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Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
Rewiring Our Mission: (Electricpreneur Secrets)
Helping Electricians Achieve the $1M Service Van so they can experience ultimate control over their futures.
Join Clay Neumeyer & Joseph Lucanie for a new electrifying episode & High-amperage action item each week to spark up your service van sales to $50K, $70K, $100K, $150K months, and beyond!
Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
Ep 15 - Code Red: How Guillermo Uses Metrics to Power Service Performance to $3M+/yr
Master the art of transforming your electrical business into a thriving enterprise as we uncover the secrets to professionalism, profitability, and ethical standards in the industry. Discover why adopting a professional image with black uniforms can be both cost-effective and appealing, and learn how to overcome pricing objections by educating clients on the value of skilled work and fair profit margins. We also share personal anecdotes about breaking away from traditional expectations and the journey toward confidently offering higher-priced services, proving that the right mindset can make all the difference.
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Guillermo, nearly two years after our first encounter, as he reflects on his company's remarkable achievements and the power of data-driven strategies. Explore how systemizing marketing, optimizing call centers, and utilizing dispatchers as strategic field generals can enhance operational efficiency. Guillermo's insights into ranking technicians and viewing dispatchers as field generals offer a unique perspective on growth strategies that are vital in today’s competitive landscape. This episode is packed with actionable strategies that blend personal growth and business acumen to help you succeed.
Efficiency isn't just a buzzword; it's a game-changer in the electrical service industry. Learn how reducing restock times and innovating with storage solutions can save your business time and money while improving team dynamics. We highlight how strategic customer retention efforts, like enhancing membership programs and implementing targeted marketing, can significantly boost profitability and customer retention. We end with a strong message of resilience and personal growth, encouraging listeners to embrace challenges as stepping stones to greater opportunities, and build a community dedicated to success by subscribing and sharing the podcast.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and spark up those sales.
Speaker 2:I'm Joseph Lucani and, together with my co-host, Clay Neumeier, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians to become a million dollar electrician.
Speaker 1:Tell me something, though, because we were just in the middle of having a laugh about this. So you choose to wear black because of law enforcement during your ride alongs? Is that the truth?
Speaker 3:so I mean not necessarily I. Actually there's another company that I saw them I saw like a group picture of them and they were all wearing black and it just looks so sharp because we used to wear the white shirt, khaki pants and one thing is, our cleaning of the uniform bill went through the roof, but now, with all black, it hides things a lot better too.
Speaker 1:So yeah, cause I'm actually. I'm on your website and I'm seeing almost like an off-white little bit of a khaki shirt and I'm in the about us and this is a picture of you and your wife, is it?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful family you have. Men, I love your website. You know what else I love about this. Can I just say this quick yeah, please. Code of ethics right there and about us. Yeah, this is like corporate social responsibility right here. Earnings, we will agree with our customers independently and in advance on the basis for our fees. I love that you just put it out there. Code of ethics strong. I always knew that about you. The website only confirms it. Thank you for your service.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's part of what we have to do as business owners. We have to be profitable for us to be able to provide that service to our customers. If we're not profitable, we can't hire right, we can't have good, nice vans, we can't buy high quality material and parts to put in people's homes. We have to be profitable.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the best ways that I found describing it is even using, as an objection, handle skill. So some of the things that we like to offer is we offer a lifetime craftsmanship guarantee, meaning that, like if I've made a connection, like from one electrician to another, if you make a splice, three number 12s, you strip it and you have a full helix and you have the nut on it and you've got your tape around it and it's counterclockwise and you lock that down. Is that not coming apart Absolutely?
Speaker 2:No like, unless someone actively comes in and goes in there and just pull yeah. Then you know it's for life. So offering a lifetime guarantee is good. Offering a lifetime guarantee is good, but I've used that as a justification for the profit margin, which is. Hey, I understand that you can consider this more of an investment than what you originally expected it to be. Can I explain why? What we do is we provide a lifetime crash guarantee to ensure that you're getting the best product before, during and after.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, if we're not making a fair profit, how could we realistically stay in business enough to provide?
Speaker 2:you that lifetime guarantee, absolutely, absolutely. And just watching it click, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and it I mean, and I'm not, and we shouldn't be afraid to put it out there. Why should we be afraid to put it out there? So?
Speaker 2:well, I think a lot of times it's because people are in a scarcity mindset where, like and I remember it as well, I'm sure you've gone to calls I remember there was one call where, like, a little old lady could have been like 85 years old, was really upset that we weren't $50 an hour like was like visibly upset.
Speaker 2:And as a result, people have gotten this stigma where they're like oh well, if you're not in the customer's expected range, you're taking advantage of them without realizing. Well, who would know the pricing in the industry better? The person who has to do it every single day and actually make a living off of it, or the person who hires one every seven years?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that you're a hundred percent right. And it's those guys that it's our, our fellow, uh, sparky brothers that, um, like you said, have that scarcity mindset. I used to be like that. I still remember the first time I presented my first flat rate price option and my dad was telling me Guillermo, there's no way anybody's ever, ever, ever going to pay. That You're out of your mind. I'm like, dad, I'm trying it, I'm going to do it, I'm going to see what happens. I was. I remember I built my options out, I slid it over to her and I'm in internally. I'm like, and then she goes. You know what? I think I'm going to do. Option one I was just it's like a fireworks went off inside me. I'm like I knew this would work.
Speaker 2:You know, I love that, I love that. Can I share something that's similar? Okay, so you know how you're talking about your mother and you're doing like the same thing, like here. I remember like a lot of my family is white collar, right. You know pharmacists, nurses, engineers, doctors, and they're all used to making a certain kind of income. Obviously, you work as a lawyer, as an engineer, you should make a certain income right, yeah, I'm a blue collar.
Speaker 2:I'm the only blue collar person in my entire family. That's really the whole line. So when I created the service business and started using service rate, it had to be over the one 65. Like we eventually were at like three, 89. And I remember one of my cousins asking me to come over and give him a quote for a pool and I was like hey, before I do, just for the sake of transparency, we focus on services. As a result, this is what we're going to be charging. And he was like you guys are going to go out of business about the case. You know, if you're not doing it for this little and literally just reversing and being like well, what about you, man? You're an engineer. So when you do time material, do you charge by the minutes in AutoCAD, or do you charge for the experience that you have in order to design this? And? But people don't say it's a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:It's a hundred percent true, a hundred percent true. I mean, the most valuable thing that we have as electricians is our, is our knowledge and our skills. That is the most valuable thing that we carry with us every single day, not the wire, not the devices, not the. That is the most valuable thing that we have I agree with you 100 100 comes with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, begs a big question, and it's how do we expand our impact?
