Simplified Sparky Member | Austin from Westgrid Electrical | 152

In this episode I sit down with Austin from West Grid Electrical in Perth, who went from full time employment to a branded, professional electrical business that's actually making money, and he did it in a few months, not a few years.

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Transcript

Let's head to the west, the wild wild west. Perth, Western Australia. Today I'm
having a chat with Austin from West Grid Electrical in Perth. Austin came to me when he was
just about to get his electrical contractor's licence sorted, and he was lacking a little bit of
direction. He's come on board a few months later, and now he's up, he's branded, he's running,
he looks professional, and most importantly, he's making money. Enjoy this chat I had with
Austin.
Alan: I'm just having a chit chat with you. Just in case you're on edge.
Austin: Yeah, I'm feeling a bit on edge with you. No, no, no.
Alan: Today I'm speaking with Austin Aves from West Grid Electrical in Perth, Western
Australia, about his journey from employment to starting his electrical business and everything
in between. Hope you enjoy.
Austin: I start three things at once. That's the best thing about the course. You gave us all
those things at once, and I would've gone straight to the sales. But having it set up where you
start this and finish that before you go to the next one, that's the best thing ever for me.
Because if I was allowed to run loose at it all, I would've started every one of them and not
finished one.
Alan: That's probably one of the best things. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, tell us
about you, tell us about your electrical business, what kind of work you do.
Austin: Yeah, based in Perth, mostly coastal and inner region, and just mainly service and
maintenance work. It's the kind of work I like doing. It's real popular for the boys up here to finish
their apprenticeship and head up north. Everyone chases the money up there, and I was never
really all that interested in going up north. Everyone gives it a bit of a bad rep, but I actually like
the service and maintenance work. I like dealing with the clients. They've got a problem, they've
got an issue, you go in there, you fix it, and someone's happy about it at the end of the day. I've
never done any commercial or all that, but I feel like with that you're just a number. No one
really cares. You solve a problem and it's just, all right, on to the next one.
Alan: Never took a fancy to going into the mines?
Austin: Not really. My old man's been mining forever, the whole time I've been alive. And
obviously it seemed like you missed out on a fair bit. Christmases away, birthdays, all that sort
of stuff. So I never really had that desire to go mining, because I'd seen that side of it, and you
think about it differently when you've got a family. Then at the old company in my
apprenticeship, we did a lot of everything. A lot of renovations, service and maintenance. We
also looked after a couple of shopping centres, so I got to touch a little bit of commercial. And
they had an industrial contract, so I did a little bit of that. The boys that worked there had done a
lot of mining, and they said it's pretty much the same. If you go up to the mines, you're pretty
much doing this kind of work when you're over there. And I absolutely hated working there. I
couldn't stand it. Just going out, filling out paperwork, sitting around waiting, this guy's in a
meeting so you sit around and wait. So when they told me that's what mining was, I was pretty
much like, well, I don't mind service and maintenance, so I'll stick to doing that.
Alan: You spent your entire working time with the one employer. Was it six years all up?
Austin: Yeah, six years. Did my four year apprenticeship and then two years as a tradesman
with him. Like I said, a wicked apprenticeship. Got to touch a little bit of everything. Bit of resi, bit
of commercial, bit of industrial. Good guy to work for, so I never really had any inkling to leave.
That's kind of what made me go into business, because I thought, worst case scenario, I just do
subcontracting, and then I'm working for a bunch of different guys so I can learn from them,
which was what I was missing at the other company. And everyone's always chasing more
money, and I knew I wasn't going to go FIFO, so the business thing just made sense for me.
Alan: There are some pros to having an extremely small company. Working with the one
employer, you end up getting really good training through them. I spent my entire apprenticeship
with just me and the boss, and because I was thrown into the deep end immediately, I was
wiring houses start to finish about nine months into my first year. So it was proper slave labour
for an apprentice. But you get good training when you're with a smaller crew, or with the same
employer, for that length of time. Let's rewind this back to before you became a member. You
reached out to me about nine or ten months ago. You were curious, you'd gone through some
stuff, and then you ended up putting it on pause and coming back around again. You've been
inside a few months now and you've changed a lot of things. How did you discover my stuff?
