Episode 99 - Electricians, Should You Take the Big Job?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to Electropreneur Secrets, the Electrician's Podcast. We're here with you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing, and deliver premium level service. If this is your first time, welcome. You've picked a great episode to join us. I'm your host, Clay Newmeyer, and with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, Joseph the sales bot Lugenny. How's that for anything? I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

I feel like I'm being announced in a loudspeaker. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And last week, if you if you follow Joe already, you also seen him yield a lightsaber. So it's like Joseph, the lightsaber swinging sales bot. I can dig it here in the flesh. I can dig it. How was the weekend, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

It was wonderful. Honestly, any time that I get to spend with my kids and my wife, I am a happy man. I know my priorities. I live them all day. It just means it just was wonderful. It was really wonderful spending so much time with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Love that. I love that. Thanks for sharing. I also had a great weekend. We did a car show.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, I saw that. I was gonna say it's a pretty sick ride you had there.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, yep. Nice. My dad's our family car is a 69 Mustang coupe. And it was actually just a steal from the neighbor. I shouldn't say a steal, it was a gift. This little old lady in her 90s in a wheelchair being pushed by her daughter, Mrs. Slain. They live together. And she came over one day and she said, Tim to my dad, um, there's something I want to talk to you about. And he goes, Okay. And she goes, Well, before you moved here, I had the I was the one time owner of a brand new 69 Mustang. It was in her garage. She never drove it. She was a grocery getter for like 20 years. She sold it to a guy and she got first right back. So he brought it back to her for the same price, $8,000 Canadian at the time. This is now 20 years ago. And she said, I want to see this car back in my neighborhood. I'm actually going to pay $5,000. I just need you to come up with three, and then you're going to park it in your garage. It's going in your name.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

My dad was like floored, right? All of us.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, who is a brand new Mustang coop? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

And if you saw my profile at all, the picture was there from yesterday. It's a beautiful car, absolutely mint. And so just know that we paid $3,000 for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

3,000 Canadian, if you would, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah. Yeah, that's like 50 American at this point.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Even better.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Okay, we've got a great episode today, but I gotta know one thing. What was your big takeaway from the Dan Antonelli interview on Friday, Joe? You personally, do you have like a favorite moment or a favorite thing that Dan said or you know, takeaway from that one?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

I would say the biggest thing that I took away from Dan was honestly his adherence to health, if anything. Like the main thing that he did really stuck out because he was mentioning that the exercise was what kept him alive, but then it actually would have been the thing that kills him. And the thing that I took away from that was it's not enough to just be cognizant of your health, it's enough to continuously check in on it. He recognized there wasn't something right. Everyone was telling them everything was good, but the fact that he was like, I know my body, I know how it's supposed to feel, and I'm going to take the steps to get more answers, and that's what kept him alive. I mean, all business aside, that's a huge, that's a personal achievement right there to listen to your body to that level to where you knew something was wrong.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Absolutely. And I love that you brought that up because there's a really important underlying sentiment there that we all need to do a little better at for sure. And it's this idea that um what we have is uh uh uh innate loss aversion built into our minds. What I mean by that is we're infinitely able to calculate what we miss if we close a door, but we're infinitely incapable of calculating what we gain when we open one. And this is one of those faith moments where Dan just faithfully knew that he loved cycling and loved exercise and should stay healthy. So he's what do you say, like 14 miles a day for 25 years or something?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

I think it was like 11 miles a day. It was some ungodly number. What is that?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