Speaker 2:it depends on what you want to make the impact in like for all, focused in service, focused on this.
Speaker 1:If your set of skills are to be able to serve at that highest level, but you've only got 24 hours in a day, then the big question I mean this is why we get on this show really every week that we're trying to answer is how do we expand that impact then?
Speaker 2:well, if you only have the 12 hours and you only have the 24 coins and you know you got to put it into health, family business first. The remaining coins can only be put into service. You have to expand your team. Like if I want to serve at a high level, I need to grow. And in order to grow I need to expand the people who can serve adequately and ethically.
Speaker 3:I think it begins. I agree with what you just said, joseph, but you got to look at it almost like a micro and macro level. So, number one, I think you, as the individual, you have to be able to go out there and make it work. Make this thing work because it does work, find success in it. And once you find success in it, start bringing and assembling a team around you in it. Start bringing and assembling a team around you. Once you start assembling a team around you, then you can. Then other people will definitely start to look look at you a little bit and want to be like hey, why is that guy always have a nice van? Why is his guys always uniformed up? And another thing too is you start getting involved in or connected in groups like the, like the resident, like the, the, the, a revs group or yep, or you know the circuit connected with, like service loop and all that sort of stuff, and you start to make those connections and those lead to people coming to your shop. You start to lead to little subgroups being created.
Speaker 3:We have something here in our Maryland area is called the Maryland mastermind and we do individual shop. We meet at each other's shop on a monthly or maybe on a quarterly basis, and I see what another guy's doing and I take that and I apply it to my business and vice versa. We just we should have that open door to each other's organizations. But it begins, I think, by being successful at a micro level and then being able to show everyone else how you're doing and they can apply that to their business.
Speaker 3:We just had a warehouse mastermind a couple of weeks, a couple like a month ago, and guess what? I got it down because of because of another member in that group to to restock our vans. We got it down to about an hour and 30 minutes. I'm trying to get it down to an hour and we're trying to get it to have 11 vans restocked, counted once a month from here on out. And I wouldn't have been able to do that if I wasn't opening my doors. It helped me. I thought I was helping others, but it helped me.
Speaker 2:You know, I guess that comes down First off. So proud of you, man, for having the ability of acting fearlessly, because I think the fear of of that is really going to keep a lot of people from being willing to open-handed, where it's like oh, if I educate someone else, they will take from me, instead of well, if you're charging a premium rate and everyone is not, wouldn't it make your life easier if they all became better and started raising their rates too?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they're not going to be able to they don't have the infrastructure to do so.
Speaker 2:So you're actually reducing your own competition and bringing them onto a better service game, making your life any job.
Speaker 3:You make. Your whole market is getting better in your area. The whole market Exactly.
Speaker 1:And that's the segue here. A mentor once told me Clay, there is no competition, there is only creation.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And today we're here to create again. This is actually a two year anniversary episode, oh yeah. And this is actually a two-year anniversary episode with Guillermo Castillo from Electrical Connections. You guys, electrical Connections started back in 2003 with your dad, bill, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:I'm on your website. Like I said, 985 Google reviews, 4.9 over 21 years. You're almost at a thousand brother.
Speaker 3:I'm going to get it, we're going to get it, our team's going to get it.
Speaker 1:So two years ago, Guillermo reached out to me from the reps group you mentioned. He said, Clay, I want to do an interview with you. And hey, why don't you do a podcast? Like you ever thought about that? And I was like, yes, I've been thinking about this. Actually, you're my first interview, let's do this. And so we named this thing kind of a nerdy technical term.
Speaker 1:but I went rise to rise thinking of sine waves and electrical technical talk that lasted for a little bit, but you were the first interview man and it's always been true that our chats have gone deep and they've been valuable and they're from the heart, and our first episode was really focused around where we're taking off from right here, which is growth, community faith, how to, at that micro level, develop a company that works and then how to expand that to the macro level and spread that impact, and so I just couldn't think of a better way to officially kick this one off, and I I just couldn't think of a better way to officially kick this one off, and I want to thank you for joining us almost two years later on the dot.
Speaker 1:So thank you.
Speaker 3:Guillermo, it's an honor to be here and I just want to say thank you both to you guys of what you're doing in our industry. You guys have got a huge megaphone and you guys are helping so many shops, so many owners, so many team members in their shops and families across this country and your country too, clay. So kudos to you guys, thank you for what you're doing, doing our best.
Speaker 1:Doing our best. And that country he mentioned is Canada. North of the border, we're getting a shout out today, canada.
Speaker 2:North of the border. We're getting a shout out today.
Speaker 1:Speaking of shout outs, our last two interview guests have been bald. So, guillermo, I've got a. I've got a haired brother here with me on this one. I'm pumped to have some good.
Speaker 2:Technically, technically, mine's growing out ever so slightly.
Speaker 3:Joseph, I am going to be joining you soon in that baldness, so it's it's coming, it's happening.
Speaker 2:You know what, though? I literally was having a conversation with my wife this morning and the best thing is, I find there's two kinds of people. There's those who accept aging and love it and there's those who are part of the the comor club, and the thing is that I love being my age and I love looking it, and you know what? I don't care if the wrinkles come.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be happy in the skin that I have I'm just trying to hold silver first I just don't want to do this before I go full. Gray man, you won't be able to tell I'm silver, it's gonna be nothing.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, 21 years, that's a long time, would you tell us. Just kind of, lay the land, guillermo, where are you guys at today? Shop size, average revenue for for the year, that kind of thing so shop size, we have, um, let's see, nine service techs.
Speaker 3:Uh, we have four, uh helpers, slash apprentices. This year right now, our budget was $3.1 million, but we're pacing $3.4 million this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so would you say budget like a projected revenue amount $3.1 million? Correct, so you're blowing yourself out of the water there. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Congratulations, absolutely yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:What's going better than you thought. I would say that's maybe contributing to that 0.3.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say our average ticket is higher. Our average ticket is higher Repeat business is through the roof right now. It's it's still strong for us, um, and I would say efficiency has also gotten better for us, um, and our warehouse, uh, has gotten much better. Where we've kept our material costs this year, um, it's it's gotten up a little bit higher than normal, but we're at around 11% this year. So we've been doing a good job about that and I'm really systemizing marketing a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I've been really laser beam focused on it more. I used to not be so laser beam focused, but I'm really putting some processes and systems in place right now and our separation of our call center and our dispatch department is huge. I feel like one of the most important positions in the company is to have just a kick-ass dispatcher that really knows how to do it right. And we do it through data. We do it on a weekly basis, so we follow our KPIs on a monthly basis. I break it down per week. I give it to her what we did last week. She does a formula based on conversion rate, average ticket and revenue brought in and that ranks the technicians for this week. Who's going to be the who's, the guy we're sending to the best jobs. Not, I don't. I don't want to say I tell my guys every job is the best job. But you know what I mean yeah, no, I understand completely.
