EP #51 – What Separates A Good Engineer From A Good Business w/ Edward Lovell
Table of Contents
TOC
Table of Contents
Overview
What if the thing holding your business back isn’t your trade skills?
How you think about money, customers, and your own value are all worth just as much as your technical skills and knowledge.
Edward Lovell sits down with Tulloch to break down how to price based on value, how to build systems that remove mental load, and how to finally start running your business instead of just working in it.
Highlights
Edward’s background
- (1:09) – How day trading reshaped Edward’s view of the plumbing trade. All markets run on the same rules of supply, demand and customer psychology — and that changed how he saw every job.
Why do engineers blend in with the competition?
- (5:10) – Charging by the hour makes it easy for customers to commoditise you. When everything looks the same, the only thing left to compete on is price.
- (7:25) – Edward explains how to reframe your offer so they stop comparing on rate.
What do customers want?
- (9:46) – The biggest complaints customers have aren’t skills on the tools. They’re quoting, timekeeping, and communication — and that’s where the real opportunity is.
- (11:10) – Customers value communication and a feeling of safety, not how straight your pipework is.
- (12:13) – When a quote turns up late, customers don’t think you’re busy. They think you don’t care about them
Going self-employed: Why systems matter more than skill
- (13:11) – The first 24–36 months of being self-employed runs on word-of-mouth. After that, weak systems get exposed when customers don’t already trust you.
- (14:17) – AI and job management software give small businesses leverage against bigger competitors.
- (15:33) – The brain can only hold about five things at once, and stress shrinks that. Relying on memory falls apart when work gets busy.
- (16:05) – Software either does the job for you, or captures the information for you to check later.
Choosing a coach & building a vision for your business
- (21:02) – If a coach isn’t telling you it’s going to be hard, walk away. Edward discusses the value of coaches, and how to choose one.
- (25:53) – Three ways of doing anything: pay someone, read the books or hire a coach. The trade-offs of each.
- (26:30) – Build the org chart for the business you want in three years, even if you’re doing every role on it today. Your first hire is probably a bookkeeper.
- (30:18) – Your vision should be a filter for deciding whether an opportunity moves you closer to where you want to go, or further away.