From Tradie to Owner: How Blake Made the Shift

In This Episode

• How Blake started an electrical business from scratch in 2017

  John: Blake, welcome. Why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about who you are and your business.

  Blake: I started the business eight years ago. I have a partner and two kids. I started it while I was still at home, late one night after I came back from an overseas trip of about three and a half months. I came back and realised that was the best time to step out and start working for myself rather than return to full-time work. It was all very spur of the moment, trying to come up with logos and business names. The business name I wanted was ELECCELL, but I misspelled it when I registered it, and I didn't like the look of it with two C's. So I just had to deal with the fact that I'd registered a business name incorrectly. It's been ELECELL ever since. That was early 2017.

  John: Why did you get into business for yourself?

  Blake: I had an enjoyment for business management and working with people. And beyond that, I wanted the opportunity to control my finances and what I could potentially earn as a business owner rather than an employee where you're restricted to set hours and income.

  John: Can you remember any of the fears you had when you were getting started?

  Blake: To be completely honest, I probably didn't have a whole lot of fear. I was in a really good situation in terms of having limited overheads. I had no debt, I lived at home, no mortgage, no kids. So I probably didn't have fear as such, more excitement and eagerness to just get in there and get started as quickly as I could.

  John: You finished up somewhere where you were working and that guy closed the business down as well, didn't he?

  Blake: Yeah. The business I worked for and spent my apprenticeship with actually sold to another company, maybe a month before I finished my time. The employees transferred over to the business that purchased it. I worked for them for maybe a couple of years and then went overseas for three and a half months.

  John: And when you came back, that's when you decided to get out on your own?

  Blake: Yep.

• How to get your first clients when starting a trade business

  John: What would you say to people who are starting their trade business in their twenties and don't have those responsibilities that come as you get older?

  Blake: Don't feel like you need to fill five days of the working week. You'll start off with limited work, maybe one or two days worth. Don't feel like you need to subcontract that Thursday and Friday if you don't have your own work, because it's the best time and opportunity to spend building your clientele and your base as a business rather than contracting because you're used to working five days a week. You can cover your expenses with one to three days of work. Take that Thursday and Friday and spend it on sales and trying to build your client base as quickly as you can, to then fill the five days a week for yourself and not someone else.

  John: Good advice. So don't be concerned about working five days a week just because that's what you're used to for income. Forgo some of that potential income for the future of your business.

  Blake: When you don't need it for the mortgage and dependants and kids, yeah.

  John: There's a little caveat that needs to be put in there though. It doesn't mean you can go fishing or play golf. You're saying spend that time building your business.

  Blake: That's right. And that first one to two years of business, you do have that work-life balance. You can finish a little bit earlier. But try and spend as much time as you can working on the business rather than in someone else's as a subcontractor.

  John: So if there's somebody listening who's actually going to do what you said, what specifically should they do?

  Blake: I've tried a lot of different things. Lead generation platforms like HiPages generate some work, but to build your business you want to build customers you can retain for a long period of time. The people who look for services online don't have a relationship with a contractor or a business. When they need something in two to three years, they don't remember your name and they jump back onto a lead generation platform or Google and find the next contractor. Get around to local businesses, talk to people at the footy clubs and netball clubs and where you spend your time. The more people who know you're out working for yourself, the more your name gets put forward when someone needs something. And I reached out to old supervisors, builders, people I had a relationship with. Jump on the phone, make a lot of calls.

  John: What would you say when you jumped on the phone?

  Blake: It's a general conversation initially, a bit of a catch-up. Then you ask where they're working, what site they're on, explain that you've recently started your business and ask whether you can assist with anything. Do they need anything? What future projects or jobs do they have coming up, and can they give you the opportunity to price it?

  John: And when you're out at the footy clubs talking to people, what should they say?

  Blake: Ask questions. Understand what their business is and who they are and what they do. Think about how you can help them, or if there are regular needs in terms of maintenance. If they rent and operate out of a factory, ask who does the exit and emergency testing, the testing and tagging, the machine breakdowns. I had family members who had an IT company. They'd install desks and computers and new business offices. Who does the data cabling? Who puts in the power points for those new workstations? If it's up to the customer to arrange, maybe pre-package it, have a chat with them and try to sell the computer setup, the network, the data and the power altogether.

• How to stay positive when your trade business isn't growing fast enough

  John: What are the three biggest issues you've faced?

  Blake: The main one that comes to mind is trying to maintain a steady volume of work. Quite often you're too busy or you're not busy enough. Consistency is really difficult. And business growth takes a really long time. Accepting that, you'll plant seeds for a long period of time but you won't necessarily see the results straight away. Keeping a good mindset through that is difficult. You don't see the changes yourself as much as the people outside the business see them.

  John: You hit on something I really like there. People overestimate what they can achieve in one year, but underestimate what they can achieve in ten. When you're in that phase where you're frustrated because things aren't growing the way you want, what do you do to stay positive?

