S2 EP27 Why 95% of Electricians Never Hit $1M (And How the 5% Do)

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So, my personal belief is that we are held back by what we think the market will bear, in that we'll only price within a certain structure that we feel is acceptable or we feel that people are going to be willing to pay. But my mind was actually blown. I had a specific situation that I think could speak really to that, which was when I was 16, I was working in Moonlighting while I was in trade school, and I worked for one client who I was charging$35 an hour, and he would constantly complain about how expensive I was at$35 an hour while I was doing electrical work and so on. And I always assumed that that means I was expensive at$35 an hour. But later in my career, I ended up working with that same guy, but I was over$350 an hour. And the thing is, is he still complained. He said$350 was so expensive. Or the price I was charging was so expensive, but he still paid. So the thing was is that the man was willing to pay$350, but was complaining about$35. It broke my mind of saying, well, maybe when people complain about price, they're not being as legitimately truthful as they're coming across as being. Maybe they just don't feel like paying anything, but they still need the service and are willing to do so.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and spark up those sales.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I'm Joseph Lucani, and together with my co-host Clay New Meyer, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians sell over a million dollars from a single service band.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Now it's time for sales. It's time for scale. It's time to become a million-dollar electrician.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Hey, real quick, if you're an electrical service business owner and you're tired of figuring out alone, then listen up. ServiceStoop Electrical is hosting our first ever live event, the Whistler Service Summit 2026. It's May 29th through June 1st in Whistler, BC. Just 26 seats. You'll have access to me, Joseph Forrest, real roleplay, working through your leads, working through your business, working with you on your strategy. There's only 26 seats available, and we want you to attend. Whether you're new to our ecosystem, familiar with our process, or a longstanding client or fan, we want you there. So click the link below or go to go.serviceloopelectrical.com forward slash summit. See you at the summit. Hello, hello, hello. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another great episode of The Million Dollar Electrician. You've got me standing today, as always, with Joseph, the sales bot Lou Caney. And guys, we've been on a mission here for a while and really want to hone in on this mission and make sure that you're hearing it. Because if you're listening to this, there's a reason people come here and listen to us. It's because with all our collective knowledge, experience, the interviews we've done, the people we've helped cross the seven-figure line, that is still this mission in transition. We're not quitting anytime soon. So if you're here, it's because you're maybe stuck between that$300 and$900,000. You got a few guys, but you're still relied on heavily. You're the neck in that bottle, so to speak. And we have this exact million-dollar plan, this playbook that we keep seeing people excel past seven figures from. And we want you to have that. And we want to teach you guys that. We want to do that together in this room. And so that's why we do this podcast. But there is a disclaimer, and it's something that you're going to be hearing a lot more. I want to make sure that everyone understands this. Only 5% of businesses ever get past the seven-figure mark. 5%. That means 95 out of 100, excuse me, will not. And the chances are that that's you. As we continue to have wins of the week, as we continue to have guests that prove this is possible, the odds are that isn't you. So I just want to give you that disclaimer right now. If you want to listen to this, though, it's because these are the proven ways that it is working for these people. And it is working for so many of us. It's worked for Joseph, right? Who did 1.3 million from his own van three years back to back. So that's the big disclaimer. Today we've got a great show. We're going to follow up from the uh the webinar of last night. At the time of recording this, it's April 15th. So on the 14th, we did a webinar on pricing workshop last night. Really good time. We're going to run through some of the stuff that happened there, some of the good stuff, some of the stuff we aim to improve, some of the reasons you might want to comment, replay down below, and get this one and have a look at that two-hour grueling session. Joseph, I'm done my rent, man. How are you doing today, brother?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

I'm feeling great. You know, sometimes you wake up on the right side of the coffee and everything moves very smooth. Uh, I love the day that we had put in place. We're getting a lot done. Back burners are full firing. And I'm honestly, I love why we're doing it too.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

