July 26, 2025 • 35 mins
I had a powerful conversation with an electrician who was just let go from his job—devastated, unsure, and questioning his next move. But instead of staying down, I talked him into leveling up. 💪 We flipped the script. I showed him how to take his skills, his drive, and his knowledge of the trade—and build something of his own. 💼⚡
This isn't just about getting fired. It’s about freedom. It’s about taking control of your future and betting on yourself. If you're an electrician—or in any trade—and you've ever felt stuck, overlooked, or undervalued, this is the episode you can’t afford to miss. Tune in and get fired up.
🔥 This story could be YOUR wake-up call to finally become your own boss. 🎧 Listen now and get inspired!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/master-the-nec-podcast--1083733/support.
This isn't just about getting fired. It’s about freedom. It’s about taking control of your future and betting on yourself. If you're an electrician—or in any trade—and you've ever felt stuck, overlooked, or undervalued, this is the episode you can’t afford to miss. Tune in and get fired up.
🔥 This story could be YOUR wake-up call to finally become your own boss. 🎧 Listen now and get inspired!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/master-the-nec-podcast--1083733/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Dedication, hard work, then fired next on Mastering the NEEC.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to the Master of the Neec podcast, the ultimate
destination for anyone passionate about the electrical trade. Whether you're
a season electrician, an eager apprentice, or just someone who
wants to dive deep into the world of electrical work,
You've come to the right place.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Join your host, Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Abernavi, a true authority in the industry with over thirty
eight years of trade experience, as he electrifies your mind
with in depth discussions, expertips, and valuable insights.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That will keep you ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Each episode, Paul will illuminate the complexities of the trade,
de code the National Electrical Code, and share the latest
industry trends, all while empowering you to take your electrical
career to the next level. So gear up, plug in,
and get ready to supercharge your knowledge because with the
Master of the Neez podcast the power or is it
(01:00):
your hands? Now?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Get ready?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Here is your host, Paul Abernavi.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Master the NEEC,
the podcast where I talk about anything electrical and it
could be code, it can be just electrical in general.
Much like today's topic, it's more or less a situation.
As you heard in the intro. Today, we're gonna be
talking about a gentleman and I will not be giving
(01:29):
his name. But we did have a lengthy conversation today
and it's all more the reality of life. And he
went from dedicated doing everything he could do for the
company he worked for, being a pillar in the company always,
you know, being a motivating force to the company, doing
(01:51):
the best he could, making the company money that he
worked for, and then out of the blue, it gets terminated. Yes,
you heard right, terminated. The best employee of the company,
the one who brought in the most money for the company.
Thought he was riding high. He had just got a
new house. He thought he was at the you know,
(02:14):
he was living the dream, living the dream, doing like
everybody usually does, you know, get up, go to work,
punch that clock, come home, and at the end of
the day he's terminated for being the top employee. Now,
as we talked about it today, we had a lengthy
discussion and he was explaining that the reason that they
(02:38):
terminated him was because they said the company was reevaluating
and that he was at the top of the pay
scale and that they needed to cut him. Now, first
of all, I said, this ain't no major league ball team. Okay,
it's not like you're cutting million dollar salaries here. I said,
that kind of sounds like a cop out to me.
But he says that's what he was told. He says
that he was at the top of the payscale for
(03:00):
the company, and you know, they just were going in
a different direction. And I said, are you sure nothing
else happened? I mean, are you sure you didn't do anything?
He's like, absolutely not. I love the company. I gave
everything that I could to the company, and just out
of the blue, he was terminated. And I said, and
(03:21):
the only explanation they gave you was that you're just
a top producer and they can't afford your salary anymore.
And he said basically that. So we got to talk
him for quite a while, and you know, one of
the things that trickered to me, and we had a conversation.
And I consult with a lot of people around the country.
So this was a former student who was did very well.
(03:43):
I was, you know, very proud to have him in
our program and he was doing very well. And he
called me up and said, Paul, can we can I talk?
And I'm like, sure, absolutely, I'm here for you. What
do you need? And that's how he got deep into it.
And there was no doubt in my mind even when
he was going through the program and he would come
to some meetings and or some of the uh you know,
(04:05):
the the Wednesday night things that we would do back
in the day, and he would just be stellar, right,
just doing amazing things. And I had so much hope
for him, and I really wanted him to someday, you know,
go into business for himself. But you know, he said
he was very happy working for somebody else and you know,
being the top guy and all this kind of thing.
So again, he was living it good, just got a
new house and everything was going great, and then he
(04:28):
got this bombshell and he called me and he was
he was scared. I could tell he was scared. He
didn't say he was scared, but I've been doing this
a long time, so I can tell he was. You
know the voice, she's a little bit you know, what
am I going to do tomorrow? What's the thing. So
we talked through all that, and you know, I said, okay,
I get you got your new house, and I said,
do you have a little in savings. He did, he's
(04:49):
got a pretty decent savings. So he's been putting money away.
That's great, not living outside of his means. Okay, that's great.
He got a mortgage. The mortgage was just he just
put the down payment down, so it's thirty year mortgage.
He says, I can cover the payments for a while.
I said, okay, I said, let's look at let's relook
at this. So some of the benefits of being the
(05:13):
best in your company and working for a company and
really shining is that you get good pay. You hope
you get good pay, the company takes care of you. Okay,
you get benefits hopefully, you know that type of thing.
Health insurance is a major benefit. Things like that that
sometimes people don't put a monetary figure on, but it
is some major benefit to have health insurance and all
(05:34):
this kind of other stuff. Especially you know, he's you know,
getting a new house and things like that, and it
has a family. So I got to talking with him
and I said, you know, maybe maybe this is an opportunity.
I said, maybe we're looking at this. Sometimes we look
at these things that happened to us in life, and
we go, is it possible, is this God's way? Or
(05:58):
is this possible that it's a just manifesting an opportunity
that may not have presented itself without some type of
outside motivating intervention, That maybe something's pushing you to to
live a dream or focus or at least try, and
even if we fail, we at least say we tried.
(06:19):
And so as he was talking, he said, you know,
I always wanted to be my own boss. And in
the back of my mind, I wanted to, you know,
make my own rules. And again, if I fail, I fail.
If I succeed, I succeed. And I and he wanted,
and he started saying all the things that that I
like to hear from electrical contractors who want to get
(06:40):
into it, that are entrepreneurial. They start seeing things like
I want to have better things, I want to be
a better person, I want to have things for my family.
I want to feel reward for things that I earn
and not just feel like I'm just taking a paycheck.
And you know, I want to feel that feeling. Uh.
(07:01):
And I am scared at the risks, you know, scared
at what will happen if you know my savings runs
out and I'm struggling. So I listened to all that
and I told him, I said, I said, so you
do have aspirations of being your own boss. I mean
you think you you think you can handle that. He says, no,
(07:21):
I don't know that I know how to do all
that stuff. And I said, you know it's being your
own boss. You know everybody puts it out there is
being hard. What's hard about it? I told him, I said,
is that is getting the business. Everything else will take
care of itself. He said, can you explain that? I
said sure. I said, Look, I've been there, I've worked
(07:44):
for other companies h and as far as electual contracting,
I've always been my own boss since me and my
brother started. So I kind of just always win all in.
And you know, when it came to taxes and insurance,
it's not hard. People acting make it hard, but it's not. Today.
