Ep 202 - You're an Electricpreneur Not a Concession

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. It is Friday, a fantastic Friday, and it's another day with us, the Electricpreneurs on Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where Joe and I go live with you five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Joe, do I even need to ask how are you feeling today?

Your boy is fighting some sort of cold today, but I love what we do so much and I feel like our mission is so important that it's worth showing up, even when you're under the weather.

Awesome man. Well, I appreciate your endurance as you pull through this. We just got out of a fire class, by the way, it was absolutely great stuff today. At least that's the feedback we're getting. Your boy went on a bit of a speech today. I got a little heated around some concepts, but we're surviving it and we're back for another great podcast, a continuation of what we had yesterday.

I love it and I can't wait to watch a replay on that. Let's say I'm going to do a little stitch here, but let's say someone wanted to watch that. How would they go about doing it?

Well, that one is members only, but our clients can access it in our client Facebook group. Guys, you can catch us for free, though, on the Electricpreneurs Secrets Facebook group, where you could be engaging with us, grabbing our free value pieces. I mean, the irony behind Electricpreneurs Secrets is that there are none. There is no competition, there's only creation, and there's just us and these strategies that we believe you should have so that you have a real, sustainable chance at building this business and to stop making these concessions that we were talking about yesterday, because it's depleting your future. We've got real examples of these concessions. In fact, one of our clients just had a big challenge that we could go into. All right, let's lay it on. Situation, you know, hour, hour and a half out of usual area. So a bit of a drive for a family member who inherited a home and they're looking for, you know, some system upgrades as an investment in this property. But naturally it's the friend or family problem. Naturally you know at first like, oh you know, just come do the work and bill me after, it'll be fine, it'll be fine. Kind of a timeout right there, right Always. Why would you do that, joe?

So I've actually been in these circumstances before and can I just do a quick description of how it bloke in my face and then we can describe why. Yeah yeah for sure. So we were working with a client who at the time was Johnny, got rocks, like you know, like he's never worried about money. I own this business, I own that business, I have these deals, all this great stuff, right? So we go to work at this guy's house and he tells us that he wants to add an outlet to the outside. Just, I want to add an out into my porch. Not a problem, happy to help. Normally we'd give you a price in advance. Don't even worry about it. It's me, you know I got it, don't just just make it happen, right? Yep, okay, no problem, make it happen. Turns out when we opened because he thought we wanted to just tap off an outlet and move it over. When I opened it up, I found it was a cloth line and that us needing to move it obviously now becomes a GFI requirement because we're moving it the six feet. And now I had to actually cut the wall, run it down, run it under the porch, then fish it up, and this is the really pathetic part. It was only a $900 job Like this was a lot of work for $900. But once again, or an experience, what are you going to do? So we go to this guy and we're like listen, we did all this. It took way longer than expected. There was this resignment, this requirement, this requirement, but I am proud to say that we're able to keep under $1,000. And he flipped his lid, thinking that there was no justification for us to charge more than just a few hundred dollars. And that like if we had told him in advance that he could have declined at that point. But now we force his hand and he has to pay. It Isn't it interesting how quick that shift can happen, where someone says don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. But then, when they actually do, and it's more than our, expectation.

Definitely it's a mess up every time, but there's a reason for it.

The reason being is that when customers have it in their mind saying, don't worry, I'll take care of it later, it's usually for one of two reasons, and neither is usually malicious. The first is that they have an expectation of what the price is going to be and they're mentally OK with that expectation of price. So like me walking in saying, yeah, you want to know what it's going to be, he's like it's going to be two, three hundred dollars. In his head he's like don't worry about it, it's a couple hundred dollars, I'm not worried about it, I don't want it done. Yeah. So he was approving mentally the three hundred dollar job, but then when we actually gave him the real price, it didn't line up to what he thought it was going to be and he wasn't upset about the price. He was upset about the difference between what he expected and what he didn't. That's scenario one, and usually those are the people who are not trying to take advantage. Scenario two is a little more malicious, where, if you have a friendly relationship or you've got some sort of acquaintance with someone, where it becomes awkward to then pursue the money Me asking for it after the work is done who now holds all the power they do. They hold all of it Because you never had an invoice, you never got an approval, you didn't even discuss a price.

