Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
Accelerate your electrical service business to six-figure months and seven-figure success in record time. Hosted by Clay Neumeyer and Joseph Lucanie, this podcast breaks down the proven frameworks, sales systems, and high-performance strategies used by top electricians and service teams, worldwide.
Each episode delivers real-world scripts, elite communication tools, option-building tactics, and premium homeowner experience frameworks that help contractors grow fast, close confidently, and dominate their market ethically.
If you're ready to shorten the path to consistent $100K+ Service months, build a recognizable premium brand, and step into the next level of leadership and income, this is the place. Plug in, level up, and get ready to scale with speed.
Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
S2 Ep 39 The Hard Truth About Growing a Real Electrical Business
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What happens when your dream job becomes your dead end?
In this episode, Jacob Dombek opens up about 10 years of hard lessons, failed partnerships, and business pain that finally pushed him to stop owning a job and start leading a real business.
Whether you're swinging tools or stuck in the office feeling alone, this episode pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to build a sustainable, premium service company in the electrical trade.
What You’ll Hear:
- The “van university” that transformed Jacob’s mindset
- What full accountability actually sounds like
- The real cost of hiring and training techs
- Why letting go of control is the path to growth
- What most electricians are missing about leadership
⚡ BONUS:
We’re inviting a small group of owners to a private 2-hour virtual workshop that goes beyond tactics and straight into the root of why most businesses stall out. If you’ve been stuck in the same loop for too long, this might be exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
Send us the word “BOLDER.”
DM us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or go to www.serviceloopelectrical.com and just submit a contact form.
00:00 Intro
00:44 Meet Jacob – 11 Years in the Trade
5:27 Van University: Turning Drive Time into Growth
14:23 Why Employees Leave: The Unspoken Truth
32:30 Full Accountability Mode
45:25 The Real Cost of a Sales Tech
56:45 Leading Like It Matters (Because It Does)
1:00:08 Final Message to Every Electrician Stuck in the Van
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Meet Coach Jacob: The New Addition
Speaker 1Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of the Million Dollar Electrician sale to scale for home service pros, and, as you can see, with me today is not Joseph, it's Jacob. We've been talking to you guys about introducing you to our latest addition to the team, our coach, jacob. Jacob's been having a great time working with our gold level clients. What that means is he spends a lot of time helping them customize the process that we really consider a standard, like when we're talking about rising the tide, a better place for all electricians. That means that we had to reset a standard, and that's what we believe the loop method process does, and that's what we really believe in here.
Speaker 1So, jacob's, that extra touch to say here's boots on the ground, a guy still running his company night electric uh, 10 plus years I think you're going on 11, jacob, is that right? You got it, having done a ton in his business also. What we're going to get into today, though, is the vulnerabilities, because, uh, would you say, jacob, it's fair to say that it was all up and up the whole time for 10 years, 11 years uh, no, that's not fair to say at all.
Speaker 1It's definitely not the reflection I had, but I one of the reasons jacob joined the team is because jacob and I have bonded over vulnerabilities on both sides, both mine in business and j's in business. We both know what it's like to hit that rock bottom. To us it's something that's inevitable in time. Everyone will lose in business and it's better to just have lost and learned than, I think, the common what's the difference I'm looking for? Than to have won and never faced that challenge. Maybe that's the best way to say it and maybe the best way to open this up. So, jacob, welcome to the show. Everyone meet Jacob, jacob meet everyone. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2It is. I'm looking forward to it. I've been listening to you and Joe do all these back and forth and I always find myself talking at the truck deck or the stereo putting my own words in now. So it's nice that I can actually be a guest, share those with everyone else so they don't bounce around in my own head alone.
Speaker 1You brought something up organically already that I think deserves attention. You and I talk about turning the van into the university and you just kind of spoke to that. How has that helped you on your journey, whether it's just staying confident in lows or rising high in in the winds? What can you tell us about turning vans into a university?
Speaker 2uh, twofold. Number one is it's great for motivation, for call by call. So if you ran a call in the morning and maybe didn't go great, then you had a 45 minute drive and you could throw on sales trainer, whatever kind of podcast, maybe self-development, but you get 45 minutes of positive, constructive, maybe strategies or role plays of things and you put a bunch of good in your head so that when you roll to the next call it's filled with possibility or maybe a new word, track or question to ask on that sales call. So for just like a very tactical on the way to my next call, if you're going to listen to music or learning, music will get you hyped up, maybe a little bit, but not consistently as much as a real story or tactic that you can employ immediately. So I always just use it as okay. I got a half an hour drive, 45 minute drive. Can I use that time to put another tool in the tool belt? Because, as electricians and tradespeople in general, the quality of tools we have in our belt and and also the specialty of each tool Sometimes when you acquire a special tool there is nothing that replaces that specialty tool when you need that specialty tool. So the more I could have put those things in my belt throughout the years when I was driving in that truck and van. I just used it as the best time to arm myself, but then more so as the best time to arm myself, but then more so.
Speaker 2The development of all that stuff, sorry, the development of yourself listening to all that stuff. You're not going to have a lot of time to do that. If you're building a business. You're not going to just okay, I'm done, work for the day, I've given my family enough attention and I've satisfied my own social obligations and now I finally have this magic three hours to sit and do business development, personal development.
Speaker 2To me that's never happened. It's never been practical to just have free time carved out. So, especially when you're wearing all the hats in the beginning, that's kind of the only time you have. Because maybe in a house you don't want to be listening to content, because you want to be aware of the job site and the things around you, or the homeowner or the dog that's in the house or something. You want to be a bit more aware of your surroundings. So when you're in that van that's the only time where you kind of get to sit by yourself if you're not making phone calls, and absorb and learn and grow and work on the business when you're so busy. Now I'm afforded the luxury of I can actually schedule in time to work on my business during the work week, so I'm not stealing from my family time anymore. But before I had that luxury it was just doubling up on drive time. It was just using the very limited resources we had as a business owner wearing all the hats, so it was kind of a necessity as well.