You can do quick books and it does everything for you,
(08:05):
and you do turbo tax and you can do your taxes.
It's you know, it's easy to incorporate. Whether you become
a Chapter S corp. Or you become a sol prider
or LLC, it's all easier today than it was years ago.
The Internet makes it easy, Chat, GPT, trade Hog, all
of those intelligent ais make life a little easier today.
(08:27):
You can I have customers who use trade hog, for example,
that will ask it. They'll they'll put in their paychecks
and ask it what is the percentage of taxes they
owe based on the state they're in, and it automatically
calculates it out for them and they just pay it.
So there are resources. So I said, look, don't let
that be a hurdle. Okay, I said, so the biggest
(08:47):
thing that you've got a challenge in business is this
other stuff will take care of itself. Okay, you can
make a call and get insurance. You can find lower
cost insurance to get started as a contractor. It's available
all the time. Next insurance is very affordable for electoral contractors,
probably like fifty bucks a month. I mean, there's options,
(09:08):
I said, though, you know, I said so at that stage,
and he is a master electrician by the way, So
I said, at that stage, I'm like, what's really holding
you back. You got a little money in savings, don't you.
He said, yes, Like you've got tools. You've gathered enough tools,
he said, over time, I've gathered enough tools because he
was doing side stuff too. And some people say, well,
that's the reason he got canned. No, that is not
(09:31):
the reason. For all you haters out there. His boss
knew that he did some side work and it was
non competing with the work that they were doing, which
was primarily commercial work. But what he would do on
the side was residential, small stuff, but he would do it,
and he would put that money aside. So I said
to him, I said, so, do you figure you've got
(09:53):
not what you make or what you made? I said,
do you figure you got six months of nest egg
stuck away of what you would have made, you know,
just kind of stuck away, not touching your savings again,
but you have some money put away. He goes, yeah,
I do. And I said, he says, but I'm scared
that I'll just you know, I won't know what I'm
doing and on bullet and I said, well, one of
(10:15):
my advice is for somebody who's getting started, is there's
two courses of action. First of all, he wants to
do residential. He wants to do residential and service work
and all that kind of stuff. So that's good because
that's easier than to get into full bone commercial, where
you're going to have to have a lot more equipment
and you just don't have the outlay. That's the problem
(10:36):
with commercials. You can't jump right into commercial. And when
you get those big commercial jobs, you know you need people,
you need things like that. So now you could subcontract
a lot of that out. But again it's a tougher
road for a gentlemen like this who it gets laid
off from a company where he's primarily doing commercial work.
He's topped out of the company as far as money,
(10:58):
and the company itself that he worked for doesn't know
how to take care of their employees because it sounds
like they don't because you don't get rid of the one,
you know, the people that are making you money. Okay,
wrong type of evaluation. Now, I know some people out
there would say, well, there's got to be something else
going on. I asked that question, and I said, you know,
I won't mention it in a podcast, and I certainly
(11:20):
not going to use your name. I said, so you
can come clean with me, he said, Paul, I didn't
do anything. I'm telling you exactly what they told me
with the reason and I'm and I and I knew
enough of him to know that he was that company guy, right,
he's not going to do anything, and they were aware
of any little side stuff that he did. So I said, okay,
(11:40):
so let's assume you want to go into it. You
want to be your own boss. I said, don't let
taxes concern you because you can pay quick books. Hell,
I'm a corporation. We do a lot. We do way
more than he probably does. You know, Okay, we probably
do over a million a year and in different revenues streams.
(12:00):
And I'm like, we use quick books for everything simple.
It just makes life easy. It just does it. And
I said, so it's not brain surgery. It costs us
about one hundred dollars a month or less to handle
all of the book keeping. Just easy. And y'all know
I have many, many, many business streams coming in, so
(12:23):
it's life can be easier. I said, Okay, Taxes, we
have an accountant, but I do my taxes and turbo
tax and I give that print out. I give that
to my accountant. He looks at it and we go
from there. But that's not expensive. It's not a big expenditure.
Says then other than that, you just have to make
sure you pay your withholding taxes and everything. And that's easy.
(12:45):
You do it all online. Now, it's not brain surgery.
It's easy. I said. In fact, you can ask chat
GPT to tell you all these things and it will
break it down for you. It's really gotten that smart
or trade hog will do the same thing under the
office hog feature. So I said, don't let that be
(13:05):
your hurdle. So take that out of the equation. What
are you worried about? He's like, well, I'm just worried
that I can't find steady work. And I'm like, ah,
there you go. There's the number one thing. It's easy
to incorporate. It's easy to set a foundation. It is
not always easy to get the sale. And just because
you build it that you know that old saying if
(13:27):
you build it, they will come. That is not true
when it comes to contracting or any trade. Okay, you
have to build relationships, you have to work it on time,
you have to use previous relationships and make connections and
things like that. But I told him, I said, you
know you've got a nest egg. Let's start by this.
You need to make sure that you find out the
(13:49):
rules in your state for business license, whether you need
one in your local jurisdiction, a local county, wherever you're at.
It's usually hardly nothing. But you need to do that
and you need to formulate it. You need to know
if you want to go into business for yourself, you
need a name. You need a name that's going to
tell people exactly what you do right out the gate, okay.
(14:11):
And so he came. He said, he just blew out
a name like he'd been thinking about it. And that
told me more that he's ready. He's been thinking. And
I said, that's a great name. And I said it
says exactly what you do. And he goes, yeah, he says,
and nobody's got it around where I'm at. And I said, well,
there you go. So I said, you need to to
you know, you don't need to go get a a
(14:33):
trademark on a name, but you do need to see
whether or not your state has a fictitious name requirement.
But you just formulate a company and use the name.
That's the first start. So you could be a sole
proprietor go down to the local courthouse get your business
license to be a sole proprietor. I said, now you
also need to make sure what your requirements are in
your state. And in his state he was a master.
(14:56):
All he had to do was have insurance and put
in an application for the contractor's license. That was it.
He was already a master. And I said, that's great.
That would be your next step. You you figured out
a name first, you went and you got your business license,
everything you need you know. Do this all simultaneous, by
(15:16):
the way, because again it's just kind of there's okay
for overlaps here, folks. No need to freak out. So
I said, you need to go that. Then you need
to formulate the name, and then you need to apply
use that name and apply and bit your electrical contractor's license.
Once you get that electric and you're going to have
to have insurance. In the state that he was in,
(15:37):
they require proof of insurance. But you got to know
the name of your company first, right, So people say, no,
you got to get your license, right, No, No, you
formulate your company first. The company doesn't care whether you're
licensed or not. Right, if you go open up an
LLC your corporation, you'll Abernathy Electrical Services is what I had.
They don't know that I'm an electrician. Yet that's just
(16:00):
the business name. But you have to establish your name,
and so you establish all that first. Then you can
apply and get your insurances, and you can apply and
get your contractor's license, and they're gonna want you want
the name and all this kind of other stuff and
send the application. Once you get all that, you've got
your insurances in place, you've got your you know, your license, okay,
(16:22):
contractor's license, you've got your business license, you know what
your official name is. Now along that journey, when you
are submitting for your for your business, you do need
to establish what kind of structure that you want to
be in kind of things to think about. Do you
want to be a sole proprietor do you you know?
