Better Options, Better Service Calls. Masterclass Recap | YT LIVE Replay

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and cook up those sales.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm Joseph Lucani, and together with my co-host Clay New Meyer. We're here to share the secrets of how electricians sell over a million dollars to a single service band.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Now it's time for sales. It's time for sale. It's time to become a million-dollar electrician.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

All right, modern electric. Glad to have you with us today, brother. Thank you for joining us today. Run solo until Clay joins us. Please, by all means, ask your questions, drop your scenarios. All you've got to do is I'm like a pull-up toy. You just gotta pull the string and words will come out, but I gotta have a question to start with. Some of my favorite things to talk about is we can get into generators, we can get into why we do options or how we do options, presentations.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

What's up, what's up, what's up?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Hey Clay, how are you, my dear brother?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Oh man, uh a little behind, but thank you so much. You already hit live. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

We're ready to rock and roll. Yes, got a few viewers. Artie, my shout out to Modern Electric. And pretty much I am I am like the wind-up toy waiting for someone to pull the string. But in the meantime, I'll hang out with you until someone can drop a comment and the questions.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Very cool, man. Well, it's good to see you for the first time since last week. It was Canadian Thanksgiving here, as uh some of you guys know. We're very thankful over the weekend, had some great family time, and uh thankful to be back. This is a ton of fun. Thanks everyone for your patience. Uh to let this happen on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. I wanted to ask you, Joe, a week ago you had another masterclass, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yes, I believe so. Yeah, we did. And that which one was that, and how did it go? Because we were trying to help electricians understand how not only that they should be offering options, but going into how they can and then where are the places that they can find them? So it was a lot of going through techniques of like what to look for, how to look for it, as well as some of the hot rooms that people might not expect, such as attics, crawl spaces, utilities, and storages.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Nice, very cool. Thank you. What's up, Pat? How are you doing, brother? Welcome to the show. Uh so Joe, you had a good turnout on that one?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, it was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed everyone was in there, and we got into a lot of fun when it came to people starting to realize that they're leaving a lot on the table by not watching the homeowner. I thought that was really, really interesting. Where, you know, a lot of us say we should be letting the homeowner lead, but then they just watch, they just walk. There's no observing, there's no looking up or looking to side. But even more so, the thing that really stood out to so many people was watching how the homeowner interacts with the home. Like if you think to yourself, if they walk into a room, like a basement, they walk into a basement and five feet in they pull a pole chain. That's something they notice to say, Hey, I'm walking into a dark room, there should be a switch on the wall. Or if the customer unplugs an extension cord to plug something in, or they say, Step over this, and there's a cord on the floor, or hey, that hasn't worked in a while, we'll try it this way. Those are like these little things that you may not think to ask, and nor would they ever be brought to the customer's attention or brought to your attention if the customer is not communicating it. But if you know what to look for, you can actually glean these little bits of wisdom right off the top.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah. And speaking of options, we've got one of the comments there. Modern electrical services, love that. Was that my childhood neighbor's house? Troubleshooting refrigerator circuit, about 78, 79 house. Apparently, no GFCI protection in the kitchen. I feel like it should offer a full device and AFGF upgrade.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

That'd be a good starting point. Believe it or not, we can actually go lower and we can go higher. I feel like I feel like I want to just jump into it.

