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Growing Pains

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#1 ·
I'm new here and am finding lots of great information. Thanks.
From reading the posts it seems that many here share our business philosophy. We're a small residential service company and are fortunate to be growing.

When I started working with the company it was just my husband and 1 helper. Now we are up to 4 electricians (including DH), me and 1 admin gal in the office. (My background is marketing & sales). He started the company in 1988 so we are well established with a great reputation.

I am trying to build infrastructure and systems for our company have many questions and hope some of you will share your experiences.

We're at an awkward stage. Not so tiny that we can "wing it" and not big enough to have systems in place and economies of scale. Our revenue has been growing rapidly the last 2 years but so has our overhead. We're at that stage where we're working harder and making a more money, but not enough more for the extra work and overhead. Cash flow is improving but it's still a bit too "hand to mouth". If we could operate more efficiently we could do a lot better. The biggest bottle neck is that too much still has to be done by my husband personally. Poor guy is pretty overloaded these days (me too).

1) Do you use a system or software package to manage the flow of work from incoming call through billing etc. We use Quickbooks for estimates, invoices, accounting etc. but I think we need something more.

2) ? For those of you who started out wearing your tools and grew... Our biggest issue is finding someone who can replace my husband in the field. If he doesn't interact with the customers, we would only get a fraction of the jobs. He's a top notch electrician with over 35 years of experience and that's why we have a great reputation. He inspires confidence in the customer and we work hard to deliver... but then how do you maintain the quality when you have others do the work? He's more than willing to delegate but we find that if he's not in the field the jobs take 3 times as long and are not done well. If he doesn't go to the estimates, we don't get the work. He needs to talk to the customers on the phone and do estimates, not do the service calls and work in the field. If he does a service call there is a good chance it will turn into a bigger job. If we send a technician rarely. If he's on a job, then he's not answering calls and questions or writing up estimates and we are losing opportunities (IMO). That may be a training issue. How do you find guys who are top quality electricians and who can sell too?

3) Finding good electricians is our biggest challenge. We get TONS of applications but finding electricians who are really qualified for residential service work is really difficult. (and can pass drug and background screening etc) We care about the work being done neatly, correctly and efficiently. Commercial and construction electricians are abundant but neat personable residential guys who can do good diagnostic and service work are in short supply. (so is common sense)

The goal is for him to do the estimates and sales and stop wearing tools, but if he's not out there, the quality of work really suffers, even with the best techs we've found. We pay well & give bonuses & incentives. Other EC friends who are bigger tell us we just have to be ok with mediocre work if we want to have employees doing it. We can't swallow that. We charge top dollar and our customers deserve the top notch service they are paying for.

Any advice from those who have grown through this stage?

Thanks!
 
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#2 ·
Welcome to the forum. When I started it was me and only me for many years. My wife joined in the field for a few years till we had children. I had workers on and off for a few years then went back to doing it by myself again.

Now I have 2 employees and my job is mostly getting the jobs and supervision when needed. The quality does definitely suffer when I am not there but I have a head person that knows what I want so it has been pretty good. The call backs will eat you up. Sometimes the guys are rushing to get home or getting to the next when and in haste forget things. My philosophy is to slow down, esp. at the end and check everything over before leaving the job-- it does not always translate into English for some reason....:laughing:
 
#3 ·
Poor brave you! You pay so well I'm sure but want the work done super fast to.. Heard this story a million times. And your hubby does the bestest, fastest work in the whole wide world. Well if he truly is the absolute bees knees you are going to have to "settle" for average electricians.
 
#7 ·
You are probably right, but I don't know what you mean by "poor brave me". We pay as much as we can. We don't expect people to hustle as much as he does, very few employees ever will. We'll settle for neat, correct and reasonably fast. We've got 3 good guys now, but we had to go through 25 to get them.
 
#4 ·
3) Finding good electricians is our biggest challenge. We get TONS of applications but finding electricians who are really qualified for residential service work is really difficult. (and can pass drug and background screening etc) We care about the work being done neatly, correctly and efficiently. Commercial and construction electricians are abundant but neat personable residential guys who can do good diagnostic and service work are in short supply. (so is common sense)

Any advice from those who have grown through this stage?

Thanks!
Two things here'

One perfectionist (if your husband is one) always suffer under growth and many stay small because they are never happy with employees.

