Ep 273 - Presentation Secrets with Tiffany Horwatt

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast. I'm your host, clay Neumeier, and with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani, and we are the Electricpreneurs a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve, serve, who Serve you. If you're a fellow Electricpreneur, if you're in the business or about to take a big crack at it, then you might want to stick around as we help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Welcome to our freemium daily coach. Call the cost for admission, sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give, just promise to take action, because we've got an incredible show for you today. Another friendly interview with our good friend Tiffany. But first, joe, how are you doing, brother?

Man, I'm feeling amazing today and I got to admit your energy is contagious. I'm sure that people are listening to say the same thing because, even though we were just on a meeting, we get on to the podcast and, man, it just lifts my spirit. So I'm feeling great. Man, I appreciate it. I hope you're doing the same.

Absolutely Schedule's full. I'm having this really seemingly obvious realization that if something's not on the calendar it doesn't get done, but the calendar's kind of full, so kind of dealing with that whole bit you know.

Yeah, so I think the streamline that process. You and I are constantly working on ways we can develop and continue in grooming.

Absolutely. I don't want to waste too much time without introducing. We've got Tiffany Horwatt of 808 Electric, rather, and she's going to tell us all about her journey so far. And this is perfect timing, Joe, because I'm actually I don't know if you knew this about me I'm pretty sure we share this, though I'm a huge advocate of women in trades. How about you? I?

completely agree. I honestly think that the next generation is going to be run by women, so why not advocate for it now?

right, that's amazing, man. Here's the thing about Tiffany. We get on calls with electric printers every day and we just try to help as we keep giving stuff away. So much freemium content, so much to help people rise up on the value ladder and rise up in their journey, on their business and Tiffany's one of the very few people who literally stumped me on a call and I thought this is profound. She's done so well in her career to date and now is building her own business after becoming a mom and all of this and her journey. Why don't we introduce her and get asking her some questions about this? I can't wait. I already got a list, so I'm ready to go. All right, tiffany, please join us. Hello, hello, hello. How are you?

Good.

Fantastic. Thank you for joining us. So, tiffany, as I said and I know you just heard, I mean you've been right here the whole time. You stumped me We've got a call flow where we literally we go through some marketing stuff and sure, you're kind of getting back into business for yourself now and we're going to talk about that but as we go through then our loop method stuff to really see if you've got these offer pieces that are really conducive to your service and keeping people repeating and you kind of knew all that stuff too. And then I'm like, okay, I got to go into sales process stuff. I got to dig a little deeper, right, if we get into the sales process and you're like, yeah, I go to the panel first and it just blew my mind Like there's so many secrets in the background to talk about here today. But tell us a bit about your beginnings and why you chose Electrical in the first place or how it chose you.

We'll say I kind of fell into it. I do actually have a lot of uncles and cousins that happen to be electricians. However, they live out of state and when I was in high school I took classes. We had classes in the basement of our high school and they were like a technology geared college course, if you will. So I took three, three, four years of that and when I graduated I wasn't exactly sure that I wanted to do electrical specifically, like I was interested in carpentry and foundry stuff. And my mom, she worked for a local general contractor. She was in the office and their electrician was looking for it to hire someone and she mentioned that hey, my daughter's right out of high school. She's looking to maybe get into electrical. Would you be interested in bringing her on? So he said sure, absolutely. So I met with him, we sat down, we had a really good conversation. I worked there for seven and a half years. Wow, a lot, mostly residential, some small commercial, a little bit of industrial work, and he was my old boss. I mean, he was amazing. He really taught me a lot. So, from there again, so I kind of on the on the side, I'd race dirt bikes and quads.

Nice.

And he said I was at the races one day and I see these bikes beside me and they say Keegan Electric on them. So I see the guys over there and I'm like, hey, you guys are electricians, I am too. So we got to talking and I said are you guys hiring by chance? And they said, well, we're not hiring on our electrical end, but we're actually hiring on our climbing end. So they also had Keegan Waterless where they worked on cell phone towers. So I joined that. I was kind of intrigued, but you know, I was like I want to check this out. So I climbed towers for three years. So I was working from 150 foot to 250 foot on a daily basis. But I also did yeah.

Just call a quick time out for a second. Like Clay, I kind of get where Clay is coming from, because I'm literally watching my own jaw drop as we're going through. You're like, yeah, I started off in residential and then also did commercial and then also did industrial and then we also did climbing. I'm almost wanting to get a certain point. Did you touch on utility too? Like what didn't you do? There's a secret here?

