Testimonial from Matt Rickard
Concretum

I’ve always been a driven person. I worked for other people in the construction sector for 10 years before starting my own business in 2017. Some of the business owners I worked for were top notch, and I learned a lot.

I had been running my own business for 18 months and things were going ok. But I knew I could do more with the business and I wanted to take it to the next level.

Working hard in the business but it wasn’t growing

At the time, I had a couple of full-time staff and a few subbies. The revenue was pretty good for a young business but the cash flow was a bit lumpy.

I had won a couple of good projects through a friend of a friend, but the rest of the work we were getting was a bit hit-and-miss. Sometimes I’d just have to take what I could get, and I’d end up doing the rats and mice jobs just to keep the cash flow going.

I was trying to grow but I was on the tools all the time. I was working really hard, but I wasn’t gaining traction. I wasn’t doing the right things in the right order.

Being ambitious, I had a lot of ideas of things I wanted to do but it was hard to make the right decisions. When you don’t know what to look at in your business, what reports or data, you don’t know if you’re making money. It feels like you’re going around in circles.

One of the best operators I had worked for was getting business coaching with Tenfold. I contacted Tenfold to see if their coaching would also be useful for my business.

I knew what I wanted to get out of coaching

I started getting business coaching with Tenfold in May 2019. We kicked off by figuring out what I wanted to achieve with my business coach. I wanted:

• Better visibility of my business: the costs, efficiency, margins, profitability, productivity
• Consistency: more of the right work. I wanted good-quality civil landscape construction projects that would fit my technical expertise in complex formwork.
• High-performing team: recruit people whose work ethic matched mine
• Be known for excellence: by our clients and by our team

Coaching has grown my business x4

It’s now been 2 and a half years with Tenfold. In that time, the turnover has increased x4. I’ve recruited an awesome estimator and we’ve got a good crew. We’re focused on recruiting more good people and building the team so it’s not the “Matt show”.

My coach and I developed a roadmap for growth. I’ve learned how to read my business data. Now I’m confident in knowing what I need to know. I’m making better decisions, and that’s making the business more money.

It’s one thing to have ambition and goals but if you’re not stacking good money, it’s not going to happen. When you can bank those good wins, you can see your goals happening more clearly.

Accountability is a huge part of the value I get from my Tenfold business coach. Lee. I’ve always looked far into the horizon, so it’s good to be held accountable for the things that are a bit closer.
As a coach, Lee is a good sounding board. He knows my business well, so he can give me a balanced second opinion. On your own, you don’t have any of that. You’re often flying blind.

Winning the work we want

In the past, I was trying to chase work from our ideal clients. Now they come to me because we’ve earned a strong reputation as specialists in complex formwork. Part of that is because coaching helped me focus on the jobs that are well suited to us.

Now we’re organically getting a lot of that work, and we’re not having to push so hard. It means we get to choose more of the work. We can be selective with the projects that will make good margins. And the guys are learning new skills and doing work that is interesting, so they’re motivated too.

There’s a reason why I believe in coaching

With any investment, you should be able to put a dollar figure on it and then track your return. That’s what I get with coaching.

Business coaching with Tenfold gives you clearer visibility of your business and that gives you the confidence to make the right decisions and move forward.

I’ve referred other businesses to Tenfold because they get real results. That’s how I know they are the best business coaches in Australia.

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For more success stories from other businesses in the construction sector, see:

Yellowstone Landscaping

Melbourne Energy Group

Costas Construction