Ep 166 - Mental Equity Millionaire Electrician

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where we help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. I'm your host, clay Neumeier. With me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph the Salesbot, lucani. Joe, how the hell are you my brother?

It's a great day Like it has been a really, really, really great day, even though it's cold as hell in New York. I am a happy man. I love what I do. I love my family, love my kids, love my wife, love my partner. I'm feeling it today. It's a good day for gratitude. What?

about you. Love and the grace. Love and the grace yeah, doing pretty good, man doing really good. I'm still stuck on the expression you used earlier what do you say in New York when it's really cold? Oh my.

God yeah. So for everyone who's listening, I apparently went a little too slang with Clay because I said, clay, it's mad brick out. And I was like wait what? And I was like it's brick, it's really brick out. And it was like you mean, you're playing basketball, it's like no, I'm not throwing bricks, it is brick. And I realized that anyone who's lived near New York City understands what I'm saying and I forget that that language doesn't translate to other parts of the country or out of the country per se.

It's Bebo language, man Shooting bricks. You don't even get to rim. It's just too much weight you can't make it. Are you from New York? If you're with us right now, are you in New York State? Do you also say this, or is it just Joe? Is it actually a thing?

It's brick out. It's actually a thing. In addition, going further, saying something is mad is the same way as saying something is very so. You say it is mad brick, it is very cold.

It's funny that you're having to translate this to me.

I know.

I'm the father of a teenage daughter and I'm hoping that she's not saying mad, brick a little bit.

I mean, I guess it's one of those things where everyone has their own slang, but you don't often realize it's slang until you say it to someone outside of your state. You're like why are you not following me? Am I saying the wrong? Oh, I am saying this is slang. I apologize, it's cold out, sir. So there you go.

That's funny man. That's funny Moving on, because I got some mad brick news here. I need to apologize. I have to apologize to our listeners and our viewers. If you're catching us on Facebook on the Electroponers Secrets Group, you are in the right crowd and thank you for engaging justins with us today. But if you prefer to listen on the podcast streams, I can't blame you. That was the whole point of having a podcast and yesterday, between me and our team, we dropped the ball and didn't upload it. Oh my gosh, oh boy, that's crazy. We went through the work of doing it. We didn't put it on the servers, so we've just done it now. Guys, you can get caught up on that from yesterday's episode If you were with us or if not, you'll be able to listen to all the great advice we had. Yesterday it was a fire session. Wait, if brick's cold, what's fire?

Fire is just good. Fire translates to that is very good.

Okay, so mad fire session yesterday on Electric Burner Secrets, with us talking again through this concept, this topic of who do you hire first. And Joe mentioned something really important. We're going to dive a bit deeper into it today mental equity, and that's why this episode is called Mental Equity, millionaire Electrician, and I've got some great examples. But why don't you dive in and kind of reiterate for us Sure, what the hell is mental equity and why do I care?

Okay. So I'm going to try and make an abstract concept a little bit more tangible. So forgive me if I go in a bit of a circle, but I'm going to try my best to make it clear. So all of us understand what financial equity is, where you say I have a surplus of a particular asset, therefore you have equity in that asset, right, but few of us acknowledge that we also have internal equity, whether that spiritual or emotional or mental or physical, you can store up good in you and then you can leverage that for further successes. Or you can let something drain that equity and then you end up running on fumes. So let's explain a little bit further what that means. If you have a strong amount of mental equity, that means that you're less likely to be shaken by the day-to-day things because you can give what you have. But if you have no mental equity, when situations come to face you you can't give away what you do not have. So if you don't have kindness stored in you, when situations happen you will respond angrily because you're living off fumes. Or if you go to try and handle a customer situation, maybe this customer rubs you the wrong way that day If you don't have a storehouse of patience. You snap with the client and now you end up going in the wrong direction. So what we should be doing as a whole, as business owners, isn't just stockpiling money, but equaling out that money with the mental equity required to properly manage it and our lives.

Right man, valid, valid, valid. And I just can't help but say man, if you're snapping at your customers, that is mad brick, oh my.

God, you're going to keep using that.

We're going to play with this the entire episode.

Oh God, what have I done you?

don't snap at your customers. It's not good, it's not conducive, and I used this analogy yesterday. I want to help everyone listening out with this, if I can. I don't see your business as flat as a five-star review does. Here's what I mean by this. I would prefer to view your business as a stock in the stock market. Okay, hear me out for a second.

