Ask What Up? What Up? Everybody? Welcome to another episode Let's Ask
Paul the podcast where you can ask me Paul Abernathy anything you want about the
National Electrical Code, electrical in general business. Hey, I've been in business
for over thirty some years, so feel free to do so. Excuse me.
All you gotta do got choked up over it? All you gotta do
is go to Paul Abernathy dot com, submit your question, and more than
happy to lend my expertise where I can to help you be better at what
you do by sharing my experience, whether it's a national electrical code, dissecting
a code question, answering a question about business. I've been there. I've
run a business. I have ups and downs, I've had businesses that fail,
I've had businesses that succeed, all types of things that I've done through
the years, and I just want to be a resource for you. Now.
This episode today is sponsored by Electrical Code Academy. That is obviously our
academy where we teach literally thousands and thousands of people the National Electrical Code,
whether it's residential, commercial, industrial, grunting and bonding, whatever it is.
If it's something about electrical code. We have a program for you,
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com. Okay, got a double wamy in there for my advertising, so
bear with me on that. All right. So today I have a question.
It was submitted. I think it's a great question because it's not directly
you know, it's it's a general type of question, but it is one
of those questions that people ask all the time, and the question is that
it was actually the way it was submitted is I want to go into man,
let me read the whole thing. Hey, Paul, love your podcasts
and your videos. I'm an electrical uh No, what did he say?
I am electrician? Thinking about becoming an electrical contractor, and I want to
know what are things that I have to think about when I'm thinking about becoming
an electrical contractor. Thanks in advance again, love your podcast. All right,
well, thank you there you go. Thank you for submitting, Matt,
And again this is kind of all right enough for that. This is
kind of a general question because it could really go across all different platforms,
right, whether you want to be a plumbing contractor you want to work for
yourself. You want to go into business for yourself, no matter what you
do. I mean, that's supposably, that's the American dream, right,
Everybody wants to work for themselves, set their own hours, do that type
of stuff. So when do you make that leap? Right? When do
you are I mean, maybe you're just content and that's perfectly fine too,
right, if you're content with working for somebody else and getting a great,
great paycheck. I hope, hope all you getting a great paycheck and working
for yourself is a big leap for some people, and it's not right for
everybody obviously, But there are some pitfalls things that you have to think about,
and we'll kind of go over those a little bit today and kind of
give you some insight. By no means do I ever discourage anybody from wanting
to be their own entrepreneur go into business for themselves. Most people know here,
for example, me at the academy, I do many things. We
have a project management software company PPM Butler. We have We believe in people
getting online and having websites as easy as possible. That's why we have Empire
Butler dot com. That's you can have a website up and running and hardly
no time that you can promote. It's very search engine friendly. These are
all resources that we, you know, put the together to help support our
infrastructure to help you be successful. We have an accounting software again, Accountant
Butler. Yeah, all Butlers. By the way, if you want to
see all of our products, go to Butler sweet dot com. But at
the end of the day, we're an educational provider and we've been in business
now for quite a few years. And I had other companies underneath me.
But most people also know that I work for other companies as well, and
I work as a consultant, so I'm always hustling, and that's the nature
of business, right I'm a big believer. I used to tell some of
my students who were we're in business or as a contractor, and maybe they're
just taking my course to broaden, you know, broaden their knowledge of the
code. As an owner, you want to have that that enhanced the knowledge
of the code. That way you know your guys are doing it right and
everybody's following the same path of success. But I've always been one of those
guys to say, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I remember a contractor back in Virginia, and I won't mention names because
you know, they might not be you know, they might not want me
to talk about them. But it was doing a lot of work for one
contractor, a general contractor, and it was busy, busy time, and
they were doing quite a bit of work, and so they started having these
issues where they weren't I wouldn't say they weren't getting along with the general contractor.
I'm just saying that the general contractor maybe was taking a little bit of
advantage of them. And what happened is when time started getting a little bit
tighter, what was happening was he was saying, well, I need to
get pricing and bidding, where before he could just do that. He was
just like no, that he was going to give him the good price and
just let him do the work. Well, that's kind of started changing a
little bit. And he came to me and he says, look, I'm
worried what happens if I'm growing so well as a company, but then I
lose this one source. And I said, well, that's a classic example
of having all your eggs in one basket. You have one source, so
you remove that source, and now what does your company have. You you're
one general contractor away from nothing, and you've got employees, you've got people
that rely on you and all that. So I said, you know,
you need to diversify out and find other things that you can add. And
I'm sure all of you've done this too and looked at these things. Then
when you're starting in business, you don't really have all those options. You're
you're you're hungry, you're willing to take anything. But in this case,
he had a good business with a general contractor. So I advised him that
that he slowly start expanding and thinking about offering service work, dedicate a vehicle
and somebody to that when there's no service work that could help you with the
normal work. But when there is service work, they're the ones that take
care of it, make them invested in it, make them kind of a
partner in it, profit share with it on the US end of it.