I'm sorry to cut you off. There's a secret here. I'm dying to know, because I once climbed 150 foot tower that I had no business climbing, but when I got to the last 10 feet or so the tower was narrower than my shoulders and that really freaked me out.

Oh yeah.

I actually never made it to the top.

There's definitely some sketchy moments. Believe me, it drove my mom crazy. She hated when I climbed towers. She's very happy that I no longer climbed towers.

Fair enough. Is Keegan, then, where you received a lot of your service training, or was that a different company?

No, so that was a different company. So I was there for three years and I enjoyed climbing towers Winter times was rough but it was definitely fun but it was a lot of out of town work. So I was living out for a week to two weeks at a time, and so that's why I wanted to get back into residential where I could be local. So I started with another company and I had a company truck. I was home every night and I was there. I've been there the last. I was there the last eight and a half years, so that's where I started. Our main focus was residential service and they were a service company and that's where I have eight years, eight and a half years, of training through there, wow. So then I got pregnant with my daughter and now 16 months.

Wow, congratulations.

I worked until thank you, I worked up until I was like 32 weeks pregnant. Wow, they did give me a help. But yeah, I had a big family and I remember trying to sit down and do floor outlets and I'm like this is not working. I couldn't bend or reach the floor outlets.

Whatever you're made out of, I wish that we could simply just package it, because I feel like we need more individuals like you. I mean my wife bless her, she's amazing. But I was going to say I can't imagine being 32 weeks and physically doing like manual labor.

That's just.

I give you some serious credit, not only for what you're dealing with emotionally, but physically. That's really intense. What made you want to keep going at those at the late weeks?

I mean, if you're not here in Pennsylvania, like we don't have any kind of like paid maternity leave.

So it maxed it out.

So yeah, so a point of that too if I'm not working, I'm not getting paid also. So I was planning on, literally after I went on maternity leave, I was planning on not staying home that long and I was planning on going right back to work. But once I had her, I just could not see leaving. Like I would be gone 10, 12 hours a day and you know, like six days a week, five to six days, so like there's no way I could do that. So that's why I started looking into just starting my own business where I could have a more flexible schedule to stay home with her. So that's been working out really well because she's been able to be to stay at my mom's or my husband's parents. I haven't had to have her in daycare or anything knock on wood so far. So that's been a blessing Really good. My why of starting. Finally, and I actually I stumbled upon the podcast here and I you know, I hear you guys talking and how you run the six options, and so everything caught my ear because I'm like I do that, like I know how to do that, like I know what these guys are talking about. And then you started the you know about. You were interviewing other company owners and they were telling me their stories about how they literally started out of their shed and now they're like a million dollar company. They did a million dollar in their first year and I'm like you know what I can do this, I can really do this. So you guys have really motivated me and here I am.

I appreciate that. We're so grateful, so grateful to hear that. That's amazing. When you're speaking to sales, then obviously you had a pretty good track record Like what was an average year for you out of your van selling as a service tech right.

Definitely like on a monthly. I could do anywhere from 40 to 80,000, I would say a month anywhere in that ballpark.

Really good. Was that like since day one, or did you have to build up to that point?

Definitely had to build up, so not right out the gate, but they were. I would say that the company was very impressed with me right out of the, from the start. I would say they were definitely impressed with me.

Yeah, I can't see why I mean pretty much everything you said so far shows you're built of a different kind of caliber individual. I'm genuinely impressed.

Thank you.

We actually we're here for your electric preneur secrets today. You mentioned getting a bit of an award before. Can you explain a bit of that story and what the award was for?

So I went to service training school. We went for like I think it was like a weekend in Minnesota. The company had sent us to and sent two of us Nice and there's a whole bunch of other companies and their service techs are there and they're having you do exercises where you're sitting down at the table and you're like doing a presentation in front of the client, and different exercises as well. But they had it kind of like a competition to see who did the best and had the key points and me and my coworker. We came out top. He actually got one and I got second. I came in second out of the whole school. So it was like insane that us from the same company we ended up first and second in that and we got little trophies. We've got a little light bulb trophies that we came home with. So our company was proud of that.