Where did you go down the rabbit hole of my content?
Austin: Well, over here in WA, when you want to open your own business, you have to do a
contractor's course, which I think is pretty different to other states. Maybe Melbourne's the
same. So I booked in that course, and that's when I thought, I need to start getting a bit serious
about this. That's when I started listening to the podcasts, just any podcast out there, hearing
other guys' experiences and the kind of things they'd teach, trying to piece together how to run a
business. And that's how I came across your stuff and started listening to your podcast. From
there I reached out to you, just before the course. But then I felt uneasy, because I didn't feel as
though I had a business yet, I hadn't even done the course, and I thought, maybe I'm jumping
the gun. So I put it on pause for a little bit. Once I'd done the contractor's course, I thought, all
right, it's time to get serious. I reached back out to you, we had a meeting, decided it was going
to be a good fit, and here we are.
Alan: Here we are. One point to that as well. We spoke about it just before we hit record, I think
you're quite disciplined and systematic. But one thing you mentioned is that what you enjoyed
about Simplified Sparky is the restrictions that are put in place, but for good reason.
Austin: Yeah. When you said that, I kind of laughed, because I don't feel like I'm like that at all.
I'm one of those guys where you listen to a podcast, you have three good ideas, and I start
looking into all three of them but don't finish one. So that's the good thing about the course,
where you only let us do this to completion, and prove that you're doing it well, to then access
the rest of the stuff. It's good for me, because otherwise I'll just get lost. I'll be going after all of it
and not finishing anything, and then I'd probably still be in the same spot.
Alan: Maybe I think you're disciplined because I'm majorly disciplined. As we mentioned at the
start, when I was speaking to you off camera, you go straight for the good stuff. You go straight
for the sales, the quoting, the conversion, all that kind of stuff. And what people forget about,
which I can't stress enough is the most important thing, is knowing your ideal client, knowing the
type of work you want to do, and your message that's going to speak to those clients to get you
all of that work. Which you've implemented into your website, your branding, your vehicle,
everything. People miss those bits and go straight for the good stuff, not realising that when the
good stuff dies out, there's no more coming back into their business in regards to leads,
because they haven't put in the foundation work. Have you seen the importance of that, and the
reasoning why you do need to put that in place in an electrical business?
Austin: Yeah, even touching back on the branding. I know before, if I hadn't joined, I would've
just done everything that I think looks cool. I like minimal, not too many logos and stuff. I
probably would've got very minimal logos on the van. And then I had a guy call me up the other
day about an EV car charger, and he said he'd seen me in the Coles car park, and I had an EV
charger on the side of the ute. That's how I got that lead. That's all out of the branding, because
it's right in someone's face on the ute. But if I'd been doing my own thing, I would've just gone
with what I thought looked cool.
Alan: We do all kinds of electrical. No job too big...
Austin: No job too small.
Alan: But what you did was you subconsciously planted a seed in that prospect, now client's,
head. Serendipitously he was in the market for an EV charger, and there it is, you're right in
front of him. People waste valuable marketing space on their vehicles, because it's a mobile
billboard. If you do your van or your ute correctly, it's passing thousands of cars. In Sydney
you're sure as shit stuck in traffic. In Perth you're probably flowing along not too bad, but in
Sydney you're literally crawling down roads. So it's ideal, and that's why it's very important that
people relay to prospects exactly what they do. And you've done that. You've applied it to your
branding, and lo and behold, it's working. People think, oh my God, I have to spend a couple of
grand on a wrap, I don't want to spend that money, it's too much. People get it into their head
that it's an expense. It's not. It's an investment. You pay for that wrap once. That wrap is
probably paid off on your ute now with that one job, and then it's going to keep snowballing. So
it's another source of work. Whereas people stuff it up, and they just put, like I did at the very 
start, 'electrical contractor'. What the fuck does that electrical contractor do? Is it commercial,
industrial, everything? It's very important.