I must admit, you got me, got my attention.

It's easy to say, okay, well, we got a four-star or a five-star review or anything in between and what that means for our business, but what it actually does is overlooks all the minor little mental equity pieces that go into each and every step, that go into that five-star review or go into why we got a one-star review, and so it doesn't properly acknowledge all the moving parts of the machine. Here's where I like about the stock analysis. Instead, if I don't answer the phone, does my stock go up a penny or down a penny?

It goes down, and probably more than a penny, if you're not answering the phone.

Just like the time coins. Let's play with pennies for a minute, though Makes sense.

I'm following.

If I'm so busy and I don't have an office administrator or manager or CSR to help us with that and we're missing calls and only answering a few, would it be fair to say that every call I miss adds to the annoyance that a homeowner is facing right now Exactly? And would they then be less likely to refer to us or call us for future endeavors if we didn't connect and make that right?

Yeah, and a really good example of this is have you ever gotten a call? Go to voicemail or go to an answering service and say your call is very important to us? We're experiencing higher than normal call volume. You are second in line, like you just hear it, and you're like you are not answering more calls than normal. You are not already on the phone with someone else, so you already feel bad and we're less likely to refer them out of that frustration.

That is brick Joe, that is solid brick, so brick You're killing me.

You are killing me. I love you, but you're bringing it.

It's east to west. Now Brick's coming to Vancouver too, oh God Listen. So, following this analogy, every time we pick up the phone, every time we answer with a smile, every time we have these little minor things adding up, it's adding a penny to your stock. It's another person that had a moment of good experience. So you made them feel something other than what Joe just described, right, which was like I did this, like nails on a chalkboard to me. God, don't give me an answering machine, please, don't answer the phone and say can you hold please? Oh my God, is there anything worth Like? Does anyone understand customer service? I think that every time it happens to me. So we can either go all year with this phone call problem and be lose a penny, lose a penny, lose a penny, lose a penny. Next thing, you know your entire market's kind of fed up with trying to call you. Your entire market's fed up with the patience of waiting for your communications, or we can go the other way and keep in mind at some point there's no basement here, people just stop. There's no more calls, guys, there's no more faith, there's no more market. You literally need a brand and a management change and a miracle to bring that back to life. Or we go the other way and we put in these systems and we put in the people in our business and this three-dimensional experience to continue to rise. A penny, rise, a penny rise, a penny, five-star reviews, another penny and over time you become the most valuable home service electrician in your market as a stock. And your people, your stakeholders, which include your clients and your staff and your managers and everyone, your family and the people that support your business All of them are stakeholders to a valuable stock. Does that make sense, joe?

It really does. And I love the fact that we're also highlighting how your staff and your clients, and even their connected families, share as stockholders. Because, if you think about it, let's say you have a family member who you know not everyone has the closest family but they want to refer you. They're not going to refer you if they're like oh yeah, you should go with service electrical. Oh, I don't know about those guys. I tried calling them before. I heard they just don't answer. I mean, if they hear that more than once, are they going to keep referring you? No, so it reduces their equity too. So I want to keep our net strong and our platform even better.

Absolutely. And now, to adopt that language, stockholder to stakeholder. I can tell you from a brief MBA experience that I once upon a time had. The ultimate goal of every business is this simple one liner increase value to shareholders. Or in other words, in this case, let's call it stakeholders, stockholders, let's generalize that term and look at it in this way. Your prerogative, the objective of your business is to increase value to every stakeholder within that range of your immediate network. To me, that includes all those users, like you just highlighted, joe. It includes everyone who contributes to that revenue at the end of every year, and that's why we have to say goodbye, wish farewell, to all the companies that are this one and done, getting ghetto. No one answer the phones or help or follow up or do club memberships or any of this stuff, because we're just letting people down, turn after turn, and eventually the stock just falls out. How could it be anything more? How could your staff care so much about a company that didn't care so much about their clients?