Speaker 2:And you know what, if I can jump in on that, I love what you're trying to do, because having a good dispatcher is like having a good field general.
Speaker 2:They're the ones who are behind the lines looking and saying where are we moving the troops properly? Because obviously you want to have a CSR who can intake and get them on the calendar. But once they're on the calendar, how can I make sure that the maximum impact is going to happen? So if I know that Rory has a religious background and the church down the street wants to get a quote for something, wouldn't it make best to line the two people up that way they can connect organically?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and we got to run our business data Like before. We used to be like Pete's, our best technician. Okay, maybe he is for the year, but how about last week? Who's the hot guy? Right now? It's like in a basketball game. You're going to feed the guy who's hitting the most shots at that very minute. Maybe the first quarter he was hot, but now the second quarter he cooled down a little bit. Let's feed it to the other guy and it's all data-driven.
Speaker 1:Timing of that answer is great. We had a guy ask this morning in our program hey, should I be tracking my KPI more periodically or really stay on it day to day? There's your answer. The more recent you are, the faster you can make decisions. Yeah, Speaking of decisions, can I ask you a personal question?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:You are the owner of electrical connections, right.
Speaker 3:That is correct.
Speaker 1:My wife and I. What's your position there? What would you say is your position?
Speaker 3:Do you call yourself a CEO?
Speaker 2:a manager? I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, I, I, I do, I do it all, but um, I see you got a book back there that I got here.
Speaker 1:Gino.
Speaker 3:So I would say I oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Trifecta over here. We've all got it so yeah.
Speaker 3:So I would say I'm the visionary, um, I, I. I'm the visionary, I bring the energy into the building. Um, I'm the cheerleader. Um, I am the. The. The I'm the brand ambassador is what I am to the organization.
Speaker 3:I love to train, even though I know that's not in my wheelhouse anymore. But when my service manager tells me hey, man, I got to go take my son to whatever, can you train Tuesday? I'm like absolutely I'm on it. You know, because I love. I love training and, to be honest with you, I love your business is like an electrical system, so I love electrical and to be able to go inside of different little departments and make some tweaks and adjustments. I love doing that and it's just fun, like right now. One of the things that I'm working on right now, on top of the other millions of things I'm working on, is how do I systemize my recruiting now, how do I make that into a process in a system? I'm working on like, like all some crazy stuff. I don't even want to talk about it yet because I don't have it put together yet, but maybe that'll be on the next podcast how to really recruit with a process in a system, and I'm working on that right now but I love you.
Speaker 2:You're like a mad scientist over the table like I'm not gonna tell you what's under the but let me just tell you, it's fire under there.
Speaker 1:You sound like talking to this guy, joe, yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:No, I'm really having a blast. Really I am. This is awesome.
Speaker 1:Strategic, strategic, strategic. Yeah, because I'm hearing a couple of things. When we started this conversation today, you talked about just coming off a ride alone.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:You were out there today.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So even the brand ambassador, you're still having sales touches, personal field level touches.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, you have to. I mean, you got to be out there once, necessarily that I do them all the time, but you have to be out there. You got to see what you guys are doing and we are actually implementing AI in our ride ride-alongs.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you guys have heard about it yeah rilla rilla is in the building now and it's been a huge tool for us, but it's good to be out there meeting customers and and just jumping in a truck with your guys too yeah, yeah, we've gotten the uh, the chance to play with that a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's pretty cool what tech's doing man. Our largest client currently is is, uh, signed up with Rilla and we could log on right now and and see what the call looked like, and that's using our process too, which is remarkable. I don't want to go too deep on Rilla for various reasons that we'll all learn in the future, I'm sure, but ultimately, it's wild what AI is doing. Can I redirect? I want to ask, because I'm still I love that you just have these different channels brand ambassador, but hey, there's a few things I'm focused on. I want to know why it's important to you and your data and your strategy to get that restock down to 60 minutes your data and your strategy to get that restock down to 60 minutes.
Speaker 3:The importance for me is a lot of like, for example, a lot of people, a lot of our, what we do now, this whole flat rate, this whole service system and everything it's. When I first started this, it was just me and maybe one other guy. It's now a lot of companies that are doing this. You got guys that are 800-pound gorillas in a market, that are doing hundreds of millions of dollars, that are doing HVAC, plumbing and electrical. You got other guys, smaller shops like me, that are doing just a few million and you got every gambit in between there and majority of these people are like on service tight. Even our estimates look the same. So how am I going to have an edge on my competitors?
Speaker 1:even though.
Speaker 3:I don't mind bringing them in and everything, but an area that I can have an edge on them is efficiency. Efficiency is one thing that if we can do it faster, cheaper and better, it's going to have an impact on the bottom line. That's why it's super important to me to be able to have that warehouse out there. If you think about it, let's say you got one guy and I did this. I got in a truck and I said why are the guys going to the supply houses so much? What is going on? This was a few years ago. I got in the truck. I was like, don't do anything different in the truck, let me just ride in it. I got in it. First day went to the supply house to get some wire nuts missing wire nuts in an electrical truck. Second day had to go get some toggle bolts. Third day missing crips. I track how many hours I spent. I spent close to six hours in five days going to the supply house. Multiply that by 11 trucks, multiply that by a week, by a month, by a year. Do you know how much money was being wasted on time going to the supply house? You're talking about thousands upon thousands of dollars. What did I do.
Speaker 3:We created something called variation boxes. We use the Milwaukee packout systems. It's a it's a three box kit that has every single thing under the sun that an electrician will use in a five day period, every little part, everything. It has it in that kit. Each van has two sets. One sits on the van, one sits in my warehouse and we put green, green. We put really weird color zip ties on them because we know if that zip tie is cut, we know that that was already used and we do a swap out every tuesday morning and guess what? What that did? That has reduced windshield time to the supply house by almost, I think, 85%. And in addition to that we now use the larger Milwaukee packout systems to do entire installs. So we have a re-device install kit. We have a service upgrade, a panel replacement, an EV charger. It's all already pre-done. The technicians go out there with the kits. They come back. Our warehouse coordinator counts what they used Done.
