Mix the mortar and reconstruct the 100-year-old bricks. Put them back into place for fear the house may fall down. Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing.

This story crossed my mind this week, and it's a fantastic story that happened to me many years ago. It was one of those life lessons and business owner lessons that I learnt dearly: not every client is for you, and some clients will make it through your net, and you won't find out how shit they are until after the job is done.

So to start with, this lead came to me as an emergency. I was currently on a job, and whatever I was doing, I got a call from the receptionist. Usually it's an email from the receptionist to notify me of a job, but this time when it's a call, shit's hitting the fan. Something serious is going down. I mean like somebody will urgently need me, or it'll be someone I know, or a client will have a crazy issue where they need me there and then. It's like the bat phone. I will then be put on the line to speak to that person.

So what's happened is this lady has called up and she has said, "We are receiving shocks off the taps in the bath." And I was like, that is crazy shit. That needs to be addressed immediately, if not sooner. So what I did was I packed up the job I was on and drove a few suburbs over. This particular job was in Annandale.

Got to the job, assessed it, pulled out my multimeter and independent earth, and sure enough, it was getting a couple of volts off the tap, and I was like, fuck, that's crazy shit. It was a mother and her child, and that's all I met inside the house.

Not only that, to top things off, it was the weirdest, craziest, most dangerous setup I'd ever seen. You know those old strip heaters? They've got the cage around them, and they've got a little pull cord on them. So what you had here was a bath, you had a shower head, and about 200 mil above the shower head, you had this heater in the bath. And I was like, whatever about your shocks and tingles, that thing is coming out. That's not staying there. 240 volts, and literally you could touch it without even stretching your arm. It was insane.

So that was one thing. I was like, maybe something's going on funky with that. So what I did was I went and checked out the circuit, pulled down the breaker, seeing which one was affecting it, and sure enough, it was something to do with that circuit, and I believe something seemed to be pinching onto the copper pipes, which is weird. It's very weird. So I found there was a power point at the back of the bathroom feeding that strip heater. I disconnected the strip heater, and it got rid of any voltage or stray voltage.

With further inspection, I looked around the house and I found that there was no adequate earth. It was just relying on an old school copper piping earthing system. I believe at the time it was only four mil, if not the bare wire style, in this old inner west home. So I was like, okay, for safety measures, I will run a new earth electrode and run that back to the board. And the board was dog shit. That circuit wasn't on an RCD either, so I put it on an RCD as well, that sub-circuit for the power circuit that led to the shocks and tingles, et cetera.

So I did all that, and stupid me, reacting from an emergency, did not quote this upfront. And it's something I always say: please, please quote your jobs upfront, even for an existing client, unless it's a like for like job. I'm guilty of this, I'll put my hand up. If it's an existing client and I've already replaced downlights for them, and they're like, "Alan, we've had more downlights go," I'll be like, "Cool," and I might just go and do the job, because they know exactly what they paid the last time, and it's going to be the exact same price, or maybe it'll have inflated by a couple of percent. So that's cool. But what I'm saying is, if it's a different style of job where they may get a bit of bill shock, let them know about it.

So that was fine. I eradicated any shocks and tingles. For good measure, I installed a good earth, a brand new six mil earth electrode back to the switchboard, and bonded the copper water pipe as well. The old earthing system was around the side, around the back. It was just shit. So I ran the new one out the front where I could get the water pipe as well.

And so what I did was drilled into the cavity of these 100-year-old bricks, as you may recall from the start of the podcast, and I threaded my six mil earth up the cavity back to the switchboard. Now doing so, I did this neat as fuck. As it came out, I actually used a T box, I believe. So it came out a T box or straight through box with conduit. I had one teeing off to the water pipe, and I had the other teeing off to the earth electrode. So it all looked really schmick, really neat.

So it was fine. I sorted out every issue. No more shocks, no more tingles, no babies getting electrocuted in the bath. Just bear that one in mind.

A day or two later, because I ran a shit business at the time, and this is probably going back seven years ago or something like that, I sent the invoice. A few days later, I got a phone call, and it was from that lady's father-in-law, who's the kingpin. He rang me up claiming I had ripped them off. Now bearing in mind, I would love to dig out that invoice, but I recall it was something around $500 to $600, something like that. So we're talking a new earth electrode, service charge, emergency drop your tools service charge, and an RCBO, which is way too cheap. It's dirt cheap. It was scratching the surface of cheapness. That would now probably be triple the price if I did that job today, but I would have quoted upfront or I would have quoted on site.

