Ep 303 - Replay - Residential Commercial Industrial Electrician

0:02 hello, happy monday and welcome back to another episode of electricpreneur secrets, joe. This is episode 139, if you can believe that wow, I honestly can't sometimes 20 000 plus downloads and rock and strong brother, and I cannot wait to see it hit the 100, 000, 200, fifty, eventually a million. Do you think we'll hit a million by september by? this september yeah, I would love to think that well, even 20 000 men, super proud guys, that's 20 000 people download this episode. Not this episode, but these episodes where we're helping electricians, master sales, simplify, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service.

0:47 And, joe, I'm so excited about this week again this fine Monday morning. It's a great day to have a great day, my guy set me up on the tee. There we go. Man Teed it up for you. How was your weekend? It was actually really, really nice. I mean, I'm able to take a little time with the family this week, but this week is so relaxing and I say it's weird because any person that has kids under three there is no such thing as relaxing. But I might have hit the lotto because it was a really relaxing weekend. Nice man, nice, I got to share something with you here. Sure, I'm so passionate about what we do that as much as I appreciate and I plan and I make sure to enjoy my days off, I'm also quite eager to get back to work, like I really love this mission.

1:34 It's passion, baby, it's passion. I agree a hundred percent. It's one of those things where I've I, when I ran my own company as an electrician, there was a point where I remember saying like, well, I don't love doing this, who am I really helping here? And then I've worked for other people and been like, yeah, I'm not serving any real, any real end goal. But now I wake up every day and the first thing I think of is I can't wait to look at those. Messages because I know wins are going to come in and they came because we influenced it. Messages because I know wins are going to come in and they came because we influenced it. Love it and that feels really good. Love it. Yeah, it's solid. So here we are once again, a couple of master electricians with business addictions, as we keep saying, right, and we're here to serve again.

2:17 This week we've got a hot topic and it's actually about niche marketing and committing to a niche and the reasons why you might want to, and that's why we named today's episode Residential, commercial, industrial Electrician. We've kind of picked on some people for doing this before, but what's the tendency? Why do people come into the marketplace, maybe with very little business knowledge and just want to jump all over all three of these industries? Really, I mean, it's a massive scope of work, isn't it? I mean, how could you even? stock the van for all of that. You couldn't. Realistically, what happens is we haven't been taught business. I mean, even think about my story.

2:58 To start with, it's hey, I'm really good at doing electric work. I don't want to work for that guy, I want to work for myself. I'll go out there and figure it out. And that's the same thing as so many other people. They just go out and they say I can figure it out. Problem is, we were trained on electric work. We were not trained on business, and knowing how to market and niche yourself isn't something that comes intuitionally or intuitively. It's something that we have to be taught. So yeah, it's a terrible decision being industrial, commercial, residential but I cannot blame or fault people who are doing it, because maybe they don't know. Honestly, I feel like this could be the basis for an electrician me too movement, really, because I did it too, man, I've done this and I've sat there and I've I've spent hours trying to decide like how deep can I go?

3:52 And every time I tried to go deeper on something, I felt like I was shutting the door on so many other people. You ever feel that, joe? yeah, I remember, um, there was a I mean, we've actually mentioned it before where I was putting bids into like $500,000 industrial complexes while also doing small local businesses, while also working with realtors, considering doing solar, trying to do it. It was too much, there was too much we were trying to do, and it's literally the concept of a man who tries to grab sand in his hands. The tighter he squeezes, the more slips through his fingers. Nice analogy. I'm going to throw one in there too the man who chases two rabbits catches none.

4:34 So that focus is huge, right Focusing on something. But if this is the case, and we can sit here and say that so simply and acknowledge it so plainly what do you think like? What's keeping people really from getting this done, really focusing in on something, like you did as a generator specialist? What is holding us back? I mean a lot of things is. I think there's also we're not trained right, we're not fully aware of what could happen if we specialize. But I think there's also this fear of if I don't take this work, what'll happen then. Like you got this guy who does new construction and he's done new construction his whole life and, yeah, you're on a five to 10% profit margin and it's terrible, but I know how to do it and I can get a million dollars in those contracts.

