Episode 31 - Service Electrician Success - Your Twin Business

@1:15:31 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Welcome to Entrepreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast. We're here to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver consistent premium level service.

I'm your host Clay. This is my incredible co-host and sales coach, Joseph Lucany. Today, we've got an incredible show for you that solves this problem.

If you've ever heard of the book, the e-mail by Michael Gerber and talking about the on. entrepreneurial myth and all the fog around this thing that really causes 80% to fail within the first five years of business.

Worse, 30% fail in that first year. And if you're in Canada, I've shared this stat before, half of those who fail say there was no market for their services.

That's confusing. Are you confused by this, Joseph?

@1:16:23 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Yeah, the first thought is like, wait a second. You mean there's no one? There's no one around that wants your service.

@1:16:30 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

You're just sitting there kicking rocks all day. It definitely suggests that we go and do things blind. But that's exactly what the E-Meth talks about.

And it's exactly something that we're going to address today. Because the good news is that understanding this philosophy, our topic today, will help you avoid that trap and have a business happily ever after.

Doesn't that sound sweet?

@1:16:53 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

I mean, hey, put a rose on top that Prince Charming carrying you away.

@1:16:56 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Life sounds good, right? Yeah. Kiss me, I'm a frog. This topic is perfectly timed after yesterday's measurement show. We talked about being measured and managed, right?

Effectively. And today we're talking about the twins, your two businesses, today's end tomorrow's. Okay. We've labeled it. We've set it direct.

Joseph, what the hell are we talking about really here?

@1:17:19 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

So the biggest problem that happens with new contractors and new business owners is something that I think you and I both had to personally experience in our careers.

It's where you have this mentality of I'm going to charge the least rate that I need to in order to get the maximum work that I want.

The problem is, is that you start off with just you, another guy and a truck and your expenses are low.

And as a result, you can charge a low amount. But as you acquire better inventory, as you require better vans, you require better taxes, you buy new tools, get a shop, all these things, trainings, events.

You need to start paying for it somewhere. profit margin you needed at just you in one van in one guy is going to change as you grow.

So the whole point of today's lesson is what steps can you take to make tomorrow's business realize today?

@1:18:14 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Mmm. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And again, I'm going to keep tying in the e-mail because a popular book, guys, if you haven't read it, please go and get it.

It's going to help. It's not just there to bring you down. It's there to talk about a real problem.

If you want to go against the grain and beat that 80%, you got to have a plan.

@1:18:32 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Mm-hmm.

@1:18:33 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Right? Now here's two things I want to tie into that. One of my favorite jokes ever someone once told me, hey, if you want to make God laugh, tell them you have a plan.

@1:18:44 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

That is like, usually it's tell them your plans.

@1:18:46 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Wanna end up? Yeah. And I heard someone say on a casual diagnostics call the other day, yeah, everyone's got a plan until you get punched in the face, which I think was a Mike Tyson quote or a Muhammad Ali, one of them.

@1:19:01 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

It's going to say, can you imagine me hit by iron mic?

@1:19:02 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

It's like getting a sledgehammer to the side of the face. Yikes. You don't get no plan after that.

@1:19:06 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Sleep. That's your plan.

@1:19:09 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

For sure. So point being a big piece of this is actually having a plan, recognizing what we're aiming for.

And we've got so much to unwrap around this, so much. But I want to tie in something that we call the law of the architect.

The reality is that a business just like a home has an architect. What does an architect do for a home?

@1:19:36 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Realistically, he looks at it and makes sure that everything structurally sound and that it's built on a solid foundation and that it's ready to grow and it has a solid enough structure that you could put a roof over it and all that.

@1:19:48 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Right.

@1:19:49 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Handles that design.

@1:19:51 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And then a lot of times, they'll stay involved with that project to make sure that construction follows that design.

@1:19:57 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Would you agree with that? Yeah. I mean, how many people? I mean, I know coming from new construction, we were always like, the engineer doesn't know what he's talking about.