That makes people eager to want to do that, and they get a taste
of feeling like they're in business for themselves, and everybody wants a taste of
that. But anyway, he expanded it and added Generator Services, became a
Generat dealer. He added the service division to it, and really started actively
thinking about expanding out and getting other gcs. Now that sounds like that should
be logical, but you get into this comfort zone where you've got something good
going on and you think it's gonna last forever, And all I gotta do
is tell you to go back and think about where you were ten years ago.
And ten years flows pretty damn quickly, folks. I remember ten years
ago my father passed away, and it's been coming up on ten years and
it's it seems like eternity, and the memories start to fade, and you
don't start to remember all the important moments. As we get older, the
memory starts to go anyway. The point is you've got to think about tomorrow
and you've got to always be looking forward. And so I advised him to
add things services and actively work on them, especially why you still had the
general contractor giving you the business. You're still building your business, but expansion.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right. You might be
doing very good, let's say in residential, but if the market slows down
or you're not able to competition gets stiffer, what else do you have that
brings income into the business, that helps steering those rocky times, you know,
rough out the the bumpy parts, make it a little smoother. Well,
think of adding a service division. Service work is great people, some
people don't like it, but I mean there's there's money to be had in
service work. Homes are aging all the time, so there is things that
people want to add and do and and things like that. So think about
that. But but you know, that's kind of a kind of digress from
what we were originally going to talk about. So let me try to We
all know I have ADHD anyway, so let me kind of get back what
we're what we're talking about is the hardest things to overcome when you're starting a
business, okay, and making that decision to start a business. Number one,
and this is common I pull this information. This is not just from
me. This is stuff that's it's readily available. Uh and it kind of
coincides with me looking at and going yes, I agree. It's kind of
a list of things. Number One, I want you to remember that it
is going into business for yourself, whether you're whether you're working for somebody,
and maybe you have a prospect where you're working for somebody, and and maybe
a builder or something says, hey, if you branch out on your own,
I'll throw you business, and you're like, okay, okay, okay,
I can do that. It's lonely, Okay. It is lonely as
a contractor because you are the bottom line. You know. You have to
remember that if you if you're grow to some point where you have people under
you, electricians, helpers, things like that, you know, and this
can go across any spectrum, right, plumbers, mechanical, it's not just
an electrician thing, an electrical contractor thing. But then you've got their burdens
and their responsibilities, and you want to keep them employed. You don't want
to harm anybody. I mean, they work for you. You want to
take care of them the best you can. That's what a good boss should
do. That's what a good owner should do. But you all of a
sudden, I have that stressful burden. So it's it is lonely at the
top. Okay, if you're doing it alone, you don't have any partners,
you don't have a not going in it that you can weigh this burden
on your shoulders with. It is definitely lonely at the top. You're going
to be putting in tons of extra hours with the ultimate goal of having all
those dreams that you want. But it is lonely. And I will tell
you if you think that where you work now or who you work for now
has rules and obligations and stuff you don't agree with, and you know you
just don't agree with some of the stuff that's going on in the company you
work for, don't think becoming an owner it's going to make it easier because
now you have more bosses. Right, you have the general contractor that you
might be doing work for. You have the owner that hires the general contractor.
If you do service work, every owner is your boss. You know,
I see a lot of stuff where where people will go. I do
service work. I do it. It's my rules. I don't the owners.
The customer is gonna have no you have to do what I tell on
me. No, you work for the customer. Right, So, at
the end of the day, being your own boss is going to be lonely.
Now there's great rewards and it can be but it is going to be
lonely, so be prepared for that. The next thing is if you decide
to go into business and you do partner So let's say you have your your
electrical and maybe you know somebody that's a great mechanical guy or a plumber and
they've been wanting to go into business. You partner up and create a company.
In that way, you're doing electrical and you can feed off each other.
That type of scenario. But let me tell you what, be careful.
