The Profit Killer Nobody In The Trades Talks About w/ Wayne Bettess

Welcome to our podcast. We're helping tradespeople grow and be more successful. I'm your host, Tulloch Priest. I'm the co-founder of Gas Engineer Software. Today, I'm very excited to introduce our guest, Wayne Beatties. Wayne has been a heating engineer for over 20 years, the last 12 running his own highly successful business, and the last 5 years he's been coaching other trade and construction businesses, helping them become more successful. Okay, so now you've got a good team, you've got your accountability and You've got your monthly checks in there, making sure that people know what they're doing. Pricing. Pricing is one of those make-or-break kind of things. So what are your thoughts on pricing? I'm kind of asking this because I'm aware that you have a report on your website called The Profit Killer.

Yeah, so, you know, again, we all fall into this trap, right? Again, because it comes down back to my first point about education, because we're not taught any different. So I priced the way I priced because of the person I worked with priced that way. You know, he would charge X amount an hour, so I charged a little bit less at first or whatever, or a little bit more. And there's no— there was never any substance to it. And, and so first of all, you need to have a clear strategy on your pricing, okay? And what I mean by that is you need to know the costs of your business. Okay, your business is different to my business. Your overheads are different to mine. Your expectations of earnings are different to mine. So we do we do an exercise in in a in a in my coaching program where we we we have three columns. Okay, we have survival rate, we have the reality rate, and we have the desired rate. And the reality the the um survival rate is what is the bare minimum? That it costs you— when I say bare minimum, I mean bare minimum— what is the rent or mortgage, what is the council tax, not your Netflix because you can live without Netflix, right? You know, literally what is the bare minimum that you as an individual have to earn, and then what is the minimum that the business has to generate to pay its Gas Safe registration, its software licenses, its insurances, and all of that. And that gives us a survival rate, okay? And what that gives us is in the bottom corner, we sort of divide it up, it's like a little spreadsheet, and we work it all out. We work it out, you're gonna have at least 4 weeks holiday and stuff like that. So we factor in a load of different things, and we're ended— we end up at the bottom of that sheet with an hourly rate and a daily rate of our survival rate. Then we do something called the reality rate. And what I— what, what the reality rate is, is the similar calculation, but now we factor in, well, what could you earn by going to get a job? So in this industry, you know, the average salary probably nowadays is between £35,000 and 45-ish if you're PAYE salary, something like that. So that's, that's the reality. The reality is that you could go and earn that tomorrow by going to get a job. So your business has to be able to be generating at least that, otherwise what's the point? Okay, so that, that's then our middle column. And again, we, we break it down into the years, uh, into the weeks and months and everything, and we're— we end up with hourly rate and a daily rate for where we should be as a minimum. Then we factor in things like— within that as well, we factor in admin costs and stuff. There's a little bit of complications to it. I'm simply simplifying it. But then we do the fun bit, which is the desired rate. Yeah, we're in business to earn more than just a wage. That's why we're in business. A business by definition, I think, is to produce profit. Yeah, I don't know if that's actually the technical term, but you know what I mean. Yeah, you know, there's a reason that if you're a business, you should be making a profit. If you're not making a profit you're actually insolvent, so that's not good, you know. So in the desired rate, we, we do all the same calculations, but we now start to add— I'm, I'm very much— I'm not university educated. Percentages and shit, don't— I don't agree. I don't like them, right? I like round numbers. Do you want to make £20,000 this year on top of your wage? Do you want to make £30,000? Do you want to make £100,000? What is the number that would make this year, if you got there at the end, be, yes, I've done it, I've done really well? Okay, let's plug that number in. And then now what happens is when we've done all these calculations, we've got what I call a pricing throttle. Okay, so we throttle our pricing up and down depending on supply and demand. Okay, so the more in demand we are, we throttle up to the higher end of our pricing structure. The quieter we are, we throttle— we reduce that down to the lower end, never going below what is our minimum, because obviously we have to survive, isn't it? You can't go to work and not earn enough money to survive. You have to be breaking even as a minimum in this industry. Um, and what that gives people is 100% clarity on their pricing. They don't even— you know, people get scared when they talk about money, but when— that's because they're just plucking figures out of thin air, thin air. You know, they're just, oh, 500 quid because that's what everyone charges for a power flush. Okay, 500 quid. Well, am I making money on that? That's what you need to actually know. And when you do this pricing structure and work out these prices correctly, you have that confidence and that, that sells to the customer. Because when you can stand in front of them eye to eye, give them a price, you know, straight-faced looking at them, you know, discussing it properly, not being scared and going, oh, I'll text you the price later because I'm freaking