The architect doesn't know what he's talking about. We just cut this skylight in here. We don't need it. And then you find out, oh, there was a reason for that.

They were putting an air conditioning on the roof. She had.

@1:20:15 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. Right. So this law and the architect goes on to say that, hey, every business has an architect as well.

That's an important realization. The founder is the architect. And there can only be one.

@1:20:29 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Mm hmm.

@1:20:30 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

If heard people say the fastest sinking ships or partnerships, we disagree. Obviously partnered up here for real service, loop electrical, giving you guys everything we can.

Following our vision, our intuition to help you in the most impactful way is possible. But in every partnership, there has to be the 51 percent or the 34 percent.

If there was three way, there has to be an architect. Someone who ultimately can make that executive decision. decision with that voting power and someone who's going to stay responsible for design and following that path.

To give you another analogy for this, if we're on a cruise ship, we've got the captain's deck, we've got the crew deck, we've got a guest deck.

What would happen to this ship and the course of this ship if the captain was down serving the guests too often?

Working with the crew too often.

@1:21:29 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

We've been doing a cruise drive in the ship. We're steering is the right word. But I was going to say, but who's steering the ship at this point is just going to Tesla cruise?

@1:21:37 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. So there's no autopilot, right? And even autopilot can't take us there forever. At some point we've got to arrive or at least check and evaluate where we're headed.

And that's such a big piece of what we're talking about today. So I hope that wasn't too much of a tangent for you.

But having the plan and someone to steer this boat, this ship. is gonna be the first and most important thing that you can do to avoid that trap.

@1:22:06 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Can I touch on something for a month? Please go. I really feel like your analogy of the ship going on autopilot, I think that's really lined up to what we're talking about.

I wanna just really dig into that for one more second because I don't know if everyone's listening a hundred percent to what you're saying because you touched on something really important.

Imagine all of you are running your businesses, right? You already can understand that a 70 ton cruise ship needs to be manned at all times.

And what would happen if you just put it in cruise control and walk away from it? But how many of you are doing the same thing in your own businesses?

Your clients need to be served at the highest level, your employees need to be served at the highest level, your taxes, your industries, your suppliers, they all need to be paid.

There's a lot of moving pieces. Having the game plan is essential, but I need everyone to understand how dangerous a 70 ton machine running on autopilot would be.

So always remember you're the captain, you gotta be behind the wheel regularly. Anyway, just wanted to touch on that and really add to the gravity of the situation.

@1:23:09 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely, absolutely. So yesterday when we talked so much about the measurement and the management of, that's the captain's job.

That's one of these half dozen things. Before the show we talked about Dr. Oz and how he does so much.

And really things coming down to these half dozen things that the architect needs to handle, that you the specialist needs to handle.

So it's constantly this exercise of grow a position, document it, delegate it, grow a position, document it, delegate it.

And that's what we would call working for tomorrow, for tomorrow's business. Today we've gotta do the work. If we don't document it, how will it ever become tomorrow's delegation?

@1:23:54 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Well, you gotta write processes for things. Otherwise, you're just going off memory. And you said, oh, I trained this person.

they're doing and that person leaves. Now what? They take all their knowledge with them. But if that employee or that position had a strict process to follow, you could literally take that manual and hand the next person needs to be onboarded.

And now all the hours and weeks that you put into that person can still be reclaimed in a way.

@1:24:20 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. And if we take that step back and tie it back into the pricing that you started us off with, right?

How can we grow this company if we're not priced for growth?

@1:24:32 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Impossible. I mean, money's got to come from somewhere. I mean, some people when it comes to fiscal responsibility, like to lean back on, do you remember the envelope theory where everyone's got their envelope and that's where you put the cash?

@1:24:43 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I don't. I'm not familiar with that one. I don't think unless you told me and then I apologize for forgetting.

@1:24:48 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

It's an old school mentality that comes to managing money, where you would say you only spend from the allotted budgets.

And the way you would make the allotted budgets is you would have back when people were paid cash, you'd go in and get into business.

