I have been wondering why our industry has been cutting itself down and not staying true to itself. What do I mean by that well I look at the plumbers in my marketplace and they all have the same mentality and price structure. No one veers far from the standard price whether you are a one man show or a 100 man shop. HVAC companies have good structure and the standards for the technicians are set higher. They wear uniforms, don’t complain about working on call shifts and just seem to have a better grip on customer service than electricians.
Electricians have been trying to play catch up with the other industries and I have to say it is about time. We make our living doing a highly skilled trade and still don’t know how to do simple things in business. There is no doubt that we are great technicians but we definitely have some work to do on the business side of things.
I made this website so we can all try to make our industry a better place to earn a living. Let’s face it, this is what we do to feed our families and if we can not do that then why do it. I see electrical contractors everyday that go out of business not because they were bad electricians but because they got in to business not knowing the first thing about running one. Believe me I was one of those guys. I searched and looked for business resources on running an electrical business but never found anything. It was the school of hard knocks for me. I realized that our industry thinks it is some secret that should not be told on how to run a business. I think different, I think that if we all have better training and resources that we all will prosper.
If homeowners and businesses have to choose on service and not price than it will be easier to distinguish the good from the bad. We all say you get what you pay for but in a service industry we should not accept moonlighters and handymen doing a skilled trade. We also should not compromise on safety just to make or save a dollar. These tactics are bringing the industry down and my fear is that we will have many safety issues in the future. Grounding, overloading circuits and cheaply made materials being used are the only way that contractors have to save a dollar besides using substandard cheap labor.
Lets make a change for the better because our industry is not like a shelf at Wal-Mart. We cant look for the cheapest disposable electricians forever and it will catch up to all of us eventually. Let me know if you have anything you would like to learn or know about so we cant discuss it further.
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