Speaker 2:You know, a thing that's really, really awesome here is I'm also looking at this through the mind of an employee. The boss was in the van and it took an hour, but what would happen if you weren't in the van at the time? Do they stop at the gas station to fuel up? Are they after at the gas station, what technician's not getting gas station food? And then, if the boss isn't there, are they having conversation? So by reducing the opportunity for them to be at a place that's not the job, you're also reducing all the additional logistics that come attached to it. So instead of you're now saving the hour and the travel, but you're also saying all the wasted time that would have been nonproductive regardless.
Speaker 3:And how about? How about the hoarding?
Speaker 2:How many?
Speaker 3:technicians, hoard parts, I mean, I remember before we started doing this it was insanity, insanity. I remember before we started doing this it was insanity, insanity. And that's the difference between you and the shop next door. That, that, that, that that organization, that efficiency, that's. That's why it's important to me.
Speaker 1:Guilty, I still have parts in my tool pouch.
Speaker 2:But you and I are a little different there, like if you can go to, if you went to my workshop in my house, like I've got walls of tools but every one of them is labeled and identified. Cause I know I'm not going to mess with that but it's so cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the next generation of what we're doing. We just bought two new pro masters. I told the. I told them I don't want any bins in here. I don't want no bins in here Interesting. So we ended up putting these wood inside the walls. We put the entire Milwaukee kit system, all of these Milwaukee packouts, inside of there, so we don't have any metal bins anymore. The weight of the van is so much lighter.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:And now we're going to be able to literally just take an entire bin system. It's going to be plug and play, snap in, snap out, and we're going to be able to get it down to probably 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that you said that, because when I was running our vans we had a fleet of sprinters and we had the all metal shelving and when you're running them in, the gas prices right around like it started getting really, really high, like $5, $6 a gallon. It was insane. So we ripped out all the metal shelves and we put in three quarter inch plywood and the weight difference actually increased the efficiency of the fuel use and we could also customize specifically what we're going to do. So I like the DeWalt pack outs but at the same time, nothing wrong with Milwaukee they're phenomenal product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I love the fact that we're operating on similar mindsets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are you familiar with uh, toyota manufacturing and their growth kaizen, that whole model you ever heard of that? No, no, oh well, no no so so kaizen is japanese, that means constant, never-ending improvement, and a big term that they use is called muda, which means waste.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's just funner to say yeah and so everything that I'm hearing is just totally in line with what they do and a lot of in the health care industry. They've done this a lot. You go to hospitals that are literally losing people. You've got two ers and they're 500 yards apart, with different doctors, room on different ends and different tools in the wrong places, and you start to realize things like oh, the bins in the van, well, they're stuck right there. So even recognizing okay, a pack out, I can move into the house with us, or at least just outside the house, and reduce 150 footsteps out to the van times 24 today and all those footsteps add up. The challenge is many people listening to this aren't quite at the level of maybe counting footsteps, but you will get there. It's not that you count, that's not what changes, it's not like one day you start counting, it's what you're counting. Still following this line of data.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it all led to is why are the guys going to the supply houses so much? And it just led to so many? It's a chain of events that I'm glad we had that problem, because if we didn't have that problem, I wouldn't have been able to solve it. And the wiser. Yeah, problems are good. Problems are really good. It's a matter of what you do with them. What are you going to do with your problems?
Speaker 2:I'm glad you said that. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. What I was going to say is I thought something you said really cool earlier was about the part hoarding. That also is a symptom, it seems like, because if you don't have the right parts, let's say you're a technician and you consistently don't have the right parts and you drive out an hour off site and then you don't have the caterpillars you need because the box is now out of space. Now you're gonna have to go all the way over plastic bushings or you're gonna be taking washers and stacking them to make them fit like it's not right. So I can imagine technician say let me take extra so that I don't get screwed over. But then now they have three surge protectors and you've got $900 in product just sitting on one van and you're overstocking. We don't need to.
Speaker 3:And then multiply that by three, four, five, six, seven, plus vans, you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2:Plus, it's also the team mindset, because what does it say when someone says I'm going to take a part so that I don't have to be, when really it's, I want the team as a whole to not have to do this? If this is a consistent problem, you've solved the whole team problem. So now, instead of fighting each other, they're fighting the problem. And the problem is direct and it's the inefficiency, not each other.
Speaker 3:Right, that's well said. Well said, man yes.
Speaker 1:That's why these podcasts are so important. People think that mentorship and coaching is about getting the silver bullet, having the immediate success, just being able to flip a switch and just be there. But I love that you said I'm glad I had these problems, because that's where all the learning happens. Mentorship and coaching is actually the opposite. It's understanding why the things we tend to do, our tendencies and our autopilot isn't serving us and how we could adapt and change that trajectory a bit to see a different way that could serve us. And even there it's always a little different for every single person. Some people just blow up with just the littlest change and some people it takes a little more, a little bit longer, and those subtle little differences are so personal and interpersonal and about your environment and about the people at your shop and and all of this I mean someone could try this packout system tomorrow and their staff rejects it, for example it's not an overnight thing no but it's something you've worked towards, incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1:you, my friend, are a CEO. No one likes the letters, right, it's not worth it, but you can see your brain just spinning on all of this. Tell me this, then I'm sure you have this number. What's been the impact on your gross profit margin from doing all this?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, before all of this, we used to run 15% in materials and we got it down to high tens 11%. So I can quantify it right now for you. So let's see here, so we have 5% on 3.5.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'll add up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Did you hit the calculator? I don't want to guess.
Speaker 3:No, I was just doing the math. I don't want to guess and get it wrong here, 3, 5, 0, 0, 0.
Speaker 1:And editing will shorten this time and just make us look smarter, don't worry, yes $175,000.
Speaker 2:That's $175,000. That's $175,000 in inefficiency. So, like the thing that really blows my mind, there is, let's say, sake of argument. You took that and you said I'm going to input all of that in bonuses. I'm going to input all of that in hiring new infrastructure and new teams, new developments, new trainings, or screw it. I'm going to hire an executive level person to come in to manage the team. Now you can do so because you have the means. Otherwise, that money was just being pissed away.
Speaker 1:I want to highlight this for a sec too, can I? Just jump in quick. Okay, because this also is a major deciding factor for whether or not you feel that it's an investment now for your business to bring in a material management team or person individual. So for the growing electrician listening to this, this is how you quantify, or begin to quantify, these things. I know what can be done. I know what we're doing. Here's the gap $175, $150, $ 175, whatever. I mean, that's one year.