Speaker 1Before we dive deeper into why you care so much to help people by even sharing that, how do you choose what tool to put in the belt next? Metaphorically speaking, when it comes to what do I need to learn next? How have you prioritized the information that you're listening to on the way to a job?
Speaker 2let's say so the answer at first was I did not prioritize and I just listened to whatever I found right. So I was, so to say, my own curator. So I had to go through a lot of junk to get to maybe some of the gold nuggets right. So I did it in a very painful way of being the curator myself. Now I have a ton of people I can lean on 10 years into business that I can say, hey, I'm struggling on this aspect of sales and I'm going to get people recommending me very pointed content to absorb. So back then I was absolutely just listening to whatever. Why don't necessarily? Yeah, Business in general wasn't trade related. I'd listen to an insurance salesman talk about people. I'd listen to someone that sold homes talk about a lead funnel or capturing marketing or didn't matter where it was coming from. And then a few years in realized that, okay, wait a minute. Actually it was probably around the time where I started to listen to tommy mellow. So a1 garage doors yep realizing a whole.
Speaker 2Wait a minute, there's this content for the trades. All right, now we're going to prioritize at least the trade content. Yeah, then after a while I found the electrician content. So at that point I was like, okay, great, now this content is at least curated for the ears of an electrician. Let me weed through this electrician stuff. Actually, you find the right content you need so lots of trial and error in the beginning, but now the answer is how I could prioritize. The best use of that time is leaning on the people around me and the community I've built to ask for that reach out. So, clay yourself, I admire a lot of what you do with marketing. So when I'm struggling for marketing, am I going to go listen to 100 marketing podcasts or am I going to go ask Clay which marketing podcast should I listen to?
Speaker 2That's where I'm going to start right, yeah, podcast should I listen to? That's where I'm going to start, right, yeah. So sales, wait, what sales podcast, aside from all your content that I should listen to, that benefited you. So you go to the curators that are naturally already in your life, at the places that you want to be, and ask them. So that's how I narrow it down is, in the beginning I didn't. Now I do, and I ask the people that, um, I want to learn something from because they've demonstrated those skills to me. I ask them you know, how did you learn this? What did you do?
Speaker 1yeah, well, I love that. Great share, great start to this. I believe it was Brian Tracy who said no one cares how much you know, though, until they know how much you care. So please, man, just answer this for us why did you decide to essentially cut one leg off in your business and to take that leg and step into ours and ultimately commit half time to helping other people achieve greatness in their business?
Van University: Learning While Driving
Speaker 2so I knew that question was going to probably come up and I was reflecting on, I don't know, when other people join the entrepreneurial journey at what stage in their life. I find there's either the young gun who hits it right out of secondary school and says I'm going to take on the world and own it, and they start the world with an entrepreneurial fire. But then there's the other half of entrepreneurs that kind of develop it at some point out of necessity or ambition. Later on. There's the other half of entrepreneurs that kind of develop it at some point out of necessity or ambition. Later on.
Speaker 2I I had the idea right from 18 that I probably wasn't going to be a good employee, and I don't know why I thought that. But it wasn't because I wasn't good at working. It was just I really liked choosing what I worked on. So all my previous jobs I'd have a list of responsibilities which was great, but then half of them I'd really hate and I realized that I dreaded my job because half the things I didn't like to do. So when I looked at my future through the lens of okay, what kind of career or something I can do that I have more control over my actual tasks I kind of just landed on.
Speaker 2No matter what I pick, it's going to be someone else's dreams I'm working on and I'm never going to have control. So I always kind of felt like I needed to learn something and then create my own thing from it. I did not know what that was going to be. My high school shop teacher I was sitting with him in grade 12 he said I don't know what's going to be either. Man, why don't you just do the trades until you figure it out? I was like yep, that's a good. So I went to the trades and I started out as a carpenter. Actually.
Speaker 1Me too.
Speaker 2Just because, oh really that I did not know about you.
Speaker 1Yeah, concrete at first. Concrete carpenter Dirtiest kind.
Speaker 2Yeah, but all the carpenters are needed, and right now I need a trim carpenter. So if anyone in Winnipeg is a trim carpenter, call Knight Electric, anyways, lots of different types of carpentry. But it wasn't what I wanted to do, because I started my first week and I realized that the guy in charge of me I've been doing the same thing for 40 years and nothing had changed about his day-to-day. I was like, well, I want a little more than that. So I looked around, I'm like, okay, what trade has the most that I can like add on to the physical? Like what's the most problem solving one? And so I started looking at, like advanced framing, and you know you can calculate hips, valleys, whatever. And then you realize a lot of stuff is just shipped to you pre-made.
Speaker 2So, yeah, hey, well, I looked around plumbing. There wasn't enough technical in it for me, um, and so I had a cabin neighbor. Um, my aunt and uncle had a cabin and their neighbor owned an electrical company in winnipeg. So I said, hey, I'm in carpentry, I want to get out, kind of want to be an electrical. Um, do you think that's good for me? And he's like, yeah, uh, I'll let you know when I have a spot. So I waited patiently for that spot. Opportunity was given to me and I I jumped in and so how old are you at this point?
Speaker 1sorry, uh, 19, 19. Okay, really cool, so you're in the trade I'm in the trade, I'm young.
Speaker 2I know that whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to eventually turn into some kind of business or something to be in charge of.
Speaker 2But then I start working and realize that I kind of enjoy the paycheck and electricians are paid very well Once you become third, fourth level et cetera. And I was like, well, why don't I just do more overtime, bank money work while I'm young and then coast for the rest of my life? So I was all set up. I changed my plan. I'm going to be a company man. I'm going to do this ticket, do this ticket, gonna get my red seal electrical up in canada it's a red seal get my electrician's license and I'd be a company guy. I would work my way up form in etc project manager. And then I realized that that was never.
