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[YouTube Ep] McDonald's Pays Better Than Your Electrical Business | 138 · Simplified Sparky Marketing

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have a double quarter pounder and some chips from the loose change menu, please.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a real eye-opener working with electricians and just kind of seeing beliefs that are out there that their business is allegedly running profitably.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're not making a profit unless you're paying yourself a proper wage and you've got money left over after all your overheads are paid.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a big shift that I want to change with you today.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this video is live on YouTube.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll link it underneath as well if you want to watch it there.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't, have a listen on this podcast, and I hope you enjoy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Electricians, there's 17-year-olds in McDonald's making more money than you are in your electrical business, and they're just flipping burgers and making your big max, your quarter pounders.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I would actually bet you this, but you don't have the money to bet with me yet.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's what today's video is going to be about.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Alan Collins.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've been an electrician 21 years, running an electrical business in Sydney, New South Wales for over 10.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been mentoring electricians just like you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for any help with your electrical business, particularly if you're starting, you're spinning wheels, or you just need stabilization in your electrical business, check out all the links in the description below.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a free podcast with nearly 150 episodes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where this video comes from today is my lived experience as well as what I'm seeing inside my mentorship.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: When I started my business, there were genuinely McDonald's workers, teenagers making more money than I was in my electrical business for probably two years.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm seeing now is when I onboard people into my mentorship, I look at the questionnaire that I give them and they will tell me that after all their expenses are paid, they're making X amount of profit.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say hypothetically, some people have said two grand, five grand, ten grand, etc.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: That they claim that they're making profit after everything is paid.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is false.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is a few questions down, I ask them what wage they're taking for their electrical business.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: What are they actually putting from the company into their personal bank account?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: What are they putting aside for tax that they have to pay on the wage?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are they putting aside for superannuation?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: That that's got to go to the government scheme as well.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're saying is zero.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Five grand, fifty grand, twenty-five grand, real minimum wages being paid, and it's all sacrificed for the electrical business.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine, but what I see is rots.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Rots start to occur where people get comfortable doing this.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: They might have cashed up, they might have had a redundancy.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You might be in the situation where you've got a bit of cash behind you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you start your electrical business, you can choose two pathways.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can choose to start it correctly, or you can choose to go down the path where you're unsure, you wing it, you stress the fuck out every single day because your jobs aren't coming in consistently, you're falling behind with your invoicing, you're falling behind with your quoting, and you're just very stuck, and that stress knocks on to you, it knocks on to your partner, it knocks on to your family, and it's just a shit environment to be in.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: All this can be avoided if you just charge simply just charge correctly.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you never come work with me, up your pricing, and miraculously, you will you'll do a lot better in business, strangely enough.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take that child cooking your chicken nuggets.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably on$25,$30 an hour.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: If penalties set in on weekends, he's probably on could be$40 an hour.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You take your electrical business, you bust your balls from seven to three, let's just say that hours, but you're probably up at 5.36 organizing shit so you can start that day.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That day finishes, you go home, you might eat, you might not with stress.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You will spend another three, four hours on the computer, most likely, trying to get your quotes out there, invoicing to get more work in, etc.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you actually take your hourly rate of what you're doing during the week, not just your eight hours during the day, it probably ends up like a 12 to 14 hour day you're working most days.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you break that down into your hourly rate of what you're charging, most likely undercharging, your hourly rate could end up at like$15 an hour.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this should piss you off.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: This should really piss you off.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not at me, at yourself for thinking, fuck, I need to change things.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I need to move the needle somehow.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very possible, and it's just about making small little tweaks in your electrical business, so some little teenager isn't making more money than you are in your electrical business.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where I messed up with this was I came into my electrical business with a lot of money behind me.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was just after doing a stint in the mines.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for a good company in Sydney and then I worked for a labour hard company that paid us a ridiculous amount of money for not a lot of work.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I cashed up and I had it in the bank.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what happens to a lot of people is you get very comfortable.