But that's faith, and that's entrepreneurship too. So there's a parallel here. And what I mean by that is climbing the stairs, knowing that what's at the top is worth the climb without ever seeing it until you realize that you've got a widow maker problem, like Dan did, right? And then it's like, oh wow, that paid off. Well, entrepreneurship's kind of the same. That's why I asked that question to him. It's like, do you think you'd be there without all the cycling? Because we always say health family business, that's so important. Oh man. Anyway, today's topic. We've got a big one, and Carlos is here with us, VIP, amongst others. But Carlos said the question, so I'm just gonna read back his comment and we're gonna answer this direct. How's it? How does that sound Joe? I love it. I'm so game for it. Hands ready to go. I'm good. All right, and by VIP, of course. I couldn't go further without plugging this again on the Facebook group, Electropreneur Secrets, the electrician podcast community. You could be with us engaging live five days a week, just like Carlos is when he asked this question. For profit, would you guys recommend service calls over longer, bigger jobs? That's a great question. It is, and we all encounter this. So let's address the issue here. This poll. Why do we feel the pull to even go for a big job, even when we have service that's adding up and maybe even creating a full-time schedule at this point, anyway?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

The biggest problem is because we've almost swallowed the fallacy and accepted it as truth that big money equals big profit. Like you can take, and actually, I'd like to speak from personal example. This is okay. So I say one of the most pivotal moments that I remember in my career was when I actually turned down one of the largest bids that we had ever received at the time. So there was a job we were strictly residential service at that time. Up to that point, that's all we were doing. But a residential client happened to work in a facility, asked us to work in that facility. We then ended up going into it. It was this large chemical factory where they needed a full, complete, soup to nuts, like redo, re- all new panels, new calendar, everything. It was a massive project. And we just shot a number out, like, yeah, like we'll never get it, like the never get it price. And it was like $500,000. And we just let it sit. And then we actually got the bid that they were gonna improve it and they were gonna give it to us. And when we actually sat there, we're like, wait a second, if we do this, what does this actually mean? And it translated to us having to shut down the actual business for about eight months. And at the time, that was like way more than what we wanted to do because we realized turning down all the service calls. And I realized that because we turned down that job and we were able to get more service calls, our revenue and our actual clientele branch grew so much because we were able to have the ability of servicing them. And then after that, because of all those times, we had a stronger clientele base and we had a very, very strong year going forward.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yep. Yep. Here's what I think about why people go for the bigger stuff. It seems to present security. In fact, residential service has the um opposite problem. The inherent risk is in volume, which we addressed on our four-part series last week and the week before, right? And filling that schedule to two weeks. Where when you get a bigger job, it seems like, okay, well, if that's eight months of work for 10 guys, I get to hire, I get to grow, it's worth $500,000. And exactly what you said, we kind of take that as like profitable. We almost assume it's going to be profitable, and that's like blind optimism. It's really dangerous. Because the last time we've said this before, the last time I ever hear someone brag on a commercial job about profitability or any number whatsoever is the moment they're awarded the job and they have a plan to execute at XYZ profitability. So you'll hear guys or see it, even maybe it's in your friends on Facebook or in your group chats elsewhere. And guys will say, Oh, yeah, things are going great. We got awarded a million-dollar job. The problem here, Joe, is you know, everyone's on a roller coaster. That's the high in big work. What follows that is almost every time it becomes like a lawyer battle. It's a fight to hold scope, not gold plate scope. Try to control your staff to make sure they're only doing what's in the scope and recognizing what isn't, so that you can perform proper change management to make sure you get paid for every little thing, or else you arrive at the profit point with nothing left. More month at the end of the money than money at the end of the month, trying to figure out how you're going to pay these guys. So it's like it's a very optimistic mind that goes into this. But in all the history I've had with projects and like bigger projects, um, three, six, nine, sometimes twelve, sometimes fourteen, sixteen, eighteen months to get long in there. Guys are finishing these jobs, even the millions of dollars with like five points of profit left.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

And it's such a shame that that happens. And the thing is, is I love residential service because you mentioned earlier, it's some people view it by volume, but really we don't fully evaluate the lifetime value of those relationships. Like if I were to sake of argument, work for some commercial facility, industrial complex, if you would, what are the odds that they're ever going to refer me to another industrial complex? If I did everything perfect, the job was under scope, or we were under budget, or we were over on the time, we got everything taken care of, they're gonna keep me under lock and key. They're never gonna pass my name anywhere because they're like, we got to keep this guy down, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

