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Nov. 14, 2024
Ep 12 - Scaling a 7-Figure culture with David naples
Imagine scaling your electrical business to generate $3.7 million a year with just 10 service vans. In our latest episode, we sit down with David Naples, a seasoned electrician and the visionary owner of Expert Wire in Delaware, who shares how he turned a childhood trauma into a thriving company focused on safety and satisfaction. Learn how a remarkable team culture, highlighted through an AI-crafted music video, doubles as a powerful marketing tool, showcasing the camaraderie and innovative spirit of his team.
Immerse yourself in the strategies that revolutionized David's operations, from ride-along training for apprentices to embracing technology with a cutting-edge app-based material ordering system. Discover how efficient material management and custom van shelving have drastically improved storage space and productivity, setting a new standard for service businesses. By fostering an environment where team feedback is not just welcomed but essential, David has created a workplace where innovation and collaboration flourish, attracting top talent in an evolving industry.
We also explore the transformative role of gratitude and personal development in achieving both personal and professional growth. Inspired by influential figures like Tony Robbins, David shares how starting each day with gratitude and ending with affirmations can enhance a positive mindset. Drawing on concepts from Dan Sullivan's "The Gap and the Gain," we focus on celebrating progress over perfection, helping you foster a cycle of continuous growth and positivity in your own life.
Transcript
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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.
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I'm Joseph Lucani and, together with my co-host, Clay Neumeier, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians sell over a million dollars from a single service van.
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Now it's time for sales, it's time for scale, it's time to become a million dollar electrician.
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Hello and welcome back Again.
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We've got a great guest with us in David Naples.
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David's been doing some magnificent stuff over on the east side of the world, the us.
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David, where are you again, brother?
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delaware delaware.
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I love delaware.
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I haven't been.
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Joe, have you been to delaware?
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can't say that I have, but it's right near where I am in new york here's what I love about delaware expert wires.
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There, david, how long have you been doing the expert wire thing now?
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Uh 21 years david brings some incredible experience, guys.
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We're super excited to talk to him and unpack some stuff, currently doing about 3.7 million a year out of uh, roughly 10 vans in the field.
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Is that right, david?
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Correct, awesome, and what most intrigued me to have you on this show.
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Honestly, man, can I be honest for a moment, guys?
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I would hope you would be.
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If you found David Naples on Facebook right now, you're also going to find a cover photo of him with some of his staff, and they did a music video.
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I love this story, dave.
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Will you tell us a bit about how this came together and why you decided to do a music video with your team?
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You try to make little videos for social media all the time, but we also take the video and use it for B-roll for television commercials.
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And my marketing expert his name is Mark he came to me with an idea and said, hey, what if we took this video and plugged it into AI and created a song?
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And so he actually did all of that on his own, did all the backend work, came back to me and presented me with a song, and I mean, ai wrote the lyrics, ai wrote the music, made the sound.
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It was 100% AI.
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He turned it over to me and said I think you should make a music video.
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And so I turned around and asked some of our team members if they would participate in that.
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And, and luckily we got some people who were, who were all about it, and and we did it and it was a blast.
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So and that's the piece, if I can say that's not AI like.
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Your team willingly participated in this and I mentioned before before, before the podcast, we literally I brought this up in class, I think twice now and I've showed that picture where culture comes up and people talk about recruitment and retention right attrition the opposite of that, obviously the deep, dark word there.
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But ultimately my question to them was like okay, imagine this is you.
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You're doing a music video with your team.
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What would your culture have to be like?
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What would their commitment have to be like?
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What would that trust and that friendship have to look like for them to want to be in a music video and be plastered on your marketing for that effort?
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And so I wanted to acknowledge that man and congratulate you on building such a strong culture.
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Oh, thank you, it's, it's, it's definitely a team like and that, and that's probably goes into why why you know why we were able to do that is because it's it's definitely a contribution of of all of our people working together to do that.
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So Awesome man, awesome, really strong Joe, I feel like I haven't included you yet much.
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Man, I'm so sorry.
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How are you doing today?
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I'm doing great.
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I'm just sitting back appreciating David's awesome Chromedome.
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What can I say?
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It just happened, yesterday too it did?
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You know what I mean?
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I got a fresh shave.
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I thought I was going to be better, but no, it looked like he came more prepared than I did.
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So what can I say?
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When we fresh shave, I thought I was going to be better, but no, it looked like he came more prepared than I did.
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So what can I say?
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When we interviewed josh he used?
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What did he say?
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He was using a special tool.
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Do you remember what it was called, joe?