Partnering can be very difficult. You have to set some guide rules up
really early. I always give an example of me and my brother were in
business together, and my brother is My brothers are my biggest heroes. I
love my brothers to death, and I don't get to see him because I'm
out in Texas. But I always looked up to my brothers. I looked
up to you, my brother Todd, who's just simply an amazing guy.
I mean, just an amazing guy and can do just about anything. You
know what I'm saying. Anything, builds amazing decks, houses, does electrical
amazing electrical. You know, can plumbing mechanically do anything. I mean,
if I got an issue with something, I just pick up the phone and
give my brother a call. You know that because I'm not you know,
I'm electrician, and I know my you know what I'm saying, I know
my boundaries. I can be as good a handyman as anybody else. I
can do sheet rock repair, I can do all that. But when it
comes to something significant, dude, I'm on the phone to my brother now.
But when we work together, both being very thick headed electrically, and
I'm more code inclined. My brother's more mcgiver inclined. He understood the concept
of, look, if I'm doing something for a little old lady, we
need to get it done. And I'm more like, well, it's still
needs to be code. So he was more practical than me. I was
very code driven from an early age. And of course along the way it
caused us not to work good together. But that's okay. That happens,
and we separated and I had my own contracting business, he had his own
contracting business, and that's how we went. But we worked together still.
I mean, he's subcontracted work to me. I would come and help him
as a separate company, and it worked. It worked. You know,
hindsight, we're looking back. Don't you wish you could go back and get
rid of all the drama because you know, here, forty years later,
I think we'd work great together because it took forty years of humility to calm
us both down and realized, look, we can work good together. So
that's what partnerships are all about. So if you're going to partner with somebody
in your business venture that might increase the odds of your success in a business,
then make sure you lay the round rules out first. Make sure you
understand how this is, how this is going to happen, and that you're
going to have arguments. So it's kind of like creating a prenuptial agreement on
how these discussions are going to go. Your decisions for the electrical or your
decisions his decisions for the mechanical or his decisions anything that makes it affects the
entire business, like marketing, advertising things. It has to be something that
you'll agree on, but think of all the possibilities it cause conflict. Think
of everything. Even though you don't want to be negative. I mean in
your mind you don't want to be negative, you don't want to initiate an
argument, but you need to think about all the possible conflicts that you could
have and then write down pre ahead of time how you're going to to kind
of create a roadmap if you're going to go to partnership route things like that.
Okay, and that can help you because it is lonely, but if
you have somebody to share that with, it can help you. But that's
another way to get started is if you happen to know somebody that's in another
trade that you can pull together and start a business together. It can be
beneficial obviously, but again be careful because partnerships don't always go very well.
Okay. The next thing to remember is everybody thinks that going into business is
going to be that the American dream is to have a lot of money.
It's that's not the case, you usually have to have some operating capital,
right, You're gonna have insurances, licenses, You're gonna need some money up
front. You know the old saying you can start something with nothing. That
that is not the case in business. Now you can go get a business
license and pay twenty five bucks for a business license. You can do all
that work and have that that license. Right, It's pretty easy to incorporate.
I've incorporated my companies myself through the years. I've never used an attorney
for that. Now we have attorneys now for things, but I never used
that. I did it all myself. It's pretty simple. But you gotta
you have to remember that you have to have money to make money. You
have to have this starting seed, that's starting capital. Uh, you know,
somebody willing to invest in you and help you do that type of thing.
So that that's kind of one of those those those areas where you you
need money in order to be able to be successful. Okay, So I
don't think you're gonna make money because you're going to be poor for a while.
Dude, You're gonna have to budget yourself. You might need to get
rid of things that are subscription programs that cost your money, gym memberships,
maybe not eat out as much as you did before, be very frugal with
the focus on what the goal is. What's the end goal? Well,
the end goal is your business, your business, and it might mean that
you sacrifice other things. And I know people out there say, I will
never sacrifice family and time overgrowing the business. But come on, I'm here
to to to be not Uncle Paul and tell you the reality. But I'm
going to throw it in your face and I'm gonna tell you you're going to
have to shun things that are going to stop your progress from being successful.
I can tell you I I look at it all the time and go,
you know, I wish I had to spend more time with my family,
my son growing up, you know, And we did. We did the
vacations annually and did that stuff. But I was so business focused, and
you know, and to this point, I would not be making and doing
what I have today if it was not the focus early on. You can
reap the benefits later. But I know, I hear people all the time
say, well, I don't wouldn't sacrifice business for my family. Well,
you're gonna have to kind of walk that type rope with it because it takes
a lot to be successful, but you're gonna be poor for a while.