Speaker 2My boss's intention was to let people run and rise up the ranks in his company. He had all those spots reserved for his nieces and nephews and family. There was no amount of work anyone in the company could do to place above and beyond family. So I was given a very rude awakening call, laid off in a very untimely time. That was not planned and it was was a direct spite to me. For the timing of it. I don't need to explain why. So I was like you know what I'm out of the trades I was 24. I was like I'm done with the trades. I had just got my ticket.
Speaker 2I didn't even work a full year at journeyman salary yet and I was already so burned from this one employer that I gave four years of my life to. I worked all the out-of-town work. I did all the overtime. I was running crews by a level two. I did all the responsibility with none of the compensation and then, as soon as they could, they kicked me out to dry and I was like I'm not doing that again for another four years to be kicked out. So I was about to leave the trade and someone stalked me. I was actually doing a side job and the owner of the house was like wait, you're getting out of electrical. You're the best guy I've ever hired. I did a few side jobs for him. He ended up being ceo of one of the largest city-owned um buildings, the event center in our town okay so he goes.
Speaker 2there's a really rare opportunity that just opened up. It's a pensioned position, full benefits, time off, all indoor work, so like the dream job a tradesperson could be handed to at that young age.
Speaker 1I need to call attention to something right here for our listeners, viewers, wherever you're watching us guys, if you're on YouTube, if you're on your Spotify or Apple podcast, whatever it is, please pay attention, rewind, listen to what Jacob is saying again here, because he just spelled out the exact reason why someone on your staff might go and start their own operation.
Speaker 1He just spelled it out out like written textbook, all the pieces. It started with conflict, a wall that Jacob realized he couldn't get over and, by the way, for you this might not be a real wall, that could just be Jacob's perspective and being stuck because the owner let him feel that way and did not continue to lead and create that journey map for Jacob to grow within and eventually you saw this opportunity outside of that and the opportunity, the list you just made is what all electricians or all workers will go through. You know what. They're predictable. They're predictable things really right, and it's about first your security and just being able to pay your bills and then your future. That's basically Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Of course, love connection, it goes on and on, but I just wanted to really call attention to that because that's never been spelled out so well on this podcast before, as it just was.
Speaker 2So there it was laid out right. So isn't that the perfect opportunity? I thought so, so I said you know what? I'm not leaving the trade. That's a great offer. I'll absolutely take it, and I started that path Now. If anyone has ever been offered a job in maintenance electrical and you've never actually worked in maintenance electrical, you should probably figure out what maintenance electrical entails first. I did not. I didn't realize it was about 99% drinking coffee.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's all pensionable hours, Jacob.
Speaker 2Yep, I actually wasn't allowed to do anything, jacob. Yep, I actually wasn't allowed to do anything. I would identify a problem, follow the process of informing a building engineer to change the light bulb. A few days later I'd get a report that the engineer successfully changed the light bulb but in fact did not turn the light fixture on. So he issued a work order back to me to now investigate the viability of the ballast and behind that bulb, and then I was able to put in a request to make a change with the ballast.
Speaker 2And then I could change the ballast successfully 90 days from that day so your writing really improved at this job uh, I know I should have, but I was not engaged in this paperwork, clay, it was not exciting stuff, fair enough. And I looked at it like, okay, so I'm inside, which now I no longer care about because I'm inside and bored out of my mind. Yeah, a pension that's going to take care of me in the future, but I'm not focused on it anymore. I'm focused on the next 40 years, because now that's what's in front of me is all the time leading up to that retirement. And then I looked around at all my coworkers and I was a third of the age of all of them.
Speaker 1Okay, Young maintenance hungry, this ain't it either.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was looking around, I was like one of these things, not like the other, and it's me, yeah, and the guys were really nice, but you could tell they did not like having me around because I was very quick moving and it maybe made them look a little bit slower. So I love those guys and actually I'm still in good contact with all of them. There was the maintenance plumber, the maintenance carpenter, the maintenance HVAC, the maintenance boiler tech, everything Right, and as far as I were, I think they're all still there if they haven't retired yet, but anyways, so that wasn't it for me. So now I was like, okay, well, I did the company thing, did the construction thing, did the maintenance side of it, jumped right ahead to retirement. Still need to do some with my life, and I don't think it's this trade. And then I read the e-myth.
Jacob's Entrepreneurial Journey Begins
Speaker 2So michael berber, entrepreneur, bro caesar, and I was like that sounds like fun, I want to have my own entrepreneurial caesar. And so, out of necessity, there was not working for someone else, not going for maintenance, guess, I'm going on my own. So I did not want to start my company 11 years ago. I did it because there was no choice at that point, because it was either I gave up on my ticket and start a whole new career or I do what I can and turn this into one last shot. So couldn't find the company I wanted to work for, so I had to make it, and that's where I started my journey 11 years ago, and again calling attention to what you just said.
Speaker 1Right, we always say there's two reasons someone starts a business, but there's actually three. And it's predictable, right, because they could be making more of the pie themselves, because they feel they'd also maybe have more time if they just worked for themselves, which we all know becomes a fallacy. But then number three is because they feel they could do something better than where they're currently at or what they've experienced in the past. So there has to be that improvement piece and there has to be that deep grounded. Why with that? In order for someone to actually succeed? Because, as we know, resilience is a huge piece and I have a feeling that's what's coming up next year.
Speaker 2So what does one do when they're young and know nothing about business? But you know you're going to start a business. Well, you can just start doing it. But I started with finding out someone in my life who actually ran an electrical business Turns out my I guess it's not my direct uncle my dad's cousin. Is that making my second cousin Nice I guess it's not my direct uncle my dad's cousin? Is that making my second cousin Nice? My second cousin owned and operated and exited an electrical company in my very city.
Speaker 2Okay, I live in, although he's the guy. I mean, he must know what it takes, right.
Speaker 1So I said no offense to him at all when I asked this, but sarcastically almost. I'm sure he had it all figured out too for you.