It's a labor of love, my friend. It's a great mission, man. And uh I want to thank you because at this point we're on is this our fourth year? Four years into this now. That's a long time to be doing this podcast. Humble beginnings. We started out going live on the Facebook group. It carried us to here, man. We've met a ton of great people, done a ton of great stuff. So thanks for joining me on the journey, brother.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

It's truly been my honor. Honestly, I love what we do. I love working with you. I love helping electricians. And honestly, the deepest core of it, something that makes me so happy is knowing that we help those who weren't helped before. Like I remember there wasn't any people working specifically with electricians. That just wasn't a factor. So knowing that we're able to go in there and get in the trenches of people who otherwise would have been ignored, it feels like almost like a redemption round, if that makes sense. I agree.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

One of the uh the big redeemers last night at this workshop, if we can jump into it, was actually having our winner of the week uh live on the workshop again. Brandon, as you know, has had some massive, massive success. I mean, we should just hit that right away, man, because I got some great stuff I want to impart on you guys from the workshop. But let's start it out with Brandon's story. I just want to be very clear on the early side, and then I'd love to dish it off to you, Joe, for the most recent big win that you were uh right involved with.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I love that.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Brandon is someone that joined us uh back in January. Uh, was moonlighting, already had a full-time job, and pretty good full-time job too, working for his local municipality, doing uh some different stuff, won't get into that, but however, pretty decent job. Got a family at home, a wife at home. For whatever reason, he came into contact with us, our content, this podcast, and he joined the SLE Pro app and the open circuit level, which as you guys know,$150 a month. Anyone can join. Uh, if you're interested in the app, just comment app below. We'll send you the link for it, no problem. But what Brandon did right away is he started coming to the extra meetings in there. So he joined Billy Harper, he's one of the guys who also did a million in his first year uh last year. Congrats again, Billy. But Billy leads one of those classes. Really good people person, big connector. So he leads a class every Thursday night. Brandon comes in there, really has no idea about his pricing, no idea how to estimate these jobs, no idea how to create options, like, really a from scratch start. A good electrician, just like us, taught the trade, did the apprenticeship, got the ticket, but just didn't know the business side, didn't know how to go about creating a transaction, a working agreement with someone. So his questions that first night were like very, very basic. You know what I mean? Those like first time estimating, like we say in the price tools, like, oh, most people like, hey, I'm gonna start a business because I believe in what I do. I'm a good electrician. But you go to estimate your first job and you're kind of like, this is a head scratcher. What do I do here? From that place, Brandon within weeks started to see wins. Had his first, I think it was a gold sale,$25,000 plus dollars. And more recently, I think that's the one you're tying into in March. He finished his full-time job and his last moonlighting month at sixty-five thousand dollars, man. It's unbelievable. A couple guys working with him. I think the biggest transaction that month was$35,000 or$40,000 from one sale. And now to this one, Joe, I pass it to you. What's the most recent win from Brandon for this win of the week?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

I am beyond pumped because it's a multi-part win. So I want to just kind of start from A and work through it. So the first was that um he wanted to work on a rewire for he wanted to quote a rewire for a homeowner. And we eventually had constructed and built the options with him in options class. I'd go go through and describe, you know, what we can do and how we can do it. And he ended up going and presenting that and he sold the rewire. And we're all high five, and we're like, Yeah, we did it, you know. Congratulations. Yeah, it was a huge win for him, something like 20 grand or something like that, or around that, around that range. And then further, the homeowner had mentioned something about wanting additional projects, you know, additional lighting, additional security, um, potentially even considering a generator. And Brandon had come in again to options class and said, Here's the request. What do we do about this? So we designed a range of choices with him from the finest to the most bare minimum, and created like a huge range. It was like from 45,000 down to just like a few grand at the very bottom. Then he came in the next day to the roleplay class, and he's like, I'm driving to this call right now. I need to get the presentation down perfect. Can you roleplay it? So we roleplayed it with it. You know, I demonstrated, then he did, and then we come back and forth, give him some feedback, and then he's like, All right, I gotta go, I'm gonna go do it. He comes back into class and he says that I'm literally holding a check for a 50% deposit of the platinum option at full SSR. So it was something like a$45,000 job. But it gets even bigger than that. Is that if you take the whole win and we like we broke it down in the class and said, like, well, what would you have been previously? Like before you offered options, before you had your SSR, like, what would you normally have done for this type of client? And he said, honestly, I wouldn't have even approach the rewire. I had the guy only asked for me moving something in the kitchen, and I would have just done what he asked, and it would have been like a few hours job. He would have been definitely underserved and had a ton of extra problems on top of all the things, but all I would have offered was this, and it was like a$500 ticket. So I said, Well, where did you end up? And he's like, Well, this is a 60k plus ticket now. So we went from 500 to 120x on his sale right there.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

