Only 2 Years in Electrical Service. $1M Sold & Installed — Mike Howie, Travis Electrical

Welcome to Successful Contractor powered by CertainPath, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. For more information on how CertainPath can put your contracting company on a certain path to success, visit our website, www.mycertainpath.com. I hope you enjoyed today's show. and take away a nugget or two.

We drove from Texas to Oregon, transferred all our equipment up there, and I was gone for 7 weeks and the guy never paid me. I almost got my house evicted. My wife's car got impounded. Like, it was, it was, it was pretty bad. It was really, got really bad there for a while.

Yeah.

And then I lost my mom on top of that.

Oh man. So it was just— you had a great year.

Mm-hmm.

You know, what did you end up selling, selling, installing last year?

We did about, I did about $1,011,000.

That's great. It's Middle America. That's a really good number.

Oh yeah. It's the first time I did a million.

So how did you know her, by the way? I just, I found her on Indeed. Okay.

I found a company.

So it wasn't a pre-existing relationship?

No, it was not pre-existing. I just went on Indeed and applied, and she emailed me. So I'll start with the troubleshoot. Um, I don't like to finish it.

Yeah.

Once they approve the troubleshoot, I don't like to finish it. I make it 3/4 of the way through. Once I, I probably know in my head, okay, I know what the problem is.

Yeah.

I probably stop what I'm doing. When I first got into the trades, someone had told me, first person that talks loses.

Yeah.

So I just shut up. I don't, I don't say a single word unless they ask a question, then I'll answer it, then I'll go right back to being silent. I remember one time I sat there for 15 minutes in silence. Complete 15 minutes. Pay attention. Don't just, don't just go to work as collecting a paycheck. Go to work wanting to be able to further your knowledge, to build a career, to be actually become something.

Mike, thank you so much for being here.

I'm glad to be here.

Greatly appreciate it. Uh, for those who haven't met you at a CertainPath event or training yet, can you share with everyone your name, company name, where you guys are located?

Yeah, I'm Mike Howie. I'm, uh, I work for Travis Electrical Service. We're out of Clarksville, Tennessee.

Very good.

I've been doing this about 10 years.

Very good. What do you do for them?

I'm a service technician.

Service—

I do the sales and 50/50 on the installs.

Okay, very good. And you had— we're talking for a great reason. You had a great year. You know, what did you end up selling, selling, installing last year?

We did about— I did about $1,011,000.

That's great. It's Middle America. That's a really good number.

Oh yeah. It's the first time I did a million too.

Is that—

oh, there you go. Walking a little taller this year.

That's right. I love it.

I love it. So by, by certain past standards, that makes you electrical crown champion. I think the threshold is $500,000. Is it $500,000? So you— yeah, you did pretty good blowing past that one.

That was great.

Yeah. So, and this is not the first time though you've done that, right?

No. Last year I did $612,000. And then this year I did $1.11 million.

Woo! So you had a big old boost this year.

Big. But I think the installers was the big, the big help there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. The year before we didn't do a lot of install work. We just did— I mean, I did majority of my work and then halfway through last year we introduced the installers.

So is everyone— is it— so is there multiple install crews now or is it just—

We have 3 installers and then I think like 4 or 5 techs.

Yeah. How is that? How's it been like for you, you know, having that support to be able to do that? And I mean, obviously you're a great communicator. I'm sure you're a great electrician as well, but I mean, I mean, now you're able to kind of sell the jobs and, you know, kind of hand that off to great skilled installers, but allows you to, to connect with more homeowners, right? Get them more happy.

Oh yeah, it gets me, it gets me into more houses, which is the biggest thing, man. You get, you continue that going into more houses and you get that more revenue.

That's right. And you're good at it. So, all right, fine, find what you're good at. It's, it's, it's funny, you know, when I first heard this install model, I first heard about it like probably When we launched Electrical, there was a few people doing it on the coasts, but now really the last 5+ years, I feel more and more people are going to it because they realize, you know, it's to have a technical person who's a great communicator. That's, that's where the, the— I don't want to say that's the value, but that's a unique skill set not everyone has.

What led us to attend the event today, we've been watching the CertainPath podcast on YouTube for quite some time, and it just had a lot of good content, so we wanted to come and see what that content was live. Coming into this, I had no expectations of what it might be. I've never experienced anything like this before, but it proved to be a truly moving and engaging experience all the way around. My most powerful insight from this is that there are other contractors just like me, just struggling to make it, to figure it out, and it's wonderful to know that there's a network of people that can help support you and have your back. The most exciting thing to take home here, what we're going to implement, is going to be the call-taking and dispatching for profit. I can truly see from the coaches what the value of that is, and for us, that's going to be step one. I would recommend others come and experience so that they can find out what they don't know, to understand that they don't know what they don't know, and to be able to experience a community that's willing to help answer that question.

So, uh, all right, well, I want to dig into your service call process in a minute, but I always enjoy learning people's personal stories, how they got to where they are, and, you know, kind of how's it shaped you to, to get where you are today. So how about you, Mike? Well, how did we get into electrical? When did that first happen?

Uh, Well, I was doing— I grew up on kind of all the construction world. My dad was doing it, my stepdad was doing it. My stepdad is actually the one that got me into the trade. He, he owns his own remodeling business, so I decided to start doing— running a little bit electrical with him. And then I did a stint in the military.

Okay.

Um, I'd probably still be in the military, but I got blown up, lost my right eye.

So—

Oh wow.

I had got out of the military and just kind of went back to my calling, which is electrical, something that I really enjoy doing.

Yeah.

Um, it's just been great ever since, man. I haven't looked back.

So who did you first— you get out of the military, you know?

I went to work for a company called Faith Technologies.

Okay.

Um, which was a great— I mean, that's where I did my apprenticeship program. I had some of the greatest leaders there. Um, but they were wanting to send me up to Ohio, and at the time I was wanting to have a family, start a family.

Yeah, yeah.

And so me and the wife decided we weren't gonna— I wasn't gonna travel.

Yeah.

I wanted to start the family. But then that kind of went downhill. We weren't able to have a child for a little while. It took a little while. We finally had one.

But congrats.

Then I went to work for another company in Clarksville. Yeah, it was just— it was not where I needed to be.

It was all service work, by the way.

It was all— no, the Faith Technologies was industrial.

Okay.

So I was— I became foreman there for a little while for them. And then like I said, they were sending me to Ohio. I didn't want to go.

So yeah, yeah, yeah.

Came back to Clarksville and went to work for another company. Um, that just didn't really work out there. That, that, you know, that they were kind of the golden boy kind of guy. They only had their one guy that they wanted to deal with. So it was like kind of hard to work yourself up.

Sure.

So, um, that kind of went downhill. So everything was going downhill very fast. I couldn't find it. I went to go work for a guy for 7 weeks. I was gone for 7 weeks. And he was supposed to— I was only supposed to be gone for 3 weeks, come back for a week. I was going down to, uh, Texas to work down in Texas in the, uh, the solar field down there.

Oh wow.

And, uh, when then we went to Oregon and—

Really?

Yeah, we drove from Texas to Oregon, transferred all our equipment up there, and I was gone for 7 weeks and the guy never paid me.

Whoa.

And I was on very bad— I was almost got my house evicted, my wife's car got impounded. Like, it was, it was, it was pretty bad. It was really got really bad there for a while.

Yeah.

And then I lost my mom on top of that. So it was just Over, over and over and over again. So yeah, when I was in Oregon, I ended up texting, uh, or emailing Stephanie, um, the owner's wife of our company. Yeah. And she got back with me.

So how did you know her, by the way?

I just, I found her on Indeed.

Okay.

I found the company.

So there wasn't a pre-existing relationship?

No, it was not pre-existing. I just went on Indeed and applied, and she emailed me, and then we just had this conversation. She just kept telling me, she said, just get home. She goes, we got plenty of work, just get home.

Yeah.

And I came home and had to sit down with her and Chris, the owner of the company, and Reagan Thomas. She's the vice president. And it's just— it's been all uphill since.

What was that? What was that interview like? What was that conversation like?