Two, in a tough market like we are in now you should be looking for better men, there are good electricians out there, you need to offer top pay, good benefits, vacations, holidays, bonuses and weed out the slackers.

As someone on this site once said, you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
 
#6 ·
Two things here'

One perfectionist (if your husband is one) always suffer under growth and many stay small because they are never happy with employees. .
You are right on the perfectionist part. It is definitely our biggest roadblock.

Two, in a tough market like we are in now you should be looking for better men, there are good electricians out there, you need to offer top pay, good benefits, vacations, holidays, bonuses and weed out the slackers.

As someone on this site once said, you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
True too about good electricians- we know they must be out there. As for top pay, we do pay more than our similar competition, but can't afford what the big commercial companies pay ($40/hr). I agree with the benefits, vacations and holidays etc.. that is a goal but we're not there yet. We'd like to offer health insurance but can't quite yet.

I don't think we pay peanuts but we've gotten burned a bunch of times hiring expensive guys who sounded great but weren't. We've got some PW wage work that pays less for residential than our guys are getting now (they get $30/hr + bonuses and incentives). The resi. PW is only $22/hr.


Now we start them lower- $20/hr If an electrician is 1/2 way decent he gets a $5/hr raise within 2 weeks without asking for it. If they do a good job on a week long job they get a $400 bonus. A good electrician is at $30 within a month. That is more than most around here pay.
If we could afford health insurance and other benefits we would. It is definitely a goal. After 6 months we do pay for holidays and some vacation.

How do people get past the perfectionist issue?
 
#5 ·
Call backs....ugh. My husband almost never gets call backs, but the guys.... so many. It is really frustrating- and costly. We are so busy right now and have a bunch of great jobs lined up. I'm super stressed with trying to keep everything organized.

We just started doing some government funded work too and we are drowing in paperwork. Desperately looking for ways to keep track of everything and manage the workload while maintaining quality. We need another electrician or 2 and another truck.

This is a challenging stage. If we were bigger, we'd have staff and systems in place. It seems like it's feast or famine. When we are busy, the tasks that ensure the next jobs get pushed back (calls, proposals, smaller service calls). If we don't keep on top of the selling end we end up with a dead week. It's not good.
 
#13 ·
'


There is a lot more to commercial work than tightening set screws on EMT connectors, sweetie. I love what I do and make a good living doing it. When the day is done, I am free to do other things. My weekends are for fun, I'm not worried about a business to run.
 
#22 ·
It takes all kind of different electrical skills to complete all the electrical work in our country, residential, commercial, control, fire alarm techs, electrical testers, deck apes, MC slingers, romex jockeys, big pipe guys.

And we all hopefully do what we like to do. And no one of us is any better than the other, if we are professionals and do our best.
 
#26 ·
yrman, the problem you are facing is that all the guys you are looking for are already working. The ones who have the shills are the ones who are employed in your niche. What you need to do is hire the ones that aren't quite there yet and train them. Your pay does seem low. I know that you may have been burned before but if I was awesome at residential troubleshooting, I would be looking for at least $35 plus bennies. So maybe you are missing out, by starting too low.

Are you above or below $125 per hour?
 
#29 ·
yrman, the problem you are facing is that all the guys you are looking for are already working. The ones who have the shills are the ones who are employed in your niche. What you need to do is hire the ones that aren't quite there yet and train them. Your pay does seem low. I know that you may have been burned before but if I was awesome at residential troubleshooting, I would be looking for at least $35 plus bennies. So maybe you are missing out, by starting too low.

Are you above or below $125 per hour?
We're a flat rate shop. I'm going to order the program from Brushman to make sure our prices are where they need to be. We're using old prices which were designed to generate ~$200 / billable/hr. That probably needs to go up. (this is ms yrman now, last 2 posts where mr yrman).

You are right about the guys we really want already working. We don't even get applications from anyone with extensive residential service experience. If we found someone with a lot of experience from a reputable shop we'd probably be willing to pay them more to start. The residential experience on resumes seems to be all new construction or for service work 2 months at a shot here and there but we mostly see commercial, new construction and industrial experience.

We have a ton of work on the board and Mr. Y is ready to clean house because of a recent series of messed up jobs. We don't agree over clean house right now vs. work with what we've got as best we can. 2 of the 3 have decent skills but they keep making bonehead mistakes. Some of them big ones. Over and over again lately.

