Powering Prescott: Inside Yavapai Electric Services

0:00Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Signal's AZ news podcast. Today I have Todd Schmidt and you are the owner of Yabapai Electric. It's correct. And tell us a little bit about your business. You're lucky enough you get to work with your son. So that's cool. Tell us all about that. Yeah. So I've been on electricians since 2002. I was working for a plumbing and electrical company in Washington state. Okay. And they got slow in plumbing and they put me in electrical. And I was like, wow, I like this a whole lot better. I would imagine. I mean, keep from getting shocked. It's got to be a lot cleaner. A lot. Yeah. Yeah. Love easier. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I was I was under house. Well, what happened is they had a mainline clog. And so we had tried everything we tried snaking every toilet and we tried filling everything to capacity to put the most pressure on the system. Nothing worked. So the next step is the low guy on the totem pole has to go under the house and cut the pipe open. And so I called my wife and I'm like, sweetie, I think I'm going to quit. And she's like, I support you. Whatever you need to do. And as I was on the phone, it cleared. So I said, oh, yeah. But then, yeah, certainly after that, I got put in electrical. And I said, well, this is better.

1:23My husband as a finished carpenter was a finished carpenter. He's changed careers of, you know, CDL driver and all fun stuff. But I was always the plumber. So and when you have five kids, you don't call the landlord because they knew you have to spend a day getting the house. Right. In order for the landlord to come in. So I always just learned how to do stuff. I changed out a whole toilet the other day. Wow. Yeah. I was, I was helping me, but it was like 20 minutes. I was like, OK, I'm pretty much a, yeah, you don't hear that every day. I know it's actually not that hard. And with you too, you could do. But electrical something you don't mess around with. Well, I would say plumbing too. I mean, unless you make a mistake with plumbing and now your floor is flooded. Yeah. But yeah, electrical, yeah, definitely, you know, we've seen a lot of handyman specials and it's pretty scary what we've come across. You know, like you open something up and you realize that it almost caught on fire. That sort of thing.

2:23You know, we're, and actually, I have seen it where it did catch on fire. I had one guy who called himself an electrician. I dabble in the electricity. Yeah. Well, he was actually working for an electrical company, but he, he hooked something up in the attic. He had no business. I was just way undersized. And it got hot and it caught on fire. And they're at a cotton fire. I was the guy who had to go and, and kind of clean that up and talk to the customers. Low man on the totem pole. Oh, you had the trust. The trusted man, I guess. So yeah. But yeah, we've seen a lot of handyman specials. A lot of flying splices they call them where, you know, they, you've got a connection in a wall. And then they just wrap some tape around it and throw it in the wall and cover it. Of course, that's a flying splice junction boxes buried in walls. Yeah, just, just poor, poor workmanship. We've seen a lot of that.

3:23Yeah. So tell me we're, we've got a new building that's being, we're getting ready to move into, but it's for my chair, Jim, and the, they put new air conditioning in the building that wasn't going to have air conditioning. So it was just going to be, I think mostly, I don't know what they're going to use it for, but eventually, maybe it was going to have air conditioning. But for us, they're like, oh, we'll do air conditioning for you. I can't really do cheerleading without air. So they're setting that up. And then it was, oh, you need a new transformer or trans. You're going to be a electrical panel, maybe a transformer, maybe. Well, I guess if you're, if you were going to have a greater draw of power, they might need to up how much power the building is getting. Okay, so that's for rils. They're not just messing with me. I don't know. I'd have to, but I guess it would make sense if it was kind of like this is, we're just going to have some light bulbs and maybe this going on, but now that you're, right, rounding all these air conditioning can use a lot of power, for sure. All right, so that makes sense. All right. That's the hook. And I also noticed you guys do, you see it. So you wire up all of the cools.

4:31If you're doing like home entertainment stuff, you guys can come along. Do you do like the speakers up in the ceiling? Where are those? Yeah, we do both high voltage and low voltage applications. So we do the smart home technology, you know, where you can use your phone and change the mood lighting in your entire house. We do that. We can do certainly do audio and we can do, you know, basically anything. We've done data lines, although that is kind of a thing in the past. But we still do that. You know, some people want the cat six run to a home office because they want that secure line or whatever it is. So I was, you know, over Christmas, I, we got really technology based. And I've got an Alexa now. So I can tell her to do stuff for me. She'll send out the vacuum, right, which meant we had to get a vacuum for her to be able to send that out.

5:32We did all the lighting. And then realized that, you know, I didn't, I mixed up. I got one set of lighting for this, but that one's a difference. So they're not talking to each other anymore. Or if I say turn everything blue, this is one color blue. And that's a darker blue. You could fix all that. You know how to keep me off. I would probably defer to my son. My son is the more the tech head of our company. I mean, I can mess around with it. I might be able to figure it out, but he's, he's definitely more. Yeah. Yeah, mentally capable for that. We can't get the remote to work. Josh can't get this to work. Josh. I was going to ask you because we, we touched a little bit about it as, you know, when we met. And lots of electrical companies around town or around Arizona. Tell me, if you wanted to start an electrical business in Arizona, what do you need to do? You mean coming from, like, if you're coming from out of state.

