Starting a Low Voltage Business Part 1

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So , as I mentioned , starting a low-voltage business who in this industry hasn't thought about doing that ? Here's a story I don't think I've ever told . I was sitting one day outside the office of the Navy Annex with three of my buddies Only about a year or two in the industry and we had to wait because our truck was blocked in .

So we're waiting for the power can light guys to move our things and we're just sitting of talking oh yeah , we can do this , this is so easy . Well , actually , two of us actually did . I never did . I never started my own business , but we've all thought about it all the time .

But what do you have to do to actually take that lead to go from an installer to an owner ? Because , well , a lot of the skill sets are going to cross-transfer . There's a lot of new skill sets that you better be good at .

And this show is actually coming on the tail end of another show on how to sell your low-voltage company , how to sell the servers and stuff . So this is going to be a good part of that series continuing on . So we're going to break this show up into three segments , or three acts , as they like to say . The first one is going to be planning your launch .

The second one is going to be executing your first projects and hard-earned lessons that you won't find in any textbooks , and then we're also going to cover . You know what to do afterwards . So let's go ahead and jump into the first one . Funny thing is , this show has been in the planning efforts for over a year Over a year .

I first approached these guys to do this show , probably , I think , about a year and a half ago , but because of their busy schedules , because of my busy schedules , we just never crossed paths , couldn't do it . But I finally got a nail down and I got three of the best on tonight's show for you .

I've got all green lights R&R , connectivity and Better Days Technology . Gentlemen , welcome to the show . How are you guys doing ?

successfully . Shortly after I did the first couple of those , I got into one or two bigger ones . They quickly sort of escalated and I realized the margins at least for me , versus doing MSP work , were a hell of a lot better .

That incentive for the money right out of the gate made me want to become a better installer , a better technician , and improve my skills even more . So ever since then I've just been on that path and trying to become better and better and better every day .

We see the the money value uh , more so in the cabling jobs than some of our MST work , but we still do a lot of MST work as well .

So I had two weeks off for spring break and I was wiring a house and there are a bunch of other traits there . Jamaican music was playing and I was like you know what ? What ? This is where I want to be . And so , uh , I I went to my boss that when we came back from break and I said , look , this is going to be my last year .

Um , and I went for it . And , uh , my only regret is not doing it sooner .

I'm sure you guys probably knowing you three the way I know you guys I'm pretty sure you've thought about it , researched it and maybe even done some planning on it , right ? So , going around the room getting started with you first , peter , what was something that you did during the planning phase that helped you hit the ground running ?

But being somewhat fearless and not knowing what I didn't know , let me sort of really go after it in a way that I probably couldn't have if I'd really calculated what I was doing .

But still being in high school was a great benefit for me Was it easy with the hours ? But we worked through the weekends , late nights to get the jobs done and went through ground running after that , after high school , and I went through a little bit of college , but not much , and just let the business continue growing from there .

I didn't have to worry about things like medical insurance and , you know , pensions and all those things that you know a lot of people unfortunately have to think about when they're thinking about their career .

So I really had a strong support system at home and when it was time to go off , like Ryan , I did have a strong client base that I felt I could confidently make the leap and keep me busy while I continue to grow and find new clients , starting your own business , right , and yeah , I didn't realize this until I started my podcast .

, or msp like work I went by tech caddy , the idea being that , you know , I would help carry you through your technology problems or some silliness like that . I , in 2016 , we were on sabbatical overseas and I had sort of shut down tech caddy .

I was planning to come back and launch something new and in a moment of just like a aha moment , I was sitting in the little house for renting . I looked over at the modem and noticed all the green lights blinking . I was like , oh , things are working .

Things are working the way they should , and that , literally , was kind of what inspired me to say all green lights would be symbolic of keeping the network up and keeping things running smoothly .

So you know I'm done and I'll be on the next flight flight home the next day . And it started from there , and so he's always made him for me , giving me like his little custom Lego man to go put on the different racks that we build out nice , nice , right .

But we kind of looked to our first customer and they said we love it . And I was like , oh , we're going with it . I said we valued our customers brand or their opinion more than someone that has a successful business themselves . We wanted to go with what a customer thought was good .

I put it out to one of these online-based , you know , computer graphic design places Like the Elver or something like that .