You're a bag holder.

Exactly. They're holding onto it and you've fronted all the work, you've fronted all your time and most of us are feeling uncomfortable asking friends and family for full rate. So now, when they're like, well, listen, man, you were only here for three hours, how much material could this possibly have cost? Now you're trying to justify a job that you probably never should have started doing because they weren't willing to pay in the first place.

Big time. Big points, man, big points there. So that's like the first problem, and obviously it's massive and it's something that we've touched on before and we'll have to continue to touch on, because this keeps getting people A you know what the deposit is important? Oh yeah, and you can't get a deposit without a known amount, a known expectation communicated between two people.

Right.

You're never going to have a situation where you're like well, arbitrarily, I need 10 grand.

I mean you could, if you were on like a retainer type program where, like, I'm a lawyer and I'm requiring a $5,000 to retainer, I don't think we're going to use it, we don't use it, I give it back, but we're going to hold this regardless. Usually it doesn't fly in our particular field and if it does it's because we drastically underquoted what the deposit needs to be.

Yeah, totally no, I agree with this and I like where this is going. So if you were to take that deal, it actually means that you've foregone your STYO, sticking to your offer. You've foregone the deposit policy. And the nice thing about this deposit policy is when you're priced right, as perhaps so 200, we rarely laid out this week on Wednesday, you know this little, very oversimplified but 30,000 foot view of like what a successful electrical service business looks like and the things you have to hold. And if you really held to this STYO, that deposit, then you're paid for, it's already paid for. Your cost of goods sold are afforded by the deposit, if it's truly 50%. So this is like a major lifeline Go ahead.

There's also one other thing that comes with the deposit and that I'm going to speak to everyone here who's lost a job before and I say lost with quotations, because you can't lose something you never had in the first place. Yeah, so when people have ever heard I approve this job, just send me, just get started and we'll move forward with it. No-transcript that usually shows that they never actually approved in the first place and that was their soft way of telling you no. Or they're trying to put you on the placeholder so that you're on the calendar, ready to work with them, and if they can't find someone else to come in cheaper, then they'll go with you for full rate.

Right, totally, man. No, it makes no sense. And in saying that, if you didn't collect a deposit, then you also don't have the sale, that's 100% true.

You cannot, you do not have what you did not acquire, didn't get a deposit. It's the same as not having a signed invoice. How can you say that I'm working with this person when they're willing to put 0% down? You're fronting everything. Your time is the most important thing to front. People say don't put up the material, don't put up your time. I don't care if it's one GFI, they're reserving your time that another person could have wanted a first class membership and taken that spot, or they could have now been an emergency demand call that you can't take because you committed to that time slot. Protect your time just as much as you can protect your wallet.

I love that man. There's like a double D rule here. That's just like really floating around heavy. We do not discount and we do not work without a deposit, do not schedule without a deposit. If you just held to that and everything we talked about this week, you'd be doing pretty good Again. I don't know if I said this simplified enough. A well-performing electrical establishment in service is going to be doing 50% to 60% gross profit margin. Let's assume you're on the lower end and there's many people that will say if it's not 60%, it's not where it blah, blah, blah. Your business can survive on 50% and do much better than you're likely doing now. Is there getting lower and lower to the 40s and below? We're in trouble here, right? This is a major pricing and execution problem that we've got to fix. Typically, that company that's below 50% gross profit margin is also below 10% net single digits or fighting to get out of the red Major red flag here. Big, big problems. We've all heard a profit first, right. We've talked about it. Michael McAluets, if you go to the bank at this point as a contractor and open five accounts, the banker will literally look at you and say, oh, profit first, right. That's how popular it's becoming. By getting that pricing right and established in STYO through this beast, you're actually perfectly set up for a profit. First accounting system. All you have to do is open the accounts and move the money where it's meant to be, whereas going the other way about it. We see so many contractors who understand the methodology, but then they look at their account and go how would that work for me? Because they actually know the underlying causes. There's nothing there to separate. Go ahead. I saw you had a magic moment there I did.