120x. Forget 10x. 120x. And I know some people listen to this that probably not listen to our podcast, but if you're listening for the first time and you're thinking, Well, how is that you know fair and leading with integrity to offer something they didn't ask for? Truth is, people just don't know even what they're asking for, they have no idea. Like, it's our job to go there and meet with them and explore their needs, desires, and problems, and explore their system's needs, desires, and problems. If they knew all this stuff, they wouldn't need you. So, wouldn't it be wrong to flip that around? Like, wouldn't it be wrong of us to only do what they asked for, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah. And if you think of this specific situation, the one of the things that we ended up looking into was like, okay, well, he wanted me to replace a range hood. But the venting itself was original from like 40 something years, and it was caked with grease and it wasn't even properly vented to the exterior. And he would have just connected a brand new range hood to this ventilation system, and everything would have been like, oh, great, it's done, it passes. But part of what he offered was, I'm going to completely redo the vent line and I'm going to use different piping with different componentry that has less retention for grease, so that you won't have to worry about smells and odors and clogging and all that. So it's better for fire safety and all those things. And as you continue going, the customer did have the choices. He could have done the most bare minimum possible, which was I'll keep the existing infrastructure, I'm only going to quit what you asked, and here's the result you can expect from it. But then he scaled it and said, based on what you're asking, here are the appropriate things that would make sense to do while we're doing this, while you have the walls open, while you're changing the cabinets, here's what we suggest doing at that current time, and here's what we'd suggest doing long term. He had complete choice. There was no pressure to do anything he didn't want to do. And that's why I feel this becomes more ethical. Because if you were boxing someone, that's salesman territory and no one wants to be there. But if you're simply just a provider of a menu of here's the safest and the most turnkey and the most comfortable and the most convenient, down to you've asked for this. It may not be electrically well thought out, but I'll do what you ask. How would you like to proceed with these choices? That's what makes this such a big difference.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

It's the menu, it's so valuable. You wouldn't go to a restaurant with just one thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

No, no, it'd be sketchy. It'd be real sketchy. I'd be like, what else do you have on the menu? They'd be like, we got a burger. Well, what else is on the burger? No, it's just a burger. Just catch them. If you want cheese, I'll give you cheese. But I mean, that's really stretching here, man. Cheese is extra.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

We're that place, right? If you're looking for a burger, this is the burger. Even then, if you go to a burger joint that only does hamburgers, they've got options. There's a whole menu of burgers from the most economy, like I just want to taste your beef, to the most premium. We've got two layers of bacon, three patties, four different kinds of cheese on that thing, on a garlic brioche bun. Right. Wouldn't it be wrong of us to deny our customers of that level of burger too?