And uh, basically you will. You'll you'll make money and
(16:45):
you'll pay taxes on it just when you do your
normal taxes. You'll take it as income. Or you can
get an LLC limited liability corporation, or you could maybe
choose to be a Chapter S corporation. You certainly want
wouldn't want to be a Chapter C corporation if you're
starting out double taxation. So you start out if you
(17:05):
want to be a corporation, there are tax benefits. I'm
not a tax person, so you'd have to check with
your tax people. I am a chapter as corporation. I
have not lost money for twenty years, you know, I'm
always owing money. So so at the end of the day,
we skip out on that double taxation thing because everything
(17:28):
gets into a K one that gets carried over to
the shareholders anyway, and we pay taxes on it. So
I said, you have to determine the structure you want
to be okay, And we're just talking in general here,
because again there's a there's a process for everything. But
I'm just kind of talking through him. I'm not doing
this podcast to tell you how to do it. I'm
just saying how we had a discussion and all the things,
(17:50):
and you know, putting the cart ahead of the horse
and getting the business, deciding the structure, getting your contractor's license,
getting your insurances, you know, cause you got to have
the business name to get your insurance before you're even
a contractor yet. Because when you have many states, when
you apply for your contractor's license, they want to show
proof that you have insurance. So again every state's a
(18:10):
little different. But once you get all those things, or
accumulate all those things, and you get your contractor's license.
I told him, you know, the best thing that you
can do to start out is realize that you you're
gonna have to leverage some relationships. Maybe you nse some
builders who you know. You go to them and say, look,
(18:30):
you know homebuilders. Because he wanted to do residential. That's
where he wanted to be. You know, commercial is just
too much for him right now because he's been there
and he saw what it takes, and it just he
doesn't have the tools, he doesn't have the equipment, he
doesn't have the people. He's not ready to jump there.
But he enjoys doing residential, doing some generator applications, things
(18:51):
like that service calls troubleshooting. He feels comfortable with that
and he thinks he can make a decent living. So
I said, okay, what I would do is you've heard
me talk about when I talk about low cost marketing,
and I am still a big believer in it. I
believe that you need to be able to look at
and determine in your area where you are or the
(19:13):
service area that you want to be in that you
try to find homes that were built, you know, ten
years ago or more, because at that point, right at
the ten year mark, somewhere around in there, it can
be as early as five years. But if you're picking one,
I'd say, if you can find subdivisions that's been around
for at least ten years, that there's a chance that
(19:35):
they want to freshen it up. There's a chance they
want some new luminais or ceiling fans, or they're adding
an addition. There's a probability that they need something that
you can offer. And so I encouraged him to locate
these communities, these these and also it created a cluster
where these homes were in close proximity, so when you
(19:58):
go door hanging that you you're actually going to cover
more ground and it just makes it more cost effective
for your time. Although you're hungry, so you've got the time.
But anyway, I told him, I said, you need to
find these other visions and he was like, oh, I
know a bunch of them that have been around for
ten fifteen years. And I'm like perfect, perfect, I said, So,
(20:19):
then the next thing you want to do is remember,
you got to you gotta, you gotta start treating your money.
You know, you gotta sip it, you know, don't guzzle it.
You need to sip it. And that means very frugal
on how you advertise, not going crazy. Okay, I know
you want money to come in, but you can't just
throw money out there because the old saying is you're
(20:41):
gonna have to spend fifty bucks to make five bucks,
you know what I'm saying. So sometimes marketing and ads
have to peer in front of people's faces four and
five times for them to bite the hook. It's kind
of like fishing, right you gotta you gotta jiggle the
bait in front of them many times, and sometimes they
just won't bite, and sometimes after the fourth and fifth cast, boom,
(21:02):
they bite. Same with marketing, and that's why, for example,
you saw people that used to do those val packs
years ago, and you're sitting there seeing you get these
things every month, and you see the same ads in there,
and you go Jesus, after about the fourth to fifth,
the sixth time, you end up saying, well, you know what, hey,
I have a need for this, let me call. But
you didn't right away. That's very common in advertising, I said.
(21:24):
But where you have a leg up on that is
that your direct marketing. Okay, so you're not hiring somebody
else to do something for you. You're going right to it. Yes,
it's gonna mean that you're gonna put the legs in,
but that's okay, because you're gonna you're gonna get shirts
made up that look the part. You're gonna dress professional. Uh,
you're gonna you know, you're going to get business cards
(21:45):
made up as cheap as you can, but look very
good and professional, and provide both sides of information on
a card, not just one side, both sides. And you're
going to be wearing those shoes out as you go
from door to door to door or in those subdivisions,
putting door hangers on those doors. Now the Doorhannger, think
about at least three things, at least three things that
(22:08):
you want to make available to these customers, whether it
is repair damaged receptacles or switches, or adding a circuit
or adding recess lights, or doing generators or hanging ceiling fans,
or trouble shooting or renovations or addict renovations or whatever
(22:31):
far electrically wise, whatever it is you identify in your area,
that's what you focus on. Is marketing pieces, and you
can get them made very cheap over at Vista Print.
It's very cheap and you don't even have to be
that talented because they have online templates that make life easy.
The point is you need to have something to put
(22:54):
at the home that conveys what you do. And I
recommend getting the kind where the bottom rips off as
a business card. Okay, I just do because you know
they encourages people to hold on to the card, okay
if they rip it off the bottom. And I'm also
a believer using both sides of everything. Okay, pay extra
(23:18):
to get what you what you can on both sides,
because again, you only have one chance to once you're
in front of them, you want to give them enough information.
Next I said to him, I said, you know, you
really do need to have a website. I don't care
if it's a basic website, very inexpensive, one page website.
They're easy to make now on wiks and there's a
lot of templates out there that you can just customize it,
(23:41):
change the names and delete the pages. You don't need
a simple page that says what services you provide a
phone number and you know free estimates if that's what
you want to do and all those type of things.
And the reason for that is because you know, we
can spend a lot of money on marketing, but they
(24:04):
may not have the attention span to view it. But
if you send them to a website, they tend to
view it more. And Scroll also encouraged him to create
a video of just him talking to his customer and
have that on his website right up front, and you know,
telling them you want to earn their business, that you're
(24:26):
a family man, YadA YadA, and that you you know,
are growing your business and that you're here for them
and you're part of this community, and all this kind
of stuff right up front. And it's you don't have
to be great at videos to do it, guys. Any
of the smartphones today have good enough cameras to do
any of this, any of this. And I told him
(24:48):
that I would help him along the way, kind of
mentor him along the way anytime he had questions about
should I do this, should I do that, should I
do a video? What should I say? What should I do?
How should I do it? And I figured, you know,
I've been doing this for so long and I want
to see him succeed. I really do and do his thing,
(25:08):
and I think he can do it. So he picked
you know, he says he can pick out neighborhoods and
target the audience and he'll go to like Vista Print.
He says he has a local printer guy that he knows.
But I did encourage him to just still look at
Vista Print because of the the fact that they have
a lot of the tutorial I mean templates, so it's
(25:29):
easy dropping drag type of thing. He can just change
the verbiage on it. Those things are going to make
life easier for him. Plus they have templates already for
door hangers and all this kind of other stuff. So
I said, don't discount it, you know, or you know,
make sure you go check it out. He said he would,
And I said, but you definitely need to have business
(25:50):
cards and door hangers, and you know, I said, you
got to be hungry. He said, what do you when
you say hungry? Paul, He's heard it on my podcast before.