Speaker 3:What could you do with that? You could do so much, and that's what I mean by focusing on efficiency, because my estimates and the other guy next to our estimates all look the same. We're all uniformed up and lettered up and everything, but we're doing something on the backend that is bringing us. We're doing the same work, but it's bringing us 175, 150 more on the bottom line at the end of the year. That's different.
Speaker 2:And the best thing about that is, I look at it almost like a game of attrition, because if you imagine everyone having, let's say, you had a really hard season, you know, let's take an argument, let's put this in real court, for 2021, 2020 was hard for a lot of people, right, you know, and like as an example. Some either thrived or some struggled, but having the ability of going through hard times and being able to still grind out a win out of it is a difference between people leaving one organization and joining yours or staying in your organization and moving up the ladder, because if you're constantly looking at the little things and saying, you know what? This was a hard year, but I took the lessons of this hard year and I made positive improvements, and now those positive improvements are yielding legacy returns for not only me, my employees and every customer I come in contact with. That is Kaizen.
Speaker 1:Love it. Are you bonusing some of these behaviors, guillermo, to get those numbers down, or is it just an organic effort.
Speaker 3:Our warehouse coordinator is bonused. My wife handles all the bonuses and everything, but if he keeps our costs at a certain percentage, he is given a bonus on a quarterly basis.
Speaker 1:How about the guys in the field?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're all bonus, but they're more bonus on revenue conversion rate, those kind of things, yeah. But now, once we start doing this whole monthly van restock, the guys will be held accountable for it. Because we got to think about it like this Our material that we put on these vans, we're like the bank You're responsible for this amount of money. Make sure you treat it well. It's a bank. Here's their money and when you come return it back, you have to be accountable for it. And that's going to on a negative for them, but a positive for the warehouse coordinator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but at the same time, like it may be seeming as a negative, but it can also be spun into a positive, where you're giving the autonomy and control over someone's personal livelihood in their own hands, like the kind of person that says I have another baby coming, I'm going to work the overtime. That benefits him. But the kind of person that says I have a baby coming, how can I make this business more money, that makes everyone better. So the fact that you have them all bonus yeah, they may improve their own metrics from maybe less than altruistic means, but they still produce a positive result through those efforts.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and you know what? Now you're making me think about this Like, why not bonus? It took maybe not some huge, large, massive, you know crazy bonus or anything, but why not reward them for having an accuracy of their material on a monthly basis? You guys, you're doing your job great. You guys are accounting for everything that we're giving you, being good stewards of the responsibility of what we're giving you when you give it back to us. If it falls within this range, here's a little something for being responsible, why not?
Speaker 1:Part of the ride-along checks.
Speaker 3:Why not?
Speaker 1:You pass the material audit. There's a little bonus in it for you. Yeah, why? Why not? You pass the material audit? There's a little bonus in it for you. Yeah, why? Because we believe in this so much. It's pavlov's dog, right. Yep, yeah, I can imagine what that checklist looks like.
Speaker 2:Do you have too many surge protectors? Are there piss bottles in the back of your van? It's like I have to put a big x next to that on your bonus clean the van floor.
Speaker 1:yeah, boy, we could talk materials and efficiencies forever, but you said some really important stuff on on the marketing and I'm super curious, and one of the biggest things that I took away from our our pre interview chat was this code red that we talked about. So I'd love to go down this marketing channel a bit. Man. What's recently opened up for you in the marketing world that you're just seeing and wanting more of?
Speaker 3:So not looking so much outward but looking so much inward. So this again this all came out of a problem I think a lot of us around the country have probably. This year has been rough. This has not been an easy year. This has been a year of being efficient and maximizing what you got and we were looking at where a lot of our revenue has been coming from and it's previous customers. Hands down, 60% of our revenue a month has been previous customers and guess how much money I have spent to new customers? Why not spend a little bit more money on existing customers? So this year has been a year of really digging deep in our membership program. We've been really doing annual maintenances hard. I mean the years before, when it was just raining phone calls, we looked at maintenance as more of a oh, we got to go run a maintenance. But this year we're generating anywhere between $20,000 to $40,000 extra on customers that are just sitting there. They're just sitting there.
Speaker 3:Another thing that we've done too as well is we've done we're using a company called Customer Lobby. Customer Lobby grabs your database, does a whole AI analysis of it. It pulls out is $2,026, which is amazing. I was like, yeah, and then he goes. But let me tell you something, guillermo. This is when I was speaking to them. You know, when a customer does two transactions with you, you know how much they spend with you Over $6,000. I was like what Any customer on average that spends two transactions with us or more, their value goes up from $2,000 to $6,000. And what Customer Lobby does is it goes into our thousands and thousands of customers that we have and it'll pull out this month. You have these 1,800 customers that are about to become customers that you will no longer see anymore. They're going to be customers that their life cycle is going to leave you guys, you need to bring them back. Bring them back Per month. We send out postcards, we put them on a text message drip campaign, we do outbound calling and now we're going to start to do email marketing directly to those specific customers and we're leaning in on what we got and we're going hard and now that we have this separation of dispatch and call center, that is their only job Call our customers. This is what you're going to be doing from here on out. So that's what we've been doing as well and it's been working great for us.
Speaker 3:Another thing with this code, green code, yellow code, red. There's been days where, like holy moly, we have no calls on board. What are we going to do? So we've identified that each department, we have a level 10 meeting every single week and we said to them you, as a call center manager, what is going to happen to you if we have no calls on the board? What are you going to do as a manager in your department? Service manager what are you going to do? Hr what are you going to do? Hr? What are you going to do? Dispatcher what are you going to do? Warehouse what are you going to do?
Speaker 3:Two weeks, we had these, every single person in each part of the department. Come up with their list and when things are bad, things are actually being done. Let's discard with HR. Hr guess what? Technicians and team members and everybody are going to get caught up on all the training videos, any type of HR documents that we're missing. You're going to get caught up. Warehouse we're going to be inventorying more vans than usual.
Speaker 3:Call center we are going to start to turn on all this marketing things on and we're going to start to do a massive amount of outbounds. Service manager we already got three trainings lined up. You're going to be doing trainings Me myself. I got all these technical stuff that I'm going to be training on code and all that stuff for installers and stuff. So every single person in the department has got something pre-built already that the company, instead of everyone going home like, oh, there's no calls, guess what? We grow internally. That's code red. Code yellow is like option one is your, this is your. Code yellow is like option two. That gets dwindled down a little bit. And code green is we're good to go. There's a couple of things we do but we look at a problem as not having enough calls on the board. Let's turn internally and let's get better internally and fix some things internally.
