Why Quote Electrical Jobs Twice? | 153

Most electricians quote a job once and never look back. That's how you bleed money for years without ever knowing it. In this episode I break down why I quote certain jobs twice, the $12,000 job that taught me the hard way, and how to stop your electrical business flying blind on profit.

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Transcript

I could have installed that myself," says the electrical engineer to the electrician. "I just don't have the license."

Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing. Quoting a job twice. And why the fuck would you quote a job twice, Alan? You may ask. The reason you quote a job twice is to make sure you've quoted it correctly.

So let's rewind this back to where it all comes from. Many years ago, when I was starting my electrical business, I did a number of jobs where I shot myself in the foot. I didn't charge correctly and I made no money. I just plodded along, thought I was doing okay, but I had my head in the sand and didn't realize I wasn't doing okay.

It wasn't until I started paying myself correctly, getting really dialed in with my numbers and what it actually costs to professionally run a business, that I realized I wasn't making money. And one of the core reasons was that I wasn't figuring out why I wasn't making money in my electrical business. That's where I'm rewinding this back to: quoting the job twice.

Now, why you quote the job twice is for the jobs where you finish up and realize, "I don't think I did too crash hot on that."

I'll tell you about one job. I was doing an extension. I found this builder through some app, it wasn't HiPages, it was something else that's since disappeared. The builder's job was listed on it. It was an extension in Newtown in Sydney's Inner West. I went there, looked at it, didn't look too bad. It was timber framed out the back, and I was a total rookie to quoting anything.

So I went there, looked at it, and had the typical startup electrician mindset of "I'll just use the cheapest materials and sort the builder out by going in at a very low price." And this builder was delighted with me, because I was going to be super cheap, not only with my materials but with my labour as well. I realized after the job he probably charged double, if not triple, on top of my head for what I did it for.

It started off as this extension out the back: an induction cooktop, a little bathroom, the kitchen was in there, a little bit of a living room. So it was just blown out the back of the terrace. And then, when the job had started, the client wanted to rewire the entire house. So one thing led to another, and I ended up fully rewiring this house.

And do you know how much I rewired this entire terrace house for, and did the extension for? $12,000, including materials. And the materials weren't that expensive, it was probably only two or three grand. This was me going back and forth daily for days, with changes and variations, but I didn't know what to do. So I just kind of left them off, or added a little bit in there. I was afraid and scared that I was going to tell the builder and he'd get really mad at me, like a fucking school child. And I did it.

And I'm glad I did it, because it's just like those things. I did mining as well, and it was shit doing mining. What I learned from mining was that I'll never fucking do it again. But it was unbelievable to see the environment I went into, to meet the people I met, some of whom I'm still in contact with today. We were all in the same boat out in the mines, but the work itself is shit.

And the same thing goes for these mistakes we make along the way in business. They're shit at the time, but then you can sit down with a few sparkies, have a beer, have a laugh, and tell them all about your biggest fuck up or your biggest loss. And the best thing is, you learn from these losses.

I went in there and rewired that whole entire fucking terrace, and I did it for $12,000. This was in my first few months of business. And I had that shit mindset too, that when you start a business you're expected to run a bit shit in year one, that you're not going to make much money in year one. And that's a lot of horseshit, because I'm proving that to be incorrect right now with the guys I'm working with. The guys I'm working with are starting their business on the right foot, and it brings me so much joy, because that's where I went wrong, and they don't have to.

And that's what I'm talking about with quoting things twice. The next job I did, I made more money on a similar style job. And the job after that, I made even more. It was just learning: where did I go wrong with that? I realized I'd spent weeks and weeks on that job, and when I crunched the numbers, I was actually making fuck all per hour. There was a job before that where I basically broke even. It's these lessons you learn along the way, but you can avoid learning them the hard way. And that's the importance of breaking down what stuff costs, and why you quote stuff twice.

Now, I don't mean every single job you do, you quote twice. What I mean by quoting it twice is, when you fuck up a job, you rip it apart, dissect it, and figure out where you went wrong and how you can improve going forward. It could be a renovation, a new build, service work. It might even just be changing a PowerPoint. Whatever it is, if you're looking at the work you're doing and walking away going, "I don't think I made that much money on that job," what you should be doing is going back through your original quotation. See what you allowed for, see what went wrong. Were there inconveniences on the job? Did you have to go back and forth to the job? Was that included in the price? All these little factors come into play.

And the mindset you want to go in with is "once bitten, twice shy." You don't want to get stung again. Even with things like EV chargers: if you're doing those installs and you realize you're not making money, or it comes to the end of the financial year... I'm not going to name the company, but there's a company out there that does EV charger installs. They have electricians do the installs for them. They don't pay too well. I know a lot of electricians, and I was speaking to one who's doing a lot of their installs, and they're not doing too well this financial year. Yes, you might be busy, but a lot of these people are busy not making enough money.

And that's where each and every job you do in your electrical business should be rewound back and looked at, to see if you actually made money. That's why, a few podcasts ago, I spoke about my floor number. At a quick glance of my schedule and what I did for the day, I can tell you in a minute or two whether I made money on those jobs, because I've got a specific number I need to hit. I'm in this game so long now that I can glance at those service jobs and know exactly what material has been used, and the exact prices of that material, just at a glance.

And all this comes with time. So if you're just starting your electrical business, or you've been in business a while and you've been a little bit blind to this, not looking at the prices of items, just going to the supplier, picking up the material, doing the work and guessing what it costs, you're flying blind. And it's going to be no good for you, your electrical business, and most importantly, your pocket.

Even recently, the price of fuel going up has had a knock-on effect on materials, because the couriers and all the deliveries have to use fuel to deliver your products, so their costs have gone up too. Conduit's going up, cable's going up, all of it's going up. But people still hold on to their pricing from a year or two ago. They go forward knowing material has gone up, but they wear it on the chin. That shouldn't be the case, because a few dollars an hour on your hourly rate could equate to thousands of dollars, depending on how many staff you have. If it's just you and you increase your hourly rate a few dollars an hour, that could be thousands of dollars a year off that one change. If you've got staff, that's a lot of money you'll generate just by putting your hourly rate up a tiny bit.

Everything has to be accounted for. That's why it's super important that if you fuck up a job, or you walk away from a job thinking, "I did not make money on that, I'm too afraid to look at the numbers, I don't know if I made money," look at it. Get your head out of the sand, because you're a business owner now, you're not an employee. Otherwise it's just going to keep happening. See where you went wrong. Dissect that job.

You might even realize you just shopped at the wrong place for your material. For example, the other day I was looking for a specific EV charger and I was about to pull the trigger with one company online. I had a look, did a bit more digging, and found it for $300 less elsewhere from another supplier. It's just about being savvy and clever about where you get your materials too. If you've got a very material-heavy job, you could make $1,000 or $1,500 more just by checking your suppliers' prices and keeping an eye open. Is there a better place where you could get maybe half your material from another supplier? It'll just push your profit margin up even more.

That's it for me this week. I'll catch you next week. We are a few days away from the end of the financial year, so please, please, please speak to your accountant. Make sure you're not going to pay any silly tax at the end of the financial year. If you don't have it sorted in the next couple of days, you're going to be paying it. Chat to you next week.