So when you do get successful, you will remember those hard times when you
struggled. I remember, I remember back when I started my business ventures,
my first business venture ever. Even though I had my electoral contracting businesses with
my brother and then started my own, I also opened up a boarding kennel
for dogs and then a grooming salon, and I was always in the entrepreneurial
mode. But that was a twenty four seven job. My wife literally ran
the kennels for me. She worked twenty four seven to take care of people's
animals. And it is a lot of work and not a lot of reward.
And you know, people say, well, the reward was taking care
of animals, that whatever makes you feel better, makes you feel warm and
fluffy inside. The reality is it a business. We were there to make
money, and so you know, I tell you things that other people won't
say because they're too politically correct, or they would for whatever reason. I'm
being real. We're in business to make money, that's it, flat sure,
But you're going to be poor for a while, so you need to
think about that going into business. You have to be frugal. You're not
going to be able to do the things you might do now when you have
expendable incomes cash that you're from working for somebody else. They take out the
taxes, they do everything, and you just take the money. Just think
about what is involved when you are, you know, working for yourself.
Okay. The next thing to think about is I am going to tell you
that being in business for yourself is way less sexy than people portray it.
Right. I talk about this all the time with my brother. And again,
I'm not here to sway any body from going into business. Okay,
there's there are upsides to this, but these are things that somebody's got to
tell you. And you still could press through and say, hey, I
knew about all these things, but I still said, you know what,
I'm going into business for myself. I'm going to make a name for myself.
But you gotta remember that you're gonna go through hard times. When you
see somebody that's successful, they don't necessarily always share the crap they had to
go through, right, And when you write something out, you put numbers
on paper and you say, okay, I can do this, I can
do this I got it sounds really great, but it never really seems to
pan out exactly how we script it on paper, and so you have to
work hard for it. But it looks it looks I mean, you know,
you might see where, oh this contractor general contractors offered me their business.
I'm working for somebody, but they say, look, if you leave,
I'll give you all the business. That's still an egg's all one egg
in the bath get scenario. You have to be thinking about the next plan
where you're gonna go from that. Are you going to expand out and all
for other services? Are You're gonna work slowly, but at least you have
some seed money coming in because somebody is hopefully going to guarantee you some work.
That type of thing. So don't think it's sexy. It's it's it's
it's too glamorous to be your own boss, because it's it's not. There's
been times where I'm like, screw it. So the next thing I will
tell you is that as your own boss, at some point, you are
going to doubt your abilities. You're gonna think that you're on top of the
world. You're gonna think that you know everything about everything, and you're gonna
get into business and you're gonna get a project, you're gonna get something,
you're gonna get involved in something, and you're gonna find out that you don't
have the knowledge that you would like to have it now. For us,
in that case, we see this a lot. This is this is why
we offer electrical code related courses. People ask me why don't I offer hands
on and you know, hey, if there's anybody out there that wants to
invest a couple of million dollars in a physical building here in Texas, I
am more than happy to open up a physical hands on facility with your money,
not with my money, but I will give you a lot of my
time. And I think that it's still something needed. Although we do have
a great apprenticeship programs, the point being is thinking about you know, you're
going to run into something where your abilities are going to be challenged and you're
going to start doubting yourself. No, just get the education. That's why
we have people that doubt themselves electrically. They don't have the code knowledge,
and what do they do? They get into our courses, and our courses
flat out it's not a commercial. Our courses are like no other course.
And you can say what you want, but I guarantee you go through our
fast tracks programs, whether it's a residential, commercial, industrial, in the
feedback that we give, you're gonna learn more in those exam prep the NC
fast Tracks Black, for example, it's not just for exam prep. We
have a lot of people in that program that just want to get a better
understanding of the n EC. That's the reason they're in it. They're not
in it to pass any exam. They know, they recognize that their knowledge
is limited and they struggle. And so that's a good a good example.
They doubted their abilities and what do they do. They stepped up and they
invested in something that's going to give them a better understanding. And that's kind
of one of the reasons that I put together the program. The next thing,
you know, you will start to think that your troubles or your issues
or things that you have in business as you're starting out, you'll have you
won't you won't you'll bid on jobs and you won't get it. You'll you'll
have problems where something happens on a project and you're thinking, oh God,
why me, I'm the only one, right, I must be targeted again.
