Andrew Sly shares his Electrical Story - Braking his back, A FREE TRIP to Hong Kong and finding that good employee! Part 3

Transcript

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Hey guys, James West here from Marketing Secrets for Electricians and today is the third episode and final one that we've got with Andrew Sly from Sly Electrical Solutions. If you have any questions for me or Andrew, please go to MarketingSecretsForElectricians.com and you can actually, you can go to the contact tab or you can send in a voice recording of your question and we'll get back to you on the podcast. Enjoy. So, here's what I hear a lot. How do normal electricians like us who are properly trained and licensed, who are not willing to cheat and take shortcuts and who are wanting to own a successful electrical business?

How do we compete against the big guys who own the market share or the guys that charge peanuts for an electrical job? On top of that, we want to employ the best electricians so we can get off the tool tools and have plenty of time for other areas of life. That's the question. Join me and follow along as we search for the answers. My name is James West and welcome to Marketing Secrets for Electricians.

the Silver Lining of the Like a Bad Thing. That's definitely a silver lining. A, you survived, B, you found an employee. What's your choice? And C, I still managed to probably the one that I've won in my life was a trip to Hong Kong.

It was really good for my business. Yeah. So, the actual trip to Hong Kong actually helped your business too. Yeah. Well, because I'm not sure if you know of Master Electricians Australia.

Yeah, I know it now. Basically, I'm a member of them and you get to the network with other contractors and there's people there that have been in business for a very long time and got lots of good insights. ideas. So, it was a thing where I've given a lot of tools from. Yeah.

Not only did I get to network with a lot of other electrical business owners, I had to learn from them as well and no matter where they were in their business journey, it was pretty good. And yeah, I made some pretty good connections with people over there and still talk to them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, like and that's even like I've never won an event or anything where I was like, hey, here's a big thing, you know, your dream holiday or whatever the thing is, I've never won something like that. So, that's cool in itself.

Yeah. And I guess this year hasn't been any different with the Corona and all this other stuff going on around the world. Changing everything as we go. You could choose to go on the trip or not. You could choose to hire an employee or not.

So, you made choices and that got you in a better position effectively. That's cool. Yeah. It gave you the motivation to make, you know, instead of just sitting in the middle going, ah, should I do this? Should I do that?

You're like, no, I'm doing this. You know, it gave you that like, choose like a reason to choose almost like I need an employee like I can't do this. So, that's where I know the pain allows us the pleasure of a different choice, which then works out for the better. Yeah, exactly right. That's cool.

I love that. I don't love that. It's a good story. I don't love it. How is your background?

You can love that story if you want. My back still. It still needs attention. As in it needs, you know, strengthening and exercises because if you have a bad back, if you still not going to do it any good. Yeah, you got to keep moving.

But I mean, all considering I'm going pretty well now. How long does it feel like a year or two or like, what did the doctor say? So, basically the bone starts started healing. Probably it probably would have been about about three to four months after this birth after the fracture. It started showing signs that the bone was fusing back together.

I think my body had had a bit of an ad like a bit of a kickback effect on the other side on my left side. I was guarding that right side and I had to do a fair bit of physio. I got told when I did it was a six-month heal, but you probably going to need to go easy for a while. I'm mindful of what I'm doing and using the right. You don't want to do it where you push it to a point where you can't recover.

Then you're screwed. Exactly. Yeah, I've got to stay on top of it, but it's like anything. If you go running, it's a workout. You're sort of doing that to better yourself and better your body.

I still have to care for that back. It still does give me grief, especially I've noticed because this is the first winter after I've done it, that those first few really cold days, I could feel that bit of a really dull ache in that area where the break was. It is probably going to heal that I'll have for the rest of my life, but I guess it's a scar. Taking steps to work with it and if you continue upon that path of taking steps to heal the body of the back, whatever, you're going to be a stronger person. At the end of the day, you'll be a stronger person after five years of doing this thing than you would have been had you not.

Yeah, exactly. There's good in it, but let's go to the next question. What makes a successful electrical company? What have you found works for you? Like had another aha moment for that or something, you know what I mean?

Yeah, like I can say I've had a fair few mini ones. I'm always looking at little ways to just make the process of a customer contacting you to the end of one job, which to me, that's the start of the new relationship with this client. Yeah, I guess they're probably just really minor things like just the way you've got your email templates worded and just little fiddly bits like that. So just on the email templates, that's one thing like you've got a template to send out to your customers so you don't. Yeah, so what I reckon makes a good business, a good successful business is a really good job management software.

Yep. Knowing your numbers, you need to know your profit and loss and what your worth. You know, you need to really, really know them. If you don't know them, you're you don't know what you're heading for. You don't know what your goal is.