Speaker 1:Really love that. How does your team see the lights? How do they know what code it is?
Speaker 3:Uh based on the call board, so our, our, our call center at the. So we also have what's called a uh, a daily huddle in the morning and every department has to spit out numbers and one of the things that he's one of the first persons to speak and he says we are now in code green, we are now in code yellow, we are now in code red, so automatically everyone knows what we got to do for the day. It begins in the morning.
Speaker 1:So everyone recognizes the thresholds based on the numbers they're providing. Where do their numbers go? Where do they put that information to be seen?
Speaker 3:So it's funny because we could do it on Trello or all that stuff. But let me show you right now.
Speaker 1:He's digging deep.
Speaker 2:I love it. The man of action. No secret right here. No secret daily huddle.
Speaker 1:Right here is our daily huddle.
Speaker 3:So our, my daily, our daily huddle is written in paper. This is what the actual it's. It's pretty straightforward like let me, let me pull I get the inside too.
Speaker 3:This is it right here? This, this is our daily, every department. What happened yesterday? What's happening today? What blockers are they had yesterday? What are you going to do this today to reach the goal? You know it's, it's just, it happens daily, daily, every morning. That we went yesterday. And if we did it, what are we going to do to win the day to day and make up for yesterday?
Speaker 2:You know it looks like and what it really feels like is almost like you're on a sports team, but this time the team actually can see the scoreboard. Because I love playing competitively, like it doesn't matter what you do, whether you're a nerding or whether you're an athlete, but the active competition is the thing that drives everyone. So you can't step up your game If you don't even know how you're playing. If I don't see the guy ahead of me on the race, I don't know how to pick it up. I might be ahead of him by three laps. I don't know. At least if I see the board, like you're doing with your team, what blocked you yesterday? What are you going to do to overcome that particular block? What particular actions are you going to take today? So it's like that's what happened yesterday. Here's what stopped you. What are you going to do about it this time?
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. And it's crazy how, if we are not in sync, how it impacts everybody. For example, if I'm going to go back to the warehouse, what if a job was scheduled to do a finishing tomorrow, but the warehouse and he even has the thing that he has to spit out it's called job planning how many do you have done today and how many do you have pending? And 24 hours, 48 hours and 72 hours. So right now I know that we have four job installs that need to get done. He has one more to fulfill before the end of today for tomorrow's installs to happen, and if it's not fulfilled, it'll affect everything, it'll mess everything up.
Speaker 2:I love that because you've gotten it down to almost like. I see you almost like on the track with the old fashioned stopwatch and you're like all right, take a note. Where can this be improved? Next lap, let's go. Next lap, let's go. So I love the tenacity and I've just, if nothing else, just by hearing you and learning a little bit more about you, I've developed an immense amount of respect for who you are and what you do. I'm very impressed with you as a person. Like as a person, you are a amazing individual.
Speaker 3:But I'm going to be honest with you. This did not happen overnight. So if there's guys out here that are listening to this, I didn't just wake up one day and poof, all this was here. This happened over problem over problem over problem, like I said before in the beginning. So it's, the problem is there, but what are you going to do about that problem? That's how this all develops. Is you, as the owner, the team leader, the visionary, the guy who wanted to start an organization? How are you going to solve the problems? Because you know what. You asked me what is my, what is my? At the beginning. You asked me what is my? What's my role in all this? Definitely the visionary, but I'm a problem solver. I just solve problems, but I don't do it myself. I have a team around me that helps and we tackle it together, and problems are good, problems are awesome. I love problems because now we got an ability, a challenge to overcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree A hundred percent. I love what you said about this separation between dispatch and this call center. Often when we're helping people who are six figures stuck is kind of one way to look at a lot of people, right, they see the seven figure mark. They want it so bad Innately. It's a drive. They're not even sure why. They're not even sure at this point if they'd be happy at seven figures, but it's still a drive that many of us face, right, you probably remember it yourself. If I could just get to a million, everything would be better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, careful what we say, but a lot of those same people feeling that, looking up or doing too much. So I love what you're saying about the delegation and the shed of responsibility. One of the first things we tend to help people do is recognize that your CSR, that office management position, someone's got to be there and start helping you. Like yesterday and I've never had a single person, we've never had a single person regret that move to just get someone there who can be on the phone every time, who will make those outbound calls for you, who can begin to help with dispatch, who can begin to help with material management. And just, they wear too many hats too in the beginning. But it always leads to this next question to tie this all together From our point of view. We actually call it an appointment center and I just ask guys, they start to feel like, well, I could almost use a second in the office and you have the same ebb and flow problems that we're kind of discussing with the code red, code yellow, code green.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I always ask this question what would happen if you had one full-time individual and their only job was to put one full-time individual and their only job was to put appointments on your calendar, to set calls for your text to run, and they did nothing else, and you gave them a priority list based on current clients, prospective repeat clients and then new clients and even the channels to prioritize, so that they knew exactly what to drop, when for what call, and start to put that together. So to me, this is very much what you're doing with this call center. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Could you give us an example? Just because I always want to be a student in this position. I want to learn, I want to help people see a bigger picture. What's an example of a call you might make to a prospective repeat buyer that maybe you're losing touch with?
Speaker 2:I got some ideas. Go ahead, Joe.
Speaker 3:Let me hear yours, and then I want to add to that.
Speaker 2:I got excited because the first thing go figure, clay. What am I usually thinking about?
Speaker 2:Well, sales Generators I was going to say generators, Because the first thing that comes to mind is you have a customer that you're currently getting out of. How many of them are people who don't have a maintenance agreement with you? How many people are first class members who haven't gotten it renewed? What additional services were offered on previous generator options that you could offer for enhancements? Because if they're irrelevant, then why aren't they relevant now? So the best thing is hey, just wanted to check in. I know that currently we have you protected for the next year. I just wanted to double check because currently it's going to expire by this year. I wanted to make sure that you don't lapse in any coverage. When would be the best time we could get a technician out there to make sure?
