“A lot of people take a lot of time to build estimates,” says Jerson Garcia, owner of Just Electric LLC in Revere. “I just do it quick, in detail.”
That is as close as he comes to a sales pitch. Garcia founded the company in Revere, and two people work for him. Ask him why a customer would choose him, and he starts with the phone. “You have to get back to the customer quick,” he says. The estimate is the first place that shows. The rest of the job runs on the same rule: the customer should not have to chase anyone to find out what is happening.
He is blunt about the failures he wants to avoid. “You gotta show up,” he says. “You gotta call. You gotta let the customer know what’s going on.” He does not frame it as manners. “This is not a game. I take people serious, that way people can take you serious.”
The company puts the same habits in writing on its website. A customer approves a written price before work begins. If the crew opens a wall and finds something it did not expect, the customer sees the added cost and decides before anyone touches it. The person who quotes a job is also on site while it gets done, a promise that is easier to keep with a crew of three.
Much of the work, as the company describes it, happens in older buildings. Its site mentions knob-and-tube wiring turning up mid-renovation in Somerville, fuse panels in the basements of three-family conversions in Everett, and 60-amp services in East Boston straining to carry a modern kitchen. From its Revere base, the company lists 19 cities and neighborhoods it covers, from Lynn and Peabody to Cambridge and Brookline, with Winthrop among them. It says it answers emergency calls around the clock and works in English and Spanish. Spanish speakers are told to ask for Jerson.
Garcia takes residential and commercial jobs and does not rank one above the other. “Work’s work,” he says. “Take every job as it comes.”
Keeping his two employees to his standard comes down to showing them. “You gotta lead by example,” he says. “Teach them the right way, teach them how to do things properly.”
He learned it the same way. “That’s the way I was taught,” he says. Asked what becomes of the company in the long run, he answers without much ceremony. “Pass it to my son or something,” he says.