scared to say it in front of you. No, we're— this is the price. This is what we do. Do you want us to do it? Yes or no? Let us know if you want us to go ahead, blah, blah, blah. You sell more. for starters. And but also what we do is we maximize the environment. When you book a school holiday to go on holiday in the school holidays, you know you're paying an extra grand, yeah, minimum, because supply and demand. When you— when the oil prices are going through the roof, yeah, because Saudi have decided to, to reduce the production of the oil because they want to run the price up— supply and demand. The whole world works on supply and energy, energy costs, all of that. is supply and demand. Don't be scared to, to implement that into your business because we are a seasonal business. We need to make hay while the sun shines is the saying, isn't it? You know, we get, we get a 4 or 5 month period of the year where we are in high demand and we need to maximize that. And knowing your pricing and understanding where you should be is so important. And I've not even factored in anything to do with inflation Cost of living, you know, when you start to factor all of these elements in again, you mentioned that report that I did. I did. I writ that. I wrote writ wrote wrote the report. As you can tell, my English isn't great, so the report reads like a fourteen-year-old probably wrote it. But the point is there. What I did in that report was factored in over a twenty-year period inflation, just the baseline inflation, which is. probably underestimated in reality if we actually went deeper into it. And it was staggering, you know. It— what I, I worked it out in that report, don't quote me on this, but it's roughly that most small businesses in this industry, technically, if they wanted to have kept up with just inflation over the last 20 years, should be charging in excess of £180 per hour. How many plumbing and heating engineers are charging £180 an hour, 6 hours a day? They're not. You know, trust me, I know that there's a few outliers in the renewable industry and the more technical space that maybe are creeping up towards that sort of rate. But 99.9% of people aren't there. And that is partly the industry's fault because if everybody raised their prices every year like everywhere else does, you know, you get your Sky subscription come through every year, 5% increase, 4% increase, 3%. Your phone bill comes through 3% too. Everything goes up because it's just economics, yeah? You know, if inflation's going up, they have to. But we don't, and we're all at fault with that. Everybody in this, in, in, in the trades and construction industry has to hold their hand up and admit that we have played a part in that. We have allowed the— it's not even the consumer, we've just allowed it to ourselves. I don't really know why, because if, if everybody put their prices up 10% today The customers would pay it in the same way we still pay the Sky bill when it's gone up. Like, my Disney has just jumped up nearly £4. It's only an £8 subscription, so that's like a nearly 50% increase. Guess what? I ain't cancelled the direct debit, have I? I'm still paying it. I'm going to pay it when it goes up to £20 because I like Disney and I like the films on it or whatever, you know. Um, so going forward, if, if I can leave you with anything around this pricing information is raise your price every single year without fail by the rate, as minimum, by the rate that the national inflation rate— I think they release it in, you might know better than me, January I think is when, when they release the, um, like the official yearly effect. I might be wrong, or is it— no, it's probably April, isn't it, around the budget time. But whenever it is, do it then because it's hot topic, people are expecting it, you know. So it sort of, it just gets like sort of slid under the radar. But if you commit to just doing that one thing a year, you're not going to be left so far behind. Yes, you should be increasing prices on— because other things go up and all of that, but as a minimum, if you can just commit to the inflation rate and, and, and, and adjust the pricing according to that, you're not going to be as far behind as everybody else. I, I know people that, uh, haven't put their prices up in 12 years. 12 years. That £100 that they think they're— they're earning less now, so they're more skilled, They're more knowledgeable, they've got a better business, as in like the operations, you know, the customer service, everything is good, but they're earning physically less money every single week because they haven't— not— it's not even bothered, they just haven't known that they should have been raising them prices. Um, yeah, as you can tell, I get a bit passionate about pricing because I just, I just, I'm just fed up of seeing hard-working men across the country, and women, you know, busting their balls every single day and not getting anywhere. You know, if anything, they're falling behind where they should be. These people are working— these people work hard every single day. They should be rewarded. It's a skilled job that carries risk, carries responsibility. It demands attention, it demands availability, you know, and there has to be a premium for that. Yeah, I'm not saying with doctors, you know, I'm not stupid. I know it doesn't get to that level, but you tell me, right, how long would society last without sanitary? You take away the plumbers tomorrow. Yeah, give you— I'd give you a month, mate, and this, this world would become— would become very, very dangerous very, very quickly. So we are important and we need to value that importance. Um, I know that's a bit of a weird way to— a weird summary to say it, but Uh, it's true, we, we, we are a very valuable part of this, uh, society and economy, and, uh, we should be rewarded for that as well.