We said, what do you mean hungry? I said hungry?
I mean when I go to supply house, or I
go to Low's or home depot, I'm going to be
putting this card in the little gasket between the window
(26:12):
in the door handle. I'm going to be doing this
on at least two cars to the left of me,
two cars to the right of me. I'm just you
got to be hungry, and he says, oh, I'm hungry.
I said, your motivation is to build it up so
you have something for your family, and then nobody can
(26:32):
let you go, nobody can fire you. You do your
own thing right. You know, my brother, for example, or myself.
Other than the fact that I've worked for municipalities, I've
always still had my contracting business, but my brother or
my academy. But my brother has never worked for anybody
(26:53):
else since he was probably twenty years old, twenty five
years old, maybe twenty eight years old, because we started
together and then he opened up the business together. But
before that he kind of worked for a company called W.
Brown and kind of kicked some things around. But I
guess since his twenty late twenties, he's really never worked
for anybody but himself. And we worked together, and then
(27:14):
when we separated and opened our own companies, he continued
to work Double A Electric and he's been there today
and he's in his sixties today, and he's he's made
a great living and he's always worked for himself. He
didn't have to worry about somebody firing him, didn't have
to worry about being hired, didn't have to worry about
a tattoo policy, ear piercing policy. He didn't have to
worry about it. Not that he has any of that,
(27:36):
but I'm just saying he didn't have to worry about
anything but his own self. And he's done very well
and been very happy, and he never wanted to grow
into a really big company. He was very happy with
his progression. And so the point is there is ability.
This guy. Sometimes opportunity will slap you in the face.
(28:01):
He was slapped in the face, top worker, top earner,
cared about the company, felt like he was close to
the owners, and then he got terminated, not because anything
he did bad, and so he has aspirations to go
out on his own. I gave him advice. And maybe
you're in that situation too right now. Maybe things aren't
(28:23):
great for you. Maybe you feel like you got more
ahead of you, that you could do more. You want
to be your own boss. You don't have to be
the biggest company in the world to be happy. You
can do a lot of side work. You can do residential,
you can do service work, generator work. There's so many
opportunities today, specialty stuff, low voltage, whatever your niche may be,
(28:50):
you have those opportunities today. So if you're in the
same situation as this gentleman's in and all of a
sudden you're laid off, and you know, and in your
mind you're thinking, maybe this is a sign, Maybe this
is a sign that there is something else for me.
Do I want it? Maybe you're happy working with somebody
else and just being a follower, but a leader within
(29:11):
that company, and you're okay with the volatility of being
replaced or laid off. That's fine, that's you. Or maybe
your hunger is that you want to establish something that
you control, that you're in top. You're you're the one
that's at the top of the heap. If that's you,
then I'm encouraging you to go for it, jump into it.
It's okay to do it small and let it grow,
(29:34):
let it be organic, and achieve something because it's out
there for you if you want it. We're getting ready
to go through a boom and there's going to be
opportunities for you. So I encouraged him to think of
it positive. If that's what he wants to do, give
it a shot, invest in himself and he'll be successful.
(29:58):
And I'm going to help him try to be succes
I'm going to help try to help him, you know,
kind of maneuver around the possible putt pit holes that
he could fall into, or potholes, I guess potholes he
could fall into. I'm gonna help him. I can't do
that for everybody, which is why I do podcasts and videos.
But I'm going to help this young man try to
(30:21):
grow his business and be successful and give him advice
where I can. But I think he has a good
head on his shoulders, and I think that he's thinking
the right way, and he's thinking positively. And I'm thinking
he's looking at this now as at least at the
end of our conversation, I think he looked. His tone
had changed, his demeanor or the voice had changed. It
was a little more uppity when I say upty, a
(30:44):
little more bright I should say not upity, a little
more bright and aromatic. And and it felt like there's
a there's a future, there's something I can do. I
can do this and That's what I really wanted him
to feel like, and it seems like that's the direction
he's going. So he's gonna gonna find out about his
business license. He's going to he's got a name that
he likes. He's going to determine what business model he
(31:07):
wants to do sole proprietor, whether he wants to be
an LLC, whether he wants to be a Chapter S corporation,
whatever he wants to do. Let him kind of gel
on that and find the differences, and uh do that.
That way, he's going to find out, you know, what
he needs for insurance. I told him there's plenty of
opportunity places like next Insurance is inexpensive, there's other offerings
(31:28):
out there. He's gonna do all that. He's gonna he's
gonna get his contractor's license because he is a master.
He's going to get his contractor's license, and he's going
to do all those things that he needs to do,
and then his only worry is where's the business come from.
And then that's when I said, you need to start networking.
You need to start calling on people that maybe you've
done work for in the past and and and let
(31:50):
them know that you're in business for yourself now, uh
and uh, I told him, I said, you know, walk
the talk, look the part. Don't be a contractor in
and say that you're not going to invest in shirts
and invest in some hats or invest in some in
looking the part, because you need to do that. People say, well,
that's the last thing I'm wnsta spend money on. Absolutely not,
(32:11):
believe it or not. The facade is what you spend
money on. At first, you give the impression that you're
in it to win it, and then everything else will follow.
Then I said, if you want to start slow, pick
some areas that are ten years or so or older
and start door hanging, door flying, putting some feelers out there.
I told him, definitely, it's got to get a Google
(32:32):
my business listing, a Yelp business listing, a being business listing.
And I told them about help them with those things
because there is a such thing as called local SEO
and being seen by people just going on the Internet
and using things like Google and all that, because Google
favors those type of things, and so if you're not
in it, you're not going to be the people that
(32:53):
pop up in the list. Okay, So I said, I
explained all those little things that you've got to do
to be successful, and they're not hard, they're just little
checkless things that you got to do. And he said, Paul,
can I please bounce things off of you if I
forget so, I said, absolutely, dude. That's why i'm here.
(33:13):
That's what I'm here for, man, That's what I'm here
to give back to the industry and help people be successful.
I'm not in competition with anybody. I'm not trying to
promote my stuff over Mike's or Ryan's or anybody else's.
I believe people should buy everybody's educational tools. If they
don't like mine, buy somebody else's. But my point is
I'm here to help. I've always been there to help,
(33:35):
regardless of what somebody wants to say. I have always
tried to help this industry, and I'm gonna help this
young man. So if you got anything out of today's podcast,
please do me a favor, give a like, give it
a share, let us know in the comments what you think,
give us a thumbs up, share it with other people,
and do me a favor. Make sure you listen to
our other podcasts in sharing with people where you work,
(33:58):
and most importantly, if you have something that you want
to hear me talk about, please by all means, all
you've got to do is go to Paul Abernathy p
A U L A b E R nat hy dot
com and submit them online and just let me know
in detail what you want me to talk about. Ask
me anything. Ask me business questions, ask me HR questions,
(34:20):
conflicts at work, uh, think anything you want to ask me,
even code. Obviously I'm a code guy. Whatever you want,
I'm here to help you. Okay, all right, folks, that's
it for today's podcast. Till next time, Stay safe, God
bless and hopefully all your dreams come true and again
we're here at Electric Code Academy to help those things happen.
Take care, God Bless.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Thanks for tuning into another electrifying episode of the Master
the NDC podcast. We hope you're feeling more powered up
and ready to tackle the electrical world with the knowledge
and confidence you need to succeed. Remember, in the electrical trade,
knowledge is power, and we're here to make sure you
stay flood into the latest insights, tips and code updates.
