Dec. 15, 2023

Ep 222 - Why We Wouldn't Get Construction Work to Fill the Season

Ever pondered on the perils of commercial work during the slow season? Get ready to disrupt your thinking in this electrifying episode. As your hosts, Clay and Joseph, we challenge the conventional wisdom of chasing commercial gigs to keep the lights on. Instead, we champion the idea of sticking to service work, charging premium rates and playing the long game. We delve deep into the psyche of the ‘playing not to lose’ mentality and how it can push you into undercutting yourself. It's time to switch gears and play to win, keeping an open schedule for the right opportunities.

Life isn't all about comfort zones, especially when you're an electricpreneur. Let's get real, get uncomfortable and focus on the road ahead. In this episode, we'll guide you through the discomfort, past the distractions and onto the path of success. We offer insights and strategies to upgrade to a higher level of accomplishment, even when the times are tough. Brace yourself for a candid conversation on facing discomfort, ignoring distractions and triumphing as an electricpreneur. It's time to plug in and prepare for an illuminating journey into the world of electricpreneurship.

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00:01 - The Importance of Avoiding Commercial Work

12:55 - Uncomfortable but Successful Electricpreneurs

WEBVTT

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Hello, hello, hello and welcome back for another episode of Electric Purnier Secrets, the Electricians podcast.

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It says it right there on the banner Joe, this is episode 222, why we wouldn't get commercial work to fill the season.

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This is important because I know it's shoulder season, the slow season that we all thought would not come in residential services here, and if you're thinking about putting commercial work there or you're thinking about, hey, maybe for an extra strategy, we're going to really break that down and tell you why we wouldn't do it.

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I'm your host, clay Newmire, with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani.

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We're the Electric Purniers, just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, showing up here with you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level service.

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Welcome to our daily freemium podcast.

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The admission for your seat here is to sit back, take everything we give, just promise to take action and report your wins back to us either on the Facebook page or on our website, serviceloopelectricalcom.

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Joseph, my brother, how the hell are you this fine Friday, joseph?

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Lucani, you know what I used to look forward to Fridays when I was working other careers and other jobs, because it was close to the weekend and I've loved what we've done.

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So much that and it feels like it inspires me to such an extent that Friday isn't actually something I look forward to anymore, because I'm like you know what.

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I just want to keep doing this again and again, and again and again.

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So I'm feeling incredibly inspired and I'm just grateful that you give back today.

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What about you, brother?

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How are you holding up today?

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Hey man, I was doing great till I just heard that you don't like Fridays.

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I'm thinking about updating the banner below Joseph hates Fridays.

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Get the news flash.

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Here it is.

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Well, I thought that I hate Fridays.

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It's more just that, like you know what I love, what we do, and I feel like the kind of mentality of I'm working for the weekend doesn't really apply to me anymore, because I come in Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and I love it and it fills me up with energy and inspires me to do more.

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So it's like why would I look forward to the end of that each week?

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You know?

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Joseph Lucani.

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Yeah, I'm still sleepless thinking about projects and commercial and industrial work anyway.

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So, hey man, why don't we jump right into that?

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I've been on some calls lately, given it's now the winter season.

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Remember, back in September we did a whole week on slow season and people were like it's not real, doesn't exist.

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Well, there's a lot of people feeling it right now, and it's not just the first time I've heard it this week where someone said, well, you know, we plan to fill it with commercial work, or we looked at commercial jobs to fill this space, or we took on commercial work or larger projects to fill this space.

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And I just kind of wanted to end the debate once and for all, really, because it happens in our program too.

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People say, well, I'm trying to stay focused on service, but like, where does the service end and the projects begin?

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And I think there's really a couple pieces that are golden rule to help with that.

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Just to break this out of the gate, if that's all right.

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By all means are they paying your service rate?

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Number one if you know your proper service rate, you've done the math.

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Then you're charging like a service provider, a premium one at that.

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If they're willing to pay your service rate, I'd call it service work.

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Number two.

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Number two was if they're willing to take sorry, give a deposit.

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I don't know why.

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My brain just glitched.

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Are you gonna give your?

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50% deposit up front.

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Mm-hmm.