Yeah, they did. Definitely, definitely. And that— I, I did really like that, um, you know, the concept of having them actually working out how much do I actually need, because I think that number, uh, is probably higher than like it I'm guessing some of your clients, if they had to guess before doing this exercise and then after, you know, I think they would be quite shocked by how much it is.

Most, most of them, the minute we've done that exercise, it's about an hour-long exercise that we go through. There is a recording actually somewhere online. You'll have to find it that I released. What was I saying? Most of them literally leave that, that, that session and they put their prices up literally the next day because it becomes— it's not a choice. They're not doing it out of greed. They're doing it out of necessity. They're doing it out of necessity to provide for their family and their livelihood and their business. And your business is no good to that customer if it ain't there in 6 months and they have to get some rogue trader in. Yeah, it's that you're doing them— you're doing the customer a disservice by not charging correctly, because if you're not there to help them, they could get ripped off by the next cowboy that comes through town, you know. So, um, yeah, it's— yeah, as you can tell, I'm quite passionate about that.

I do really like it because you get that, you get that really, that certainty. So you stand in front of the customer, you say, this is what my fees are. And then, you know, you— because I thought you're quite right, you know, that whole thing about this kind of question, like, am I worth it? Am I charging the right thing? I wonder what the other quote is, if there's another quote or whatever, you know. That certainty definitely comes across, you know, to the customer.

It was game-changing for me. Do you know how many times, right? And, and there's room for being a nice guy, and I'm not, I'm not discouraging anyone doing a favor for someone that, you know, struggling. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not heartless, right? But you know how many jobs I would go to back in the day where, oh, I'll pop in, I'll just give, just give us, just give us 20 quid, just bung us a tenner, you know? And you compound that over a year, 2 years, 5 years You can't. I know, I know to the penny. We get on average 5 billable hours a day, okay? So I get 5 opportunities in that day per engineer to bill my hourly rate, okay? So in my calculation, I'm not dividing the day rate by 8 because I'm not going to be able to bill 8 because the guys have got to pick up materials. There might be a problem, job might overrun a little bit. You've got to factor all that. My average from From what I know is roughly 5, at a push 6 jobs. If we get 6 paid jobs in a day, we're winning, you know, we're, we're exceeding expectation. But I have to— I have no choice. I have to be able to charge 5 hours a day. So we can't go and do that job for 20 quid, right? Yes, we were only there 10 minutes. But we weren't, were we? Because we took 5 minutes to answer your call. We took five minutes to plan it in the diary. We drove ten, fifteen minutes to get to you. We used our twenty-odd years experience to fix the problem in five minutes. It's not my fault I'm good at my job and fixed it quickly, you know. So you you we have a minimum charge, and and yes, some some customers moan. I'd rather have a customer moan every now and then, which they do. They still do. You know, they'll be like, "Oh, he was only here ten minutes," and I have to go through the same. I've got like a template email that says, "Look, this is why we charge. This is how we're." And then most, most of them just shut up and they, they come back and say, oh yeah, totally understand, sorry. Um, but you've got to do it, you know. It's, it's— if you want to be around in a year, 5 years' time, there's no choice.

