Tips on Turning Side Work into a Business

what's going on my friends i am dustin stelzer  with electricianu and uh today i have a good   answer to a question i think i  had somebody ask a question about   business about kind of like making  the leap and going into business   so i think there's some good insights  to be had with this comment so enjoy   advice on starting a business i'm looking into  starting a side business mainly doing service   calls and smaller new construction jobs this will  primarily be on the weekends and evenings i'm   currently a master electrician that's good and  this is a side business that would not be going   against my current employer that's arguable  i've got a good set of tools and some money   saved up for this that's also good after getting  a contractor's license and setting up everything   with the government side what would be my next  steps i have a shop on my property already so   that portion is not a problem i'm curious how you  would go about a work truck also what do you guys   do for billing and accounting i'm nervous about  starting a venture but i'm constantly getting   asked about side work and wanting to do this  completely legal okay so i mad respect that um you   realize you're doing side work to say that you're  not like going against your current employer i get   what you're saying about that but anytime you're  going out and getting business and getting jobs   you're in competition so you got to at least be  honest with yourself about that if you have a   boss that's cool with you doing it you know that's  a whole different thing but there are companies   out there that they find out you're doing side  work they're you're gonna fire you because you're   taking money out of their pockets so to speak so  as long as you you know have the conversation with   the person that you're working for let them know  hey i'm not gonna take any of your customers i'm   not trying to do anything silly that i'm just  trying to go out on my own and make my own way   i think it's absolutely respectable as far as  the shop on your property uh you could start   out in your garage in your house like really you  just need a place to throw material most of what   you're going to be doing is going out to supply  houses right you already know the deal you're   a master electrician you've been doing this long  enough but you're going to be going to like home   depot you're going to be going to supply houses  stuff like that so if you got a place you know   in your garage so you don't have to go pay a bunch  of money to build a shop or anything like that but   if you have a shop like you're saying like awesome  that's that's already one big thing out of the way   if you're just doing this yourself you don't  really need a big shop you're not gonna keep   in this massive amount of overhead you're  probably not doing service work primarily   it's probably going to be more new construction  if anything so you don't really need like stock   in a shop somewhere you just need a place to  put some [ __ ] you know before your jobs go out   as far as the work truck i would not go into  debt to buy a work truck a lot of people are   like oh i'm gonna go get like a a k-nig big bet  on my truck i'm gonna get this brand new panel   uh van for like forty thousand dollars don't  do that [ __ ] until you've got some cash flow   coming in you need to prove that you  can pay your bills before you just go   into debt i never recommend that people go  into debt to go into business i think that   going into business and figuring out that you have  a proof of concept that you can take care of you   know your bills that you can bid correctly that  you can weather some seasons and you know when the   highs and the lows come and just kind of how  things go and once you've got a positive cash   flow you're profitable you have a you know  a few months worth of customers lined up   and works really good and you can start hiring  some people that's when i would start thinking   about getting a nicer vehicle but if you can  make you know like your old 1992 chevy pickup   make that thing work it just needs to get you  from point a to point b reliably that's really   it you don't have to have anything fancy of  course when you go to a job and somebody sees   a nice truck from their window they're like oh  wow these guys really have their stuff together   i get that whole argument absolutely but  they're not startup companies you know and   you're not going gonna be just getting all  these jobs because you drive a shiny truck   you're gonna be getting all these jobs because  people are going to google.com and they're   searching the word electrician wherever the hell i  live and they're just picking somebody or they're   getting word of mouth word of mouth is really  huge i've gotten so much work over the years   probably fifty percent of the work that  i've gotten over the years has been   uh maybe even more than that i don't know uh but  the the word of mouth thing is really really big   as i'm sure you already know um so i would just  kind of hang on that and and uh don't go too big   into investment debt um or don't go into consumer  debt so that you can run a business go into an   investment debt um it's a very different thing  consumer debt is what people are like oh i want a   tv i'm gonna go into debt for that instead of wait  for a while there's no cash flow there's no money   coming in so it's just a poor investment it's  not even an investment it's just a waste of debt   but if you can leverage debt into an investment  that's going to pay you back you know a nice truck   if it can get you more work done like say you're  going from a regular truck to a bucket truck   well a bucket truck gets you a whole ocean of  new type of work so that can cash flow that   actually has a return on your investment over  a long enough period of time so that's wise   but don't do that right away and do that once  you're already getting profitable in your business   billing and accounting good old excel seriously  if you can put yourself on a budget if you   can account for every single day and make a  good spreadsheet so you can see your entire   year in front of you difficult thing with  budgeting is that you really can't account   for much accurately you don't know when jobs  are going to come in draws get pushed out   on new construction jobs things take much  longer so you don't you can't really rely   on an exact budgeting method i've used  housecall pro in the past there's things like   service titan where it you know helps you usually  a little bit larger companies but it kind of helps   you track jobs and do invoices and things like  that quickbooks um you do have to pay for like   quickbooks online but it's really cheap i mean  comparatively to like how much money you're going   to be making as an electrician it's worthwhile you  track everything in there you can write invoices   in them you can send them they can click pay  right through the email and pay you so it's really   really easy to do but that's my tips based off of  what you asked i could talk about this for like   way longer i've already been talking about it way  longer than i probably should have so that's my   tips for you my dude so if you liked this episode  and you would like to see more of these please   definitely leave some comments below you're more  than welcome to email us at support electrician   you dot com uh if you ever have questions that  you want answered or you can follow us on all   the socials all the facebooks and the discords  and all the different instagrams and places and   i will try to get to your questions there's so  very many questions uh if you want to speak to   me directly on social media at dustin.stelzer  on instagram make sure you join the just did if you join the discord server you're  going to be super cool and awesome   and isn't that great let's join discord  there's a bunch of electricians in there   always talking about your mess um really  good group of people though like uh it's a   it's a good like safe group of people that all  you know care about education and teaching and   learning and all that stuff none of the uh  none of the crazy trolling there are every   once in a while you're gonna get a troll in  there but like everybody for the most part is   it's a well-managed group and uh well-taken  character so you should definitely check out   the discord link in the description below love  you crazy people and i'll see you in the next one  descant music and video.

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 56,122

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, dustin stelzer, electrician vlog, construction, commercial, residential, electrical courses, electrician courses, electrical class, electrician class, electrician school, electrician vlogging, electrician vlogs, side hustle, side work, side jobs, how to, side hustle ideas, business ideas, startup company, life as an electrician, journeyman, startups, startup ideas, apprentice tips, electricial, side jobs for extra money, part time jobs

Id: qnP27tV5QQM

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022