It was great. It was like an hour and a half interview. It's the longest interview I ever had. Yeah, we have it. We have 2 different sides. We have our contract side and then we have our residential side. And yeah, it's funny because Chris and Reagan, they were arguing on who was going to get me and I ended up making the decision to go to service and I've never looked back.

What, what about service? Drew you towards it versus the other side?

I think the people. Yeah, the people. And like on the industrial commercial side, you don't— I mean, yeah, you get that sense of completion or whatever you want to call it, but it's— you don't get that satisfaction from the client.

Yeah.

Like B-Building, going in and just talking to Betty and getting her lights back on and seeing her smile is— man, that'll make a bad day go good.

Yeah.

All day long. Yeah.

How many years ago was that when you started with them?

With Travis? Yeah. Uh, it started with them 2 years ago.

So it was 2 years ago. So you, you, your first year became a—

Yeah, first year. Wow. All right. First year as a tech. I came on, I came on at like the middle of like August 2 years ago, 2 and a half years ago, I should say now. And then, uh, I didn't get put in my van until I think like that Jan— December, January of that year.

So about 5, 6 months.

And then yeah, I hit Crown my first year in the van.

That's crazy. What was your, uh, what was your, like, your onboarding experience like? I mean, again, you knew the trade obviously, but there's a whole communication side to it, how to run a service call that we're gonna get into in a little bit. So where'd that come from?

I didn't know a lot about it. I mean, I kind of just, like I said, coming from that company, that other company I was working for right before Travis, um, they didn't tell you anything. They just kind of threw you out in the wind and you just kind of had to figure it out yourself.

Sure.

So coming on to Travis, um, learning about the CertainPath motto, Yeah. And learning how to do the calls and it just, it's, it's changed everything.

Yeah. So you guys, uh, what's training like for you guys today? Because obviously you're, you're a high performer, but I'm assuming you guys still train today to say, keep your—

Yeah, about every, we try to do it usually around Tuesdays, Thursdays. We'll have some kind of training, whether we watch a video from Certain Path or we just, we do maybe, um, brain fart. Um, Roleplay.

Okay, sure.

We do a little bit of roleplay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. So when you were, uh, so those six months, you're kind of what were you doing? Were you riding along?

Yeah, I was doing a ride along. I I rode a lot with the like the field supervisor a lot. Learned kind of kind of how to use the iPad, how to debrief jobs, how to run calls, collect the money, all that stuff. Right.

I didn't.

I had never used service time before. That was first time I ever used service time. So I didn't. I didn't even know how to build an estimate off service time. All my Previous experience was handwritten estimates. So it was a big, big difference.

For sure. So you're learning all those nuts and bolts and how they run service and you're sitting in the training. So, I mean, I'm bringing this up because there's a lot of people that go, oh man, I want somebody to hire. I want to hire somebody, throw them in a truck right away and go make money.

That's not possible. It's not possible. No way it's possible.

Yeah, there's an investment.

Oh yeah.

And then the payoff is you got a guy who's a 2-time Crown Champion. So 6 months is worth it for the business. I just want owners that watch this to hear that. That patience pays.

Oh, patience pays all day long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good stuff. So when did you, uh, you start running calls on your own, right? What was that first call like? Do you remember anything?

The nerves were crazy. The nerves were crazy.

Kind of like this, you're nervous?

Yeah, kind of like exactly, exactly. It was just, it was kind of knowing what to say and what not to say. Yeah, that was the biggest learning aspect of you can't just go into any client and treat them the same way you treated the last one.

Right.

You gotta treat everybody different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. When did, uh, when'd you start feeling comfortable?

I think, uh, I think after I sold my first big job.

Yeah.

After I sold, I think my first big job was like a, it's actually my first job I sold with Travis was the biggest job I ever sold.

Is that right?

Still to, still today it was like $60,000.

Whoa. Um, what was it?

It was a big like 180 by 100 barn. That they, that client actually ended up becoming family of mine. We actually still talk to this day.

Is that right?

Yeah, they're, I do all kinds of work, but I've probably done probably well over $200,000 of work just for them. So it's—

Wow.

That's kind of, kind of fitting. Like this is the way, welcome, that you're in the right place.

Yeah, it was, it was a big, big culture shock, I should say.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a big difference.

What did you, quoting that kind of job, I mean, how much were your hands sweating?

It was stressful. It was very, 'cause I, one, I never quoted that kind of a job before. Yeah. And then I gotta make the material list. So then they, It was funny because my field supervisor, he's like, come in this office, we'll make material lists. And he just kind of sat me down. He's like, start making it. And he walked off and I was like, what?

Good training.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was definitely a big— I needed that. Yeah, I needed that because now I can think about a material list like it's nothing. I can just start making it. Sure. That first time was a little hard, but you need that. Yeah, you need that.

Sure. That's cool. That's pretty cool. All right, let's talk. Let's, let's, let's walk, walk me through your process. So when you get When you get dispatched to a job, do you do any research on that job? How do you prepare yourself to go on it?

A lot of times what I'll do is I'll, uh, I'll just kind of open up the job notes, see what's going on there. Um, what I like to do is I look up the history, see if we've been there before.

Yeah.

Um, if we have been there before, I'll look through the estimates, see what's been quoted there before, what hasn't been quoted. Look, see, maybe look through the pictures, see if there's pictures of the panel. Yep. Pictures of maybe their outlets, stuff like that. Kind of get a knowledge of the house before I get there.

Yeah.

Um, and then sometimes I'll even listen to, um, the calls if they got the calls on there. Yeah.

What are you looking for when you listen to those calls?

Really any, any tidbit of information. Maybe they're excited to get something, like if it's an install, maybe they're getting a hot tub or something like that. Seeing how excited they are in that voice, if especially on a call, if they call with a lot of excitement, man, you can probably get them to get a lot more than just that hot tub. Now, if they call Man, my wife just got me this hot tub. Now I gotta, now I gotta pay for it. Now, you know, you gotta go into this with completely different aspect because he didn't want it, but she did.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Do you, um, you know, I, I'm sure you, you close most of your jobs. At least you get something.

I'll try to.

But on those occasions where maybe you're like, man, they just, it was a tough call. Maybe it was, maybe you did sell something, but it was a tough call and these homeowners were hard. Like that happens. It's, it's a tough business you're in. How do you put that, compartmentalize that so you don't bring in that negativity to the next job? Is there anything you do or you just go, it's done?

Well, the thing, biggest thing I do, um, it's funny because it's a podcast, but I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts. Yeah. A lot of comedy podcasts.

Who do you listen to?

I listen to whether it's Kill Tony. Oh yeah. I mean, I listen to every comedy podcast you could think of. Are You Garbage? I mean, it doesn't matter.

I just started listening to that like a couple weeks ago. It's hilarious.

It's hilarious.

I'm like, I find way too much in common.

Yeah, those guys are great. Yeah, they're great.

They're funny.

They're great. But I like to listen to like either that or some kind of music because I mean, I— everybody's got those clients. You get those clients that whether— hell, I just had one last week where all I did was show them the estimate and he just started cussing me out. Like he just started getting so mad and I was like, what do you want me to do? It honestly stunned me for a while because I haven't been cussed out like that probably ever and it kind of just stunned me so I didn't really know what But I mean, you're always gonna get those angry clients, but you just gotta, you can't let that be the dictator on your entire day.

That's right.

You can't, you gotta, you gotta come at each call with a different mindset and don't, don't, like they say, don't carry your work home. Just don't carry your work to your next call.

That makes sense. What do you do in that situation where you're getting cussed at by some crazy person?

Honestly, that on that one, I kind of just, I, I, I, I waive the service fee cuz it's not, it's not worth it. It's not worth trying to get him even more mad.

It's—

yeah, it's really what you want to do. For me personally, in them situations, I just want to get out of that situation as fast as possible.

Yeah.

So if he's already mad and he's that mad, the likelihood of you changing that is— no, it's not going to happen. So what I did in that situation is I said, all right, buddy. I mean, he started cussing at me really bad and started cussing at me. And so I said, all right, man, you just have a good day. He's like— I was like, your estimates are here if you ever need them. If you ever change your mind, you have a good day. And I kind of walked away while he was cussing at me.