Well, you just have to be fair to yourselves because otherwise, if you don't charge the right amount, what happens? You know, at the end of the year, you'll be tired. You'll look at your accounts, you'll sit down with your accountant. This is a worst-case scenario. Ideally, you need to be looking every month, etc. But you just kind of, you think, well, I worked all year, where's the money? And it's these— is it just been, just kind of been nibbled, all of these little things. Just, just be really conscious of them. You know, this is my suggestion. But, and the other thing I really liked about the model is that you have that kind of ex— you know, at the high demand, you actually charge more because you don't have— as you say, you've only got a 4-month window, you know, when you're in really high demand. And, um, and just kind of— I think it would also give more confidence about, um, you know, charging more. Well, they're kind of a— because there is a kind of— there's a fear, like, if you put your prices up You know, will I not get the work? You know, there's all sorts of, you know, these other bits and pieces that come into pricing. So it's quite a, you know, it's more intense kind of thing. So, and that's why people hesitate.

Yeah, no, no, yeah, I agree.

So your tip is, would you do the— would you recommend doing like a 15-minute just logging what you're doing? Requires a bit of discipline. Find out where your time's going. And, um, and just to actually see how many billable hours you're doing, you know, per week per engineer and what you actually need.

Yeah, there's, there's 2 commodities in life, isn't there? There's money and time. Um, you need to know, you need to be on top of both of those. Yeah, money, you can make, you can make more money. Yeah, if you're blessed with the next day, you could, you can always make, make money. Um, you can't guarantee the time. So there's a balance, you know, and it's not all money. It's, you know, there has to be life and balance. Like, part of, part of my coaching program is, is looking after all of the areas— body, business, and balance. And, um, that's very, very important as well, you know. How many, how many fat, overweight, miserable millionaires do you know? Or the local businessman that's really rich but, you know, wife left him and, and, you know, and, and he looks miserable as sin. You know, you don't— in my opinion, you don't want to be there. You want a good balance. You want a healthy balance of enough money that, that you have some choice in, in what you're doing, a great family around you if you, if you're blessed enough to have that, um, and looking after yourself. Because ultimately, if you're not in, if you're not in a good place, even mentally, physically, or both, then you can't perform. So you need to make sure that, that all areas are, are covered. And it's hard work, I won't lie. It's not easy, you know. You see these online people that make life look like they're, you know, like a walk in the park. Life ain't easy. We all know it ain't. We all— you could go up to anybody in the street today and say, oh, I'm really sorry to hear about your problem. And they'd be like, how did you know? Because everyone's got a bloody problem, haven't they? You know, no one walks around like life is rosy. Um, yeah, so I don't know what my point was there. I just sort of waffled a bit.

I think it is a good point because it is missed. Um, You do need like all legs on the chair. You know, a chair is not going to be like if you just make— if you just focus on the money. But I think the reason we're kind of like, from what I see from, you know, the people that use our software and people we interact, because we do customer interviews all the time, we find out feedback, etc. But you do see that people— we're kind of pushing to raise the prices for the tradespeople because we see that, you know, people are just working really, really hard and they're just not getting rewarded for it. And if you, if you're not going to raise the prices, you know, there is an argument and we do see it with some people is that they go back to being employed.

Yep.

Because, you know, they're earning less as a self-employed than they were employed, plus all the extra— I'm going to put it under the category of fun, but, you know, all of the overhead of running a business, etc. Um, and to the additional learning, etc., that you have to do.

Yeah, sadly I see it all too often where people go full circle, where they, they, you know, they go out on their own, then they have all that, all the problems that come with that, and then they, they go back employed. Some, some love it. Some, some love it when they go back employed. They're like, yeah, you know what, I realized it ain't for me. And that's perfectly fine too, by the way. You know, if you just want to be on your own and you're not trying to build anything special, you're just, you know, you're just trying to have a decent life and earn a decent money, that, that, mate, power to you. Because if that— if you know, again, it comes down to your why. If you know that's what you're doing, go on, crack on. Amazing. If you're happy, I'm happy, you know. But don't live unhappy. We only get one turnaround here. Yeah. So don't keep putting off happiness for tomorrow because, you know, it doesn't always come. So try to be— try to get yourself in a position where you can enjoy and you can be happy in what you're doing, whatever it is, whether it's building. I've got clients that are trying to take on the world. They want to be the next Pimlico Plumbers, right? Power to them. I've got clients that just want to make an extra 20 grand this year. I say only 20 grand, 20 grand, you know, I'm not demeaning 20 grand, but my point is they're not trying to grow a business. They're just trying to make— maximize what they're doing be efficient as possible and, and create that lifestyle that they want. And again, that's great too, you know. There's no right or wrong. Don't look at somebody else that's got 10 staff and you think, oh, I should, I should be, I should want that. Well, no, you know, you don't have to. You've got to want what you want. That's the important thing, is knowing. And again, it's one of the things that I found with— again, I'm going to be specific with men because that's who I work with— a lot of men don't know what they want. They, they, they, they don't. And I spent, I spent a decade there not knowing what I'm trying to achieve. And then finally, when— I guess it comes with maturity, maybe comes with life experience. And at some point along that journey, it clicked, and I knew what I wanted. And, and then that just made everything from that day just that little bit easier to, to do and, and move forward from.

