[00:00:00] Being an electrician can open up many doors to different careers. You go to college and learn the fundamentals of how to be a sparky, but it doesn't have to stop there. And then once you learn the skills to be an electrician, a fully qualified electrician, you. There'll always be other opportunities that pop up along the way with a number of different avenues you can go down to like build a business based on the electrical knowledge that you've learned from the electrical trade.

[00:00:30] So in this podcast, I'm gonna go over five opportunities that you could do, some businesses you could build when you've got the skills to be an electrician. Welcome back. Once again. It's me, Ben Polter, your host . And I haven't been in the trade for maybe 20 odd years or more. I've always been asked to do something extra and something d.

[00:00:58] And what I do find is when you're an electrician, most things sort of seem easy, and I think it is built in us as electricians to enjoy a challenge like fault finding on a cowboy, builder's work, you're like a dog after a bone. You wanna see what they've done. You wanna see how they've done it and where completely how they've gone wrong.

[00:01:19] Just for example, there was this one guy that was a bathroom fitter and he wired a new shower, and that shower kept tripping The fuse kept tripping the fuse, so they replaced the shower four times. I got called to go around there. They said you put a 10 kilowatt shower in on a 32 hour fuse. That's why it keeps tripping.

[00:01:36] The shower's too big for the supply. Well, the kitchen fitter or the bathroom fitter, whoever he was, didn't know this. He just kept replacing the shower. And I could see exactly why he'd done it. He just put a nice brand new tin kilowatt hour in and it's not like you can upgrade that fee to a 50 mcb because it'll melt the cable.

[00:01:54] So he didn't know he was an electrician. And it's nice sometimes when you find a fault like that where it rectifies to say, look man, you should have got a proper electrician to do the job. So when a customer asks you a question, you say, Hmm, can you do this? You think, well, yeah, I can give it a go. And that's exactly what I did.

[00:02:14] So let's start with the easy one. TV and sky cabling. When electricians rewire a house, the customer automatically assumes we're going to do the TV points too. And yeah, I know it's not a big deal. Running a car axle to a single box where a house is completely. It makes complete sense, but when it comes to getting a signal to that cable, that's where you call in the specialized guys.

[00:02:38] They do have the proper kit to test the cable or a GPS to find out where the aerial needs to point to for the best signal. In my experience, a customer's more than happy to pay a good amount of money for a professional TV company to come out and make everything work spot on. And being a fully qualified electrician, you could easily install TV and Sky aerials.

[00:03:01] As far as iron I, you don't have to be qualified by anyone to do it, not like the N I C or you don't have , any NVQ level freeze to be able to install TV, cable or sky cables. It's not actually dangerous because if it goes faulty, the TV goes off. You don't have to worry about getting a shock. No one's gonna get harmed.

[00:03:21] I suppose the kids might get upset cause the Teles gone off, but that's about it. You will, however, you need to get the right kit for the job. You need the right testing kit. The ladders to get up to an aerial, which is, well, they're normally installed on the roof. You need the right tools to crimp off the ends of the cables and a decent gps, which I know for these days you can get an app on your phone to see where to point the signal for the best TV signal.

[00:03:45] So, I'm not saying that it's an easy job, but many electricians have installed all the cable into the aerials in a new bill. Plenty of times you could, however, specialize in TV and aerials as an electrician quite easy. So building a business, installing Sky and tv, aerials, that's one option for you. Now to move on to one, a little bit more tricky security alarm systems, for God's sake, never install a battery alarm system.

[00:04:17] They are pants. I've happened in my own house. I've put them in as well. I've learnt by these mistakes. If you install 'em in your own house, you're forever changing the batteries. And if you install them in a customer's house, every time that beeps because it's a low battery, you'll get a call. But again, with TV aerials, it's all wiring.

[00:04:37] Normally it's a small seven core cable rooted to a P A R or a window contact. And the only thing is with security systems is really you need to know two things. You need to know that control panel inside out to get it set up. And also offer a membership for call outs, cuz they'll definitely happen all the time.

[00:04:57] And in my opinion, the security market is booming at the moment. We're not only only domestic installs, but with the industrial commercial too because burglary is on the rise in the uk. So if you are a fully qualifi electrician and you want to go into fitting this, uh, security alarm, it can be a goldmine right now cuz you can also offer p i r outdoor lighting along with the security system, including in maybe your package, you can offer that little bit more.

[00:05:25] Because with a lot of security companies that I've dealt with, they said, yeah, we need an electrician to come out and actually install a spur. Well, a spur, what's a player? It's, it's a single socket. Because they're not qualified. Part P Register. They're not qualified electrician to be able to put power to that security system.

[00:05:41] So if you can do that as well. You're a cut above the rest. So as a fully qualified electrician, I think it'll be easy to transfer into installing security alarms. So that's another job you can do as a sparky. So moving on to the third job you can do as an electrician, as you may well know that when you work as an electrician, you are in a different location every day and you may enjoy it, but if you are the kind of electrician who wants to be in the same place every day, you can do that as well.

[00:06:13] There are hundred if not thousands of factories all over the world who always install , control gear for new machinery, and it's a fully qualified electrician. You learn how to read a wiring diagram, right? You read them all the time. When you're doing an install on a domestic premises and industrial commercial, you need to be able to read that wire diagram to see what they want.

