Harry Handles It: Episode 37 with Eric Olson

Many founders start businesses because they are great at the craft. Far fewer understand how to build the systems, people, and culture required to scale that craft into a sustainable company.

In this episode of Harry Handles It, Harry Nalbandyan sits down with Eric Olson, founder and CEO of Olson Superior Plumbing, to discuss the real journey behind building a service business from the ground up. Eric started alone in the field answering his own phones, scheduling jobs, and learning the operational side of business through constant trial and error. Over time, those lessons evolved into a scalable company supported by internal training programs, behavioral hiring frameworks, and a culture designed to prioritize people and long term customer relationships.

Eric explains how Olson Superior Plumbing developed its own training academy, Olson Superior University, to bring new talent into the trades and teach both technical and interpersonal skills. The conversation explores why many companies struggle to grow when founders fail to separate craftsmanship from business infrastructure, and how leadership systems can transform a small operation into a structured organization.

The conversation covers:

• The leadership shift required to move from technician to business owner
• Why hiring for character matters more than hiring for technical skills
• How behavioral interviews reveal real decision making patterns
• The development of Olson Superior University and its hands on training model
• The early compensation mistake that created major operational challenges
• How empathy and communication training improves customer service
• Why trades businesses can remain resilient during economic uncertainty

This episode is for founders, operators, and business leaders responsible for building teams, developing culture, and sustaining growth over the long term.

For anyone navigating the transition from doing the work to leading the organization behind the work, Eric Olson’s experience offers a practical perspective on scaling a company while keeping people at the center of the business.

"Harry Handles It" is a podcast hosted by Harry Nalbandyan. Each episode explores how top-tier performers navigate pressure, build discipline, and execute at a high level in business and life. Follow the show for direct conversations about performance, leadership, and intentional growth.

Transcript

Harry Nalbandyan (00:28.674)

Welcome to the Harry Handles It podcast. Today we've got the wonderful Eric Olson on Olson Superior Plumbing. He's the founder and CEO of that company. Eric, welcome.

Eric Dean Olson (00:39.954)

Thanks, thanks for having me.

Harry Nalbandyan (00:41.534)

So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your story of finding Olson Superior Plumbing?

Eric Dean Olson (00:49.596)

Yeah, man, I spent a lot of time in the trades growing up. My dad and my grandfather, my brother, several other family members were in the trades. Some were general contractors, some masons, framers. I was the first plumber. And so I think it just runs deep in my blood. I remember growing up the thought of like digging a hole out in the yard just to get a sunburn and see if my hands would bleed sound like fun. And so

Harry Nalbandyan (01:01.592)

Nice.

Harry Nalbandyan (01:18.776)

That's awesome.

Eric Dean Olson (01:19.08)

You know, I ended up in the trades just following the family's pathway.

Harry Nalbandyan (01:25.024)

awesome. And my, my family is full of craftsmen too my dad, the body tech still still works on cars frames on cars. Craftsmanship has been a big part of our family and upbringing. And that's something that I was brought into the lawyering world. At the end of the day, it's a craft and your craft speaks for itself. And I think that follows you know, through and through from whatever trade you're in. That's a pretty cool story, man.

Tell me a bit about the founding of Olson and I know you have the Olson Training University. Olson, did I say that right or was it first? So tell us about that, that's pretty cool.

Eric Dean Olson (02:00.038)

Yeah, we call Olson Superior University.

