When I first met Valeria, you can feel her natural confidence. Tthe kind that only comes from years of building something from the ground up. Born in California to Nicaraguan parents who fled political unrest in the ’80s, she now runs a sixty-person appliance repair operation from Nicaragua. It’s a story about grit, clarity and redefining what “speed and quality” mean in an industry that touches almost every home.

I’ve always believed that when you talk to people who truly love what they do, the conversation drifts from business to purpose. With Valeria, that happened right away.

“I didn’t think I was going to do appliance repair for a living,” she laughed, “but it turns out this is the best job ever.”

I’ve worked with enough leaders to know when someone has stumbled into their calling and when someone has built it. Valeria’s career began with a Craigslist ad and a spreadsheet. Today, she leads a network that repairs thousands of appliances a month across nearly thirty states.

In her world, one broken fridge can mean a lost tenant, a furious owner and a property manager scrambling for answers. I could feel her empathy when she described that moment: the spoiled food, the ruined barbecue plans. “My ribeye’s gone bad!” The small but pivotal frustrations that turn clients away.

Listening to her you hear how often we underestimate the emotional ripple of “maintenance.”

“We’re not the cheapest,” she said, “but we go out to the home with the intention of actually fixing the appliance.”

She isn’t competing on price; she’s competing on trust. And in the property management world, trust is currency. Her team’s edge isn’t just the speed of the repair, it’s the quality behind it. They don’t send a tech to collect diagnostic fees; they send one to solve the problem.

From my seat, that made me rethink how I frame value in sales conversations. I’ve always told my team that discounting on price compensates when trust is missing and Valeria’s model proved it. Her customers aren’t buying a repair; they’re buying reliability.

“People worry about saving ten percent on an invoice,” she said, “but they don’t see that they might lose an owner over it.”

It’s easy in business to chase efficiency so hard that you forget about relationship cost. Valeria’s intention is a reminder to measure what matters most, the long-term loyalty that comes from doing the right thing even when no one’s watching.

Her approach also exposed a truth I’ve seen across industries: the biggest risk isn’t losing money — it’s losing trust.

“We know our techs,” she told me. “We know who goes out on Sunday, so we don’t schedule them on Monday mornings.”

She isn’t just talking about scheduling, she’s talking about leadership, knowing people well enough to set them up for success. It’s a small example but it says everything about her leadership philosophy.

For me, it was a reminder that systems are only as strong as the humans running them. Valeria’s business works because she treats those humans like the techs, the clients, the coordinators as whole people.

“I try to be the least foolish person I know,” she said near the end. “Be genuine, keep it real, and if someone’s upset, tell them, ‘Honestly, I’d be pissed too.’”

Valeria doesn’t sugarcoat, she doesn’t posture. She leads with empathy and transparency, that’s the exact combination that creates a “Hell Yes!” conversation.

These lessons weren’t just operational; they are human!

From my perspective, here’s what I took away and what I’m asking myself and you next:

• Authenticity scales. When you’re honest about what you can and can’t do, the right clients find you faster.
  
• Fix the real problem. Sometimes the issue isn’t the broken fridge, it’s the broken trust in how it’s handled.
  
• Speed is empathy in motion. In business, responsiveness is a form of respect.
  
• Know your people. Predictability comes from relationships, not just process.
  
• Price is never the story. Value is.
  

So here are the questions I’m still wrestling with:

• How do we make our version of “speed and quality” visible to our customers before they even ask?
  
• What relationships have we under-invested in because we were busy chasing the wrong metric?
  
• And how do we keep our promises when the pressure’s on not just to fix what’s broken, but to earn another “Hell Yes”?