Well, now they would have envelopes, budgets for food, budget for home, budget for car, and you allocate the money into it.

The thing is, is that if you don't manage growth, the money has to come from somewhere. There's only one pile that it comes from.

So the thing is, what are you going to be willing to take from? Are you willing to take from your food budget?

Probably not. Guys still got to eat. Are you taking away from your house? Still got to live. So what ends up happening is you become the successful business owner.

And the overall result is, is the only thing you can take away from is yourself and from your customers.

So now, unfortunately, by trying to run a business that's growing without growth accounted for, your customers are going to suffer because you're going to try and go faster.

And you're going to suffer because you have to spend more years in order to get the same result. So you end up having less personal time, less family time, less time with your customers.

@1:25:58 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that goes to answer this really timeless question. It does come up a couple times a year.

I hear it from someone, do electricians need credit? How should I establish my business? Should I pull a big loan and just go after it?

And almost unanimously, we see people say no. And I'm wanting to vote for that. I firmly take this stance that you don't need credit to be in trades, in business for yourself and to be successful.

Humble beginnings bootstrap business just fine. As long as your pricing accounts for the growth that you desire and where the ship's headed, you design that path and you're working for today's business, humbly, sweat equity, putting it in, right?

Put your hand up if you've been there, guys, right? Let us know in the chat. Have you put in some sweat equity to this thing?

Are we building something for tomorrow or what? And having that growth built into that pricing, which again, as we mentioned before, we're building something for tomorrow.

For guys, if you're live with us in the Facebook Entrepreneur Secrets group, you can put hashtag price tool in the chat.

We're going to send you a direct link to our just released, newly released pricing tool in 15 minutes flat.

You could know your current sold rate if you're above or below it and a growth rate or check what you have already.

@1:27:22 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

And you know, I love the fact that we keep talking about current rate and then future rate. Because the thing is that if you're not planning for the future, I want to stress this again to everyone.

Where is the money going to come from? You know you have to grow. And some of you might be saying, well, I'm already charging so much.

Are you really? Are you really charging so much? Because if you think about it, you offer a warranty to your client.

Five year warranty to do a generator service. 10 years to do a cola or a genaract. And then you don't know if you're going to be in business for the next 10 years.

Who is actually losing? because they invested in you to be the long-term investment for their home. And by you not being able to plan on staying in business that long, sustainably, how could you possibly serve them at the highest level?

So it's not just, am I charging too much? The question is, are you charging enough?

@1:28:19 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah. And everything we do, we should be looking at it. Is this sustainable? Is this scalable? Right. We all want to pass this fishing test.

90% of the people get on a call with interested in coaching, training, development. They all want this well-oiled machine, a salable, scalable, well-oiled machine.

What that really means is it's exitable. It's got exit ability. You've got exit ability. God, I'm very close to a very passionate rant here.

Oh, for sure. Guys, your business is the single biggest break in your lifetime. I mean the biggest opportunity that you have and here's why.

We may have touched on this before but the governments give us taxable benefits in business. The benefit is tax timing.

As an employee, we have to post what you earned. The government takes their share and then you get paid.

As a business, you reap all the revenue. Then you let the government know how you did and then they take tax on what's left.

Jacob, hello, thanks for saying hi. This tax timing benefit is massive because here's something that can fit in there and become non-taxable to your person or to your business.

It's called professional development. It's these single most important line item in your fixed expenses. If you don't have anything beside it, please, if your head is shake, it's time.

You can leverage tax-free growth from this little haven of a business you're building. Exitability. You can set your pricing to reflect these efforts that you want to put back into yourself and into building up this process for tomorrow's business to run and pass this fishing test.

You're in control of this. So I ask you, what is the number beside that professional development beside that training column?

Are you leveraging this? Because if not, if you are going out hourly for $110 an hour because that's what it is in your area, what everyone else is doing, just hourly, $100 bucks, $110, $120.

It's not cutting it. Please grab this pricing to it. Please recognize that tomorrow's business is non-existent if that's what you're doing.