Yeah.

Smart. It's like, I'm not one. I need to stay professional.

Absolutely.

You always want to stay professional. You don't want to give in to them. Yeah.

Ever. No. No. Refund that service fee. Do not service ever again.

That's exactly what I did. I called my office. I said, put them on the do not call list. We ain't ever coming back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, and that's fine. Now there's crazy out there.

There's crazy.

There's a lot of crazy. So, all right. So you, let's talk more happy stuff. Of course.

I'm here for it.

You pull up to the house. Uh, you walked up, you knock, they open up. Well, first of all, when you get to the house, are you looking at anything so you can find common ground, something to talk about, or you not try to get that, you know, calculated with it? You just want to get into the house and meet the homeowner?

No, you— when I walk up to houses, I mean, I look at the entire house. I look at their service, make sure their service is good, especially on them older houses. A lot of times you walk up to services not strapped to houses, or grounding's not done, or meters hanging off the wall.

You're starting your inspection already, kind of.

As soon as you get up to the house, I mean, you should be looking at Everything, whether they got— if they have soffit lights, seeing if they all work, if they're dirty. I mean, yeah, it's simple things like that that you can— I mean, I sold, I sold $600 to a guy just to clean out soffit fixtures.

Is that right?

Just, I mean, you can, you can find so many things on people's houses if you just look.

Sure.

Absolutely. So you— I start by looking over the house, looking over their entire everything. And then if I don't see anything outside, then yeah, I'll start. Then I'll go to the door, start knocking on the door and seeing how y'all doing. And start from there.

Yeah. What is you— so when you get let in, you know, how do you introduce yourself? What do you start talking about? Do you start trying to find common ground right away?

The first thing I do is like, um, excuse me, if it's an install, like I classify 2 different jobs. I classify it's install or if it's a troubleshoot.

I like it.

Um, and on, you know, you're on your standard troubleshoot calls, they're calling you because they have a problem.

Yeah.

So you need to solve that problem first, or at least Talk about that problem first. So like on a troubleshoot, I'll knock the door. I'll they'll answer. I'll introduce myself, tell them who I'm from, make sure I'm parked okay.

Yep.

Make sure nothing's wrong there. And they said, "All right, cool." And then they let me in. First thing they're going to do is take you to the problem.

Yep.

I don't interrupt them in that process because that kind of makes them think that you're not listening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I want them to take the reins at the first part of the call. Tell me what you've been experiencing, what you've been going through.

So you're asking questions over there?

Yeah, I'm asking questions. What led to it? How long it's been happening?

Yep.

Stuff like that.

Does any? Do you ever ask? Like, has anyone come out and looked at this before?

Yeah, I have. I usually ask that. I said, "Have y'all had? Is this first time you ever use an electrician?" Yeah. Have you ever had someone look at this before? Yeah. Ninety percent of the time they're calling you because they haven't had somebody out there before. Sure. Especially on a troubleshoot. Yep. So, but on like on an install job, when we get there, first thing I do is I'll again I'll ask them. Hi, how are you getting the new hot tub? And then yes, I am. They get all excited about it, and then. Then I, then really I just, I'm looking around their house, see if maybe I could find any common, common ground and we can just talk about, especially with hunters. I'm a big hunter. If I see deer mounts on the wall, we're going to start talking for 30 minutes just about deer. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you want to get that conversation because once you break down that, that trust barrier that they have, man, you could, you could do anything.

Yeah. Just loosen them up a little bit.

Just loosen them up.

That's it.

Okay.

On that troubleshoot call. So you go, all right, say it's just that. Outlet that just don't know why it's not working. The other ones in the room are working, right? So you're asking all these questions. What is your next step? Do you explain how you are going to perform today's service, or what do you— or do you just start looking at it? You talk about a diagnostic. What's your next step in a situation like that?

So like if a client comes up to me and says, hey man, I got a bad outlet here. First thing I'm going to start asking them questions. What did you have plugged into the outlet when it started happening? Uh, how has this been going on for a long time? Stuff like that. Uh, and then if they, once they answer all them questions and I, then I'll start bringing up, okay, well, what I do on my service Titan is I don't, I don't, I make that troubleshoot estimate right in front of them.

Yeah.

Okay. Um, and I make it super quick. Like I put the label as just the letter A and then super quick troubleshoot bedroom outlet not working.

And what do you, what do you explain to them what that is?

Like the troubleshoot?

Yeah.

Um, I, I explain to them, I say, look, so our troubleshoot, it covers, um, it gives me unlimited time to find the problem. So I can be here for 30 minutes. I could be here for 6 hours and price is not gonna change for you. Um, and then I'll tell 'em, uh, and as long as it's not running a new wire, so it'll cover, um, if it's a bad outlet, A bad connection, maybe a wire popped out of an outlet because a lot of times in these, in these homes, people just do a backstab outlet.

Yep.

And then when I say that, they don't know what that means. So when I usually, when I say that, I'll just tell them, I say, and we'll talk more about the backstab outlet later if I come across it in your house.

Yep.

Just give them that knowledge. Okay. I wonder what that is.

Yeah.

And then I'll tell them, okay, so if it's a bad connection, bad outlet, it pays to fix that. But it pays to fix a standard breaker. A lot of people think with the troubleshoot, if they have an AFCI breaker, it'll cover that too. So I make sure I say a standard breaker because it won't cover the more expensive breakers.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and then I'll say, but if on the odd chance that it is, if I got to run a new wire from point A to point B, yeah, I said it'll be an upcharge for that. But 99% of the time it's usually not that, but that's always a possibility. So I do want to let you know that.

What do you say when someone's like, the outlet doesn't work? Why do you have— can't you just fix the outlet? Yeah.

And then I get that a lot. I mean, people are like, well, it's just that outlet, but the whole room works. Why can't you just replace that outlet? I said, yeah, that's fine. I can replace that outlet. I said, but this is what happens if I just replace that outlet. If I replace that outlet, but then that outlet goes bad, that's right down the wall from it.

Yeah.

You're going to call me back out for that same outlet.

Right.

But I think if I troubleshoot this, what I can do is I can go through your entire circuit, make sure all the connections are tight, no outlets are maybe giving signs of burning, giving signs of melting, that they're old or anything like that. Um, which gets them into the mindset of maybe circuit restoration, replacing all those outlets, because that's kind of— that's the kind of route I like to take. So I'll start with the troubleshoot. Um, I don't like to finish it.

Yeah.

Once they approve the troubleshoot, I don't like to finish it. I may get three quarters the way through. Once I, I probably know in my head, okay, I know what the problem is.

Yeah.

I'll probably stop what I'm doing. Um, and I go to the client. I say, hey, is there anywhere else that you use a lot of outlets? Maybe vacuum that you plug in a lot or anything like that. I just want to, I just want to check out that outlet.

Yeah.

They said yeah. And meanwhile, I have already shown them before I ask that question. Sorry, let me back up before I. asking that question, I've already shown them, okay, maybe a backstabbed outlet or an outlet that maybe has a loose connection or something like that. Or maybe an outlet's bad that stumped— you plug it in, it's just falling right out.

Yep.

Um, so that's why I get to that, where's an outlet that you use a lot? Not something that you leave plugged in, but something that you plug in and plug out, plug in and plug out. Um, they usually bring me to a hallway plug or something like that, and I plug in my plug tester and it just falls out. Almost 99% of the time that happens.

Yeah.

And I say, okay, that's loose. So I pull off the COVID I'll take out the outlet, and sure enough, that one's probably backstabbed too. So then that gets into the conversation of, okay, well, you use this outlet a lot. Not only can we just do— I already talked to you about the one-circuit restoration for your one room. I said, but now we got, we got a chance here. Maybe we could do a two-circuit restoration.

Yeah.

And maybe replace all the outlets in that room and in this.

Yeah. Um, by the way, if I interrupt real quick, when you explain How do you explain what backstabbed is and why that's not a good thing?