But if I have a residential customer and I wow them and I give them great service at a price that's fair, and I serve them at the highest level to the point where they're like, I don't think I can get this service anywhere else. I know the moment their friend says anything, they would be honored to share your information. They'd be proud to do it, and they would tell you, this is what I got from working with this guy. Here's his number. Yeah, that's called building a tribe versus building a client list.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I agree 100%. So let's break that down in almost sort of an easy, simplistic way to do the math. And let's say big jobs for residential service. Let's say uh two-week jobs. Okay, let's say you're gonna do rewires, a two-week rewire every second week of the year. You're just gonna keep going two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. Easy math. You're gonna serve 26 people this year. Okay. Now, if you didn't do those rewires all year and you actually serve little customers day in, day out, how many service calls can we fit in a day?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I mean, realistically, you could be at the bare minimum, like bare, bear scratching the service conservative. You could run at least three calls a day.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

So three calls a day for two weeks. So you're looking anywhere from 14 to 24, 28 calls.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

So let's say you're gonna 10x your actual lead flow just by taking the smaller stuff. That means 10x opportunities to have more referrals, more reviews, more repeats, right? And they'll continue to network that on. So what that represents from a strictly business standpoint is diversified risk. Once you add in club memberships, et cetera, and you start to gain schedule control, again, plugging our four-part series here with many of the methods that we discussed. If you can demonstrate that from a business standpoint, it's very, very powerful. And it's why over COVID, so many investments began flowing into the home service industry. The frontline work with tons of diversity. Once you have these contracts in place, the risk really is mitigated and there really is a ton of potential. Now, on the other side, let's talk about what goes wrong. Let's go a bigger project again. Let's say you took the eight-month, one relationship. Yep. More staff, so diversified your brand as well, putting your brand at stake because each of those has less training to do what they're going to do, which is work for one contractor, and each of them represents a risk in your relationship. Would you agree with that? 100%. Right? So there's that risk. Then there's you, yourself. I don't know about you, Joe, but if I'm cooped up in an office with someone or on the same job as someone for eight months, I tend to get a little wily myself, a little less patient myself. You ever experienced that? Someone you like working with for two weeks, but after two months, you were like, you know what, I'm ready for something new.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah. I mean, like the best comparison is imagine a family trip with your extended family. I mean, everyone's cool seeing their extended family, but you lock yourself in a beach house when it's raining for two and a half weeks. Mm-mm. There's gonna be some trauma coming out at some point.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Tough stuff, right? So that's some of the risk involved there. Just some of. Now, if you're sticking with that, like I said, every time there's a change, is there's another price conflict again. I've dealt with that, where it's just a stalemate. Where project consultants or whoever's managing the project that you're working for is going, why does it cost that much? You're going, because it does. We're the ones on site. This is what it takes to get the material. It becomes very time and material-esque in these projects when you're hammering out different change management. So that's frustrating. Not to mention all that project management time, safety management time, quality management time, that these contractors tend to believe is just part of the bid. It's part of your cost. So, from my experience, where they're when you land at these like five-point margins, a lot of that is due to all the project management that has to happen. It's crazy. Now, let's talk about devil's advocate for projects for just a minute. If we weren't doing that already, there's also this point, and it happens in projects. You recognize before the finish line that you're not gonna make any money. Uh what does that do to your coming weeks, days, weeks, months?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

I can only imagine. Like, if I'm looking let's say you're like three weeks out and you're like, I mean, honestly, we've had experiences like that, but the thought is you go into a job and you're like, wow, I'm gonna be paying my guys out of my own pocket. I actually would have made more money if I sat at home and kicked rocks. That is one of the most heartbreaking feelings in the world. And in all honesty, your staff is gonna pick up on it real quick because I don't think I'd be able to keep my chair of like demeanor.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yep. And Carlos just picked uh said those weeks drag out like hell. And I would agree. I've personally, yeah, morale way down. No one wants to be there. Everybody wants to drag up and quit, yourself included. I've been on those jobs facing months knowing we're gonna fall short of about 100K. Now, let's go back to the drawing board on pricing and talk for a second. If you're doing advanced budgeting, there's a line item on your pro on your profit and loss, rather, and it comes just after your gross sales revenue. And it's called refunds. How many of you actually have a number there that isn't zero?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