unknown 3:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So here's the thing. And Modern Electric, thanks for being a part of this. Really, at the end of the day, we can't just offer one solution. Because you're right. I could see the logic, like let's make sure it's GFCI, let's put sure it's Arcful, let's change the device. But that necessarily doesn't solve everything, and it also isn't the lowest they could possibly have. Realistically, we should have a range of choices. And I could see the bottom being, well, why don't we just replace what's currently there? Obviously, put it to GFCI protection to modern safety standard, of course. But that doesn't really solve a huge problem. That just kind of replaces the device for the problem to continue. So going up an option would be, well, why don't we change this and then also offer a smart notification return module, such as Elevitant Smart, which will let us know when power comes back on. We like to call them spoil notification systems. It's the same thing as putting a GFCI, except not only doesn't have an audible alarm, but it can also send you a push notification saying, hey, there's no power in your kitchen fridge. You should go check that and then find out, oh, wait a second, yeah, you're right. The circuit tripped. I better go throw that so I don't have to clean up ice cream off the floor. But then going further, and this is assuming all the wiring is good and the box is good and the circuit is good and the panel's good and the breaker's good, because all that's directly connected to it. Like if you think to yourself, Gly, like how many times we opened up that refrigerator outlet and find out it's two inches recessed behind the countertop, because the countertop was actually an afterthought. So should we actually brace that out? Or the wiring that going to and from it? How often do we find it's cloth? Or even then that it's 14, should be 20, but at the same time, we'll see it's 14. Or then you find that the breaker's not correct. So another option above that then is saying, okay, well, is it localized? Meaning, does this kitchen GFCI trip when other GFCI trip as well? I grew up in a home where, and this is gonna sound crazy, but we had one kitchen, uh, we had one GFCI that I had to reach behind a shoe closet to kind of feel for, and it did all the bathrooms, it did all the garage, all the basement, and then all the exterior points. So if anything ever tripped, it was always a pain in the butt to take care of. So you ask yourself and say, what else would trip this fridge? And then line side it that way. Every individual one is localized and can protect itself without worrying about the fridge being downstream of anything. Then going higher, we could include what you're suggesting as far as arc folding GFCI, but then go further and say, let's do electronics protection. Because at the very least, now this not only protects their fridge, but everything surrounding it. Then going further than that, provided it's justified, once again, we're going blind, we could offer and say, let's put either a new circuit in, if that's justified based on what we're seeing, or saying at least a dedicated circuit. Because now, if it's dedicated and has an audible notification sphere spoil notification system, how are you going to risk this thing failing? The redisk has been so much further mitigated. You can go further than that and then say, Well, why don't we offer these spoiled notification systems on the other points? I've got a meat freezer in the free in the garage, or I've got a secondary fridge, or got a beer fridge, or something else that you feel is a concern. Put it on the sub bump for all I care. But if you have these smart devices on, they can actually provide a peace of mind to the homeowner. And the bow that's on top of this would be the first class pass on the first stop. So I believe the top of my mind, that's six options right off the head.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah. First class pass. Let's talk about that for a sec. I've got a couple of things to bring up today that are super important, but this thing I think eludes a lot of people. They don't commit to offering first class pass, which is so simple to just adopt and just do. In fact, if you guys just comment first class, we'll send you over a framework for it. There's a little value piece we've had for a long time. It's just a little PDF, tell you exactly what to offer and why. But I want to give a big why right now. Let's say they choose the top option. Let's say, and you don't have the first class pass in there. Well, Joe, is it true that options actually help us identify who our premium buyers are?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

100%. And this person just spent top dollar on you.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, they just spent top dollar. We just found that person that trusts us this much. The resistance has melted off. There's no fat left in this relationship. The trust is at the peak. Clearly, they're willing to spend and upgrade everything with us, and we don't have a way to come back and serve them further. It's the most awkward thing because later you'll be having this conversation with your team. Like, we need, you know, we need more clients like like Joseph. Remember him, the guy we did the platinum for in the kitchen? Oh, that was an awesome job. I wonder how he's doing. Versus, it could be, hey guys, I see Joseph's on the calendar again. We have our annual home inspection coming up. He's been a member for two years now. Let's make sure we serve him at this high level. Oh, hey, and take this over to them. I know how much they love that local bakery's cookies. Now it's we keep serving. Guys miss this so much. It's like it's like this big celebration. Oh, we got a platinum. But really, what you did is the biggest disservice to your future company that could ever be done, which is identifying your best customers and having no other thing you could do for them. Joe, what are your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

