Review of business coaching

Review of business coaching for commercial plumbing business

My wife Amy and I run Diamond Plumbing, a commercial plumbing business in Victoria. We’ve been operating for around 8 years doing commercial construction and commercial maintenance. I’ve been a plumber for 30 years, so I know the plumbing side of things. Amy looks after the books and she’s very good at that.

Before coaching, we were doing OK. We were profitable, but it was inconsistent. We kept bobbing up and down, and there was no predictability. We wanted to take the business to the next level, but I needed someone to steer me in the right direction. Amy and I were looking around online for a business coach, we saw there are lots of them. On one coaching firm’s website, we saw that they coach Reliable Plumbing.

I’ve met the director of Reliable at some industry events over the years, I wouldn’t say that I know them well but I’ve seen them grow and I wanted to see if coaching could do for us what it’s done for Reliable Plumbing.

You don’t know what you don’t know

I really needed an outsider to come in and look at what we were doing. We’d grown every year and our profit margins were good. We know what we know, but we don’t know what we don’t know.

What I wanted was systems that would make the business run more smoothly, more consistently and without me having to do everything.

I was wearing too many hats in the business

It’s often the case when you’re the operator of your own business, you wear all the hats. I was the estimator, I was doing client account management. I was winning jobs. I was on the tools, I was running the crews.

We were OK, but I just couldn’t see ourselves growing any further if I was going to keep having to do everything. I had to take some hats off in order to grow the business.

I contacted Tenfold and spoke with Tania. She asked questions about the business and then she matched us with Darren.

In the first meeting with Darren he went through some strategies and the focus was clear. He said, “You’ve got to get the right people, teach them, and then trust them.” At the time, we were taking anyone with arms and legs.

Running a business can feel like you’re on a hamster wheel

When you’re on the hamster wheel you can’t take time off to stop and recruit properly.

Because we were short staffed and short on time, we used to hire whoever responded to the job ad. And that meant we got the wrong people. We’d get a job candidate who seemed half decent so we’d employ them but then after 2 months you’d realise that they weren’t up to scratch. But by then you’ve already got them on the tools, on a project and in your payroll system or even got a van for them so you’re kind of stuck with them until they get so bad that you have to let them go and start over. But then you’re worried that you’re going to fall behind on your project so you just grab then next half decent applicant and the cycle starts again.

Our staff turnover was really high and it really hurt us.

Because having a good worker force is so important, Darren prioritised that in the first year of coaching. The strategy was broken into three stages: find the right people, recruit them properly, and retain them.

Coaching helped us to hire better people with a proper process

The first thing coaching taught us to do differently was before we even started recruiting was to get really clear about what we were looking for in the candidate. Our coach actually worked with us to develop the job description that is very specific to our business and our type of work and the clients that we’re servicing. And then based on that job description, he helped us write the job ad, again very specific to our business, our projects and even the culture in our business.

Then he taught us Tenfold’s structure for recruiting: screening, assessment, interview, and a trial day. That process helped us filter out the wrong candidates early and focus on the right ones. It saved us time and also the frustration of dealing with unsuitable applicants. In coaching, Darren taught us how to do the interview; what questions to ask and he even told us what answers they would likely to give us, and then what follow up questions we should ask them to dig deeper, keep digging deeper.

At first, I didn’t trust the process. I said to Amy, “I hate this. What does this guy know about recruiting plumbers?” But the reality is he’s done it before and because he’s part of a team of business coaches at Tenfold, they’ve all done it before. And so we knew that even though it was a process that we’d never done before, we could trust Darren and the Tenfold process because it had worked for the kinds of businesses that we wanted to be like.

And as a result, we got the right people. We did have to be patient because you can’t just go to Reece and pick them off the shelf – you have to attract the right people and then go through the process.

Keeping the right people and setting expectations

Once we had the right people, the next step was keeping them. Coaching helped us put structures in place so expectations were clear. The job descriptions we developed became the foundation for setting key performance indicators (KPIs), and that meant that every person we recruited was clear from the get go about what was expected. Then if we needed to have conversations about performance, we could do so much more easily because we had set that expectation of accountability.

