“Do not trust to the cheering, for those very persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.”- OLIVER CROMWELL
We all look for validation. Starting a new venture is high-validation-seeking time, where every nuance of how people react to what you tell them is noted and analysed, preying on every insecurity.
While feedback is great, it always needs to be balanced with sticking to your convictions. It’s only me who knows the full picture – and it’s me who’s going to look silly if this all goes horribly wrong.
The Electric Car Charger
My wife took on the challenge of finding somebody to install a charging point for our first electric car that we picked up last week. (Yes – perhaps we did that in the wrong order, but there you go…)
We tend to use Check-a-Trade if we don’t have any recommendations from friends.
There are loads of electricians who will put a charge-point in – electricians with a whole range of impressive services.
Who did my wife arrange to come round? SOTA-electrical.com. The Header of their home page:
That’s it – that’s all they do.
SOTA are a small local company. They (Adam) has been trading for 20 years as a general domestic electrician, but has recently decided to exclusively do charging points for electric vehicles.
Obviously they could have chosen to carry on with general electrical work – it’s a vastly bigger market. But Adam’s figured out the following:
- There are more than enough EV charge point installations to keep them busy, if they can get a big enough slice of the market.
- This type of work is relatively straightforward once you have the experience. Very little clambering through lofts and under floorboards.
- It’s a premium service – there are good margins.
- As a specialist, they compete on quality of service, not on price.
Adam came round to have a look at what we wanted and give us a quote.
I told him about the solar panels we’re hoping to get in the new year. He told me the options for the best charger to integrate this, showed me an app linking in solar panels, talked about what he’d need to do to the fuse box so the solar panel fitters could just plug their stuff into it, gave me some options for different locations – basically filled me with a massive amount of confidence that if we went with him, we’d get the right gear fitted in the right way.
The price, when it came through, was a bit more than I expected to be honest, but not excessively. Fleetingly, I thought “I should get a couple of other quotes, really”.
Did I? – No.
At the end of the day, the charger might be there for the next 10+ years, and saving £100 is just not worth looking at when I’ve found a specialist who I’m 100% confident will do a very good job.
So thanks Adam for validating my waffle last week that SMEs can thrive by having a laser focus on what they are good at, and I’m looking forward to you coming round next Tuesday so I can finally drive my new electric car!