New Electrical contractor 2024

[Bvoltpowersolutions]

Wow it’s been a journey from apprentice to journeyman to master to a very fresh electrical contractor, I’m so thankful for the mike holt study materials and the advice of the360electrician!

I would like to know where to start with Electrical contracting in general! with service work In competition with handyman men doing all the permitless jobs, would it be easier to go straight into commercial or government contracting.in 2024-2025. I’ve been marketing a lot for myself and avoiding marketing services as Angie’s list and thumbtack and don’t want to cave to peer pressure lol

I guess what I’m asking is what advice would you give to a brand new electrical contractor in regard to growing an business from scratch?


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[Hv&Lv]

My only advice is to be prepared for net 90

 

[acin]

Wow it’s been a journey from apprentice to journeyman to master to a very fresh electrical contractor, I’m so thankful for the mike holt study materials and the advice of the360electrician!

I would like to know where to start with Electrical contracting in general! with service work In competition with handyman men doing all the permitless jobs, would it be easier to go straight into commercial or government contracting.in 2024-2025. I’ve been marketing a lot for myself and avoiding marketing services as Angie’s list and thumbtack and don’t want to cave to peer pressure lol

I guess what I’m asking is what advice would you give to a brand new electrical contractor in regard to growing an business from scratch?


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running a business is 80 percent of the job imho

 

[ptonsparky]

running a business is 80 percent of the job imho

and most of us find out that is not to our liking.

 

[ramsy]

competition with handyman doing all the permitless jobs

"Increased Hazard" is the language most State insurance codes use to allow non-renewal and cancellation of property insurance policies, or complete loss after casualty, regardless of premiums paid.

If you're the only license on record with these construction defects, you are 100% joint and several liable for doing 1% of the work.

If owners aren't litigious, but slander your ratings with public advertisers, that is published in perpetuity, until you can afford to burry the bad reviews with better ones.

 

[Jawrenn18]

Wow it’s been a journey from apprentice to journeyman to master to a very fresh electrical contractor, I’m so thankful for the mike holt study materials and the advice of the360electrician!

I would like to know where to start with Electrical contracting in general! with service work In competition with handyman men doing all the permitless jobs, would it be easier to go straight into commercial or government contracting.in 2024-2025. I’ve been marketing a lot for myself and avoiding marketing services as Angie’s list and thumbtack and don’t want to cave to peer pressure lol

I guess what I’m asking is what advice would you give to a brand new electrical contractor in regard to growing an business from scratch?


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Congratulations! Buckle up. It's going to be wild. First "me time" gone. "Good nights rest" nope. Your just starting out and builders, owners and GCs are going to come at you like sharks in bloody water. And they will eat you alive. Know your worth. Learn to say "No." You'll have to be competitive at first and for a while but if your honest and do good work your name will get around and you'll get better jobs.
Have you thought about what type of contractor you want to be. Hands on in the feild or management only? If your hands on your gonna go through employees quicker and be burning the candle at both ends most days. Days will be getting up early for paperwork and emails, working in the feild all day and evenings and weekends doing more paperwork. Estimates, invoice etc. Get to know your supply house. Find a couple you get along with and treat them like gold. You'll need it when that 30 day pay doesn't show up until day 60.
Bill, bill, bill. And be aggressive about collections. I myself am a hands on owner. I work in the feild and we do a bit of everything. Anything under $5000 is pay upon completion. And I don't give much slack on late pay. See earlier comment about bloody water and sharks. They will take advantage.
Don't be afraid to leverage credit when needed and learn to walk out on thin air. The biggest rewards come with biggest chances.
The benefit is your doing it yourself. Your not sticking your hand out every week for a check from someone, nothing wrong with that but there's pride in running the business yourself. You may eventually employee people and your then providing jobs and security for the employees and their family. Your making a bit more than the average cause your the owner.
Start with what you love and enjoy most. Service work is very profitable if you can hold a schedule and meet appointments. Residential, especially at the high end, is like working on a peice of art at times. Commercial is literally being a part of the growth of communities. Pick the one you love most, start small and go for it.
Start small. Grow slow. Grow into your success.
And one more thing. There's never, ever enough money to cover it all.

 

[cdslotz]

Wow it’s been a journey from apprentice to journeyman to master to a very fresh electrical contractor, I’m so thankful for the mike holt study materials and the advice of the360electrician!

I would like to know where to start with Electrical contracting in general! with service work In competition with handyman men doing all the permitless jobs, would it be easier to go straight into commercial or government contracting.in 2024-2025. I’ve been marketing a lot for myself and avoiding marketing services as Angie’s list and thumbtack and don’t want to cave to peer pressure lol

I guess what I’m asking is what advice would you give to a brand new electrical contractor in regard to growing an business from scratch?


