EP 157 - The Power Behind the Brand: Exploring Generator Options

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Electric Pernur Secrets, the Electricians podcast. It is Friday, joe, as I wanted to tell you. I was trying to say backstage, as it reminds me of Fly Day, something that I don't do anymore, but if you're listening and you're still experiencing Fly Days, then I feel for you, brother, I'm happy you're here and maybe we can help you out of that. Joe, you know what I'm talking about when I say Fly Day.

It's not ringing a bell, but hey, I am all ears because I'm sure there are people listening right now that are going tell me what a Fly Day is All right or get life knowledge.

There is a huge population of electricians who are used to flying in and out of remote projects, and it's one of the most defeating feelings I've ever experienced as a grower, as someone who wants to do great things but had to put my time in to earn enough to feed my family, put a roof over her head, put food on the table, et cetera. It's a project lifestyle. It's not one that I overly miss. If you're there and you love it, hey kudos, glad you're here anyway. But if you're on your way out, we're here for you and I can't wait to help you out of that situation, because it's like being one of the herd, joe, and it's like having the bells ringing around your neck and just feel like cattle and that number, number 1,172,. Are you ready for your camp stay?

Oh God, that sounds so demoralizing because I feel like electricians as a whole. We're proud people Like we really are. We're like. We are incredibly educated, usually very driven, logic and process oriented. We don't want to be treated like cattle. We're like. No, we all think we're smarter than someone else, which, for better or worse, may or may not be the case, but regardless, putting us in the cattle car is not going to get it done.

Definitely so for my brothers who are still experiencing fly day, and you're here with us. Guess what? We're back again fifth day of the week this week. Anyway, to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service, if you haven't made that connection yet. Basically, what we've done is helped electricians build awesome businesses and support them in their business ventures, and I enjoy the shit out of it, joe. How about you?

I absolutely love it as well. There's a certain thing that I've always associated with. Do you remember the first time you ever did a panel like the first time you did a crisp, nice looking conduit job where it's like everything is bent perfect, and you see it and you're like you know what. We know the feeling we're talking about right.

Oh yeah, I was a conduit guy for a bit, so that was my thing.

That's how I feel when we help a business, because you start with something and you're like, okay, I didn't know what it looked like before, but afterwards we swept aside the sawdust and we helped change the closure and we put the great word behind it and the conduit's been nice and now they've got a system with so p's and sales process and positive morale and I can step back and say we did that, we helped, and it's the same feeling I get after doing a job, so that's how I know we're doing the right thing.

Hundred percent and forgive me for plugging it, but this week especially like we had a huge program relaunch. We put so much work in in the last forty five days. In fact, behind the scenes folks, I was literally showing joe after just having worked so hard on this big relaunch. Now we're able to really promote bronze package again, where it's more of a d I y option for electricians, where you can just have the book on how to build a premium service electrical business, get off this first floor, can automate the sales offer and marketing part of your business, really nailing that stuff down. And what we found was we quickly looked at my journal. What was like forty six days ago, man, or it was like. This is what it looks like. And I had penciled notes from a ferry ride I had with no cell service, and we just brought that to life. And I'm so proud of this team for doing that your self included, obviously, for being such a beautiful brain man and bringing all of your collective of knowledge is the sales bot, everything that you've designed, but also as the team we've built, who have just gone all in with us and continue to stay all in with us and support electricians. Man, I just couldn't be prouder.

Ma, I mean honestly, it means the world to hear that thank you, because I am super proud of what we built as well and you gotta give yourself some credit for it as well. You know, I remember if I can pitch it. One additional thing we talked about like the benefit of leadership and guiding things, and I'm so happy to be the first made on the ship because I know that we are going to take people places with us. Can't wait to see the look on their face when they see the horizon, because it's gonna be full vision and values.

I should do the post this week on this, and it wasn't a bragging post, it was about just showing our growth and how far we've come already in just nine months really, from start up to here. There's some really good evidence for what we're doing and that growth, and I actually made a list of the ten things and there were a few that really top the list and I know this isn't the topic today, but it's friday, I'm feeling good, I'm celebrating and I would love to share kind of the top few, if that makes sense please buy lanes go for it Present, not perfect. That has been huge for us. We've talked about it almost every day of the week for nine months. We always say, we continue to say and I think one of the biggest reasons why it's so important is because we're electricians and we love to perfect shit. When you focus on perfection, there's that law of diminishing returns somewhere after the eighty percent and it just you start spending more and more time to get less and less result. So why not just show up, get uncomfortable and be resilient in sticking with it until you are comfortable and then push it again?