I must be some karma in another life. It's something Why am I?
Why am I experiencing this heart ache or hardship or whatever as a business
owner? Okay, the reality is you're not alone. All of us have
experienced it, all of us. As a contractor, one of the things
I hated the most was bidding process. I literally hated the bidding process with
a passion. Now I used a bidding software, but you know the old
saying, crap in, crap out. You know, there's this fudge factor
that you always try to come up with in case you don't want to get
screwed. You don't want to be too low, you don't want to be
too high. And then you start wondering why I didn't get the job.
And then you start thinking, damn, could I call them and say,
hey, can you for my feedback? I understand I didn't get the job,
but for my feedback, could you tell me why I didn't get the
job so I can learn from you know, And then you realize that people
are just fit. People will go with the lowest price, and your problem,
you know, doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna get bad quality. Uh,
you know, maybe somebody gave a low price, they're a good contractor they
just did not how to price their work and they beat you out. So
you're gonna go through that. But don't think you're the only person that's ever
gone through those hardships. Okay, as rough as it will be, everybody's
gone through these hardships. I've gone through these hardships, and it's just,
you know, it's just one of those things. Now, the next thing
is you will mourn, you will cry, you will you know, grown
men do cry. Okay, you will go through something where you think,
why the hell did I do this? It's not all peaches and cream.
Folks. Obviously being your own boss because everything's a burden on your shoulder.
Your family is depending on it. But if you're hungry, no task is
mundane, whether it's flyers in a neighborhood that you know that the homes were
about ten years old, and you're doing a flyer that you door hang and
you got to do it yourself. When you're hungry, you do what you
need to do. That to me, that is a problem with this generation.
And I'm not saying everybody you know as a whole. I'm just saying
what I see in today's gin, whatever it is is everybody wants it,
but they don't want to put in the nearly to put in the sweat equity
that's necessary today. You know a guy a man to feed his family or
a woman. Well, you know, if if I had to feed my
family and all of my work that I put in, all the companies that
I have, were to go belly up, you know it's would I scrub
toilets to feed my family? Absolutely? I would. It's not beneath me.
It is not beneath me to do whatever I needed to do. And
if you're the kind of business person that has things that you just will not
do right, then being an entrepreneur is really not for you. It's really
not. And I don't mean that to offend you make you feel bad,
it's really not. Stay where you're at, stay in your comfort zone.
If you're not willing to get your hands dirty and get out there and hand
out business cards or or door hangers or or whatnot. I tell people a
story. I remember when I was a contractor. I used to go to
the home depot and lows and I would actually slide my business cards inside of
the boxes of ceiling fans and luminaires because it's you know, it's taped up,
but there's always this little sides or on the sides that are not taped
up, and you can slide it right in there so that when they open
it from the top, your card will fall out right on top. You
can't get it in the b but you just get it in the flaps,
you know, push it in the flap. And people said, I can't
believe you do that, and I'm like, why not, dude, I'm
hungry. I'm hungry. I want my business to grow. And if you're
not hungry, then you're gonna have those days you know, where you're gonna
cry, You're just you're going to you're gonna wonder what the hell did I
do? But it's okay, we've all been there. I've been there.
I've had my electrical contractor. But this is what I love about social media,
is it People would always say, Paul, you teach and you do
podcasts, you do videos, you consult around the country, but you never
got your hands dirty. You know. It's I guess it's at the point
now where I kind of laugh at that, because you know, everybody's gonna
get in their fifties and sixties. Whatever you're doing now in your twenties and
thirties, your life's gonna change. So I love to see that. I
love to see the comments from the people on social media that you teach you
can't do and they realize that electricity hasn't changed. It's the same electricity it
was when Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla was around. We have other technologies that
emerged, but you know, the last I checked, brand circuits are run
the same way. Feeders are run the same way. Switch gears installed the
same way, panelboards installed to save the same way. Conductors are run the
same way. Cables are run the same ways. They're secured and supported the
same ways. Race ways are bent the same way. There's nothing miraculous has
changed. We all did it as an electrician. So to think that you're
greater than somebody else is kind of foolish. Really, you're gonna be that
fifteen, sixteen seventy year old guys or gals someday, So grow up,
right, Just grow up and realize that. Okay, So at the end
of the day, I've got the scars and the and the cuts to prove
that I was in the industry. But I don't have anything to prove to
anybody. All I want to do is pass on my knowledge and try to
help somebody and offer resources. So you're in business for yourself or you want
to be in business for yourself, you know, just realize that it is
going to be those hard days. There are going to be those hard days,
and just get used to it. Next. You know, as a
business owner or potential business owner, you're never gonna know what to expect.