6:33Oh, if you just want to be in the election here. Well, you have to pass a contractor's exam. Okay. You have to, you need a bond. You need a general liability policy. And then you're good to go. And how many people can you have working for you? I don't think there's a limit. Which is very different. I, you know, I started in Washington state where they were incredibly strict. I had to log every hour I worked. They were all supervised hours. I had to test to even, you know, move up as an apprentice. And then in Colorado, it was very similar. So I as a master electrician could only have three people working under me. And I had to supervise them as they were working. And they were in, they were in school at the same time. Once they reached a certain amount of hours and they had passed their classes, then they could test to move to the next level, you know, whether, whether that was like a journeyman or you could be a,

7:40forget what they call it now residential residential journeyman. I think it was anyway. But yeah, you had certain levels that you could get to, but I could only legally have three people working under me if they were apprentices and I had to supervise them. If I wanted to grow my business, I had to actually hire a journeyman who could have three people under him. So total, if I had a journeyman working for me, we could be a business of eight people. You know, here in Arizona, I can have, I could have 1500 people working for me. If I wanted to supervise them, they don't have to be electricians, they're not at class. Yeah, I don't, I don't think that's a good thing. I think that it means you're going to get poor quality workmanship. I love this story. I saw a news article one time this, this reporter was interviewing this guy who his house was the only one that survived in this neighborhood after he's horrible hurricane.

8:42So why are you so lucky? What makes you so special that your house is still standing? He's like, well, it's really quite simple. We built it to code. And so that, you know, the code, you know, it's a pain in the butt sometimes, but it makes sense. There's a lot of redundant safety systems built into it. And, and, and just smart, like, you know, logical things about the code. Right. Well, and I bring it up because it is like, you know, if you do the things that you outlined that you need to do to be an electrician in Arizona, you can hire anybody you want that hasn't had the training, but they're learning. But now you've hired 10 guys. Right. How are they getting trained correctly? I think the reason I wanted to bring it up was mostly because it's like, that's not how you do things. No. And when you're working on something that is, I mean, can start a fire or safety or, you know, again, making sure it's up to code.

9:42Right. It matters who you hire for these types of things. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, we're a really small company. It's myself, my son. We have one full time employee who's actually a friend of my sons. And, you know, we, we're not opposed to getting bigger, but we want to do it slow. We want to do it correctly. We, you know, we want to make sure that the person that we're working with gets trained up right before we go and let him work on somebody's house. Not just in terms of like his experience in the electrical field, but also knowing who he is that he's not going to go into somebody's house and, you know, swipe something or whatever, you know. So, you know, I think it's smart. I think that some of these guys, you know, I think homeowners don't realize that legally, if you have a handyman working in your house, or you have an electrician, and he's got one.

10:44He's got one of those thousand guys working in your house, and he's not carrying workers comp on them. If they fall off a ladder and say break their neck, the homeowners actually liable legally for that. So I carry workers compensation even on myself. Because if, if I get hurt on somebody's property, I don't want them to be liable for me. Or if they can't afford to be liable for you and know you're trying to figure out how to take care of yourself in that situation. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, a lot of homeowners don't know that most people it's never going to be an issue. But what if it happens once, you know, it's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. I had a friend in Colorado who he was working on a deck. He had a set up a ladder on a deck up on a, and he was working on kind of the roof or something. And, and he had put the ladder on a piece of plywood because he did not want to scratch the deck. Been it and the plywood just went grink.

11:44And he fell about 18 feet busted himself up really bad. The contractor did not have he was just a subcontractor. And so that's another thing. If you hire a subcontractor, that subcontractor is supposed to have their own insurance. They're supposed to carry their own general liability policy, their own workers compensation. They don't have it. It's on the homeowner. It's not on. So it's, you know, hopefully it never comes to that and never comes to that legal thing. But it could. How would somebody know? So if I was looking to hire an electrician, I mean, do you ask those questions? Well, yeah, the first thing you can do is they should have an ROC register of contractors license. And so you want to look for their license number. Okay. There's that bumper sticker you see on people's cars. It says license contractors build confidence. And so, you know, there's truth to that. I mean, you can go on to that to the ROC.

12:44You can look up their license. You can see, do they have. Do they have a bond? Are they in good standing? That's really important. Are there any complaints against them? Very, very important. We had somebody in our business networking group. And he was a contractor. And he wound up taking a whole bunch of money from this lady and then never did the work. And, but on his website, there were complaints about him, but she had never checked that. So, yeah, I mean, you can always ask, you know, if somebody comes to your house to do work, do you have a general liability workers compensation? You could ask him for policy numbers if you wanted to. I've never been asked that, but you could. You could. Yeah. Especially if you've got them doing a big job or you're. Oh, sure. Yeah. That would make sense. Yeah. And another thing a lot of people don't realize, too, is that if a handyman is allowed to do up to $1,000 worth of work without a contractor's license.