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, doesn't really matter, I can chip off the savings.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that, and you may have a partner that's got a very well-paying job and it kind of balances out.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you get into the comfort rot where you persist undercharging and you're just you get on with it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what you say to yourself is, I'll just get my name out there, I'll build up my reputation, and then I'll get more work.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what's actually happening, unfortunately, is those clients you're most likely undercharging, and the only reason you're kept busy is because they're saying to their their friends, I've got a really good electrician, he's really cheap.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that is such an insult.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would hate to be called cheap.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer when people call me expensive, it's like that sentence where he's a really good electrician, but he's expensive, but you pay for what you get.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're the kind of clients that we all love, they're the kind of clients that we want.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Price comes down the line.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Price comes second or third down the line.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Price is always gonna be a factor.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is like, I do not care about the price.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you said it's$10 million to install that PowerPoint, someone's gonna care about that.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm talking about is people just want somebody that's gonna show up, someone that's gonna be reliable, someone's gonna get a job done, someone's gonna fucking clean up after themselves and just give that customer a wonderful experience.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Price will come second or third down the line, and that's what we want to work on is getting those ideal clients for you and your electrical business that you can charge more, make more money, work less.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're one of those people that's chomping into your savings, doing exactly what I just said, what's gonna happen is you're gonna hit the toothpaste analogy.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's called Parkinson's Law.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: What Parkinson's Law is, is no matter how much you have of something, you will make do with it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So a good example of this is a tube of toothpaste.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you get a tube of toothpaste and it's brand new, big fucking bopper, you're putting on your toothbrush and you might give it a double layer, you're so generous because you've got so much of it there.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's going to happen is when you get to the end of that tube and you forgot to stock up a more toothpaste, you squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, you get right up under that neck, and you're just getting that last little blob, barely the size of a pee onto it, and you'll just about get a pee on it tomorrow as well.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're at the neck of the toothpaste right now.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're making do, but what you can do, go get another tube of it because you've got the money to do so, and you go again and you go again.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: This crazy thing happens with your wages as well.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started my business, I was paying myself under a thousand dollars a week.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was about$800.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So an apprentice wage for too long.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what I did, and the best shift I did was I started paying myself more.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And was the money there to pay myself more?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was like the start of this video where the the profit was there, the leftover.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, there's a little bit more money, I'll start paying myself a little bit more of a wage.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is a huge mind shift change of if the money is not sitting in the business bank account, it makes you hungrier to create more money.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm to give you any tip from this video, creep your wage up a little bit, even if it's$100,$500, start paying yourself a proper wage.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what you'll see is it's going to motivate you to find more work, to go out there, charge a little bit more so that money reappears in your account, tinker with the system, up your wage, send it to your bank account, set up automations as well, just make your fucking life easier.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: What blows my mind absolutely sky high is when I speak to electricians and they're looking to hire a staff member because they're flat out busy.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is let's say hypothetically, the going rate in Sydney is anywhere between$45 to$50 odd doll an hour just for a basic electrician.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is they take the electrician on, they're paying them$45 to$50 an hour.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that electrician could be taking home, let's just say, for instance, it's$1,500 a week into their bank account.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: The most craziest thing going is the business owner is still only paying themselves$800 a week or$1,000 a week.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that staff member who comes in cool as a breeze, 7 in the morning, clocks off at 3, goes off, plays PlayStation, has a surf, hangs out with friends, goes on the beers.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't really matter.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: They clock off at 3 p.m.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: and they don't have to worry about anything up until 7 a.m.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: the next morning.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you've hired that person because you're flat out.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is my crazy theory is you're better off upping your money, losing some of your clients that you're absolutely flat out with, and therefore you're earning a very solid wage.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You build up that client base that wants to pay the solid wage, then you hire the staff member.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an avenue where people go wrong, is they get busy with shitty clients, and then they to keep up with the shitty client workload, they actually scale a loss by taking an employee on and they're not paying themselves the right wage, and they're overpaying the employee, and then that employee hits overtime, he's getting double time on weekends.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: If he works four hours on a Saturday, he's getting a full day's wage.