What does a Mogul Aerialist Know About Electricity?
by Tom Watts
April 23, 2010
“I usually spend about 35 days of the year on snow, plus a week or so up at the Olympic Jumping Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., over the summer, Bill Murdy said. “Most of my snow time is spent coaching young athletes with Olympic dreams, but occasionally I do get to ski with my wife, Debbie, who is also an avid skier.”
Murdy is a Level 3 professional ski instructor and a U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) mogul and aerialist coach, but his day job is as the president of Murdy Electric Co. Inc., in Oceanside, N.Y., where his company performs 80 percent residential and 20 percent commercial work.
“I’ve been fortunate to be able to take this kind of time with my passion for skiing. But it can only happen because I have systems in place with Mister Sparky® that keep my business running while I’m away,” said Murdy.
Evidently, the Mister Sparky systems he has in place are doing quite well for Murdy who has had time to mentor his three daughters, Deirdre, Ryan, and Caitlin in skiing. All have grown up skiing and competing, and his oldest daughter skied at Nationals against some of the Olympians who competed at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
Last year, Murdy compiled an impressive $1.2 million in residential service revenue as a Mister Sparky franchise, while Murdy Electric generated $600,000 in new commercial construction. The year prior, Murdy said, the revenue numbers were opposite between residential and commercial. “I expanded the company over several years to grow to a volume of over $1.5 million in annual sales,” he said.
But, nobody starts off at the peak of a successful career — in the beginning he spent a lot of time winning low-bid contracts and then trying to squeak out a profit with them. “It was long hours and hard work, and I did get ahead but I had to be on top of everything all the time,” he said. “I felt there was no system in place to ever make my life any easier.”
SUCCESS DAY WITH MISTER SPARKY
When Bill Murdy takes time away from Murdy Electric and Mister Sparky he usually can be found on the ski slopes where he is a Level 3 professional ski instructor and a USSA mogul and aerialist coach. Here Murdy enjoys a day on the slopes of Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort in Utah.
When Mister Sparky opened as a franchise in New York, Murdy didn’t exactly lead the charge. “I thought the timing was a little early for me and I had some reservations about changing the name of the company that I had built up for 20 years,” he said. “But on the other hand I liked the idea of jumping head first into all the changes that I had wanted to enact over the years — but mostly to no avail. I also liked the idea of creating this national electrical company and really saw it as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”
Murdy put his first Mister Sparky truck on the road in January of 2007. That year, he did about $600,000 in sales. One year later, the company won the Transformation Award from Clockwork Home Services for sales growth of over 70 percent.
“It really helped me appreciate all the work we had put in, and I do mean we,” he said. “I am fortunate to have some great talents in my company and the changes that we made as a Mister Sparky really gave these people the opportunity to shine.”
Murdy said the Mister Sparky system showed him who is performing and who is not, and rewards those that put in the effort. “I can think back to times in the past when I’d be away for a few days and I’d come back to one mess after another,” recalled Murdy. “It would take me a week to get things straight. I should have just shut down.
“These days I come back and there’s no catch-up, everyone knows their job and the business runs without me,” he continued. “The systems we have in place made everything work so smoothly. From our customer service representatives (CSR) booking our appointments to our technicians running the call, we are all trained on how to handle the situations, and we do our best to get the job done.”
Murdy said the camaraderie of the Mister Sparky franchise is one of the big attractions. “I am no longer out there by myself against the world,” he said. “We have over a hundred Mister Sparkys at this point and you couldn’t find a better group of people. I am able to exchange ideas with people from all over the country on a regular basis.”
Murdy is pleased to have access to franchise business coaches who are resident experts in a variety of fields. “I may know electrical work, but effectively putting together a marketing strategy is something new to me,” he said. According to Murdy he now has access to experts in not only marketing, but when he needs help with pricing, budgeting, call taking, dispatching, sales, software, buying, training, operations — anything pertaining to his business — he can get it from Mister Sparky.
BUILDING A NATIONAL BRAND
Murdy said his Mister Sparky franchise is still early in its goal of building a national brand. “But we’ve got some pretty big things coming down the pike,” he said. “The success of our national branding efforts should really grow. In the meantime, I’ve seen our own popularity grow in my area. It seems that everybody notices our big red trucks, and the name is very easily remembered. We keep our name out there through flyers, Yellow Pages, Internet, and a host of other ideas.”
The brand awareness of Mister Sparky has taken a real shot in the arm recently with the national television presence that the popular hit show “The Celebrity Apprentice” has brought to the franchise. The show started airing March 14, and one of the season episodes will feature not only the Mister Sparky brand but two other Clockwork brands: One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating®, and Ben Franklin Plumbing®.
Asked what advice he would give other electrical companies that are considering a national franchise such as Mister Sparky, Murdy said that while the U.S. economy is experiencing a slowdown, this is the time to utilize new strategies. “It takes some different strategies to stay on top,” he said. “One of the things we have stressed since joining Mister Sparky is our stance on customer service: We set our hours to make it more convenient for our clients. We schedule Saturdays and evenings. We rotate our technician schedules so that everybody gets a fair share of the work load and nobody burns out from long hours.
“We’ve also looked at our product line and found ways to give our clients more options,” he continued. “We always look to provide the best long-term value for our customers and occasionally that may cost more upfront, so we offer financing to make the sale easier.”
Murdy added that the office can handle things pretty well when he is not there. “With the computers all set up on an Application Service Provider, I can have a look into the day-to-day activities from anywhere that I can get Internet access,” he said. “Additionally, Mister Sparky management reports are sent to me daily, so I get a good snapshot of where things are.”
HOW IT STARTED
After college, Murdy went to work as an engineer and spent several years designing automatic test systems for F-18 jets with Harris Corp. But in the meantime, at the age of 23, he had taken and passed his electrical license exam. “When my father passed away in 1982, I came back and took over the business,” he said. “He performed mostly residential service work, but I felt that new construction and commercial would offer me more growth and opportunity.”
So, that is how the business got started, how it flourished with Mister Sparky, and how Bill Murdy made time for his real passion.
HITTING THE SLOPES OF SUCCESS
“This spring I will get to ski with my wife for a few days at Snowbird in Utah,” he said. “I believe that I’ve got to enjoy it now because once the weather warms up the phones really start ringing and I won’t get as much of a break.”
It sounds like it’s a good thing the slopes are closed in the summer — Bill Murdy would really rather be skiing. With Mister Sparky providing the guidance for running his electrical company much more smoothly, he has great expectations.
“As we come to the end of this slowdown, I would like to see our Mister Sparky franchise jump out very proactively to gain market share as our competition continues to wait it out on the sideline,” Murdy concluded. “Strong campaigns and strong direction from the franchise will give the franchisees the confidence they will need to be dominant in their market.”
Tom Watts