That's really remarkable. What do you think is the reason for? Because I would consider, you know, 40 to 80 came months. I mean, there's ebb and flow, it happens to everyone. It's just those are pretty decent numbers. And if you're winning awards too, what do you think are your keys to success in presenting, in connecting with customers? Like, if you could boil it down to a few things, Tiffany, what would you say, what would you encourage even your daughter one day to focus on?

Just be genuine, and you know I strive to be genuine and I truly wanna help my customers. You know I wanna help my clients. I'm there for them. So it's not about you know the dollar signs. I mean that also. That comes with it as well. But it's just like you're writing out a menu for the customer and you know you give the menu to them and they pick what they want on it. It's just like you're at a restaurant.

Very cool. I love that. That's really good stuff. So you offered six options as well.

You were saying yeah, you know you strive for. You know anywhere from four to six options on every call and it's not that difficult really to come up with those options when you know what to look for. Especially, you wanna go to the panel. You don't know what the panel looks like. It could be a fused panel, it could be a pretty simple panel, it could be all rusted out on the inside. You don't know until you pull that cover physically off and see what's there. I mean I love when the customer comes with you and they're standing beside you and you pull that off and you have something sparking or there's water in there and you can show them step by step. This is what you have going on.

I love that and I think it's really cool that you like the customer following and the reason. I do the exact same thing because a lot of times the average contractor if they even go to the panel, they go to the cover, they look, they see if they got any breaker space and they close the lid and they walk. When you take the cover off, you'll see amazing things. I remember my favorite one was I found a bat literally where one wing was touching phase A and one wing was touching phase B and it was just a skeleton. The fact was, I took it off with the cover. I was like oh, that's interesting. They're like whoa, okay, I wasn't expecting that as a result, there was a sale that came from that, but it was under their volition, they wanted it rather than let's just leave it the way it is. I don't care about it.

Another thing I've done because sometimes you're in a home and you have an elderly client. They can't get around as well. They have more time going down the steps. I use my phone. That's a great tool. I take the phone with me, I'll record what I have going on and be able to show them safety concerns. Then I can go upstairs and Mrs Jones and I can show her on right on my phone. These are the safety concerns that I've seen, and I found that there's water getting into your panel. That being said, I want to find out where the water is coming from. I'm going to go outside and take a look at your outside electrical to see what issues we have there. Then I can go out there. Same thing there's no duct seal on top of the meter or the cables cracked. You can video that all and take it in and show her.

I'm actually very curious about something, if you don't mind asking about your process. Because, normally I don't like to do that additional education as we're going through it. I can imagine if you go to the customer and you say, hey, there's water getting into your panel. Now, for the most part that's justifiable. Someone would say, let's look into that.

The thing that.

I've always been worried about is when you create a situation where the customer asks you what something's going to cost, they come through and say, well, what does that look like? What do you think is going to cost us? What have you found has best helped you in those circumstances? You're brought in a situation where they now have something to question. What do you do?

Well, so from looking at your panel. That's why I'm going to take a look on the outside to see what is needed there as well. Then that'll give me a good idea of what kind of options that I can come up for you.

Okay, that makes a little bit more sense is where you're coming from, rather than speaking specifically to the thing you're bringing back, the larger concern of like. Well, I'm seeing this and our goal is to treat the root cause, not just the symptom. I understand you called us because your interior electrical control point faulted, but I'm going to do everything I can to treat the root cause.

That's why we're going to go outside.

I like to recover from the same cloth. This makes me happy.

Awesome Good discovery I got to come back to again women's history month coming up. There's a lot about this advocacy for women in trades. There's not enough people in trades, there's not enough people looking at all sexes to be involved in that problem. I really, really want to ask, and I think people would love to know, what challenges have you faced being a woman in the service industry? Have you faced challenges with a co-workers or other tradespeople or even clients?

So everybody's been very accepting of me, especially coworkers. I've had really good mentors going through, so everybody's been really good. I have had some pushback before, but soon as people see that I know what I'm talking about and that I can pull my own weight and if not as well, sometimes even better I haven't had any issues and everybody's been really great with me, especially even customers as well. I had an experience one time. I knocked on the front door and an elderly lady opens the door and she goes. I didn't want no lady electrician, I wanted a man. Wow.

Confession.