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, you know, and it's actually so interesting that we talk about those options because this also breaks a huge psychological factor that clients, most electricians, deal with, which is they go to the home and they assume the buyer archetype based on the home they're living in and the way the customer presents themselves. But if you don't give them choices, your stereotype or your prejudice limits what they can buy. Like I've gone to the McMansions and found out all that's just debt. It's all debt. And they want to be frugal because they're behind. And I've gone to the trailer park communities and love the community as a whole. And they've bought the ultra platinums because you know what? The guy's retired. He's actually a millionaire, but he doesn't want to have any high investments. He's driving a 1999 Toyota Corolla. So giving them the choice actually is more ethical.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Yep, I agree. I agree, man. Yeah, couldn't agree more. So congrats again, Brandon. Another win of the week. It's not the first time. Uh Brandon will be on the podcast. He'll get to hear the whole story, all of this. It's an incredible story, incredible start. And this is my opinion on Brandon is I think we may have mentioned this on a prior podcast, but like people who have no other experience sometimes do the best because there's nothing else getting in the way. There's no clutter in there of like, well, maybe it's a bit of this and a bit of that. There's a whole commitment to just like, here's what the people are telling me, deer in the headlights, like, I better just do this thing. I think that's been just exceptionally good for Brandon and for people like him. Nathan Miles, who we recently had on million in his first year, similar thing, right? Dan Totten was very much like this. Guys, just take it and run with it. Uh Sherman, once he unlocked in a few ways, tripled his revenue in a few months. Like, again, disclaimer, these are exceptional results. That's the 5% we're talking about. But I'll tell you what they all have in common. Direct focus on a specific instruction and execution of that instruction repeatedly until they get it right. In Brandon's case, he's gotten it right many times in just a few months. It's incredible, man. Thanks, Joe, for helping them do that, man. That's a big win. Big win.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Truly my pleasure. Truly my pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Webinar turnout. Let's talk about pricing for a minute. This one's really important because we want to give you some goods that you can take away. Whether you catch that replay below by typing replay, uh, YouTube, anywhere you're finding us, uh, you can send us that message, uh, price tool or price webinar replay, replay, replay, replay. You'll get that thing sent to you. I want you to have this. I want you to grow from this, but I want you to know what you're going to experience on that replay. If that's cool, Joe. By all means, I'd love to hear about it. One of the pieces of feedback that I've received, which is interesting for someone that's like an observant person, half of it was in the numbers, but the bigger half, let's say it was 60, 40, was actually in our heads and in our hearts. Could I explain what I mean by that? It's one thing to figure out what we need to charge. And like I've said many times before, like success in service is just good math where we know the formula and we show the work. You know, like grade 10, grade 11 math teacher, like, oh, you got to show the work. Let's fill a page with notes. I didn't care. I didn't want to do that just to be judged, but in pricing, it really matters. In pricing, it matters because this is about your business longevity. So we only spent about 40% of the time on the actual math, and we spent 60% of the time on the person you need to be to actually step forward and understand this math and then follow what the math says. So, kind of like old way, price based on feelings and what the market tells us. The thing is, that causes more feelings. Getting beat by Chuck in a truck, tank top Terry, uh, denim Dan. We had a bunch of names come out last night. It was hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

In the band, yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah, coming up with as many as we could. Nonetheless, it just goes more and more emotional as we chase this thing, racing to the bottom, right? You guys know what this feels like. You know what this feels like, Joe. You're losing jobs because it seems like someone else is buying them all from underneath you. Hey, they'll do, they're gonna match what we just offered, but do it for half the price. Well, how is that fair?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