Eric Dean Olson (02:05.726)

So when I first started my company, it was just me. I worked alone for many years. And along the way, when you're investing your life, your heart, your passion into something, it's more than just building a business. You want some people to come along and maybe care about the things you care about as much as you do. And so I knew how important people were to me, and I knew that I needed people who would actually care.

and share my heart for customers. And so I had some friends at the time that were not plumbing. One of them was a missionary and he was in Panama and Mexico and different places and living out of a backpack. He wasn't married, had no kids at the time, but he loved people and he cared for people. his story at some point gets married, about to have kids and starts

questioning life as far as man, I can't be living out of a backpack anymore. And so I actually was able to sponsor him to to move back home to the United States. And I knew that I had to teach and train him how to plumb. He had the people down. He could care for people, but he had no technical skills whatsoever. And so that was actually my friend Samuel. And so it started with just me and him riding on a truck. And then we just multiply that. That just kept happening. I kept

searching for people that could actually love customers. And what that ended up turning into is I had to train multiple people at the same time. And ultimately we framed out, basically built a mock house, everything that you could potentially find inside of a home. I had that studded out in a warehouse and that's turned into a full curriculum that we use to train apprentice coming into the trade.

Harry Nalbandyan (03:55.022)

Pretty cool.

Eric Dean Olson (04:01.544)

So just started out a passion, trying to support and help some friends that needed to build a career. And now we get to use that for any applicants that are coming through and hoping to enter into the trades.

Harry Nalbandyan (04:14.434)

That's pretty cool, man. Very forward looking to develop your own warehouse with different scenarios where I'd assume somebody with no experience can come in and learn the ropes or learn the basics of the trade just to get started.

Eric Dean Olson (04:28.124)

Absolutely. That ended up turning into a full curriculum where we have video training as well. And we have different people that would come in, not just from the technical side, but also provide sales training, sales support, customer service at the highest level. And so it's turned out to be something pretty awesome to give somebody a jumpstart into the trades.

Harry Nalbandyan (04:50.328)

That's pretty sweet. Is that unique to Olson or is that something that's seen in a lot from your industry?

Eric Dean Olson (04:57.84)

I don't know anybody else that is doing that in house. We kind of have it as a separate product mainly used for our companies. But what we also do is we partner with the local community and with schools. And what we've learned are there are students that are currently challenged at school for whatever reasons. Some might label them troubled teens and

Harry Nalbandyan (05:02.317)

Yeah.

Eric Dean Olson (05:27.198)

We view people differently. We really highly value everyone and rather than seeing them as a troubled teen, it's like maybe school's not exactly for you. Maybe college is not the direction you're trying to go. We love learning. We value education. But sometimes learning is not from a book and from taking tests and sitting inside of a classroom. Learning needs an activity, needs somebody to show you what to do so you can get in there and work with your own hands.

We partner with the schools around us and we actually take interns to develop them, not only introduce them to the trades, but we put them through leadership classes that hopefully go back with them into school after summertime or after their vacation. And so it's really about helping people. And if that ends up transitioning into an actual career at one of our companies, then that's a beautiful, beautiful result.

Harry Nalbandyan (06:27.128)

That's pretty sweet. How long did it take you to develop that curriculum? And like that reiterations of it, right? mean, because first it was like, let me show you what to do with the tools. And then let me show you how to be a how to sell. And then let me teach you how to be a good person so you can lead.

Eric Dean Olson (06:32.968)

Man, the beginning is just...

Eric Dean Olson (06:45.14)

Yeah, initially it was just me and it was a lot of hours and a lot of time. But as the business continues to grow and scale, the business needed me at a lot of different, a lot of different places at the same time. And so I had to actually teach and train another trainer. And again, it just kept growing, kept building. So I think we'll always be building it and always be improving it. But right now we've been able to get it onto a learning management software.

where they can take classes and having that written curriculum has helped. I think it's probably been developing over the course of maybe five years. And we're about to redo it again right now because we can always improve.

Harry Nalbandyan (07:27.874)

That's incredible. like to your point, although school might not be for everybody, the pursuit of learning and education and advancing your own knowledge base, it's different than just the regular classroom setting. And I love that you bring that into your own company too and constantly reiterating on the craft.

Eric Dean Olson (07:47.699)

Awesome.

Harry Nalbandyan (07:48.49)

Yeah. So tell me a bit about the journey. How did you learn how to scale? How did how did some of those growing pains that you feel no matter what industry you're in when you scale? How did you navigate those?