Speaker 2Well, I called him up and let's just call him Bob. So, Uncle Bob, I'd like to start my own electrical company. He said what are you doing right now? I was like I'm doing houses, oh, okay. Well, yeah, you're going to have to stop that. So how electrical companies work is you take whatever you think it's going to cost. We get 10% overhead and 5% profit.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2He gave me about three sentences of his time. That's as much as he gave me. He said if you want to meet sometime, I'll talk to your dad and I'll let you know if I have some time to meet. I was like okay. So basically he blew me off. He's like I'm not going to teach this young guy, there's too much to teach, whatever. And so the only thing I had in my head was okay, well, at least I know the numbers. I need 10% overhead and 5% profit. I kid you not, I had those numbers in my head for four years.
Speaker 1What happened during those four years?
Speaker 2nothing actually, how do you do a negative? I was negative by a lot. Yeah, I just and I, as good as I am, I like to think I am at math I was not applying any math to my business strategy at all, I was just aside from the percentages I wasn't looking at. Okay, well, how much available time do I have to work? And if I actually did work all that like I didn't put any of the logistics together about how to come up with a price, I just knew, okay, well, if I'm paying myself $45 an hour, add on 15%, add on 15% to my material, and that was it. I quoted like that and worked like that, and it was a very terrible grind. In that time I took on a business partner who was so myself was the electrician. I was like, okay, great, I'm going to stay focused on electrical.
Speaker 2I'm going to hire out this business part. Guy went to high school at the just finished university.
Speaker 2He's an engineer really good at organizing things and he was my roommate at the time. He's like I'm in Perfect, tried that out. That out turns out just wasn't cut out to learn the skill of business and he immediately went back to his career as an engineer, first lesson. So I was like, okay, great second time. You know what I'm gonna do, the business part, I'm gonna partner with the electrician. So I went out and a guy went to school with for electrical. We got our ticket at the same time.
Speaker 2He was also about one year on his own, same kind of you know, just barely surviving. Getting out there I said hey brother, want to roll this up together? What do you think We'll work together? Good, right, we got along good for this 10 weeks. We met each other in college. Yeah sure, he was the complete opposite of me and I had no idea because we never worked together, because why would you put two journeymen on the same site? Right, I had apprenticed an apprentice and it wasn't until like month eight or nine where one of my apprentices was with me and he said whoa man, said what he's like. You do things a lot differently than other owner. What do you mean by that? Well, for example. And then he listed things that horrified me.
Speaker 2This was my business partner. So all my head was like damn, how many jobs I have to drive back to that he's been at. He's been working with me for a year just, for example, using residential material in a commercial setting. So NMD in a tin stud, like okay, that kind of stuff, yeah, very. And and to to to his. Like he was a country trained electrician. He was never close to a supply house, so it's not even his fault. Like that's what he was taught how to operate. He was in the farmer's hog barn and it was what do you have nearby? Then get this working. Like that's how he was brought up. So that was all he knew was get it done. Like you don't get to go buy parts, like you have what you have. And he never got rid of that mindset.
Speaker 2So fortunately, I had to buy out another business partner. Now I'm really in the hole. I bought out two business partners while running an unprofitable business for five years. Yikes. So what do I do now? Well, I, I actually took a job. I took a contract for three months to run someone else's company. Hmm, Interesting.
Speaker 2So my role there was sorry not to run the company was to run the office side of their company, right, so the logistics of actually, funny enough, it was a coaching and leadership company, fair enough. So they taught coaching and leadership worldwide. A lot in the UK, a lot in the States, very minimal clients, but it was big organizations and just kind of disc profiling upper management and helping sort out, you know, creating job roles and that kind of stuff. Working with large teams and difficult people, de-escalating high-performing ceos in stressful situations, that kind of stuff, stuff.
Speaker 1Learning the people.
Speaker 2Learning people. Yes, you got it, and that was the worst three months of my life. Not because Sorry to laugh, no, that's fine. It was not because of what I was doing, right? I loved working with these people and learning the soft skills and learning leadership and talking to these high-level people and organizing this content and courses and flights and all that like that was fun. But the end of the day, what wasn't fun was remembering why I did and start my journey when I was 18 was I don't want to just do this checklist for somebody else, like where is my dreams that I'm working on in this equation other than getting money out of this?
Speaker 2and the money wasn't enough to make my dreams come true. So at that point I realized, damn, I got myself a job again and I'm stuck here and it's very calculable. I know I'm making this much indefinitely with minimal raises. And at that point, like I was running kind of the office side ish, there was nowhere to move up, right, like it was kind of capped, so immediately felt like, uh, you know, baby, backed into a corner, like, oh, gotta do something right. And so at that time I was operating night electric part-time. I went back to full-time with night electric and I was like, okay, this time I cannot fail, it has to be. I have five years of experience behind me of everything not to do. This is the last, as we say, the old college try, let's go all in, all in. And I joined the Rebs group on Facebook.
Speaker 1That's where we met.
Speaker 2Start mixing. That's correct.
Speaker 1And I think we did one or two interviews with you on revs as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, one was an impromptu, I think. I just grabbed the mic one day and and then the second one. You asked me and we planned that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah yeah, that was a cool time. I mean, that was really where all of this began, and that was just a Wednesday night initiative. We treated it basically like a stitch and bitch, but we always just promised to try to provide value for people, whether it was dealing with the personal or trying to help with pricing or sales or marketing or anything we could. Humble beginnings, brother, humble beginnings that's what I'd say to that.
Speaker 2But for me it was the first time someone told me that you can create a residential business. So remember, I'm at like year five where the first four years I knew that, or I was told and I believe, that residential electrical is not a viable business. You had to run a commercial shop with high volume, low margins, margins and you would just be able to sustain a residential division on the side, but that would never, ever be a profit center or nothing. And I had that 10 and overhead five percent commission burned into my brain as well. That's the only example I know personally. The professional business is.
The Harsh Reality of Business Mentors
Speaker 1That's the numbers he gave me if the name e-myth wasn't already taken for a book, we would write it, because that is the biggest myth in electrical I believe yeah and it passes around like wildfire, as you know 10 and 5, 10 and 5, 10 and 5 low margin, high volume. Low margin, high volume. We have to do it because they do it and there's no other way. Clearly, no one would accept us presenting in any other way. Keeps me awake at night, brother.