Alan: You had a journey getting to where you are, from employed to an electrical contractor
right now in one of the best areas, I believe, in Perth. Scarborough Beach. Am I pronouncing
that correctly?
Austin: Yeah.
Alan: So you're in a red hot... would you say that's the equivalent of your Bondi or Coogee of
Sydney? That would be one of your main beaches.
Austin: Yeah, I would say so.
Alan: So you're in such a good area. I've been there many years ago, and I'll get there again.
This call was too long for a flight. I would love to go there. I will come over. Usually I do these in
person, but Perth is quite a trek. I'll mention to you as well that you and the legend that is Kenny
are two people where I saw gaps. When you came into Simplified Sparky, my whole model is
essentially for guys that have a business up and running. But what I spotted was that most of
the market coming in was startups. And what I noticed, compliments to yourself, is that really
smart guys tend to reach out to me. I find that everybody in the group seems to be a step above
the rest. What I urge people to do is go back to the start of the podcast, go back to the very start
of the YouTube videos, take all the free stuff, and digest it. Because the right people, the people
who want to better their businesses, will actually rise to the top, and they'll reach out and say, I
know you've given me all this free shit, but I want to see what's on the inside. Compliments to
you, and to all the guys that have come in. There are some really smart people inside that
group, driven people, and that's the kind of people I love working with. I thought I didn't want to
work with startup businesses, but now I absolutely fucking love it. It's extremely enjoyable to see
the little wins and the little journeys people go on, to start from zero like yourself, and then start
generating revenue, paying yourself a wage, and building an established business. It's
extremely satisfying. The gap I saw with you and Kenny was that there was no in between, from
employment to actually starting the business. So I built the Off The Ground course, which is
those exact steps. Things like, do you go as a company or a trust? Do you register for GST?
Where do you get your website? What software do you need? What are the bare essentials?
You were one of the first guinea pigs through that, and I think you took a lot from it, even just to
get your ute on the road and ready to go.
Austin: Yeah, there's so much to get sorted out. Insurances, setting up the company, all that
sort of stuff. So having something like that made it much easier to just tick along.
Alan: Did you sacrifice your vehicle to buy the ute?
Austin: Yeah, I did. I was very big on it from the start, I always wanted to look like I was a much
bigger or more established company than I was. I had an old farm ute, my uncle's old farm ute,
one of those N70 Hiluxes. I knew I could start the business out of it, but it just looked like a sole
trader, one man band sort of thing, which wasn't the branding I wanted. So I sold that and
bought a 2021 little two by two Toyota Hilux. And it looks like a fleet car...
Alan: It looks like the kind of car a big company would've bought ten of.
Austin: Yeah, exactly. Having that look just makes you look much more professional, so I
always wanted that. So I sold the car and got that.
Alan: The safe thing about that as well is when you do expand, you get an apprentice, you get a
worker, you can just get another one of those and print it up again, and you'll be building your 
fleet. It depends what you want to do. I did that as well. Kept the same colour, kept the same
scheme, and it looks a lot more professional, rather than a mixed bag of different vehicles. Then
I ended up downsizing, because I realised staff weren't for me, as I'm very open about. I just like
virtual staff, and the thought of AI excites me a lot in regards to agents, which we won't even get
into in this chat. But it's coming.
Austin: Yeah.
Alan: One of the key things, before you started, tell me about integrating yourself into the
software. Now that you're running your business with the likes of ServiceMate and Xero, can
you see what it would've been like not using those?
Austin: Yeah. I actually can't believe people... obviously we were using ServiceMate the whole
time at the old place, but I didn't know anything about the front end or the back end of it, or how
to really use it properly. And I can't imagine ever running my business without ServiceMate
housing everything. I think it's almost as essential to me as having my pliers and screwdrivers,
as far as being a business owner. Being able to track everything for the job, all the job photos,
job notes, invoicing from there, quoting from there, tracking your time on site, everything like
that.
