Happy Sunday {{first_name|dear builder}}!
We found a new landscaper. His name is Hector. He works alongside his son, who is also Hector.
The other day my four-year-old Lev and I were mowing the lawn “together.” My wife came out and asked Lev what he was doing and he shouted “WE ARE HECTORS.”
Hector Sr is a jolly man, tanned with a silver mustache, probably in his 50s but essentially ageless in the way certain people can be when they do physical labor in the sun all day for decades and go home with more energy than when they started.
Last week we had a leak in our drip irrigation and Hector came to check it out. He fixed it and then walked around the rest of the drip line with me, pointing out what needed to be changed.
Sam look at this plant. Not enough water. I fix, make it nice. The tree needs more mulch, I put mulch and make it nice. This grass needs more seed, I put and make it nice.
I find myself nodding heartily in agreement. Yes. Yes I want to make it nice too.
Even though I never feel like I am being sold something, it is an astonishingly effective sales technique. Spoken with care and love for his work, and in his sweet kind Mexican accent, it is just delightful. His definition of “nice” seems to be a core personal value to him and I have unshakeable trust that he will do whatever is needed to make it fulfill that vision.
He could have said you need three more bags of mulch in this bed, 24 2-gallon drip heads for this line, and 30 sq ft of seed. But he just softly gestures and repeats the desired outcome, rather than listing the outputs.
It’s the easiest Yes in the world.
Of course it is also backed up by the fact that when the invoice does come he never overcharges, and he does list the final outputs clearly. Someone could use make it nice as handwaving to obscure racking up a bunch of big charges. Not Hector though.
And I think not you, either.
We all have such a tendency to overcomplicate, overengineer, overthink, overtalk.
But at the end of the day we all really just want it to be nice.
And we want to work with someone who wants it to be nice just like we do.
Maybe making it nice is the highest way we can serve each other. Especially now, when so much is just kinda crappy.
Maybe we don’t need to use more words than that?
Let’s make it nice this week.