Yeah , I can't remember the name of it , but you know I had to put up a cash prize for the one that I selected and I had I'm not exaggerating hundreds of entries that I got to really comb through and it was such a really fun process that I've , like tried to find other ways to go back to it with like little , like side things that I had going on , like

because it was just so cool to see people dreaming for you . It was just so cool to see people dreaming for you . And if anyone's got that hurdle that they're trying to get over on , how do I get this logo ? It was such a fun experience for me . Like I said , I don't want any play on the initials .

That was just a thing that I didn't want and you got a lot of those , but for the most part when you saw it . You , when you saw it , you're like that's the one . And then you got to go back and forth with them to make little iterations like the uh , it's like the grays are like a soldering solder board , if you've ever really looked at it close .

Yeah , so it was fun .

The other , the other , is being consistent across all of your stuff , across your your , your social media platforms , across business literature , lettering head , all the be consistent that way , if someone sees that right now , if someone were to flip across the web page and they'd see the let's Talk Cabling logo , they'd automatically know oh , that's Chuck , right .

So the key is being consistent with that , and that's where I think a lot of people fall down .

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Um , you know , do the right thing , set up the right legal structure , get it set up as an llc at a minimum to protect yourself and separate the company and everything else past that .

You know , if you've got they don't even have to be in the same field , but just mentors who can help you on structuring business or running a business and the things you need to think about , like how do you set up your accounting and your billing and all that kind of just basic stuff that we all need to do to run the business .

Definitely , leverage those people and use them as best you can .

One thing I would say is definitely reach out to people that have their own businesses for the help , especially if you're in the low voltage community and want to start your own business . Look up Tech Knowledge Worldwide TKW .

There's a couple of channels on our Slack that are made for that , and all of us would be happy to help mentor anybody looking to start their own company . All of us would be happy to help mentor anybody looking to start their own company . I know one of the guys recently , sean Wilson , out of Philadelphia area or New Jersey , pa .

He started his own business and I kind of helped him along the way with that .

And then , um , we had a couple other accounting people that we we leaned on well , we've all more income than I realized .

r&r , no matter what .

And you know , when you start looking , they start handing you all these little page boards that you got to sign . She's like no , no , I'm going to read this and I'm like , okay , jeff , licensing , insurance , setting up a legal structure , any advice for me .

He's an engineer but I was able to kind of like watch him and and how that worked .

The only thing , as I was listening to the other two guys talk that I would add to that is um , you know , get yourself obviously a great lawyer , a great accountant , but uh , don't stay with them If you don't feel like they're the right one and don't feel like you're trapped with that professional offering .

That's something that happened to me and you know you kind of feel like , oh man , like at this point they're so entrenched in what I do . But if you don't feel right about them , I mean you got to remember you're not , you're not working for someone anymore .

People are working for you and you got to feel really good about the people that are on your , on your team and uh , you , you can't be afraid to cut bait if you need to , and that's something that happened to me , and and I um , I try to tell anybody who will listen is uh , don't feel like the decisions you made from day one are the ones you have to

live with for the rest of your career .

They will try to put up with them and then try to try to make them work and all stuff , and then there's a lot of damage it can have . This show's not about that . But yeah , don't be afraid to cut bait . I like that . So let's talk about okay .

So now you've got your business and I think one of the biggest questions I get asked quite often is Chuck , how do I get my low-voltage license for XYZ State ? I don't know , I don't live in Wyoming . I don't live in Wyoming , I don't live in New Jersey , I don't live in .

But I think , as Ryan pointed out , I think that's where the advantage of being in a community like TKW or Technology Worldwide will help , because even though somebody may not have gone through that process , they probably know somebody's gone through that process . Right , certainly can help you with that .

So let's shift from kicking off and all the legal stuff to your first job , right ? Your first job under your company name , the first paid gig under your company name Pierce . How was it ? How did it go ? Did it go as ?

So we did it and got through it , but I definitely forgot some little things like just some materials and some planning and some key logistics stuff . But you learned and the next one went perfectly fine . It was just that first one .

it went pretty well actually . It was for a food chain restaurant we did two months up in michigan . Uh , rick and I did um and we we did . I think it was 16 or 17 stores in that two month period . Oh and uh , it was our first solo gig and we did it together . I will say , uh , he lost some hair , I lost some hair .