Alan: Every few months you'll see somebody post up on a contractors forum, are job
management softwares any good? Do I need one? And someone will go, just use Xero. And it's
like, no. Xero is for your financials. The ability and power you can get inside ServiceMate... like I
said, I speak about my flywheel, the before, during and after stages of the client's journey. The
centre cog is your job management software. That's where the leads go in, they get handled,
they get churned back in, and it goes around and around. If only for ServiceMate, with all the
little automations you can plug into it, I honestly don't know how... well, I do know how they
operate. They operate a shit business, and that's the reality of it. You can get on ServiceMate
essentially for free. I don't advise it. I advise you to go, I think it's the second top tier package
that's a hundred and fifty or something right now.
Austin: Yeah.
Alan: And that gets you customisable SMS, which is paramount for professionalism when
you're going out to those jobs. It's insane that setting up your software is such a key stepping
stone of having a professional business.
Austin: For sure. And even just getting quick reviews after jobs, because you mentioned that.
One day you did three jobs and you got three reviews, just following simple systems, and I'm
sure the clients were very happy to give those reviews. Even that's the thing I'm probably most
complimented on, the level of communication. And I can't lie, it doesn't even feel like I'm doing
anything, because it's all automated inside ServiceMate. You schedule the job and they get a
booking confirmation, then a reminder twenty four hours before that you're going to be there.
Then you're going to the job and they're getting a live tracker that you're on your way. For me to
do all that, there's literally nothing. It's all automated. You just click a button to go to the job and
it navigates you there. When people experience that... obviously people have terrible
experiences with trades, especially with communication and just being confident the trade's
going to rock up on site. So if you're doing all of that, I've been complimented a good handful of
times on it. And it's funny, because I don't feel as though I'm actually doing anything. I'm not
working hard to do that, it's just ticking along in the background, which is wicked. And that's the
kind of thing people bring up in the Google reviews, because that's normally their pain point. Is
he going to rock up when he says he is? All that sort of stuff.
Alan: Half the time it's that kind of stuff that leads to the reviews, and it's wicked to have a
generic template for the review. I'll give you my template for the reviews, you can cut and paste
it straight into your ServiceMate and it's done. Set and forget. You don't have to go into your
iPhone, into text messages, into the client, and start typing out the message every single time.
You go to ServiceMate, tick, tick, tick, tick, send, drive. And while you're driving you might get an
alert saying a review's been left. That's what my whole thing is about, integrating these tiny little
systems into your business that get you efficiency, five minutes here, two hours there. You build
it once, it might take a bit of time to build specific systems, but once they're built, they're done,
they're in place. Even my quoting system, which I've shown you guys, a lead comes in, I just go
click, click, click, click, send. Then I wait for more information to go back, click, click, click,
pricing, send, done. Old me with my Xero quoting was two finger typing every single time. I'd
retype the whole quote again. It's part of starting and running a business that you learn the hard
way, but you had the intelligence to not learn the hard way, which is fantastic.
Alan: Your website as well, tell us about that. Did you have any clue about websites? Did you
have any clue about what you'd put on your website? Because I'm not a web developer, I'm just
a guy who knows patterns and has had real life experience with my electrical business, what
works and what doesn't. Tell us about your experience, or how you built what is now your
fucking amazing looking website. It's one of my personal favourites out of the group. It's clean,
it's crisp, it's to the point. Tell us about the journey building it.
Austin: Yeah. Before, I couldn't even imagine what kind of website I'd have. If it was there, it
would've been shocking. But I built the website out, had a referral from you on a guy to use,
because I'd seen a website he'd done before that matched what we were after. Hit him up, told
him what I wanted out of the messaging, and built it up. I was pretty happy with it to start off
with, but then I sent it over to you, you helped me out with a couple of little tweaks here and
there, and I changed a few things I wanted specifically. But things like, is it CMS pages and stuff
like that?