I'm with you there. I grew with you hundred percent on that.

Massive, bright. The other thing I think we've done really well is where we've needed help. We've got coaches. We hire coaches. We have coaches that help us in the areas where we weren't comfortable, where we're trying to grow. Why try to figure it out ourselves? Success love speed, and speed loves to know what's worked already, what is already worked for other people. I'm so proud to say that we have coaches to. We're not the coaches that don't have coaches. Telling you you need a coach is quite the opposite.

I love that one I agree with you completely. I think it's really great to think about. We don't want to be hypocrites with this. You know everyone needs someone, and including us. We're not gurus, we're just people who want to help in the best ways we know how.

In the last one. I want to throw it there on this, brother. I appreciate that feedback is like the vision and the values how important it is to have a roadmap. Nowhere we're going collectively as a team, but share the values as a team. Only bring people on the, share those values and truly put value ahead of monetary Rewards. We actually do that. We turn people away when it's not a fit, even when they've got a good check, they got a working visa. It's not worth it to us to compromise this winner circle, this culture we've built with our client team, with our service loop staff team, and any of this winner circle for someone that doesn't fit, who has a big bank account balance, hasn't been worth. It won't be worth it and I love that we hold true to that.

I think it's one of our biggest Take a ways from what's been helping us succeed yeah, I guess a good way of describing it is you can't buy your way in, but you can earn your way in.

I love that. I love that. Okay, sorry to take us down that rabbit hole, man, I had to share that because I am just so proud. Obviously, I want to finish this generator topic for everyone this week, and there was actually a question that came up on the last episode from Drew that we didn't get to answer.

Oh sweet, let's get into it.

Turns out Drew said we were horny and he was happy about that. Some other words were in there too, but turns out that was auto correct. He meant honest. He meant to say honest. He said horny. So Drew does not think we're horny on the show. I just want to reinforce that, Joe.

Well, I'm good, I'm glad, I'm glad to have the vote of confidence.

But he did ask on your preference between generator types, vendors, and I think he referenced Kohler as thinking maybe that was your preference. Do you have a preference and would you explain why?

Sure, I'd be more than happy to so. By the way disclaimer we are not sponsored by anyone. Therefore, I'm going to give you my honest opinion based on the things I've worked with and the situations I've experienced. So the three brands that I worked with was Kohler, generac and Champion. The three brands all serve specific niches, Like there's a particular type of customer for each type of system, and we would design them accordingly. Kohler is my preferred. The reason why Kohler is my preferred is because I both went to Wisconsin to see the Generac facilities as well as the ones in Wisconsin for the Kohler facility. The thing was is that the Kohler facility they all made it by, like you can just tell is a well made product, and when we had Generac concerns, unfortunately, the warranty was not as amazing. It really wasn't as good. The main thing that separated it, though, was that Generac used to be this amazing quality brand, right. Like I remember when I first started with Generator I think my first January was like 2011 or something like that and Generac was the brand. The problem was, during Hurricane Sandy, what we found was that there was a such a massive demand on generators that people physically could not make them fast enough to keep up with the demand. Kohler didn't ramp up its production because it maintained its quality. Generac increased its quantity to meet the demand, which I cannot blame them for as a business, but as a dealer in those times we were finding the amount of actual problems that came from it Like, oh, just manufacturer defects, or this happened or that happened, or fault code. There was a much larger amount of fault that happened in that timeline, so we made the transition out. Lastly, was the reason why we wanted to go against Generac was because they initiated something known as the mobile link. The mobile link was a mobile notification system that allowed the customer to get a notification if the generator was faulted. Sounds like a brilliant idea and I'm totally for it. So we sold a ton of them and installed them. The problem was we didn't realize that the mobile link would actually go and notify multiple dealers beyond us that there was a customer that had a fault, and here's their contact information for you to be in contact with. So you know how my whole stick is. Get in with service and then you can continue on the relationship. Imagine doing the installation, trying to set yourself up for service, but then having some other company show up to your customer that you marketed to, because the manufacturer said hey, you should be getting three quotes on this for this repair.

Wow. So that's insane. And not to mention, the customer is now bombarded every time there's a fault.