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: None of this is accounted for, and it's it it fucking genuinely breaks my heart because it's such an unforeseen as in you you do this and you're like you don't realize till it's too late, and you're like, I didn't even realise I'm paying that guy more than I'm I'm taking as a wage.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I thought he was generating revenue and profit for the business, but he's actually not, it's just breaking even essentially.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're hiring that guy to churn the shit client to pay his wage, so you may as well cut that down the line and shove him aside.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's just my opinion.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it's when you get your holes plugged in the bucket that you know what to charge.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can then hire a staff member and go, I know exactly what I need to charge him out at so I can make money, and that is going to make your business profitable.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the number one thing is you want your business to be running like a lean machine, you want to be profitable, you do not want to be scaling a loss.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is profit?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Profit is so simplistic, it might even piss you off.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, profit is revenue minus all your expenses minus a proper wage, that leftover bit that is your profit.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want to see in your business.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're in with seven builders, four real estates, and you've just got this list of clients and you're absolutely fucking flat out busy.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're making multi-six figures or even a million dollars, if you're not making enough money that you can't pay yourself a proper wage, a market wage, even your business is not profitable.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let that one digest.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do we course correct your van to pull it back onto the road that you are making actual profit?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we want to do is we're gonna focus on some core items.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, for this example, we're gonna focus on three things.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much I could cover, I could do a mini-series on this, but I want to focus on three things, and that is number one is making profit, making money.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the number one thing or lever to pull is simply to charge more.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what happens when members come into my mentorship is we go through a little and we figure out exactly what they need to earn, what they need to charge, and that relates to every item.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it covers their overheads, it covers their wage, and they know firmly what they need to charge going forward.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Very important because that dictates everything.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So number one is your money that you're charging enough.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is the clients that you work with.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something I focus on level one, two, and three with my clients is getting them very clear on their ideal clients.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like I spoke about a few minutes ago, is you could work for seven builders, four real estates, but they're probably shitty ones that aren't paying you well, particularly if you're not making money.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting very granular on who your ideal client is, where they hang out, how to target them, how to find them, how to infiltrate them, that you become the electrician for them.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is your core system and what I like to call my flywheel.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got a before, during, and after stage, which is consistently turning around in your electrical business.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in the middle of that, what's turning it is your job management software.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is the center cog of your flywheel.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Within the before, during and after stage and the center cog, there are micro micro systems built in there that just make the friction remove ever so slightly with every part of the process.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So where you would be going wrong right now if you're not making enough money is the before stage of the flywheel.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that is making sure of your niche that you're not barking up the wrong bush, you're taking the correct work, you're finding the correct work.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is the target market.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you actually targeting to get that work in the door?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then number three is the messaging that speaks to the target who's got that work that they can get you in to do the work.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many little things that you need to pull together to create the start phase of your flywheel, but it's very simplistic.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Once you start doing it, it becomes very, very easy.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when you know your clients and you know their problems more than they know their own problems, it makes it very easy for them to select you as the electrician that they want for their business or their home or whatever kind of work you want to do.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the three core parts you need to focus on is your pricing, the type of clients you have, and your systems.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: What I would suggest for you to do this week is sit down, have a look at the revenue that you made last month, see all the hours that you worked, work it out, divide one by the other, and what you'll be shocked by is how little per hour that you're actually earning.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of this video today is to just give you that shock to be like, holy fuck, there is some little teenager earning more money than I am in my electrical business.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And stop telling yourself that your business is profitable if you're not paying yourself a proper wage.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: The day that you're paying yourself a proper wage, you're running the business correctly, you're charging correctly, and you've got everything paid for all your overheads, and you've got some money left over in the bank, should be about 30%.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is when your company is making profit.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So until then, your business is not running profitably.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Shift things, change things, start dialing your system, start diing your hourly rate.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you're sparky, you need any help with this.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's links in the description underneath to find me.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: See you in the next video.