You know, of all things, believe it or not, my brain goes to generators and a parallel that's here. And the cool thing is that it's the same concept that I think supports what you're saying, right? We eventually want to create this tribe of people that are close to us, that believe in us, that support us. And the hardest time is getting back after you sold this ultra platinum agreement because in the homeowner's mind, they've purchased everything they need. Why should they need even more? My personal belief is that whenever we're offering a maintenance agreement, we should always be including this service as well as the future service. So, like only the only the bottom option would be this year alone. Everything from the bottom up is actually five, four, three, two, one, and then just this year's service. And the logic being is it's a massive disservice to say, I know this thing needs modification, I know it needs annual upkeep, or at the very least, the relationship needs a touch point. And I'm leaving it to the homeowner to remember that responsibility after they took my best, and I can't even take the time to look out for them after the fact. That just feels like a massive disservice, doesn't it, Clay?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, big fallacy. Big fallacy. So on this topic of you creating options in the kitchen, it's really interesting because I was having a chat with uh Nathan Miles yesterday. Nice meeting with him, and I know he just had one with you. And I think um, I think he'd be happy with us finally, uh not finally, but okay with us sharing this. Like one of his things was overcoming uh offering rewires. And what I mean by that is just when is it justified to offer this big service? Because it tends to be the biggest ticket that residential service electricians will ever offer, especially when it includes a full service upgrade, which of course often it does. And often, I mean, if there's not EV, well, now there's provisions for it, and if there's not backup power, well, typically now there's provisions for it. So suddenly these options are 30, 40,000, maybe 50,000. I mean, I think the record is still held by Jacob with a heritage home for like $91,000 that went from an inspection to that level of ticket. Now, Nathan had a really good feeling. This is kind of an update for you. I don't know when you got to speak to him last, but he said, Hey, I think that call went really freaking well. And it seemed like they were gonna take a pretty tall option here. This is incredible. I feel good, I feel vindicated in this. But the question I always have, Joe, is like, okay, well, A, if that's the truth, if electricians feel shady about this, I mean, we kind of go back to the why, but also what justifies us doing this then?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

