BUSINESS COACHING FOR ALL TRADES
Coaching for All Trades and Services
Plumber, builder, sparky, landscaper if you run a trade or service business in Australia, Keith Collins has a coaching program built for you.
The problems that hold trade and service businesses back are remarkably consistent, regardless of the business. Pricing, cash flow, team building, time, systems – these challenges show up in every trade. Keith has spent 25+ years solving them across hundreds of Australian businesses.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
The Challenges Every Trade and Service Business Owner Faces
You're great at the trade, not the business
Most tradies become business owners because they’re excellent at what they do not because they were trained to run a company. The gap between the two is where most businesses struggle.
You're stuck trading time for money
The business only earns when you’re working. There’s no leverage, no scalability, and no way to grow without working more hours which you’re already maxing out.
You don't know your real numbers
Turnover sounds good. But do you know your actual gross margin? Your break-even? Your cost per job? Without knowing the numbers, you can’t make good decisions.
There's no plan just hustle
You react to what comes in rather than building toward a goal. No 90-day plan, no annual target, no clarity on where the business is actually heading.
25+ years coaching trade and service business owners just like you across Australia.
HOW WE HELP
What Keith Works on With You
Know Your Numbers
Understand your margins, your break-even, your cost structure and make business decisions with confidence instead of guessing.
Price for Profit
Set prices that reflect the real cost of your work and deliver the profit your business needs to grow and sustain itself.
Create Systems
Document how the business works so it can run without you on every job. Systems are how businesses scale and how owners get their lives back.
Build a Team
Hire better, lead better and create a culture where good people stay. Build a team the business can rely on beyond just you.
Grow Sales
A structured, repeatable approach to winning new work without discounting, cold calling or relying on referrals you can’t control.
Plan & Execute
A 90-day plan and an annual goal then weekly guidance to make sure you actually do what you said you would.
CLIENT STORIES
Hear from Real Trade and Service Businesses
Client: Alistair Nichol
Business: Linkfire
Industry: Essential Services
I started as a one man show, not really knowing how to run a business. I was actually a control freak and thought nobody would know how to do it better than I could! In the early years I was working 60 – 80 hours a week – I seemed to spend all day doing the work, and all night doing the “other stuff”. I was never “off”, I worked at night and worked all weekends, with very little family time.
I learnt from Action Centre how to let go… how to let your staff grow.
Recently as a family we went to Bali for a week, and we are able to do that. When we got home I went motorbike riding for 2 weeks, which I really enjoy. So that’s the biggest benefit for me, giving me more me time.
When I first started out we were turning over less than $1million, now we have 40 full time staff and turn over more than $8million.
Client: Russell Pearson
Business: Crimson Fox Studios
Industry: Marketing industry
We’ve had the pleasure of using Brett Burden and the ActionCoach business coaching program for 9 months now. In that time we have had well over 200% growth in our business and have seen significant improvements within the business, including additional processes, better staff management and larger profits.These improvements have largely been the result of Brett’s advice regarding implementation of measurement criteria and a strategic focus on business activities to ensure we are placing our attention on the right activities at the right time. Other than tangible results, I have also been greatly impressed with Brett’s professionalism and friendly manner when dealing with not only myself, but also with my staff.
I would recommend Brett’s coaching services to any business owner who is ready to do some hard strategic work and focus their attention on developing a successful business.
Thanks Brett. The results speak for themselves.
Client: Jeff Speak
Business: Safe Play Systems
Industry: Playground Equipment Industry
The biggest headache in my business was trying to be all things to all people doing the sales, doing the accounts,
The main benefit of working with Action Centre has been that we now have systems and structures in place, they have helped us identify how to get the best out of our people, and not to cross over roles.
It all comes back to having clarity.
We’ve been an Action Centre client for over 6 years, and our business has increased over 50% in that time. Whilst that isn’t a staggering figure, our profitability has been much greater and the choice of client that we want has been vastly improved. We’ve also started up a second business after identifying a gap in our market and going for that.
Client: Matthew Kent
Business: Mariljohn
Industry: Design & Manufacturing
We’re a design construction company in the hospitality space. We haven’t been taught in the business sense of running a business, to maximum profitabilities, on how to know our numbers and that sort of things.
Experience with Action [Victoria] I believe has been really beneficial for the overall company. As in the Director’s getting their heads around business development. We’ve now been able to identify what our strengths are, and target those strengths and now we’re looking at bringing key personnel to replace where we are weak and that allows us to be even stronger in those separate fields. And that’s probably been the biggest shift in the business is to start getting the right people in the right spots.
Before we were across everything. You just can’t do it. You don’t have enough hours in the day. It’s tough to implement everything but without someone structuring it, making you and keeping you on course, we tend to drift straight into operations and day-to-day issues you have with the business, and not really spending enough time dedicating to developing a business.
In the last three years we’ve able to take our company from about a seven-odd million dollar company to 12 million dollars. We have a goal to get to twenty million dollar turnover by 2020. That’s our goal at the moment, but we want to do it the right way.
Probably the biggest benefit we’ve seen from having coaching involved for a number of years now, is the fact, we are still flat out, we still have to do a lot of hours in the business and we don’t want to change that, but when we do have our time of either a golf day or going away with family we have back-up and resources built into the business now that you can handle the issues of day-to-day through using your team. And that wasn’t there before, if you went away, it was your job, and basically you had to get back on the phone with the builder and solve that.
Now we have great project managers and we’ve put infrastructure in place that we can at least cover any of those holidays and that allows us all, between the team, to be able to have some time away and catch up with family.
Client: Scott Stafford
Business: KATANA
Industry: Building and Construction
Katana’s been around for 12 years now. We specialise in architectural extensions and renovations in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. I started as carpenter over 20 years ago, and from there I progressed to becoming a builder. I’ve been with Action Centre now for 10 months. I do a weekly session with them and I go to all the business seminars. Some of the issues that I was having before Action Centre was lead conversion and being confident talking with clients during the interview process.
Prior to starting with Action Centre Katana was turning over five to seven hundred thousand dollars a year. In the last four month we’ve signed up $AUD2.5 million worth of work and I attribute a fair majority of that to being with Action Centre.
[Coaching] allowed me to more time to work on my business rather than in my business, which is one of their key phrases. I’ve got more time to have with the kids and the wife and to be able to plan holidays and just have a bit more freedom in my life. [Action Centre] have given me confidence in what I can do and my potential as a builder and a businessman. It’s been important to have a mentor to tell me I’m doing the right things, and to reinforce that or to show me other ways of doing things that are better or more efficient.
The 90 Day plans good, it gives you an ability to step back and really focus on what you’re gonna do move forward rather than putting out fires. You’re not as nervous as talking to people because you need the work. More referrals are coming through. It’s just confidence.
[Coaching] is something I’d wished I’d done 12 years ago when I first started to show me how to conduct a business the right way rather than feel my way in the dark.