How Avery found his American Dream in Houston — Pro Stories

It’s 8 AM and Avery is getting ready for work. He just bought a spacious house in the suburbs of Houston with his wife. They adopted a dog, too. It’s like the perfect American dream, and for Avery, it is.

Avery has been a locksmith in Houston, Texas, for 5 years. He started as a freelancer, and now owns a locksmith company with 8 pros on his team. His van has some of the latest technology to make keys for all sorts of locks. He loves his job, and you can tell. As soon as Jobox matches him with a job on his phone, he jumps in the van and starts calling the customer. He verifies the issue and the address, and off he goes.

Avery drives over 200 miles a day, almost every day. He only takes off Saturday for religious reasons. The rest of the week, his phone is always on ready to help a customer in distress. That’s the part of the job he loves the most. “I just love it. I wake up in the morning and I like to go to work. Like you come to a car, no key at all. You make the key, the car starts, you’re making progress. Also lockouts, when people are stuck outside and you come in and help them. You solve problems. I just love it.”

He has an incredible ability to multitask. He can locate his customer in a crowded parking lot while solving a technical problem with one of his team members on the phone and driving. He jumps out of his van as soon as he parks and goes introduce himself to the customer. He unlocks the car in less than 60 seconds and immediately starts working on the car’s dashboard. Within minutes, he gets back into his van to make the complicated key his customer needs. The whole job is completed in less than 30 minutes.

When he’s done, he gets his Jobox reader and app to process the customer’s payment in seconds. It’s seamless, even more so because he’s able to entertain a conversation with his customer while doing so. Like we said, he’s good at multitasking. He doesn’t have time to linger anyway, because he’s getting another job already. Tuesdays are supposed to be slow days. That’s what he said.

Avery likes Jobox because it makes him even more efficient. It matches him or the pros on his team with jobs based on their skills, availability and exact location, so that they don’t have to get across town. Although for Avery, it doesn’t mean he drives less — it just means he gets more jobs for the same amount of driving. But what Avery likes the most about Jobox is the payment. Most of it is automated and seamless so that he doesn’t have to think about it. He has one payment reader that can accept credit card taps, swipes, pins, and even phone payments like Apple Pay and Google Payments. The customers get branded receipts and invoices automatically, and he gets automated settlement reports on a weekly basis. He spends less time doing the administrative things so that he can focus on helping people. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters the most.

When he gets back home, Avery still has work to do. He has a business to run, it’s not just him anymore. That’s part of growing your company and having pros who work for you. When you ask him how he sees himself in 5 years, he will tell you he just wants to keep doing what he does. Maybe he’ll grow his business even more and expand his coverage. He’s not sure. But what he knows for sure is that he found his trade. He’s made to be a locksmith. He’s good at it, and he loves it. There aren’t that many people who find their niche so early in life, and he’s grateful for it.

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