You don't know if you're losing money or making money. You need to really know those things. If you don't know those things, then you're in shape. I'd suggest you get to know them pretty damn quick. Yeah.

I think those things being very organized, being proactive, being, you know, as we've spoken about earlier, being approachable and flexible and, you know, not, not getting sort of shitty with people if they want to change or they ask you if you can do this as well on top of this and this. You welcome all of that. You need to if you don't welcome that, it's not going to, it's not going to work well. For you as a business, if you start headbutting, these people who are asking you to do things for them, because that's what you need to do. Exactly.

It's the basics. It really is the basics that makes a good business at the end of the day. Good old fashioned manners can take you. Yeah, definitely can take you a lot further. Is there, is there a software system that you use or would recommend for others to try out?

So I'd say one of them sure would be a task management app or program as a starter. So it's basically you, you create, you can create projects, you can create tasks within those projects. You can, you can organize tasks across a few different projects. I've got mine, you know, 25 tasks every day. And it's my, it's my way of dumping all that information that's in the brain about work.

Cause you, you, you will never switch off. Get it out of your head. You could write it down on paper. You could put it in your diary, but I just find that this little, this little app, and that's again, thanks to the electrician success academy, pointing me in the right direction, but the app is very good for assigning tasks to yourself, assigning tasks to your staff, to your wife, you know, whoever. You can set up a task for manage, like, you know, management within the business.

So you can put your processes in that section and have a number dot point, you know, how you do each, how you would do a certain process. So you can, you can send that list to someone and they could do it the exact way you would. We, we use service mate for our job management system. So you don't, so you use Asana and service mate differently. Yeah, for different reasons.

So service mate purely, it's got all the jobs, it's got all the job details, the, you know, invoice, the things that, you know, what, what, what's needed at the job. It's got the invoicing, the quoting, the, the, the time, you know, time tracker, so you check in and out of jobs. You can add your materials, like your wholesaler invoices to the job, like in the diary. - It helps you be organized versus. - It does.

And it helps you be able to have repeat clients. Already in your database. So if someone calls up and says, oh, you know, it's, you already know, cause that's another key thing I'd suggest is saving all your client names in your phone. So next time I call you, you say, oh, how are you going, James? And they go, Oh wow, you remembered me.

- That's a big small thing. Like a person's name is huge. Like that's the number one thing they like to hear. And if they're calling you and you're like, Hey, how are you going James or Andrea? Or whatever they're like, I can see that being like, ah, this guy remembers me.

I'm going to remember that. You know, they just, they will remember you. - Yeah. - So that's cool. - I guess that is something I missed earlier when I think that's the using, because there's client using anyone's name rather than mate or boy or whatever, like user name.

I've seen it before. If you can use their name, that's a more formal way of speaking to someone. And I find that, you know, older generations, they look at younger people and think, you know, Oh, you know, wow, that's really good that this young person has come to my home and he's got respect for me. He's not calling me mate or, you know, he's not swearing or any of that sort of stuff either. But yeah, I think people like being called by their names.

And yeah, that's something that's something that I always try and remember to do. And do you have a, so if you, if you go to someone, I guess you already have it in the system. I was like, do you have a way to remember their name? Or you kind of just already have it in your system. So you know, before you go to the job, you're like, okay, this person is John.

And yeah, you put it. - Yeah, basically that's it. So someone will call, they might say, Oh, hi, hi, Andrew. It's James here. I'm just looking to see if you could do some electrical work for my house.

You know, what I do with service mate is I'll send a link to their number as soon as I get that phone call. But if it's just, I've never heard from them before, they'll get a text with a link on it. They'll fill out their little, their details on a booking page. And it'll, when they submit that, it comes up in our system saying, it's James from this, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know? And then from there, yeah, basically that you've got the details that you need to send the quote, which is, you know, the address, the email, the, you know, job description and obviously what, what, what it's going to cost them.

But you've got, you've got that there. And then also another, another thing is with that diaries, you can take photos and it ties them and it puts your business name and your job number there in the date. So it's, it's not anything other than my reference, really. It might be, Oh, you, you didn't do, you left the main sweet job, but we took a photo, you know, at this time when we were leaving and everything turned on, we do that. Like, Hey, it's like, I had, this reminds me of one job and why I did this.

I did the same thing. Take photos because we had one guy who left a tile off the roof or supposedly that's the power through, but there's like multiple contractors, um, that were working on the job. And apparently we were the last ones there and he didn't. So basically what happened was someone left the tile off. We got the blame and it was this whole insurance job where it poured down the next day.