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Um, it's a new kind of shaver and it even had like a buffer like a flush.
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It was like a flush wash or something like, something like that yeah, I don't know that makes it sound like maybe it washes and cuts.
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Anyways, we'll get topic.
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But we keep finding ourselves in interview situations where I'm outnumbered.
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Well, until you join us.
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The bald brotherhood is greater than the hair.
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Until you join us man Just take it off Just shave it.
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Just shave it.
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Enjoy your hair while you have it.
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Enjoy it while you have it.
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I'm thinning a little in the back.
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I don't show that too often, I, and I try to hide it with the whole the flip back.
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Anyways, gents David, you said 21 years, man super pumped for you to have come this far you started from scratch.
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Then expert wire, was it yours right from the ground up?
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Yep, so my, my partner, which is actually my ex-wife we started together.
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We're still still partners today, and so so, when I was five years old, my family lost their home to an electrical fire, and so that that essentially sparked my passion for providing that sought after electrical safety to our customers, and so that's that's kind of the focus of our company is providing, you know, electrical safety and quality service to our customers with total happiness.
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Did you, like back then, decide that you were going to start an electrical company?
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At what point was that pivot?
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I can't imagine a five-year-old throwing a burnt truck to the ground and being like I'm going to prevent this for other people.
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When did you decide that you were going to rally behind this cause?
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Certainly not at that time.
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So I guess, really, when I was 17, a friend of mine who worked for an electrical company got me, got me hired with his company and as we went, as I went through the apprenticeship, I got my license the year before I graduated school.
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Wife at the time, she, she you know, was she was a stay at home mom and she, she encouraged me to work together you know us to work together to create the business and, and so that was what we did and it was kind of, to be honest, our reason and and and passion for what we're doing kind of developed over time.
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I don't I don't think you necessarily have to have that right off the bat.
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You kind of focus in on it and now it's crystal clear.
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I would say it's been crystal clear for quite some time.
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But at first.
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No, it definitely was not I think it's pretty cool, though, regardless, because you're solving a very specific problem that everyone worries about having.
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No one likes to use the fire word when it comes to electric, because everyone thinks it's like a scare tactic, and obviously we don't want to scare our customers, but being able to say like I've been there and I never want anyone else to be there and that's why I've poured my heart into this, so that no one has to experience what I've experienced, gives you such a level of credibility and authenticity that I can imagine people rallying to you, both customers and employees, for that specific relatability, and I think this is really, really amazing, and I wanted to showcase that or highlight it.
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Thank you, you're welcome.
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Yeah, I agree.
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It's really tough to talk about safety without pushing that button, isn't it?
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I love that you tie your story into that.
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Is there a way that your guys speak to that too, or do you put that in your marketing?
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Like, how do you share your story to be part of your brand currently?
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So like five years ago, we definitely had a campaign around around that.
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That was kind of told you the story that I just said and kind of explain that and it is, it's on our website and our about us section and of explain that and it is.
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it's on our website and our about us section and stuff like that.
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But I mean, we don't focus on that.
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Like you said, it's, we're not trying to scare people, but we are trying to make sure that we go in and do a thorough evaluation, find out what, what, what, how we can best serve the customer, including their, their safety issues, but also what they want, need and be able to serve them in that way.
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I love that.
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I love that, and this is your mascot behind you right?
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Yes.
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I think you also have like a stuff somewhere, anywhere handy, that you can bring back.
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Yes, yes, my girlfriend actually had this made for me.
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I love that.
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My girlfriend actually had this made for me.
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I love that we used him in a recent company thing that we did.
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We did a shopping spree and he was a part of that.
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What do you mean?
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A shopping spree?
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Will you go into some detail?
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What's the purpose of this shopping spree other than to spend your money?
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Yeah, so it's a lot of fun.
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We've done it three years in a row now and what, what?
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What it is is we typically have a have a game that's a month long game in our, in our company, with goals tied to it, where we can earn different earn points towards the shopping spree and so, and then there's different levels.
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This year we laid out four different levels that the guys could earn, and the team ended up earning the $200 level of shopping spree.
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And so what we did is we went to Home Depot and got everybody gift cards, and this year we tied in kind of a scavenger hunt to it too, which was to take selfies of some different things throughout the store, and also we added in an extra $10.
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So there was a couple of reasons for that One.
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I wanted to throw people off on the amount in case they pre-planned what they were going to buy, and so they had to do the scavenger hunt.
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And then also there was kind of another game tied to that, which was that the winner of the shopping spree was going to get a thousand dollars in cash, and that was tied to doing the shopping spree but also spending the closest to the full amount without without going over in the shortest amount of time, and so so the Mr Ed is what we call Mr Electrical Device.