5:25 I can see it being scary for someone to say, yeah, even though I'm getting shit profits on this, I can count on it. So maybe I have a division that does this and then another division that is a residential, and then they wonder why both don't thrive. You're trying to go in two different directions 100%, totally different set of skills. In fact, some of you listening have maybe even been on a call with one of us and maybe even seen our demonstration of the org chart that has a construction and a service division. That's not a small undertaking man. Those are entirely different positions in each one of those divisions of a company and so if you're small and taking on both or trying to entertain both, it would be no surprise as to why you might be hitting the ceiling on revenue, why you feel all over the place, why we're arguing and racing to the bottom on these construction jobs and having trouble getting more service work and getting our profitability up or even keeping staff and having trouble getting more service work and getting our profitability up or even keeping staff.

6:28 All of those problems kind of come down to and are a big part of this, this niche problem, this decision to serve someone, specifically God. I can't underline that enough man, and I feel like part of it is. Even again, we're trying to cast a wide net to get all these people in fear of if I just put some strategic fishing lines out, then how many fish could I possibly get? And can I just say one of my favorite phrases right here I mean literally. it's our show. You can say anything you want, go for it. Thank you for that permission. It's consent culture, brother Consent culture. Here we go. Don't listen to what we say, watch what. Anything you want, go for it. Thank you for that permission. It's consent culture, brother consent culture. Here we go. Don't listen what we say, watch what we do.

7:08 We literally opened up shop in a place where no one else is. If we really thought about this for a second, being that this is really a marketing topic we're talking about at this moment, have you ever considered that the reason marketing is so expensive for electricians is because we're all competing for the same keywords? Yeah, and that makes a ton of sense and it's really sad to think about. But if you think about how people get their leads like the typical contractor, it's well, I'm going to take about $4,000 and I'm going to funnel it towards pay-per-click. Oh man, it didn't work. What's the solution? More money towards pay-per-click. Let's just keep funneling it so I can outspend the next guy.

7:50 Who wins in that, by the way? The pay-per-click people. I'm picturing like pay-per-clip people like with eyes and a face right now pay-per-clips that are people with legs remember back in the 90s they had that little thing like they asked jeeves. There was like a little paper clip that you would ask questions to. That's what I think of that's the guy, that's what I'm seeing. But yeah, no, it's the marketing companies, and it's google, and it's bing and yahoo, it's. It's wherever we're putting that ad spend. They're the ones that are capitalizing on our lack of certainty, confidence and clarity in our own business. They're the ones that are profiting off this.

8:33 Exactly. We need to make sure that everything that we want to do, like if you're a generator specialist, every word that gets looked up, should be you and you can double down on those words and even further, getting to the organic marketing of it Get. All your posts now are about it. You're at least now a spearhead. If you're thinking about piercing a target, would you rather it be a circle or a triangle? Being a focused marketer lets you have better penetration. If you're just gonna throw something against the wall, expect it to bounce off if it doesn't have a point. Yeah, I don't know about you, joe, but I'm a penetration guy. Listen, I'm trying to penetrate a very specific market.

9:18 That's what we're doing here. Again, don't listen to what we say. Watch what we do. Opened up shop in a completely unique market and you can do the same and you can face less competitors there. And, more importantly, we're going to talk about this lots this week and in the value piece that we're giving away on Wednesday, you're going to be able to speak to a specific problem using the words that your clients would use to describe it. That means PFM. Do you remember what PFM stands for, joe? I hope you tell us. Pure, fucking magic man. That's the moment which someone says God, it's like you're in my head.

10:00 Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth. I was just thinking what you're saying when you say that. When they say, say that rather, and you're creating that. That's the ultimate rapport. You understand them. You're on the same frequency. What comes next leads to work in that area. This seems so simple. Please jump in I was gonna say there's one thing. There's actually a connection point between those two. All right, because it's like now that you have the connection, then there is a relationship between the two, because you cannot sell to someone who doesn't like, trust and respect you. But once you have that point where they're like you're in my head, we understand each other.

10:45 There's a moment of this person understands me. That's a very big thing to do that. I don't think that really we've highlighted enough Bold underline, italic when your customer feels understood, they don't need to go elsewhere because they already wanted you to show up as a 10. Now here you are, clean, uniform, well-shaven, well-spoken, having your tactical tools on you at all times. And now you're here and the client gets to see the experience that's going to make sure that they're going to want to move forward. They won't need to get the quotes because they already know they're understood by the right person. I'm going to go on a limb here and really push this envelope a little bit In saying and sharing our personal and transparent information.