13:47But after $1,000, they actually are required to have a contractor's license. If you start getting bills for $995 and I'll have to come back next week to do the other job. Exactly. That's kind of a little red flag there. Yeah. So if somebody, oh, you're also doing the permanent lighting, which I wanted to touch on because that is. Yeah. I used to be the girl that I always made sure by like the middle of January, because I wanted to keep my lights up as long as possible. But I was like, okay, I think we can get away for like two weeks in January, but then you have to take them down. Sure. It's everybody leaves their lights up now. They have all the pretty lights now. Well, it does look pretty tacky to have like the ice full lights on your house. My neighbor. Yeah. We just recently started installing OLO. It's called OELO. They're out of leveling Colorado. So it's an American company. Yeah. I was told the stuff I bought was. And it's great. You know, you can call them. They answer the phone. They speak English.

14:47It's great. They have a really nice quality product. It actually comes in a very nice track. So all the lights are perfectly separated. And whereas the some of the products are getting out of China. It's like a stick. A stick and clip or something like that. And I don't know. I just don't think those products are going to last very long. They, the OELO product. They have a five year guarantee on it, which is really good. Industry standards one. So five year guarantees. Good. They're estimating their lights are going to burn for 100,000 hours, which is eight hours a night for 35 years. I need it for their dark sky, dark sky compliant. And I put them on my house. Absolutely. Love them. Really cool. I didn't go crazy. I didn't wrap the house. I just did the front. But yeah, it looks really, looks really nice. It's kind of a nice accent.

15:48You can do different holidays. So I just did St. Paddy's. I had green on my house. Yeah. So I like it so far. The HOA hasn't said anything. I hope they don't. But there are other people in the neighborhood doing the same thing. So we live out in analog meadows. So our HOA never. Oh, yes. They don't do much. But the other night I had party time. I have like flood lights. And I just said it to party time and the whole house. Oh, yes. Yeah. But it's fun. Yeah. I kind of like it because it. I think it kind of looks festive. I think I think it actually can set off the neighborhood. I think you can bring it up. Yeah. And I love the why we clear lights when you have those on. Oh, yeah. It looks so pretty. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, there's certainly like leaving your Christmas decorations up. Or your Christmas lights up. Certainly looks tacky. I got to take them down. Yeah, I don't think that. I hate to take them down, but you have to. Yeah. And now I'm like, we don't have to do that anymore. And set them. But yeah, the icicles you got to take those down. Yeah, absolutely. If they're clear. Yeah. So, um, okay.

16:48So we've covered that. So you'll, if they call you, you can come out and you'll install those lights for them. You can set them up on the phone. Absolutely. I can give them a free, free estimate. And they'll know what they're getting into. That's awesome. If somebody who was looking to hire a great qualified electrician. Uh-huh. Who is going to stand by their work? How they get a hold of you, Todd? Well, um, we are Yovapy electric. So they can look us up online. Yovapyelectric.com. Yeah. Um, I can give you a phone number. I don't know. That would be great. Yeah. So it's 970-340-7088. I have 928. I'm sorry. 928-340-4088. It's Colorado. Yeah. That's where I came from. 928-340-7088. Yeah. You call 970. Some of the answers don't exist. Well, that's, that's my son. Actually, he's got the 970 number. It's called either one. Yeah. Um, also you, you have a quote on here on your website. Um, God literally quoted on your website.

17:48What does it say? You have a quote, let there be light. Oh, yes. That was so cute. I have that on my license plate too. That is awesome. Yeah. It's like God. That's perfect. So perfect. So 928 or 970-340-7088. Yeah. You have a pie electric dot com. Yeah. Not just a regular electrician, but we'll install lights set up here. All your cool stuff, recess lighting. Yeah. All kinds of awesome stuff. Yeah. Something's not lighting up. Give you a call. Yeah. And we do, um, we do residential, we do commercial. We've done like North Face stores, T mobile stores. So we're not opposed to ceiling fans. Oh, yeah, we do. I've done so many ceiling fans. I've probably done 10,000 ceiling fans. I think as we get older, we get smarter. I'll still change out of toilet, whatever. Yeah. But my husband, I'm like, we need new ceiling fans. He's like, I'm going to call a guy. Yeah. And the ceiling fans might just open it, take it off. He's like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, some of them are getting a little bit more complicated.

18:48I don't, you know, I never understood it in the industry. Like, you've got a really good design and then you change it. Why do you do that? You know, I don't understand. And they make it more complicated or it's, it's fussy. Yeah. That happens all the time, especially with ceiling fans. And sometimes with light fixtures too, especially coming out of China. Mm-hmm. A lot of them are a pain in the butt to install. Yeah. And I don't think the stuff from China is going to get any cheaper anytime soon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you have a pie electric dot com, nine, two, eight, three, four, zero, seven, zero, eight, eight. Yeah. And thanks for doing what you're doing. Thanks for coming in. Well, thanks for the interview. I appreciate it. All righty. We'll see you guys next time. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.