okay then folks so let's have the first question there so uh what
sector of the industry do you like working in most domestic commercial industrial
i'm primarily domestic so i don't we don't sort of have the workforce to get to involved in the
commercial side of it because the jobs are so can be so large can sort of last well a week anything
up to a year or things like that so i yeah i really enjoy the domestic stuff it's when people
sort of say to me i've had three or four other electricians around i wanted outside light here
they said it can't be done that's the sort of work i love so yeah always domestic for me
next question how do how do you both end up getting into the electrical industry yours first
yeah so i've i spent uh 18 years in the automotive wiring industry and when the recession hit
um i decided to retrain went back to it was uh Wellingborough attraction back then Gary ended up
retraining me um and no thanks to gary but um it got me the job i'm in
now and really it's all about you guys at the end of the day you need to put the time in you need
to go out there meet people and the more people you meet the more opportunities you get i can't
remember what the question was how'd you been on the industry oh okay so when i left school i was
a bit of a toe rag to say the least i had no idea what i wanted to do so initially i went
to be a maths teacher so that was the idea i went to college i was supposed to be there four days a
week i probably went one just sort of dropped out didn't know what to do ended up getting a
job in asda at the bakery working there full time and then after my old man hammered me
enough about getting another job i went down to my local college and he said why don't
you be an electrician you're always messing around with stuff and that's pretty much how
i got into it so i started off day release at college when i finally got into my second year
i got an apprenticeship and i was with the same firm for six years then i went on my own
and i've been on my own for 10 years now so next question what is your favorite top warrant system
i can give you my least favorite anything anything conduit galvanized conduit i cannot stand um
like i say being domestic based we don't tend to do too much of that so can i say clip direct
that's my favorite it's easy so um what about the bit of mi there in fact if it's not on camera
i'll tell you where you can put that next question how many miles a week you do travel into jobs and
how long would you say on the road can we go first yeah you go first so i cover all the uk so whether
there's an issue it could be up in scotland it could be in france um sometimes i've gone for
a couple of days i was in london this week so um it depends so maybe two to three hours i could be
driving down to a site um one time i went all the way down to uh newquay and i was there 20 minutes
so i was on site for 20 minutes and it took me about four and a half hours to get there four and
a half hours to get back so all depends on the job i've got to start answering these questions first
mine is a little bit more boring than that we used to travel sort of down to london
things like that but we've created a bit of a sort of a niche for ourselves where we are
so to be honest most of our work is within sort of a 45 minute radius of our office so
and i've well up until now in my new van i used to do all the job in so i do like
anywhere between eight and twelve jobs a day and they'd all be sort of located
within sort of a ten mile radius each other so i spend a lot of time in the van a day um
whereas my other lads three of them are on site and then the others are just sort of out doing
two or three jobs a day so yeah between i reckon i spend at least two or three hours a day in the van
okay let's open the question up to the rest of the floor then so you talk there about uh other
people that you work with yes so you must employ people how many people do you employ down and how
do you find employing fellow electricians being an electrician myself i'd imagine i
was a nightmare to be around so how does it employ your electricity well a lot of my lads
so there's a guy alfie he's worked for me for nearly 10 years now i actually he used to be
a manager at morrison's just jacked his job in one day got fed up at work in weekends
he was helping me out doing a little bit of labour and he said you know what
i actually enjoyed doing this so i put him through his college and he's actually sort of my top lad
now he actually trains our two electricians our two apprentices sorry who we've got um i've
had a couple of guys who have been friends of mine worked for me they've sort of come
and now they're out on their own doing their own sort of thing they sub to us occasionally um but i
try and keep it all in house like say it's hard to find good help but i think the way i treat
my lads they're always going to sort of stick around so so you said that you're taking on two
apprentices now yeah why do you find an apprentice probably somebody between 16 and 19. how old
they're both actually in the same class they're both third year um they're just sitting there
final exam today actually i believe so they're both 20 years old which is fun for van insurance
as you can imagine and to follow that question on then so once they've finished your apprenticeship
which is probably imminent within the last 12 months yeah are you going to take them on or do
you release them so they can go into the workforce and see the real world after their apprenticeship
is always fine if you've done an apprenticeship with someone there's a sort of a comfortability
with him that you were the boy yeah yeah sure all of a sudden then you become an electrician
well you tend to be maybe the status doesn't always change quickly into being a qualified
spark within the eyes you've been working with yeah no absolutely yeah um well one of the guys
phil's been with me from the start of his apprenticeship and jordan only joined us
in january so he did his sort of the first two and a half years of his apprenticeship at a different
company he didn't actually do that much electrical work sort of more maintenance things like that
so coming and working with us doing the installs things like that has really sort of
opened his eyes to the industry a lot more um the guys are on a permanent contract so there's no