Speaker 2Well, it's kept me awake at night for 11 years. So you open up the world to have that confirmation that, hey, you can grow a residential business Absolutely. In fact, it can be the focus of your business and the only focus. Boom, okay, now I'm in a community of people that are trying to make a residential electrical business work. First time I've ever been surrounded that I've been in five years of business surrounded by not great colleagues. Yeah, right, I did have a few mentors that were not mentors now looking back. That used me for years because I was a cheap electrician and as soon as I noticed my value and at this point I went from 45 an hour to 75 an hour at year three, the jump from 45 to 75 ruined a seven-year relationship.
Speaker 2This guy was my best friend. We, first of all, I adopted his vision of the future and he was turning around entire neighborhood in our city. It was the ghetto. Actually, if you look it up, it's the murder capital neighborhood of the murder capital of Canada, like a very scary neighborhood. Yeah, I followed him blindly to move in the door next door, to live in that neighborhood, to help him rewire the neighborhood and fix it all up. Wow, I was in there grinding it out, and I filled every one of those rentals. When we'd done renovating them, I found the people to rent them.
Speaker 2Wow, not only did I follow his vision of this so-called mentor, moved into the dangerous area, helped him renovate it, then helped him fill it, I literally built my community around me. I chose all my neighbors and then I decided after all that he had another house come up and I said, okay, great, just so you know, I kind of need to raise my prices. I've been talking to some business people and I think I'm going to go around 75 an hour. We never had a proper conversation after that, ever again. He threw away the entire relationship. Every sacrifice I made up to that point meant nothing at that point and I got a really rude awakening in business that be very careful who you take information from, who you work for, what kind of advice you get, because not everyone has the right intentions and I totally missed that from these mentors that were just using me for cheap labor.
Speaker 1So many times we talk about the race to the bottom. Yeah, bro, you were literally at the bottom.
Speaker 2Yeah, the bottom.
Speaker 1I was on the ground yeah, and like sprinting in it. That's crazy. I didn't actually know this about you and I'm glad you shared that because I've never actually heard a better example. We talk about the tank top terries and chucking a truck and the guy maybe it's an apprentice moonlighting for 40 or 30 or even 20 bucks an hour, but you're talking like a full-time effort in a dangerous area trying to help people with no money and then helping rent out those situations after the renovated. That is wild.
Speaker 2Right, and it all was because I thought I was building something bigger that never actually came to fruition, just like that job. I spent four years going for the other guy Didn't matter, right? So now it's really cemented in my head that there is nobody coming to save you. It is you, brother, it's just you. So I went into full accountability mode and I just started taking accountability for all my actions. Can we pause there?
Speaker 1for a sec. Yes, what do you mean by that? What's full accountability mode? Treat me like I've never heard this before. I know nothing about what you're saying. What does it mean to be in this place where no one's coming to save me, but I'm going full accountability mode Before?
Speaker 2that moment excuses were part of my vocabulary. I had no problem telling people an excuse why something didn't happen. I had no problem putting everything out of my internal locus of control. It was way easier for me to say, yep, that was because the market sucked, that was because my employee didn't listen, that was because the customer was an idiot, that was because insert excuse here. So it was a New Year's Eve resolution to not complain anymore.
Speaker 2Don't wish it were easier, you were better correct. That was my full accountability moment. I was done ever saying any excuse. And if you ask tara now, it takes a while. Tara's my partner. It takes a while for me to complain about something and I preface it with this like two minute intro. She's like stop, you're allowed to vent. I'm like no, like I need to, I need to say something that's frustrating me. She goes yes, you can be frustrated with something. I'm like okay, this is bugging me like.
Speaker 2I. It's really hard for me to complain right now. I've just worked so hard on that and and so because of that, I realized how much was in my control. So I didn't know business. I thought I knew business, but I didn't, so I had to learn business, okay. Well, what's business? Well, business is a language. You can become fluent in it, but there's so many different languages you can learn, okay. So which business language did I want to learn? You helped me identify that. It was the language of excellent customer service and premium right. There's lots of different languages you can learn, so I finally identified the language I wanted to learn, which was a premium model.
Speaker 2I wanted to serve at the highest level. I wanted to have an actual marketing funnel that brought consistent leads and it wasn't emotional based right Going in and out with the ebbs and flows of tax season and holidays and credit card statements. That's when you let the world control the weather, but you can make your own weather. You can actually learn all these things. You could learn sales, so that it's not oh, you just got lucky. That person called you on the phone and said I need you to replace absolutely everything in my house. Like you never got that phone call. You got that I, and said I need you to replace absolutely everything in my house. Like you never got that phone call, you got that. I think something's wrong, can you come look at it? Right? So Okay, I got to learn all this stuff. That's a lot to learn.
Speaker 2I've built teams, but I never built teams before. I had employees that were just kind of helpers Right, I didn't empower them. I before I had employees that were just kind of helpers right, I didn't empower them. I didn't have any training curriculum. There was zero onboarding. I didn't show them what success looked like. I didn't job cost nothing, I just knew that like enough for their paychecks. Let's keep rolling right, like so. Now I was going to build everything very intentionally and so that full accountability was all right. I'm going to identify what I know, what I don't know, and if I don't know it, who's going to be the one to learn it or know it? Who, not how right I remember who wrote that book dan sullivan.
Speaker 1Dan sullivan, yep, who know how. If you haven't read that, guys go grab it. Dan sullivan's got a whole series of books. Uh, I just got a new copy of the gap and the gain yesterday too. I love that one as well. Sorry to interrupt your flow, book nerd 101 over here, not a problem.
Speaker 2I love books myself, and that one is on the list. The next one you mentioned that just came out it's going to be after Adam Grant's Hidden Potential. I'm finishing.
Speaker 1Oh man.