So I had to say I'm sorry, nam, but I'm here, so can we take a look and see what you have going on. But she was great Like as soon as she saw that I knew what I was doing and I could educate her on everything, she felt really comfortable. I ended up walking away with a sale from that job. And at the end of the fall, the client. She apologized and she said you know, I'm really sorry, I just I never saw a lady electrician before, unsimilar. But I think for the most part a lot of customers, especially like women homeowners, they do feel more comfortable having a woman technician in their home. So I've had a lot of good feedback, especially like Google reviews. Reviews are huge, so I'd get a lot of Google reviews and I'd get customers that would specially request me and they I had never been to their home before, but they saw that my reviews on the Internet that were really, you know, really good reviews, so they requested to have me. So it's been good, awesome.

How did you get so many reviews, Tiffany?

Yes, for that, you just have to ask you, just asked.

is that it? Yeah, it's just taking action. Can you email it?

over and wait for them. What Hold on? You're not just going to send a blank email and be like I'll just fill it out when you get a chance.

You'll never get on that way. That's not the way to do it.

So before Exactly.

I'm going to say I appreciate you for having me in your home today. Is there any way that you could leave me a five star Google review? And I'll even say that at the beginning of the call that you know we strive ourselves on five star service. So if at any point during the call that you feel that you're not receiving five star service, feel free to put the brakes on and let me know and we'll bring it back to make sure we're up to par.

Gosh, I love that.

Or, you know, at the end of the end of the today, I'm going to be asking you for a review.

I love that. I want to go one more place with this and it's kind of back to the beginning of the call. Sorry if I'm taking us back and forth a little bit, but something that happened prior to us recording this episode. You guys were talking about when we're first meeting a customer and actually getting permission, asking permission and if they would like you to share any safety concerns that you found during that visit. Can you guys have both of you help walk us through that as a group and just like how important is that step and really asking the client of what they would like to do in that case?

Laura's here, Stephanie.

So myself, like right at the front door, I set the expectations with the client, so I told them exactly what I'm going to go through. So, mrs Jones, the first thing you can do, you can expect from me today, is the first thing I'm going to do. I'll take a look at your issue here with your flickering lights. I'll also take a look at other key components of your electrical system, such as your electrical panel, and that'll give me a good idea of what kind of wiring you have in the house, what kind of panel it is. I'll make sure there's no safety concerns there. If there is any safety concerns, what would you like me to do? Sure, I'll definitely let you. Be sure to let you you know and I'll bring those to your attention. Okay, do you want to start here in the dining room with your lights?

I love that a lot and if I can kind of break down the process a little bit for you, because I'm hearing the things that you're saying and I think it's really, really awesome which was the first thing was I know that you're using a Mrs Jones term. Is there a reason why you can use the first name rather than go for the formal?

Nope, okay, no worries.

I didn't know if that was a pretty. I like to break things down and understand them as a whole. So whenever I see someone who's highly trained, I'm like all right, I got, I got to figure what they know, right, because I consider you, like up here, like you really know your stuff, so okay. So the second thing was, as you started off and you're talking about, like let's address the flickering light, right, and obviously we're talking about a generic scenario, right. Yes, now, when you mentioned that you're going down to the panel, I thought that was really great. I think that was a really highlighted focus, like hey, we have to look at the panel, or do you make it more of a suggestion, like I'd like to look at the panel?

100%. I need to look at the panel.

If.

I do not get your panel. You're not getting any service today. I'm sorry.

No, I completely agree. I think that's a good stance. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't like we'd like to see the panel, because that's, I think, where a lot of electricians struggle, where they make it a request but at the end of the day, they are the professional that can dictate whether the customer gets their service or not. So, what do you need to be done?

Like early on I had a customer they just needed like they had a bad outlet and they just needed it replaced and the hub was in the office on a phone call and the electrical panel was in that office. That's not what we're interested in Got it. It's just so funny. I decided to just change the outlet real quick. I just changed it hot for them and I think when I got into it the wires were real, real short, so I was gonna spark it just to trip the breaker and it would not trip. I was almost welding. I was like arcing so much that this breaker would not trip. So eventually I get to the panel. It's federal panel. Oh my God, that's awesome, it would not trip. So, that's a good lesson learned, though, of always go to the panel first, because you don't know what it's gonna be.