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We had him hidden in there and it was a ton of fun just watching the guys look for him and while they're trying to calculate how much they spent and this and that, and just so much fun doing it.
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And actually the same guy, nate Warrington, has won three years in a row, so I think we got to shake it up a little bit next year.
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Yeah, it's fun.
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If you go on our Facebook page, there's like some 30-second teaser videos of it and yeah, they're definitely having a blast and actually that's probably our most liked video that we've ever had.
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Right now, we've got one that's got almost 450 likes on it so far, which is a lot for us, and that's under Expert Wire on Facebook, correct?
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Yeah, go and check it out.
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I'm a huge proponent of this.
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As you know, we've been massive proponents of taking responsibility for your own marketing and investing just a little bit of time at first, if you can't afford someone to help you with this, but whatever energy form you've invested in it, make sure to invest in it to put yourself out there and to help spread your, your message and your energy and your culture, and that's something that I've acknowledged about you, david, and I'll continue to.
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I've even seen you actually do videos, I think in the van right, showing the shelves around and explaining how you're going to stock it with the best materials and make sure that an electrician never has a problem when they're on site finding what they need because of the good organization.
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I mean, doesn't that speak volumes to the service electricians out there who are looking for a place to happen?
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you know, oh, yeah not even that, but like how many of us were working out of coffee cups and cardboard boxes in the back of our shot, like I I was.
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There was no argument against.
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When you first start out, you're broke as a joke.
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You do what you do, but the fact is is that you had a situation where you showed that you're a more established organization with a technician in mind like hey, you ever get frustrated and have to come back for random changing a ivory covered GFI.
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Well, we have them already stocked and they're ready to go, so you don't have to make the trip back to the shop.
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That's like really focused on the tech and I think it's really cool.
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Yeah Well, so that was actually something that I was doing, a ride along with one of the guys actually the same guy who won that shopping spree and he came up with the idea to redo all the shelves.
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Mean, I think, I think at the time, at at that time this was maybe two years ago we were averaging like two supply house trips a day per van, which is that's, that's really typically that's a nightmare, yeah it is, it is and um.
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So we put a number of things into place, including using an, an app to order material, and having the vans all set up with the shelving system that was designed by our team, and we essentially were able to create 50% more space to put stuff, and so that made it.
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So we can stock a lot more stuff and and but also organizing it.
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You know, in our shop the way we do it is, our apprentices will.
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They might ride with technician a today, but tomorrow they'll be with B and the next day they'll be with C, and this way they can get on any one of those vans and know where.
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You know, if the journeyman says, hey, go get X, y, z off the van, this technician or the apprentice knows exactly where it's at, and so it's really.
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It's improved our material efficiency, but also our time efficiency, which is huge.
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So I love that I heard a few things, Joe.
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I think I'm seeing your wheels are turning too.
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First and foremost, you're doing ride-alongs.
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Absolutely, absolutely, wow, a proven strategy to make sure that people are really on that culture, on that process and able to help them identify and improve.
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Ride-alongs are a great thing.
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I love that you do them.
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Trust that you're still doing them today, david.
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So I have a service manager in place now that does them way more often than I do, so, admittedly it's not nearly as often, as it used to be.
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I love that For me, but they're happening.
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Yes, our service manager does it three days a week.
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The thing that really stood out to me was you mentioned two things.
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One, I think, was a slip and the other was really interesting.
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I thought you said princesses first when you said apprentices.
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And the other was really interesting.
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I thought you said princesses first when you said apprentices, so I was like I was like timeout.
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What kind of position is this?
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I was like I gotta know what this means.
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But the second thing was is that it seems like you've got such a culture because it keeps coming back to it.
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Our team designed this and the team designed it with 50% more efficiency and they were the ones who brought it to your attention of doing these things.
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Like, how good is it knowing that you have people that are contributing towards the overall mission, rather than being what most business owners feel like, where they have to carry everything and lead everyone rather than have a community effort push forward?
00:15:00.692 --> 00:15:03.249
Like that's got to be a difference and how does that feel?
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Oh, it feels great.
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I, I, I've, I've definitely heard other people talk about it, but I don't want to be the smartest person in the room.
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I want people around me who have ideas and and and.
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So that's definitely a big.
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A big part is listening to your people and figuring out ways to work together in a better, more efficient way.
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I love that, yeah, really good share.
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And in a better, more efficient way.
00:15:25.009 --> 00:15:26.134
I love that, yeah, really good share.