Speaker 2That's good. So now we're fast forward to five years from that REBS meeting. I've identified residential service niche as what I want to build my business in. I owned all my downfalls and I've been working diligently ever since. I think I've improved a bit as a marketer. I think I've improved a lot as a salesperson. I think I've improved enough as a marketer. I think I've improved a lot as a salesperson. I think I've improved enough as a business owner.
Speaker 2But I mean, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. And it's not about learning at all. At some point you're like no, no, who's doing this for me? Who's going to learn bookkeeping for me? Who's going to learn answering the phone? So now I've spent the last year trying to run a business and not work in it.
Speaker 2So after 10 years of trial and error, I was bootstrapping in the beginning. So 10 years on I had not had that big payday yet. I'm still alive, I'm still viable financially, but there's definitely some scars on me from the last 10 years of business lessons. Yeah, so I could have chose at that 10-year mark which I had last fall, to wrap it up and say I gave it the college try, I gave it. 10 years of my life I could not produce a predictably profitable business year over year. There was always up and down, up and down. I never figured it out. I could have gave up there, washed it up and said hey, are you hiring Clay? Can I work for you? Anybody? Does anyone in my town want to hire me?
Speaker 2I could have done that, but we had a really long talk Again, my partner Tara and I, and we went all in together. So now she is the administrative arm of the company and then, since her joining and us doubling down, we are experiencing growth month over month and year over year.
Speaker 2That's running a business and not working in it. Yeah, and so I did not want to accidentally slip back into the van and back into the truck and take over the show again. So cue clay, saying hey, there's a bunch of people just like you that need to hear what you're saying. You have some fair time to help out. And I said yes, because that will keep me out of my own truck.
Taking Full Accountability After Failure
Speaker 2So it was two things. It was one I absolutely want to help everybody out and you can see I've had a journey where I learned a lot of lessons and I'm really excited to share those scars with everybody. But also it's just a smart business move to keep yourself out of your own business so that you can actually operate it as a business. I know I can go in and knock sales out of the park. I know I can go in and install for profit all day. I know I can do all those things. That I've proved that over the last 10 years. But the goal now is not for me to do those things, it's for my team to do those things. So my next 10 years is focused on being the leader and the person that moves the pieces on the chessboard, rather than running around the chessboard myself trying to move everything from the board.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's awesome, and obviously we've seen a ton of growth. Yeah, it's awesome, man, and obviously we've seen a ton of growth. Uh, jacob at one point was also a client of sle.
Speaker 2I think he did over six, seven, maybe nine months with us yeah, it was a three month and then a six month and then, at the end of that six months, we did another three. So, yeah, a year total yeah.
Speaker 1So jacob worked hand in hand with us a ton, definitely knew the process, definitely had like attendance records for a while where you just attended every class, didn't matter where you were van university, full immersion. We love that about you. One of the things that stood out about jacob was not only did you attend class, you always turned on a video and engaged and tried to help someone in the room and then in the community, and I'm sure there could be some of those still old community members listening now to this. To this day we remain in good relation with a lot of these people. So you actually were the most productive networking person we've ever had in the group. But that's not actually why we invited you specifically to join us. Do you know why we chose you?
Speaker 2If I had to guess, it may be because of my value of mine.
Speaker 1It's a big piece, right, you demonstrated that for sure, for sure. But a lot of it's actually the grit. See what people don't realize about recruiting and building towards a vision. We've actually had a number of established multi-million dollar exits or eight figure exits or million dollar electricians who apply here and want to be a coach. But just like we teach, guys we always say this Don't listen to what we say, watch what we do. Just like we teach, we're looking for the person. This is a huge fundamental that we're actually going deep on in a private workshop.
Speaker 1For anyone that saw my Facebook post called Boulder Jacob you were one of the people that commented there's about 100 people invited to this. It's very private and small Just because, if you guys follow the podcast at all, if you send us a message, boulder, wherever you're listening, wherever you hear this first, you could be invited to this too. But the point is we're going deep on the other side of this and what that means is I don't look for the human doing, I look for the human being. Human doing has an endless consequence of comparison and competitive analysis and there's no like when I say endless, bro, I I think our listeners know, I think you know this. I think everyone knows this story very well.
Speaker 1When you start looking to other people to decide how you value yourself, it's a problem. When you really look for A players, when you're looking for a CSR, for example, if you focus on the human doing, you could still end up with Oscar the Grouch on the phone, even though they have a great call booking rate, but that might not match your values. To me, premium service isn't being a bitch on the phone. To me, premium service is someone that can be truthful, be authentic and actually want to smile when they pick up. That's what I want in a CSR.
Speaker 1That's the human being. It's not someone who's threatened by the person across from them. It's someone who sees an equal and wants to help them. Bro, that's why you got the invite above anyone else. Again, we've had other people say well, I could do this, but you get the sense about the ego and like the competitive nature that they're measuring up to us, and I really don't like that. I don't want someone to come into our groups and our classes or even on our podcast to measure up against others and to be a threat. You know that feeling, that big arrogance in the room.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's one of the things I love about our partner Joseph as well, who just doesn't have that arrogance about him. He's a kind person who truly wants to help people, and that's what we see in you. That's why you're a perfect fit for this. I don't know if I ever explained it in that way, but here it is live.
Speaker 2I appreciate that synopsis.
Speaker 1You got it, man, and at this level. There's a couple of things I want to throw in here. Win of the week this one we've held on to for a bit but I wanted to share. When Jacob first took this role, in halftime you were planning for your first class. On Friday, you had hired a new service sales tech. You were training in the field and on during that training you let us know that you had basically 10 X your average ticket, with a $23,000 platinum sale with the trainee, while yourself training to help others. Isn't it strange that once you tend to like loosen on the reins a bit, sometimes the horse rides better.
Speaker 2Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1Right. Have you heard that before, and how is that impacting your business now?
Speaker 2I haven't heard it quite laid out like that, but letting go of control is, is is part of it, right, and so I'm very familiar with the concept of letting go of control, but I'm not familiar with actually doing that, and so that's what I'm doing now. Right, letting go of control, and you know I probably do these exercises too much. Um, but I'll run numbers for, for example, like this morning, I did it, I'll be honest. I ran my, my, the guy I'm training at sales. I ran his average calls and how much he pulled in.