There's a lot of ways to consider it and really break it down. And I have to address the fear first, because this is something that's tied with logic. We as electricians don't want to offer the rewire for usually one of two reasons. One, we're worried what the homeowner will say, and they'll think we're trying to sell them something they don't need. Or two, the electrician himself doesn't really want to get into rewires. A lot of times I'll hear, yeah, I probably should have had it, but I just don't want to do it. And that's a very interesting concept because at the end of the day, what is the right decision for the home and the person living in it? So let me give you a good example, right? You go to a home and it was wired in the 50s. Now, for us, that means it's not knob and tube, it's cloth. And a lot of times it's BX, it may even have plastic jacketing, or if it's not, it has cloth jacketing. If you think about that kind of line, it's gonna hold this integrator for a long time, right? Like you've seen homes that still have that current wiring. But when you go and you start looking at it and saying, all right, this has been 60, 70, 80, 90, 2000, 2010, 2020. We're like 76 years in to this electrical system. At what point would you consider it being responsible to start changing how the infrastructure is set up? Like, sure, copper is copper and all conduct, but at what point do we start saying this is justified? 80 years, 90 years, 100? You have to pass a whole century to say it's appropriate for a rewire, rewire. So the point I'm trying to get here is to really sit and reflect and say, all right, I may not offer it as my standard packages, right? But if in my heart I'm thinking to myself, someone should rewire this, or at some point, this is going to need a rewire. Put it in your platinum package. And you can even lead with, listen, I have zero expectation you're gonna take this. I simply want to just communicate everything I'm seeing, as well as the longest-term way that we can address it, so that if you're gonna spend anything, it's the best possible investment you can make. But do not shoot, just hear me out, and I'll show you the more economical options.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, yeah. And in Nathan's example, actually, the guy came right out and said during his observations, hey, we're not looking for anything additional here. He clearly indicated he went on offense from a homeowner standpoint. And by the way, guys, this is not a bad thing, it's the right thing because everything out there is trying to sell us. The marketing is everywhere. I mean, on average, we see thousands of ads a day, and it's pretty good. It's not wrong of homeowners to play a little defense and protect their pockets, and it's not wrong of us to play a little defense and protect their safety. The truth here is it's triangulated, it's in the middle, it's both of us working towards the kind of trusting relationship that can foster us sharing our experience, our knowledge, the exact aptitude that they don't have, us being able to share that in a way that they can buy. That's the magic here. Neither side is wrong. It's okay. So Nathan just disarmed it. I won't nail it the way he did exactly, but it was quite simply in just saying, like, hey, if I could just call a timeout, just so we're on the same page. My goal is not to sell you anything here today. It's just the hopes that I do my job well enough, that I communicate well enough, that you understand what I've seen, and that you have enough information and understanding of it to make a decision about what's right for you guys. Top or bottom makes no difference to me. I only hope that you see us as the best provider to help you. I love it. That's what led to this altruistic moment of them having this kind of silver, gold, platinum shuffle and trying to figure it out. And while he did spend some extra time with them too, I think he even tried to, you know, discuss maybe a silver for now, and we can always upgrade later. Ultimately, it's I think that one's gonna go to a third call close. But man, what a lesson in that, Joe, don't you think?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I really think it's beautiful because it shows that doing it with the background of ethics. Now, time out. We all say, every person out there, like, I'm ethical, I do this, but really sit down and think about it and say, if your job as the electrician is to simply educate them on what's currently being seen, even if you don't want to do the thing, or even if you don't expect them to need it, but it is relevant to the conversation, it's ethical to tell them. You could even say, like, I don't even want to sell this, I'm gonna put so many numbers on it, they don't take it. That's fine, but at least let them know so that at least someone else can take on this rewire then, because it should be done.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Well, let me let's test that for a moment. I mean, even what you just said, there is such a thing as FU pricing. I'm sure everyone will agree. Sometimes you don't want the job. In fact, live or not, if you're watching this, we you know, these get a few hundred views over the week or so. Uh, type F you below if you've ever given FU pricing. This one's a fun exercise. I asked this question in night school, and often it's unanimous. The whole room says, Well, yeah, you know, it happens. What about the hoarder? What about the the 100 cats lady? You've had cat ladies, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I remember the worst cat store I have is I was doing work for a hoarder and I had to change a light fixture while climbing a pile of coats and changing light fixture on my back and realizing there were dead cats in the pile. It was a gross house, man. I burned almost all my clothes.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yuck. Yeah, nasty, man. Nasty. I mean, there's biological hazards here, so it's natural that we don't want the job sometimes. But for every person that's given an FU price, most of them have also gotten a job with an FU price. Yep. And that's not a plug to say, hey, we should just throw numbers out there. No, you guys know we're not advocates of that. But when you don't want the work, I'm like FU price or referral. Like, let's give this to someone else. Or the right thing to do here is still serve the person, right? So we can't be selfish in this. We have to be selfless and just think about taking care of that person. So, I mean, it costs what it costs.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

You know, the cool thing about it is like there are some real arguments that people will say. Like, I uh um I have a friend who's working in Texas right now, and he as a result, what he said was like, I know this house needs to be rewired, but it's a tight little attic, it's a hot summer in Texas. I don't want to do it, but the home needs to be done, but I don't want to do it. In those circumstances, I agree with you, Clay, where it's like if you don't want to do it and you're the best electrician you know, what are the odds that someone else either wants to do it or is gonna do the same quality job as you? So if you think you're a better electrician and you know this is a difficult job, it's better to at least get paid on it and do it the right way than pass it to someone who's desperate and is not able to do it the same quality. And he's like, you know what? That makes sense. We're gonna include this in the top option.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Thousand percent. Uh Pat's not into dead cat jobs, by the way. He's made that clear. Oh, modern electrical, preferred out on services you don't offer, and I love this in brackets yet. I was just reviewing uh Christian Farrella's class takeover. He did. Uh, guys, this is someone who joined us from social media at one point, caught onto our content, joined our program, and went from about 70k average months to the biggest month was 300k June of last year. Uh, crushed it, but averaged about 200k months last year. We did a class, uh takeover with him where he was uh teaching this, and he said, word for word, the one of the biggest lessons he had learned was like, stop being the subcontractor and start becoming the general for his customers. What did he mean by that, Joe?