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And most projects.

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This is kind of where things take a nasty turn, Because a lot of the projects I've been on seems like I've had to bankroll the whole thing, underpaid, the whole way to the finish line.

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Fighting for the last 5%, which turns out to take 30% of the timeline, eats up all of your resources.

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Change management, project management, the whole freaking thing, and then you're left there begging for money with more month at the end of the money than money at the end of the month, thinking, oh well, at least we kept our guys busy for slow season.

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Mm-hmm.

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Now did I just squish the whole podcast by saying it all in a single breath?

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No, because the thing is what you did was you spoke to the reality that a lot of people are experiencing, but we haven't explained how people can get out of it, and that's, I think, where we can really help.

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All right.

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So if the problem's out, we're going to jump right into solution.

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Is that what you're saying?

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Well, pretty much yeah, because we understand the main reason that people take this kind of work on is because they have this fear that service or demand calls won't come in and, as a result, they're preemptively trying to predict the future, saying, well, we're reportedly slow between this month and this month, so if I take a commercial project, I should be good.

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And, yeah, I may not make what I need to make, but I keep the lights on Right there.

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What you're doing is you're playing not to lose.

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You're not playing to win.

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We want to work with winners.

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Cheryl Crowe just called.

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She said the first cut is the deepest, and that was it.

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Well, thank you.

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So the fact is is that when you play to not lose, you're willing to undercut yourself in the very beginning, just so the lights don't go off.

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But when you play to win, you're willing to keep a longer schedule open for the opportunity for the right call for the right customer to come in as well.

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Now, you mentioned we need to have service rate.

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I completely agree.

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You mentioned we need to have a deposit.

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I completely agree.

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And taking that to the next step, it now determines why are people so afraid of that season, and it's because they haven't done the thing we told them in September, which was you need to train for slow season.

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The responses in slow season are price objections they're not time objections, and that's the one thing that people usually stumble the most with.

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But if you knew that you could present a price objection solution because you're a better quality, better reliability, better service you're going to be able to do that Then it wouldn't make a big deal what season of the month it is.

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Now, that's how you're playing to win.

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You just got the goats.

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Thanks brother.

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Matthew, if you're watching us live or in the recording on YouTube or whatever channel you're on, you can now see the goats are up in the banner.

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Joe just got a goat.

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Oh my God, that was deep man.

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Huge, huge, huge.

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I feel like for the first time even I just connected that training for the slow season.

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The whole time was a mindset.

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It wasn't even as much the activities we were doing to create long standing customers.

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I mean, that is it.

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Don't get me wrong.

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But if you don't have the wherewithal, that resilience to stay with it even when you don't have your two weeks booked out and to keep running the play and take our service leads now list and run that action checklist and keep voting leads on the calendar day by day by day to get through that season, if you don't have that wherewithal, you're kind of up shit creek without a paddle, are you?

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And it's pretty unfortunate because the thing is that every day you go without something on the board.

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Yeah, you lose money, but you lose mental equity and confidence, which costs you more money than you not taking that call that day, Because you never know where the demand call lotto is going to come in Like.

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One specific example that came up was remember yesterday we were talking about ballparking.

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I had a customer called me asking for what would it cost to have a couple outlets change my bed and breakfast.

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We went there, we ran the play and it was in the cold months of the year and we ended up doing multiple Tesla chargers.

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We ended up doing multiple panel changes, we ended up doing the full redevice of an 8,000 square foot facility.

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But we would have not have known, and because of that we had weeks worth of work through the winter All from one.

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What does it cost to change an outlet call?

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You never know which one's going to blow up on you.

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So the fact is good.

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I was just going to say 8,000 square feet.

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I mean, that sounds like we're back to this original question.

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That's almost a project Almost.

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Did you get your service rate?

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Oh yeah.

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Did you get your deposit?

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Oh yeah, so it was in front, essentially, and you were room for the winter, working inside for the most part.

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It was the best part about it, yeah.

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So we ended up having I remember there was multiple panels inside.

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It was an old bed and breakfast.

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It was an awesome place.