Please go.

@1:30:47 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

I was going to say, I want to speak from personal experience here that Clay is literally hitting the nail on the head.

So many of us start out in that $100 to $100, $200 range. I remember I started off, I was one.

And I remember thinking, my partner will make 50 bucks, I'll make 50 bucks, the company will make 50 bucks.

That's more than enough, right? It was a 22 year old kid. I didn't know anything. But the thing is, is that later we found out we needed to be charging well over $300 an hour to actually be sustainable.

The thing is, is unless you know this pricing tool is like Pandora's box. Once you know, you don't un-know the information later.

It's revealed to you. The revelation is here, you just have to ask yourself, am I willing to learn? Am I willing to even find out the right answer?

Am I willing to be wrong? If you're willing to be wrong, you'll always end up right. Because the right kind of person, the person who thinks forward to saying, I don't know enough.

Whereas the person who loses always says, I know everything. So it's for you, you guys.

@1:31:50 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Love that. Good take. And I just lost my train of thought. So I'm going to have to ask. What is going on this?

@1:31:58 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

No, that is totally fine. I'm sure you see me have that situation too. We're all like, all pumped, all pumped.

@1:32:06 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Here it is. Here's I'm going to bring it back. There is a person listening right now, because we hear this often saying, or in your internal dialogue, hearing in your head, that won't work this side of the Mississippi.

That won't work in the South. That won't work Northwest. That won't work Northeast. That doesn't work in my town of 12,000 guys.

We've seen it all. It works. And if you're feeling that, then I have this to save you. Don't tell us, show us.

We're going to tie that right back to yesterday's episode. Collect the data, record the data, show us it not working.

Because the next problem to solve is not your pricing. It's your delivery. Specialize and helping people establish a sustainable rate, and then sell it.

And people buy. And just like Jacob, Don Mac who's in the. in the audience right now live in the Facebook group.

We didn't interview with Jacob last year in the REBS group, another Facebook group guys that we do some interviews in by weekly.

We interviewed Jacob and he said this, Jacob, sorry, I'm not gonna quote this one, but you did say, hey, look, I've tripled my rate from that place where I was naive to this place where I'm now found where I'm woke, where I understand what my rate needs to be.

And my customers are happier than they ever were before because it's not just your rate that he adjusted. It's a value exchange, that customer value proposition that gets adjusted.

Yep, three times he says, love it, thank you for that. Go ahead, Joseph. I was gonna say, I wanna speak with that as well.

@1:33:49 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

And first off, Jacob, I love the fact that you've got that mindset and it's great. And I wanna let you guys know, I actually experienced this personally as well.

When we started going from 165 to like well over.. 300. There was the same thought. I was like, that's not going to fly.

Our customers are going to show up with, I'm going to be on a crucifix. They're going to be in torches and pitchforks outside of our shop.

There's no way they're going to be okay with that. But the thing was the biggest thing that I found was the fact once we thought we were expensive, our desire to deliver at a higher level became paramount.

It was like, listen, if we're going to charge this much, we gotta do good work. So the question is, is that when you charge a little bit, you can justify doing a little work.

But when you charge more, your feet are held to the fire that you have to deliver. So sometimes that price is one of the best accountability tools that you could have.

Because if you're not doing better than your competitor, why would someone call you and pay more for it? Doesn't mean you have to do less.

It means what are you doing more that they're getting exclusively from you that they're not getting from someone else?

@1:34:56 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

When you charge Laura, you will be forced to do more. Absolutely. Good thing.

@1:35:00 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

It's a great thing actually. In fact, just having that level of pricing says something to your clients too.

@1:35:07 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

There's a challenge, an unspoken challenge. It implies that I am premium. I know what the fuck I'm doing, and I'm here to do exactly that.

@1:35:18 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

You call me, I didn't knock on your door.

@1:35:20 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Right, big thing. So I wanna share a little case study with you guys to continue answering this, do we need credit?

