Luke Cove from Lightning Solar

Luke Cove, Managing Director of Lightning Solar, started out as an electrician installing downlights before transitioning his business into solar in 2018.

Since then, he’s grown the business to a team of 40 within four years, and taken himself off the tools to split his time between business development, company culture, and strategy for the next five years.

To move from working in the business to working on the business, Luke says he doubled down on refining his sales skills, and building relationships—with staff, suppliers, and customers.

Luke is passionate about providing a positive work culture as a way to retain staff in a high turnover industry. We interviewed Luke to get his advice for other solar installers aiming to grow their business. See his answers below.

Luke’s advice to other solar installers

What do you wish you’d known about before you started?

I wish I knew how much was involved in addition to being a good sparky. The actual electrical side is a small part of it. There’s so much else you need to stay on top of, and I wish I’d had more understanding of sales, marketing, operations, branding, and culture.

I now think a lot about the importance of human psychology. What is the emotional reason that people want to buy solar? Too many people think it’s just about the numbers and that people will always choose the most efficient option.

As an example, Lightning Solar’s website uses the marketing hook “escape from high energy costs” to tap into the emotional reason customers buy solar. See here for more information on value selling.

Sparkies don’t get taught how to run a large business, and they’re not about to go do an MBA, so you have to teach yourself all these things.

You still need to be an expert in your field—being a good electrician is still number one. But if one part of your business is not working, the whole thing will fail.

If you were going to do it all again, where would you start?

1. Be an expert in your field
2. Have a mission statement and a vision statement and align this to your business plan and strategy
3. Be flexible and don’t have a fixed mindset, this will help you avoid getting pulled into bad deals

It’s all about progress over perfection, just start and move and refine as you go. Don’t get held up trying to be perfect!

In terms of growing the business, what roles or team members helped you level up?

Everyone in the business is important—like I said, if one part of the business isn’t working, it’ll fail.

The most benefit I got wasn’t from a single staff member but from speaking to business advisors who could give me objective feedback about the business plan. They analyse and then advise, not just yes men. And I don’t always take their advice, and that’s okay too.

If you’re a general tradie or electrician who doesn’t know how to set up a website, getting an IT-savvy team member is very helpful. Get them to help with setting up the website and a CRM.

You mentioned how important company culture is, what tips do you have for it?

Trade school doesn’t teach you how to motivate people or manage performance. Just like with customers, it’s all about the emotional reason why.

What’s driving the people that work for you? What’s their why? If you look into this, you’ll find the right way to motivate your team, in a way that’s specific for them.