The 19/20 Rule: Why Good People Beat Perfect Portfolios Every Time
You are looking for someone to help you out.
Maybe it's a carpenter to build custom shelves for your living room, a freelance designer to make a menu for your cafe, or a part-time assistant to help run your small shop.
You find a guy online. His photos are flawless. His portfolio is a perfect 20 out of 20.
You hire him.
And within three hours, you deeply regret it.
He shows up forty minutes late. He talks down to you. When you ask for a minor tweak to the project, he gets wildly defensive. At the end of the day, he leaves a mess for you to clean up.
His work might be technically perfect, but doing business with him is an absolute nightmare.
This happens every single day to normal people trying to hire local help. And it happens because we get blinded by the "perfect" skill and completely forget to vet the actual person.
The 19/20 Rule of Daily Business
If you run a small business, or if you regularly hire people for local projects, you need to adopt the 19/20 Rule.
It is incredibly simple: If someone's technical skill is a 19/20, but their character is a 20/20—hire them immediately.
Why? Because you can teach that missing 1%.
If you hire a shop assistant who is eager, honest, and hardworking (a 20/20 person), but they don't quite know how to use your specific cash register yet (a 19/20 skill)—that is a completely fixable problem. You can teach a good person how to press buttons. You can teach a reliable carpenter exactly how you want the trim cut.
But you cannot teach a perfectly skilled jerk how to be a decent human being.
The Blind Spot of the Internet
The fatal flaw of finding local services on public directories or gig apps is that the internet only shows you the polished surface.
A stranger's online profile is a carefully curated highlight reel. It proves they have the 20/20 skill. But a 5-star rating cannot tell you if they are going to ghost you on a Tuesday morning. An app profile cannot tell you if they are trustworthy enough to hold the keys to your shop, or if they will argue with your customers.
When you hire strangers off a public board, you are blindly gambling on their character.
The "Good Person" Guarantee
So, how do you verify someone is actually a good person before you hand them your money or your keys?
You ask the people who have already done business with them.
When you hire a trusted professional that your neighbor or your cousin recommended, the conversation is rarely about their technical perfection. Listen to how people actually recommend their favorite local workers:
"He's so reliable."
"She's incredibly honest."
"He genuinely cares about doing it right."
They aren't vouching for a resume. They are vouching for the human being.
And because that worker knows you share a mutual friend, they have built-in social accountability. They aren't going to overcharge you or treat you poorly, because doing so would instantly ruin their reputation with the person who referred them.
Stop Gambling on Strangers
You don't need a corporate background check to make smart, safe decisions. You just need to tap into the real-world network you already have.
By mapping your phone contacts, you bypass the flashy (but risky) internet portfolios. You instantly see the exact people your friends and family trust with their own daily business and homes.
Ready to do business with good people?
Stop letting unverified strangers cause you daily headaches. Sync your network securely and find the reliable, hardworking people your friends already trust.
Download InContacts today and hire the person, not just the portfolio.