You know, I think that's really, really cool that you experienced the federal pacific like that. It reminded me very similar, like the first time I was ever told that federal was wrong. I just assumed there was, yeah, it's probably not wrong. But the person that was teaching me was like okay, let me show you. I opened the panel, took a wire directly off the breaker and was like I'm gonna hold this, I'm gonna touch it to the ground and touch the ground bar, and it was like I'm like shouldn't it trip? He goes oh, it should, and it didn't trip. Okay, great, so do you think we should install these? I was like no. So the thing was, is the customer seemed like they were giving you resistance about going in, but eventually you went in. Now was this after the fact of hey, I'm arcing and arcing and arcing Like, how did you bring it up to their attention after the fact?

So I think the customer like the homeowner was there, like the wife was there, so she saw what was going on and I'm like this should not happen. So once I finally got to the panel and saw that it was a federal Pacific, I was able to educate them. And there's even like I think there's a website that's called ismypanelsafecom and, yeah, so in it tells about Zinsco's federal specifics and outdated so like Fuse Panels. So that's a great tool as well, because you can show that to your customer as well and they can look it up for themselves.

Wow sounds like a great idea we always want to leave people better than we found them, and I think that's certainly happening. We are going to be mindful of time too, tiffany. We may have to have you on again. We're super pumped for you in 808 Electric. What is the 808 in 808 Electric?

So again, I'm a dirt bike and quad racer, so that has been my racing number for pretty much ever. So that's where I came up with the 808 Electric.

Awesome, awesome and just share with us quick. Really love this interview. Where's 808 Electric going in the coming years? What do you see for size? What are you building this to?

So we'll see. I mean, we'll see where it goes. I'm just starting out. So I just acquired a van, so I just got a logo. I'm working on getting the van up and running. I'm literally working out of my own. I have a she shed at the house, so that's literally where my quarters are. So I mean I would like to be able to put on some electricians under me, so I would like to build my business. So we'll see where it goes. But like, basically, the sky's the limit. So we'll see where we can go. But we're just starting out, but I think we'll do well, oh right.

Based on your track record, I have absolutely no doubt in your ability of bringing in revenue. I mean, you clearly seem to understand what you're doing and that puts you ahead of, drastically, the majority of electricians that you run into. So I think that's really, really cool.

Thank you so much.

Definitely, tiffany. If you had any closing kind of secrets or last bit of advice for anyone listening, male or female, interested in maximizing their potential in service, what would you say? What do you have?

I would just say you know, have confidence, practice everything and go for those six options Definitely. I mean that'll help you tremendously Follow the service loop. Listening to you guys, I mean it's really, it's the secrets, it's the key, Like it does work. It really does work.

I appreciate that board of confidence coming from you. Tiffany, Thank you for joining us. That's, I'm just gonna mute you. If you wanna hang out till we finish the episode, I'd love to do a little. What do you call?

it Close out.

There we go. Close out meeting. There we go, guys, I've got my words. Joe, I'm impressed. Yeah, I love having Tiffany here. I think that was huge. What would you say from this episode if we had to dish out a couple of action items? What are the biggest things? Basic and all star. What could we come up with here for our friends or electric entrepreneurs who are listening?

I would say, to start with, the basic option almost ties in with the all star. Do you mind if I just touch on both of that's okay, hit it man. Because the thing that really blew my mind was the fact that she was already comfortable doing four to six options and, as a result, doesn't shy away from them. So I would say, for the basic, it's simply acknowledging that what is happening in this industry is real and that doing the good, better, best, and only offering one or two choices is no longer a relevant way of doing business. People are now offering options. The all star, though, I think is really specific to you, tiffany, is that she said it wasn't hard creating four to six options, but that comes from the muscle memory and the experience of doing so. A lot of times where people struggle is they think that six options need to be just add-ons that you throw on top of the equipment. I personally believe that the options come from your technical prowess and understanding. When you understand a system and you understand how it's serving the client, it becomes easy to figure out where the pain points are going to be. So the basic is simply acknowledging and saying you know what six options are coming Systems are coming. In this industry, all star is learn your stuff now, because when it does eventually take full root of this industry, I don't want you being behind it. Learn your systems now so you can ride the wave.

I love that, joe. Really inspiring stuff. Tiffany's story has been incredibly inspiring too. Gents, I got one more little action item and it's a consideration for you. Don't miss considering there could be a gal like Tiffany near you, ready to serve at the highest level and really convert on massive sales because of that. 40 to 80k months, that's no slouch, tiffany. You've been worth it, joe. This episode's been worth it. One of my favorites by far on our mission to help electricians master their sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We'll see you again next time. Thanks, joe, all the best. See you soon.