SPEAKER_00 19:52

There's a big gap that a lot of people don't understand, and I can give some real world examples of what I mean. Now we're talking about the hoarder, right? This is an example of where someone does sees it and is like, F that, I don't want a part of it, right? But the home is still in danger, and someone really does need help with this situation. And with all these flammables and the open electric, this is a genuine safety hazard for them as well. We could simply just say, No, I'm not interested and walk away, or you could raise the bar in which you serve them. Imagine saying to yourself, and this is actually been something I've offered before, literally hire a cleaning crew. Like, I'm literally going to hire a crew to come in and they're going to spend two days emptying everything and putting it on the driveway, and then making sure all everything is sanitized and cleaned. And then we're going to hire a roll-off, which is a dumpster that's going to show up in your driveway. And you or the homeowner can take as many times as they need to throw those things out. And after a certain period of time, say at the end of it, whatever's still left over by this date, we're all going to take into the roll off. We're going to tell them it's going to go and it's going to disappear. And then after we've had the sanitation check in place and everything's been cleared to work, we can come in and we can give you the standard price for us doing that. Or if you'd rather us going and hiking through every individual thing, it's going to be X. How would you like to proceed? And believe it or not, some people do take it.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

That's a great opportunity to clean up, clean house. I love that, man. Um, the other part of this conversation with Nathan that's interesting and belongs here with everyone as well is just the areas of most importance. That's interesting because currently he's hiring people and eventually going to replace himself in sales. And so when you start training what we train, of course, with your teams as they're growing and you're electing to do some training, this question becomes really evident that needs to be answered, which is where do I start? What are the most important things I need someone to understand right away that would make up for any lack. And other areas because you can't just plug in like the matrix and download it, really. Can you?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

No, if I if I could be made in a different business.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

When you're asked this question, Joe, what are like the top three things that you think you've got to start here? You need to know this, or there's no great outcome possible.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

I would say it's understanding of what's connected to the thing and truly exploring that. It's actually how we structure our observations. It's like if you understand here, this location, here's the problem. Most people say it's just a GFI, it's just a dimmer switch, it's just a fan. And that word just comes in because they don't see the bigger picture. Say, okay, what is the wiring like that connects it? What is the box that it goes into that wire attaches to? What device is that condition? And just in that space alone, is this the highest quality it could be? If it truly is, if it truly is, then go further and say, okay, from this box to the panel, is this the safest and most reliable it could be? If yes, you continue and say, open the panel. Do I see any faults that could damage this system that they're asking me for, or anything else in this home? And what are the odds you're telling me every termination is perfect? There are no knockouts, every breaker is up to date. There are all arc fault GFCIs, none of them are mixed match breakers. There's no dust or rodents in the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Like panel schedule is perfect.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Oh my god, yeah, four panel schedule is perfect. So though you think electronics protection. So there's so many things in just the acknowledgement of what's connected. And if you're worried about searching and saying, like, well, how do I with the whole more things? I'm just trying to find more stuff. Like, well, I really appreciate you communicating that and thank you for your honesty. Believe it or not, I'm not trying to quote you for anything. My responsibility, though, is to make sure that when I leave you, I've given you a guarantee that what I'm leaving you with will work and that it's safe. And in order for me to understand that, to put my name behind it, because we all do offer a lifetime crash and a guarantee, I have to see it from where it begins to where it ends. Is it wrong of me to want to provide that level of thorough service just to ensure I'm not quoting you the wrong thing? Not at all. Okay, and there we go. So I'm not going to be able to just spit things like, oh, just offer this, this, and this. I'd rather say, look and fee, see what's connected and then explore from there because you'll find more relevant things as you explore.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Being able to see, and you know what I'd add to it? Having the right reason behind why you're seeing them. And then the only thing that's missing, like this is actually a triangle, and we just created it. I love triangles. I love threes. I think they help, especially with electricians where we had to learn deltas anyway, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