Eric Dean Olson (08:03.412)

Well, it's interesting because I don't know who said it, but there's a quote that floats around. says, Necessity is the great mother of all invention. And so when you first start a company, you might be the individual that is doing all things. I remember when I first got my license, started my business, I was customer service. I was plumber. I was dispatcher. I was everything. They took my

They took my phone number and they put it on public websites and they put the business application and put it on public websites. And I signed up for a specific lead source that put my phone number on public websites. And I started getting tons of phone calls from people I didn't want to talk to. So I remember I'd be installing a water heater. I'm up on my ladder. I'm actually soldering on.

a new shutoff valve and while doing so my phone rings and because I'm all pumped and I'm excited to get business and get jobs, I get off the ladder, I take off my gloves, I answer my phone and it's like this spam bot trying to like sell me stuff. So I hang up and I climb back up on the ladder and two seconds later my phone rings and that adrenaline goes because I'm about to get a new client, we're doing this thing and at some point you just think, man.

I could really use somebody to answer this phone. Let me call my mom. So I called my mom, got my mom on the phone and she took the phone's next day and she scheduled 18 jobs for me in a single day. I'm like, man, that is amazing. And so as I started with this, it's necessity is the great mother of all invention. Now for me at the time, I've been in the plumbing industry for over 20 years.

Harry Nalbandyan (09:30.734)

You

Harry Nalbandyan (09:42.946)

Wow.

Eric Dean Olson (09:55.506)

I didn't have all the resources that we have today and I wasn't able to quickly find solutions. So I found myself developing my own solutions. It's a lot different in today's world because I can get on the internet and just type my problem and some answer shows up. But I think going from that mindset, that concept that I just shared, your original question was like, how did I scale? For me specifically, I needed two things. I needed to be able to somehow generate leads.

Harry Nalbandyan (10:11.2)

Yeah.

Eric Dean Olson (10:25.384)

And I need people to help me work on those leads and work on those jobs and hopefully find a balance to where I'm not in the field forever. I can actually focus on building my business and the infrastructure that could sustain growth. so thankfully I prioritize that in the beginning, really focus on business infrastructure. And so now with the amount of work that we're doing, we can stay healthy.

Harry Nalbandyan (10:52.68)

In every entrepreneur's journey, there's always those moments where you're like, pulling your hair out, climbing up and down that ladder 15 times just to get another job. And you found a great solution there, know, getting in leverage, leveraging help. Somebody answered the phones, you get 18 more jobs. Was there a moment or were there multiple moments throughout the journey where you're like, man, like is this, do I really have to do this again?

Was there a moment where you're like, right, you know, maybe this is not for me. The hard moments that every entrepreneur goes through, you turn the corner when you get through them. Do you have any one of those?

Eric Dean Olson (11:34.036)

Despite that, I got a lot of hard moments. I got a lot of challenges, but maybe I'm a little unique because when I went all in, I really went all in and committed to doing this. I've never actually looked back to contemplate my decision. That's probably part of my personality and my nature is just to continue to fight through for solution. But there are times where you really question your own abilities.

Harry Nalbandyan (11:36.76)

Yeah.

Eric Dean Olson (12:03.56)

Hopefully that points you to finding a super who that can come in and support you and help you. But one major challenge that I had that had a major ripple effect was maybe at the time that I started my business, I did not fully understand financials in the way that I ought. So when I created the first compensation plans, I wanted to be generous because again, I'm a people first company. I love the people that work for me.

A lot of them in the beginning were close friends and I want to see them and their families do well. So when I set up the compensation plans in the beginning, I didn't learn until maybe a year, year and a half later where I was actually doing millions of dollars in sales. But my personal bank account and the business bank account wasn't growing. And that's because I was giving away everything to the technicians and I didn't realize I was doing it. I just didn't know how to calculate compensation right.