So don't think that you can create a game plan that's going to be perfect.
Things are going to change all the time. You're gonna be positive and
then something's gonna drive you negative. You're gonna go up and down, up
and down. It's gonna be a roller coaster ride. But realize that no
one step leads to another step, and you just have to keep putting one
foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. That's all you gotta
do. Also, you know, remember that mistakes are inevitable. You are
going to make mistakes. You can't get around it. Business is a collection
of mistakes. Success is built on many mistakes. Nobody's a success right out
the gate. And if you are, you're an exception to the rule.
You're gonna make a mistake, You're gonna learn from that mistake, You're gonna
move forward. You're not gonna make hopefully the same mistake again, but you
might. Okay, it just happens. The next thing I'll tell you is,
look, do me a favor. If you ever have this desire to
compare yourself with another company, another electrician, another trade, don't do it.
Don't do it. Never compare yourself to somebody else because you don't understand
their background, their training, what they've been through, and a lot of
people on the surface are nothing, are totally different beneath the surface, So
a snapshot in time. So don't develop an opinion, don't develop something of
somebody else based on what little knowledge you have of them, And don't look
at somebody else's company and compare it to yours and things like that. It's
it's only going to serve to give you a downfall, to make you go
into that spiral of doubting yourself and being negative and all that. You're you,
your individual. What you do is you. That's the beauty of being
your boss. That's the beauty of on your own company is that you get
to set the tone, so you know, it doesn't matter if Johnny is
uber successful. He might Johnny might have got to help along the way,
might have had a family that already had money, might have had a couple
of contractors who invested in him early on, so he already had a leg
up. And you're wondering why the hell I can't get jobs when Johnny over
there is not as good as me in your mind, but they've got all
the work they can handle. Don't let it eat you up because you don't
know Johnny's situation. You don't know who gave Johnny a leg up. You
don't know he was at the right place at the right time, with the
right connections. Don't do that to yourself. It's just it's just gonna eat
you up, tear you down. It's just not worth it, okay.
Another thing to remember is that going into business for yourself, it just may
not work okay, And there becomes a time when you'll have to make a
decision whether or not it's time to say it doesn't work and go back to
work for somebody else. And we we all know have been through that and
made that decision, and you just have to be ready to make that decision.
Now. The next thing that I tell you in business that I hear
all the time that I just it cringes me when people say this, and
people that aren't really you know, the accountants and other people that don't know
your business say this all the time, but they say, always pay yourself
first. That's what they say, Always pay yourself first. I'm here to
tell you that's bullshit. Okay, that's bullshit. You pay your vendors,
you pay your your accounts, you pay your expenses first. You always get
paid last if you're paying your expenses, and ultimately at the ends, you
don't have enough money to pay yourself. That's why you need money to start
up. That's why you need to have money in the bank, because you're
going to be spending more out than you're taking in. If you end up
paying yourself and you don't pay your vendors, it's not gonna be long before
you can't get any supplies. It's not gonna be long before you're a pariah
when it comes to the supply houses or the different vendors, and nobody's going
to want to work with you right, and it's not gonna be long before
you're gonna find yourself hopping around to different vendors trying to find product and it
just doesn't work. It doesn't work. You have to pay your people,
you have to pay your vendors, your supplier, you have to pay every
your insurances. Everything has to be paid before you pay yourself. And I
know accounts to say no, no, you gotta pay yourself first. I'm
telling you they're full of shit. Don't listen to them. It's not gonna
work in business, it's not. You have to pay your expenses first.
You always get paid last. You know you're successful when you can pay all
of your expenses and pay your salary to you or pay money to you.
And if the company has zero at the end of the month, after you've
paid all of your expenses and paid your salary, then you're successful. You
are so you know at the end of the day. You got to think
of that type of mentality. But you can. You cannot pay yourself first.
I hear that all the time, and that is just I don't understand
it. I don't get it. The next thing to remember, being your
own boss is and I would be remiss if I didn't say this. If
you already work somewhere now and you're moaning and groaning about the fact that you
have to go in at a certain time and get off at a certain time,
realize that when you're in business for yourself, you're twenty four seven,
folks, really you are. You're not a nine to five or anymore.
