What Does a Trade Business Coach Actually Do?

A trade business coach works with you, fortnightly or weekly, on the parts of a trade business that nobody taught you on the tools: pricing, cash, sales, staff and the systems that hold it all together. Then they hold you to what you said you would do. That is the job. It is not bookkeeping, it is not tax, and it is not a video course with a Facebook group attached.

What a trade business coach actually does

Picture a plumber running three vans. Jobs are coming in, yet the bank balance at the end of the quarter does not match the effort. A coach sits with that plumber and works out why. Pricing? Too many small call-outs and not enough bathroom renovations? Staff standing around between jobs?

The coach does not do the plumbing and does not do the books. The coach asks the questions the owner has stopped asking, sets the targets, and comes back in two weeks to see what moved. Having co-owned a construction business, I know the difference between a slide deck and someone who has had to make payroll on a Thursday.

How is a coach different from an accountant, a bookkeeper, a mentor or a mastermind?

People lump these together. Paying for the wrong one is a common mistake.

• Bookkeeper. Records what happened. Invoices, bills, reconciliations, payroll. Essential, backward looking.
• Accountant. Reports on what happened and keeps you right with the ATO. Tax, BAS, structure. Also backward looking, mostly once a year.
• Mentor. Someone further down the road who gives you their opinion when you ask. Valuable, informal, no structure, no accountability.
• Mastermind group. A room of peers sharing what works. Good for ideas. Nobody in that room is responsible for your result.
• Trade business coach. Works forward. Sets the plan, teaches the skills you are missing, checks the numbers with you every week, and asks why the thing you committed to did not happen.

Here is the honest caveat. Some tradies do not need a coach. If your quoting is sound, your margins are healthy and your only problem is a shoebox of receipts, hire a bookkeeper and keep your money. A coach is for the owner whose business has outgrown the way they run it.

What does a weekly coaching session look like?

A session is not a chat. It runs to a structure.

1. Numbers first. Revenue, gross profit, jobs quoted, jobs won, cash, work in progress. Ten minutes.
2. Review the commitments. Last session you said you would raise your hourly rate on maintenance work and chase two overdue invoices. Did you?
3. Work the problem. One thing, not six. A carpenter losing money on decks because the quote never included the second trip for the balustrade. A tiler whose apprentice costs more than the jobs he is on.
4. Set the week ahead. Two or three specific actions with a date on each.

In the Business Growth and Accountability program, that weekly call is the backbone, with on-demand support in between for the moments that cannot wait a week.

What does the coach do between sessions?

This is where a real coach separates from a program. Between calls, the coach is reading your numbers, reviewing the quote you sent for the kitchen fit-out, and answering the message that says the builder wants a 20 per cent discount or he walks.

Specific between-session work includes:

• Checking your job tracking software is set up so you can see margin per job, not just revenue.
• Reviewing your Facebook or Google Ads so the leads coming in are the jobs you actually want.
• Building a budget and setting your prices with the Tradie Lifestyle Pricing Model, then testing a real quote against it.
• Setting up WIP tracking so a builder knows what has been done, what has been claimed and what is still owed.
• Drafting HR steps when a staff member needs a conversation you have been avoiding.

If nothing happens between calls, you are paying for a meeting, not a coach.

What can a coach not do for you?

Read this before you pay anyone, including me.

A coach cannot fix a business the owner will not change. If you will not raise your prices, will not track your jobs, and will not have the hard conversation with the labourer who turns up late, no amount of coaching moves the needle. The coach brings the plan and the accountability. You bring the willingness.

A coach also cannot replace your accountant, cannot give legal advice on contracts or fair work matters, and cannot guarantee a result. Anyone promising a number before seeing your books is selling, not coaching. For the legal and regulatory side, business.gov.au is the place to start, and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman exists for disputes and payment problems.

How do you tell a good coach from a video library with a Facebook group?

Plenty of programs sell themselves as coaching. Here is how to tell.

Signs of a real coach

• They ask to see your numbers before they tell you anything.
• They have run a trade or construction business themselves, not just marketed to one.
• Sessions are one-on-one, on a calendar, with you, not a group webinar.
• They know what WIP, variations, retentions and progress claims are without you explaining.
• You can read what their clients say. Ours are on the reviews page, rated 5.0 from 18 Google reviews.

Signs of a content library in disguise

• Hundreds of videos, no one responsible for whether you watched them.
• Support means posting in a group and hoping someone answers.
• The same program for a solo sparky and a builder with twelve staff.
• Big results promised before anyone has looked at your business.

An electrician doing service calls has different problems from a joiner building commercial fit-outs. That is why coaching is shaped by trade, whether that is builders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, tilers or cabinet makers, and why the partner running the office gets coached as part of the business, not as an afterthought.

Questions to ask before you pay

Ask these on the first call.

1. Have you owned a trade or construction business? What happened to it?
2. How often do we speak, and is it one-on-one?
3. What happens between sessions if I have a problem on a Tuesday?
4. What will you need from me in the first month?
5. What do you do if I am not doing the work?
6. What does it cost, and what is the exit if it is not working?

On that last one, plans here start from $100 per month, and the first scale session is free.

What to do this week, before you spend a dollar

Do not sign up to anything yet. Do these three free things first. They tell you whether you need a coach or a bookkeeper.

1. Pull your last ten completed jobs and write down what you quoted, what you invoiced, and how many hours went in. If you cannot find those numbers, that is your first answer.
2. Work out your gross profit per hour on the best job and the worst job. The gap between them is where the money is leaking.
3. Write down the one thing you have been putting off for more than a month. Pricing, a staff conversation, chasing a debtor. That is where a coach would start.

Then, if the numbers worry you, book a free scale session. Bring those ten jobs. We will look at them together, and you will leave knowing whether coaching is the right next step.