In addition to that, they would also mail them promotions. So they would be like hey, if you give your dealer this flyer, generac is now honoring a free 10 year warranty, and the problem was is it wasn't something we still had to pay for. It was like the customer is not paying for it. We, the dealer, are paying for it. So, though the product isn't bad, I'm not saying that it is a poor quality product. It's not bad at all. But as a premium service provider, if you're trying to install the best, that was for me Kohler. I saw them in torture tests side by side. I was a GenRack specialist. I'd been to GenRack classes year after year after year. It was my unit I serviced the most, but we would install more Kohlers because that's what we wanted to leave with our clients. Now, lastly, champion not a bad brand. It's really not. I don't have bad things to say about it. But we got into Champion strictly because we wanted to have an economy model to offer, and when we started as a dealer there, they were just this up and coming new thing that was trying to break into the automatic market, and I wanted to at least say we can work with this level if you want premium, if you want mid-range, we have this. If you have economy, we have this. So hopefully GenRack doesn't come from me now that I just out of them, but I wanted to give my honest feedback on product that I experienced and tested in the field.

And even so, you still marketed all three, though right, correct Intended, and I wanted to encourage your ability and your process to then actually be able to offer your preferred installation to clients. Is that also right?

Yeah, can I talk about that?

There's a bit of genius behind this that I just love to talk about.

All right, so we would have on our vans Kohler and GenRack, right. But I was very intentional on what side of the vans they were. The GenRack logo was always on the driver side passenger door. The reason being is, when we would pull into the driveway, the customer would likely be looking at your van as you're pulling in. They're looking at you, they're following you, they're not looking at the truck, so their eyes would almost always be drawn to the GenRack logo. Genrack has such a popular brand. Genrack is almost generator. People have associated the two, almost like Xerox is the compere, right. So we would go to the door and people would be like, oh, you do generators. And now we had the opportunity for something to be brought up and I could always ask okay, well, yeah, are you looking for a GenRack or are you looking for a generator? What do you mean? Well, they're not always the same, so hopefully I'm not going too far into it, but yes, there is specific marketing style. I love that. I love that.

And I think you mentioned before too with the champion. You never actually installed a champion, but being a dealer allowed you to have an into service. If you found someone who had installed their own champion or had some tank top Terry, do it for them.

That's correct. And, once again, it's not a bad product, it's just an economy grade product and I will never fault someone for the means that they can afford. So if you want service, I'll service it, because then I'm now in as your electrician and maybe I'm servicing your champion generator, but next year I'm installing your Tesla charger, who knows. But at least I'll be your guy and I'll have the opportunity to build that relationship of like, trust and respect.

Love it, man. Some great generator secrets there. Let me ask you this Give back to our main topic. Portable or automatic? Oh, portable 100%, why?

Okay, so people might look at this as a little bit of a weird topic. Right, because automatics are appeared to be this far superior thing, right, you lose power. They look nicer. They look nicer they have, you know, the bigger tickets. Like all of us as business owners would be like oh, I want to move more automatics. But I believe that I am so much better when it comes to creating differentiation in portables than I could as an automatic person that if you gave me a portable customer versus portable customer, I could outwin almost every time.

First an automatic customer. I think that was a misfit. So a portable versus an automatic customer you feel you'd win the portable every time.

No, let me explain it different. Actually, I meant what I said, but I can explain more about it. I'm sorry I missed it. That's okay If you are a portable customer, meaning that you're in the market for a portable generator and you call two providers and one electrician offers you a portable and I offer you a portable. I am certain that I will win the job. I see what you're saying Because, if you think about it, the options with portable are far more customizable and you have so much more because framework, like, give me some examples of some product that I could use, of course, yeah, let's hit it All right. So when you think about a portable generator, I talk about Hurricane Sandale a lot because it was eye-opening for so many people. One of the biggest concerns was that people were having their portable generators stolen. They would pretty much the thieves would come in the middle of the night, take a cheap, shitty lawn mower, rip it, turn your generator off, put it in a trailer and drive away with it. You wouldn't know about it, because it'd be two in the morning. You'd hear the generator running or so you thought in the back would be a problem. But because people didn't experience it, because I mean, unless you experienced it personally, how would you know about that?

Yeah, how would you?

Our customers had experienced things like that. So, because I'd seen it so frequently, we designed the anti-theft anchoring system. So it would literally be a concrete poured foundation underground with a metal rebar hook. That would be along lines of saying hey, I understand your concern with portable, as your words own might steal it. That's why I'd installed an anti-theft anchoring system for you. That way you can physically chain your system to this and it's going to be right near where the inlet is and in some situations you can even park it outside, keep it running there overnight with it charged and connected, and the thief, if they wanted to take it, are they going to go out with a sawzall or a bolt cutter? I mean they could, but wouldn't it be a deterrent? Especially if you got well lit lighting that I'm installing for you and you've got an alarm. That's there.