Alan: Yeah, they're the repetitive pages.
Austin: Yeah, I wouldn't have a clue. There's no way before this that I would've known what
that is, or would've implemented it. And that's huge for ranking in all the different suburbs and
things like that.
Alan: I'm biting my lip heavy on AI, because AI is going to be the new financial year topic that
I'm going to be introducing heavily into Simplified Sparky, plugging in and starting to go AWOL
with it. Who knows, in a year's time it might be just a few clicks and you're getting your website
built. So that's something I'm keeping my eye on. Any little thing where I can see a system or
process that can better your business, it's like, fuck, let's plug this in. It's a tried and tested trial,
that's with me as well. I've spoken openly about this in podcasts, a lot of coaches out there will
sell you the dream. They'll sell you fluff, and they'll try to tell you to implement something they've
never implemented into their own business, or they think it might be a good idea in theory, but
when it comes to reality it's not actually a good idea, and it's going to be out of date next week.
Right now, at the time of this recording, Claude Fable 5 has been released, and it's been
retracted again because it was too powerful...
Austin: That's crazy.
Alan: Too dangerous. And in between the two days where it was released, you almost had
people selling courses on how to use Fable 5, and now it's gone again. This is what I'm trying to
stay on top of, keep the finger on the pulse. What are we going to build that's going to stand the
test of time, that's going to have longevity? And if anything, if more AI comes out, let's make it 
even more powerful. That's where people have to keep their guard up. There are so many
snake oil merchants out there selling shiny objects, selling AI courses to become a guru. Spend
enough time on YouTube and you learn it yourself, to be honest. Just don't fall into the traps.
But yeah, it's going to be heavily influenced inside Simplified Sparky in the new financial year,
so I'm very excited about that, getting some agents going and stuff. I'm tinkering in the
background, but I'm not going to say too much.
Alan: Your website's up and running. You even got inquiries from your website shortly after it
went up, didn't you? That's not something that automatically happens. You happen to be laid out
right, you happen to be in a good area. Most likely it went down a trajectory of Google Business
Profile to your website, then converting, because I know you're ranking quite well in your area,
which is unbelievable for your profile. The reason you're getting compliments and conversions is
it's built correctly. It's built for a good user experience. It's built with the correct messaging. They
can fill out a form very quickly and easily, and you get it handled quickly and easily.
Austin: I was getting inquiries week one, week two from the website. I'd honestly say at the
minute my work is about fifty percent referral clients and people I know, and fifty percent really
just from the website inquiries and the Google Business Profile. I've been in business maybe
four months or so now, and fifty percent of my work is from the website. And I have plans to
build that out even more. It's at stage one. It's not even built out all the way, I have so many
other plans for marketing and things like that. To know it's ticking along the way it is, that's
definitely a boost in confidence. Knowing consistent lead flow is coming in, it doesn't scare me
that next week no one's going to be ringing the phone. I'm confident that this week, I'm sure, two
leads will come in and there'll be some sort of workflow from it.
Alan: You've built the proper foundations. There's a real argument for spend money to make
money, and you're not even spending money, you're investing money. And, I'm not going to
name figures, that website was actually extremely cheap. It was half the price of what I pay for
my website, and the reason is I just found a good contact. I know you've got that contact. But
your website... you look at you, you look at Dave and other members as well, your businesses
now look like you're established with years behind you. You look like you know your shit. That's
the secret key, looking established. People can smell a rookie business. Builders almost prey on
businesses that look rookie, with a DIY website, and they think, brilliant, this guy will come in, do
a cheap job, we'll churn and burn and get the next guy. You've got that look and feel that you've
been around for years, and that's why you're getting the good clients, why you're getting the
good jobs, why you're going out there confidently quoting those jobs and getting them. It all
goes in tandem. As you said, your website's at phase one. You're going to clap a turbo on it,
you're going to add more pages, more services, but the bones are built. And with the CMS
pages, they'll start to evolve. You can build them out and out, and build your website even
heavier for SEO. SEO's going through a crazy time at the moment, there's been a lot of
algorithm changes, all the usual bullshit. I find myself reading the AI summary up the top, what
they recommend, because it brushes through everything, and that's going to be the key of the
future, getting your business ranked up there. Right now you're ranking, and Google's got to get
its information, and AI's got to get its information from somewhere. As you're building, you're still
miles ahead of people that are just starting their business today or tomorrow, where they're
starting from ground zero. You're already miles ahead with your presence and your website.