I explain backstab is like when you take an outlet, a lot of times a new home construction, because they're just going by speed, they're not going by quality. It's really more or less speed on how fast, how many houses they can get done. Yeah. So what they do is on the backside of an outlet, they'll take the outlet and they just stab the wire right in the back of it. But like we were just talking about, when I tell you Just me talking to a client. Um, like we were just talking about how you use that outlet a lot of times. Every time you use that, that wire just works its way out. Yeah. Yeah. And eventually it's just gonna pop out and now your whole room doesn't work because that's when I get into, okay, it's all like a chain.

Yeah.

Once you break that chain link, I said the rest of the chain's kind of useless. You got maybe 2 chains that you, you ain't gonna pull a car off that.

Yep.

I said you're gonna need the entire train to pull that car. Right. And they're like, oh, that makes sense. Because I literally just had one probably Wednesday or Thursday last week and say, that outlet, if that outlet's bad, the whole room's not going to work. I said, yeah, it will. This is why that happens. Right.

And at that point, do you go, if you think you have a backstabbed outlet here, what's the likelihood of you having it in the whole room?

Yeah, I always say, yeah, normally I say like, if I don't get them to go and show me another outlet and I'm already at a backstab outlet, I'm like, what's the chance that you think you have one in your master bedroom?

Right.

Or you have one in your garage or where else?

Or the whole house.

And that gets them start thinking.

Yeah.

Um, a lot of times on these older houses, that's where it really works about the circuit restoration. Because if you can get them— it— I've seen it and I've done this. If you can get them to commit on whether it be one circuit restoration or maybe 2 circuit restoration, where all you're doing is replacing the devices, usually if you make that one last estimate of a whole, whole home re-device.

Yeah.

And they look at the difference in the prices and make sure you— my biggest thing is I don't want my optimum package and my premium and the deluxe to be $4,000 difference in prices. I want them to be maybe $1,500. Yeah, something like that. So they can really think about, okay, well, maybe if I just spend a little bit more, I can get the whole house done. Might as well.

Might as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. So in this situation, this specific call, you know, you're walking me down this path of talking about the different outlets. At the same time, I'm assuming, you know, this is getting you throughout the house because they're like, well, yeah, this one's old and how about this one? And you're, I would assume you're looking around, right? And what other issues are you taking notice of this in an inspection? Or like, what are some things you're looking for? Smoke, just trying to think, smoke detectors you might notice that are yellowed, or what are some other things that you're like, hey, Mrs. Jones, while I'm here, you know, when's the last time, you know, how do you walk through your inspection?

How do you set the pace? On a safety check, like I'll, a lot of times on a safety check, I try to get the client involved. A lot of the times they don't really care. They're kind of just gonna leave you be and let you do your thing. Yeah. I've only had maybe a handful of clients I can think of where I'm actually trying— every client I try to get them to get involved with the, with the service call, but they don't always wanna do it.

They're doing something.

They're doing something, working from home, whatever the case is, dealing with kids, whatever it is, is they kind of let you be. Um, and I kind of just go through, I mean, I'll hit every outlet that I can get to. Um, Because maybe if you hit an outlet at the start of the room and you think, okay, yeah, the whole room's good. But if you try that out in the back of the room, that outlet's kind of loose.

Yeah.

That outlet, the ground is shaky on. So I try to hit every outlet that I can that obviously furniture's not missing or anything like that. Um, I look for switches a lot.

Okay.

Um, 'cause with switches, one of my first foremen ever told me this. Uh, if you take a switch and you kind of just, while it's on, If you can shake that handle just barely and that light flickers, that, that switch is probably going bad. And so I do that on most every switch I'll do. I'll just kind of shake it a little bit. If I can get that light to flicker, especially when the client's around, they're like, what the heck? Why is that light flickering? So I tell them about the switch.

And what do you say? It's just a loose connection? It's going bad?

No, I just tell them, I said, it's usually the age of the device.

Yeah.

If it's a new home, it's probably maybe a loose connection. But normally I don't do that on new homes because the switch ain't going to be bad.

Yeah.

Mostly I normally do that in just older houses. 20, 30, 40-year-old houses, I'll start shaking that switch. Um, and every house besides new houses, they don't have— almost every single one will not have a washer GFI. Oh, almost every single one won't.

Yeah.

So I mean, that's an easy sell right there.

Yep.

Um, and surge protection. Surge protection, that's my baby. I mean, I'll sell— I can sell anybody surge protection. That's—

Yeah.

That's where I, that's where I really go to that. And smoke detectors for me, Are kind of hard to sell as far as like if we buy 'em, it's easy for me to sell 'em to get the other, the, the, the other client to sell it. Yeah. Or for them to buy it from us to install it. That's easy. But for us, for me to tell you that I wanna put a markup on these already expensive smoke detectors, it's that, that's one hard sell for me. Um, but, but Surgis is always my go-to. All right.

Well, I wanna get into that just a minute. Hey contractors, stop only relying on digital advertising. It's your pal Bob Houchin with The Successful Contractor. This data is so shocking I had to share it with you immediately. We all know the contracting world is obsessed with digital marketing, but did you know that properly curated direct mail campaigns outperform digital's response almost every time? Good direct mail has a higher ROI over any paid channel. Again, when direct mail is done right. Research shows that consumers will keep a piece of direct mail for 17 days. It sits on that kitchen counter looking at them all day long. Your best customers, you know, the households earning 6 figures plus, 65% say they're overwhelmed with digital ads and they now trust good old direct mail more when deciding who to buy from. So the mailbox is winning. The question is, is yours? Most contractors are spraying postcards across zip codes and praying that the right homeowner opens one. That's not marketing, that's a lottery ticket. So let me introduce you to CertainPath Lead Generation. CertainPath Lead Generation is our direct mail marketing agency that works with CertainPath members and non-members. CertainPath Lead Generation uses 200+ data points points, home, age, income, and more to put your direct mail in front of the households most likely to book a job and buy. We run structured multi-month campaigns, so instead of a one-time spike in calls that fades, you build predictable, repeatable demand. I know, I know, you love digital because you can measure it. Well, with CertainPath Lead Generation, it does it for you as well. We can show you exactly which mailed homes turned into booked jobs and the revenue behind them. So you get all the accountability of digital and none of the noise. Direct mail still works. Guessing just doesn't. Click the link and request your free market analysis. Stop guessing. Start growing with CertainPath Lead Generation. So you, you, let's say they, are you writing an estimate or options on say the whole house re-device? And getting— and plus the multiple, you know, maybe a couple circuit restoration, you're separate. Do you get— do you close that one job before you open the scope to look at all these other things? Or do you just kind of keep an open ticket and you're talking to them and then you're going to sit down at one point and go over 3 or 4 options altogether? How do you— what's your thought on it?

What I do is I'm, um, every time I see something in a client's house that I want to put in the estimate, I don't ever put something in the estimate that the client— I haven't already talked to the client about. Great nugget.

Yep.

Because I don't want them to be surprised.

Sure.

I really don't want them to be surprised. So as soon as I spot something in the house, I stop what I'm doing. I bring the client in, say, hey, I just found this. I want you to know about it.

That's it.

And we'll talk more about that later once we actually go through the estimates. Just trying to get it in their head that they know what I'm talking about.

Do you talk to them about, hey, this is what I'm seeing is wrong? How do you explain it? Something's wrong? Or do you say, hey, this is just something worrisome? Or do you take it beyond that and go, there are some things that we could potentially do here? Or do you not even get into that just yet? You just—

Not just yet. I, some, now if they may start asking questions, I'll get into it.

Yeah.

But if they don't ask any questions, I kind of just give a brief overview just so they know about it.

Okay.

And then once I actually start explaining the estimates, that's more or less, that's where the, a lot from what I've seen, that's where they're going to start asking questions.

For sure. Okay.

About why do I need to do that? What's wrong with that? Yeah. Why? Why is that necessary? Yeah. Now, if it's a panel or say maybe a Federal Pacific or something like that, most of the time the clients are going to already start asking you questions the moment you bring it up.