00:15:26.134 --> 00:15:28.740
And that was going to be my next one I pulled out too Awesome.
00:15:28.740 --> 00:15:53.370
Awesome that you're taking that constructive feedback from the team and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take everything, and I'm sure this is your experience too but just listening and acknowledging that that's there and having a review where it seems to make sense could be enough to create an initiative, like David did here, and create a big change, right, and that all led to this position that started this conversation in the first place, which is well.
00:15:53.410 --> 00:15:54.894
Why don't we showcase this now?
00:15:54.894 --> 00:16:03.053
Because in my time of coming up as an electrician, I know it's like the magnetic field has swapped on the industry, right.
00:16:03.053 --> 00:16:09.274
Like we used to wonder if I was going to get a van, used to wonder what the condition of the van would be.
00:16:09.274 --> 00:16:16.460
Maybe it was like the fourth generation hand me down with with a spare tire still on the back and shelves with plywood ripped.
00:16:16.460 --> 00:16:17.202
You know what I mean.
00:16:17.202 --> 00:16:21.779
You remember that feeling, and now you get to see it before you even apply.
00:16:21.779 --> 00:16:27.827
So it's like why would I want to work for expert wire and you're putting it out there on the playing field.
00:16:27.827 --> 00:16:30.107
Man, I just really love that you do that.
00:16:30.107 --> 00:16:35.567
So can you walk us through a little other piece there, because we got into material management?
00:16:35.567 --> 00:16:36.931
But there's a whole other side.
00:16:36.931 --> 00:16:43.929
Do you mind going into a bit of how you guys are going about your restocking and some of the material management stuff at the shop?
00:16:43.929 --> 00:16:44.231
David?
00:16:44.895 --> 00:16:46.836
Yeah, yeah, sure, Sure, Um.
00:16:46.836 --> 00:16:53.188
So we were using Capital Electric, which is, uh, I think, a Sonopar company, their nationwide company.
00:16:53.188 --> 00:17:23.000
They've got an app where, um, you can order order online, and so essentially what, what we aim to do and we're not perfect with it, but we aim to have every buddy order, uh, order their restock items on a daily basis or job on job per job basis, and then that way, the next morning it's here at the shop, Basically when the technician comes in and is talking with dispatch or maybe a service manager or something like that.
00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:41.470
While that's going on, apprentices are restocking the vans, and so that that process in itself two, two, two years ago we were at 21% cost for our material and our cost of goods sold and got it down to 17% just by making that change.
00:17:42.351 --> 00:17:45.201
Wow, go ahead, joe, if you want to speak to it.
00:17:45.694 --> 00:17:53.006
Yeah, no, I'm looking at it and thinking to myself like, okay, the best thing is it doesn't sound like a huge number, like going from 23 to 17.
00:17:53.006 --> 00:18:00.303
But when you think about the scale that you're at, even a 1% change is thousands upon thousands of dollars.
00:18:00.303 --> 00:18:10.779
So for you to be adjusting and making a five to 6% positive inefficiency, that's a tremendous amount of improvement and I think that's really worth noting.
00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:14.615
Not to mention the time that we saved in amount of improvement, and I think that's really worth noting.
00:18:15.435 --> 00:18:18.734
Not to mention the time that we saved in the supply houses.
00:18:19.734 --> 00:18:42.215
I don't know what that number is off the top of my head as far as like the percentage that it improved, it's a burn time avoiding as well, because, like I don't know about you, but I know that when I would go to a supply house and I went and I saw the Klein wall and I was working on a project, there was something I was probably going to buy, right, and the thing is is that it's almost like having your orders delivered for you.
00:18:42.215 --> 00:18:45.320
It stops the impulse purchase that you would need.
00:18:45.320 --> 00:18:51.009
Or, hey, I don't have these on my van, so I'm going to buy more that I need now, that way I can have it later.
00:18:51.009 --> 00:18:51.971
It's already ready.
00:18:51.971 --> 00:18:56.387
So you're finding that the in-person impulse purchases are probably also down as well.
00:18:57.631 --> 00:18:58.775
True, true.
00:18:58.775 --> 00:19:00.040
I would imagine that's true.
00:19:00.836 --> 00:19:09.086
I want to take it a level deeper yet, if we can, because I think there's still a couple of tidbits here that we don't go in the depths of often, but they help people with some clarity.
00:19:09.086 --> 00:19:15.201
Are you using a bin system or something for materials in the shop in the morning?
00:19:15.201 --> 00:19:20.440
How do they know what materials are for the job or what materials are for the van, et cetera?