You did things the correct way. You went from full time employment to subcontracting to doing
your own work, and you started with maybe one day a week of your own work, then two days of
your own work and three days subbing, and now I believe you're down to maybe one or two
days?
Austin: Yeah, depending on the week. It's pretty much one to two days subcontracting.
Sometimes three, it comes in waves, but I'd say the majority of the time now it's about two days
subcontracting.
Alan: We jumped on a call about a month or so ago, and we had a back and forth, and you got
wound up about having work for an apprentice that you used to do work with. And it shows the
heart you have, that you were more worried about trying to find that guy work, because he's a
good worker, I'm hearing. And I said, well, hang on, why don't you, unfortunately, not take that
guy to work with you, and you ease off the throttle a little bit and spread your work over two
days. A common misconception, which is something I would've thought too, is if I don't get the
job done in one day, the client's going to be shitty with me. And what I said to you was, fuck it, if
the job takes two days, it takes two days. Just relay that to the client, we're going to have to do
this Thursday, Friday, or Monday, Tuesday, or let's do a gap in between, whatever works with
their schedule, but break it into two days. The biggest worry, when you work in their home, is a
power outage. There are two things here. You can either advise them the power's going to be
down intermittently, because we're only working on the power circuit for a certain amount of
time. If you're doing downlights or something, and they're working from home, you can say,
you're sweet, your wifi will be working all day, the only thing going down is your lighting circuit,
so it won't affect your power circuit. And worst case scenario, buy a little power bank, plug their
wifi into it, and that'll keep them humming along if that's the fear with their work. Tell us about
the penny drop moment when you thought, I never thought about it like that.
Austin: Yeah, because I was always... if I got a big job, I'd just get a bit of help to smash it out.
That was how it always went, if you get a big job, you just load up more boys on it. That's the
mentality I had. Almost to the point where, if a job was too big, maybe I'm not a good fit for it,
because if I'm there for three, four, five days dragging a job out, the client's going to be
unhappy, or maybe I'm too small to do it. But then that kind of dropped me. I thought, no, I'm
trying to fill a working week. If a job comes in that's going to take me three, four days, that's
three, four days I don't have to subcontract, I'm going to be making more money, and I've filled
out my week, and it's only one lead. It makes total sense. It's the perfect scenario. But in my
head I was worked up to where, if it takes over a day, that means I need a hand.
Alan: I would've had that too, thinking, are they going to be pissed off that it's over three days?
People get their house painted and it takes a week to paint the house, and they move all their
stuff all over the place. I think people fear, because you may be going in solo on your own,
that... I think we get in our heads a lot. We get in our heads with pricing, we get in our heads
with what clients are thinking. We think clients will think, for fuck's sake, they should have this
done ages ago, if there were two of them it would've been quicker. But I don't think you should
worry about that, because the kind of clients you attract, and will be attracting because of your
marketing and messaging, are the best kind of clients, who care more about the job getting
done neatly, correctly and cleanly, rather than rushed through with a shit job, get in, get out.
That's not a fear to be had. The clients we attract are the best kind, who just care about the job
being done correctly.
Austin: Yeah, the jobs I've done over more than one day, no one's ever cared. If the level of
communication's all good, and they're confident you're going to rock up when you say you are,
they're not really concerned about it.