And it was like the whole kitchen roof basically fell in. So it was, you know, I was like, okay, we'll take responsibility, even though I can't prove it was or wasn't, but that made me go, okay, if you're on the roof and you take a tile off, just grab your phone, take a photo when you're done. So then I know that you did put the tiles back on and it's all clear. Just take five seconds because then it proves that we did our part and it wasn't us. Well, you know, it's definitely, and if you've got employees, um, yeah, that's like, did they do a good job?

Like, did they do a good job on the switch? You can log in and you could go, Hey, hi, that switchboard looks good. And you're like, no, you need to go back and like, it doesn't look right or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

No. Yeah. I think those things are very important. Not they're not, they're not super important until you need them. You don't know when you'll need them.

You might need them the next day. You might need them at a year later to remember what you did on the job, especially if they want you back. If someone, especially, yeah, let's say it's a year later, your memory is not going to be pristine on the job. And if they're like, Hey, this, but you did this or whatever the thing is, you've got evidence, like you asked for one PowerPoint, I gave you one, or I gave you two and someone's, I don't know. Yeah.

No, I think for me, it's like, you know, especially if it's to do with the switchboard. So, you know, you know what condition it's in. Um, just a memory job. Oh, that's right. I did those three lights for you in your house, in your dining, living in the kitchen area.

Um, they're sort of like, Oh, oh cool. That was ages ago. No, that's definitely like, yeah, if you can remember stuff about the customer, about the job, it just helps the process. And it just, it makes more sense. Yeah.

Instead of relying upon your memory, our memories aren't that great, especially the dealing with lots and lots and lots of jobs, like it's impossible. No, no, exactly. And that's the whole point of all these systems work just having it. And I think the key to it is having your own way of doing it and, and making it work for you as in, you know, but you need, you need to have good, good organization. And the bigger you go, the more you need it because your employees, you're like, what do I do?

And you don't, you know, you need to guide them and ideally systems are a way to guide them in that, that direction. So yeah, that's cool. Even as a one man crew, you do that. Exactly. You start with the one man crew because you build the system and then you handle it to one person and see where the fault, they kind of test the system and they've kind of find all the faults.

You plug it in and then you're like, then you go to the next one. That's my, my recommendation. Cause I, I went from having like me to one guy and I think I went to three or four. And it just became a nightmare because I didn't fix the system. I just kind of went bigger.

I was like, yeah, no, that's not cool. Stress. Then, then if you don't have the system, you have more stress. That's, that's right. But that's, that's cool.

So what with, with what marketing do you now, do you do now that you, you, you could share that might help another electrical contractor. What's a marketing tip or trick that you use to, to help you get customers, keep customers. I don't know. So I reckon as it's reviewed, it's, it's, it's basically most of it is just reviews, whether it's Google, Facebook or yeah. Another platform.

Like I'm not much on, you know, I didn't do a little bit of Facebook for the things I don't, I don't do paid advertising on Facebook because I've tested and measured that and found that for me, that didn't work where there's other contractors in my local area. It works really well for, but you know, I've done Google ads as well, but that, that can work. If you spend a bit of money, which is just like any marketing and advertising, but the thing that buys all of the marketing, you know, platforms out of the water is word of mouth. And I think even when clients are looking up, you know, electrician wherever, Kelvin, Geelong, electrician Geelong, there's lots of them here. They'll click on the ones that have lots of reviews.

And if you read those reviews, you know, even if you don't know the people that are writing the reviews, you can, you can sort of gauge what people are saying about that business. Totally. I find that if, if, if we're asking our client, you know, would you mind doing a Google review? Ask them for that. Okay.

Can you do this for us? Yeah. We asked them for that. We have, we have a link on our invoices too. Like, you know, we'd really, really love to hear your feedback, you know, help share it with, help help others, you know, find out fine.

Yeah. If you enjoyed, if you enjoyed our service, leave us a review. That's a way of showing thanks because there's a, I think it's like 80% of people will nowadays go online and Google the company, you know, and before making a purchase decision. So even if you've given a price, you've done all the work, they're still going to go, especially if they're younger, like the older generation, I don't know. They're definitely going to go online and go, type me a company, Google, especially local.

That'll come up and be like, Oh, you've got like 10 reviews and they're all good or 10 reviews and they're all bad. That's definitely going to sway their decision. Like, okay, if it's all negative, I'm not going to touch this contractor. Yeah. Well, it's just like, if you wanted to go somewhere to eight and it said, you know, you're too horrible, you know, whatever, whatever, you're not going to go there.

Yeah. I guess it's a bit ruthless, but you know, if you do, if you do things right by people, they'll do the right thing by you. And the, the power of the, the not just review, but the power of word of mouth or, or other people's word is, is bigger than anything you can pay, you know, thousands of dollars in advertising. It doesn't mean it's going to, going to pay off. You've, you've got to work hard to get these, these clients of yours working for you to get your name out there because that's where the, that's where most of the good business comes from.