(35:04):
If you enjoy today's episode, don't forget to subscribe. Leave
us a review and share the podcast with your fellow
electricians and industry pros. Until next time, keep your tools sharp,
your circuits clear, and you're my.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Focused, because here at.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The Master of the ANEC podcast, we're all about sparking
your success. Stay safe, stay smart, and keep mastering the trade.
From all of us here at Electrical Code Academy, thank
you for all your support and we will see you
on the next amazing Master of the NEC podcast episode.
Dedication, hard work, then fired next on Mastering the NEEC.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to the Master of the Neec podcast, the ultimate
destination for anyone passionate about the electrical trade. Whether you're
a season electrician, an eager apprentice, or just someone who
wants to dive deep into the world of electrical work,
You've come to the right place.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Join your host, Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Abernavi, a true authority in the industry with over thirty
eight years of trade experience, as he electrifies your mind
with in depth discussions, expertips, and valuable insights.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That will keep you ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Each episode, Paul will illuminate the complexities of the trade,
de code the National Electrical Code, and share the latest
industry trends, all while empowering you to take your electrical
career to the next level. So gear up, plug in,
and get ready to supercharge your knowledge because with the
Master of the Neez podcast the power or is it
(01:00):
your hands? Now?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Get ready?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Here is your host, Paul Abernavi.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Master the NEEC,
the podcast where I talk about anything electrical and it
could be code, it can be just electrical in general.
Much like today's topic, it's more or less a situation.
As you heard in the intro. Today, we're gonna be
talking about a gentleman and I will not be giving
(01:29):
his name. But we did have a lengthy conversation today
and it's all more the reality of life. And he
went from dedicated doing everything he could do for the
company he worked for, being a pillar in the company always,
you know, being a motivating force to the company, doing
(01:51):
the best he could, making the company money that he
worked for, and then out of the blue, it gets terminated. Yes,
you heard right, terminated. The best employee of the company,
the one who brought in the most money for the company.
Thought he was riding high. He had just got a
new house. He thought he was at the you know,
(02:14):
he was living the dream, living the dream, doing like
everybody usually does, you know, get up, go to work,
punch that clock, come home, and at the end of
the day he's terminated for being the top employee. Now,
as we talked about it today, we had a lengthy
discussion and he was explaining that the reason that they
(02:38):
terminated him was because they said the company was reevaluating
and that he was at the top of the pay
scale and that they needed to cut him. Now, first
of all, I said, this ain't no major league ball team. Okay,
it's not like you're cutting million dollar salaries here. I said,
that kind of sounds like a cop out to me.
But he says that's what he was told. He says
that he was at the top of the payscale for
(03:00):
the company, and you know, they just were going in
a different direction. And I said, are you sure nothing
else happened? I mean, are you sure you didn't do anything?
He's like, absolutely not. I love the company. I gave
everything that I could to the company, and just out
of the blue, he was terminated. And I said, and
(03:21):
the only explanation they gave you was that you're just
a top producer and they can't afford your salary anymore.
And he said basically that. So we got to talk
him for quite a while, and you know, one of
the things that trickered to me, and we had a conversation.
And I consult with a lot of people around the country.
So this was a former student who was did very well.
(03:43):
I was, you know, very proud to have him in
our program and he was doing very well. And he
called me up and said, Paul, can we can I talk?
And I'm like, sure, absolutely, I'm here for you. What
do you need? And that's how he got deep into it.
And there was no doubt in my mind even when
he was going through the program and he would come
to some meetings and or some of the uh you know,
(04:05):
the the Wednesday night things that we would do back
in the day, and he would just be stellar, right,
just doing amazing things. And I had so much hope
for him, and I really wanted him to someday, you know,
go into business for himself. But you know, he said
he was very happy working for somebody else and you know,
being the top guy and all this kind of thing.
So again, he was living it good, just got a
new house and everything was going great, and then he
(04:28):
got this bombshell and he called me and he was
he was scared. I could tell he was scared. He
didn't say he was scared, but I've been doing this
a long time, so I can tell he was. You
know the voice, she's a little bit you know, what
am I going to do tomorrow? What's the thing. So
we talked through all that, and you know, I said, okay,
I get you got your new house, and I said,
do you have a little in savings. He did, he's
(04:49):
got a pretty decent savings. So he's been putting money away.
That's great, not living outside of his means. Okay, that's great.
He got a mortgage. The mortgage was just he just
put the down payment down, so it's thirty year mortgage.
He says, I can cover the payments for a while.
I said, okay, I said, let's look at let's relook
at this. So some of the benefits of being the
(05:13):
best in your company and working for a company and
really shining is that you get good pay. You hope
you get good pay, the company takes care of you. Okay,
you get benefits hopefully, you know that type of thing.
Health insurance is a major benefit. Things like that that
sometimes people don't put a monetary figure on, but it
is some major benefit to have health insurance and all
(05:34):
this kind of other stuff. Especially you know, he's you know,
getting a new house and things like that, and it
has a family. So I got to talking with him
and I said, you know, maybe maybe this is an opportunity.
I said, maybe we're looking at this. Sometimes we look
at these things that happened to us in life, and
we go, is it possible, is this God's way? Or
(05:58):
is this possible that it's a just manifesting an opportunity
that may not have presented itself without some type of
outside motivating intervention, That maybe something's pushing you to to
live a dream or focus or at least try, and
even if we fail, we at least say we tried.
(06:19):
And so as he was talking, he said, you know,
I always wanted to be my own boss. And in
the back of my mind, I wanted to, you know,
make my own rules. And again, if I fail, I fail.
If I succeed, I succeed. And I and he wanted,
and he started saying all the things that that I
like to hear from electrical contractors who want to get
(06:40):
into it, that are entrepreneurial. They start seeing things like
I want to have better things, I want to be
a better person, I want to have things for my family.
I want to feel reward for things that I earn
and not just feel like I'm just taking a paycheck.
And you know, I want to feel that feeling. Uh.
(07:01):
And I am scared at the risks, you know, scared
at what will happen if you know my savings runs
out and I'm struggling. So I listened to all that
and I told him, I said, I said, so you
do have aspirations of being your own boss. I mean
you think you you think you can handle that. He says, no,
(07:21):
I don't know that I know how to do all
that stuff. And I said, you know it's being your
own boss. You know everybody puts it out there is
being hard. What's hard about it? I told him, I said,
is that is getting the business. Everything else will take
care of itself. He said, can you explain that? I
said sure. I said, Look, I've been there, I've worked
(07:44):
for other companies h and as far as electual contracting,
I've always been my own boss since me and my
brother started. So I kind of just always win all in.
And you know, when it came to taxes and insurance,
it's not hard. People acting make it hard, but it's not. Today.
You can do quick books and it does everything for you,
(08:05):
and you do turbo tax and you can do your taxes.
It's you know, it's easy to incorporate. Whether you become
a Chapter S corp. Or you become a sol prider
or LLC, it's all easier today than it was years ago.
The Internet makes it easy, Chat, GPT, trade Hog, all
of those intelligent ais make life a little easier today.
(08:27):
You can I have customers who use trade hog, for example,
that will ask it. They'll they'll put in their paychecks
and ask it what is the percentage of taxes they
owe based on the state they're in, and it automatically
calculates it out for them and they just pay it.