  Blake: I talk to someone like yourself. You always have opportunities and quotes and things going on. Think about those, consider them coming in, and look forward to them. Continually look forward to the opportunities you've put the work into. Just know that if you've got the shits on a bit today, when this job comes through or the work you've put in pays off, it's going to pay off shortly. Be optimistic.

  John: Being positive and optimistic but not doing any work is a complete waste of time. You've actually got to put the work behind it.

  Blake: That's right. Be optimistic and positive, but you've got to be realistic. You hope and want these jobs to come through, but if they don't, you've got to have a backup plan, A, B, C, D. You continually work. It's a continuous process.

• Why every trade business owner needs a business coach

  John: Why did you decide to get a business coach?

  Blake: Some of my role models within business had a coach, so I naturally felt that was a piece of the puzzle for building a successful business. And as an employee you've always got your boss or supervisor, someone you can go straight to if you've got a question. As a business owner you don't have that person. You need a coach to give you that outside perspective, to bounce ideas off, to make sure you're making the right decisions.

  John: I always found when I was running my business it was quite lonely. I genuinely felt that the only person who was on my side was Steve, my coach.

  Blake: That's a really good point. There aren't many people who understand the ins and outs of your business, so even talking to someone who doesn't know the ins and outs, it's hard for them to give you really good advice. It's really great to have a business coach who understands your complete business so you've got two heads making decisions rather than one.

  John: What do you think people should look for in a business coach?

  Blake: A really key point is to have someone with industry experience and knowledge. A lot of people can read and understand the data, the figures, the balance sheet, the P&L, but to have someone understand the industry and environment you're operating in is a massive one for me. And a couple of other points came back to me on this. Having that outside perspective, someone who doesn't have an emotional connection to what you're doing, helps you make clear decisions that aren't emotionally influenced. And someone who can see when you're ready to take the next step, even when you can't see it yourself. Sometimes you don't know what to do. Your business coach can show you the way. He can see when you're ready and introduce you to what that next step is. Having that person there to help you continually grow and take that next step so that you don't plateau is very valuable.

• What this electrician would do differently when starting a trade business

  John: If you were building your business today starting from scratch, would you build it the same way or would you do things differently?

  Blake: Personal development is a really big thing. Try and work on yourself at the same time as your business rather than neglecting that and having your sole focus on the business initially. If you can focus on both when you start, I think the development and the growth would be a lot quicker. Read and listen to people who have been there or done it before. Books, podcasts. Try to learn from other business owners who have been there and done that before you.

  John: I quite often say that a business is the direct reflection of the owner. The owner is the cap on the business. Your level of income generally rises to meet your level of personal development. And one of the things is, if you want to make more money, if you knew how to do it you'd already be doing it. So you've got to go out there and educate yourself.

  Blake: That's right. If you were the first to have done it, you wouldn't be worrying about business growth because you'd already be rich with a huge successful business. So learn from those who have done it before you.

• Why trade business owners must get everything in writing

  John: If you could go back to Blake eight years ago when you were first starting, what advice would you give yourself?

  Blake: Have everything in writing. Quotes, agreements, all of it, digital or hard copy. Handshake and verbal agreements don't stand up. Especially when you're first starting, the businesses that have been established for a lot longer have a lot more experience. They'll take advantage. The verbal "yeah proceed, we'll sort it out later," that's not good enough. You need to have that variation quoted and 100% locked in on price before undertaking any work.

  John: Really good advice. And one little piece of advice for people who haven't got systems and processes in place to send through a quote and raise a purchase order, just send an email. If you're doing a job and the guy says "I know you're putting in four lights, but I want you to come back and put two power points over there, I'll pay you for it," just send them an email. "As per our discussion, I'll install the two power points over there and you'll pay me for it." It's always in writing then.

  Blake: And you need to outline the cost too. Don't just have a verbal agreement or an email approving additional works. You've got to have a dollar figure next to it, because if that hasn't been agreed upon beforehand, you can bet your bottom dollar they'll try to screw it down.

  John: Some people will. Yeah.

• The best job management system for electrical businesses

  John: What is the best system you've implemented in your business and why?

  Blake: SimPRO. And that came from you. We were using a job management system and I thought that was it, that's all you had to do. We had a system we were familiar with, it was doing what we needed, so I considered that box checked. You introduced us to SimPRO, which has so many other different features. If you utilise all of that correctly and implement it, all of your systems and processes outside the computer can align and run a lot smoother. If we hadn't jumped onto SimPRO, you'd still have that mess but not realise it can be fixed just by changing the systems on the computer.

• The quoting mistake that cost this electrical business owner

  John: Do you have a favourite failure, one that taught you a lesson you needed to learn?