Speaker 2:you're serviced I love that you don't even have to worry about giving us a call. Let's schedule it, so you don't even have to pick up the phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I love that. I mean, I would say for me, I do love that. That's awesome. So it's really so. For dispatchers, for example, they definitely dispatch, but they also do inside sales. Yeah, they do inside sales. So their job is to try to call customers. That we just didn't decide to move forward with work, but we automated that and we break it down per quarters. So what we're doing is we're taking, we pull a spreadsheet out of Titan of all the customers who did not buy from us in Q1 of 2024. We take that spreadsheet, we put it inside of Chirp that's another great tool that we use and once we put that data in there, we have these pre-made text drip campaigns and we mass blast it, and then those text messages that come back. Our inside salespeople are able to see that, and we do that for Q1, Q2, q3, and so forth, and that's able to. Now, is the conversion rate high? If it was a new customer, no, but if we're able to salvage 1%, just 1%, holy moly. And that's one thing that we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:It feels aligned. Can I drop? I've never said this on the podcast before. Uh-oh, this is like guys. I try to remain modest, but this is actually my favorite guerrilla marketing strategy that I've ever designed. If this is already out there and you're listening, apologies, I'm not trying to steal it, but I didn't see your content first. This is just yet.
Speaker 1:If you do either a service quarter or a service annual retrospective, deep dive on your numbers and you look at your majority sold job. So perhaps it's generators like Joe said, for some that don't do generators, it might be LED retrofits and you find that that made up 60% of your service revenue for the year. It makes sense to go deeper and target that more. Right. Why work against what your brand is already doing? So you take that and then every time you complete one of those jobs and you get your review and you run your little good neighbor program and you make sure that that, because frame is intact, you do an EDDM campaign automatically, like your code. We just did. Let's say it was a code gold, cold gold. We just sold our favorite job, our best providing fruit. Eddm email campaign blast good neighbor every door, calling other clients in that square mile radius. We're going to try to become the local hero, the hyper local hero, and do the most LED retrofit. So basically, my objective is to never see another electrician in that area installing our favorite install.
Speaker 3:Geofencing it yeah.
Speaker 1:And every time you do another generator in that area, you get another review, another because another social lift. Yes, it's just a matter of time before you've got a dozen, you get another review, another because another social lift. It's just a matter of time before you've got a dozen. Now your maintenance is more centralized, your maintenance packages are more centralized. Cost of goods go down, profit goes up and they just keep seeing your van with the darn generator logos. You know what I mean. It's a hyper, the hyper local strategy, and I just don't think people go deep enough on that kind of stuff. But you don't see it if you don't pay attention to the data and the numbers and how valuable those kinds of shifts can be.
Speaker 3:I mean, and and just to kind of uh add to that, like one thing that we're we're playing with right now, it's, it's so in here, in, in, in my area I don't know in your area, joe if, if this happens.
Speaker 3:New York, brother, new York we have a lot of aluminum wiring and a lot of federal Pacific stuff. So one of the things that we do is, if we have, when the technicians debrief with the, with the, with the dispatchers, one of the things they ask them was there a federal pacific panel or aluminum wiring in that home? They check they, they tag it. Yes, I do a every friday. I'll do a, a a a look at the calls that went happened last week, this past week, and I look for that tag aluminum wiring, federal pacific, and if there's one panel or one aluminum wire house in that in that area, guess what else is in that area? A whole lot of more, absolutely. So we we use a company that we we tell them this is the address that we found it. Yeah, I want you to send 50 to 100 postcards to that neighborhood of attention, homeowner, aluminum wirings have been found in your neighborhood. We are now doing a $69 electrical safety checkup to make sure that you and your home and your family are safe. Call today.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you're calling in an airstrike.
Speaker 3:You've got a targeted location.
Speaker 2:It's like I found within these coordinates there is aluminum wiring, carpet bomb the whole area with postcards. We got to get in those doors but it works and the cool thing is is that the customer is going to thank you for it.
Speaker 2:It's almost like how did they know? So, like when we were going into homes and working in certain developments we were finding that the kitchen and dining room lights were flickering because they were all ge style panels that were all installed the same time and we're literally arcing out those circuits. So we'd send eddms like wonder why your kitchen lights keep flickering? Call state to find out. And we'd get calls like how do you know my lights were flickering? Like well, we're the provider. We're actually the preferred provider for your area. I'd be happy to come in.
Speaker 3:We specialize in your home come on in love it, man.
Speaker 1:That is awesome russell brunson said uh, famous marketer, throw rocks at your enemies. It's difficult to talk about safety without people's sales defenses going up yeah just meet it head on. I love that about this strategy. Like you can tell that when you're sending it out with that level of messaging, aluminum wirings are enemy. Here's why the facts are it's unsafe. Let us make sure that it's safe for you so that there's no casualties in this war.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's the right thing to do. Holy moly, we could talk to you forever, guillermo. I got one more thing and I want to respect your time, but I know we're already at the hour here. Do you have a few minutes more?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay, very cool. When we chatted last, you talked about employee net promoter score.
Speaker 3:Yes, understand this, so would you help us in this episode. It's never been talked about on here on the Million Dollar Electrician, so could you tell us a bit about what is that and why it's important? So we have somebody here. Her name is Heidi. My wife and I have actually known her for many, many years and I've always wanted her to work at the company because she's just such a she's just a warm person, and we created a position for her called our care coordinator. What that is is her job is to make sure that everyone's happy, that our people are being taken care of, and we started to implement with her stay interviews. And at first, when we say stay interviews, they didn't understand, kind of what it is, and we started to collect all this information like how you're doing and how they're feeling and all that sort of stuff. But now we want to quantify it.
Speaker 3:So what we're going to do is we're going to begin in 2025 doing this is that these state interviews are going to happen. We don't know if we're going to do it on a quarterly basis or on a bi-quarterly basis, an annual we're still kind of playing with it but we're going to ask some very simple questions and we're going to quantify these questions like on a scale of 1 to 5 or on a scale of 1 to 10. How do you enjoy working here On a scale one to five? Or on a scale of one to 10, how do you enjoy working here On a scale? Just put quantifying everything in there and I'm looking at some. There's net performance scores in some websites and everything on how we're actually going to do it.
Speaker 3:But it's great to hit revenue goals, it's great to hit review goals and service agreement goals, but why not start focusing on making sure that your people are happy and you're putting a quantified, a number that you can measure, to it, and that should be something that we are really going to focus on in 2025. Let's get the net promoter score. What is the standard and how do we get above that standard with our people? If we have a happy team member, guess what they're going to do. They're going to serve.
Speaker 2:They're going to serve.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's something that I'm really hyper-focused on for next year.