I think about knowing what you want I don't think— like, when you start out, you don't know what you want, so you have to try stuff. And you only find out after you've tasted it whether you actually like it or not and whether it's for you. So you're talking about like managing 10 staff, um, or, you know, or the easy example is that if you go from self-employed to self-employed and you discover you don't like it, it's brilliant. You've tried it out, you've solved that curiosity. You know, it's not sitting in the back of your mind, maybe I should go self-employed. And then when you look at somebody with 10 or 20 employees, just think about, do you enjoy managing people? Do you enjoy holding them to account? Do you enjoy building the structure and all of those things? If you do, go for it. If your main focus, if you really enjoy fixing— we are talking about boilers— You know, if you really enjoy the actual, the physical, you know, the work of it, you know, that might not be for you because, you know, as you grow, as the company grows, that skill set of knowing how to fix a boiler or the actual doing the trades work, that portion of your time is— it gets less and less as the company grows, you know, because you need to— You know, it's more, you know, leadership, etc. It's, it's all the other bits around the business.

One of the happiest guys I know runs a business with 15 staff, and he works on the tools. He, he, he realized he doesn't like running the business. He doesn't like being in the office. He doesn't like dealing with the engineers day to day. So 3 days a week, he's just on the engineer's diary. He just, he just goes to work, mate. The geezer's so happy, honestly. Like, he's one of them blokes that, you know, you walk in a room and he's just smiling. Like, he's just, just happy, just happy-go-lucky. And, and I've seen it in lots of, lots of different— like, for me, I always wanted to be off the tools. That was, that was what made me happy, was getting me out of there. But most of my clients, it was a bit of a revelation. I just presumed naively that everybody wanted to get off the tools. I thought that was like Well, yeah, you start off, you learn, you, you start the business, you get off the tool. But I— most of my clients want to do a bit of both. They want to— they— what they really want is the freedom, the freedom of choice between, okay, on a Monday and a Friday I'll be in the office, on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I'm happy to be out in the van working, you know. And, and that was, for me, that was quite eye-opening because I, like I say, naively just presumed well, that's just surely everyone's aspirations is just to get off the tools, when in reality it's not. Most people, it would drive them mad sitting in an office all day.

Like, we're kind of talking about like, um, success and, and what, what do actually people want? You know, like you kind of mentioned that some people want like the Pimlico end of the scale, but when you actually like, are they looking for freedom, money? You know, what, what's the most common kind of things?

The, the, the biggest thing that, that I've learned is that most people want the freedom of choice. They want to, they want to be able to choose what they do, so it's so they feel in control, I guess, you know. So they want to choose that, so they don't want to be, they don't want to feel led down the garden path, so to speak. They, they want to make them, them choices and them steps that they want to go to. Um, and most, when they get that bit of freedom of choice, then they just become happier because they're choosing to do— like, I'm doing a lot of work on my house at the minute, right? And I, I— this sounds really weird, right? I find nothing better than digging a pile of mud from there or a pile of stones and getting it over there. Yeah, basic laboring, right? For whatever reason, I love it, right? I could employ a local lad, £80 a day, who could come and could, could have done it all. I've done most of the laboring here purely because I want to. I like it. It's a workout. I don't have to think, as in, like, you know, it's like, move that to there. Okay, right, let's go, you know? And that's, that's, that's what I mean by choice. I got to choose to do that. And and I know that I like that, whereas the plumbing in my house, right? I didn't do my bathroom. I did do a bit of the underfloor heating reluctantly because I had to dig in. But 95% of the plumbing in this house has been done by one of my team. Obviously, I can do it. Of course, I can. I don't have to pay my guy to be here and do it. But I just don't freaking like it anymore. I don't like the smell of solder. I don't like the the the the tackiness on my hands, the black. Like, you know, I just don't like it. Um, and again, that comes down— thankfully I'm in a position where I can choose to do that. And I think that's what most people want, is that just that choice, um, that freedom of choice. Obviously, naturally everyone wants money, but if you dig a bit deeper, it's normally freedom.

