Ep 261 - Premium Service With a Language Barrier

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electric Preneur Secrets. I think this one's actually episode 261. I make that mistake from time to time and, as you can tell, yesterday was one of those days. I am your host, clay Neumeyer present, not perfect With me, as always, my more port perfect co-host and esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani, and we are the Electric Preneurs Just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve With what? How we serve electricians, to help you, master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Today is no exception. We're going through some of the language barrier troubles that we can find in trying to elevate that premium service, and that can be a real showstopper, joe. So if you're following with us, if you're live with us in the Electric Preneur Facebook group or if you're just listening to us on your favorite podcast channel, either way, welcome to the show and welcome to your freemium daily coach. Call the cost of admission for this, sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give, just promise to take action. Joe, let's light this one up. How are you doing today, brother?

Dude, I'm feeling great, just like as we started our previous live with. I am currently with my feet open over a heater, feeling great as it's pouring down the snow outside. It's been an awesome day. We're serving at the highest level. I'm a happy man, so life is good.

Thank you, brother. You know what Things are good over here. It's not snowing, it's blue skies. Actually it was pink looked beautiful over the mountains this morning. I do not envy you at all, although I do have one of those really underrated electric snow shovels. It's a snow blower, but it's just a little electric one. As long as you catch it within six inches and it's still dry, you're good. Don't need the big gas-three-stage Honda to go out there and really chug through that. But it sounds like maybe that's what you need today.

Yeah, I honestly wish I had a flamethrower and all honestly, that's what.

I've hoped for about it.

I would love to just go away and just wipe away all this white stuff and be done with it. Heated driveway. I mean we could have done it, but the driveway has already been redone so I'm not going to tear back up and do it, maybe when I do the driveway next in 10, 15 years.

Did you ever install them? Heated driveways.

We never actually gone into the heated driveways because with driveways themselves, it often required us to coordinate with a second provider. But it was something that we would offer, because if we had the ability and saw that there was a need, we would always recommend walkways, pads, things like that. But just the fact that with driveways themselves, you have to pull up the entire infrastructure, you have to have usually someone to re-grade underneath it, expect and look and see what other costs are going to go to it and then also cover the driveway on top. So it was more of a hand than we really wanted to do with the driveways. Big task, big task.

Oh yeah.

A lot of hands, a lot of coordination.

We've got our hands full with this one already. How does this topic come up, really, man? It sounds like there's kind of two pieces to this we should explore. There's kind of you know, I've got a language barrier, knowing that maybe there's a different nationality that I'm working for as a homeowner or the homeowner has a language barrier, kind of two different perspectives, and they're kind of outside maybe my usual market and I want to still provide that premium level service. Where do you want to start with this?

So I feel, like the easiest one to start with is your own personal language barrier, because once we start talking about the customer having it, the road just opens up and there's so much to touch into it, whereas the things that we can control about ourselves are a little more pointed. Does that make sense? Yeah? it does man Yep, awesome. Well, if we're going to start about things with you yourself having a language barrier, the very first thing that needs to be addressed is how you feel about it. The reason being is that, like, obviously, if you can speak a language for the most part even 75% people aren't going to judge you for it. The person who usually judges you the hardest is yourself. So instead of thinking to yourself and saying this customer is going to be unhappy with me, I'd want you to first have the reflection and say who is more upset. Is it that I'm actually getting like you know complaints or I'm losing jobs because of this? Or is it because I myself am not feeling as comfortable or as confident? Does that make sense?

first, like, to figure out that first balance. Yeah, a little perspective shift and really making sure we're being kind of fair to ourselves, even a bit there.

Yeah, because a lot of times, what we hear is that when a client comes in and says, you know, I have a language barrier, it's like, ok, well, who does this affect more? Well, it's affecting my confidence. When I go into presentations. It's affecting my confidence because I'm very smart and I know the things I'm supposed to say. I know what I'm supposed to do. I just struggle in those moments and articulating them. So I recommend that there's two things to do. Ok, and it really comes down to what is your current grasp of the language versus? Is it the language or is it your grasp of how conversations are supposed to be formulated? If it's something where you yourself feel the language is a struggle, there are so many apps that you can use that can help teach you your languages. Like right, I love languages. Personally, I really, really enjoy learning them and speaking them. So I usually use apps like Duolingo. Now, they're not stitching us for things. In case you guys are curious. No, we have not been sponsored by the app, but the fact is that you can choose any language. Like I'm trying to learn Arabic, I'm currently speaking Italian. I like speaking Russian, like things like this. I enjoy the languages, but you don't just pick them up, you have to start working through them. So if you yourself are saying, ok, well, english is a language I want to learn better, well, how often are you dedicating yourself to it? Even if you did 10 minutes a day, where would you be in a month? Where would you be in a year? No different than you practice your safe process. Yeah, love compounding growth on that right.