A business owner is working twenty four seven. You're working in your sleep because
the processes that you set up in your company are are still going, still
being done while you're sleeping. Right, If you're marketing, you're advertising that's
out there, If you're doing the service work and all that stuff's out there,
you're you're doing this even in your sleep. Okay, So you're working.
And so if you're just used to Monday through Friday clocking in and the
weekends are yours when you're starting the business, that's not how it's going to
be. If somebody needs you on a weekend, you better do it now.
If you say I am not doing that, I am only working,
then you're going to struggle. And if you're okay with that struggle and you
can make it past that struggle. And there's an exception to every rule,
then you go for it. Okay, I'm just saying, Okay, you're
you're you're. If you're used to your eight to four, seven to four,
whatever it is, you're working weekends off, then being an entrepreneur is
not for you. You can do a little side hustle here and there.
That's fine. As a little income helps pay a bill, that's fine.
But being an entrepreneur and being in business and having all these burdens that you
have to be aware of, people that depend on you and things like that,
then you're not ready. And I would say, don't do it.
Don't don't waste anybody, don't don't waste that time of your life struggling,
because it can be a pit of hell, sitting at the bottom feeling like
what the hell did I just do? If you're not willing to put that
time in, don't do it. And as far as getting a good night's
sleep starting off as an entrepreneur, business owner wanting to branch out on your
own, you're not going to get good night's sleeps. Trust me, You're
gonna be laying there and you want to lay there with your eyes closed with
nothing flowing through your mind. But You're not going to be able to stop
it. All kinds of craps going to be flowing through your mind while your
eyes are closed trying to get to sleep. And you know, maybe you're
one of those guys that can close your eyes and boom, you're off.
I'm not. When I lay down. I have so much stuff replaying in
my mind because my mind is always thinking, and so it makes it tough.
I do suffer from occasions of insomnia and being a diabetic, I have
issues with sleep. But you know, through the years, it's been stress
as a business, a project that's not completed yet, maybe I have a
timeline that I have to complete it or I'm gonna get a penalty. Different
things that I've encountered. Affects your sleep. You're not going to get a
good sleep now. As you get on and become successful, yeah, things
will change for you, but early on, just be prepared, okay.
And I remember, if you build it. A lot of people say if
you build it, they will come. They might not come, but again
or how relentless are you? I can tell you myself. I put if
I started in the business, the first thing that I would do is electrical
contract Let me. Let me explain what I would do. And I'm not
talking plumbing mchannal. That's their own deal. But as a contractor, if
I wanted to get into contracting, I would start out me doing service.
I would get a work truck if ID out what I could afford. If
already had a truck, that's great, I would put magnet mounts on it
because I'm a big believer in professionalism, at least having your name on your
company. Obviously, get the licenses and permitting that you need per your state
and locality or whatever. Follow the rules. But if I was a licensed
contractor and I just got into it, service work is the easiest to get
started in. Although it's a trickle effect. It doesn't start up right away.
But you can go to things like Vista Print and get good door hangers.
And I always search for neighborhoods that have a good supply of houses that
you can cover them by just walking the neighbor neighborhood. You can pay some
kids to do it for you, you can get family members to help.
But get the door hangers. Offer a special target those things that you know
the homes need, like ceiling fans, luminaires, chains, fix that broken
switch or receptacle, all those little things. Freshen up your house. By
adding all new luminaires, it makes a difference in the look. And YadA,
YadA YadA. You can add ring, you know, Ring cameras and
ring whatever you want. Automated systems, you know, Alexa stuff and all
that. But you can go around the neighborhood and door hang these things and
realize it's a slow trickle. It is with apps now like next door.
And my point is you got to be aggressive. And if you're aggressive,
you can start out and make a good income on it. But you have
to start okay. And just remember there is no such thing as an overnight
success story. You can get all the help you want in the world.
You can get somebody who wants to invest in you. Ultimately, at the
end of the day, it's all on your shoulders and you have to make
that decision. Remember, being an entrepreneur is not for everybody. We need
leaders and we need followers. There's nothing wrong with a follower. You're working
for somebody. You're happy to get the payroll, you're pleased with it,
you're content, you're making enough for your family. Maybe you have a dual
income family where the wife is bringing in money and you're bringing in money and
you're happy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But don't think that
going into business for yourself is an instinct success. You're gonna make money.
