Tradies Success Academy gives you the frameworks, systems, and coaching to build a business that works without you.
Chris Karavasilis built an EV electrical business in one of the fastest-growing trade specialisations in Australia. But growth in a niche does not eliminate the universal challenge every trade owner faces: finding and keeping the right people.
EV installation is booming. The demand is there. The margins are strong. But if you cannot hire the right electricians to deliver the work, demand means nothing. Chris learned that the hard way and built a hiring system that ensures every new team member meets the standard before they step on site.
The EV market is growing faster than the supply of qualified installers. That creates a temptation to hire anyone with a licence just to fill the demand. Chris explains why that approach is a trap. A bad hire in a specialist field does not just cost money. It damages your reputation in a niche where reputation is everything. Word travels fast in specialist markets, and one poor installation can undo years of brand building.
In a specialist trade, the right hire is not just someone with a licence. It is someone who represents your standard on every site, every time.
Chris talks about hiring the same way every high-performance trade business owner does: character first, skill second. In a specialist field like EV, the technical skill can be trained. The attitude, the professionalism, and the reliability cannot. You can teach someone how to install a charger. You cannot teach them how to show up on time and treat a customer's home with respect.
The hiring framework Chris uses is the same one we teach across all trades at Tradies Success Academy. The trade changes. The principle does not. Hire the person who aligns with your values and your standards. Then invest in training them on the technical specifics of your work.
Response Electricians applies the same principle across all their work. Character first, skill second. Every hire goes through a structured process: defined role, scored interview, reference checks, and documented onboarding. The result is a team that upholds certainty, safety, and professionalism on every job without the owner needing to supervise.
The EV market will not slow down. If Chris had not built a hiring system, his business would have capped at his own capacity. The system is what allows the business to grow beyond the founder's ability to do every job. Without it, growth means burnout. With it, growth means freedom.
This applies to every specialisation in every trade. Whether you are an EV sparky, a commercial plumber, or a heritage builder, the bottleneck is always the same: your ability to hire and retain quality people. The trades with the biggest demand are also the ones with the biggest hiring challenges. A system solves that problem in a way that desperation never can.
Define the role before you advertise. Score every candidate against the same criteria. Check references, always, no exceptions. Onboard with a 90-day plan that includes KPIs from week one. Review at 30, 60, and 90 days. If the person is not meeting the standard by day 90, address it immediately. This system costs nothing to implement and saves you from the $80,000-plus cost of a bad hire. Build it now, before you need it.
Get 1:1 coaching to scale your trade business faster. Join the Freedom Fighter program for hands-on support from experienced trade business coaches.
Find the right program for your trade and your stage of growth.
This episode applies differently depending on your business stage. Here is the specific action for each phase.
Get weekly financial visibility in place before anything else. 30 minutes every Friday: what came in, what went out, what is your margin. Build the habit first, then layer systems on top. Start in the Learning Hub .
Your first hire for freedom is a qualified tradesperson, not an apprentice. Cost every job before you quote. Track hours against every job. Follow the scaling loop — proactive hiring, never reactive.
Delegate the weekly numbers review to your operations manager. Your job is now strategy and work generation. Systemise the Financial Visibility Loop so it runs without you.
Dashboards, not spreadsheets. Margins tracked per job, per team, per division. Hire decisions backed by data. You are optimising a machine, not building one. If you are still firefighting, the system is broken.
This episode applies differently depending on your business stage. Here is the specific action for each phase.
Get weekly financial visibility in place before anything else. 30 minutes every Friday: what came in, what went out, what is your margin. Build the habit first, then layer systems on top. Start in the Learning Hub.
Your first hire for freedom is a qualified tradesperson, not an apprentice. Cost every job before you quote. Track hours against every job. Follow the scaling loop — proactive hiring, never reactive.
Delegate the weekly numbers review to your operations manager. Your job is now strategy and work generation. Systemise the Financial Visibility Loop so it runs without you.
Dashboards, not spreadsheets. Margins tracked per job, per team, per division. Hire decisions backed by data. You are optimising a machine, not building one. If you are still firefighting, the system is broken.
The frameworks in this episode are the same ones members use inside Tradies Success Academy.