We've all been there.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

In a project, um, projectized organization, that contingency has to be a measure of historical data and just based on the volume of sales you're doing, literally putting a number in there that's like saying a percentage. Hey, 5% we're gonna lose this year. Now let's go back the other way. On the service side, you're gonna serve one client. If Joe, if we're running the play like we teach, how many times did you run into clients that you couldn't get paid from or absolutely turn into train wrecks and you had to walk away?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

There were some situations, like you know, I'd go to like a trailer complex after like rewiring it and found out that they're now going to try and push a legal situation to not get paid or not pay out, or re yeah, there have been situations like that. It's awful.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

What was your biggest loss in a situation like that? Do you think?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

In all honesty, the lowest I can really ever remember off the top of my head was I believe it was like a five thousand. No, it actually, I'll give you the exact amount. There was a job that I lost four thousand and sixty-three dollars on. The reason why I can say that specifically was because I remember it actually was a trailer park complex where we went to do a full rewire for because we found a circuit that was completely melted. All the outlets on one wall were physically melted into the wall, and we wrote out they financed in full, signed the contract, everything was good. We then did the work, but then she found something in the panel that she was like, Oh, you should have changed, which we weren't supposed to at the time, and then used that to drag out the financing form and drag it to such an extent that even when we called collections on her, the collections agent was like, Listen, she's just not going to pay. This is it's in her history, she has no credit score. This is what's gonna keep happening. You're gonna walk away at 20% of this job if you keep pursuing it.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Blood so we just don't know like screw it. Yeah, what do you do? Point of this whole little circle down this uh rabbit hole is that um that risk is limited when you do a service job. Because if you're following a decent process, you're collecting the 50% up front.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

You're already half paid. The worst case is is you coughing up for half of a job that went absolutely terrible, and that's just not that likely. We're talking in thousands of dollars, not tens, fifties, or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

No, I agree with you completely. I mean, like if you're thinking about what's the biggest residential job that you could take on on a service call, and what are the odds that you've dropped the ball so completely that not only did you not collect a deposit or get them to sign the financing in half in full or half, but now you're also having a customer so unhappy or so strapped for cash that they're not going to do anything for you, it just seems so unlikely if you're actually doing decent work.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yeah. Now, to be fair, because I've really been bashing projects. And by the way, if you guys don't know, if you haven't heard my interview, if you haven't heard my backstory, I've got a bad taste in my mouth from projects because it feels like you invest everything you have and you have no protection from everyone that just wants it better. Better quality, as they say, triple constraint, right? Better quality, less time, and they want it to cost less. It just doesn't add up. And it's every single time. Can't get away from it. So if you have a great relationship with a contractor and they're giving you a premium service rate, and you're able to share that and get to know clients and off your warranty direct and build off that and have service contracts XXXXX, if you're able to accomplish all that, then hey, I'm your biggest fan. Go for it. If you're divided already and you have a construction side going and you have a service side going and both are balancing out well, and that service side tends to pay your bills while the construction gets you money for tomorrow and it's profitable, by all means, I'm your biggest advocate. Go for it. I'll be over here cheerleading. But just as you said, would I turn down, right? Would I accept a bigger job to turn down my service work and completely block out schedule and get rid of all those customers and keep telling people no or stop answering the phone? Absolutely not. Never. 100% agree. 100% agree. Okay. Now that's just one situation. Is there anything we missed on that topic? Because we've got a bit of a pivot into um one of our clients and what they said this morning.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

I mean, I feel like there's so much that we could go into this subject. So let's continue on with what our clients said. And then if we need to keep going, we'll just keep going with it.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