You could almost argue that the freedom is kind of like a more of a top level, and then below that you've got freedom of money, freedom of, uh, time, and then There's probably a third one of them in there of freedom of, you know, who your customers are, who you want to deal with. So, yeah, because I don't know whether that comes up at all, but, you know, there might be a thing where there's somebody that gives you a lot of work, but, you know, you have some hesitations about that.

So in the marketing world, you've probably come across it, is like they call it your client avatar. Don't they? And I, I avoid using that word. I, I, I, I try to say, who do you like doing work for? You know, so I, again, I'll use my business as an example. Okay, so we, so we're based in Bedfordshire. We're flanked by very wealthy areas and very, very poor areas. Yeah, so, so we've got a real mixture of people. I presumed that I wanted to work for wealthy people I just presumed that that was obvious. Of course you want to work in the nice big houses down the— down that street rather than, than these streets. Then I realized I don't. I don't like them. I don't like middle class, higher end people. I'm a working class man and I like working class people. Obviously, of course, we work for other— we work for, for, for more wealthier people as well, but my preferred customer is Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They've worked their whole life, you know, they want a good job done for a fair price. They want to have a bit of a banter, you know, they don't want it all snotty and stuffy like a corporate environment. And so we just doubled down on that. So, so we focused on that. I know clients that solely work in multi-million pound houses around freaking Regent's Park area in London, and, and that takes That's their choice. They prefer that because then it's all structured, it's all organised. There's plans, there's architects, there's, you know, the designers. There's all of these layers of input in, and that's what they prefer. So you do need to know who you prefer to work for, in my opinion. And the best way to know who you prefer to work for is think back to the last 5 customers that stand out in your head, and that will tell you who you prefer to work for. You know, if it's that lovely old couple that live in the village, You know, and then there's about 2 or 3 of them customers that come to mind. Well, that's who you prefer to work for, because if they're the ones that come into your mind, so then you can start to target the business for those people. Yeah. And so the language that you use, the adverts that you put out, the, the places that you put those adverts in, you can put yourself in a position to attract more of those type of customers. Yeah. I don't like working for people under 40. Yeah, so my age group, I'm 36, right? I can't stand people around my age because they all want— they think everything's a 2-minute job. I'm generalizing here, so, you know, I'm having a bit of fun. Um, they, they want everything for nothing. They, they think it's a 2-minute job. They want you here yesterday because they ain't got no patience because they order everything on Amazon. I can't stand— oh, you know, so none of our marketing talks about like gadgets and, and like techie stuff because I don't want to attract that sort of, you know, I want the 55, 60, 70-year-old people, you know, that just want a good job. They just want a nice man in there, a nice person in their house that does a good job, that comes back if there's a problem, you know. And, and, and yeah, that's, that's the way we roll. But if you like techie people and you like that stuff, then that's what you need to focus on and focus your adverts and your marketing around that niche that you're looking for.

Yeah, that language If you was like a sole trader, before you get to the sole trader, like an employee, so you, like, if we go through this journey again, you, at which kind of, like, in the beginning we're talking about really basic marketing, we're talking about Facebook groups of your local area, or, you know, flyers, putting a wrap on your van, you know, all the basics. And then at which kind of point do you start When do you start getting a little bit more— like, what are the stages of the actual marketing as your business grows?