It's what is directly connected. That's what you just said. The what it's why I'm seeing it, having that great reason behind it, and it's how we're going to communicate this in a way that they can understand us. I think if you have those three things, you can serve 10 times better, more happier customers than other electricians who don't have that same concept down. Would you agree with that? Or you think it's more, maybe, or less?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

So I agree with the concept you have because it also comes back to the first concept we were talking about of people not wanting to communicate it. So, like, let me give you an example. Um, I'm gonna draw one from my memory and say the right way and the wrong way. So, one of the best stories that I have is being able to go from a ceiling fan to a whole home rewire. Now that's that's great and all, but the why is more important, right? Yeah, so we into the go to the home, we take down the fixture, we find this knob and tube aluminum, eventually talk to the homeowner, explain the situation, she does the rewire. Great. But if we had just approached them and said, okay, I'm looking at a shelving, hey, by the way, we're gonna be talking about rewiring your entire home. This whole thing is trash. We've got dangerous aluminum wiring, it's gonna get super hot, your system's super corroded, everything's bad, you're gonna die, walk away. Right? Like that's the worst possible way of communicating the information. In fact, you've done it so badly, they'll likely refuse even the other electricians who do it the right way because they're so upset by how you did it. But if you can explain, here I know you called me for this, you call me for this fan, right? And as I'm opening and inspecting the connections that I have to make, because I have to take one and put it into the other, I opened up and I found something that was concerning. I didn't want to concern you, so I did an exploration just to make sure that this wasn't an isolated incident. Once that's been done, I'm able to now formulate options and explain there's a long way of ways we can get this taken care of. I'm not trying to scare you, I just want to make you available aware of what's going on, and we can do whatever you want, whatever you feel comfortable with. But at the very least, I would be wrong to not tell you, are you mad at me for doing that? Or is it wrong of me to not at least communicate what I'm seeing? That way's better.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Absolutely, man. Couldn't agree more, guys. We're out of time for this week, but I want to finish this with a win of the week. It's up on the screen right now if you're following live on YouTube. Uh, just came in literally an hour ago, jumping onto this call. I knew this was coming. We designed this program called the Yellow Alert Program. It's an extension to our good neighbor program, which many of you know, or maybe you don't. You could type GNP below or good neighbor, and we'll send you that too. We had first class, good neighbor program, either of those. Send us a message here right on this YouTube, and you can get those. We'll send it over uh in the comments, a link to it. But Alan, he hired someone to go door to door in these areas where they're finding troubling concerns in homes. We call it the Yellow Alert Program. And within two weeks, they've had many great conversations, booked several appointments now to go and do deeper inspections on these homes, but literally just made a $13,000 sale already, a massive, almost a 10x uh return on this investment in like two weeks flat. Uh, the only thing he's saying at this point is, brother, we need to scale this now. Just an incredible effort. Thank you guys so much. Joe, thank you for for uh being on here early and me coming late. Thanks for your patience, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Always my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

I can't wait to see you guys next week. If you want to learn more about this yellow alert program, just type yellow alert. We'll go into it on next session. So you want to come back next Monday at the same hour. I know it's kind of middle of the day. Hopefully, we can be Van University for you guys. Uh, engage with some QA. I'm looking forward to seeing you next week. Cheers. Take care, friends. See you then.