No, no, I was gonna say, and a lot of that, you're right, dumb comes down to the emotional because we seem to give this bias to those competition and say, well, how are they doing it? How are they able to make money? And the funny part is that they're not. A lot of times, this is someone who either is trying to be very aggressive or someone who is really trying to make a name for themselves, but it's not a sustainable plan and it's not a sustainable price structure. So we may look at it and say, like, well, how are they making money? They may be asking themselves the exact same question. Maybe they're like, Well, I've sold all these jobs, it cost more than I thought. What do we do? And now they're not doing great either. So next time you're worried about someone undercutting you, stop thinking that they're the best electrician in the world, either. It's not fair to be on the same playing field as someone who's really trying to undercut and doesn't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Absolutely. So the old way, as we're saying, is like to price emotionally and to be moved by emotions to do pricing. The moments where you discount last minute because they're they had a bit of price shock, for example. You know, we see so many people come in the program, and that's the first move they make is like, I held my price and it still worked out. They still chose me. And it's such an amazing win that we tend to see with every new person. But to move from that emotion and the new way is to your pricing is a math problem and to make that decision logically. Hey, you guys, if this episode sparked something for you, imagine stacking that every single week. That's how businesses stop flickering and start running steady. If you subscribe to the show or leave a review if you're on audio, and if you're driving down the road, please pull over when it's safe because I've got something you're not gonna want to skip. For every person that subscribes and or leaves a review and fills out the form below, letting us know that you did that thing. We're gonna draw one monthly subscriber for our open circuit lifetime membership worth$1,500. And that's not all. Every six months, we're actually gonna draw another subscriber for our$5,000 scholarship, which you can use for any of our electric service packages to get your business and your service rocking better than ever. Come on, guys, let's brighten this thing up. Is it gonna be you? Back to the show. And here's the thing that a mentor unlocked for me, and I want you guys to have this takeaway on this podcast before we wrap it up today, is my mentor recognized that I was in a prison that I didn't know I was in. And the first thing I needed to do was physically break the chains and escape this prison. And that prison that I didn't know I was in was a prison that many of us are in. Unless our dad was a salesperson or a major uh professional athlete from a sports team, someone with like advanced high-level charisma that instilled that in us as a kid. Otherwise, you're probably like me, you're probably like Joe, where you weren't born into great conversation, you weren't born charismatic, you don't feel skilled in that area. You might still get nervous when you talk to people. That's common across a lot of us. And so that's the prison I was in. But when I looked outside, when I started to see and really pay attention to other people who were like bigger names, bigger influencers, people stepping on stage, doing big things in their life, I started to realize with his help that they're not special, that they were just stepping into something that they felt they deserved. And so a big theme of last night was like Jim Rohn said, change my life. If you want water, you don't go to the ocean with a spoon. The kids will laugh at you. You gotta bring buckets. You got to really ask for what you want in this world. And so pricing is a big piece of that, I feel. And the other thing my mentor said, when we're bringing those buckets, we've got to remember that the market is between your ears. What do you think that one means, Joe? Have you heard that before? The market's between your ears.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, so my personal belief is that we're held back by what we think the market will bear, and that we'll only price within a certain structure that we feel is acceptable or we feel that people are going to be willing to pay. But my mind was actually blown. I had a specific situation that I think could speak really to that, which was when I was 16, I was working in Moonlighting while I was in trade school, and I worked for one client who I was charging$35 an hour, and he would constantly complain about how expensive I was at$35 an hour while I was doing electrical work in his home. And I always assumed that that means I was expensive at$35 an hour. But later in my career, I ended up working with that same guy, but I was over$350 an hour. And the thing is, is he still complained. He said$350 was so expensive. Well, or the price I was charging was so expensive, but he still paid. So the thing was is that the man was willing to pay$350, but was complaining about$35. It broke my mind of saying, well, maybe when people complain about price, they're not being as legitimately truthful as they're coming across as being. Maybe they just don't feel like paying anything, but they still need the service and are willing to do so.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

It's a big takeaway. That's a big takeaway. Yeah, great example, man. And so this market between the ears, that one really challenged me because I thought of it the same way. But then I realized there's more layers to this. It's not just that I'm holding myself back by the way I think and feel about the market. The other layers were, I think, well said like this. Value is also created upstairs. Value is created up here, it's created between your ears. So it's really important. That we don't block that ability in ourselves. The delivery of value can be emotional, though. The delivery of value can live right here, guys. That's what really connected with me. Value is created here, but it's delivered here. If you're listening to the podcast, I'm pointing at my head, saying, Between my ears, that's where my brain is. Logically, we create value, but we deliver it emotionally. We deliver it by hearing what their emotions are telling us, by paying attention to the words they're using, the feelings they have, by accumulating those and using that in our presentation to deliver how we can help them in their words with what they're feeling, with what's important to them. That's an action of the heart. That's all heart all day. I want to serve people at the highest level. So we don't let our emotions get in the way of our price. We do our price with math, which is logic. We create value to overcome that math, which is logic, and then we deliver with our heart. Does that make sense, Joe?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