Question. Not that that came up, I came up in this show so I do wanna speak to this. So one of our favorite and earliest electric partner clients hired us two weeks into their business.

This was last August.

@1:35:42 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

I love that guy by the way.

@1:35:43 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so within about a month, prices are up. We know what we need to do, right?

But he's struggling. And it's what we call the red team. It's a self-diagnosed objection, rather not diagnostic, or a self-objection.

We need to do that. start fearing the value that we provide against the price that we're asking for. Humans all encounter this at every level of sales, whether you're asking for $10 for a $5 chocolate bar because you're in Girl Scouts or if you're selling your first $200 an hour sold rate electrical job, we all experience this at every level, but the process is very much the same.

Project the value, ask for what you're worth, complete the transaction. Is it going to work with everyone? No, because your value is not going to speak to everyone, but here's the magic that happened after a grueling month of working through that together.

Months two, they had their first $35,000 month and he managed to sell at the full rate that we had articulated together for his growth.

continues to have fairly consistent months. A few months later, we do what we call a power quarter session, do a budget for the first quarter, and do a 15-week plan for that first quarter, including new van that was budgeted before in that sold rate.

New wrap, new website. These are big ticket items, right? All the new shelves went from a $5,000 Chuck and a truck throw it together.

Let's start a business. Put food on the table for my family to a proud premium service provider in seven months flat.

He just sent us the messages with his new wrap pumped on a Sunday afternoon with his family in front of this thing.

@1:37:42 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

And it's absolutely gorgeous. He totally deserves a press.

@1:37:46 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

He's now the absolute poster child for electricians in his area. He just set the bar. No credit was required.

And German says, yes, credit is everything in life. Good to have credit, that's leverage. Just like keeping capital is leverage.

@1:38:08 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Owning more assets.

@1:38:10 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Having assets is leverage, but do you need it? Do you need to be over leverage to cause this growth and the answer is no.

And I'm by the way, not suggesting or saying that they went out and bought a van outright. I don't believe that's a good business transaction because that displaces all of your capital.

You want to maintain capital, that's leverage. But the fact that they're able to do that comfortably in the seventh month is something I'm super proud to say on their behalf.

And for anyone who's thinking, is there really two businesses? Does that pricing? Is it fair? And does that really help me get there?

And the answer is yes to all of those.

@1:38:55 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Absolutely resounding, yes. The thing is, is that by talking to this person, we... We know that not only is the rape and calculated, but also there's a certain level of sanity in clarity.

Does that make sense? Like when you know I'm charging this amount and I have the numbers to prove why I'm charging this, it becomes easier to defend your price.

Like sake of argument, let's say that your numbers said that you could be at 270, but you yourself are like, you know what, I feel like I should be around 200.

And then you quote yourself at 200 and some customer says you should be at 175, that's outrageous. If you're willing to bend a little bit, what's stopping you from bending more?

And who's money you're taking? You're actually taking that in your own pocket. But if you can look at that number and be like, I know how we got here.

And I know where we're going with this. And I know why we're charging it. When a customer asks you to take it down a little bit, $100, $200, $300, you see exactly where that's coming from.

That's a future car payment I'm not gonna be able to make. That's a technician I can't uniform. That's my training room.

It's going to remain without sheet rock on.

@1:40:03 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And are you willing to make that jump? Super powerful. Yeah, great stuff, great stuff. That's just the beginning of this one, right?

Like we said, there's all the data that supports this, which really follows the scientific method, which comes down to six simple steps, identifying a need or a problem.

Well, in this case, the need is a sustainable business with a captain at the helm who can also, by the way, step away and the boat keeps going.

But someone still has to man the ship. There has to be someone in control of direction, even when it's remote.

So identifying that problem or a need, right? Doing research is number two, scientific method, do research. All those people, the 49% that failed, that said there was no market.

That's what I would call either research and execution problems. And execution is the next one. So design and execute.

Or sorry. great hypothesis. So making assumption about what's going to happen, then design and execute that experiment. Which to us means don't just go out on rabs and say, Hey, does every door direct marketing campaign work?