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If you go into commercial/gov work you better know how to estimate, otherwise you will get embarrassed to where GC's won't trust your numbers, or you will lose your shirt by GC's that will take advantage of you. Commercial estimating is a science

 

[Eddie702]

Whatever you do you need a good accountant and a lawyer. Try to carve out a niche if you can taking jobs others won't take or doing some specialty that others are not familiar with. And don't be afraid to charge enough. My accountant told me to charge 3x what I wanted to pay myself. I thought he was nuts. He wasn't. But that was almost 40 years ago.....don't know if things have changed regarding that.

If you work by yourself, you will be working all day and billing and estimating the rest of the time. Don't be afraid to say no to jobs that don't fit your experience or workload.

And be careful what you spend. A shiny new truck won't make you more money than a 5 year old truck. And a new truck means more excise tax and more insurance money. It's a cost. A a new wrench won't make you any more money than one you by at a garage sale.

 

[jmellc]

They say not to take advice from those who have failed but sometimes they can tell you what doesn't work. Me for sure.

Plan ahead and watch your money. Track carefully to see if you are making some profit. I often lost track and didn't really know. I just knew that I usually didn't have any money and when I sometimes did, I owed it to my suppliers. Keep up with your materials and have all the common items on your truck. I wasted a lot of time and money going out for things I knew I had at the house but the supply house was closer.

Make every effort to pay yourself every payday. If you can't do this, you will never get ahead. I only paid myself occasional draws or small checks for pocket money.

Try your best to hire a helper. 1 man can do a lot but not all of it. You need someone on the other end to help pull wire or run conduit. You need someone to help keep the truck sorted out. Someone to keep the work going if you get on the phone with customers. Last but not least, someone to pick up your spirits when you totally run out of steam sometimes.

Review your business every month to see if you're taking in more than you spend. See where you made any profit or kept losing it. Set limits on how far you can go without ruining yourself. Get out if you can't make a go of it.

I struggled along for 5 years and totally burned myself out. Lost a lot of money and all my spirit. Shut down in 2013 and now barely back to an even keel. My spirit has healed some but still badly bruised. My id and ego don't fight each other, both are too weak.

 

[ptonsparky]

That is pretty good advice. We may be good electricians, but most of us are lousy as business owners.

 

[jmellc]

That is pretty good advice. We may be good electricians, but most of us are lousy as business owners.

Business wise, there were just 2 things I did well.

I used a payroll service for what little payroll I had. That kept all withholding paid up and accounted for. I knew I would fall behind if I tried to do it.

I used an accountant for my income taxes, plus wife's taxes. He kept us on the right track and we still use him.

 

[Seven-Delta-FortyOne]

I say this a lot, but I think it has merit:

If you, as a tradesman, decide to go into business for yourself, you are now starting over again at the bottom, in a new trade.

You may be a master electrician, but you are a first year apprentice businessman. You MUST make the commitment to learn a second trade, and that is business. It is not for everyone, and there is nothing wrong with that.

But at the point you decide to go into business for yourself, your trade knowledge is only half of what you need to know.

As far as what to bid on, PW work is very competitive, and you can spend a great deal of time doing mandatory pre-site visits and bidding, only to lose by a few dollars. There is no room for building relationships, it’s the number that wins it.

If you want to chase the lowest number, that is fine. It works for a great many contractors. But they are dialed in to it, and know how to play the game.

Subbing for GCs can be great, or miserable. If you hook up with a GC like myself, you’ll be calling him, like my subs do, asking for work. If you hook up with d-bag, you’ll want to shoot yourself. Or him.

Doing service work can be lucrative, but you need a lot of it, and it can take time to build up that quantity of customers. Doing a service call that took 3 hours and you made $500 is great, unless you have one Tuesday afternoon and another on Friday morning and nothing else all week.

Residential works gives you the opportunity to build relationships. You don’t necessarily need to be the low bidder. But emotions run high in private residential work.

Private commercial is my personal favorite, but it’s paperwork heavy. Different form PW, which is VERY paperwork and bureaucracy heavy. Private commercial is a bit more impersonal, which appeals to some folk, but you have to be prepared to have a lot more complications than residential.

Also, to swing bigger commercial and most PW work, you’ll need a crew. If you’re starting out as a one man show, or have a helper, the PW thing is going to be real hard. You almost need a full time admin person just to keep up with the paperwork.

 

[ramsy]

You almost need a full time admin person just to keep up with the paperwork.