So there are resources. So I said, look, don't let
that be a hurdle. Okay, I said, so the biggest
(08:47):
thing that you've got a challenge in business is this
other stuff will take care of itself. Okay, you can
make a call and get insurance. You can find lower
cost insurance to get started as a contractor. It's available
all the time. Next insurance is very affordable for electoral contractors,
probably like fifty bucks a month. I mean, there's options,
(09:08):
I said, though, you know, I said so at that stage,
and he is a master electrician by the way, So
I said, at that stage, I'm like, what's really holding
you back. You got a little money in savings, don't you.
He said, yes, Like you've got tools. You've gathered enough tools,
he said, over time, I've gathered enough tools because he
was doing side stuff too. And some people say, well,
that's the reason he got canned. No, that is not
(09:31):
the reason. For all you haters out there. His boss
knew that he did some side work and it was
non competing with the work that they were doing, which
was primarily commercial work. But what he would do on
the side was residential, small stuff, but he would do it,
and he would put that money aside. So I said
to him, I said, so, do you figure you've got
(09:53):
not what you make or what you made? I said,
do you figure you got six months of nest egg
stuck away of what you would have made, you know,
just kind of stuck away, not touching your savings again,
but you have some money put away. He goes, yeah,
I do. And I said, he says, but I'm scared
that I'll just you know, I won't know what I'm
doing and on bullet and I said, well, one of
(10:15):
my advice is for somebody who's getting started, is there's
two courses of action. First of all, he wants to
do residential. He wants to do residential and service work
and all that kind of stuff. So that's good because
that's easier than to get into full bone commercial, where
you're going to have to have a lot more equipment
and you just don't have the outlay. That's the problem
(10:36):
with commercials. You can't jump right into commercial. And when
you get those big commercial jobs, you know you need people,
you need things like that. So now you could subcontract
a lot of that out. But again it's a tougher
road for a gentlemen like this who it gets laid
off from a company where he's primarily doing commercial work.
He's topped out of the company as far as money,
(10:58):
and the company itself that he worked for doesn't know
how to take care of their employees because it sounds
like they don't because you don't get rid of the one,
you know, the people that are making you money. Okay,
wrong type of evaluation. Now, I know some people out
there would say, well, there's got to be something else
going on. I asked that question, and I said, you know,
I won't mention it in a podcast, and I certainly
(11:20):
not going to use your name. I said, so you
can come clean with me, he said, Paul, I didn't
do anything. I'm telling you exactly what they told me
with the reason and I'm and I and I knew
enough of him to know that he was that company guy, right,
he's not going to do anything, and they were aware
of any little side stuff that he did. So I said, okay,
(11:40):
so let's assume you want to go into it. You
want to be your own boss. I said, don't let
taxes concern you because you can pay quick books. Hell,
I'm a corporation. We do a lot. We do way
more than he probably does. You know, Okay, we probably
do over a million a year and in different revenues streams.
(12:00):
And I'm like, we use quick books for everything simple.
It just makes life easy. It just does it. And
I said, so it's not brain surgery. It costs us
about one hundred dollars a month or less to handle
all of the book keeping. Just easy. And y'all know
I have many, many, many business streams coming in, so
(12:23):
it's life can be easier. I said, Okay, Taxes, we
have an accountant, but I do my taxes and turbo
tax and I give that print out. I give that
to my accountant. He looks at it and we go
from there. But that's not expensive. It's not a big expenditure.
Says then other than that, you just have to make
sure you pay your withholding taxes and everything. And that's easy.
(12:45):
You do it all online. Now, it's not brain surgery.
It's easy. I said. In fact, you can ask chat
GPT to tell you all these things and it will
break it down for you. It's really gotten that smart
or trade hog will do the same thing under the
office hog feature. So I said, don't let that be
(13:05):
your hurdle. So take that out of the equation. What
are you worried about? He's like, well, I'm just worried
that I can't find steady work. And I'm like, ah,
there you go. There's the number one thing. It's easy
to incorporate. It's easy to set a foundation. It is
not always easy to get the sale. And just because
you build it that you know that old saying if
(13:27):
you build it, they will come. That is not true
when it comes to contracting or any trade. Okay, you
have to build relationships, you have to work it on time,
you have to use previous relationships and make connections and
things like that. But I told him, I said, you
know you've got a nest egg. Let's start by this.
You need to make sure that you find out the
(13:49):
rules in your state for business license, whether you need
one in your local jurisdiction, a local county, wherever you're at.
It's usually hardly nothing. But you need to do that
and you need to formulate it. You need to know
if you want to go into business for yourself, you
need a name. You need a name that's going to
tell people exactly what you do right out the gate, okay.
(14:11):
And so he came. He said, he just blew out
a name like he'd been thinking about it. And that
told me more that he's ready. He's been thinking. And
I said, that's a great name. And I said it
says exactly what you do. And he goes, yeah, he says,
and nobody's got it around where I'm at. And I said, well,
there you go. So I said, you need to to
you know, you don't need to go get a a
(14:33):
trademark on a name, but you do need to see
whether or not your state has a fictitious name requirement.
But you just formulate a company and use the name.
That's the first start. So you could be a sole
proprietor go down to the local courthouse get your business
license to be a sole proprietor. I said, now you
also need to make sure what your requirements are in
your state. And in his state he was a master.
(14:56):
All he had to do was have insurance and put
in an application for the contractor's license. That was it.
He was already a master. And I said, that's great.
That would be your next step. You you figured out
a name first, you went and you got your business license,
everything you need you know. Do this all simultaneous, by
(15:16):
the way, because again it's just kind of there's okay
for overlaps here, folks. No need to freak out. So
I said, you need to go that. Then you need
to formulate the name, and then you need to apply
use that name and apply and bit your electrical contractor's license.
Once you get that electric and you're going to have
to have insurance. In the state that he was in,
(15:37):
they require proof of insurance. But you got to know
the name of your company first, right, So people say, no,
you got to get your license, right, No, No, you
formulate your company first. The company doesn't care whether you're
licensed or not. Right, if you go open up an
LLC your corporation, you'll Abernathy Electrical Services is what I had.
They don't know that I'm an electrician. Yet that's just
(16:00):
the business name. But you have to establish your name,
and so you establish all that first. Then you can
apply and get your insurances, and you can apply and
get your contractor's license, and they're gonna want you want
the name and all this kind of other stuff and
send the application. Once you get all that, you've got
your insurances in place, you've got your you know, your license, okay,
(16:22):
contractor's license, you've got your business license, you know what
your official name is. Now along that journey, when you
are submitting for your for your business, you do need
to establish what kind of structure that you want to
be in kind of things to think about. Do you
want to be a sole proprietor do you you know?