Yeah.

So that's, that's an easy one. You already answered all those questions, but it's simple as like a washer GFI. I'll just say, hey, ma'am, I just want to let you know new code states a washer needs to have a GFI on it because it's close to a water source. But we could talk about that more later once I actually go through the estimates, unless you have any questions right now. Okay. And then if she ever—

you just kind of leave it at that. You just go, hey, it's something I noticed.

Yeah, yeah. I just, I just— something I noticed. Hey, you don't have surge protection. It's just something I noticed. It's actually got put in the codebook recently for every house to have one. But again, we'll just talk about that in a little while.

When do you get to the panel? We haven't brought that part up. Like, when do you— from that read device conversation, do you go, hey, let's go to the panel?

Yeah, after. So after they, after they show me their initial problem, I'll say, well, okay, well, let's kind of take a— let's look at their panel. Okay, let's see what's going on.

What do they say? Well, why do we need to do that?

I've never had a client do that. Okay, not as an electrician.

Um, they trust you.

They— every, every client, you should never feel— I don't know what the word is. Um, scared, I should say. Now, you should never feel scared to ask to see the panel, right? You're an electrician. You should go into every house being able to see that panel. Yeah, not every client's gonna have, have it accessible. I mean, I've been into so many houses where they built a cabinet over it or put all their entire garage right in front of the panel. Yeah, I've been to houses and they know you're coming and they still don't clean it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I've had that, but at least ask to see it. If you can't get to it, that's one thing. Maybe ask the client, hey, do you mind while I'm working on the troubleshoot, would you mind just at least clearing a way for me to get to your panel?

Right, right.

And they'll never have a problem with that.

Right. So when you— okay, you get to the panel and maybe it's Federal Pacific or maybe it's just old, you got some bad breakers. Bring the homeowner in and you have that conversation like, do you know what a Federal Pacific is? Or do you know what it would be like? How do you educate a person on what they don't know about in terms of how bad that kind of panel is or that their panel's old and has issues? What's that conversation like?

Um, I kind of treat it— there's 2 different ways you can go about it. If it's a client that kind of already knows about it, they know they have a bad panel, they know it's old, they know it needs to be replaced. I'll hit all the high notes about that Federal Pacific fire. I don't really say fire hazards, but I'll get into the hazards on it, why breakers won't trip if something serious is going into your house. I actually just went to— came from a house that completely burned down from a Federal Pacific panel. So I took all those pictures and I save them now.

Yeah.

And I've, I've shown clients, okay, this, this is— I don't want to scare you because I'm not, I'm not into scaring people into, into buying something. I just And inform them what can happen.

Yeah.

Um, scare tactic is not the way to go. Yeah. I mean, it's easy to get somebody scared.

Yeah.

But it's easy not to get them scared too, and rather just educate them by saying, hey, your house is going to burn down if you don't get this panel replaced.

Yeah. How about, you know, it's just an old panel and maybe it's got some bad breakers or something like that? Keep track, you know, what's that like? Because don't those things last forever?

Yeah, I've had like, I've had clients Well, that panel's not, uh, it's not one of the ones that you can't work on. I said, no, it's not. Yeah, it's not. It's, but panels also have a lifespan of 30 years. I said, and once you, once you pass that 30-year mark, whether it be the busing or whether it be the breakers, everything's, it's just like your car.

Yeah.

I said, your car's not gonna last forever, is it? And they like, they start thinking, well, no. I said, well, you gotta get your oil changed. You gotta get all this stuff. I said, eventually maybe your motor takes a crap on it. It's not gonna last forever. Nothing's built to last forever. It's the same with your panel. Yeah, I said that's your lifeline of your house. Once that goes, your TVs, you cooking in your kitchen for your family, none of that's going to work. Yeah, I said so. This is your lifeline. And yeah, we don't have to do a panel change. So what I do, like if we're talking about an older panel, whether it be an ITE or whatever it is, the panels that we can use, I like to give them three different estimates on just the panel. Okay, because we can do.

Will you talk about the different estimates? While you're doing the inspection, or is that really when you sit down and go through everything?

When I sit down and go through everything.

Okay, that's fine. Just wanted to clarify.

Go ahead. Um, well, I'll hit the high notes, like when we're talking about the panel, I'll say, well, there's 3 different ways we can do this. I said, we can, we can do it 3 different ways, whether—

You're tuning them up.

You're warming them up. Yeah, tune them up. But we, I'll just hit briefly. I'll say, we can, we can change it, we can do a tune-up, or we can change all the breakers. I said, but we can get more into that. If you got questions now, I'll answer them. If not, we can get more into that later when I actually explain the estimate.

Right, right, right. Okay, very good, very good. Uh, and then I guess at that time you can go, well, you don't have a whole house surge, right?

Exactly.

What is that? How do you explain to people what the heck that is? Because I had never, never before I got into this, I had not heard of what that is.

So surge protection.

Yeah, so in the whole house. Yeah, I don't have all those, those plugins all over the place.

Whenever I'm doing like— it really works on people that work from home. The moment you see somebody that works from home, the chances of you selling a surge protection go Through the roof. I mean, through the roof. Yeah. Um, that, or whether or not they're a big gamer. If you see that they have a big gaming setup, or if they maybe have a, a theater in their house, something like that, something big. If they have a lot of electronics in their house, surge protection, you should not be able to sell.

What do you say?

What do you like?

What I say is, well, I'll bring it up to them and I'm saying, hey ma'am, hey Miss Betty, I said, I noticed that you don't have surge protection. One of the biggest things about surge protection actually just got put in, in the codebook for 2024, that every house is actually supposed to have one. Still, Tennessee has not adopted that codebook, but once they do, every house is going to be required to have one.

Hey.

I said, your house is maybe, maybe, yeah, your house is a little old, but you have so many electronics in here, don't you? And then I'll get her to talk. Well, yeah. I said, well, you got your HVAC system, you got your water heater, fridge, stove, microwave, dishwasher. Um, your phones, your, your TVs, um, your treadmills, everything. I said, all that is electricity, whether it be permanently hooked up or just plugged in. I said, and you see all in Clarksville, there's a lot of new home construction. So that's, I guess that's kind of easy. That's an easy topic for me to hit. It's never stopping.

Yeah.

So I'm telling them, I said, all this new home construction that's going on when they're always messing with these power lines or all these storms that we're getting or the tornadoes. Whatever the case, hell, you could just be sitting here on your couch just watching TV and you get a surge and it's sunny outside.

Yes.

And it happens all the time, even when you're not realizing it. But every time you get a surge, whether it be a strong one or whether it be a small one, you have the chance of losing all those devices that I just mentioned to you.

Yeah.

But one of the benefits of our surge protection is not only will it heat up every time, every surge that comes in this house, one of the best things is, is that if it ever goes bad, we don't charge you for another one. We're just going to come in and replace it. That could be 20, 30 years from now, ma'am. I said, we'll just come and replace it. It's lifelong. Yeah. I said, and on top of that, you get a $100,000 warranty if you lose anything. And that's a no-questions-asked warranty. So that's stuff that, you know, we pay insurance all this money and they don't ever want to cover anything. And that's— that gets— that gets them laughing 90% of the time. Yeah. That we pay insurance all this money, they don't ever want to cover anything. I said, this stuff that insurance will cover, or the warranty program will cover, so you don't have to think about it.

Yeah. So it's an— because it's a no-brainer.

It's a no-brainer. I make it a no-brainer.

That's right.

It's, it's, that's the goal of that.

How about, you know, like the hot tub or maybe, you know, more and more electric cars, right? And all of a sudden they call you for the EV charge, you know, the installation. Wait a minute. Panel capacity.

EV chargers are— those are kind of harder.

Okay.

Because a lot of these newer EV chargers come with surge protection in them.

Right. But it's panel capacity. Like all of a sudden, oh wait, this, this giant thing needs all this much electricity.