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It was one of these old historic buildings and the benefit was is that, yeah, you're right, we were inside, but we were also directly impacting someone during their slow season Because they were like these are the best months to do this because we have less foot traffic, because people like coming to this area for the foliage and it's already gone now at this point.

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So it benefited them to take on the larger projects when we would have said it wouldn't have.

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So, just by running the play, presenting options on every call, you go to having the resilience to say I'm not going to quit on this because I believe in what it can do, not just for me, but for every life that it touches and impacts.

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Remember you throw a stone in the water.

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The waves and ripples go far beyond what you can see.

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You can improve one life, one home, and we don't know what it's going to lead to.

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That one outlet change could be the next referral that leads you to your biggest sale ever, and if you were on a commercial project to fill in that slow season.

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You're just surrounded by more commercial project guys.

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At the worst scenario, someone will call you for their own personal home and because they've seen you work, they expect you to do it for a lesser rate.

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Huge, huge man.

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This is huge and I'm having a mind shift because, again, we don't plan these conversations, we just have them.

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We know there's a topic that we're moved by in the morning and we just get it going.

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But I've got like this 30,000 foot view All of a sudden.

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I'm seeing like our whole this season, from fall to winter, kind of summed up really in like four R words man, resilience, run.

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The play, which I recognize is three words, but that's what it's one of them right.

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Rinse as an end of the day, like the 75 E hard.

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Really get clear of your mind and your space to be with your family and then repeat and do it again, and do it again, and do it again and watch what happens.

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When you become that consistent it's close to a fifth or a robot as possible.

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It's no wonder we called you the sales bot for a little while, joe.

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Obviously we're not trying to breed robots, but if that's the human condition, the human weakness really, that we all have in common, is our ability to take consistent action, doesn't this all make sense?

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It really, really does and it's going to have huge impacts.

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I like the four Rs, man.

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We are going to start using that.

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That was an on the fly great assumption, but we're now going to be using that because that's a solid acronym.

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That's it, man, right, I think I got to do it one more time to reinforce it.

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The four Rs are solid.

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Right, resilience, running the play, rinsing, end of day, you got to clean it off.

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Right, you got to wash this all the way, because there's hard days, there's good days.

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Either way, they'll affect tomorrow.

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Repeat that's massive, massive, massive Joe.

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Let's wrap this up with a couple of action items and get out of here for the Friday.

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What do you say?

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I'm down with it.

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You want a basic or all-star?

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I could take either one.

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You take basic I'll do something big today All right sweet.

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So when you think about this basic option, we've all established that we're trying to take this commercial work because we don't want to lose right.

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And the very, very minimum is I want you to know that if someone were to give you $100 for $1,000, would you take it?

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Obviously, you would see that this is a losing agreement, but you still have $100 at the end of the day.

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That's what a lot of people say when they take these projects.

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Well, at least I got something compared to nothing.

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The goal is is don't you think at the bare minimum, you're worth what you're asking for?

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Does your worth change in the season?

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Then why would you ask for less when you need it most?

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That's my basic action.

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It's just a question to leave with you.

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Okay.

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Well, my all-star is going to be a heavy contemplation for the weekend.

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I'm going to quote right behind us here, as I'm looking at the camera, I'm also looking at a Voltaire quote uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one.

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Let that sink in for a moment, guys.

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That's why we're starting with resilience Run the play, rinse and repeat.

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Do it again tomorrow.

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I know it's uncomfortable not having your calendar all figured out.

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It's not always two weeks out.

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It's not always two months out for some of you people.

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When you start to get uncomfortable, right For some of us rather not you people, I apologize Get comfortable doing the uncomfortable and really often that uncomfortable bit is just sticking to us, sticking to our trajectory, while the world tries to pull us out to do it their way.

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You don't have to do that.

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You're different.

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You're an electricpreneur.

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Guys, this has been another episode of Electricpreneur's Secrets, the Electricians podcast.

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We're here with you five days a week.

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Tomorrow we're taking two off right To help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service.

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If you think you'd like to upgrade from this premium level into the paid and more premium levels, you go ahead and reach out to us or Austin and the group guys.

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We look forward to chatting with you soon.

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Have a great weekend.

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Cheers to your success.

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Can't wait to see you soon.