Something came into my mind and I realized I'm sure someone listening right now is like why the five accounts? But also I'm super profitable, everything's going great, but why is the money not adding up at the end of the year? Do you not neglect your maintenance account so often? We'll sell maintenance agreements or club memberships but don't allocate the money into the proper account. So then when you actually look you're like, oh wait, a second, I'm much more profitable. No, you're only profitable because you included five years of generator service, but that money is allocated for future services. If you were to pull out the $1,500 for the five-year agreement, suddenly you're in the red and this isn't a profitably priced job. So the five accounts is super helpful for not only allocating the resources but getting a real pulse on whether you're actually profitable.

Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm just realizing that if someone's listening to us for the first time right now or just recently catching up catching on, then a couple of things we said are actually kind of life-shattering here. Yep, a is you're getting 50% deposits and that accounts for all the costs of goods sold. And B is wait, you're selling five-year maintenance agreements. Hell yeah, how in the hell? So essentially, we get paid for everything upfront.

It's an interest-free loan from your credit, but it's also in their direct benefit too, because you'd say well, I don't want to sell multi-year maintenance agreements, because if I do, I could just met and go year by year. They could, theoretically they could, but let's say, sake of argument, has things gone up in the past five years? If you were to take the cost of milk today and the cost of milk five years ago, what kind of increase would you be facing?

Jeez, you know what? Like I venture a guess around 40% or 50%, honestly.

Correct, right. So the thing that you're protecting your clients again is this is called an inflation fighting package. What we're doing is they're paying for 2027 service, 2028 service at 2023 price. In addition, they're now in your club membership, meaning if they were ever going to call you for something, they get all the benefits for the next five years. And the best thing about it is, let's say, you purchased it while doing a generator sale. It's considered capital improvement, which means any particular sale that would have happened gets brought into that tax-free bracket, meaning that the generator maintenance is now five years tax-free when it normally wouldn't have been. So you're saving them 40%, You're saving them the tax, you're giving them five years of benefit and you're getting interest free loan. It's literally a win-win.

Win-win-win-win. If you're Michael Scott, then yeah, there are some levels to that shit. Man, you just touched my heart and blew my mind at the same time. There you go, all of that while serving at a higher level. So people like it.

Well, the fact is, is that why wouldn't someone like being served at a higher level? Right? I can imagine you saying, well, I'd rather keep the $1,500 in my account. Okay, totally reasonable. Let's say you do that. Take your argument. Money stays in the account. You give me $300 today, plus tax. Your first year didn't include tax, got it? Now, every single year is going to get the 8.125. Yes, okay. So everyone gets the interest rate calculated on top of that. So if it's $300, every year they're going to be paying an extra $30 to $60 in tax. Doesn't seem like a ton, but imagine over five years. Now the interest alone is more than the actual membership itself. So you've given them a fifth or sixth year free quote, unquote, just by saving them the tax. Then the second thing is is, let's say you have a major power storm, right? Everyone loses power in the neighborhood. Thousand calls come in. Who do you prioritize? You can say well, we're. Our service is an extremely high demand. We're generator specialists. So, as a result, wouldn't it make sense that we would take care of our club members and our generator maintenance agreements first and then take care of the general public after our own have been satisfied?

You got my vote yeah.

So you offering these plans and allocating the money to that particular account is not only one of the most impactful financial decisions you'll do, it gives you better clarity of everything. It allows you to serve your clients at a better level, it measures how you're serving them and increases the longtime, lifetime relationship you have with them. No one loses is an arrangement, except for the quote unquote $1500 that left their account. It's just an investment in themselves and they know it.

Wow, you could have been a financial analyst in another life, joe, you know, you know.

I actually was going to be a financial analyst. What ended up happening was my grandfather owned a financial analyst company and managed it at a very, very high level and wanted to pass it on to me when I was in the third grade and, naturally, being a third grader, I declined because I didn't want to study math. I wanted to go play with my friends, so I ended up declining the opportunity and became an electrician. I'm super glad that I did, but, man, looking back, numbers are just numbers in my jam.

