Sparky Coach

Incase you haven’t heard, the rumours are actually true.  Josey Bremner, of Bremner Electrical, can indeed perform a high kick like a ballerina.  In all seriousness though, I was super stoked to have Josey on the pod.  He is such a humble, honest, down to earth, approachable, fun, light hearted and passionate guy it honestly felt like we could have talked all day.  We discuss business, growth, ope...

So this morning in my Wednesday ritual of making fried rice for school lunches, my 6 year old Jasper walked into the kitchen and said “WAIT IS THERE RICE IN FRIED RICE?!?” Bewildered and confused, he actually couldn’t believe it.  And here I was thinking the name “fried rice” effortlessly gave all its simple secrets away.  But it got me thinking how often we as business owners don’t stop and see t...

Yeh that’s right it’s the chorus from Blink 182’s classic “Carousel” from the 1995 album “Chesire Cat”.  On today’s pod we discuss the importance of releasing your back end admin so you can get back to what you do best.  And it really doesn’t have to necessarily even be back end admin, it can be any form of work that you can either automate or delegate.  Our general rule of thumb is, if you’re wor...

The Ryelec team are in the house!  Today we are joined by Tommy and his right hand person Max.  As we all know, Ryelec is one of the industry leaders in the home and commercial automation space.  If the definition of excellence is doing what you do with a good attitude; then Ryelec is no doubt excellent. Not only are they good at their job, but they are absolute legends to deal with too.  Max has...

Yes you read correctly. Taylor Swift lyrics have entered the chat.  Did you know I once touched her hair? True story tbh. I know what you’re thinking too… “Cool story Hansel” lololol.  On today’s pod we talk about the importance of having a “blank space” in your schedule.  If you (and your team) keep finding the schedule is too jacked, packed and stacked to the rafters you can be unconsciously sai...

Yes you read that right, and it’s of course a shout out to The Offspring “Come Out And Play” from the 1994 classic album “Smash”.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, what a time to be alive!  In this pod we talk about the importance of excellent staff.  Put simply: excellent staff produce an excellent product. An excellent product ensures the client is happy. Happy clients come back and...

Electrical Lords // The Sparky Coach Lounge with Brad Hibberd  This week on the lounge we have none other than Brad Hibberd (aka Hib) from Hib Electrical based out of “gods country” (aka Tasmania).  Hib Electrical are super diversified. They do a whole range of everything from electrical projects, service work, commercial work, industrial work, solar, batteries, air con + whatever else gets thrown...

“We at the hotel motel holiday iinnnnnnnnn”.  While some of us (ok ok mainly just me) are learning that this in fact a Pitbull song, the rest of us (ok ok maybe everyone) will be wondering what on earth does Pitbull, hotels, motels and holiday inns have to do with your electrical business?  It is, in fact, a good question.  Recently I was at our local show. It was pretty much an all out carny affa...

“Boats n hoes boats n hoes gotta have me my boats n hoes” // Step Brothers  You know the song!  Ah Step Brothers, what a movie! Greatest of all time? Maybe not, but definitely up there in my top 10 that’s for sure.  Today we are talking about office essentials.  What can’t you live without? What do you “gotta have” in there? What is a must have or essential item to ensure that you have the most pr...

So pumped to have Willman (Willman Electrical) + Heath (hspark Electrical) drop by the lounge for a chat.  We discuss pricing, sales, the importance of weekly invoicing, sparkies helping sparkies, branding, business growth, client relationships + much more.  We even manage to give some PG relationship advice along the way!!  I’ve got a lot of respect for these guys and I am super thankful they cam...

Insert Vince Vaughn from Old School saying “ear muffs ear muffs” lololol.  The Christmas run in is real!! 6 weeks to go. Crazy hey?!?  So often in the busy-ness of business it’s incredibly easy to make a bad decision / mistake.  For instance, sending the wrong person to the right job, having the wrong person in general, a quick quote that’s not thought through enough, a phone conversation when it...

Ok you know the song. It’s from one of the greatest movies of all time Step Brothers.  It goes like this… “boats n hoes boats n hoes gotta have me my boats n hoes”.  And omg… LOL. What a movie. What a time to be alive.  But the song got me thinking, what have you “gotta have” in your business?  So we started a series. We start it with part one (obvs), welcome to the discussion on site necessities....