What ended up happening and what made business very challenging, it took me away from the plumbing, it took me away from my customer, was when it was time to actually reset the compensation plans in a way that would support company growth and health while also taking care of the owner. That in a sense was taking away from my plumbers. It was taking away from what they had and was lessening it.

It doesn't matter what my explanation is at that point. It's just never good. And so some of these individuals that I poured my heart, my life into in the beginning, taught them a trade, gave them value. Man, I'm trying to have a healthy company. So resetting compensation plans, man, that had a ripple effect that lasted years. And I think in those moments, a lot of people might want to give up because if you're working with

with people that have challenges and issues you can throw in the towel maybe. Thankfully, loving those individuals and caring for them sounds bad, but it was actually more important than my company. I knew that I needed them and I had to protect the company culture and relationships if I was going to continue to scale and grow. So I committed to people first, even though my profits at the time were diminished and nonexistent.

Eric Dean Olson (14:21.432)

And we rode the storm, man, and we didn't give up. And now those individuals are doing very, very well and we're crushing results.

Harry Nalbandyan (14:30.584)

That's incredible and Where did you find the resources? You know, you set up the first compensation plan To find it didn't work. How did you come up with a different solution that you would find would be helpful for you? I mean similar to the trades a lot of lawyers They like to craft they love the craft. But when it comes to the business, it's a different that's a different craft That's a different set of skills a different skill set different things. You need to know. How did you come up with? the solution to that problem

Eric Dean Olson (14:35.454)

you

Eric Dean Olson (14:59.374)

gotta sneeze. Hold on.

Harry Nalbandyan (15:01.624)

Yeah, there you go. Bless you.

Eric Dean Olson (15:06.366)

Sometimes they come in sixes. Big ones. Man, it's going to sound like the same answer a little bit because we were moving so quickly. A lot of it was just trial and error, trial, error, trial and error. But I'm a little unique because I never worked for, I never worked for another plumbing company. And so most people learn things because they worked for somebody else at some point.

Harry Nalbandyan (15:08.108)

Yeah.

Bless you.

Eric Dean Olson (15:34.388)

When I got into the plumbing industry, I had a really unique relationship with what was seemingly my employer, but really I was just a 1099 and they were dispatching from a different state. They hired me with zero experience, zero tools, and they gave me a job the next day. And it was just up to me to figure out. And over the course of nine years that I worked for this organization, I did not meet them. I did not see them.

and there was no zoom calls. was just there was jobs that showed up on a phone that looked like some type of pump pilot and you were just expected to go in and fax in your jobs at the end of the day. And so because I didn't have a history of seeing how things were supposed to happen, I just started creating my own solutions and those solutions were probably unique and different and maybe not normal the way the industry was doing it.

but that's because I didn't really have any examples. And so again, a lot of trial and error, a lot of sleepless nights, just trying to figure stuff out. And here we are today.

Harry Nalbandyan (16:39.82)

Yeah. Well, in an industry where you're dealing with a lot of craftsmen, how do you find help? Like, how do you find is there a framework that you have where you're looking at a resume or do you really look at the person when you're trying to hire somebody for your company to to do the work? Because it's more than just somebody doing the work on the back end who doesn't interface with anybody. The people who you hire are out there interfacing with all of your clients and customers. So that's

That's a bit different than a big, something to account for,

Eric Dean Olson (17:16.18)

Yeah, absolutely. So for us at Olson's Sapir plumbing, we've we conduct what's called a behavioral interview and we're looking for five core competencies within the individual puts the customer first works well with others achieves results develops continuously and leads courageously. Those competencies are what we're looking for. So in a behavioral interview, rather than asking you what you would do, I

I get the individual to tell me what they did do. So take me into your actual memory from an actual experience. I want to know who was there, what was their name, what happened. And because I'm going into an actual experience and I'm not trying to dig into their philosophy on what good customer service is, it gives me a greater opportunity to learn exactly who the individual is. So a question I might ask is, hey, tell me about a time, a specific time when you failed to meet

a customer's expectations. I know we all want to exceed expectations and we all want to try our best, but there's those days and those times when we absolutely blew it. If you need a moment to think about it, that's okay. But if you can, take me into the exact moment. What happened? How did you blow it? In that moment when they begin to share their experience,

It gives me the opportunity to ask them questions. Okay, well, what happened next? Who did you talk to? Who was your supervisor manager at the time? Did they give you feedback? How do you feel about the feedback? What did you do next? Did it ever happen again? And because I'm talking about their real life and real experiences, I'm able to actually see how they process then, but I can give them feedback in the moment as well as to whether or not I think they responded well in that moment.