  Blake: Just recently, not spending enough time initially going through a job and what can and can't potentially go wrong. You need to put in a lot of time at the start to cover all bases. If you don't, you can come unstuck pretty quickly.

  John: And this was a complex job where you were under pressure to get a price to them quickly. What would you do differently?

  Blake: Slow everything down and make sure I'm comfortable and have assessed the complete job before sending any quotes through.

  John: And what would you say if they come back and say, look Blake, we just don't have time, we need the quote now?

  Blake: Be open and honest with them. A job of this nature, of this scale, takes time to accurately provide a price. We can't do that within the unrealistic timeframe you've given us. We need another couple of days.

  John: Are you better off giving them something or better off saying, that's okay mate, we don't have time to do it?

  Blake: You're better off saying that's okay. Because you do it this time and it might work out okay, but if they give you that short notice on the next one and it doesn't go okay, it counteracts the first one. You'll come unstuck eventually.

• What Blake's working on now in his electrical business

  John: What are you working on now that you find interesting?

  Blake: We do a lot of work within the insurance building industry. One of the things I like is walking into a project where you don't have the plans. You can design and construct and try to work out, with what's left of the building, what was there so that you can reinstate it. The consultants and the scope of work can take photos, but no one can look through the electrical components and cabling of what's left and put an accurate scope together. So you design the project before undertaking it. I enjoy that challenge of trying to nut out what was there. And then based on what you can work out, because of your industry knowledge, you can go back and justify your pricing and explain the differences between the broad scope they've given and why there's more work required. You go in as a bit of an inspector initially.

  John: We always found projects where we had to design them to be really good projects and quite lucrative. The margin on them is higher. I'm thinking of a couple of instances where we did some major fitouts for clients. I made a really good margin on the project, but they also saved a lot of money by not having electrical engineers come in and do the design. So the net benefit to the client was a plus.

• When to hire an estimator in your trade business

  John: When you started in the business you had virtually no responsibility. As you move along the path of life you've picked up a wife, children, a mortgage. How have those responsibilities changed your outlook on business?

  Blake: My outlook on business hasn't changed as much as the implementation of other staff members to free up my time to spend with family after work. If I was working all day and then doing paperwork and accounts after hours, that's absolute madness. You're very limited to how much time you've got. The free time that can be created by other staff members assisting you is so valuable that regardless of the expense, it completely outweighs it.

  John: You've done that in two ways. First, you've got a really good business admin person. What do you call her?

  Blake: She's basically the administration and accounts manager, but she's a bit more than that. She's like my PA basically. She assists with any tasks that if I don't have time or the chance to do, she covers. She also talks and deals with a lot of clients. So when I need to organise operations and scheduling, I can have a chat to her, she might have spoken to someone a couple of days ago or that particular day that I can then use to fill the schedule.

  John: And then the other thing you did, generally when we're setting up a management structure for trade businesses, the admin manager comes in and then the next manager is an operations manager who runs the schedule and the guys. But you did something a little bit different.

  Blake: I put an estimator on instead. The estimations took a lot of time. And when you feel your time isn't valued or appreciated by who you're pricing the job for, it creates a lot of frustration. I was taking it a little bit personally and felt like my time was wasted. So rather than being frustrated doing something I didn't want to do, I outsourced it.

  John: And this is one of the really good things about being a business owner. Business is hard, especially in this country, especially in this state of Victoria. But one of the really good benefits is the stuff you don't like doing, you can get someone else to do it. And quite often you can get someone else to do it better than you did, because you've got a person in that role who's a natural at it. I remember when you and I discussed it I was like, Blake, I don't know whether this is the right thing to do. But in hindsight it's been a really good thing for your business. What have you been able to focus on?

  Blake: It gives you time to focus on the business. To really understand the financials, the margins, the markups. How the jobs have been completed. And then you can focus on building the business, understanding the ins and outs and your markups and margins a lot more clearly. You give yourself time to get across other aspects of the business.

• What growing a trade business taught him about himself

  John: As you've been growing your business, what have you learned about yourself?

  Blake: Probably how I was not tapping into the resources I had available. I'd never considered personal development or reading books or listening to podcasts. I wouldn't have done it to be honest. I learned that I was pretty narrow minded and had to open my eyes a little bit and realise you're probably not as good as you think you are.

  John: Put yourself into positions that make you do things. Most of us lack the confidence to see something large through at the beginning, but if you just have enough courage to step into it, you can't get off it. There's a saying I used to like: nobody would've gotten across an ocean if they could've got off the ship in a storm. So if you put yourself in the ocean knowing there are going to be some storms and back yourself to get across it, that's a big thing to learn in business. Otherwise you never take the big risks or big steps because you're not confident you know how to get to the end. You don't have to. You just have to have the courage to get started and back yourself to figure the rest out.