Wasssuppp lords!  On today’s session of “Sunday School” we have none other than Josh Ford aka Fordy aka The Ford Lord aka the unofficial god / deity of starting businesses and social media.  Ford gives us a pretty thorough run through of Capcut and how he uses it to edit his videos for New Age and Lock Out + Live etc.  In the modern world of social media if you’re producing a lot of content there...

Let’s face some facts, unless you have a serious chip in there will probably be a fair bit of work in getting your business (aka client base) off the ground.  Common chips in include taking over a family business, having builder friends, having friends in high places in schools, knowing people in the commercial space, dating a contracts admin (lol), marrying a realtor or a real estate receptionist...

Ok so don’t let the title fool you or upset you, this is designed to bring up a very important topic: should you partner be doing the admin?  So let’s face it, 5% of the time your partner doing admin works every time! Lolololol.  We have put this pod together because we see too many people get their partner in an admin role without considering that the dynamic isn’t doesn’t work, their partner isn...

On this episode of the pod we have Sam Ackland from Alpha Tradie, Build Clean + Delta Temp.  Sam and I have been back + forth over online sorcery (aka insta DM’s) over the past few months and we felt it was about time to jump on a pod and hang out for an hour or so.  We discuss branding, marketing, organic content, product, charge out rates aka the age old debate of “$120+ per hour” (lol), the coa...

The Sir Mix-A-Lot references are back and far out are we in for a good time here or what.  In the first “Baby Got Back Charged” we discussed if you back charge employees or not (spoiler: we think not).  The second iteration references when business gets back charged by the client.  The insecure business owner says ”I’m sorry baby I didn’t mean that I think they are excellent back charges” Happy Gi...

While the title is no doubt a play on Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 classic “Baby Got Back”, in this pod we take it back a few decades and draw inspiration from The Rolling Stones’ song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.  A common question we get around here is “do you back charge employees when they make a mistake?”  After all there is parking fines, falling through ceilings, crashing cars, turning up...

Such a pleasure to have Tommy + Ford back on the pod again and all be in the same room with an audience!  A few of the Sparky Coach members set aside two days this week and invested into ourselves hearing great workshops from great speakers on great topics such as emotional intelligence, mental health, leadership + setting a clear business plan.  It was so much fun to get around each other, learn,...

To start off let’s confront a couple of key items. Firstly, yes the title is indeed a Backstreet Boys song. Secondly, yes I indeed knew this. Thirdly, yes I indeed know all (or at least most of) the words. And finally, I indeed have a question for you: did YOU know that it was a Backstreet Boys song too? Don’t lie to me I’ll bet you did!!! Lololol.  But let me answer your question with another que...

Today we take a trip down memory lane and take some serious inspiration from the 2001 City High smash hit “What Would You Do?”  The conundrum we discuss is what do you do when your schedule is stacked to the rafters and your best client calls with a major job that they need done?  Obviously we know the answer, say yes and figure it out later! But yeh it’s so much easier said than done.  There are...

Alright the big dog automation god self appointed and self anointed rough in lord turned automation lord turned sexiest man in the electrical industry (voted by 1000’s of sparkies throughout Heathcote + Engadine) Tom Ryan is here running us through how he uses Groundplan.  Tommy runs Ryelec Automation based out of “Trade God Country” aka the Sutherland Shire and while he was unlucky not to lock hi...

Ahh Blink 182 references, what a time to be alive!  While you can choose to disagree about the best Blink album being “Chesire Cat”, one thing that you can for sure not disagree on is that summer is coming!  Summer. December. Christmas. January. Holidays. Break from work. No break from work. Staff holidays. Clients needing stuff done. It’s all coming up. And really soon. Really really soon.  The h...

Ahh Blink 182 references, what a time to be alive!  While you can choose to disagree about the best Blink album being “Chesire Cat”, one thing that you can for sure not disagree on is that summer is coming!  Summer. December. Christmas. January. Holidays. Break from work. No break from work. Staff holidays. Clients needing stuff done. It’s all coming up. And really soon. Really really soon.  The h...

The Ford Dog / Ford Lord is back on the lounge and what a pleasure it is to have the big dog back in the house!  We discuss Lock Out + Live, getting quotes wrong, the importance of safety, awards nights, networking, preparing for the busy season, why to invest into wholesaler relationships, communication, plus much much more!  100% all sparkies should get around the Lock Out + Live business, purch...