11:36 We don't pay for ads. Our classes are full of contractors trying to grow with us on the inside track, paying clients that love and appreciate us and stay for the support. They came for a transformation, but they stay for the support, and that's exactly what we communicate in our marketing. We communicate to people that we want on the inside track, using their words that came from other people that are just like them, that are just like us. That's how simple this can be. And when you organically market yourself not just your authority, but also your person authentically so people can know, like and trust you and you're speaking specifically to the problems that they're having then what you end up with the result of this is, instead of spending a bunch of money blindly through some marketing agency, who's paying the google or paying the facebook or paying any of these giant beasts that continue to raise the rates on cost per lead?

12:35 Instead of that, you'd have people reaching out, going I know, you can help me, and you won't even know who they are half the time. That's massive. There's nothing more powerful in marketing than that. And if you had that superpower, dare I say, if you reach that point, wouldn't that mean your confidence and your messaging to your market is so high that when you put coins in this machine, what would happen? it would. Just honestly, my first instinct is to say more coins are going to keep coming out. It's going to keep getting better and better. Like you put in. It's like if you can connect with someone to that level, to where they're like you've spoken to me before you've even met.

13:20 I didn't just put a coin in the machine and turned in, a ball came out. I put a coin in the machine and two coins came out. That's a big reference, because that person who recognized you, I'm certain already told someone else 100%. What we're talking about here is real marketing and real marketing strategy. Actually looking at the people we're trying to serve and saying how do we help them best and where are they and where do we put the message that will resonate with them to cause them to want us to help them? It's a superpower and that's the way marketing is supposed to work. If we're up on the top of the wrong mountain just yelling that we're the best, who's that going to help?

14:03 It's going to help our ego. Yeah, man, and you know what? I'm glad you said that, because typically, when we put that first business card out when we're early in business and if this has been you for years, I'm sorry to say it, right, but there's some improvements we could have here when you put out that business card that says residential, commercial, industrial, that's about you, not them. If it was truly about them, then speak to their problem and help them solve it. That business card did none of those things and pretty much just like I'm a sparky. What kind all of them mic drop boom, call someone who cares, boom, yeah, it's like it.

14:45 It doesn't really work because, you're right, you're not speaking to anyone. There is no homeowner that you will go to that says, oh you do industrial. Great, I actually have a 600 am service downstairs that I was hoping you could work. It's like what it's like. No, we're not having our goods to go down in a residential system. It's not going to happen. So why does that apply to them? it's a contact card and it's a waste of happen. So why does that apply to them? It's a contact card and it's a waste of money. At that point, if you just want to give people your phone number and tell them you're an electrician, you can set that up in your phone and just send them your contact. It's a waste of paper, it's a waste of ink, it doesn't do anything. And if you are with us on this service game which I assume if you're listening to us, you've been here a while with us.

15:30 If it's your first time, please know this. The service game is real. Electricians are here. There is a support system Fucking. Finally, we're giving it all away. That's why it's called Electricpreneur Secrets, because everyone was, prior to this, hoarding this shit. We don't need to do that. We want to lift you up. So take the secrets. Just promise to take action. Right, if you're putting on a car, residential electrician homeowners aren't looking for that. Homeowners aren't generally searching for residential electrician. What? would they search for? Why are my lights flickering? Why does my fridge keep losing power? What can I get a generator for?

16:11 Is this panel safe? I want a pool next year. Those are the things they're looking for. Understand their lives. They are people with wants and desires and needs, projects and families. And you speak to none of them by just saying oh yeah, I do agricultural too. It's like great. So when I'm done working my home, you can go work my 600 acre farm. All right, that's exactly what I'm looking for, Right. And now I know there's people listening to this going. Well, residential electricians is a ranking keyword and that's just because electricians are searching it over and over and over and marketers are searching.

