just don't know and you want to remove that you want to remove that that barrier and be mindful of the fact that they don't they legitimately don't know yeah let me clarify that by ignorance you mean the lack of knowledge correct not stupidity correct the knowledge is there you just don't want it right right and and see no and it's it there's nothing negative about being ignorant I'm ignorant on a lot of things I mean a whole bunch of things and and and I recognize that I just don't know certain things and and that's where you need to as you have to be able to recognize that within your customer or your or your tenant and yeah you know try to tip toe around maybe a little bit more to try to avoid those that that we all should be mindful of other people's feelings and how we come across it's difficult it is it's difficult but you know here in the last few videos that I've done that one of the last things I say is to just be kind to each other out there I think that that goes a long way and so if you just try to be kind and understanding of other people you know this world would be so much better off absolutely and if you're working on somebody's equipment or whatever it is you're doing for somebody else just understand that they're not as knowledgeable as you so be kind and considerate and patient with them and that's that's really all I can say you know yeah so guys this is Dan Giles I appreciate you listening to today's episode I look forward to coming back at another event to bring to you and with that I'll say it again be kind to each other out there and I'll catch you in the next one so long