All right. So breaking out a little situation from this morning, guys. In fact, it was over the weekend. Emergency call out. And now I hope I don't butcher this. We're we're running from memory, guys. No rehearsal here. Was it a campground, Joe? Do you recall?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah. So what it was was there was, and I'll just I'll I'll I'll field it. Yeah. So there was a situation where one of our clients was called out to a almost, it sounded like a commercial facility because it was a large property that had lots of trailers and like a campground. It was like both trailers and campground, but they also had like amenities, like they had a bar and they had like a like a restaurant area in this thing. So I can't say that it's a trailer park or a campground. It was just a camp facility area. I would say it's the closest to it. And what ended up happening was he had a situation where they got a call for emergency service. And when he got There, turns out over the years they had suffered multiple floods at this facility. And he had when he got there, he found there were three 600 amp services that actually had so much water in them that he was actually scraping mud off the main breakers.

unknown 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Like that's how bad that they were. And the main situation was that actually, I love where you say, hey, the untrained person shouldn't touch electric. One of the handy men or the general people that was on this facility recognized that a phase dropped. Open the panel, take a look. And so he had one out of three phases that dropped. So when he took it off, took the cover off, there were so many wires inside this panel that when he put the cover back on, he took an impact driver and actually drove the screw through and actually pierced the leg of the other undamaged phase. So at that point, he ended up dropping two out of three phases and now had so many trailers that were out that just could not get power.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Which is terrifying, by the way. 600 amp screw.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, that that's a bad day. That is a bad day.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

It's terrifying. Now, the reason it's brought up here in this episode is because this is coming from a newer contractor, one-man show currently, dealing with this amazing service call, really, this emergency call. I mean, this might be just an absolute dream for many. But as a smaller contractor, um, he goes there, solves some of the problems, gets it back running. Do I have that right?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yep, he gets it back running. So at least he had at least um two out of three phases back on. There was one phase that just could not be turned back on.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Right. So at this point, done what he could to restore it, goes home with a promise to come back, and is probably there currently, right now, working through this, taking pictures and designing solutions, creating options to help this trailer park, this establishment, restore all three legs and get everyone back up powered and happy again.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Correct. And yeah, he said that he was there at like 11 o'clock at night, wanted to see it during the daytime because it's clearly an involved job. I can't blame him one bit. I mean, the guy shows up at 11 o'clock at night, fixes one phase, kudos. Really, the guy deserves a medal at that point.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah. So the question becomes from a confidence perspective, and how big this project may be, keep in mind these were submerged panels with mud in them. There's a ton of replacement, a ton of work to do, and the guy's just not set up for this, potentially, with the resources to get this done. Because it's needed probably yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Today, he needed he needs it yesterday because right now, if you don't have these things running, there are people who should be paying you rent that will not be. Because right now they have no power. They have no power, they have no light, they have no heat, they have no fridge, and it's your responsibility to get it back on. So, more than likely, they're draining the rental checks, and you need this pack on today.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

So, really, that question becomes then, Joe, what do you say to the contractors out there that run into this situation, not specifically and even necessarily, but where it's like, am I outside of my comfort zone here? Am I outside of my resources to get this done? And what would my next steps be then to still stay involved, maintain a relationship, and create some sort of wins for these clients?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Sure. So the very first thing that we want to focus on, regardless of whether you can take the job or not, is to always approach the situation with gratitude. Let them know because there's nothing worse than showing up and being like, ah, geez, this is a big job. I don't know if we can do this. Yeah, I don't know, we're booked for the next two weeks. We'll have to get back to you then. That's just like, dude, you're being a dick. I don't want you around my house anymore. Or I don't want you on my property anymore. Or like, I'm not gonna keep calling you back. But if I were to show up and say, Clay, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be here. I understand you're in a situation and I'm gonna do all that I can to help you resolve this. If nothing else, at that point, you've at least created the understanding that I want to be here and I'm gonna do my best. Yeah, so that's step one. Yeah, step two would then be evaluating the situation to see if you even can take it on. It's not figuring out how you're going to do it, but it's figuring out can I even do this project? So if you think if I have to rebuild three 600 amp services, let's say in its entirety, everything had to get completely stripped out, and you're a one-man show and you have no ability of getting other helpers, and you need to do it in a tight time frame, it seems like the odds are kind of stacked against you. The amount of profit margin you would need wouldn't matter if it's physically not able to be done.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