Um, so once you've boxed off the basic stuff and you're doing that consistently, 9 times out of 10, that's going to get you to a position where you're busy. You know, you're getting a decent amount of referrals coming naturally. Um, what I normally advise people to do is before we spend any more money than you're spending, we look at your referrals. Um, so recommendations is another word for that. So recommendations for most small businesses, and probably your own business— most people that are on your platform are probably on it because they spoke to somebody that was on it, or they were in a group that someone recommended. You know, recommendations are very important. Years ago, when we first— when I first started Recommendations come in the form of the neighbors talking over the fences, yeah, and, and down the local shop. Nowadays, obviously, recommendations come on social media, they come, they come in all different places. So attacking that— and what I mean by attacking it is, is don't just leave it to nature, because if you're good at your job, that, that's going to happen, yeah. You're going to get the guy that recommends you to their neighbor, you're going to get the, the daughter that tells their mum that you've done a great job, and they're going to come naturally, okay? And that's great, and that's brilliant because it's free advertising. You're getting basically free work in essence. But you want to encourage that. So one of the first things before I, before I start telling people to spend money is how can we make this referral, this recommendation, be encouraged? So we— there's lots of different techniques. We, we have some people that make like cards. So they're like referral cards. Customer puts their name on one side, give it to their friend. If their friend gets the boiler done, they both get £50 Amazon voucher. Yeah, nice and simple referral scheme. It encourages them to recommend you to people. And as you all know, uh, anyone listening to this, if you get a recommendation from somebody and you go there, you've got a higher chance of winning that job. Um, so, so it's, it's a good way to do it. Obviously you can use email encouragement as well. So we send out emails, um, I think it's quarterly, so that's every 3 months that we send out emails to our customer database through software, basically saying, um, just saying how is everything, if there's a local event on. So we try to use seasons. So obviously with Christmas coming up, the email that will go out in December will be a Christmas-themed one. If it's April, it will be Easter. If it's Halloween, we try and use like points of the year that, that have a bit of meaning. And we, we just ask customers, we're like, if you know anybody that needs any work doing, don't forget that we do XYZ, ABC. Um, if you pass our details on, we'll give you a bit of a discount on the next job. Um, or if it's like a boiler specific or something, we give like money or vouchers and stuff. So we really hone in on that referrals, because if you can maximize that, it's costing you no, no real money. Maybe, maybe an odd email, bulk email or whatever, or a bulk text message that you might send. So before you do anything, I look at that. Um, then only then would I start looking at— um, and, and to be fair, before we even looked at online advertising, I would be looking more at the process that the business, how they handle the leads. So if you've not got no one answering the phones, don't, don't start doing online advertising because you need, you need to be able to maximize every single inquiry that comes through because it's a cutthroat game. Yeah, you could end up spending hundreds of pounds and not even get to book a visit to a customer if you're not doing it right. So, so before you start doing that, you need to make sure that you've got decent call answering, decent processes to get quotes in and out of the business as quickly as possible, because you don't want every quote to take you 2 hours and be a ball ache. You want to be able to efficiently do them. So templating and processing out some of the, the sort of more monotonous parts of that job. Um, and then obviously, then naturally you start to look at a bit more of a Google Ads, Facebook Ads, pay-per-lead stuff like, um, MyBuilders and all of them sort of sites as well. Uh, yeah, and, and then roll with it from there.

Yeah, but I think from like from a software point of view, the most important thing, because we— people can pay monthly if they want to, which means that, um, if we make a mistake we get feedback very quickly. So people just cancel their subscription. But from a, like, a tradesperson's point of view, that recurring, that, you know, getting people to come back is just really crucial. Because when we look at, like, the most successful companies using our software, their referral or their repeat customers, it's close to, it's above 90%. And this just, this is a just making sure that all of their systems are in place handle. It's like a, you know, from our point of view, we look at it like a leaky bucket. If you've got a hole in your bucket, there's no need to pour more water in, you know, fix the hole first, which is, you know, your service, everything like that.

Exactly.

Then start putting a bit more in. And I think we are giving Facebook, Google a bit of a hard time. The paid ads do work-ish, but they should be the last on the list, would be my suggestion. The very, very last.

I hope I've made— I've sort of made that part of the way I've been explaining it, because I feel exactly the same.

It's just a— you can just— yeah, it's just a quagmire. That's probably the summary of it.

And there's lots of sharks swimming around in that industry as well.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And then do the basics, but get that consistency up there. So you— it's really easy to do stuff for a week, you know, it's a bit harder to do it for 10 days, but it's, it's actually quite difficult to do the basics, you know, repeatable You know, consistently. And it's that consistency that will just get you, get you there.

Definitely. Can I swear on this podcast, or is it not? Is it non-swearing?