Exactly. That's what I tell them. I'm saying now you're adding this big load on your panel. Yeah. I said, so your car, while you're charging your car, could also cause a surge in your house. Everything can cause a surge. I said, but also with your, with your car charger, I'll ask them. I said, you're saying it has surge protection on it, but does it come with a warranty? And maybe they say, yeah, maybe like $25,000.

Yeah.

Would you want more?

Right.

You want a more warranty? You want more protection? What's more protection worth to you?

Right. I mean, I'm sure that opens up if they don't— some people don't have the panel, like they need a new panel upgrade, right? For a lot of that. Yeah. So that— but people don't realize that. They just think they're getting in this installation, right? So how do you explain to people, well, now we're spending X amount more thousands of dollars with a new panel? Like, do you get a lot of pushback or shock with that?

Like if they wanted like a car charge or something? Yeah, yeah.

They're having this new car and they've got— they paid all this money for that and then they think they got this little electrical piece.

It's always a shock, man. Like, I've been into so many houses where it'd be a hot tub or a pool or— And they spent all this money on that and now you're hitting them with— Now I'm hitting them with another $12,000 to replace their panel and their service. It is, it's always a shock. I mean, it'd be a shock to me if you came into my house and said, oh, I got to do this first. I mean, I get it. And that's where you got to level with yourself and level yourself to the client. Yes. Um, I don't ever price jobs off of my own pocketbook. I price it. Right. Every job the same way. It doesn't matter. So I'll have a lot of clients hit me back with some of them getting mad, some of them get just confused, and you just you got to go to each client with a different mindset. You can't treat the same person as the next. I've sold three panels in one day from from things that didn't even ask me to get a panel out.

Sure.

I mean, I wasn't calling out there for a panel, but it's it's a need. I bring up. Financing is the biggest thing.

Okay.

Financing. They, they, if they're not expecting to spend $8,000, they're expecting to spend $600 for you or whatever the case is to hook up their hot tub. And now you're hitting them with $18,000 plus the $6,000 to hook up their hot tub plus the $12,000, whatever it is. Yeah. So it's, it's definitely a shock, but the financing always helps.

So that's when you, when someone's like, Mike, this is— you're kidding me.

Oh, like whenever I bring up—

So do you bring up, well, you know what, Bob, we do have some financing options or ways to make it a little less stressful. How do you, how do you position it? How do you bring in that financing?

So whenever I'm initially, when I'm talking about the panel, when I bring up, hey, your panel's bad, we need to get you a new panel, um, they're normally, their, their first comment is, well, I bet that's expensive, or, or something like that, man. That's usually their first comeback with that. And it's— I immediately hit them back with, I'm not gonna lie to you. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's definitely an investment. Yeah. I said, but not only is it an investment, so we could talk about— we got different ways we can pay for it. I said, we can do financing or you can just pay it outright, but we can talk more about our financing program.

Yeah.

Later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't want to bore them with the financing details right there.

Right.

You want to do that during— for sure. The actual presenting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. How much, uh, I mean, do you do a lot of rewires in your neck of the woods or no, not a lot?

Yeah, I just, uh, my installer doing one for me right now.

Yeah. So again, those kind of come up unexpectedly, right? For a lot of people.

They do. Um, I do rewires kind of as far as like whenever I open up their panel, you'll see the circuits with grounds and you'll see in these older houses and circuits without grounds.

Yeah.

Um, like the one I just sold, there was like 8 circuits that didn't have a ground wire.

Right.

So I, I just explained to them, I said, every circuit really should have that ground wire for that extra protection so it doesn't actually go back onto your equipment. Um, and that's what I got her thinking, okay, well, I do actually have a lot of stuff plugged into this house and I kind of don't want to lose it and I don't want everything randomly back on the neutral. So kind of just informing them about that.

Yeah.

Um, and she had already gotten approved for the financing because I had to, I had to replace a panel for her and she had already gotten approved and she had got approved for $50,000. So I was— that's when I started talking to her. I had already mentioned about those ground wires not needing it and then After she approved the estimate for just the panel change, I go back to the panel. I was starting to make my material list, and I was just looking at it. And I just brought—I just asked her one last time. I said, "Are you sure you don't want to do any of these ground wires?" And she goes, "Well, I did get it approved." Yeah, I said, "You did." And the next thing you know, it turned that ticket from like ten thousand to sixteen thousand. Yeah.

So, and she's a lot safer now. A lot safer. A lot safer. All right. When you Okay. So we've walked through a lot of stuff in the house. You've, you know, you're in my house. We've walked through a lot of stuff like, wow, okay, there's a lot of potential big stuff here. You've alerted me to it. Writing out your options, are you doing it? Do you have me, hey, let's go sit at the kitchen table and you write 'em out in front of me? Or what's your process for building out your options? Let's start, start there.

I, I build 'em in front of the client. Okay. I don't, For me, when I first started as a technician, um, working at that other company, I would go to the van and I'd write my estimates.

Yeah.

Um, and then when I switched to writing them in front of people, it built that trust a lot more that you're not trying to hide anything from them.

Yep.

Um, so I build it, I kind of let them just do whatever they're doing. I'll say, hey ma'am, if you're, if you're cooking dinner or whatever the case is, cooking lunch or whatever for your kids, I said, you can continue doing whatever you're doing. I said, I'm just gonna stand here and write your Estimates real quick. Yeah. And they kind of go back whether they're watching TV, playing on their phone, whatever it is. I just kind of stay in the room, stay in the area.

But you tell them that's what you're doing.

That's what I'm doing. I'm, I'm gonna start writing your estimates. If I'm quiet, if you have any questions, feel free to ask, but I'm just going to start writing your estimates.

Do you, will you at that point go over maybe everything you've, you've covered so far, or do you kind of talk about that as you go through your options in a few minutes?

Yeah, I talk about that when I go through mine because that already, like I said, I had already, I If there's anything that I'm about to put on that list that I hadn't talked to them about, yeah, I'll stop what I'm doing. Like maybe I was doing my safety check and yeah, I hit— I talked to her about everything except for that one outlet that didn't work that I found in the back bedroom. Oh man, I'm going through my list and I'm putting it— as soon as I write that, I'm like, oh crap, I didn't talk to her about that. So I'll stop what I'm doing. I'm saying, hey ma'am, there's one thing I just put on here I completely forgot to talk to you about. I just wanted to talk to you about it real quick. And I'll just kind of inform her about it and then I'll go back to my estimates.

Okay. Do you, uh, just a quick step back before we step forward. Do you, you know, you guys have a club membership, right? Do you ever plant the seed or talk about the club during the service call process at any point until the end, or does the office just do that, ask if you're a club member?

The office does that to start. Yeah, when they call a client. Um, and then whenever I get to a client's house, I talk to them about It's easier on install jobs for me.

Right.

Um, troubleshoots are kind of hard to sell that because they really just want you to fix the problem and get out.

Yeah.

Um, but when do you, even on the, the install jobs, like on the install jobs, then you come up early? Like, yeah, I come up early. Um, because normally on install jobs, they're gonna know that they're gonna spend money today. Yeah. They know that. Um, so what I'll tell 'em is I'll say, hey man, One great thing, and we'll talk about this more later. I said, but we do have a club membership that'll actually save you more money if, if you get it.

Yeah.

And that just gets them thinking about it. Okay. What's that club membership?

Yeah.

And then when I present that options, I'll have that pamphlet with me and I'll say, okay, this is what I was talking about. This is that pamphlet, the TAP membership that I have. And I'll explain it to 'em. Me personally, I know like when I learned a certain path, they want you to do that at the beginning. I can't, I don't do that. I used to do that and it's never worked for me. So I changed that and put it to the end and it's just helped me a lot.

No, that's all right. Hey, we're here to learn what you do. You know, that's cool. All right. So you, you know, you're writing your options. Okay. Then you're like, hey Bob, we're ready to talk about this. Right. By the way, I know a lot of these calls, you might, it might just be me at home. Right. It might just be this one spouse. And again, cause I thought it was going to be a $300 fix, right? Like you're going to change that outlet and away we go. And I'm going to go home. But all of a sudden we're looking at a $20,000 plus job. And you know, you know that my, this other spouse might wanna, how do you, what do you do in that case? Do you just present? Do you ask?