We wanted to punch each other a couple times , but we made the best of it and it was a nice paycheck at the end of the day right , right , right , and you guys came by with probably a little more healthy respect for each other as well oh yeah , absolutely jeff . What about your first job ? How did it go ? Compared to not well at all ?

I had , um , I , I was , I was working at a school , um , I had um like five classes left to get a second major . So I asked the job if I could finish my fifth year of college while I took this IT director job . So , from you know , the first semester of the year I was part time and then I was just part time for the remainder of the year .

So one of the board of trustees , one of the members of the board of trustees , he reached out and he said , hey , um , I know you have this uh spare time now that you finished school and everything . Uh , you want to jump in and do some it stuff at my , my place of business ? So I said , yeah , this sounds great .

Um , looks like I'm going to be doing some freelance stuff . And you know I the mistakes , I I mean one mistake that just kind of like resonates with me every day is I I was responsible for ordering new computers and I had to order . So we were ordering , windows XP had just come out and I was like , yeah , let's save you some money .

I'm ordering all these XP home computers , not realizing that those couldn't join a domain . Uh , you needed the xp pro uh license . So , uh , that was egg on my face , uh , first time . But you know , I I think about it every day . Xp is long gone , it's not part of our world anymore . But it it reminds me to , you know , cross every t and dot every .

I make sure that when you and like you , said , oh man , I won the bid , what did I do wrong ? This is that kind of reminder for me , like something as simple as ordering the wrong operating system on a device could really , you know , submarine a project fast . So simple reminder of to look out for things .

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I'm not going to make you go back and redo all these and retest everything . We'll just make these A's . Just next time pay a little more attention . They're like whoo-hoo , because you know how much money that would have cost Because the modular furniture was already set up . They were moving stuff in .

That would have been a huge hit to the project and I hate to admit this , but I had 15 , 20 years experience at that point . That shouldn't have happened , but it does . It just does right .

So one of the biggest shifts , I think , for a lot of people coming from the tech field once they start their own business is how do you find customers , how do you land contracts ?

And I actually talked about this a little bit in last week's show where I mentioned one of the ways you absolutely should not be doing it is there's a book that gives you all the local construction projects for your area , and the problem is there's very little margin and they're too late .

You know the low voltage contracts are going to be selected by the time it hits that block . So let's start with you , pierre . How did you land this first couple of clients ?

So when I decided to start doing that , I went downtown you know a little college time we're in and in the first day I had picked up three clients literally knock on the door and say , hey , this is what I could do for you guys , ddad services .

When it got into the cabling , I got very , very lucky and I'll admit that out of the gate that I picked up a very good client from the outset and I've been with them ever since . So I haven't had to do a whole lot of looking for new clients , if you would , because there's been a lot of work over the last decade with them .

two o'clock in the morning my wife's like who the hell is calling you ? Like I'm like I don't know . So I answered it .

It was uh , it was this client and their headquarters were in charlotte and they were screaming , yelling that they hired someone that started doing the job , then just walked off the job and their entire network's down and it was the entire campus for this large company in charlotte and they didn't care what it took , but they needed to get someone there .

So my happy butt got out of bed at two o'clock in the morning , went over there , took about two and a half hours , got it done , all working . I stayed until about 7 38 o'clock in the morning just to make sure as their employees were showing up for the day everything was working .

As soon as I got the check off that everything was good , one of the people come in and they handed me a blank check . They said you fill it out .

Oh , wow , I'm like I have no idea , like this 2 o'clock in the morning , like I wasn't thinking about money at that point I was thinking , okay , here's a good , solid client , nationwide client , over 5,000 locations Like didn't think anything about it .

Uh , we've , we've talked about it for a couple days and I was like , yeah , I'm not looking to knock your head off , but how do we get in to do all your nationwide work ? Right , right , right , that's that's where I took off with them .

Um , but it's been mainly word of mouth and I'm thankful for a couple of the facebook groups and for tkw for that as well . Um , I mean , I don't want to toot my own horn or to any of , uh , our horns at r and r , but as you continue to do quality work , your name get recognized and your name is put down there yes , it's done .

Mr jeff , how did you , how did you , uh , do yours ?

