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Electrical Fault Finding + Email Marketing... | 175 · Simplified Sparky Marketing

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Never trust a client who pats a possum on its bottom.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Had an electrical job a few days ago and I felt it was full of information, full of insights and information that was worthy of spreading on the podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take you through the job.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a return client.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: They called up, booked in a few days out, they were having tripping lights, and they said, ever since we did this bathroom renovation via this builder, there's been this kind of weird thing happens where when we start using the IXL in the bathroom, we get tripping.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, easy, simple fall find, it's gonna be the IXL.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they're flicking on and it's tripping, it's gonna be that.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I booked it in, went out there, and it was brilliant.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't be better.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Walked in the door, room to the left, inside the en suite, there it was, brand new bathroom.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to the culprit IXL, flicked all the switches off in the bathroom.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there was down light switched individually, then there was the three switches with the heat, the fan, and the light on the IXL.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So switched them all off, went to the board, flicked the breaker on, sure as shit, it stayed up.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: All the house lights were on.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Every single light was on, went through them all, turned them on, turned them off, kept some of them on, and then I went to the bathroom.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, brilliant, it's gonna have to be this.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So flicked on the down lights, it stayed on, flicked on the center light and the fan, it stayed on.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the second I turned on the heat lamp, it tripped down.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So turned that back off, went back out to the board.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else was still on, flicked on the brake or it held.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, brilliant, defaulty IXL.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I went through some more just checks and testing and stuff, and I was like, I literally stepped aside and checked out on my phone what a replacement would cost.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was going through all of that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know what?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I better just double check everything here because I don't want to look like a mug.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And look like a mug, I would have if I didn't do that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was I was weighing up what IXL was going to go in there.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I measured up the hole to see what kind of replacement we could get if I didn't want to go with the IXL because the client was giving out that that was a pretty shit fan as well and wasn't giving good extraction.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't really like it anyway.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they were kind of like, it's a blessing that that this thing isn't working.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the brink of ordering an IXL, taking the lazy way out, and saying to them, sweet, I'll order that, I'll get it in, pop it up next week or whatnot, we'll go from there.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, fuck, I better check this, I better do the right thing here.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So went to the switchboard, disconnected everything, disconnect the EN, tested the cables, and I was getting nearly a dead short.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, Okay, this is a little bit deeper than this IXL.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So ended up popping the IXL down, actually physically disconnecting it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, that's not the problem.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's something a bit deeper.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So went through the house, split the light circuit, found it was toward the rear, split it again at the very back door, found it was outside.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Had a look around prior to doing that externally in case there was any water in like that was obvious, but there wasn't.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I was roaming around the place looking for obvious signs, and then uh I asked the client, I said, Look, it's actually not your IXL.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've gone through all of this, and it is pointing the finger that it's something out here, something of the lights out here, so it's either this little laundry, this bathroom, one or the other is gonna be the issue here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they're like, Oh, really?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: In there, and I was like, Yes, and they were like, We've actually got a pet possum living up there, and I was like, Now you tell me about your pet possum.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, Where in here?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a little nook that you can actually see in there, um, great access, actually lovely vicinity for a possum to live in, to be fair.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I got my camera on the my phone, put it up, turned the light on, stretched the camera, and sure as shit, the little possum, big possum, was in the corner inside there, and I was like, Yep, that's gonna be your problem.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had to end up ripping two sheets off the roof of this little lean to roof to get into the cabling, and he had nibbled through an external light, and it was it must have been hanging on by a bare thread, and it all made perfect sense that when the IXL came on, which was a hefty load, it obviously leaped across the wire to cause that earth leakage on it, and that was the fault all along.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they were blaming the bathroom rental, but it was actually that, and there's a few lessons to be taken on board here, and that is never listen to what a client is trying to convince you of, even though it made perfect logical sense that it would have been the bathroom rental.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could have I would have hand up, I would have done that years ago when I first started the business and that thing tripped once I turned on that switch.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would have just presumed that that was the issue.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But learning lessons by doing that and walking away from the job and embarrassingly getting a phone call saying, Hey, it's after tripping again, what would have been 10 times worse than that is replacing the IXL with a brand new one, and then it trips the afternoon.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You go out the door and they go for a shower, that's when it trips again.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: You look like an absolute idiot, and that is the default of not testing correctly.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I see it so often where Sparkies will get called to a fall find, they'll go out there and they'll be like, Oh, I just went out there and flicked back up the breaker, and it held so it held, so I'm heading away.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where you're going to get a backlash of stuff is you'll end up going out there either as your own business owner or as an employee, you'll flick that back up and not test it correctly, not IR tested to see if there's anything on the line, and it'll end up tripping again.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when I when I've cleared the faults out of that line, it jumped from 0.1 up to 24 mega ohms.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think which as a nutrition you'll appreciate this, but there's no better feeling that when you do fall find and you stick that IR test on it after everything's done, maths don't lie.