Speaker 2And if I were to run them based on my numbers, and I looked at the difference and I said I was looking at my someone in the office here and they saw the difference number and it was a big number and I said that's the cost of training a salesman. Right, because previously we were looking at all, right, how much wages for the month, how much is that extra van, how much is the extra insurance gas, extra iPad Well, we don't use iPads. The extra tablet, the extra gear, we thought that was the cost of a new salesman, but that is half of it. The other half is the lost revenue on all the calls you have to not burn that's a bad word the calls that they're learning on and you lose revenue. So I let go of that control and I watched that number grow over two months and I held my patience and I held tight and in that third month it all came back and his numbers are great nice and he's got reducing I love he's not in my
Speaker 2numbers. He's not in my numbers no way not yet but he's gonna get there way quicker than I got there. I took 11 years to get these numbers. He's gonna get there in less than a year. So when you let go of control, yeah, you may lose a bit of that confidence that you have for a bit and things might get shaky and you may see numbers temporarily drop. But in the end now I have a fully autonomous salesperson on the road that's producing great numbers and that's going to be indefinite now until he decides to move on to a new opportunity. And now I have the next training behind him and the third training. So short-term pain for long-term gain letting go of control is the short-term pain. The long-term gain is watching all these birds fly when they jump out of the nest.
Speaker 1I love that, yeah, really impactful, and something you just said I think a lot of people miss. Your obsession with the numbers, by the way, ties perfectly into this, and I remember a point where you reached out to me and you said hey, man, do you mind if we do a quick one-to-one call, I'll pay you for the hour, like whatever it takes. I just want another perspective, please. You remember this call I'm talking about the pricing call. Yeah, and I don't believe I took any financial anything for that. We just met and went through this. That's how I'm remembering this.
Speaker 2Yeah, you were like no dude, let's go. You comped it, you were good awesome.
Team Building and Letting Go of Control
Speaker 1Okay, great, because that's true to my form and I love helping, so, um, important to me still. That said, you walked me through probably two, three, maybe four tabs of one of the most thoughtful thoughtful, fully compensating all burdens growth, wages, materials, historical data versus projected data, charts, percentages, profit margin everything was built into this. I honestly thought it could have been an accountant who made this. I honestly thought it could have been an accountant who made this, but then it couldn't have been because there was so much trade, knowledge and investment from our side in it too. Yeah, and I learned something about you on that day You're a serious operator man.
Speaker 1You love the numbers like you're like a. There's a. You mentioned the language of business and you mentioned a partner who was an engineer. I see you somewhere in the middle. I recognize your technical electrical aptitude, but I see this engineer behind, behind. You know the surface level as well and a bit of the accountant is in there, very, very specialized and attention to detail and not to suck up too much.
Speaker 1But I just really that's what I saw in you that I think our gold members are now seeing the benefit of as well, because your systems that you've built in your business are quite polished. It's nice to see that your onboarding has XYZ steps, on what days, how long it should take, proper sign off for that, so that your tech knows exactly what's next when it's going to happen, what KPIs you should be at to get to the next step and everything in between. It's remarkable, man, and I really wanted to call attention to that because someone can listen to this. They could be in Van University and this could be the furthest thing from the next thing to do. But at some point, if you're to take your business seriously, you've got to recognize these trends. You've got to see these numbers.
Speaker 1Like Jacob just said, now knows exactly what it costs to bring in that level of salesperson. How does that benefit us to know that? Well, how about to plan for it to start? How about knowing exactly what it costs last time we brought an electrician, so that the next time we have that aside, or we know what to expect at least, or we can adjust our pricing in this six months or this quarter or this year, whatever that period may be. And how powerful would your guys' business be if you had those level of insights? This is turning into something bigger, man, and I just want you to jump in if you got something to say, or otherwise, I'm going to keep going on this little rant for a moment.
Speaker 2Keep it rolling.
Speaker 1I recently read a book and I've talked about it here a couple of times, but it's called Challenger Sales. Ironically, it's not really so much about the sale In it here a couple of times, but it's called Challenger Sales. Ironically, it's not really so much about the sale. In fact, a lot of it came from more of the project perspective and proper tenders, requests for proposals and then submitting proposals, not in the way that we teach, but at a higher level big organization to big organization, business to business, sales. How do we capture someone's attention? How do we put an offer in front of someone that is competitive in that market and stands as competitive? Because even last night, on a podcast that I'm listening to, I'm hearing you know what your best customers and this is the truest thing ever said your best customers are great today because of the great work, the great offer, the great value that you presented. But they're only that way so long as your offer, your value, your communication stands to be the best option that they have. Do you know when you lose your best customers?
Speaker 2When the next best thing comes along.
Speaker 1That's it. It's predictable, it's when the next best thing comes along. So there's a calling on all of us to continuously innovate, to keep pushing the edge, to keep understanding challenger sales. This book back to it. The real point was you know what your competitive edge is, your insights, your unique ability to take the data before you guys I'm sorry this got so nerdy, but this is the absolute truth To mine, that data for your truth. To understand how your staff think and act and do, to understand how your clients think, act and respond and communicate, and to meet them there with continuously increasing values, so that you never have to watch them walk away. That's the ultimate secret and I think you get that very well. Thank you, man.
Speaker 1I know we're getting late in this episode and I think we went a little bit off the rails with where we maybe even intended to go. But if you, if I mean and you know lots of people listen to this thing Now if you're just speaking one-on-one to an electrician who may be on a similar journey to yours, what's that message that you want them to have? Now, jacob, what, what would you share immediately? What do you think is your biggest thing that you would look to help them with, or question to ask and then an answer that one's on you, man, most important takeaway for them.
