(Soon) New electrical contractor

[Jarrod Hannon]

Hi all. 1st I want to start off saying I think I Chose the correct category, so please forgive me if I did not. I am starting up my own electrician company soon. I like most new businesses am trying to get a feel for what to prepare for. More specifically I'm trying to get a feel about how many RE investors are looking for electricians. I am trying to get My name out there and I hope this is ok and if not please someone direct me how to properly do so and I will gladly comply, but another big question I can't fully decide on is whether or not to hire an apprentice right away. I'm up in Princeton, MN but am looking to work in my area and more so in the north west suburbs. I haven't been in the cities for a while so I don't know the demand currently and am looking for advice from other professionals and others familiar with the industry.

[James Hamling]

What area have you been in @Jarrod Hannon? 

On apprentice, no, hands down NO. You have not even started yet, adding a person is scaling, there is nothing to scale AND you don't even have a structure yet. Adding now would be beyond foolish. 

Specific to an electrical service company, you don't need investors, and if your relying on them for business your doing something MAJORLY wrong. Right now, all you have to do is be available and be found, that's it. People are calling shops and getting told sparkies are 1-6 months out. 

First thing first is getting a system in place, you MUST systemize EVERYTHING. That means your invoicing and billing, done via some system which has mobile application so you can write it from the site and take C.C. payment then and there. Next is inventory control because your going to be turning inventory so fast it has to be via some system not paper or guess work. For a lot of this I really like Joist, it does a lot of this and does it very good, at a very fair price. 

Then you gotta peg down how to market and advertise as a system. If this is just impossible to wrap head around then don't, get a partner who for a % of the company will run all things marketing, advertising and admin., letting you focus everything to the field and actual work and managing people so you can start bringing them on. 

As for demand, off the chart. For a sparkie that is. The demand is crazy, you could say your only doing Princeton, Zimmerman, Elk River and that's it, and you will still have 10X the work you can keep up to. And if not that flooded with work, again, your doing something wrong. 

You should get a Calendly or other online scheduling system up ASAP and direct all persons to there to self-schedule and post a deposit for service, like $150 to cover the trip-charge at minimum. This again frees up your time to keep too the doing vs the admin stuff. 

It's all about efficiency and setting up systems, that's 50% of it.