And uh, basically you will. You'll you'll make money and
(16:45):
you'll pay taxes on it just when you do your
normal taxes. You'll take it as income. Or you can
get an LLC limited liability corporation, or you could maybe
choose to be a Chapter S corporation. You certainly want
wouldn't want to be a Chapter C corporation if you're
starting out double taxation. So you start out if you
(17:05):
want to be a corporation, there are tax benefits. I'm
not a tax person, so you'd have to check with
your tax people. I am a chapter as corporation. I
have not lost money for twenty years, you know, I'm
always owing money. So so at the end of the day,
we skip out on that double taxation thing because everything
(17:28):
gets into a K one that gets carried over to
the shareholders anyway, and we pay taxes on it. So
I said, you have to determine the structure you want
to be okay, And we're just talking in general here,
because again there's a there's a process for everything. But
I'm just kind of talking through him. I'm not doing
this podcast to tell you how to do it. I'm
just saying how we had a discussion and all the things,
(17:50):
and you know, putting the cart ahead of the horse
and getting the business, deciding the structure, getting your contractor's license,
getting your insurances, you know, cause you got to have
the business name to get your insurance before you're even
a contractor yet. Because when you have many states, when
you apply for your contractor's license, they want to show
proof that you have insurance. So again every state's a
(18:10):
little different. But once you get all those things, or
accumulate all those things, and you get your contractor's license.
I told him, you know, the best thing that you
can do to start out is realize that you you're
gonna have to leverage some relationships. Maybe you nse some
builders who you know. You go to them and say, look,
(18:30):
you know homebuilders. Because he wanted to do residential. That's
where he wanted to be. You know, commercial is just
too much for him right now because he's been there
and he saw what it takes, and it just he
doesn't have the tools, he doesn't have the equipment, he
doesn't have the people. He's not ready to jump there.
But he enjoys doing residential, doing some generator applications, things
(18:51):
like that service calls troubleshooting. He feels comfortable with that
and he thinks he can make a decent living. So
I said, okay, what I would do is you've heard
me talk about when I talk about low cost marketing,
and I am still a big believer in it. I
believe that you need to be able to look at
and determine in your area where you are or the
(19:13):
service area that you want to be in that you
try to find homes that were built, you know, ten
years ago or more, because at that point, right at
the ten year mark, somewhere around in there, it can
be as early as five years. But if you're picking one,
I'd say, if you can find subdivisions that's been around
for at least ten years, that there's a chance that
(19:35):
they want to freshen it up. There's a chance they
want some new luminais or ceiling fans, or they're adding
an addition. There's a probability that they need something that
you can offer. And so I encouraged him to locate
these communities, these these and also it created a cluster
where these homes were in close proximity, so when you
(19:58):
go door hanging that you you're actually going to cover
more ground and it just makes it more cost effective
for your time. Although you're hungry, so you've got the time.
But anyway, I told him, I said, you need to
find these other visions and he was like, oh, I
know a bunch of them that have been around for
ten fifteen years. And I'm like perfect, perfect, I said, So,
(20:19):
then the next thing you want to do is remember,
you got to you gotta, you gotta start treating your money.
You know, you gotta sip it, you know, don't guzzle it.
You need to sip it. And that means very frugal
on how you advertise, not going crazy. Okay, I know
you want money to come in, but you can't just
throw money out there because the old saying is you're
(20:41):
gonna have to spend fifty bucks to make five bucks,
you know what I'm saying. So sometimes marketing and ads
have to peer in front of people's faces four and
five times for them to bite the hook. It's kind
of like fishing, right you gotta you gotta jiggle the
bait in front of them many times, and sometimes they
just won't bite, and sometimes after the fourth and fifth cast, boom,
(21:02):
they bite. Same with marketing, and that's why, for example,
you saw people that used to do those val packs
years ago, and you're sitting there seeing you get these
things every month, and you see the same ads in there,
and you go Jesus, after about the fourth to fifth,
the sixth time, you end up saying, well, you know what, hey,
I have a need for this, let me call. But
you didn't right away. That's very common in advertising, I said.
(21:24):
But where you have a leg up on that is
that your direct marketing. Okay, so you're not hiring somebody
else to do something for you. You're going right to it. Yes,
it's gonna mean that you're gonna put the legs in,
but that's okay, because you're gonna you're gonna get shirts
made up that look the part. You're gonna dress professional. Uh,
you're gonna you know, you're going to get business cards
(21:45):
made up as cheap as you can, but look very
good and professional, and provide both sides of information on
a card, not just one side, both sides. And you're
going to be wearing those shoes out as you go
from door to door to door or in those subdivisions,
putting door hangers on those doors. Now the Doorhannger, think
about at least three things, at least three things that
(22:08):
you want to make available to these customers, whether it
is repair damaged receptacles or switches, or adding a circuit
or adding recess lights, or doing generators or hanging ceiling fans,
or trouble shooting or renovations or addict renovations or whatever
(22:31):
far electrically wise, whatever it is you identify in your area,
that's what you focus on. Is marketing pieces, and you
can get them made very cheap over at Vista Print.
It's very cheap and you don't even have to be
that talented because they have online templates that make life easy.
The point is you need to have something to put
(22:54):
at the home that conveys what you do. And I
recommend getting the kind where the bottom rips off as
a business card. Okay, I just do because you know
they encourages people to hold on to the card, okay
if they rip it off the bottom. And I'm also
a believer using both sides of everything. Okay, pay extra
(23:18):
to get what you what you can on both sides,
because again, you only have one chance to once you're
in front of them, you want to give them enough information.
Next I said to him, I said, you know, you
really do need to have a website. I don't care
if it's a basic website, very inexpensive, one page website.
They're easy to make now on wiks and there's a
lot of templates out there that you can just customize it,
(23:41):
change the names and delete the pages. You don't need
a simple page that says what services you provide a
phone number and you know free estimates if that's what
you want to do and all those type of things.
And the reason for that is because you know, we
can spend a lot of money on marketing, but they
(24:04):
may not have the attention span to view it. But
if you send them to a website, they tend to
view it more. And Scroll also encouraged him to create
a video of just him talking to his customer and
have that on his website right up front, and you know,
telling them you want to earn their business, that you're
(24:26):
a family man, YadA YadA, and that you you know,
are growing your business and that you're here for them
and you're part of this community, and all this kind
of stuff right up front. And it's you don't have
to be great at videos to do it, guys. Any
of the smartphones today have good enough cameras to do
any of this, any of this. And I told him
(24:48):
that I would help him along the way, kind of
mentor him along the way anytime he had questions about
should I do this, should I do that, should I
do a video? What should I say? What should I do?
How should I do it? And I figured, you know,
I've been doing this for so long and I want
to see him succeed. I really do and do his thing,
(25:08):
and I think he can do it. So he picked
you know, he says he can pick out neighborhoods and
target the audience and he'll go to like Vista Print.
He says he has a local printer guy that he knows.
But I did encourage him to just still look at
Vista Print because of the the fact that they have
a lot of the tutorial I mean templates, so it's
(25:29):
easy dropping drag type of thing. He can just change
the verbiage on it. Those things are going to make
life easier for him. Plus they have templates already for
door hangers and all this kind of other stuff. So
I said, don't discount it, you know, or you know,
make sure you go check it out. He said he would,
And I said, but you definitely need to have business
(25:50):
cards and door hangers, and you know, I said, you
got to be hungry. He said, what do you when
you say hungry? Paul, He's heard it on my podcast before.
We said, what do you mean hungry? I said hungry?
I mean when I go to supply house, or I
go to Low's or home depot, I'm going to be
putting this card in the little gasket between the window
(26:12):
in the door handle. I'm going to be doing this
on at least two cars to the left of me,
two cars to the right of me. I'm just you
got to be hungry, and he says, oh, I'm hungry.
I said, your motivation is to build it up so
you have something for your family, and then nobody can
(26:32):
let you go, nobody can fire you. You do your
own thing right. You know, my brother, for example, or myself.