No. The first thing I'll do when I first get to a house is I ask once we're after, after they told me that the problem is or whatever they're getting a hot tub, whatever the case is, after they told me what they're getting or what they need fixed. I ask them, I say, is there anybody else that we need to involve in this call? Yeah. Once we actually start talking about it that we need to talk to. Yeah. And if they say yes, cool, maybe we could call somebody. If they say no, there should be no reason that they all of a sudden need to talk to their spouse at the end of the call. Yeah. Um, but I'm sure that's not always the case though. It's not always. I've had it happen. I'll ask them, is there anybody else that need to be involved? And they say no. And then I go to present the offer.

Oh, well, I need to talk to my spouse. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. Well, I, I'm not afraid of nos. Sure. You can't be afraid of the nos and you can't be afraid to ask questions. So I always ask a question if I know that I'm about to present them with something that they're not expecting. Yes. Like a panel change or whatever the case is. I say, hey, do you want to call your spouse? Do we want to maybe set up another visit so I can talk to y'all both at the same time? Got it. Something like that. I don't. Our company's not set up to do like after-hour stuff, so maybe I'll set up some another day. Maybe I can come back when your wife and you are home.

Sure.

Or vice versa, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good. That's good. Okay, so you've written them out. Now it's time to start talking about them with me, you know? Uh, what do you say? How do you outline? First of all, when you're writing your, your options, do you have any like benefit-driven language? Like it's going to take care of this problem, that problem? Or is it just, hey, this is what's in the, the option. Like when you write out your options, before we get to, I guess, talking about it.

No, I don't. I just kind of just put it all in there.

Okay. So when, so when you sit down and explain that top option, maybe kind of walk me through maybe how you go from that. Do you go, okay, do you have any questions? You just shut up and let me absorb it and say, yeah, let's do it. Or do you immediately go to the next option and start going, okay, and this is what we're going to take away from that. Kind of walk me through your presentation.

So what I do when I present Is first thing I'll do. I said, "Is there somewhere you want to talk about the estimates or anything like that?" Yeah. And they'll just normally they'll just go anywhere that's near here. Right here is fine. Wherever the case is, they don't really care about going anywhere. They just want to see the money. So what I'll do is I explain my top option first. I say, "Okay, well, this is what everything that we talked about today and the stuff that I also brought up to your attention." And I'll explain every line item in that. I explain what it is. Um, what I'm doing, so on and so forth. And if they don't, if they have questions, that's where they're gonna ask it. Yep. If they don't ask any questions there, what I do is say, my next option over, this doesn't include this. The last option, this doesn't include this. And then I just sit and wait.

Okay.

From, um, it was actually something that I, I learned, um, When I first got into the trades, someone had told me, first person that talks loses. Yeah. So I just shut up. I don't, I don't say a single word unless they ask a question, then I'll answer it. Then I'll go right back to being silent. I remember one time I sat there for 15 minutes in silence. Complete 15 minutes.

Was it a couple? Was it just one guy?

It was, it was one guy. He sat there and just— I thought, I thought he was reading. I mean, that's what it looked like. I just sat there and I didn't say a single word.

What do you do?

You just play it, playing with your wedding ring or something, or—

I'm, I'm sitting there holding the iPad because he didn't want to take it and because he was just like, oh, right here is fine. So I'm sitting there. You sat there for 15 minutes. 15 minutes holding his iPad. And I was like, I'm sorry. After I just hit the freaking screen every time it'd go black.

Oh my gosh.

I'll never forget this. It was funny. And he ended up talking and then I ended up selling like $4,000 that day. Wow. It's like I'm a big believer in the first person that talks loses. Because if you go into your estimates and you just try to hit every single detail, In detail, that client's going to lose interest. Yeah, they're going to lose interest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, when you're presenting each one, does it come with a finance price, a club price?

So when I'm presenting, the first, first number you're going to see is— I say, first number you're going to see is going to be your 12 months, no interest financing prices. Good thing about that is you don't have to pay that for the first 60 days. I said, you're now— your next price that I swipe over is going to be your entire price. And that's what I show.

What was that? I'm sorry, what was the next one?

I say, once I swipe over, I said, the next price you're going to see is the The full price. The full price.

Okay, very good. Do you— I'm assuming you though have other financing options other than 12 months? That's it though. That's it. That's it.

You don't do it. We're trying. We kept trying to get them to get, get something different. All right. I want to, I want to get something different because that, that's only one option, man. It's not— you're not giving people a lot of options. Yeah.

Yeah. So, all right. Well, I'm not gonna— I don't want to get in trouble. So I'll go. No. All right. So then they, uh, I'm sure you're getting some objections, right? Man, Mike's a lot of money. I don't know.

I get either— then you talk to them. I get that all the time. You talk to my spouse, right? Or—

You talked about that, how to reset that, right? You try to reset it or get them on the phone. But, you know, what else will you say? We reiterate your warranties, guarantees, all that kind of stuff.

I'll hit up our warranties, our guarantees that are, you know, our warranties typically only comes with 1 year. You get our TAP plan, comes with 2. And one biggest benefit is, is like on a bigger job, The TAP plan is going to pay for itself while giving you a discount. And on that, what I'll tell people is, I said, now we're doing this big job for you, we're doing this big panel change for you. It's a lot of parts, a lot of labor that goes into this. I said, but it's a lot of tiny parts that can go bad.

Yeah.

So one of the— and this plants the seed for them to renew their membership every year.

Yep.

Because I'll tell them, I said, 10 years from now, if that panel goes bad, do you want to pay for it?

Right.

And they're like, well, no, not really. I said, exactly. Now you pay that membership. I know it's only $125 a year, And I used to know down to the freaking week what that was. But, um, and I'll tell them that. I said, this is how much it costs per week for you to have warranty for your life for that panel as long as you live in this house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that helps.

That helps a lot.

It helps. Do you get, uh, hey Mike, again, I thought this was gonna be a couple hundred bucks and all of a sudden I'm looking at $18 grand or whatever. It's— I feel like I should get another bid. Like, do you— when people bring up other bids, or does that not happen as much?

No, the bid Usually with the bids, they'll tell you right off the rip. I'll get that a lot. It's like, okay, hey, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get 3 different bids.

Yeah.

And I'll ask people, I said, okay, well, I get you want to get 3 other bids, but is there something that you're looking for in a bid that maybe is not price? 90% of the time they won't. They'll just say, no, it's just a price thing.

Yeah.

Um, that was something that I actually learned at the last expo last year that I tried this year. Um, was the, uh, that. Yeah. Um, but it never worked. Not once. Not once did it work. Um, so I stopped, I actually stopped doing that 'cause it, it never worked. But yeah. Um, yeah.

Do you get presented with a lot of other bids?

Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes, like if you get a, if you get a job that they're getting multiple bids, it's 50/50 whether or not they're gonna tell you what that other bid is. Yeah. A lot of times, like, I've had a guy that he was so strict that he didn't want to tell me his bid until I showed him what my bid was. And then his— the next bid, once he showed me that bid, it was like half the price of mine. And I was like, I can't beat that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't beat that. I said, now, if you would've told me that— now, now, I'm not saying that if you would've told me that I could've got anywhere closer to that.

Yeah.

Because my price is gonna be different than chucking a truck down the road.

Yeah.

So, and that's when I tell people, I'm like, you pay for what you get. That's the biggest thing. You pay for what you get. And if you go and— yeah, you go with Chuck and the truck down the street, but a year from now that stops working, are you going to be able to get back a hold of him? Right. Are you going to be able to call him and know that you're going to get a warranty within a couple of days? Yep. Chances are no.

Yeah.

So he's not going to warranty his work. And then if he does, he's going to Charge you to come back to fix it. Sure. So with us, we're not going to. We're going to make sure we got your back every step of the way. Our guarantees are there. I said if there's anything you're not happy with, feel free to tell us because we're going to work with you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So you let them no more negativity. You close a job, right? How do you explain to them? You know those circumstances like now where you're you're not doing all the installing yourself. Sometimes you you hand it off. When is, when is a job handed off, by the way? Like, is there a certain revenue threshold? Like, are certain sizes—

$1,000.