Alan: You hit the nail on the head massively there, because communication is probably the
number one thing. Communicating to the client what you do, number one. Communicating to the
client quickly when they reach out. Communicating to the client how long a job is going to take.
What would piss a client off is if you took that job on and said, we'll be there Monday, and then
midway through Monday you go, by the way, we're coming back tomorrow, we're going to finish 
it tomorrow. That's the wrong way to do it. So you absolutely hit the nail on the head. If you
communicate at the start, this is a big job, you spread it over two days, we're going to need two
days on this. And the best case scenario is you finish it in the day, or you say two days but you
finish on Tuesday morning at eleven o'clock, and then they're chuffed because you're out of
there at eleven even though you told them two days. But if you don't communicate that, that's
where you get the one star or three star reviews, for just a slight lack of communication. Having
that communication in place is paramount.
Alan: When you go to quote jobs now, because of the stuff inside Simplified Sparky, my
process that I showed you, how confident are you now quoting jobs and the way you go about
it?
Austin: There are always those couple of jobs where you're like, oh God. If there's a renovation
job and you kind of know there's going to be a bit of callback, if another trade doesn't do the
right thing and the splashback's not put on at the right time, trying to account for that, that's the
only time I really... But if it's just a mum and dad service job, yeah, I'm pretty confident with it all
now. That was probably the biggest concern going into business, the quoting and pricing.
Because when you're on wages, you just rock up, do your eight hours, and get paid your wage
at the end of the day. You're not concerned about any of that. But now, if you quote it wrong,
you're doing the job and you're not going to make any money on it. That was probably the
biggest fear for me. I'd never done this before, and this is literally the thing that ultimately
determines if I make money or not. If I do it wrong, and I've committed to the job, I'm seeing it
through, and that doesn't guarantee I'm even going to make anything on it. I could almost be
losing money. So rocking up and having the confidence that you're going to make money on a
job, it's huge. That's the whole reason you go to work, let alone start a business.
Alan: Absolutely. And what you would've done in the foundation level... actually, I may as well
reveal this, I'm building a new tool which will be revealed on this week's live session, the hourly
rate calculator. How was that, just getting a reality kick up the ass, to be like, if I want to make
this much as a wage, this much in profit... how did that feel, to actually go, shit, I can't just
charge a hundred and twenty an hour, or whatever?
Austin: It's a bit of an eye opener, and I probably needed the kick in the ass to actually charge
that. The number kind of scares you. Oh, I don't know if I can charge that. But you've laid it all
out in front of yourself, what your costs are and everything, and how much you want to make.
So it's just numbers. It's not being greedy or anything like that. But when you see the number,
and you hear what other people are charging, you think, I don't know if I can charge that, and
you get in your own head about it. So yeah, it was a good eye opener. And as far as getting
knocked back because of price, it's not like that's very common. Some clients do shop around,
they get multiple quotes and they tell you, oh, this guy's much cheaper. But they're probably not
the client you want to deal with anyway. As far as when you go on a job and it's a good client
that fits our target market, no one really batters me down on price anyway.
Alan: It's such a common theme. People that complain about clients battering them on price
tend to have clients coming from Hipages, other lead generation websites. They're fishing in the
wrong pond, is what they're doing.
Austin: Mm hmm.
Alan: And not only that, they're not prepping their business correctly, and they're the same
people whingeing about people being cheap on price. It's because those lead generation
companies market to the cheap. They go, get the cheapest electrician, three quick quotes, blah
blah blah. They target the cheaper people, who fill out the form wanting a cheaper quote, and 
that's why the cycle happens, where the cheap quotes come from. It's not until sparkies realise
that, when they Google cheapest electrician Sydney, cheapest electrician Perth, you'll start
seeing these lead generation companies advertising. That's when people fill out their forms and
end up in that loop. Price comes down the line. It's convenience, it's communication, it's doing a
good job, it's having a reputation. After that, people are happy to pay a premium. At the end of
the day, people buy Ferraris, people buy Fiats. They have the money, they have disposable
income, they like nice things. That's what we want to give our clients, the nice things
experience. I want to pay for a good electrician. I think you're nailing that down. What excites
me so much is you're only a couple of months into business and you're crushing it already. It
took me three to four years to get to the stage you're at. That's what I do inside the program, I
accelerate you to get to where you are now, because I saw the hurdles I jumped over to get
here. It took me years, and you're crushing it now, and you're going to be crushing it even
further.