I've seen this before, by the way.

@1:41:16 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Yep.

@1:41:17 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And then a bunch of people go, No, doesn't work. Nope. Worse $1,300 I ever spent doesn't work. There's too much information.

There's too many variables. That's a bad question and a worse answer because it discourages the right thing. Right.

@1:41:32 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Like if I may, yeah, when people just touching on that, some people are going to be like, No, EDN doesn't work.

Why would you do it? But the thing is, is that I know for a fact that it will, because imagine this, imagine you have access to your company to your county's utility company, and they now produce a map of all the local power outages in the last storm.

And then you send your EDBM to them, and you're offering your generator services. We did that and it worked and it worked really well.

So the thing is, is you're just not placing it in the right way. If you take a bunch of flyers, you throw them at the back of your van, of course you're not going to get results.

But if you can put them in the hand of people who need the most, now you're not only providing a service, but you're doing it the right way.

@1:42:19 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. We call it offer linking, honestly. And it's something that even our coaches, our current coaches speak to heavily.

And that is if you correctly identify the problem from the place of awareness to the call to that moment where you're going to make an offer, then that offer is yours to lose.

Does that make sense?

@1:42:43 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Because at the end of the day, right? It's the only person losing is you if you're not willing to take the steps to move yourself forward.

@1:42:51 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

But if you never address an actual problem, one of the chances that that EDDM is going to do anything.

@1:42:57 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

It won't. I don't get a shit. Like what are you going to do for me?

@1:43:02 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So what most people do is actually they'll put a discount incentive on it.

@1:43:06 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Mm hmm.

@1:43:06 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Right. And go out there and say, well, if you come with us now, you're going to save 30% on a generator, but it doesn't address the problem or agitate the emotion behind why anyone needs a generator.

@1:43:17 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

But if you can say, how was it like, how was it losing power last week? Now suddenly you're able to put the customer in a more emotional state.

You're like, have you ever had to throw food out of the freezer? That's a rough statement too. Ever have to shovel water out of your basement before?

All these things speak to storms that we're talking and happening during our read, during Sandy, during Floyd. All these things happened.

If you don't tie the advertisement to the emotional reason that's going to get the customer to pick up the phone, you might as well just be thrown in out the back of your van.

@1:43:50 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Agreed. And we've gone a bit of a tangent here from our today's business, tomorrow's business, but that impacts it too.

Clean to that marketing effort, guys, something we call a drip campaign or any organic marketing methods, right? Let's talk about this for a second because the misses of today, those moments of making no unnegotiable is negotiable where, yeah, we run the good neighbor program when we need work, but we don't when we don't.

The complacency that follows with the busy season, which it's spring. So guess what? Everyone's about to spring again. Things are picking up.

It's going to get busy. I'm just shining where I am. God, it must have been 65 degrees yesterday. I couldn't believe it.

Oh, right? So everyone goes back to work, but where's the sales training now? Where's the good neighbor program now?

Where's the follow up on the opportunity calls that are unsold now?

@1:44:48 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

There's going to be a podcast in them itself because you think about it like people need to train for slow season.

Busy season is actually I have a very opposite view where some people say, I got to train for when it's busy.

You got to train for when it's slow because when everyone is fighting over the same pile of leads, you got to make sure you're in a position to close it.

And the only way you're going to do that is the consistent muscle memory that comes from the repetition. And the only best way to do the repetition is you're doing it when you're most busy.

So just do it.

@1:45:21 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely. I love that. I want to touch on something Brian said earlier. He said, I have a new chant now and develop, document, delegate.

And you guys can't see my whiteboard, but I literally have the four D's of work, Brian. So this one's for you.

The four D's of work, very close, very intuitive, what you said there, but doing deciding, delegating and designing. Four D's of work.

So pretty close. I wanted to throw that shout out. Jason says 80 degree forecasted there tomorrow. Getting warm already guys.

What's our big action items here today, Joe? So if I want to give a couple, we've got the standard and the all star as usual.