  Blake: That's exactly it. You go through your apprenticeship and the business you work within has established its niche. Then you step out and realise all the different areas of the industry and the people that can approach you, or you can approach them, without actually having the experience, but saying you can do it anyway and just figuring it out. That's such a huge part of business initially because you don't want to give away the opportunity just because you don't completely know how to do the whole project or process. And that's when you find people with technical experience, a business coach, companies that can assist like Master Electricians. They have a technical support page, your electrical inspector can assist. And when you go to trade events and the wholesaler Christmas parties, don't consider the other contractors your competitors. Try to build a friendship with them because the advice you can get from your so-called competition is so valuable. Everyone does little things differently and you can reach out to them directly and they can really assist you with the hurdles you come across.

  John: It's a great example of being creative, not competitive. If you've got a competitive mindset, you're always competing against other people for a finite amount of resources. But if you're creative, you can talk to so-called competitors and generate work for each other. Car yards build beside each other, and that's being creative, not competitive, because it brings more people in. I love that you said that.

• Why trade business owners should stop seeing other tradies as competition

  John: What hobbies do you have outside of work and how does that help you in work?

  Blake: One of my main hobbies is dirt bike riding. It's such a fast paced hobby where you have to concentrate on exactly what's in front of you every split second. It gives you that break from business because you don't have the luxury of concentrating on anything else but what's in front of you. You can try, but you'll come unstuck pretty quick. It gives you that circuit breaker. And then you get off the bike and doing any hobby you enjoy puts you in a better mood. Because it gives you that break and you're in a good mood after you've finished, you don't fall back into the stresses and worries of business. You leave that behind until Monday.

• Blake turns the tables

  Blake: I'd be curious to know what your main failure was or what really stands out for you that changed your business. Did it change it 180 degrees, 90 degrees? What's that one defining moment that comes to mind?

  John: I had a lot of failures in business. The one that comes to mind the most, I was relatively new to business and I had a contract, a pretty simple one. I basically had to supply myself and talk to somebody in Sydney who would tell me what to do with transmitters. There was a really big issue on site and we had to do disaster recovery. In the process of doing the disaster recovery after a massive fire, I realised I was completely out of my depth. It was really scary. And it started to overwhelm me. So I decided I was going to tell the person in charge of disaster recovery that I was out of my depth and couldn't do the job. But I had a cable that was only halfway tied in. So I thought I'd better just tie this back to the switchboard. And in the process of doing that I calmed down just a little bit and thought, I'll go do another one. Then another one. Slowly, the more I started to do, the less I felt out of my depth. I went home that night, came back the next day and did the same thing. I learned two things. First, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Chunk anything big into smaller pieces and just focus on that smaller piece. Second, get yourself out of your depth, but back yourself to make it work. And the outcome was I made really good money on that project, and that was the money that set me up in business.

  Blake: I like the fact that you put yourself in a situation you're uncomfortable with but always back your ability. I feel I've done that. And the sense of achievement after it is really rewarding.

  John: This is the other thing. You've got a circle of influence. Everything in your life exists in that circle. If you want to grow as a person you've got to get outside that circle of influence. And the only way to do that is to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. But once you've done it and backed yourself, your circle of influence gets bigger and bigger. People who continually push themselves outside their comfort zone end up with much bigger comfort zones. And that generally has a direct correlation to how much money you make in business.

  Blake: You're uncomfortable and nervous about the things you don't know, but as soon as you've done them, it's learning. It's learning every time.

• How the electrical industry has changed since 2006 and what still works

  Blake: How do you see the change in the industry and environment we're working in? Are the challenges you faced from external sources the same as what we're seeing today, or are there differences?

  John: Yes and no. I only exited my main business two years ago and I'm still involved in a couple, so I'm still in the business landscape. One of the biggest changes I've noticed from when I started to now is I feel like we're on a very uneven playing field between employees and employers. I feel employees have a lot more rights than the people who employ them, and that makes it very difficult for business owners, especially small business owners. When I first started, there was no Google. It was all Yellow Pages. I was one of the first people to advertise heavily on Google in a regional area, but even that heavy advertising was only about $500 a month. Whereas now you could spend $20,000 a month on Google and not get that return out of it. But what hasn't changed is this: the best way to build a business is to look for good long-term A-grade clients. You sit down, you meet people, you build relationships and rapport. And over a period of time you get really good A-grade clients. That's old fashioned. And you don't get many of them from Google.

  Blake: Which is exactly what we touched on earlier, not relying on a lead generation platform or Google to grow your business because it's not sustainable. Old school works and it's proven to.

  John: There may even be an advantage now because so many people are so heavily invested into marketing, that those who just go out and do it the old school way might even be more successful.

  Blake: Yeah.

  John: Thank you very much, Blake for coming.

  Blake: Thanks for having me. Appreciate your time. It's been good to have a chat.

• Connect with the guest

  Blake Gilbert, ELECELL