Adding to that, there's another thing that we need to touch on, which is you're actually more likely to retain staff when your stock is strong. Because if you have to put like I remember I'm not going to say any names because people might know them, but I worked for a company that I truly hated, because, when I was working with them, I constantly felt like I was taking advantage of our clients, and this was the same company that I charged the $3,000 light fixtures to. I remember their stock was low. I would constantly hear that people didn't like them, that they charged a lot, that they weren't really great. So, even though I was being paid very, very well, I didn't believe in them because I was constantly exposed to the negativity from our clients. So, as a result, if, on the other hand, I was constantly told how good they were and how fair they were and how honorable they were and how good their customers were feeling afterwards, I wouldn't have a negative experience, because I would have been like you know what? There's a reason for it. These guys are good people. So when your equity is up, so is the faith of your staff. When your equity is down, so is the faith of your staff. So not only does it help your mental equity grow in the fact that you can be more sustainable, but it makes your overall business sustainable, because now everyone connected to you can either rise or fall, based on the perception of your company 100% man.

I couldn't agree more. That's really valuable insights. It reminds me, too, of the leadership challenge, right? And that's something we talked about in class this morning. We're that consistency. It's really difficult to be consistent when you're overwhelmed. Right, deal with that. You know, we're business owners too. We deal with this too and we have each other to kind of bounce back and forth on this, so we can not only relate but also help as we help ourselves through it too. It's a constant balance and, if I haven't said this enough on this podcast show, balance, I don't feel, is an achievement, it's an action, it's something we're working towards and so, constantly as we wear hats and prepare hats and get them right and try to build SOPs around them and hand them off and delegate, or, as these three outcomes we talked about yesterday, I'm going to do it and do it well, I'm going to delegate it and delegate it well, or I'm going to eat crow and cut it off because it doesn't need to be here. Every time we do that and take one of those actions, doesn't that affect our balance?

It really would. It truly honestly does. And in addition, when people think about balance, they always think about like an internal state of flow, but they often visualize it as someone standing on one foot, going back and forth. It could be the same thing. Imagine your own internal well-being sitting on a fulcrum and if you're not in a state of balance, everything you perceive is going to be skewed based on what you're surrounded by. So if you're the business owner who feels that everything is going against you, that may honestly be the case. I'm not trying to invalidate you, but the high likelihood is that it's a misperception because you yourself are out of balance.

Yes, strong point, strong point. And when we're out of balance, in other words, again when this action, when we're losing sight of aiming for that balance, constantly readjusting and the mental equities taken up, it can become very, very difficult to lead a team. Because here's what happens the chaos spreads, and that chaos spreads quickly to anyone in your wake. That's what leading is. There's people following, literally, if you look at it, like you're cutting through the air in a certain direction and making a streamline, people follow in that streamline, they follow in those footsteps, they follow in the path that you've led with, and so if that path is chaos, then you better be prepared for staff in chaos, bottom line right. So this is again why, full circle back, we're suggesting at such a discipline level that we really have to look at relieving ourselves and our mental equity of the office components of our business and being able to delegate this stuff as soon as possible. And that's why it should be the first tire, because it's not your strength, it's not where you should focus and spin your tires, it's not where you should get stuck. In fact, you should really focus on the things that you're already great at, no matter how big the pull is to be the business owner and to get out of that you have to start with your strengths and honor that and build systems around those so that you can train your strengths to others in the best possible way. Joe, what are your thoughts, brother? Boom and boom. I love that. And guess what? It's 17 minutes in. Why don't we come up with some action items and call this just a smoke and boom Thursday Cold as bricks Brick, can it be plural?

No.

I'm doing my best, I'm trying.

I know you are, you know what this is.

I'm not making fun of you. I'm actually trying to elevate to your level because of how cool you are, and that is fire.

You know I feel interesting here because I've never been referred to as cool, both internally or externally. So I'll just take a moment to be like wow, that was an unusual expression. I appreciate that Because I was the first for me.

You're cool man. Everyone listening thinks you're cool and watching they think you're cool. You're getting hearts and likes and blue hearts. Right now, dorian Ben Justin's with us, a few other people who are going unannounced just watching or just listening. But hey, why don't we throw some actions together? They get those people on fire and moving forward on this.

I like that. I'm feeling really good now because I actually touched my heart. I appreciate that, brother. Alright let's get some action items, so I like this particular topic. So, as far as mental equity goes, I can talk about specific examples that help with personal balance. Is it okay if I just start touching them, if that's all right?