I'll give you an example. My son is a pool cleaner and he works
for somebody, and he thinks that he'll immediately wants to be in his own
busines in this cleaning polls that he's gonna make money for himself and he's going
to be an instant success. And I have to remind him. I'm like,
you got no customers. You can't poach your customers or your company because
you're not touching enough of them. You might be doing ten service calls a
day, but that's not going to sustain you, and you can't. It's
not right to poach their business. That just wouldn't be morally right. So
how are you going to get these customers? So you're gonna go from a
guaranteed income to zero income and you have no nest egg. I'm not willing
to invest in you. You don't have the experience for me to invest in.
You're on my own son. But I'm not investing in you. I
only invest in people that have three and four years of experience in something that
I know. I've had people come to me for electrical contracting and want me
to help them out, and I will help them out, but at the
end of the day, I need to see that commitment. And no,
I'm by no means shark tank. But I have helped people. I've given
up to ten grand to a contractor to help them out, whether it's for
tools or whatever it was. And don't all you people start emailing me for
that help. I'm just saying I've done it, and you know, and
luckily so far they've been successful and I got my money back. And I
didn't do it to make a bunch of money. I did it to help
people get started. Reality is, I'm not investing in and you know,
I wasn't investing in my son, for example, because he hasn't really not
put in the work, put in the work to be successful. He just
thinks, immediately you go into business for yourself and you're gonna have this this
your money's gonna change. It's not gonna change, it's gonna get worse.
I've got no money coming in now. And if you're not willing to hustle,
you know, I could tell he didn't like to get up in the
morning, he hated getting out of bed. He wouldn't do anything you asked
him to do, so I knew that he wasn't the kind of person who
was going to run out indoor hang and hustless to earn it. I don't
invest in people like that. I'm sorry. I have scraped and hustled my
whole life for my businesses. Like I said, if I lost everything,
I'm cleaning toilets, right, I'm bear handing it, folks. If I
need to feed my family, that's the difference. If that's you, then
greeting an entrepreneur. Owning your own contracting business is great. It's a lot
of upsides to it. But I wanted to make you aware of the downsides.
It's not to be the Debbie downer. It's just to make you aware.
Trust me, there are beautiful sides to being your own boss. Right.
Just remember that it's an equal thing here. You're gonna have the down
with the good. You can't just make a schedule where I'm going to work
this and this and this until you become very successful at it and have other
people that you can cover those areas you're going to be struggling and just realize
that's just part of it. But if you're hungry and that's what you want,
by all means, there is something beautiful about the American dream. Owning
your own company, doing your own thing, setting your own tone, willing
to take all those burdens on your shoulders, press forward and become a success.
Not everybody's going to succeed, but those that do there's definitely a pot
of gold at the end of that rainbow. All Right, folks, Hopefully
got something out of the day's podcast. It's not like my normal podcasts.
Hopefully the person that I'm talking to out there that sent me that email,
hopefully you got something out of this. Hopefully it was inspirational to you.
Again, I'm here if you need me. I have been doing this for
over thirty two years. I have owned companies good and bad. Okay,
I lost nearly a million dollars in a company that I invested in years ago,
and most people can google it was Radio pet one of the first underground
pet fencing companies out there, and I lost my ass on that. And
you know, and so at the end of the day, I've I've been
up and I've been down. I've lived in a in a room a building
with a grooming salon, trying to run an electoral contracting business, and at
night pull out a mattress out of the closet and sleep on the floor in
the commercial building because I couldn't afford an apartment with my wife, because I
was hungry. I was growing my contracting business. We were trying to grow
the grooming salon and a boarding kennel, and people believed in me enough to
help me get started. But they did, but it didn't bring income right
away. But I had to sleep. It was easier to buy a mattress.
There was a wall separating the front part of the back part, so
you couldn't see behind it. So I we slept in our businesses. We
took baths in the dog tubs. Okay, I've been there, Okay,
been there. Luckily, my electric contracting took off, my consulting took off,
our kennel and all took It got better. It did get better.
I never gave up. And if you've got that tenacity and you're willing to
push forward, you can be successful to trust me. You can do it
all right, folks. Until next time, I hope you got something out
of it. Till be safe, God bless, love one another, and
I'll see you in the next episode. Let's ask Paul Baska, ask Ball.