So anyway, he called me up claiming I ripped him off, and he scared the fuck out of me. He was like, "I'm going to go to A Current Affair. I am going to go to Fair Trading. I'm going to report you. You've ripped people off." Never once did he think, hang on, this guy has possibly saved my grandson from getting electrocuted in the bath. Thanks very much. It's a cheap price to pay. No, it was all about the dollar with this guy, and he ripped into me, and he scared the fuck out of me because I was just naive. I was a young business owner, and once I heard A Current Affair and fucking Fair Trading, I was like, "Well, what do you think is fair to pay?" And he was like, "Oh, one hundred and..." whatever it was. It was about $200. So anyway, I just bowed down immediately and I reimbursed the money. I think his daughter-in-law paid the money and then I had to reimburse it, because I was so fearful of what he would do.

And basically what that guy did was he bullied me for being a naive young business owner, claiming that I ripped him off, even though I'd done a crazy good job. But not only that, part of his argument was that by drilling into his double brick home, not even his home, his son's home, he claimed that I ruined the building. I ruined their 100-year-old building. I ruined the structure of the building, and it was fucked as far as he was concerned. I didn't realise a 20 mil hole could do that, but apparently it does, because this guy's an expert. He's most likely an engineer, I feel. He had that kind of vibe off him.

Anyway, while I was doing the job, something I never mentioned was I remember fishing that earth electrode up the cavity. I actually slid up the tile out the front, and there was this really nice gentleman next door, right smack bang next door neighbour. Bearing in mind, this couple had only moved into this house probably a few months earlier. This neighbour kind of stuck his head in, and I was under pressure to get this earth done, so I partially ignored him. Then he flagged my attention and said, "Hey, I'm looking for some bits and pieces done next door if you've got a chance." And I kind of fobbed him off a little bit and threw him a card. And that, folks, was the silver lining, because that gentleman next door has turned out to be one of my best clients. He called me about, I think it was something to do with downlights the first time, then it turned into a switchboard, then it turned into circuits, then it turned into a partial rewire. It turned into several different jobs. It's thousands and thousands of dollars. So when a door shuts, a window opens, and that was the window right there. That was such a shit client, but the silver lining was the neighbour that came out of it.

So what had happened here as well was I was like, how did this guy get through the net? How I actually got this lead was a referral from another sparky that couldn't be arsed. That said sparky has shut down his business since, but he just couldn't get out to the job, or he didn't want to do it or whatnot. And what I find, similar to the Simplified Sparky content, is that people who come to me have digested and looked around so much that they're like, okay, this is the right fit for me. This person slipped through the net, and basically it was a horrible, horrible fit. And I think it was just because the father-in-law got involved. The lady seemed extremely nice, but when push came to shove, she didn't defend me and say, "Nah, look, fair enough. He sorted the electrical shock issue. We're not going to get electrocuted anymore, so maybe it's not that bad a price to pay to not die." I don't know.

But anyway, what I'm saying is there's a few lessons here, and this was a story of lessons. A: not every client is for you. You will get really bad clients. You will have shit experiences along your journey. And as an electrician starting a business, or even if you're an electrician in business a few years and you don't set yourself up correctly, you will eat shit on a few jobs, and I will fucking guarantee you that. There will be jobs where you will not want to be an electrician anymore, and trust me, I've fucking been there. I've sat in the van going, "I don't want to be here anymore." And there are days where you're just counting the money that you made in two hours. So it's hot and cold, but you are going to go through some troubled patches as an electrical business owner. I think it's very important to remember that and take that from this story. When you have a shitty day, just remember there's going to be a silver lining somewhere to come out of it.

The next thing, point B, is not quoting upfront. I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, and it can really, really come back to haunt you. You need to be quoting upfront, as I said, even if it's an existing client.

And point C is there are silver linings to come out of these jobs. Just because one guy's a fuckwit, maybe if you market correctly you may capture their neighbour with certain specific strategies.

That's it for me this week. I just wanted to share that. Not really a rant, more of a story, just to kind of say you're not the only one that has bad days. Catch you next week.