It's a tough call and I don't know what is the best way to go. I think we have to loosen our standards somewhat in order to grow and find ways to train them better or mistake proof the work. (No one is ever going to care like the owner will.)

One issue is that we don't know if someone is good for awhile and customers have no idea if they are getting quality service work or not. We took over the phone number of a company that closed up shop. We get calls from some of their former satisfied clients and when we get out there we've found some of the worst hack work imaginable. We thought they had a good reputation, yet we found out they were using used parts and just doing the most awful and illegal work. The customers didn't know- they only knew the lights were working. They were selling people services and then not actually installing the work. They were a good size at one point and like many companies of any size, the owner was out of touch with the actual work being done.

There are decent service companies with more than a couple of technicians. How do they get there and maintain quality? That is what I want to understand. There is a way, we just aren't seeing it yet.
 
#30 ·
Yrman,

Find a man that is know as an excellent worker with another firm and pay him enough to woo him to your firm.

But if you think you will ever find an employee to do it your way 100% of the time, then it is time for you to retire or resign yourself to working alone.
 
#38 ·
Yrman,

Find a man that is know as an excellent worker with another firm and pay him enough to woo him to your firm.

But if you think you will ever find an employee to do it your way 100% of the time, then it is time for you to retire or resign yourself to working alone.


The only way I would leave my current employer is if I went out on my own. I also am afraid that a female would not be taken seriously. The more I read here from the guys who are one man shops, the less appealing it is. I recieved an offer from one of my employers competitors that was a 15% raise and turned it down.

I never told my boss. Maybe I should have?? I have things REALLY good. The benefits are great, plus it is all the little things. If I break a tool, whether the company's or my own, the policy is buy a new one immediately, no questions asked. Any personal tools that get broken, wore out, or even lost are replaced. At least once a week, we are provided lunch. At the end of a big job, if it has been lucrative many of us are given a cash bonus. That is CASH in a plain envelope. Bad personalities and slackers don't last. It seems if a person makes it past the first 90 days, they have a job as long as they want it. The chemistry between everyone is great and it makes a huge difference in productivity.

Money isn't everything, especially when you are very happy with who you work for. The point is that it is often the employer who brings out the best in employees, not the other way around.
 
#31 · (Edited)
Your husband needs to remember that there is only one of him. He is probably stubborn and stuck in his ways. He needs to let go a little bit and trust who he lets do his work. Mistakes are going to happen, but the key is how they are managed. It's tough. I've been losing hair because of my stubbornness, but finally I realized I need to let go of some of the control.

Your not going to find the guy to replace your husband in the field overnight no matter how much money you throw at him. Concentrate more on hiring someone with your husband's work ethic and personality and train the hell out of him to make him a mold of your husband. Since your making an investment, pay him well enough so he is always happy and not looking elsewhere.

There are good electricians in SD. I literally found a guy 30 minutes ago who is unhappy and overworked. I can give him scale and it would be a raise and I just saw his work and I'd feel comfortable leaving him alone for a few hours. Baby steps for me. Your husband is not too different from a lot of smaller owners, myself included.
 
#32 ·
Your husband needs to remember that there is only one of him. He is probably stubborn and stuck in his ways. He needs to let go a little bit and trust who he lets do his work. Mistakes are going to happen, but the key is how they are managed. It's tough. I've been losing hair because of my stubbornness, but finally I realized I need to let go of some of the control. :thumbsup:

Your not going to find the guy to replace your husband in the field overnight no matter how much money you throw at him. Concentrate more on hiring someone with your husband's work ethic and personality and train the hell out of him to make him a mold of your husband. Since your making an investment, pay him well enough so he is always happy and not looking elsewhere.

There are good electricians in SD. I literally found a guy 30 minutes ago who is unhappy and overworked. I can give him scale and it would be a raise and I just saw his work and I'd feel comfortable leaving him alone for a few hours. Baby steps for me. Your husband is not too different from a lot of smaller owners, myself included.
Ms Y here. Great comments and advice from both you and Brian John.
We were just discussing that if we want to move beyond where we are now, we are going to need to find different ways of doing things, even if that means compromising our standards a bit. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome.