What we do know is, if we don't put those efforts in, we will be in the same exact place in the month in the year. Exactly.

Yeah, and like you, know the accent will always stay. I mean, I love my grandfather God rest his soul, you know. But he was Italian when he came here in his 20s and he had his accent for the rest of his life and that's OK. So you may always sound like the place that you were from, but as long as you understand the words and you can pronounce them close enough, people aren't going to be upset with you. They know that they're calling you to serve them, not to serenade them.

Yeah, and Garrett's with us live in the Facebook. He said I've been learning Spanish for the last five years for the exact same reason. Well done, garrett, commend you on that. And, joe, I actually I do consider you a subject matter expert In this department, because one thing I've learned about you and our time together is how much effort you have put into language, but also understanding cultural diversity and different niches between them and independent of the others. But then you know what. You've put that stuff into practice and you've brought some of those stories into our chats on this podcast and demonstrated through some of these examples how that can go a long ways and just up to the top. And just understanding someone, especially where culture and theology then are intertwined, and understanding someone's beliefs, I think, is a reference that you've made before, so I appreciate your insight specifically on this. For that reason, thank you, brother. I really appreciate that.

I just had one other last suggestion that we can go into if someone themselves has a language barrier. So we've already determined that, yes, they themselves should go into an app and start studying on a daily basis. But also, the second thing was what if it's not the language? What if it's how you're communicating it? There are a lot of speech services that are available and even further, you can YouTube anything, and a lot of times it's how do I say? This Could be. A lot of times it's your tone is off or that the structures of the words are not being conveyed properly. So there are speech therapies, there are apps you can use, there are YouTube sites you can do. But all I know is that if you yourself feel that you're the problem and it's actually affecting your work, then you yourself are the only one who can create and implement that change.

I love it. Do you have an example of a time where you've actually had to use an app or a translator with a customer and still been able to provide an exceptional level of service?

So there have been two situations that come to mind immediately where there is actually a translate app that I had used. Okay, so there was actually not English or another language, it was sign language. The person was deaf that we're working with, and we didn't realize that they were deaf. There wasn't anything. There was nothing on the notes, because someone had called in on their behalf and, as a result, we had assumed that the person was able to understand. As we got there, I had shown up to the call and they had. They really did not understand what we wanted because we weren't prepared for. So what I started doing was I actually had a talk to text function on my iPad where I would say what I wanted. I would turn it over to them. Now, that was a bootstrap version. Now, eventually, there was actually a service that they had put us on to and, forgive me, it's on the spot. I don't remember the name of it off hand, but what you can do is I think it was Babel. Is it Babel? I think it was. I'll find the name of it, but what it was was that it's a dollar a minute, and what they'll do is you would call this number and you would ask for this particular language to be translated. So you would have to first understand what are they speaking. Right? Then you would translate and be like I need someone who speaks Uzbekistan. Okay, great, let's go, and we're going to make this happen. They'll have a translator for a dollar a minute and they'll be available for you to work with you. But they also have people that if you have a video screen, they can do American Sign Language. So the second time we ended up having this, we called that app. I physically turned it over and I had. So I was holding an iPad in front of me and I was talking to the iPad and the person was signing on my behalf. Wow, we got the job, believe it or not. I do remember it was only like a $2,000 job, but it was a job that I never would have gotten otherwise.

Of course, yeah, no, it sounds like you really stuck through that, so you're able to provide options to them, Correct?

Because the benefit of Demonstrate a little bit.

I suppose you just get through it.

