Burst the BUSY electrical illusion | 88

Being flat out doesn’t always mean making bank. Too many sparkies hire staff without systems, scale chaos, and end up with more stress + less profit.

In this week’s pod I spaek the “busy bubble” — why being busy is NOT the same as being successful, and how to actually build a business that gives you profit and freedom.

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Transcript

Let the hamster off the wheel. Life is too short. Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing, coming to you live from Ireland for this podcast — and probably for a few different podcasts. You might even get one from Malta as well, depending on how I’m feeling.

I want to speak about being busy but not profitable — what I like to call the busy bubble. It’s something that’s so, so common, and something I’ve gone through myself. You’re flat out, the phone’s ringing, you’re running around, but you’re not actually sure if you’re making money. You look at your bank account and think there should be money there. There kind of is… but your P&L is skewed.

That’s what I want to touch on — getting organised in the backend. I’m a Nazi when it comes to that in my business, and it’s the reason I’m able to take five weeks off every year to travel through Europe, plus two weeks off at Christmas, and not have to work weekends. I’ve got the flexibility to spend that time with family, friends, or travel — because the backend is tight.

Now, there’s this massive misconception that the more staff you hire, the more money you make. But usually, the more staff you hire, the more headaches you create. And it all comes back to you as the business owner and how well you oil up the backend of your business with systems.

Something I tell my members inside Simplified Sparky is that systems are so much easier than people think. That’s why I’m so excited about creating the Micro Systems for Sparkies course. A system doesn’t need to be complicated — it might be a 30-second video that’s easy for your staff to find. I’ll dig deeper into systems in another podcast, but today’s point is this: too many sparkies are stuck in the busy bubble.

Here’s how it goes. You start out without job management software. You hesitate on getting Xero because you think it’s too expensive. You wing it. Jobs come in from contacts, referrals, a builder, or a strata. You’re chugging along, but you’re not really making money. And in the back of your mind, you think, I’ll make money soon. It’ll click. But it won’t — not unless you stop and take a look at your business from the outside. You need to ask: what simple systems can I put in place to make this leaner, more efficient, and actually profitable?

Here’s an example. In 2020, I was part of a coaching platform with other sparkies. Halfway through, they were all saying: “You need to hire staff. Everyone needs to hire staff.” So I thought, well, looks like I need staff too. I ran ads on Seek and Indeed, even boosted an ad on Facebook. It was COVID, so plenty of good sparkies were on the market. I interviewed a bloke — half-assed interview because I didn’t have systems in place — and hired him. I bought into the advice of “hire on gut feel, hire on attitude, they’ll come good.” Spoiler: it didn’t work out.

And I’ll put my hand up. That was on me. I wasn’t ready, and my business wasn’t systemised enough to handle it. I tried again with another hire, but the same thing happened. Those two hires were the nail in the coffin for me and staff. Honestly, if I’d kept pushing that way, this podcast wouldn’t exist. I’d be buried in stress, not building something I love.

Here’s the lesson: systemise the stuff you’re already doing, not what you think you might do one day. I made that mistake early. I built a system for replacing a hot water thermostat and element — diagrams, step-by-step notes, tools list, the lot. And guess what? I haven’t changed a hot water element since. A complete waste. Systemise what you’re doing now. The only exception is staff onboarding — that you should systemise before you hire.

If you’re hiring, you need a proper process:

• Job ad template ready.
• Triage call questions.
• Interview process with set questions.
• Letter of offer and contract (and make sure it’s watertight — my wife’s in employment law, and she tore one of those “free contracts” apart and found 16 holes in it).
• Onboarding steps: adding them to ServiceM8, uniforms sorted, safety docs, how leave works.

Even better, use AI as your assistant to draft onboarding checklists, then adapt them to your business. The point is, if you don’t have that in place, your new hire will think you’re running a Wild West outfit. On the other hand, if you’re systemised, they walk in and go, “Holy shit, this place is lean.”

The danger is when you grow with no systems, you end up with old-school sparkies who resist change — the ones who say, “We’ve always done it this way, why bother filling that form out?” That cancer spreads through the team. I’ve seen it firsthand, and it wrecks businesses.

I got a question on Instagram this week asking if I’ve had experience running five or more staff. I don’t know if it was a dig or a genuine question. Early on, I tiptoed around admitting that I’m essentially a one-man band with a virtual team. But I don’t care about “big dick syndrome” anymore — bragging about 60 vans and 100 staff. That’s not me. My goal has always been to build a beautiful backend, a humming flywheel system where the business runs lean. And that’s why I connect best with sparkies who have one to four staff — that’s my sweet spot. That’s where I can move the needle.

And here’s the thing: life is short. That realisation hit me a few years ago. I don’t want a business that dictates my lifestyle. I want a lifestyle that my business supports. That’s why I take five weeks off every year. Too many sparkies have buried themselves so deep that they can’t even take a day off without stressing. That’s not freedom. That’s a cage.

You’ve got to ask yourself: what’s the goal here? Do you really need that shitty builder who complains about invoices every week? Or that deadwood staff member dragging the whole business down? Sometimes cutting them loose is what makes your business leaner and your life better.

This isn’t about working yourself into the ground. It’s about building a business that serves you. Because life is short. Nail your systems. Get rid of the dead weight. Focus on what actually matters.