He and I have different strengths. He is a semi perfectionist and I am more of a big picture marketer. (he sees the trees, I see the forest) Those different skill sets can be complementary or a source of conflict. If we work it right, we can go places as long as we are respectful of our different ways of doing things. (which we are)

You are in So. Cal, what part? How did you find your new guy? Does he have a friend in San Diego. We need one or two more asap.

I think we are sometimes too quick to let guys out on their own. He really does want to delegate, he just expects a certain level of quality from guys with XX many years of experience. I don't think he minds letting go of control, but we need to find better ways of setting expectations and dealing with the trip ups so that they improve with each mistake. Some will and some won't. That's employees, but some WILL. Those are the ones we need to find and nurture.

Thanks for your helpful comments.
 
#33 ·
I have great employees and it wasn't by accident that they are great employees. The reason that they are great employees is that I gave them the ability to be great employees.

The first step was a clear job discription for the employee,how could I find someone unless I knew what I was looking for?

The second step was to clearly comunicate to the employee what my expectations were.Often we expect someone to do it our way when we are not clear on what that way is.

The third step was to allow the employee the freedom to do the job.If i have done my job in the second step then I need to step back.

The forth step is to keep clear lines of comunication with the employee both to praise a job well done and to make corrective actions when expectations are not met.
 
#34 ·
Great points.. Thanks.

I think we're good on knowing who we want. Our ads are very specific and we do know exactly who we are looking for. (finding them is a different story)

Point 2 is an area we can improve. Based on too many recent experiences, I think verbal explanations must leave too much room for interpretation. DH keeps saying "these guys are experienced licensed journeymen- should I really have to explain every little thing, they should know how to........?"
I think we need to express our expectations for every little thing IN WRITING. Maybe even a checklist that they have to initial each item acknowleging that they undertand and will do this. PLUS a check list that needs to be initialed before leaving any job or service call. He thinks that would insult them... we're talking about super basic stuff like, test the problem you were sent to repair and make sure it's really fixed, make sure you pick up any trash and clean the area, step back and look at your work. Is it straight and level or wavy like spaghetti? Is it neat? did you use the correct fittings?, Don't forget to GET A CHECK!!! I know they are told but it doesn't seem to stick and some of this stuff really is common sense. Like using the correct size of wire, grounding outlets, using outdoor fittings outside, not indoor, measuring and thinking about the location of a fixture before cutting a hole in someones painted wall.....

Step 3. We're ok but I guess we must need improvement in #2.

Step 4. Please tell me more about about what you do for corrective actions? Do you handle this verbally or do you have a written procedure.

Thanks
 
#35 ·
One thing I have found affective is our monday safety meeting. I use this time to critique the jobs. Its not about fault finding but fact finding.Its focus should be to improve our methods and not about chastizing someone.
A case in point last week one of the guys installed two 30 amp shore powers on GFCI breakers he crossed the neutrals which resulted in the breakers tripping when the customer pluged the boat in.
I made the trip out to fix the issue. So at the monday meeting I mentioned this issue and asked what "I" needed to do to help the guys from having this issue come up. Two ideas were presented by the guys one was to make sure different color tape was available to mark neutrals and another was to create a "test" cord so the outlets could be checked under load.

I just finished building the test cords yesterday the are twist lock cord end attached to a light so the can test the receptacless under load.

So I have made them aware of the problem and also allowed them to find the solution.
 
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#39 ·
We'd hire a female electrician in a heartbeat. All we care about is finding good people with both skill and a positive attitude. Anyone who can carry their weight is welcome here. We've never even received an application from a woman. I think having a female electrician would be an asset, we'd be different from everyone else. If you ever move to SD look us up, we'll hire you. :)
 
#40 ·
We'd hire a female electrician in a heartbeat. All we care about is finding good people with both skill and a positive attitude. Anyone who can carry their weight is welcome here. We've never even received an application from a woman. I think having a female electrician would be an asset, we'd be different from everyone else. If you ever move to SD look us up, we'll hire you. :)


That is sweet, but I am VERY happy where I am. My BF makes good$$$$$ and I have a nice place that is only 8 years from being paid off. It is really funny because he is white collar and works for a big ins. co. here. He is one of those guys with a nice cubicle and he wears slacks everyday. I work in the heat and cold and I'm so dirty that I look like Willie Nelson at the end of the day.:laughing::laughing:
 
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