I love numbers. There's one thing that stands ahead of your calculations and it's that there is a loser here. Okay, who is the person who listens to this or any other episode or takes our pricing tool, who does not make the change? Maybe it's several pricing tools and you say something like that is kind of like just all the others and that, to me, says something very specific. It says if you've done multiple pricing tools for your service rate and still have not implemented that rate and you, my friend, are not an electric burn, you're a concession. You're making concessions every day on your future, on your sustainable business. And it doesn't just end at your business, because we all know what that business model looks like overworked and underpaid. If you're making concessions, then you are destined to put in 10, 12, 14 hour days to cancel family events, to rush in to save the day again, to discount more just to get work on your schedule, to face price objections anyway and to ultimately be miserable in this endeavor when it doesn't pay the bills and 5, 10, 15 years go by with barely any rate increases and you realize Holy shit, I'm tired of running. That is the golden truth. If you do not plan this and execute. You're kind of up shits creek without a paddle and the only reason why and we hear it every day I don't think people will pay me that rate in this area. I don't think, or I don't believe would be a truer statement. I fear that I will lose too many customers if we charged what we're worth.

You know what's funny that you mentioned that? Because that actually brings back to a conversation I had years ago. My brother started a landscaping company and was a terrible business person, truly terrible business person, and he was cutting lawns for about $30 a lawn and it would take about an hour and a half to almost two hours to do for these large estates. And we're telling him listen, you're not making money. This is me at like 14 years old. I'm like you're not making money. You should double your rate, lose half your clients. Even if you lost half and you'd make the same amount with half the time he looked at me, goes, yeah, but then I'll lose clients.

That's logic, man. That's where we get stuck.

Sometimes people get stuck and I want you to understand that you can't serve everyone. If your goals to serve at the highest level, you can serve everyone at a mediocre level, but you're also not going to be remembered because that does not stand out and gets erased and forgotten Just to place the hope that you want to remember.

Man, we've got about 90 seconds to crank out some action items and finish this one up for the next appointment here. Basic action. Can I just kick it off? By all means? Let's make something up here. If you haven't changed your price, change your price. If you haven't looked at it and taken action, or if you have looked at it and haven't taken action, please take the action. Please, please, please. I beg of you. Listen to these last three episodes again 200, 201, 202. Screw it. 198, 199. Do this whole week again, this weekend. Really listen to it and analyze your situation and let us know where you're falling short of this simple process we've given you to dominate this field. You can do it. Make the list. Here's the shit that isn't working. Make the list All. Star Joe, do you have anything? I do All right.

So the All Star action is going to be a mental exercise that I want you guys to go through, because a lot of times we have this fear based scarcity mentality which is, if I raise it to this, even though I acknowledge this is what a profitable level is other people are going to undercut me and get the jobs. Excuse us again. With us, I'm going to dismiss everyone, for here this year is actually Teil Janema. We haven't been online for a while. Title 2021 again is, sadly, mood это ringtone. So we're just working from the beginning now. Also, I want you guys to remember this next show Tempable. Two inches of hair lines. Yup, that's a hiçé. Now, that's a fear-based thought, but I want to almost lean into it. To really make the point. Let's say let them take all the jobs, because what ends up happening? Your competition takes all the unprofitable jobs, works themselves to the bone, doesn't make a profit and then, as a result, serves your client at a worse level. You raising your price often removes you from getting the bulk of work, but those you do get, you have the intention, the time, the mental reserve and the energy to truly serve, not just do the work serve, if you think about it from the 30,000-foot view that we like to stand on. If you did this and exactly what you said was going to happen, that would still be in your best interest, because now the people you do get really get to be wowed, and those are the referrals that bring you more of the same.

There you have it. Stop undermining your business. You're an electric printer, not a concession. This has been episode 202 of Electric Pinner Secrets. Here for you to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. We'll see you guys again next week. Thanks, joe, can't wait to see you soon.