It all started with the intent of exposing bad electrical work.
I have been in the electrical industry for 43 years. In 2008 I opened an electrical contracting business doing electrical service and remodels on high-end homes in Arizona.
My brother was a general contractor, so I worked through him wiring remodels on these homes working $100k plus kitchen remodels. Some of these homes had been remodeled over the years by other contractors that did not share the same quality expectations that we had.
I came across a lot of crappy workmanship that was either done by homeowners, handymen, and even some electricians that did not know what they were doing or did not care.
As I uncovered these gems, I got frustrated with the type of electrical work that was being performed and wanted to figure out a way to expose some of this work to other electricians in hopes that they would see what was really going on in the electrical industry.
My start on YouTube.
Youtube was only 2 years old at the time, and I liked the platform thinking this would be the way to reach thousands of electricians, homeowners, and other contractors about the dangerous work that was being done by unqualified people.
So I started my Youtube channel and named it Sparky U Online.
I started showing all the crap that I ran into on a daily basis and pointing out the bad stuff people do.
The problem was that a lot of the people that were watching the videos didn’t know what was wrong with the work I was uploading, and I did not do a good job of explaining what was wrong with this work.
Here is an example of one of the first videos I uploaded. Watch it and see how I complained about bad work without explaining how it should be done correctly.
Fast forward several years.
After reading the comments from viewers over the years about how I didn’t show videos about how to do electrical work correctly, I started to upload some productive how-to videos. That seemed to pacify some people but not all people. Ya make one little mistake in what you’re saying, and “I became a hack that didn’t know WTF I was talking about.
I got frustrated with trying to help people on YouTube and let things ride; no video uploads for a few years.
From the start, I have wanted to help people do good work; it has always been that I wanted to find out why people do what they do.
I changed the name of my channel to the Electrical Industry Network. A network is defined as an association of individuals sharing a common interest. The common interest, in this case, helping each other become good at our trade.
So I am changing my platform to help people become better at what they do through personal and professional development.