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is 100% gonna hold.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I could confidently turn around to them and say it's not your IXL, that's up, it's running, it's not gonna happen again unless that little bastard crawls in there and nibbles the cables again.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But they were gonna wait till that night because possums are nocturnal, they don't like the daytime, so they gave the possum a little bit of notice before he got evicted.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of electricians out there would have literally gone there, flicked off the breaker, turned around, jumped in the van, and headed off.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's purely as well as just a few things, it's fear of actually sending an invoice for the work as well.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually stuff that they didn't quote up front.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are doing something like this and you are an electrical contractor, what you should be doing as a minimum is even if the breaker holds, is pulling the cover off the switchboard, inspecting the switchboard, pulling the connections out of the breaker, IR testing them, and at least giving the client the peace of mind and showing them the tools that you're using for the job and the transparency that what you're doing, that you took the cover off the board, you took the circuit apart, you checked it.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the power is staying on, but we want to make sure it doesn't happen again, that you have the peace of mind that it is tested and the mega ohms reading is correct for the client that they can sleep soundly at night, knowing that their fault isn't there anymore, whatever caused it to trip.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: That way, when you do do this, you can actually justify your amount that you charge to go out there.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you go out there, you flick up the break or you're feeling guilty about an invoice because you didn't test correctly, that's your problem.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if you actually pull out your tools and you go through your process on your invoice when you are sending it to the client, or if the client is getting an invoice and they've got an idea of the pricing up front, or you have relayed the pricing, at least when they see your testing process of what you went through, what you found, discoveries, even a photo of the readings when you are doing the readings, it will beef up the invoice to make it tangible and valuable rather than fall find$500 and all you did was go out there and flick up a breaker.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's when they're not going to be happy.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if they can see something tangible, like you've actually put effort into the invoice of what you actually did, that is going to give them value and it will disarm a lot of the pricing backlash that can happen.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a few different ways you can quote your fall finding as well.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Many people do it different ways, but the main way to do it is to break it up into sections.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are quoting, just to get to the door, there should be a fee for perhaps investigation, as people call it.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It might just be a visual investigation where you go around, you check, you unplug things, check if the breaker holds.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you do something like that, it might be without tools.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The next stage is taking the cover off, switchboard, doing this, doing that, possibly breaking the circuit.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: But in this circumstance, that's how it was led and how it was quoted along the way.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was initial quote was for the fall find, which was presumably the IXL.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then it went to stage two and it wasn't the IXL, it continued on to fall find by breaking the warring loom.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was found that it was up on the roof.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then it was further quoted where I had to pull sheets off the roof to get in there, rework the juncture boxes inside there, and get there all sorts to break that into another stage.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where electricians go drastically wrong is they will give like either an hourly rate where they've got the clients standing over them, putting them under pressure, saying, Did you find it yet?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or else, if they give a flat fee of let's just say, for instance, you presumed you under presumption, you believe the clients, you're like, it's the IXL, it'll be an easy one.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say 300 bucks, you go out there, and next thing you know, it's four hours, four hours later, because you had to rip a roof off.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's more of an awkward conversation.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you relay your pricing to them up front, that it's under presumption, it's the IXL.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: However, if it's not that, we can quote you further on side, or we can go to the next stage of our fault finding process.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is how my mind works.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: As I was rummaging around in the roof and I was partially pushing a possum away because it was in my way and it wouldn't get out of the roof.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking something I speak to my members about is ideation for their email marketing.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And something I thought of with that is what I like to do with email marketing is incorporate real stories that happen to you as an electrician and then twist it to help your clients.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't usually give these things away.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: However, I was like, fuck, I'm just gonna say it, I don't care.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I came up with an idea for this email marketing, one of your many emails that you should be sending to your clients.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Someone gives a fuck about your ceiling fan specials and stuff like that.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be interesting, you have to come to the table with something that's gonna tweak interest with a good headline, it's gonna be openable, and the first headline sells the second headline, sells the third headline, so on and so forth.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking for this email, it would be called something like cute, cuddly, and expensive.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're like, Why is it cute, cuddly, and expensive?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: What the fuck is this email about?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it strikes curiosity and they open the email.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: They go into the email and you tell them the story about a possum.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not going to get into the nooks and the crannies of it, but basically it would be tailored around this client's had a possum in their house, they thought it was their pet.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: However, what it was doing was nibbling the cable.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you find this in your house, it can be causing a lot more damage than you think.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That could literally be your email.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It could be literally three sentences and that is it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's your email.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And just be interesting, don't try and sell them shit, and you will get a lot of work from that.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we're down to about five spots left in the mentorship.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Links are below.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Catch you next week.