Other than the fact that I've worked for municipalities, I've
always still had my contracting business, but my brother or
my academy. But my brother has never worked for anybody
(26:53):
else since he was probably twenty years old, twenty five
years old, maybe twenty eight years old, because we started
together and then he opened up the business together. But
before that he kind of worked for a company called W.
Brown and kind of kicked some things around. But I
guess since his twenty late twenties, he's really never worked
for anybody but himself. And we worked together, and then
(27:14):
when we separated and opened our own companies, he continued
to work Double A Electric and he's been there today
and he's in his sixties today, and he's he's made
a great living and he's always worked for himself. He
didn't have to worry about somebody firing him, didn't have
to worry about being hired, didn't have to worry about
a tattoo policy, ear piercing policy. He didn't have to
worry about it. Not that he has any of that,
(27:36):
but I'm just saying he didn't have to worry about
anything but his own self. And he's done very well
and been very happy, and he never wanted to grow
into a really big company. He was very happy with
his progression. And so the point is there is ability.
This guy. Sometimes opportunity will slap you in the face.
(28:01):
He was slapped in the face, top worker, top earner,
cared about the company, felt like he was close to
the owners, and then he got terminated, not because anything
he did bad, and so he has aspirations to go
out on his own. I gave him advice. And maybe
you're in that situation too right now. Maybe things aren't
(28:23):
great for you. Maybe you feel like you got more
ahead of you, that you could do more. You want
to be your own boss. You don't have to be
the biggest company in the world to be happy. You
can do a lot of side work. You can do residential,
you can do service work, generator work. There's so many
opportunities today, specialty stuff, low voltage, whatever your niche may be,
(28:50):
you have those opportunities today. So if you're in the
same situation as this gentleman's in and all of a
sudden you're laid off, and you know, and in your
mind you're thinking, maybe this is a sign, Maybe this
is a sign that there is something else for me.
Do I want it? Maybe you're happy working with somebody
else and just being a follower, but a leader within
(29:11):
that company, and you're okay with the volatility of being
replaced or laid off. That's fine, that's you. Or maybe
your hunger is that you want to establish something that
you control, that you're in top. You're you're the one
that's at the top of the heap. If that's you,
then I'm encouraging you to go for it, jump into it.
It's okay to do it small and let it grow,
(29:34):
let it be organic, and achieve something because it's out
there for you if you want it. We're getting ready
to go through a boom and there's going to be
opportunities for you. So I encouraged him to think of
it positive. If that's what he wants to do, give
it a shot, invest in himself and he'll be successful.
(29:58):
And I'm going to help him try to be succes
I'm going to help try to help him, you know,
kind of maneuver around the possible putt pit holes that
he could fall into, or potholes, I guess potholes he
could fall into. I'm gonna help him. I can't do
that for everybody, which is why I do podcasts and videos.
But I'm going to help this young man try to
(30:21):
grow his business and be successful and give him advice
where I can. But I think he has a good
head on his shoulders, and I think that he's thinking
the right way, and he's thinking positively. And I'm thinking
he's looking at this now as at least at the
end of our conversation, I think he looked. His tone
had changed, his demeanor or the voice had changed. It
was a little more uppity when I say upty, a
(30:44):
little more bright I should say not upity, a little
more bright and aromatic. And and it felt like there's
a there's a future, there's something I can do. I
can do this and That's what I really wanted him
to feel like, and it seems like that's the direction
he's going. So he's gonna gonna find out about his
business license. He's going to he's got a name that
he likes. He's going to determine what business model he
(31:07):
wants to do sole proprietor, whether he wants to be
an LLC, whether he wants to be a Chapter S corporation,
whatever he wants to do. Let him kind of gel
on that and find the differences, and uh do that.
That way, he's going to find out, you know, what
he needs for insurance. I told him there's plenty of
opportunity places like next Insurance is inexpensive, there's other offerings
(31:28):
out there. He's gonna do all that. He's gonna he's
gonna get his contractor's license because he is a master.
He's going to get his contractor's license, and he's going
to do all those things that he needs to do,
and then his only worry is where's the business come from.
And then that's when I said, you need to start networking.
You need to start calling on people that maybe you've
done work for in the past and and and let
(31:50):
them know that you're in business for yourself now, uh
and uh, I told him, I said, you know, walk
the talk, look the part. Don't be a contractor in
and say that you're not going to invest in shirts
and invest in some hats or invest in some in
looking the part, because you need to do that. People say, well,
that's the last thing I'm wnsta spend money on. Absolutely not,
(32:11):
believe it or not. The facade is what you spend
money on. At first, you give the impression that you're
in it to win it, and then everything else will follow.
Then I said, if you want to start slow, pick
some areas that are ten years or so or older
and start door hanging, door flying, putting some feelers out there.
I told him, definitely, it's got to get a Google
(32:32):
my business listing, a Yelp business listing, a being business listing.
And I told them about help them with those things
because there is a such thing as called local SEO
and being seen by people just going on the Internet
and using things like Google and all that, because Google
favors those type of things, and so if you're not
in it, you're not going to be the people that
(32:53):
pop up in the list. Okay, So I said, I
explained all those little things that you've got to do
to be successful, and they're not hard, they're just little
checkless things that you got to do. And he said, Paul,
can I please bounce things off of you if I
forget so, I said, absolutely, dude. That's why i'm here.
(33:13):
That's what I'm here for, man, That's what I'm here
to give back to the industry and help people be successful.
I'm not in competition with anybody. I'm not trying to
promote my stuff over Mike's or Ryan's or anybody else's.
I believe people should buy everybody's educational tools. If they
don't like mine, buy somebody else's. But my point is
I'm here to help. I've always been there to help,
(33:35):
regardless of what somebody wants to say. I have always
tried to help this industry, and I'm gonna help this
young man. So if you got anything out of today's podcast,
please do me a favor, give a like, give it
a share, let us know in the comments what you think,
give us a thumbs up, share it with other people,
and do me a favor. Make sure you listen to
our other podcasts in sharing with people where you work,
(33:58):
and most importantly, if you have something that you want
to hear me talk about, please by all means, all
you've got to do is go to Paul Abernathy p
A U L A b E R nat hy dot
com and submit them online and just let me know
in detail what you want me to talk about. Ask
me anything. Ask me business questions, ask me HR questions,
(34:20):
conflicts at work, uh, think anything you want to ask me,
even code. Obviously I'm a code guy. Whatever you want,
I'm here to help you. Okay, all right, folks, that's
it for today's podcast. Till next time, Stay safe, God
bless and hopefully all your dreams come true and again
we're here at Electric Code Academy to help those things happen.
Take care, God Bless.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Thanks for tuning into another electrifying episode of the Master
the NDC podcast. We hope you're feeling more powered up
and ready to tackle the electrical world with the knowledge
and confidence you need to succeed. Remember, in the electrical trade,
knowledge is power, and we're here to make sure you
stay flood into the latest insights, tips and code updates.
(35:04):
If you enjoy today's episode, don't forget to subscribe. Leave
us a review and share the podcast with your fellow
electricians and industry pros. Until next time, keep your tools sharp,
your circuits clear, and you're my.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Focused, because here at.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The Master of the ANEC podcast, we're all about sparking
your success. Stay safe, stay smart, and keep mastering the trade.
From all of us here at Electrical Code Academy, thank
you for all your support and we will see you
on the next amazing Master of the NEC podcast episode.
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