once your apprenticeship is over you've got a new place as far as i'm concerned they're part of the
team and that's that's it that is fantastic lee we know from conversations i've had to do in the past
that you've spent a lot of time at footballers houses programming and looking at their lighting
systems can you uh disclose to us some of the maybe football teams that you've been to if you
can't say the players names and which parts of the country you were in when you were looking
at their systems okay um i've already been to a couple of them um most of them are up north so
i think one was a manchester united chap and then the other one was a one from liverpool
can you describe what their properties look like and the amount of money they spent on
their lighting system they're quite happy to spend about 30 000 pounds on
outdoor lighting think of that contract did you do that no
too expensive fantastic so anyone else so we've got other questions for them i can go on forever
so back to your apprentices then dan so if these two are due to come out their time yeah is it
consideration that you may be taking on one or more apprentices say in the next three years
uh yeah quite possibly quite possibly like so the guys have got um they've got their own vans now
they're all kitted out with their own tools so they're out doing sort of bits and pieces small
jobs um like i say i tend to spend the days job in and then if they're on bigger jobs and they get
say cool at the end of the day which just replace a couple of light fittings things like that
they get to go out and they get a bit of customer interaction rather than me always
being there saying hi this is lee he's my apprentice yada yada they get that first
hand so and it helps it helps build them um which then hopefully they'll transfer to
like say if we take on some more apprentices they can they can teach them that and we love
that ricochet effect don't we that someone's gone to college been trained by a good electrician
becomes a very good electrician themselves and ricochets it down to the next generation that's
something we're really really really passionate about at trashion college anyone's got a question
nice and loud we'll see if you have any free time or would you like to do it
if i have any free time um well i've just uh my other half we've just had a little baby girl
so to be honest a lot of my time is taken up by that if i wasn't doing that any free
time i got i used to spend riding my bike like motorbike not push bike um
that was pretty much it i mean the thing with being self-employed these days i find you never
shut off like you're always just thinking about work it could be three in the morning like this
morning i go up at four o'clock and mainly because i was excited to come here and see guys and joe
and you guys but like you just just never stop so if getting out on your motorbike or things
like that is is a good way to sort of chill out so anything anything like that is is good for me
um mines are control systems so high in domestic a lot of um houses have control systems so like
control 4 i've got rayco at home there's lutron crestron and so i like to just find out about
how these systems are programmed up and especially like with control4
it's not just the lights you can do you can do your tvs do security cameras um curtains yeah yeah
um so when i do have some free time at the minute i'm i'm converting my house into a smart house so
that's what i do in my free time a bit sad but smelling and things knowledge is power mate yeah
next question uh what's been your most difficult job or like one that you've struggled with the
most oh i've had loads i think it comes down to when your cost costs the job and then it's not
till you turn up and you find out that it's not quite what you think it is so
and it happens quite a lot you agree with me on that one yeah 100
the last two days so this is an example i've been doing garden lights um so i had six wall lights
six lights on steps similar to that and then six surface mounted ones on the front so i
said right it's probably a day's labor i said give myself a little bit so give me 10 hours
to do it cause i'd run all supplies back put in some connect switches things like that
it hammered it down with rain so i literally could have no tools outside i couldn't have the lights
outside so every i put a light on the wall have to go back in the garage get the drill back out drill
the next one get the light back out so i think the whole job ended up taking me about 17 and a
half hours so that's seven and a half hours that i haven't been paid for effectively things like that
so i wouldn't specifically say there's one job but definitely time keeping within jobs is is the
hardest thing so you mentioned payment there for hours that you didn't work so you priced it and
you had a few extra hours it didn't work yeah can you disclose maybe without the number yeah sort
of money that you may have been in the past owed that you didn't get straight away is there life
changing i know another popular youtuber yeah for a large amount of money have you ever come
across something like that i yeah so there was was it 2000 probably 2011. i was working for one
builder and he had two mates who were chippies now i'd sort of sub to them individually so i do sort
of yeah a house for the builder kitchen utility room whatever i was doing all their electrics
we did a big job in a commercial gym and i think my bill in the end was about 21 000
back in this time i was building like really small increments like a thousand here 2000 there
just because i thought i had to do everyone a favor that's so naive of me i mean i was in my
mid-20s thinking oh if i'm nice like we'll have a better relationship things like this
i build about 10 grand out of like the 20 plus that i was owed and he said oh sorry it's i only
allowed 10 grand for the electrics so i think i lost about 11 and a half grand on that job um
and then after that i obviously fell out with the builder
i was halfway through doing the chippy's house so i lost about three and a half grand there
if i was thinking about it now i would have chased the money a lot harder but yeah so
probably around that time probably got knocked for about 17 grand i think which is uh a life-changing
sum of money but we we got through it and yeah we've come out the other side really well so