Mr. Electric Franchise Headquarters Not train me nearly enough as a new franchisee Waco 1010 N University Parks Drive

This is not a remark about the quality of individual Mr. Electric franchise locations.  The locations themselves consist of hardworking, honest and effective local contractors, who want their customers to be entirely pleased with their work, as dearly as any small business wants and needs this.

                               ************This note is a warning to those considering becoming a franchisee.****************   

WARNING:  If you are not  a) an electrician with a good 7-8 years of residential service work under your belt,  and b) one who has had direct experience and responsibility quoting on jobs  I will tell you that you have a high chance of losing all your money, as others I have known did. I lost $160,000.00 before I closed my doors, 18 months after opening.  I had zero experience going into this industry in any form of contracting, and I have no technical knowledge of anything.

Without lots of industry experience, you are at the mercy of your electricians.  You have no way of supervising the process, of improving it, or even measuring it.  Also, many fine electricians out there do not know how to make sure you are not undercharging for the job, despite the seemingly impressive company software to quote. A few I hired were adequate to even fine electricians, but had minimal to zero experience in the art of quoting high enough to ensure the company’s profitability, but low enough to win the business.

Most hazardous to you is the fact that the headquarters support after training is essentially non-existent.  Yes, they have a few seminars during the year, but those seminars are a reteaching of the most crucial elements of the training.  As ongoing learning, I had someone from the home office assigned to me for support, but whose background had absolutely no content in any form of contracting whatsoever, much less that of electricity and electrical work.  She knew nothing about the day to day realities of the contracting business.  In my opinion, the headquarters might have well said, "G'bye, good luck" when I left their headquarters after 5 days of solid training. 

No franchisor out there can get that much into your head in five full days.  Training, especially into areas not covered during  in class, must continue, because every franchise out there indeed does have a ton to teach you.   My rep's idea of further training?  A  useless call every 30 days asking, "So how are things going?"  She never penetrated into any aspect more deeply.

There were 30 excellent reports available in our software to help run and analyze our business. I was not told about them in training, nor was I ever even told by her!  I literally stumbled across them in our software!   There is hardly any excuse for her not to have taught me those reports as a part of further training.  Making me into a decent electrical contractor owner was, as I've mentioned, essentially "G'bye, good luck, see ya" after what in fact was a solid, well organized initial 5 days of in-class presentations.

  I had been a franchisee for 25 years previously in an entirely different industry, and with Mr. Electric, I was just astounded, once I saw the stark absence of further phone training after 5 brief days.  Again, a franchisor can only teach so much in five days.  Later, and deep, training about the internal systems, let alone the reality of being a better contractor every day, is essential.

Know that this is a somewhat capital intensive business.  Once you put all the shelving, tools, electrical supplies and a custom paint job into an electrician’s van, you are looking at a $50,000.00 cost.  They recommend you get to three trucks as soon as you can afford to.  Do the math.  It is fairly capital intensive.

Again, if you have minimal or worse, zero experience with any contracting (even another form of it, say plumbing, heating, etc.) I cannot put it strongly enough: keep your money safe, and put it into a franchise that is hopefully less capital intensive, less technical, or less necessary to have previous direct, price.