Yeah, because if you were trying to present options with someone, it's a couple of different things you can do. The bootstraps version was I was just doing talks, that talk the text. But once you get time for physical options, you would write things down in a way that the customer would be more layman's terms, because the way we do things anyway is I'm not saying outlets, switches, lights, I'm saying turnkey installation of living room lighting, right, oh, okay, we're doing everything. We're doing all sparkling painting, finish, okay, we're doing the whole thing. If you have the person signing along with you, that's even better, but it's not essential in every particular option. The second situation that happened was where you actually we called in and we found out that the owner only spoke Mandarin, where he did not have any kind of situation where I didn't know how to translate it. Yeah, and I at the time wasn't aware of Google translator thing along those lines. But what I did ask is I was finding out, do you have anyone else in your family that I can talk to? And I pulled out my phone and I literally went over and I was like is there anyone we can call? And he called his son and his son spoke to us and his son was the translator between the two of us Smart. So the thing was is just because they don't have an immediate answer or you don't have technology available? They called you because they want service and even if you have to pantomime it, you'll find some way to find mutual ground until either A you can have an app you can do talk to text, you can use Google translate, you can call a family member. There are options that are available.

Just seems like maybe advanced troubleshooting.

To an extent. At the end of the day, when it comes down to language barriers, it's not as straightforward, because we seem to think and I don't mean to cast blame on anyone, but we seem to think as a whole that when someone doesn't understand your language, it somehow makes them less smart or that they are less knowledgeable. It's not that there's a lack of knowledge or common sense, it's just a lack of understanding of the words that you're using. So the one piece of advice that I'd want to grant is that no one likes to seem like they're being talked down to. Yeah. So when you're trying to find that common ground, don't overly slow your words, like you're trying to talk to a two-year-old. Make it to a point where you're trying at least be respectful, as you're working with someone Like I like using hand gestures a lot. Right, I completely understand where you're coming from. Let's time this out for a moment. Is there someone that we can call to talk to about this Like that? Even something like that would be more useful.

Yep, no, that makes sense, ben, that makes sense. So we're already about 14 minutes into this. Is there anything else you wanted to add into that before we get into some action items for this episode?

I think if there's anything we're going to add, it's going to end up taking us down a parallel, because I would want to start getting into what services you can offer for translations, what things are available, what kind of therapies can you work through, what services are there? But I think that would take more time than we have currently allotted.

Yeah, I also feel that what we've talked about today actually ties wonderfully into the next episode, which is really qualifying yourself as a premium service provider and what that means to stand up to that standard and hold yourself accountable at that level. Yeah, and this really ties in with that, I feel, because there's the mindset I would say that's like okay, this isn't a fit and I'm going to disqualify myself. And what I can appreciate about everything we're talking about today was actually no, here's some additional challenge, but we're still qualified because really, the universal signs of premium service have less to do with the language and more to do with the activity and what we're able to do for someone, and so, as long as we can communicate that, we're still in the game to be able to provide a higher level of service.

I agree with you completely. I'm really excited for that.

Awesome. So what action aims do we craft up today?

I actually could do both, but it really depends on whatever you prefer, but I like languages. Do you mind if I take cracks at this, of course, okay. So I feel like the basic action when it comes to language is really first having an understanding of where you stand in the grasp of the language Meaning. Are you conversational? Is it broken? Is it just you're piecing it together, or do you actually have a good comprehension? It's just, the pronunciation is a struggle for you. So, at the most basic level, it's do you know where you stand in your English or the language you're trying to speak as a primary Right, right. So the all star action directly ties to that, which is, now that you know where you're at, what are you willing to do to change it? The reason why I say that is if you're going to say I want to learn Spanish but you're not going to have communications with Spanish speakers, then you're not going to truly understand the language. My advice for the All-Star Action is to not only assess where you're at with it, as well as to invest time for services, but to also find time to practice that language with an actual speaker. The reason that's going to be so valuable and so important is because you're not looking to master an entire new language. You're looking to use it as a bridge to connect you to the opportunities that that language would give you. You don't need to know it in old English, you just need to know it well enough that you can communicate to someone. Really good man. Long story short. The action assignment on that is are you willing to take the time, are you willing to invest yourself in the services? Can you connect yourself with someone who actually speaks it?

Makes sense. Love it, joe. This episode, while it might not appeal to everyone, is a very important piece of your puzzle and being ready to bring that premium service to anyone who wants that premium service from you guys, All in an effort as we keep showing up five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Tomorrow is certainly no exception, as we get right into this. How does and what does make you a premium service provider? How do you know when that's happening? What does that look like? Thanks, joe. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Truly a pleasure. Can't wait to see you then.