Speaker 2:You know I want to give-focused on for next year is I've actually worked at places before where they would do the weekly announcements and the weekly how do you like working here? But when I would talk to the managers they'd say well, we actually don't look at them because all we get is negative feedback. We just do it because we know we want the employees to think that we care, and that's the thing is that I know you actually care. So the fact that the team and the employees will recognize you're doing it for the right reason means that they're more likely to actually give honest feedback, because if you don't actually care, why would they do the thing other than just check the box 10?
Speaker 3:Right, right, and, and and, and us as as business owners in our company, and there's 99.9% of business owners they want to take. I mean that's what I feel, cause that's just the way I, that's just the way that I've seen. Success is you want to take. I mean that's what I feel because that's just the way that I've seen. Success is you want to take care of your people. You've got to take care of your people. I mean being a business owner in the electrical industry. I mean we're truly in the people business and, yes, it's great to have customers, absolutely but we are stewards over people that we're leading and they have to be taken care of because if they're taken care of, they're going to take care of the customer and they're going to be happy here. They're going to recruit for you, they're going to be brand ambassadors for you.
Speaker 3:We just got an installer because one of my technicians went to a customer's house and he was helping the customer. His cousin was an electrician and he overheard my technician talking to the customer about how amazing it is to work at the company and the guy was like where do you work Electrical connections, can I come and apply there? Sorry, can I come and apply there, and Can I come and apply there? And we got a great installer because of that.
Speaker 1:I love that. I believe it, man. Earlier, I didn't want to say anything, but I was tempted to ask if you were hiring, and I'm a little rusty on the tools, man, but it sounds like a great place to work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, boy Clay, we could always make room for you, brother.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks, man, Thanks, two years it's been.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's the greatest strength that you have now that you didn't have two years ago? You didn't see this one coming. I got hard questions to finish this up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, trust those around me. That's my greatest strength now is I'm letting go more and I'm allowing people to try to figure things out, like, for example, my father, my stepmother. She had triple bypass surgery last November and we almost lost her and she's like a mother to me and my dad's got Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and I literally had to drop everything that I was doing to take care of my dad for two and a half months while the company was. I was in here for two and a half months. What came out of it? I learned that I have the most amazing team members here. They took care of this place like if it was theirs.
Speaker 3:When I came back, I felt so out of place I didn't know if. I almost felt like I thought I wasn't needed anymore because they broke records. When I was gone, they broke records. My wife manned the ship and they broke records. When I was gone, they broke records. My wife manned the ship and they broke records. But what I learned from that and what has changed me, I think, is that I trust more and allow people to fail, because through failure they're getting better. That's what's changed, I think.
Speaker 2:That's a backdrop moment, that is-.
Speaker 1:For sure. It begs the rhetorical question of why do leaders need to break or break down before they let their team step up? Yeah, yeah, yeah crazy yeah I asked this before. I'll ask it again to finish us off. You got three electricians in a room. You can give them each a different message. One's's just starting out, One's looking to get to that first seven-figure year and one's just a little ways behind you already done over a million. But looking to get to where you're at and looking forward, what's your advice to each of?
Speaker 3:them. Focus on the process of becoming the best selling tech that you can possibly be, because if you become good at the process of running a service call, you're going to be able to train the next guy and the next guy and the next guy. That's going to get you out of that truck. Focus on the process. Don't think about revenue. Revenue is nothing more than a byproduct of the process and providing good service. So that's that guy. Um, the guy that is uh, uh, it's is is about a million, a little over a million maybe.
Speaker 3:I would say start creating processes and systems in your business. What could you do in your business to make things easier around you? Systemize it, make it a machine, for example, your call center. How can you plug and play it for somebody? Manage the process and not the person. So create processes, systems that you can put people in and they're going to be able to have success in it and manage that process. And if something goes wrong, it's not because of that person. It's because the process is broken and now you can fix it. It's not because of that person. It's because the process is broken and now you can fix it, as the person that has multiple trucks doing multiple millions of dollars. You have layers of management in your team.
Speaker 3:At that point, I would say, at that point, you are now managing leaders in your organization. That's what you're doing now. You now need to step up your game. You now need to become, you do to inspire. What can you do to instill energy in the organization? Because you, as the leader, you're the visionary, you see 10 miles ahead of everybody else and you're looking back at them and you're saying and inspiring people come, follow me. This is where we're going, this is what we're going to do. You become an inspirer and you just implement that energy into people around you. So those are the three things that I would say.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:The thing that came up to mind was the difference is you're a leader, not a boss. A boss sits behind the desks and says this is where we need to go. A leader says, follow me, this is where we need to go.
Speaker 3:And funny, you say that so I got something right over here. I mean, I don't know if you guys can see it or not, but you see that right there there's a boss sitting at the top.
Speaker 1:And then the other one at the bottom says there's a leader just going ahead of everybody come follow me. Yep, perfect man, and I love that strong finish. Guillermo, you make me wonder why we don't have you on every week. You're a busy man, you're doing a heck of a job. We're so, so proud of you and so happy to have you here and just share your experiences, your knowledge, your wisdom to other electricians I mean, it means the world, and I know that, uh, that's not it for you. I know that you aim to continue to give back. What's the best way for someone to reach out to you, whether it's someone listening who decides? You know what. I just want to work for a company that's already doing things right. Or, if it's, I want to connect with someone and maybe get to be a part of one of these shop tours, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So there is a Facebook group called um. Uh, oh my gosh, I just, I just said it earlier.
Speaker 2:Maryland masterminds.
Speaker 3:Maryland, maryland masterminds, maryland masterminds. So you can definitely join that Facebook group and and just be a part of it. Um, we, we do shop tours with each other. Um, cell number if anyone ever wants to talk to me or text me or anything 240-426-7946. And if you want to just send me an email, I would be more than happy to get on a Zoom with anybody and talk about the issues you're going through and I could just tell you how the problems I went through and how I got through, got through it. Um, it's the world's longest email. It's a G Castillo C A S T I L L O at electrical connections LLCcom, and I'm here to help, just like you guys.
Speaker 1:Wonderful Thanks so much Is there anything else you wanted to part with on this episode before we let you go?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Uh. One last thing I want to say to everybody is I've said it before whatever you're going through right now, if you're struggling, if you're going through issues and everything right now, you're going to get through it. It's part of your growth. Growing hurts and problems are good, because now you have the ability to solve it and move on to something bigger.
Speaker 1:Incredible Thank you so much, truly a pleasure.
Speaker 3:Take care guys.
Speaker 1:And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast.
Speaker 2:We hope you're buzzing with new ideas that charged up to take your business to the next level, so don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with fellow electricians Together.
Speaker 1:we'll keep the current flowing.