Yep, yep, for sure, and we've touched on that before. I mean, thieves too are people of opportunity and looking for what's easy. Easy come, easy go right. They don't want to work for that, otherwise they'd go cut some catalytic converters off or something, right yeah or go scrap an AC system.

I mean, like there's so many things you can do or even battery backup lighting. Like, if you think about it, battery backup lighting wouldn't really apply for an automatic generator, because within 15 seconds it should be powered back on, but with a portable it's not going to be powered on until I go out there and press the button or activate it. So I now have the option of saying has any other electrician mentioned backup lighting for you? Huh, I wonder why they didn't do that. Maybe they didn't know about it. That's okay. Who do you feel would be a better fit to work on this? Someone who specializes in or someone who might just do it on the side?

Nice, nice. So where do the auto gens fit in your arsenal, then, and how would you leverage those, like you did the portable, even though they weren't your favorite?

So on a Manics, you would leverage in a little bit of a different way, because the generator itself was the solid product but you had to tailor the service around it. So what I mean by that is this People knew they were already $10,000 plus. Like you didn't walk into an automatic generator costumer and they'd be like it's more than $2,000? What now? Like they knew it was a certain amount, but what they often didn't know was the maintenance and the service required to upkeep it, that you need to make sure you have a fuel source, like a consistently charged fuel source, a lot of times dedicated fuel source. They didn't know it needed frequent maintenance on a yearly basis, or that if it ran for more than 36 hours, that you would have a potential oil fall time. So what we would do was we made the service agreement so turnkey and so robust and so easy that it would be like, okay, I provide the generator directly from the manufacturer, it doesn't show up in your driveway, I bring it with me. We're going to offer multi-year service agreements that you have to do absolutely nothing. We're going to be monitoring it. So if there's a fault it'll come to us. We're going to do all the permits, all the inspections, all the utility coordination. We're going to coordinate with your propane provider and we're going to get you a dedicated tank. We're going to make sure it's fueled and we're going to shop the markets. You get the best tank too. Then we're going to offer you every enhancement like. It's not going to fail when it goes under zero degrees, it's not going to ever risk a back feed under certain circumstances, or, if it does, it's got the electrons protection available. We're waxing it, we're elevating it so that there's no flood danger. You can tell it just builds and builds right. Yeah, totally. In addition, there's an aesthetic factor to it. People look at them and say what kind of client buys an automatic? The kind who has more money than they? Have the fear. The investment is offset by the amount of fear I have. Well, if you can equalize that fear, they're now comfortable. But if you can now make this thing now beautiful, now it's an enhancement beyond it. Now it's an upgrading investment into the home. So things like let's have a cobblestone pathway to it, let's have beautiful landscaping around it, let's make sure that when we install it in the front, that all the gas piping is painted and the conduit is buried so you don't see it, and that there's a mesh fence around it For all you generator guys. The mesh fence would be within the three feet around it and it would be air permissible, so wouldn't choke the engine. Don't crucify me, but there are things you can do to make it look beautiful. So if it's beautiful and it's functional and it prevents fear, there's no reason why this customer wouldn't at least choose one of your options.

Exciting stuff, man. I love it. And with that we're also running out of time already for this week, if you can believe that. Generator City man, I know we got you excited about this. You've got a couple more action items you can peel out of this one. Do you want them?

both again. Oh yeah, Send me out, man, I love it. All right, let's go. So I'd say the basic action. What would be a good basic action for this? Probably I would say the yesterday our action was can you be familiar enough with the product? I'd say the basic action is which one do you want to sell Really? Just, do you have a preference yourself? If you have the choice of doing a portable owner automatic, do you know which one you'd prefer? I'd say that needs to be the bare minimum. The reason why I'm starting that as the bare minimum is because it's going to tie with the all star action. The all star is, if you not only know which one you want, can you then back it up by the data of which is most financially profitable and which one requires the least amount of work that goes into it? Because if you know that portables are a higher profit or if you know that automatics create a longer lifetime relationship, you can then position yourself to specialize in one or the other. I prefer portables, which is why I'm so sharp when it comes to those options. It doesn't mean I'm not doing automatics, but you have your preference and you know where the target is you're trying to reach. If you don't know where the scoreboard is, or you can't even see the target on the wall, how are you going to know how to best hit it?

Valid point man Really powerful.

Awesome, so I think that counts for a good action assignment for today.

I think so Slam dunk Big week brother In just under 25 minutes for another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, episode 149. 157 of the Electricians podcast. Here to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Again, we're just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, committed to serving you at the highest level. Guys, I wish you the best weekend and we cannot wait to see you again next week on Electricpreneurs Secrets. See you all Monday.