And I can then learn in the interview how they respond to my feedback because we're talking about a real situation. And so we take them through a very specific interview that doesn't have every question preset before the customer or before the candidate comes in, but we actually tailor it to the individual. So if I'm going to hire somebody that's in a management or an executive position,

Eric Dean Olson (19:40.828)

I will tailor my mindset, my questions around those types of behaviors that maybe a manager would demonstrate versus maybe customer service or a plumber.

Harry Nalbandyan (19:51.63)

That's a great philosophy, man, because you get to really deep dive into and see where the failure points are in somebody's decision-making process or how they think about a situation. That's actually really clever that we're going to use that in our firm to walk me through some of your experiences. Yeah.

Eric Dean Olson (20:07.016)

Awesome.

Harry Nalbandyan (20:13.72)

So enter as a plumber and leave as a friend. Can you tell me about that kind of phrase and how that works into your culture?

Eric Dean Olson (20:23.41)

Yeah, that's actually the heartbeat of everything that we do here. We recognize that the home is a really sacred place. It's a place where typically only friends and family get to go into. And yet in comes the plumber. And so while we hope to enter that home as a plumber, the goal would be to leave somehow as an extension of the family. We understand that not everybody is going to be like me. We have some people that are charismatic and we have some people that are

maybe introverts and it's gonna look different every time. But the hope is that we would care for them in such a way that we would settle their anxieties, bring a sense of peace into that moment and hopefully not treat them as a transaction. You know, in some situations, I remember I went to this one house when I was still in the field and I knocked on the door, was probably 7.30, eight o'clock at night.

Harry Nalbandyan (21:09.688)

Mm-mm.

Eric Dean Olson (21:19.738)

And this lady opens the door and she's got a couple kids behind them. look like they're maybe between two and four years old wearing diapers. The house is a mess. And the moment that I walk in, she's apologizing to me. She's like, man, I'm so sorry you had to come out here. I know it's late. And there's like this defeat that's just on this on this person's face. And as I enter into the house, she's.

starting to clean the house and she's picking things up on the floor and she's trying to organize and she's apologizing to me. She doesn't even know me. She's apologizing to me for her messy house. And I follow her in and she takes me in through her house. It was actually probably cleaner than my house. She was doing a great job. And as she leads me into the bedroom, it sounds kind of awkward. It sounds kind of funny to say this, but her underwear was on the floor and she like hurried and kicked it underneath the bed. She's embarrassed.

And then we gotta go turn that corner and you kinda turn the corner, you look over this direction and there's a toilet at the end of the hallway. And this look of just defeat comes over her face of embarrassment. And it's almost as if she's just kinda doing this. She's like, yeah, I know, just. I'd normally call my dad, that he'd help me, but.

die last year.

I'm separated and don't really have somebody calling. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just so sorry that you had to come out here." It's like, why do you have to have those feelings? Why do you have to have those feelings? Because you're just trying to care for your family and you're just trying to care for your house. And so my number one priority and objective is a thing that my customer service said we're going to do and how we're going to do it. That the very first thing is I deliver.

Harry Nalbandyan (22:55.694)

Yeah.

Eric Dean Olson (23:13.704)

I gotta deliver on that. I gotta do the things that we said we're gonna do. But the manner in which I do that, I could just go in, unclog the toilet and leave and she would have been satisfied and happy that I left her house. But in that moment, within reason, with all respect and carrying the cautions that we have to have inside somebody's house, to be able to look at her and say, hey, I just wanna tell you for a moment, you're an incredible mom.