What's that?

As long as it's over $1,000.

Okay. So when, you know, Mike, you and I, we've built rapport, you know, you've been maybe in the house for a few hours now and we're talking about hunting and we're buddies and I'm like, maybe it's the end of the day and you're like, you know, or it is a big job and you're like, it's going to happen to happen. You got to explain to me this is going to happen a day or two and I'm not the one. Do you get a little pushback? Oh, I thought you were going to be here.

Yeah, I'll get that a couple of times. Yeah. Um, I got a lot of clients that I actually have 4 clients that strictly only will use me. They won't— I mean, whether it be an install, it can be just as simple as a tap tune-up, they will not allow anybody else go in their house.

Okay.

Um, we've— we— I've had those people, but I also have people that, that, yeah, they really want me to work on their house, but I just kind of explain to them, say, hey, Miss— I'd like to use Betty— hey, Miss Betty, I'm sorry. Um, I said, but we do— we have installers. Yeah, our installers Just as skilled as me, and I promise you'll love them just as much as me. And whether it be we have two of them—one's Dave and one's Mike—and all whether it be Dave, what I like to do is I'll call the dispatcher and hopefully I can find out exactly who's going to be which installer is going to actually be there. Yeah. But if I can't find that out, then I just say it's going to be one of the installers. They're both great, and you'll—I promise you'll be happy with any of them. They've been doing this just as long as me, if not longer. One of us has been doing a little longer than me. So I just, I reassure them that they're going to love them just as much as they love me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you try to do anything on sort of job at all, avoid cancellations, or—

On, uh, big jobs, definitely. Um, you don't want to charge— we like to charge either the membership if we can't do any work. Um, but if we can do work with like biggest things, service replacements, those are easy. You can at least pound the ground rods. Yep, at least get those in. Um, whether it be a re-device, you can start, at least start a room. Yeah. Start something. You can always, yeah, there's those jobs that, like I've sold running power to an unbuilt garage. No, you can't really start anything there. It's kind of hard. Um, if you get them approved for financing, obviously that's not gonna fall through. But if you can't get them approved for financing, really, I just, it's the TAP membership. You get them approved for it and get them signed up for that TAP membership. What's what we call it, Travis Advantage Plan. Yeah. Or your club membership. Um, that's, that's, that's kind of gets them locked in a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. When you, uh, when you did do the work, right, and you, and you got it all done and everything, and then you— will you walk them through everything you did again to kind of put a cap on the project? Or how do you kind of then leave them feeling good about you leaving that appointment? They spent a lot of money with you. You've been there maybe a few more hours, right, when you were doing the work yourself. Or kind of how do you wrap up the call so they're— they have smile on their face versus just going, man, I just spent a ton of money.

When I do the job, because yeah, everybody knows electricity is kind of invisible. You don't see it.

Yeah.

You don't see what you just paid for. Right. Um, true. And all the work that we just put in, you won't see. It's going to hide behind the wall. So what I'll do is I'll just kind of explain to them exactly what I did, exactly where I came from the power, what breaker I just put in, where it's labeled, how I labeled it. Um, just kind of run through everything. I'll show them that it's working. Um, if they have, if I just ran power to a hot tub, I'll make sure what I do is I tell people while I'm, while I'm running the power to it, go ahead and fill it up so I can go ahead and start it while I'm done so we can make sure it runs.

Yeah.

Um, or their sauna or whatever the case is, just make sure it works. If it's something that didn't work, whether a whole bedroom didn't have power, my favorite thing is what I like to do is I, it's kind of hard to tell whether like the light's gonna come on or not once you flip that breaker on. Um, if it's a fan, but if it's just a normal fixture, I like to turn on the light fixture before I go turn on that breaker. Okay. And so whenever I flip that breaker, a lot of times— and it's one of those things I was talking about earlier that puts a smile on my face— when you flip that breaker, oh my God, I have light now! It's like you hear that when you flip that breaker and it's like, heck yeah, it's pretty cool.

I like it. All right, so that's, you know, that's when, when you're doing the job. Now You know, you're selling a job and your install team's doing it. What is— do you have a touchpoint with them after the job is installed? You call behind, hey, are you happy? Or how do you know if you get a review? Like, what's— are you done after you sell and hand off?

We done after we sell. We're, we're kind of done. You're done. Okay. I've had clients that after they, the installers do it, they call me back for more work. Yeah. And then I'm the one that goes back out to sell it and they love to see me at that point. And then I, that's when I ask them, well, how'd you think about your last bid? Did you like the installers? Did you like The process on how it went. And yeah, I've never had one to say, no, I didn't like your installers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I guess your installers are the ones that know how to ask for reviews and stuff afterwards.

The installers. Now if I do the job myself, I'll ask my own review. But yeah, normally it's the installers that'll ask for it.

Kind of wrap it up. What, Mike, what motivates you to, to do your best to get through those jerk calls? The guy's cursing at you and go, I'm gonna put that aside and do the best I can for that next homeowner.

And my family. Yeah, my family. Um, and it's something like, um, I was talking to my wife about is I grew up in poverty and poor and didn't really have a lot growing up. So now that I do and I have my own money, I don't want to spend it. So it's, it's my biggest thing is providing. I want to provide for my family and make sure they have a better life than I ever dreamed of having. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now you can see it happen. These 2 real good years and it's only getting better.

I love it. It's already going up.

That's right. What advice do you have? I mean, you guys, good-sized company. I mean, it's growing and growing. It's neat to see. Um, what advice do you have for young electricians, you know, that want to— maybe they're not in the sales role yet, or maybe they're an install guy who wants to be in sales, or just in general, any new apprentice that wants to get in and do service and sales as well as you do? What advice do you have for them?

I would say pay attention.

Yeah.

Pay attention. Um, don't just, don't just go to work as collecting a paycheck. Go to work wanting to be able to further your knowledge, to build a career, to actually become something. Because everybody can just go to work and just collect a paycheck and go home. Anybody can do that. But when you actually put your mind into it, your body, your soul— like, I pour my heart into my work because I want to become better than I was yesterday. If you never, if you don't have that mindset, you're just gonna, you're gonna stay on a level playing field and You're never going to grow. You always want to grow. You always want to become better than you were yesterday. Pay attention. Watch your technicians. Watch, watch who you're learning from. Take notes if you needed to. Watch how they present themselves in front of customers. Yeah. Um, just be a better you. Yeah. Really.

I love it. All right. Last question. You're a Certain Path event. You go, this is at least your second one. You've been to a couple. What's it like being a part of this network? You get to see, I mean, a lot of other successful electricians, other tradespeople. Well, what kind of value is that being able to interact?

It's great, man. You get to actually talk to people. Um, like last year I wasn't a, I wasn't a million-dollar crown champion, but I talked to so many million-dollar crown champions and just asked basically what they did and how they did it differently. And maybe there's some things that they were quoting that I never even dreamed of quoting or never even thought about quoting. Sure. Sure. It's getting that connection with people. And once you— for me, I have to step out of my comfort zone, right? Because yeah, I don't like talking to people, but I do it for a living. So it's like, it's like I gotta do it. So when I'm here, might as well seize every opportunity. Yeah. I love it.

Did a great job today, Mike. Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I hope you've enjoyed today's show. If so, please like and subscribe on YouTube. If you're on your favorite podcast player, please leave us a five-star review. The two seconds you take to leave a review will help other success-minded contractors like you find us and hopefully get a little bit better, which elevates our entire industry. And please join me for future episodes. This has been the Successful Contractor powered by CertainPath. The Successful Contractor Podcast is a part of the CertainPath family. CertainPath. Builds successful home service businesses and has for more than 25 years. We do it by providing contractors with a proven path to success, professional coaching, software solutions, and a member community of more than 1,000 home service companies just like yours. Doubling your sales with a 20% net profit and an inspiring company culture really is possible. Let us show you the way. With CertainPath, success is made certain. Visit mycertainpath.com for more information.