Yeah, I gotta. I have to interrupt for a second because there's been an emergency announcement in the chat. Whoa, okay, what's up? Yeah, dorian said bro, you're a real-life Jedi, and I think WIM stands for what do you mean? But again, the acronyms, the teenage dad syndrome? I need to know. I google this stuff and Ben Ben followed up with it. Definitely, so Hats off to you. You're a real Jedi.

I appreciate that I was gonna say I mean, granted, I am covered in Sith tattoos, but I'll take being a Jedi for now, so that's cool, I appreciate that. So, as far as the action assignments, mental equity can be practiced in two different ways. Right, one is internal and the other is where you can apply it on a physical realm. So the first thing is you need to be able to be in a place of calm and quiet. The reason why I say this is because I have you ever felt like there's too many thoughts going on in your head. I mean, grant your business owner, your father, you get it where there's so many thoughts that you can't even figure out which one to pull right. So I've learned that by sitting in silence, in conscious and intentional silence, and Not trying to answer any of the thoughts, just being with them, is the healthiest possible thing you can do during overwhelm. The reason being is that if you can't become comfortable in silence, you will, by definition, try to find more noise. It's like the kind of person needs to sleep with the TV on right because you're uncomfortable with silence. You start to appreciate all the background noise. If you instead shift your focus to appreciating silence, you'll recognize all that constant feedback as something that needs to go, and if you're less plagued with constant thoughts, you can operate singularly with a singular focus. Does that make sense so far?

It does, yep.

Okay now, as far as the all-star action, how do you take this? Well, you can actually apply mental equity to certain actual lists and you can say where am I strong and where am I not, so you can actually figure out how to take it. So it would be physical, emotional, spiritual and mental Right, we have those particular categories and you can say, if I were to judge this aspect of my life From zero to five, where do I end up? And most times very fairly is everyone always a five or is everyone always a one? There's always these variables in between. But if you can recognize as each individually being separate, what you'll do is you'll say okay, I'm doing really good spiritually, I'm doing really good mentally. Oh, I haven't worked out in about four months. Okay, well, that might explain why my blood sugar is high, that might explain why I'm irritable, that might explain why I'm not getting as much sleep. And you can realize that if I fix that, everything else should proportionally raise as well. Mm-hmm. So until you know where you're lacking, you won't know where to strengthen. It's no different than looking at your account and saying this account is good, this account is good. Oh wait, this one is red. Let's figure out why, let's fix that, and then let's monitor it until we're all in the green again.

Really powerful stuff. You know what you could do all that. Or you could just take our word for it and hire the office administrator, because a lot of the shit that they're doing your office manager, your CSRs is so much of the stuff that you don't want to do. That was the first time I ever even suggested excusing an action item and to know insult to you, joe. Those were fantastic, in fact. Let me just go on record saying there's no fucking band-aids here, man Mm-hmm, you know what we don't do. We don't show up five days a week and give out band-aids, and I'm proud of that. We go deep. We help you actually live a life that you can enjoy while building an electrical business that you can enjoy and your community can enjoy, without any fucking band-aids. Is it wrong of us to do that, joe? No, and I love that. You're even using my words against me.

It's perfect. No, but you're right.

I love it. At the end of the day, we're only going to give you advice because we genuinely believe it will help.

We're not going to tell you things that we haven't done or haven't practiced in our own lives, but at the end of the day, we could all be better and if we can improve even one of you listening, then this whole podcast was worth it, absolutely.

There's another way I see the mental equity, and then I'm going to shut up and end this thing. It's something we call the law of open cycles, and I'll just give you the statement. It's simple. The things left undone are the vampires of our livelihood. Face your family with that in your mind. That's tough. You guys. We are here for you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. And this week, build up build back up some balance in your personal and health and all that part of life, and find someone in your office and take some of this mental equity back, take control and become a millionaire electrician, because this is where it begins. I know it doesn't seem like that. We feel like all the battles are out there on the field. We're on telling you the fields in here and you've got one to win and when you do and you get this down to that half dozen things that you yourself need to do, you'll have a lot more to invest in those things that are actually putting money in the bank and value in your stock. So thank you, joe. Cheers to your success. We're going to see you again tomorrow for Friday Another great day to have a great day I love it, you'll take care.

May y'all be blessed.