Seems like lien rights are less likely without an attorney's proof of service affidavit, for preliminary / notices to right person & place?

Few on this forum mention attorney services, perhaps routinely avoided, or selected out, during construction projects.

Contractors without attorneys doing proper preliminary service must be getting the job done, but absorbing losses to ingratiate themselves.

Are developers, owners, & GC's avoiding lawyers by shopping the low-ball bid?

I used a payroll service for what little payroll I had. That kept all withholding paid up and accounted for. I knew I would fall behind if I tried to do it.

I used an accountant for my income taxes, plus wife's taxes. He kept us on the right track and we still use him.

Are you serving preliminary & required lien notices yourself without an attorney, and accepting losses without liens?

 

[jmellc]

Seems like lien rights are less likely without an attorney's proof of service affidavit, for preliminary / notices to right person & place?

Few on this forum mention attorney services, perhaps routinely avoided, or selected out, during construction projects.

Contractors without attorneys doing proper preliminary service must be getting the job done, but absorbing losses to ingratiate themselves.

Are developers, owners, & GC's avoiding lawyers by shopping the low-ball bid?

Are you serving preliminary & required lien notices yourself without an attorney, and accepting losses without liens?

I never dealt with liens in any way.

 

[Seven-Delta-FortyOne]

Seems like lien rights are less likely without an attorney's proof of service affidavit, for preliminary / notices to right person & place?

Few on this forum mention attorney services, perhaps routinely avoided, or selected out, during construction projects.

Contractors without attorneys doing proper preliminary service must be getting the job done, but absorbing losses to ingratiate themselves.

Are developers, owners, & GC's avoiding lawyers by shopping the low-ball bid?

Are you serving preliminary & required lien notices yourself without an attorney, and accepting losses without liens?

There is no requirement or necessity that an attorney serves or files any preliminary notices, no one would ever have an attorney do it, nor would any attorney who had even the slightest knowledge of construction law take on such a menial task.

The requirements for sending the preliminary 20 day notice is clearly spelled out on the State website, CSLB.ca.gov, if you are interested in the procedure.

 

[ptonsparky]

Only had to sign a lien waiver once, and my bookkeeper did collections. She had done it in previously.

 

[ramsy]

I never dealt with liens in any way.

Most states require preliminary notices for a valid contract.
huschblackwell.com/50-state-construction-lien-law-map

Me & Seven-Delta are from the same state, which also penalizes contractors who skip this step, per Civil Code 8216, and 9306

 

[ramsy]

CSLB.ca.gov, if you are interested in the procedure

Thank you. Was just reading about it.

Penalty for Failure to Serve Per Civil Code §8216 and §9306, if the contract of any subcontractor on a particular work of improvement provides for payment to the subcontractor of more than four hundred dollars ($400), the failure of that subcontractor…to give the notice provided for in this chapter, constitutes grounds for disciplinary action under the Contractors' State License Law.

California has made proof of service to the right person so complex, no one can use it if not perfected. Seems impossible without an attorney.

Seems to me, contractors attempting this proof of service themselves paint a huge target on their back side, advertising that they can be screwed.

 

[ramsy]

I never dealt with liens in any way.

Can’t really blame you

Requirements to serve owners are ridiculous. Here’s my state Service Requirements for All Preliminary Notices:

Mailing Requirements per Civil Code §8110. ..shall be given by registered or certified mail, express mail, or overnight delivery..

Note: It is not necessarily required by statutes, but highly advisable to get proof of delivery. In any event, claimant must document the mailing for attachment to Proof of Service per Civil Code §8118.

When Complete Civil Code §8116.
Notice under this part is complete and deemed to have been given at the following times: (a) If given by personal delivery, when delivered. (b) If given by mail, when deposited in the mail or with an express service carrier in the manner provided in Section 1013 of the Code of Civil Procedure. (c) If given by leaving the notice and mailing a copy in the manner provided in Section 415.20 of the Code of Civil Procedure for service of summons in a civil action, five days after mailing.

Summarized by Kevin R. Carlin, Esq. www.carlinlawgroup.com

 

[AC\DC]

Seems like lien rights are less likely without an attorney's proof of service affidavit, for preliminary / notices to right person & place?

Few on this forum mention attorney services, perhaps routinely avoided, or selected out, during construction projects.

Contractors without attorneys doing proper preliminary service must be getting the job done, but absorbing losses to ingratiate themselves.

Are developers, owners, & GC's avoiding lawyers by shopping the low-ball bid?

Are you serving preliminary & required lien notices yourself without an attorney, and accepting losses without liens?

Not being rude, but sound like your experience with clients is not great maybe you should move out of cali if your dealing with customers