Alan: In one of the Monday wins in the group, you put in that in one day you topped [insert
figure] in profit. And it's crazy, that figure. How long would it have taken for you to make that on
wages?
Austin: That would've been about a week's wages. That's pretty much just shy of what I was
making for a full week on wages. Which is so funny, because I remember before starting my
business, I actually wrote out all my weekly expenses, what rent is, how much food will cost me,
adding it all up to figure out, okay, how much money do I need to live? How many days
subcontracting do I need to do? And then to come out one day and pretty much make what I
was making in a week on wages, it's a good feeling.
Alan: And that's the cool thing, you can afford to take a few days off a week to work on your
business. When you know your numbers, know your figures, particularly starting out, you can
afford to work two days a week, make juicy profit, and then the other three days you either
hustle to get work, or you start working on the business, implementing stuff, dropping flyers,
doing stuff that brings you more work in that downtime. And then between the systems, the
automations, the client nurturing back in again, it all comes together. But it's knowing the
numbers. The fact that you made that much profit in one day is absolutely insane. And obviously
that then becomes your floor number, as you go into the future, having that number to aim for.
You'll have that digit where you think, okay, if I'm not making that much in a day, I'm not going to
be too happy about my day. But if I'm above that, you're absolutely cheering, that's a fantastic
day in your business.
Alan: To people watching this, people on the fence, people thinking about starting an electrical
business, or people who are even in business and they've got a staff member or two, they're
spinning wheels and unsure, running a bit of a shitty business, would you advise them to join
Simplified Sparky? Have you taken stuff from it?
Austin: Yeah. Obviously from the chat there, you can see that I have. My big thing is, you don't
know what you don't know. I wouldn't have known that I would've handed up a crappy website if
it wasn't for knowing what a good website is. And I wouldn't even know about all the
automations and stuff that I can set up. I would've been busting my ass, working hard, reading
all the books and listening to all the free content, if I hadn't joined. I would've thought I was
doing good, but I know for a fact that if you compared the me that didn't join and the me now
that has joined, the business I have now would obviously be much better than if I hadn't. So I
think that's the main thing. You don't know what you don't know. That would be my big
takeaway.
Alan: I really appreciate that. And already, what you've achieved in that day's profit you spoke
about, I'm sure you can see the return on investment in that as well. It's costing you money to
not know. I listened to Dave's episode, and what he said stuck with me. He said you're paying
for everything twice, because you build a website which costs you money, and then you find out,
actually this isn't really converting very well, so now you've got to do it again. So you're paying
for everything twice to get it right, and you're making a lot of mistakes.
Austin: Yeah. Whereas doing something like this, you've made and you're making the mistakes
for me, and then you just hand it to me on a platter, going, yeah, this works, this doesn't work,
maybe try this out. It's a bit of a cheat sheet. Obviously I've done it, so I'm a little bit biased, but I
think...
Alan: I want you to be biased.
Austin: Yeah. I think what you said there is like the poor man pays twice.
Alan: I'm totally cool if people just want to listen to the podcast and take some free information
and inject it into their business. I'm still happy that I'm bettering the industry in some way, that
every ship can rise together with the tide, as long as people implement. It makes it a better
place. And I'm absolutely overwhelmed with the quality of guys in there. It's just such a good
group of guys. I'm very, very fortunate to have them in there, just like yourself. Thanks so much,
Austin, and I'll chat to you soon.