16:51 I swear to God, there's not many homeowners that search for residential electrician, maybe the odd nerdy one, you know what. Okay, fair enough, here's the other search that you'll see Electrician near me, electrician in your area, and guess what? Your marketers are hitting that angle. They all are, and you're competing for those words in your area and you're trying to get on a google list and really, if you think about this, we're trying to get a client in a moment of. I don't have anything else. I've exhausted all efforts to talk to my friends or colleagues or family and find someone that they already know like and trust to get a proper referral right, because everyone knows one and everyone refers. We've already exhausted all of that and by chance and maybe out of convenience, someone went on their cell phone and typed in electrician and it came up with near me results and now you're fighting to be on the top of that list, be the top of mind with the best reviews and maybe a review that speaks to that client about the actual problem they're having.

17:47 So what's effectively happening is you're spending money to get to the top of a list where people will do their research on your brand and look for a place where your clients your former clients finally spoke to the problem that they're having because you didn't, in all of your marketing efforts, you didn't do it and finally they reached this place and you had to let another client tell them. Isn't that insane, joe Dude. I'm just sitting here. Just your fire is catching. I can tell the passion behind that. I'm literally, for those of you who are just listening, I'm like fist pumping the air as he's going into it, because you're right, everything you said was true. Too often we try to pretend that we're the other person we're marketing to is another electrician and that they're using electrical terms, and that's not gonna work.

18:37 And you wonder why marketing's so expensive. Bad marketing is expensive. Yes, good marketing works because it'll just keep cycling itself. Clay and I were talking about something earlier and saying oh, you put a quarter in the machine, something comes out. Good marketing is I put one quarter in and two quarters come out. That's how it's supposed to work. In some cases it's even just time and energy. In our case, as I made an example earlier, to finish us off here on this rant, guys, is that last week our just organic post brought in 150 people putting their hands up. 150 people put their hands up.

19:18 Not all of them are going to book a call, in fact, maybe 10 in this next couple weeks but all of them received a touch point. All of them received value from us. All of them are likely listening right now and what you can't deny and we can't deny is that all of them read through a short post formatted specifically to target a pain point that they were having, and that's what caused them to, in front of everyone else, say I want that help too, because you know and I know that wasn't easy to admit. But when you speak to the actual pain point in a way that's conducive to helping people with that, it doesn't matter. It no longer matters.

19:59 Joe, we got to carve out some action items. We're done on this one. Brother. What do you want action or all-star. I want the action item because I know what the floor is, All right man. Okay, you guys want to understand the bare minimum of marketing. Truly, it's not even handing out a business card. Some people think that's the worst. It's not even having a printed t-shirt. It even gets simpler than that. The basics of marketing is who are you serving? That's it bare minimum. Do you have a target client in mind? If you were to think about who, the person, whose house do you wanna show up to?

20:40 Do you wanna show up to a factory? Do you wanna show up to a commercial building? Do you wanna show up to a home? If you at least know which building you want to show up to, wouldn't it make sense to say at least I know what to market to? I'm not even saying the client. What does the building look like? Is it a parking lot? Is it a facility? Is it a home? You can do that. At least you can check. I did 0.01% of what I needed to do. That's the floor. Awesome man, love it. Here's the all-star. If you listened to us last week, then you already know we've been talking about following up your sales process with those post calls facts, and we gave a huge value piece away called sales sanity and the secrets to that sanity.

21:24 Well, think of this like marketing sanity. It ties directly to your sales and it ties directly to your current clients and it ties directly to the people that could be prospective clients who aren't committed to buying yet. They all used words that you should be using in your marketing. You need to have the data. We need those post-call facts. We have to write this stuff down and you ought to have the data. We need those post-call facts. We have to write this stuff down and you ought to be collecting it. Here's what's at stake. You might think, well, I don't know how to market that, yet it won't matter. Later, when you figure out how, when you get our help on Wednesday, when you get confident with this, you're gonna wish you had those words. There's this phrase in marketing called ad words.

22:09 Here's where I'm going to go on a limb and say if your ad words didn't come from your client's mouth, you're wasting your freaking time. Stop projecting what you want people to think and want and start listening to their actual needs, desires, problems, and use that language. All start out. Problems and use that language. All start out, write that stuff down, record it. Guys, this has been maybe the most valuable marketing episode of Entrepreneur Secrets yet, but here we are, the Electrician's Podcast five days a week and we got four more days this week where we'll be helping you with this marketing, this niching and, of course, mastering your sales, simplifying your pricing and delivering premium level electrical service.

22:50 We love you, guys and we are out. Y'all be well.