@1:45:59 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Yeah. But bare minimum, at the very, very bare minimum is download the material and simply just enter in and find out your price.

Like that should be the absolute bare minimum is saying, I at least know where the score is on the board.

I may not be playing the same game. I may not be actively pursuing it, but at least I know where I'm supposed to be.

I know whether I'm over or on it, right? Would that be safe to say it's at least the bare minimum action?

@1:46:28 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Knowing where you want to be? Absolutely. If you guys don't have a price that you're confident in, German's asking if we have a laborate calculator.

So, German, we're saying right now we're offering a pricing tool which can help you figure out your sold rate, your service rate as we call it.

So yes, you can type in price tool right now and get that. As to the action, yes. If you guys don't have this figured out, then that should be the first action.

If you're confident in your price already. But you still want to take that step up. Then the other thing I would really heavily suggest and we're giving ours away as well is a KPI workbook where you're recording your leads and your sales and your different marketing membership information in as well.

@1:47:17 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

I have all stuff.

@1:47:18 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Do it. Let's go all star.

@1:47:20 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

The all star action actually comes exactly from personal experience. And that is, well, once you know your rate, once you really are like, this is what I got to charge.

The line is drawn in the sand. I am not going to lower the rate. Now that's going to be scary.

And the reason why I want to touch on this was I remember I was working with a customer. He was a good customer.

We did hundreds of thousands of dollars work with this guy. And he actually was getting quoted for a job by me and he wanted to get a $20,000 job and he asked for $200 off a $20,000 job.

And I told him not. And he actually offered to pull the whole job away. He's like, well, I'm giving you 20,000.

You're not even gonna be 200. Maybe I gotta get other bids. I was like, you're more than welcome to.

But let me ask you a question. Would you at least like to know why I'm not willing to budge on this?

Sure, why? We didn't make up this number from nothing. We know that any dollar you're taking away is going away from someone.

It's going away from our technicians. It's going away from their benefits. It's going away from us being able to pay rent.

And at the end of the day, that affects our ability to warranty this. So I can give you $200 off.

Are you okay doing that if it's gonna compromise your warranty? It's gonna compromise the technicians that you have working in your home right now.

Is that $200 worth it to you? And at the end of the day, he was like, you know what?

I'll pay full rate, that makes sense. I understand. And that was it. It was handled. But I wouldn't have been able to make that argument if I didn't know the number intimately.

So for every one of you, know your number is the bare minimum. But be willing and prepared to defend it.

Truly defend that number. Because it's your future you're defending. And the features of all your employees. based on your you.

And even further, if you think about it, it's also affecting the future of your custom. Because if you're not in business, who's gonna take care of them?

@1:49:10 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Absolutely, I love it. I'm gonna go ahead and throw a big conundrum in there.

@1:49:15 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Ooh.

@1:49:17 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

But here it is. The expert level of understanding your pricing and understanding your numbers means that, you know what?

Even with what Joseph just said, you're going to be able to make an actual informed decision about when to discount, when that actually does benefit your business, when to give back to a cause.

Many businesses with community in mind do have a couple of community cases they'll do every year. And guess what?

That's not entirely a giveaway because it's also a PR opportunity, a marketing opportunity when done correctly. But having the numbers first and foremost is required to make those educated.

Just... decisions. Otherwise, it's just desperation and desperation is a stinky clone.

@1:50:06 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

You can't give it what you don't have. You don't have it. You can't give it.

@1:50:10 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

All right, guys, that's it for another episode of entrepreneur secrets, the electricians podcast. Thank you for joining us live in the group.

Jacob's pumped about the train in the slow season. Give me to Ludie says, we got some good feedback here today.

If you're not in the Facebook group, please join us go to Facebook. Entrepreneur secrets is the group name. We'll see you there next time.

I'm Clay Newmire. This is my partner Joseph Lutkany. It's a pleasure to bring you guys all the impact we can see you succeed.

@1:50:44 - Joseph Lucanie (Fathom)

Thank you so much for being present.