Before Darren introduced that process the expectations used to be very open to interpretation. Plumbers and apprentices would come to us from working with other companies and they were used to doing things there. Where at Diamond Plumbing, we have our “diamond standard”. And so because we’re able to put that into the job description and the key performance indicators, if someone wasn’t meeting the diamond standard, we could point back to their job description and their induction. It made it simple for everyone and then we incorporated those standards into our toolbox meetings.

We also put more structure into our regular toolbox meetings. Now it’s not just about the technical side of the job – we talk about our standards. Everything’s nice and orderly, and now everyone in the crew knows what the expectations are, so it didn’t just improve the performance of one person, everyone’s performance improved because a rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s become part of our culture. And that accountability is what Darren has brought into our business. As I said, I’ve been plumbing for 30 years and I’ve never seen any other business do it like that.

Coaching helped us introduce career development plans. We talk to team members about where they want to see themselves in three to five years; do they want to run big jobs, do more complex work, run crews. Then we lay out the expectations for their current role and what they need to get to the next step. What we are saying to the plumbers that work for us is that we’re going to invest in your skills to our very high standards.

That’s helped us lift performance and keep good people longer.

Coaching helped me step up into a leadership role in my plumbing business

My role has changed. I’m off the tools now. We used the recruitment process we learned in coaching to hire an operations manager, Chris, who now runs the crews. That allowed me to step back from day-to-day operations and focus on growing the business.

Now I’m 95% office-based. I still visit job sites, but it’s in a leadership role. I’ve got structure in my week. Coaching taught me how to use a weekly diary, so I’ve blocked out time on set days for set activities: following up on live jobs, managing client accounts, and planning ahead.

Previously when I was wearing 10 hats I was only ever able to do anything at 50% capacity because I was trying to do so much. Now my role is strategic, not operational so I’m able to do those roles much more effectively and because of that, my hours have dropped.

We also bought a factory, and I work from there four days a week and from home one day a week so I can be around for my kids. On that day, Amy goes into the factory office. It’s a good setup.

As soon as I drive home, I’ve clocked off for the day. I might hop into the home office once or twice a month after hours if there’s a big tender or something. But other than that, now my day ends when I leave the factory.

New systems have put me in control

Before, I used my email system to track everything. It wasn’t working well – I’d have to read through everything to remember where jobs were at. I never really felt in control, maybe 40% in control at best.

Coaching helped me move to a new system. I use Trello now. It’s structured, and I can track tasks, jobs, and follow-ups properly. At the end of the day, I can see exactly what I’ve done and what’s next. Now I feel like I’m 90% in control.

That consistency and structure means I can clock off properly at the end of the day. I know what I’m doing tomorrow. I’m still working hard, but now I’ve got systems that support me.

Coaching gives a different perspective to take your business further

At the start, I thought we were doing OK. I thought our systems were good and our margins were solid. But you don’t know what you don’t know.

Coaching gave us a fresh perspective. You need someone from the outside who knows what they’re looking at to show you where things can be improved. Most of us only know how to run our own business. With a coach, you get insight from other businesses at the same stage or further ahead.

He doesn’t always get through to us the first time, but he just keeps nudging and nudging and explaining. And, you know, sometimes as a business owner you can be a bit stubborn, but you just have to trust him as a business coach because look where coaching has taken us so far, and we want to keep going.

The results have been massive

When we initially starting thinking about getting a business coach, it wasn’t really about growing the revenue of the business.

We didn’t have a goal of a certain revenue we wanted, our focus was more on getting the business to run better with less of my time and involvement.

The results speak for themselves:

• Our revenue is the highest it’s ever been
• Gross profit is up by more than double
• Net profit is what 5 times it was before coaching
• We bought our own factory

Better business means a better home life

This is a bit personal, but I think other small business owners will relate: when you’re juggling everything at work – finances and schedules and clients and teams – it’s on your mind all the time, and it impacts your home life.

Even though Amy and I are both in the business, there wasn’t much structure to how we worked together. Now our roles are clearer, our time is better managed, and we’re both more in control.