I don't know exactly your story, situation, but I know you love your kids and I know you're doing a great job and you're doing every single thing you can. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to kind of step in and be the person that you trust to come inside your house. It means something to me to know that my customer service gave you a price before we even walked in the door. We told you what we're gonna do. I did my best to do that. I just wanna check in with you and make sure that we fully, fully like satisfied.

what you expected us to come in the house. If there's anything, anything that you need from me right now, I mean, if you need me to tighten up a doorknob or hang a picture frame, I know that's not plumbing, but we're really just trying to extend ourselves to give you that five star service you experience or you need, you deserve, but at the same time, at the same time, we're just here to be an extension of your family and just make sure you have somebody that you can call when you need support. So in the moment like that, that is really that differentiator because

We're actually driven by the people and hopefully we get to build business through the lens of humanity. And so if we just do the right thing, people call us back. And that's why maybe we have a 46 % return rate on customers because we're caring for people.

Harry Nalbandyan (24:59.786)

That's such an incredible story like as as a plumber when you walk into somebody's home There's like a crisis that you're dealing with a plumbing crisis but on top of that there's kind of all of that that you have to deal with too and I don't know if Everybody will have the kind of emotional intelligence to be able to catch on that and to be able to read those That kind of situation, but man, I bet you that

Whoever you helped at that time is a raging fan of yours and your company's and is only singing the highest praises. That's a really touching story.

Eric Dean Olson (25:31.878)

It's trainable. So in the beginning, I didn't think that I could train this because I thought it was just unique to me. I wanted to put that pressure on others to be able to care in this manner. And I figured out I have to kind of lower the bar a little bit as far as like they're not going to do it like me. So what we do now is we actually develop the training process that can help our plumbers do it in their own way. So it's not going to look exactly the same in every house.

One of the things that we emphasize is we teach the disc assessment, the four major personality types. We train our plumbers and our staff to ask open-ended key questions and to really be listeners to hopefully identify somebody's preferred language on how they like to speak and what matters most to them. And we teach and train our staff to actually adjust how we communicate so we can speak.

in a way that matters most to them. So if I have a C-type personality on the disk assessment, that person's gonna be geared towards maybe being very technical. They're afraid of getting surprised or making decisions and being wrong. And they really value understanding process and how we got to the recommendation that we're gonna make. If I have maybe...

an I personality, this individual is very charismatic, they like storytelling, they want me to be their friend, and they usually like shiny objects, they want the best of the best. Doesn't mean that they're immediately gonna go spend a bunch of money, but if I actually teach my team how to communicate in a way that they need to be spoken to, that helps. That person, that woman that I referenced, I was a real situation, a real customer, and she was an S-type personality.

We get into the disk assessment, but anybody seeking to improve their staff's ability to communicate and have phenomenal customer service, there's training available to be able to do that.

Harry Nalbandyan (27:32.846)

That's incredible. Did you use any specific tools for the disk assessment or is that something you also developed to patch into your framework of training?

Eric Dean Olson (27:42.452)

We have a link that we give to employees when we're recruiting them and we have them complete a disc assessment. And in the onboarding process, we actually teach them to understand their own assessment. And when you get their buy-in on that and they're like, wow, this is actually true. That's how I think. That's how I make decisions. Those are things that irritate me. Those are things that bother me. Then they're bought into the assessment.

So now we've developed tools ourselves to be able to say, hey, this is how you recognize, this is how you recognize, and just a few questions, where these individuals lie on one of the four major personality types. And so most of our training, we spend two hours every Monday teaching and training this continually every single Monday, and we call it settling anxieties.

Our job is to communicate in such a way that we can settle people's anxieties. We do that by answering the questions that they don't ask, answering the questions they're afraid to ask, so that way they're not sitting with that kind of internal turmoil.