And it's free too. Yeah. There's no, it's like, you just have to ask, ask for it. It's not hard to ask. And then most people, you know, they'll be like, Oh, sure.

No worries. I like to know. And then, most people tell you to your face that they're pleased with the job at the end of the job, you know, and that you've earned that review. If that, if that, if that customer is happy and they're going to be really happy to, to recommend you on lawn or to friends or both. I would, I would add to this and this is something I'm trying to lead with getting electricians to do is, you know, how you said they want to share, like they say, Hey, you did a good job trying to get a video recording of that and put that on your website or on Facebook or like, cause video is kind of the new way.

It's like how people are consuming information. Hence why I'm doing this. Oh yeah. Yeah. But if you could, if you, if electricians could finish the job and they're like, Hey, you did a great job.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you're like, okay, cool. Can we just get on a quick five second call? Um, you know, get your phone, record it and you capture them saying, Hey, this guy came to my house. He did this job and it was amazing.

It was great. I enjoyed it. I'd recommend him. You get that on camera. You get 10 of them.

That's like huge. Yeah. You got 10 and those, those cause I've talked to other people and they're like, you know, they go on Yelp or some sites that don't always trust those reviews because you could get a bunch of to go on and go, it's great. But yeah. Yeah.

But if you've got a video, it's more, more real, more authentic because it's harder to forge essentially. It's more trustworthy, especially if it's on the job, you could go like, Hey, I installed this life. And there it is. And here's the customer and you know, have some fun with it. That's, um, haven't, haven't seen much of that.

No, I haven't either. Although I did, that was one of my interviews sort of, uh, the pre-interview kind of things like the fun little challenge on my job ad was call me. And then we'd add, I'd have a chat to the person on the other end that was interested in the job and the challenge, you know, was to send a short video just saying, Hey, you know, introduce yourself. So what, what you like to do or whatever is like, doesn't have to be long. Just 30 seconds.

Like, Oh, you know, introduce yourself to me and you know, cool. And that's exactly what, you know, what Zach did and his video straight away. I could just say that he was just, just, yeah, you can see he was a genuine guy. And you could, that's the other thing you're like, if you go on video, it tells you so much more than, than texts and even images. Yeah.

Like you can just, you see that person's a decent bloke or they're just some scam artists or whatever. Um, and it filters out people who you may not want because they may not be, you know, they may not go on camera. So like, I'm not going to bother, but if they really want the job, they'll do it. Yeah, exactly. It does.

It did wait out a couple of people that didn't obviously want the job that much. Yeah, no, don't want to do that. And I think it also like people who aren't open because video is kind of a new thing. Like it's, it's not new, but it's kind of like in the trades are definitely a new, like it's still kind of, you know, we haven't really taken full advantage of it. Um, so it weeds out people who are maybe more closed-minded and like not wanting to, like in a young company, you need people who are willing to change and evolve and adapt as you grow.

So I think that's also a good, uh, sweet. So. Is there anyone you'd recommend to be featured next on this podcast? Yeah. Um, probably, uh, definitely, um, I have to say Mick McAller from Spark Electrical and Air Conditioning Services in Brisbane.

Okay. Um, he's a good friend of mine. We, he's the, the, the friend I took to Hong Kong with the second, second path. Um, yeah, he's a, he, his, his business journey is awesome. Um, to, to, yes, learn about, he's a really good guy.

Um, yes. Sounds good. Thanks. Good to, um, good to say, yeah, good to, good to, um, say what, what he has to share because he's, um, yeah, he's, he's another probably, yeah, another growing business that's, um, definitely, um, doing things right. Cool.

No, thanks. That's, that's great. So that's what I want. I want other electrical businesses and I want to get us all working together on a bigger stage than like our own individual suburbs and that. So working together to essentially create a better electrical market or, you know, we can learn from it out to other, like, no doubt, everyone's got something to share.

Everyone's doing something unique, something different, and we can all do that. So that's, that's kind of cool. Um, and where, if people want to connect with you or find out more about you, how would they go to kind of connect with you? Yeah. I don't know.

It's kind of different. Yeah. Yeah. I just sort of caught it while electrical solutions. Yeah.

That's cool. We have, we have, we have good solutions. Yeah. No, that's, that's great. Um, so yeah, like anything else you'd like to share, we've pretty much been talking for a while now.

I think we've been going for ages, haven't we? Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the show. It's been, been good having you on and, um, yeah, we'll keep in touch. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for tuning in and listening guys. Now, if you want to join in on this conversation and see what we're doing as we develop sales funnels for electricians, head over to Facebook and go to marketing secrets for electricians. And you should be able to find us there. Thanks.