Speaker 2You have to want to succeed, not for the money. You have to be able to work without looking at the clock, your purpose or your vision. For when this plays out and you get your goal, what are you going to do with that success? Some people don't have a dream big enough. They don't need to run a business. It's not that their dream is not valid. Some people may be running on the treadmill for no reason, but if it truly is something you need, because I know for myself, I have to take care of a lot more than my family.
Speaker 2I lost my dad really unexpectedly, and I had to take care of a lot of other people as well, and I knew that I would never get by in life with just a salary for a job. I knew that I always have to take care of a few people. I knew I needed something exponentially more, and so for me, my why is to provide for everyone I need to, and my own growing family. And, by the way, I do want to call something out. I keep calling Tara my partner, but that's force of habit. We are now engaged. So my fiance, tara. There we go. Good correction, good correction. Yeah, but I'm just so happy now that I have the support of this dream with Tara, and the real cost of growing a business isn't to you, it's to those around you, it's to your family, it's to the people you employ. They're almost a guinea pig in your experiment, right? You need to take that responsibility so dang seriously. These people are putting their family's hands in your hands, being the provider of paychecks. So if you want that responsibility and you truly want to grow a business to achieve goals that can only be achieved by that level of success and wealth that you cannot achieve working for someone else, then double down on this journey.
Speaker 2Don't get caught up in the trends. Follow the patterns of historical data and do not lead out of emotion. Find a way to make your decisions out of logic. Don't fire someone because you feel like you should Fire them because you have to, based on the numbers. Make your decisions so intentional. If you're going to go down this path. If you are and you take it seriously and you make intentional decisions and all the responsibilities that you put on your shoulders you do not take lightly. That is the leader that people are going to follow. If you half-ass that, you will never have people following you that you want to. You may get stuck, like me, for a decade building and tearing down businesses up and down, up and down, up and down, not realizing the game you're actually playing here.
Speaker 1So if you're going to do it, let's do it, but focus up.
Speaker 2It takes a lot more than a job. That first year or two we're going to have to put in more than 40 hours a week sorry, it's gonna happen. You need to get your family on board with this. Hey, I'm gonna take this thing seriously. I want to grow a company and not just a job. It's going to require a little bit of extra effort the next year or two. Are you okay if I sacrifice some of our evenings and weekends?
Speaker 2It's not a decision for you to make, it's a decision for your family to make, right? So if everyone on board in your life wants to support you on this journey because you cannot do it without support of those if tara did not support me building this business, I would not be able to. There's no way. Yeah, right. So if you have the support and your vision is so real and your reason is there, then please don't think that this doesn't take a lot of work. You need all that in place, plus the hard work, and if you do that, you will succeed, because there has to be people that succeed.
Speaker 2Why is it not the person that puts the most amount of prep, the most amount of logic, the most amount of um, I guess, intention behind the decision making. Don't they have at least a better chance of making it than the people that are kind of half in, half out? Right, are you going to learn the skill of business? Are you going to learn the language of business? Are you just going to dabble in it while you just continue to be an electrician? Say, you own a company, but you don't. The company owns you. You got a job and your boss is kind of crap, mic drop, he doesn't pay you for the overtime. Yeah, he doesn't care about you being sick. You still got to show up, right. So take it seriously.
Speaker 2If you're going to do this thing, we can do it. It can be done. It's all out there. The knowledge is there. The access to the knowledge is not the secret. There's nothing at SLE that is not out on the internet. Everything is learnable. The access, the information, has never been the barrier. It has always been the person willing to act on the information they know, willing to make moves, willing to talk to their family, get the support, get the buy-in. Talk to their employees, let them know what we're building here. Communicate that vision to people. If you're going to do this, do it. That's my advice.
Speaker 1That was super powerful.
Speaker 2If you don't want to do this and save everybody a lot of headaches, including yourself and your family, find something else to do find something else to do like a hobby business on the side, anything but this.
Speaker 1Jacob, I want to thank you so much, man. We went a full hour and a bit here in this chat. I I know that your story is going to inspire some people. A true discussion about that race to the bottom and, like I said, a sprint at the bottom and all the way back up from you know, building your company up. I know you guys are experiencing some really great sales, some record months. Right now You're experiencing some holy newfound joy in helping our clients, and our clients are experiencing a ton of additional detailed and structured development support above and beyond the standards that we teach here on the podcast and our free content and even at the lower levels of our programming, really going above and beyond and customizing that.
Speaker 1Now to tag into what Jacob said, you guys I I briefly plugged this little event very private. Uh, there's more than just electricians in the room. By the way, it's called boulder. If you want an invite, the events uh set up on facebook doesn't have to be there, but if you say boulder anywhere that you're hearing this or seeing this, whether that's youtube or any other channel, or go to our website, serviceloopelectricalcom, and send us a contact form. Of course, you can reach out to either of us, jacob Dombeck or Clay Neumeier, on Facebook. I'm also on Instagram. There's a ton there and here's why you would want to attend this event. If you don't know this, if you haven't seen my interview, well, I went to the school of hard knocks.
Speaker 1I did not learn things well, I learned things fast and the things I learned were about not being a very productive person inside the box. Some of the things Jacob described today. I always knew there was something different for me. I didn't know how to express that and I found myself growing, starting my first business in concrete, becoming very angry when I lost everything, including the respect of my friends. That shame nearly killed me. I had a daughter. She kept me in. It made me realize, oh, there's a bigger world than just me.
Speaker 1And in that journey from selfish to selfless and giving, giving, giving and what Jacob talked about with shifting to full accountability Jacob talked about with shifting to full accountability I was able to seek the help and be unlocked from my own prison, as one of my mentors, master Dan Zaleski, said. I want to pass all of this on in this unique two-hour event Never been done before. If that sounds, if that speaks to you, if you're hearing Jacob, if you're hearing the motivation on this podcast, but you're just stuck, you're feeling stuck personally, if you're the bottleneck in your business, then this might be for you. So send us that Boulder keyword and we'll send you an invite, and that's going to happen sooner than you think. So, guys, thank you so much, jacob, thank you so much, and we'll see you again next week. Cheers to your success.
