Electrical Business... Boring, Predictable, and Paid | 121

My electrical business is boring. Same residential service work, same quoting systems, same client typw, week in, week out. And that’s exactly why it’s profitable. This episode came from watching Mr. G’s burg. Repetition makes electrical work easier to systemise, reduces mistakes on jobs, and creates predictable cash flow. Boring isn’t failure. Most of the time, it’s a well-run electrical business.

📈 Work directly with me 👉🏼  HERE

🚀 The Sparky Series: How to build your Flywheel™ in 9 minutes 👉🏼  HERE

📽️ More on Instagram 👉🏼  HERE

🎥 More on YouTube 👉🏼 HERE

Transcript

Add the extra bacon to the Stone’s Revenge.

Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing.

If you haven’t been there, there’s a burger place in Sydney called Mr. G’s. I’d highly recommend it. It’s in North Strathfield now, but before that it was on Parramatta Road in Five Dock, across from what’s now Total Tools, I believe, near KFC. Whatever you’re looking at.

What I always loved about it was how simplistic it was. You’d literally check Instagram, see what burger they had that weekend, and that was it. I think they were open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or maybe just Friday to Sunday at the start. Small burger truck. Probably two to three staff. One taking orders, the rest churning out burgers.

Part of the simplicity was if you didn’t want that burger, you just didn’t go. There were specific burgers, and that was it. That also made it very easy to A/B test what worked. They’d try different burgers, but when the Stone’s Revenge was on, it drew massive crowds. Easily one of my favourites.

You’d have queues of people, but the queue moved crazy fast. The business was extremely simple. One burger. They weren’t jumping between chicken, beef, different sauces, toppings, all that shit. The burger was the burger. If you wanted extra bacon or another beef patty, that was pretty much it. Easy to modify, easy to produce.

The staff absolutely churned them out. And that’s what got me thinking about simple businesses that make money.

Then they moved. The truck allegedly got burnt down. They went to a temporary café in North Strathfield, and now they’ve got a permanent spot on the main drag. Just Google it if you’re in Sydney. Highly recommend it.

Now they’ve expanded, but I reckon the profit was insane when it was just the truck. No shop, less staff, one simple product. Fast turnaround.

That’s what got me thinking about simple business models that make money.

I’m not anti-diversity. If you want to diversify your business and open up different divisions and services, go nuts. But most of us have a core service. The bread and butter. What you do day in, day out. What got you to where you are now.

Then a shiny object pops up. Maybe solar. Maybe batteries. And you think, fuck, maybe I’ll give that a crack.

But if you focus on what you already do well, and you’re making good money from it, it’s usually worth doubling down. It’s easier to systemise. Easier to make lean. Easier to make profitable. Easier to plug staff into.

Take a lean residential service business. It’s repeatable. Predictable. Leads come in, they’re handled the same way. Quoted the same way. Booked in. Job gets done. You get paid. Client gets nurtured. Rinse and repeat.

Now start dabbling in solar and batteries. There’s paperwork, government schemes, measurements, accreditation, more complexity. If you can plug that in cleanly and it works, great. But the point is, when a business is boring and repeatable, it’s often at its most profitable.

You know how much money you’ll make. You know how to make it quickly and efficiently. You know how to invoice.

When you look at franchise models, this becomes obvious. Lawn mowing. Cleaning. Test and tag. Plumbing. Electrical. Pest control. Pool services. All home service businesses.

On a side note, I think people who enter franchise models are off their head. You’re paying someone else to start a business, and if it takes off, you’re flying their flag. But that’s another podcast.

Look at lawn mowing. How complex is it? Same process. Same pricing. Same subscriptions. Same repeat visits. Same thing with cleaners. Same thing with franchise plumbing and electrical. It’s mostly service and maintenance. It’s kept boring on purpose.

That repetition is why it works.

I even looked into batteries myself. I was doing a lot of Tesla chargers and thought about it. Then realised I’d have to do solar as well. Accreditation, renewals, the whole lot. I didn’t want to do solar, so it went on ice. And that makes sense. You should know what the fuck you’re doing if you’re playing with batteries.

Another reason boring businesses are profitable is repetition reduces mistakes. If you don’t know what you’re walking into, you’re blind. But if you’ve done a job 20 or 30 times, you know it inside out. That reduces quoting mistakes and install mistakes.

Systems become repeatable. Less thinking is required. There’s less mental load. New jobs burn more brain power. You might underquote. You might overquote. You lose jobs or lose money.

Predictable work equals predictable cash.

If you dabble in everything, your van isn’t stocked properly. You’re running back and forth. Little inefficiencies add up.

Now, the cost of a boring business is staff.

This is a big one.

Doing the same work over and over is hard. I look at my work and think, fuck me, I’d hate to do this as a staff member. Crawling, rummaging, nitty gritty work. As an owner, I see dollars. As a staff member, it can just feel shit.

Unless you pay well. Unless you incentivise properly.

That’s the trade-off. Repetition can turn staff away. Unless they buy into the business, the culture, and they’re rewarded properly.

So realistically, if you want excitement, get a hobby. If you want profit, build a boring, repeatable business.

Joking. You can do whatever the hell you want. It’s your business.

But have a look at repeatable, profitable businesses versus complex ones that dabble in everything. There’s a lesson there.

All the links you need are below. I’ll catch you next week.