[00:06:34] They want put in. So if you come up to maybe a time where you are fed up with cool around in loss or hanging around and building sites, You can start wiring out control panels for machinery or switch gear to be delivered on site. This is another job that I've done in the past and many of these panels are quite complex with wiring components with contactors time delay switches for machineries to be sort of controlled out on site.

[00:07:00] The the machinery with that I used to work for was in McDonald's before that was interesting as well cause we had to deliver 'em to site. We saw all the little monopoly stickers that were being manufactured. Unfortunately, there was a high security to get in there as well, so we couldn't pocket a couple of free Big Mac.

[00:07:17] And that company I worked for back in, well that must have been 10, 15 years ago, was a highly profitable company. They delivered machinery components and control wiring gear all over the world. And that's the same with this next one that I'm gonna come up with, that you can have a job as a electrician.

[00:07:34] It was a DC power engineer. Although there wasn't any formal qualification to be a DC power engineer, being a qualified electrician was a massive advantage. The whole world of telephone communication systems is run on DC power, which you've got AC power in houses, alternating current, and you've got DC Power, which is direct current.

[00:07:54] It's run on dc power because direct current is less interference. I only found that out cause I always wondered what DC Power was. And that company that I used to work for was called Emerson, and I think it's still around today, and has contracts all over the world for DC Powers to install a 54 volt DC supply to their equipment.

[00:08:13] And because the equipment is supplied by Emerson, Emerson also contracted to do the maintenance on that work. And that involves discharging huge batteries. What I did all over the world. And that job took me to like Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, every week I was in a different destination, and the good thing about being a DC engineer is that they love to send you on courses.

[00:08:37] It wasn't a day in London or a few days in London either. It was a three day training course in Sweden, and I was working as a DC power engineer whilst doing my apprenticeship. So I was getting all these qualifications for being a DC power engineer, along with my qualifications, become an electrician. And that worked for me a massive advantage in the future.

[00:08:58] Now moving on. Number four, the jobs that you can do as an electrician. Cause as an electrician, you're expected to know everything to do with wiring. Everyone asks you, what's this wire do? What does that wire do? And personally, myself as an electrician, I've been asked to put a plug on a small blue hose that came out of the fridge.

[00:09:16] Well, I wasn't sure how to explain it to the customer, but that's for water. I'm afraid there's no wires in there. I can't put a plug on it. It's not gonna. Do any advantage if I put a plug on the end of that hose that comes out your fridge? I didn't know how to explain it without making the customer feel stupid, but I can see how they assumed that it needed a plug on the end of it because there are these cat five cables, CAT six, cat seven cables.

[00:09:38] They're all different colors, and I think as an electrician, you're expected to know what to do with each cable. And if you've worked anywhere or maybe an industrial site or commercial site, then you know that you've probably seen miles of this stuff all over the building. It can be quite tricky to make the ends off at first, but after you've took, I don't know, five or six drums and running miles of that cable, and you end up sitting there making the ends off, after one job, you will become a professional at making RJ 45 ends.

[00:10:11] And I do know a couple of electricians that went into network cabling and built a business around it. With my experience, network, cablings sort of a lot simpler sometimes. The only thing is you're doing the same thing every day. You're running the same cables and making, you can make around 200, 200 ends off a day and it's quite boring to say at times.

[00:10:33] But if that's what you enjoy, then become a master at. And for the final one, the final job you can do as an electrician and only know this one because most electricians I know have done it themself. They've installed their own CCTV system into the house just like I did back in the day with a a 500 pound swan c CCTV system years ago.

[00:10:58] Because again, it's cabling and it is plug and play, but the customer will expect you to expect you to know that D V R inside out. So if you install it into your own house, you'll get a bit of knowledge on how to do it in other people's. , but being a fully qualified electrician as well, you are able to put that DVR box or maybe these cameras anywhere you want because they, they need a power supply.

[00:11:21] So you are able to put maybe a spur or a plug socket, maybe in the loft or anywhere you lie, whether they want that DVR system. So you are at advantage already ahead of the rest once again. But once again, like security systems, you're gonna want to have a membership site because, When a customer ever gets a new phone and they can't install the app onto their phone, or maybe they move house and they take that security system with them or maybe even upgrading the internet, you'll get a call to configure that system and it won't take 10 minutes.

[00:11:54] You'll have to upgrade it while you are there, cuz. People like to plug and play. The people like to install it and leave it and it just works. But they don't necessarily use it every day. So you've gotta be the professional that knows exactly what to do, when to do, and they'll call you cuz you installed that system.

[00:12:13] And the SWAN systems, what I've found out in my experience over the time now is that they're quite a cheap system. I wouldn't install them for customers. If I was gonna build my own business, I'd installed a lot higher grade system and they'd be able to. , sort of maintain it remotely, which would be the best bet.

[00:12:30] See you go. That's just five different professions that you were able to do as a qualified electrician and all these jobs. And I did incorporate into my elec electrical business over the years. But I did however, learn the lesson that it's best to stick to one profession. Don't be the jack of all trades.

[00:12:49] Do do it all. If you've got a thriving business and it grows and you're able to employ a specialized person who maybe does security systems, who does cctv, who does the telephone points, then that is gonna be the best way forward, and that is where you start to employ other people and employ with employees.

[00:13:09] I'm gonna leave that story for another day, so until next time, I'll see you again.