So, second, then would be can I even physically do the job? Then step three is if there's even a chance you can do the job, now the important part is to make sure that it's within your margins. I always recommend a two-call close approach to this mentality. Because what you would do is you would meet the customer, build your relationship, say, I'm going to take all the pictures and measurements so that I can give you the most accurate and comprehensive quote as possible. Because I understand with a job of this size, that budget, I'm sure, is going to be a consideration. And I do want the work and I'll do what I can to stay within it. Yep. Just giving them the mentality. And before you leave, set up a following appointment saying, I understand that this is going to be an involved project, and I understand you have a time frame as well. Let's set a tentative appointment on the calendar because after I've done all my designs, I'll come back and I'll present you a range of solutions to how we can get this taken care of from the finest money you can buy to the most temporary solution we can come up with. If we're not the right fit for this project, I will gladly walk away from it with no hard feelings. And I'll even go so far as to find someone I can refer out to do this project for you. That way there is a no-lose situation for you. But are you wrong to want to do that?

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Not at all, not at all. And I love that you brought that up because in my mind, I'm thinking of this statement that you've said many times. If we're not clearly the right solution for this work, then I'd be too happy to throw my plan against the wall, my options against the wall, and help you guys focus on getting the right solution.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

And it's the truth because at the end of the day, people don't know what they want until it's presented to them. And what I mean by that is this guy is in a situation, he's got three services that are down. All he knows is that people are banging on the super door and saying, I need power, I need power. He doesn't know what the solution looks like. But one, I'm sure he's gonna want to work with someone who works with him. Two, he's gonna want someone who has the honesty to say, if I can't do it, I can't do it. And that last bit of if I'm not clearly the right fit, is also establishing, I believe I will be. I'm the kind of person that says, if I'm gonna take this job on, it's because I believe I'm the best fit to help you with this. And if I'm not, if there's someone who does better service at a better price, at a better quality, like your triple constraint, then screw it. Toss the whole thing against the wall, throw it in the garbage, I'll walk away happy because I know that you're getting the service you and your family deserve.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah. And that's more important. And I think what's what's really important to highlight here is this guy, the the owner, took it upon himself to look into things because he didn't have the call to make. If he knew that our contractor was there, had his back, or he was in a service agreement, had a membership contract, something going on, he would have never taken that risk.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

That could have cost him his life.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

I agree. I mean, think about it. What if that 600 amps, that line, you could have had that under load? What if he didn't have thick rubber boots? What if it wasn't holding an impact gun that had a proper insulated tool? Like if he was just the typical contractor, handyman working out of a shop, it could have been like what's the cheapest? A blackened decker screwdriver that he got from a Tinker toy set. Like, you don't know what he's opening that panel with. It could have been anything for sure. Could have been really melded himself.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yeah. I need to insert a bit of a um contextual thing about imposter syndrome here. I know we talked about this earlier, so you could see this coming, but imposter syndrome is a real thing that lives in all of us. And it has to do with our confidence. And as we've said, without going down a rabbit hole, confidence isn't really real. There's what we're able to do comfortably and what we're uncomfortable doing, really. That's what we're talking about here. But a mentor taught me, wise mentor, I love and respect to this day. He taught me something very important that I need to share with all of you. Because if you've ever experienced this, or likely you will, if you haven't, I'd be surprised actually, because we need to get uncomfortable to grow. But if you've ever experienced a situation where you're able to recognize the problem, but you don't quite feel confident in being the solution provider, I want to challenge you right there. Because what I was taught this stage of my life, much later in life, is the ability to recognize a problem precludes that you are able to provide the solution, even if you don't yet know what that solution is in entirety. Does that make sense, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, when you first told that to me, my jaw rolled out of the floor like a freaking cartoon character because it made sense to such an extent, but it's something that none of us ever really think about. Like speaking to all the electricians out there, I'm sure you guys have been there, where you show up to a job and you're looking at it and it's just beyond your normal level of experience. And you're like, I don't know what I'm looking at, but I think I know how I can help them. That right there, I will take the kind of guy that's like, I'm willing to try it and figure this out. Then the person who's like, I don't know everything about this. I'm gonna walk away from it now.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Yeah, and bearing in mind that we're surrounded by people, right? We all have this resource. You could jump on here on any episode and throw a question up. You could jump on the wall of our Facebook group uh group and throw a question up and get countless, countless hands up helping you with that, right? There's a ton of resources, and I honestly think the biggest danger to doing new work or work that's less experienced, let's say, less experience doing it, is just knowing the code, knowing that best practice. And that's an easy gap to fill. But just to just to circle back and make sure everyone got that, the fact that you recognize the problem actually means that there's a solution that you understand here. And if it's not entirely clear, just like you said on multiple episodes ago, I can't remember which one, the the television mounting one, I think you said. When someone asks uh asks for something, I'm butchering this, I think, already. If someone asks you for something, don't just answer without first seeking why.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Exactly. So I can touch on that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah, do it.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