Harry Nalbandyan (28:52.11)

Yeah, well, that's really cool. I think you started your company in 2008. Is that right? Yeah, the Great Recession. Now, you the economy is uncertain now again. You know, people are humming over the tariffs or whatever it is. Is there anything that you bought from your some of the lessons you learned from 2008 that you're applying still today in terms of getting through whatever uncertainty there may be during the times?

Eric Dean Olson (28:58.132)

That's correct.

Eric Dean Olson (29:19.496)

I think that the plumbing and trades world for the most part is pretty consistent because in my opinion we're recession proof and there could be a lot of different things going on in the world and economy but when your pipe burst and it's pouring water out of your ceiling you're going to call a plumber and when your is clogged and overflowing and the plunger's not working you're going to call a plumber and when your water heater

Harry Nalbandyan (29:39.746)

Yeah

Eric Dean Olson (29:46.484)

is pouring out water and ruining your wood floors, you're probably going to call someone. Now there's a handful of people that are DIY and the DIY, one of the two, I don't know, mix it up, it yourself. They're going to figure it out maybe, but the majority of people are just going to call it professional. so I think that we've, we even in times of uncertainty and the United States have just continued to grow. But to kind of where we're at today, I think

Something that many people probably can't speak to is how artificial intelligence is actually impacting the world and how it's impacting the trades and other people. so AI is actually replacing a lot of people's jobs. For the trades, not actually replacing our jobs. It's actually just making us more impactful, making us a force multiplier because the speed and rate that we're able to learn and get data just makes us better.

So sure, AI can possibly replace some people on the phones, but the reality is AI is helping me understand customer behaviors better. It's helping me get to more accurate data faster and taking away a lot of labor hours that we used to spend to be able to get there.

Harry Nalbandyan (31:02.978)

Yeah. Do you track all your data? you have a CRM, some sort of a system to be able to kill this?

Eric Dean Olson (31:09.352)

Yeah. So we have a CRM that we we that we invest into called Housecall Pro. There's things like Service Titan and Jobber and all kinds of other CRMs out there. And Housecall Pro is pretty cool, but it doesn't give us the reporting that we need. And so I'm not just a plumber. I own some other companies. And because I have some outside resources, we've actually built our own dashboards.

We've built all of our custom ways, proprietary ways to actually track data. And so it's definitely helping us out.

Harry Nalbandyan (31:45.102)

Nice. That's awesome, man. Well, this was a really awesome conversation, Eric. Do you do work just in the Southern California region, or you nationwide now?

Eric Dean Olson (31:57.644)

Right now, we're mainly in Orange County, California. And there's some expansion plans to go into some other counties and Northern California, some other places within the state. But at the moment, the only thing that we do outside of California is maybe consulting or maybe assisting and helping people with their marketing plans or business operations. My other companies that I own that create solutions for the trades industry.

Harry Nalbandyan (32:26.967)

Nice.

Eric Dean Olson (32:27.016)

We try to use my company as the case study to show that it works.

Harry Nalbandyan (32:30.606)

That's pretty awesome, There's no better, you know, the proof is in the pudding, right? There's no better example there. Tell our viewers where they can find some more information about you and your company, Zarek, and how they can get in touch.

Eric Dean Olson (32:37.822)

Awesome.

Eric Dean Olson (32:43.452)

Awesome, well, we got a website, olsonsapere.com. Other than that, my name is Eric Dean Olson. I love people, I care about people. If for some reason you heard this somehow, some way, you wanna chat. I love connecting with people, whether it's over Zoom or if you're in South Orange County, I'll meet with you, we can have some coffee. We're no charge, man. We just wanna connect with people, hopefully influence you to be able to make an impact in your community and with your employees. So reach out if you wanna chat.

Harry Nalbandyan (33:12.984)

You're the man, Eric. Thank you for doing what you're doing and you're making the trades a better place for everybody.

Eric Dean Olson (33:17.47)

Thanks, friend. You're awesome.