00:19:21.221 --> 00:19:22.284
Yeah, great question.
00:19:22.284 --> 00:19:31.449
So we have one guy who's our trade administrator or material manager and his job is to get all this stuff set up.
00:19:31.449 --> 00:19:49.619
So he's got, and our property here is very small we're on a third of an acre is our total lot here and so we've got kind of storage containers or, yeah, like shipping containers is our warehouse essentially and in those containers we've got shelves set up.
00:19:49.619 --> 00:20:10.196
Where the shelf is for van, you know, whatever van number it is, this shelf belongs to that van and so the guys can go in our material manager will assign, all, put all those material on the specific shelves so that they can know quickly who's good as to what van Did.
00:20:10.237 --> 00:20:10.980
I answer that question.
00:20:11.434 --> 00:20:12.277
Yeah, yeah for sure.
00:20:12.277 --> 00:20:15.065
No, that helps Paints a much more vivid picture.
00:20:15.065 --> 00:20:23.112
I know it's easy to breeze over and we kind of have assumptions about what others know, but just keeping in mind that we've got people listening who are starting out their first day of business.
00:20:23.112 --> 00:20:29.369
We've got people that have been 10, 20 years like yourself in business doing millions already, so it's good to just paint the picture.
00:20:29.369 --> 00:20:42.478
You mentioned apprentices a few times not princesses, but apprentices and there's an ongoing conversation about that ratio in a service business.
00:20:42.478 --> 00:20:45.284
It sounds like you've got a number of apprentices.
00:20:45.284 --> 00:20:53.746
Do you have an opinion on how many apprentices you should have or what you guys like to run with in your experience, um, to be able to help with these units?
00:20:54.346 --> 00:21:02.471
great question I would say whatever the maximum that you can possibly take on at a time is is what you should have, because that's your farm.
00:21:02.471 --> 00:21:35.762
You're farming up the next generation of electricians, creating, creating the next service techs, um, and so for us it's a it, it's two apprentices for every three journeymen, and so kind of my reasoning for that is that if we have some techs that call out sick or go on vacation or something like that, I don't want to have apprentices, not have someone to go work with, but at the same time I want to have as many as I could possibly be training up at a time that we can I want to shift gears and I want to ask a bit about your journey, if we can.
00:21:37.267 --> 00:21:37.606
Sounds good.
00:21:38.494 --> 00:21:41.561
You said you're at about 3.7 million per year.
00:21:41.561 --> 00:21:42.644
Humbly, I mean.
00:21:42.644 --> 00:21:43.086
You see him.
00:21:43.086 --> 00:21:44.797
You come across a very humble guy.
00:21:44.797 --> 00:21:46.161
You've delegated a lot.
00:21:46.161 --> 00:21:51.683
It sounds like a great organization that you're happy just being the brand ambassador and leading these guys.
00:21:51.683 --> 00:21:57.847
Has it always been, right from day one, kind of this million dollar plus company?
00:21:57.847 --> 00:22:02.807
Was there a journey to the first million that you recall like, distinctly standing out?
00:22:02.807 --> 00:22:05.443
Could you shed some light on what their earlier days looked like?
00:22:09.484 --> 00:22:11.450
Oh yeah, yeah, it was.
00:22:11.450 --> 00:22:13.494
It was-year overnight success, right, yeah.
00:22:13.494 --> 00:22:24.611
So the first, at 10 years in, I was sitting in my bankruptcy attorney's office getting ready to file.
00:22:24.611 --> 00:22:29.507
I mean, I had gotten off the path of doing service and got into the new construction.
00:22:29.507 --> 00:22:37.967
That obviously didn't work out very well, knock on wood, I never did file bankruptcy, but we were there.
00:22:37.967 --> 00:22:46.961
I was to the point where vehicles repossessed A year of not making a mortgage payment.
00:22:46.961 --> 00:22:48.205
My house was about to be taken.
00:22:49.276 --> 00:23:14.997
I think I scraped together a thousand dollars, had a really good friend of mine, actually a mentor, helped me out with a pickup truck, got me back on the road and we really and that was that mentor was kind of the one who directed me to get really focused on service and said, well, man, you gotta, you gotta put together the plan and stuff, and, and so I would say from probably 2013 to 2018, was, was grind.
00:23:15.357 --> 00:23:28.939
I mean, at least, at least the first, at least three years was working 80 to a hundred hour weeks and that was 40 to 60 hours in the field and then coming back and doing 40 hours of office time.
00:23:28.939 --> 00:23:30.843
I built my own website.
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I built all the systems and processes and stuff.
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