So the the the proper quote is never answer a question unless you know why it's being asked. And the logic behind that is there are some particular situations that people will ask you to do something and you don't know that that is the thing that makes them actually decide this that we're moving forward with you. Like I've had circumstances where a customer pays significantly more working with us. But when I ask why, it's because we were providing a turnkey painting project and we were doing the permits and the inspections and the utility coordination. And now suddenly I'm like, if I take the painting out of any of my quotes, they're going with someone else. So knowing the why they'd be interested is a very important factor.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Absolutely. Okay. So we helped this contractor along. We we began to uncover this and we're out of time. So I have a feeling our next episode is going to be around how to actually bring another contractor in, how to develop that relationship and setting up a referral program. What do you think, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

I would love that. And to give a little teaser, I can almost imagine we get to throw in things about working with hoarders and unfund customers too, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah, yeah, you got it. All right, guys. Thank you for joining us again. This has been another episode of Electropreneur's Secrets, the Electricians Podcast. Clearly, we have more in store for you tomorrow. Uh, so happy to uh to be here with you, Joe. Thank you again for your contribution. And you've just reminded me we did not go with actions. I'm sorry, Kate. Do you want actions? It's all good.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

It's all good. All right. So I got something off top of mind if you're down.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

All right, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Okay. So whenever you're in that situation, like I want to start with the bare, bare minimum action is just simply being able to acknowledge that I am the right fit to help this customer. I think that that should be the bare minimum. And the reason why is the statement you made, I felt was really profound because it covers a very, very wide audience. So many of us have been in circumstances that we didn't feel comfortable in, but when push came to shove, we're able to get it done. And then after you're able to get it done, this just became something you do, right? Like no one gets into generators knowing generators before it. They have to study it and be uncomfortable at first. First time I ever did a diesel system, it was a nightmare. I didn't know what we were doing, but now we know how to do them and it gets done. So the bare minimum, bare, bare line is to say, if I can figure out what the problem is, I have the right to quote for the solution. I love that. Bare minimum. You at least have the right.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

I love that. Okay, I'll cook up and I'll start here. And it's just simplifying the task. One of the best estimating methods, in fact, one of the only working ones for electrical, because of this so many little micro tasks that fall into the greater task you're trying to accomplish, we have to boil it down to the smallest pieces. And in estimating, if we have to do that, then at this point, if you're visiting that job and you're not completely confident yet and you're trying to wrap your head around it, then that's what we need to do. We just need to break this down to the smallest steps and look at each individual action item and what that would take. Right. Um, a simple single line a lot of times can bring a hell of a lot of clarity just by drawing it out on paper instead of staring at a wall like a deer in headlights, trying to figure out what the hell you're gonna do. Does that make sense, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Very good. Okay, guys, now I get to do the outro. Thank you. There's been another episode of Let's Peneur Secrets, the Electricians Podcast, included actions today. Joe had a good one. I added another one on top. Listen, we're here to help you master sales, simplify pricing, and deliver premium level service. And we're going to continue this one tomorrow. Continue doing just that. Thank you, Joe. Take care.