I feel like a lot of the people that are my age , you know , are now starting to move into decision making roles in their , the companies that they've been with .

So we work for a lot of electrical contractors and a lot of the people who started off just being journeymen electrician are now project managers with their company and they're realizing like yeah , we don't know anything about low voltage stuff . We're losing jobs because we don't have a low voltage person on staff .

It really doesn't make sense for us to hire a low voltage person on staff , so we need a reliable subcontractor that can do that type of stuff . So I feel like , you know , for me it's definitely word of mouth , um , you know really big into , like local sports , uh , so I have a lot of connections there as well .

And um , yeah , for me that's that's really uh , the phone never stops ringing . Just I I've said before , very rarely is there not one degree of separation between me and and the client that I'm working for this . There's always like it's very rarely do I just get a cold call like hey , saw your van , took your phone number down .

It's always like hey , I got your number from so and so um , so that that's very meaningful to me and um , and I don't feel like I'd be wearing it today without having a solid connection and word of mouth advertising is the absolute best because you already go in there with somewhat of a somewhat .

drops ? I'm not going to ask you guys how you estimate , because there are a dozen different ways you can estimate . Each one of them is valid in their own ways . But what I will ask you is did you make any early mistakes during the bidding and estimating and if you did , how did you recover from that ?

So over the years I've , you know , increased prices a little bit as we go , but once I realized where I should be charging out of the gate , it became much . What was better for us financially ? Because we had ? We were a little bit as we go , but once I realized where I should be charging out of the gate , it became much .

One , it was better for us financially because we had , we were getting paid what we were worth . But two , it's been operating that much easier . You're always worried about not being like , always worried about cashflow when you're not making enough , quote , unquote . And so guys ask me the same question all the time what should I charge ?

And I'm like always charge more than you think because guys are like oh , it just cost me , you know , two dollars for a box of cable and fifty dollars for a bag of jacks . That's all I gotta charge .

Um , and that that invoice and our , our net negative is posted on my wall in my office now just to remind me every day , because we took a project that we were supposed to make probably net 20,000 on and we're negative net 70,000 on . So I mean , there's projects like that that have bitten us and we still do it here and there .

But we live to learn and we work through it . Obviously , we try not to make that big of a mistake every day , but it happens here and there . There's still going to be unknowns and I think that's the biggest thing that I stress to anybody is don't panic when an unknown hits you .

Just stop the project and talk to whoever you're working with and say hey , hey , this happened . How can we go about it ? If you can present those facts nine times out of ten , those customers are going to work with you oh , absolutely , absolutely .

It's funny we work in a communications industry , but what do we suck at ? Communication , jeff ? Okay , let's talk early . Mistakes for bidding and estimating . What were they and how did you overcome them ?

I will also say it's not a matter of just learning from your mistakes , it's a matter of like , like ryan and pierce keep referencing . You know , we have a community of people and it is in tkw , and you know , the ones that I have the closest connections with are the ones that aren't afraid to admit to me when they have messed up .

I find those relationships to be the most genuine and I try to be that way as well , to share my mistakes and ask questions and not worry about being vulnerable . I'm at a point in my career where you know if , if , if .

If you think I'm stupid because of the type of questions I asked , I mean I can't change that , I can't do anything about that , you know . So I'm a perpetual learner . I'm never going to stop learning from people , and that's really what it comes down to is .

So , in addition to learning from many of my mistakes , I learn from everybody else's mistakes as well , and I find that to be really humbling to um to be able to do that to other people that's great advice , that's that's the .

advice .

You know , one of the big one , of the one of the benefits of working for large companies , like I did , was um , we had multiple offices across the united states and once a year they would always bring in each of the office for a yearly meeting and during that yearly meeting each office manager had to talk about one project that went really well and the project

that went really bad , and the goal idea there was to have the other area managers learn from the mistakes , so if they came across the same situation they were kind of already step ahead .

And that's one of the advantages of being a member of a group like TKW , because you've got other people who are similar size and similar size businesses have gone through that stuff .

So , yeah , I think if anybody takes anything from today , it's , you know , definitely lean on people in the industry , but that should not be the only place where you gain knowledge on running a business , right , Thanks for listening to let's Talk Cabling , the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low-voltage industry connects .

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