It really does. You know, it's funny how you mentioned that because you can think something, but if you can't communicate it emphatically, authentically, and passionately, people won't buy it from you either way. You could have the best offer in the world, but if it's not able to be communicated as a way that's desirable, people won't take it. And the reverse is actually true too, in the scariest of ways. You can have a super passionate, charismatic, and energetic presentation and not sell anything of value, and people will still be like, I gotta be on that. So it's the combination of both the ethical and logical with the passionate delivery that creates the total package.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Love that. Hey Joe, before we part ways, since we're on the webinar topic, you think you were telling me earlier you've got next month you're preparing. Do you know the topic generally and why it would be important for guys to uh check that one out? You want to deliver that one now?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Let me jump on it. Okay. So a lot of times people get stumped by objections. They think that objections is this post-sales skill that they need to like memorize lines of like, oh, if they say this, you say this, they say this, you say this. Almost like they're creating ladder logic and spider web frameworks. I disagree. I'm saying it's great to have that in the backup, but I personally believe objections are solved before they come up. If you can bring them up to the customer while everything is still gravy and before you give them the price, you could use their own words to walk them through why the objections are actually not relevant to the situation anymore or eliminate it from ever coming up in the first place. So, what we're gonna be doing is I'm gonna be actually breaking down our process and explaining what objections are being removed by going through the natural process. And then if the customer decides to do a 180 and pull it away from you, how you can bring them back into, I completely understand where you're coming from, things might have changed. If you don't want me to ask you a question, when we first arrived, what did you say you wanted to accomplish? Or I can understand you want to get more estimates. It makes sense. If you don't want me asking, what did you say last time you tried hiring Acme? And now you've got their own words being presented back to them in an ethical way that helps close the gap so they don't have to disappear into the wilderness. They could figure it out right here and close that loop, thus leading you to close the sale.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

That sounds big, man. That sounds like a massive workshop that people really need. And judging by the questions, some of the QA we got last night, we had like over 50 questions, went back and forth, and some of them started to get into that objection handling area. So I know this is going to be a popular one, one that people would definitely look forward to. So if you're following YouTube, like we said, comment replay down below, send you the pricing workshop replay, help you escape the prison that you might not realize that you've been in. And also if you want to get the first crack at getting invited to Joe's objection and pre-objection handling workshop, then just type objection workshop down below and we'll get the right page to you guys there so you can sign up as well. Joe, anything else to add today, brother, before we part ways?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

You know, I guess the last thing I'd want to say is just to communicate to the electricians out there that we often get in our own way before anyone else does. And that the objection that you are end up bringing often affects your pricing. If you're stuck thinking that someone won't pay, then it won't matter if you come to the logical number and you're like, here's the facts, here's the number, we all agree. But if you're still held back by I'm not worth this, or they're not going to be willing to pay that, it's gonna come out in your tonality and how you present it. So if you want to take something away from this particular lesson that's like, how can I apply it today? It's really go through your numbers and ask myself, if I could have lowered something, wouldn't I have lowered it? Who am I willing to take money from in order to lower this deal? Because it ends up, if you look at it, you're the one you're stealing from in order to actually get that across the line. So don't steal it from yourself. Offer it the right way for the right reasons.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Great notes, man. Well, then to finish off, I just want to remind you that you are a great electrician if no one told you this today. Enjoy, guys. We'll see you next week on the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast. Have a good one.