How someone earns my referral.
When I send a neighbor to a business, my name goes with them. That's the whole reason this page is public instead of private — you should be able to hold me to it, and so should the businesses I work with.
What a business has to clear.
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01
A current certificate of insurance, on file with me.
Not "we're insured" over the phone — the actual certificate, current, in my folder. No certificate, no referral. This is the rule I get asked to bend most often, and it's the one I bend least. It applies to family before it applies to anyone else.
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02
Work I have personally seen.
Not a portfolio they emailed me, not photos from a website. I've either watched the work happen or stood in front of it afterward. If I haven't, I'll tell you I haven't.
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03
They answer the same day.
The customer who waits is the customer who calls someone else — that's not a theory, it's the most common way a good business loses a job it had already won. If someone can't answer the same day, they don't get sent work they can't catch.
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04
The price they quote is the price.
No pressure, no invented urgency, no upsell on a job that didn't need one. If a job genuinely grows once they open it up, they explain why before doing it, not after.
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05
You pay the business that did the work. Never me.
Their invoice, their account, their insurance on the job. I never hold your money, not even "for convenience." If anyone ever asks you to pay El Triángulo for someone else's work, something has gone wrong and I want to hear about it.
How I get paid.
Most referral services are cagey about this. Here it is plainly: the business pays me a channel fee out of their own margin — the customer's price is exactly the same whether I was involved or not. I don't take a cut of your money, I take a cut of theirs, and only when the work actually happened.
If you ever want to know whether a fee applied to your job, ask me and I'll tell you. That's not a policy I can be talked out of; a referral you can't ask questions about isn't worth having.
Real-estate agents are handled differently. North Carolina rules require a broker to disclose anything more than nominal value received for recommending services tied to a transaction. So agents in this network trade referrals with us both ways — never cash. It keeps their license clean and their advice honest.
“If someone I referred doesn't make it right, I get involved personally.”
There's no dollar figure attached and no claim form to fill out. It's a promise from one person who answers his own phone, and you'll have his number.