I'm not sure. Go for it.

Okay, so I, I've, uh, started saying this little phrase, basically. I'll beep it. I'll, I'll— it's basically, be a little bit less than everybody else. So the reason I mention that now is because All you've got to do is the basics right in this industry and you will do well. You've got to answer the phone, get back to people, turn up on time, communicate well, get quotes out quickly. Do the basics right and you can build a decent business for you and your family. It, it really is. And like that, that be a little bit less shit than everybody else is because 95% of the industry are pretty poor at what they do from a business point of view. I'm not saying they're poor engineers and whatever. I'm just— most are still writing stuff down on the back of a fag packet, forgetting to send out a, a service reminder, or, or forgetting to, you know, send an invoice for 2 weeks and wondering why they've got no money. And, you know, all these basic sort of schoolboy errors. Um, so yeah, you don't need to do much to really stand out.

Well, if you've been completely, you know, objective about it, like, if you are on the tools You're a sole trader, you're out there, you are trying to answer the calls, trying to book stuff, and, you know, you know, it's just, it's, it's just not possible to do it well, you know, all those things all together, um, you know, without, you know, without dropping stuff.

Yeah.

And then at the end of the day, if you're tired and stuff, you're going home, your family wants time, you know, trying to put the kids to bed or You know, whatever your personal situation is, you know, there's, there's a lot of demands and there's a lot of juggling. So it definitely needs some, just some kind of standing back and some thought about, you know, how to organize it better.

Definitely.

So that's everything from me. Do you have any kind of final thoughts or anything that you would think that would help, be helpful for, you know, people as they're growing their business?

The last thing I would probably say is I think I've already sort of briefly touched on this, but seek out information. If you don't know the answer, find someone that does. Find someone in your industry or someone close to you that maybe knows, or, or look for outsourced outside help. But you don't have to know it all. So please, if there is a problem in your business, if there is things that you want to do next in your business but you're not quite sure how or what way to go about it, don't try and do it on your own. You don't need to do it on your own, okay? There is communities across the internet, there's physical communities that people meet up, um, and talk business, um, and offer support and guidance. So yeah, that, that's really what I would, would encourage everybody to do. If you're— if you want to take that step from sole trader to business, then you need to be gathering that information in. You need to be learning from those around you, learning from people that have walked the— walked that walk already. Um, because if you can just pick up a small thing here and there, it will just make your journey a lot smoother and safer.

Yeah, and I would, I would second that. You know, part of one of my, my own personal beliefs is, um, 1% better every day. Um, so don't be overwhelmed. Like, if you start searching What do I need to know to run a business? There will just be like this huge tidal wave of information. What you really want is just stick to the really basic simple stuff. But every day, definitely don't beat yourself up. Just, just be slightly better every day. And that 1% better every day, it really compounds. And I know you're not really a percentage guy, but it's a really huge difference. Just—

I know, I get the concept. And I'd like to add off the— off the bottom of that, on the days that you don't, don't beat yourself up. Start again tomorrow. Don't, don't let a bad day today drag into a bad week, a bad month, a bad year. You know, start every day. If we're blessed, if you're blessed enough to wake up in that morning, is a new day. So learn the lessons from the day before and don't, don't dwell on, on any mistakes, any down bits that have happened that day before. Crack on with the day ahead.

Yeah. And the other thing is focus on the how much you've gained, not the gap. So don't have this like ideal, I'm— I should be up here kind of thing, you know. Look at how far you've come, celebrate how far you've come, and just focus on that. you know, that gain element, not of that gap, because it's, it's just a— you'll, you'll approach the day with so much more energy, um, drive. And when you're with customers, you know, that will come across and you will win more. And you'll actually, you know, you'll go— you— it will work out.

So that's really, really important. I think it's— I read a book by Dan Sullivan, I think his name is. He talks about the gap and the gain and his Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. So, so important to remember where, where it is you've come from. We, we're too busy always looking forward. We never really appreciate just how far we've actually come to, to, to be sitting here today or be doing whatever it is we are. So yeah, no, that's a very good, very good point and a good book if anyone wants to check it out.

Yeah, well, thank you very much for your time today. Um, it's been very Insightful and, uh, yeah, really enjoyable. So thank you very much, Wayne. It's good.

Excellent. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.