Prioritising Your Strategy
Strategy - a word you may have heard often .. especially if you’ve been following Small Fish for a while. It’s a word that we all know, one that’s etymology can be traced all the way back to the Ancient Greek words Strategia and Strategos meaning ‘general,...
Hang up your toolbelt; you’ll make more money if you’re not wearing it
If you want to grow your business (and I don’t know why you’d be watching my stuff if you didn’t) then this little metaphor about taking your belt off is important. When you started your business, it was probably just you so you did everything. As you start growing,...
Daily Prioritisation
You might have noticed that Prioritisation has been a little bit of a theme these past few weeks and this is because Prioritisation is an integral part of the succession and growth of our businesses. As well as any sort of achievement in our lives, both professional...
How To Prioritise Your time, Money And Capacity
Prioritising is one of those things that seems to continuously go wrong - when you think you’re finally on top of everything your prioritisation crumbles, things are in shambles and chaos reigns again. I know the feeling, we all do. It’s overwhelming to...
How To Keep Tradies Motivated
Motivation is something we all struggle with. And a lack of it can come out of nowhere, you might wake up one morning and feel overcome with this all consuming sense that everything is too much and too hard. I should point out that I think everyone is...
How Much Is Enough For Tradies
This week I want to pose an interesting question to you; How much is enough? It obviously elicits an extremely personal response from each of us, so I’m not going to attempt to tell you the answer to what I think it should be. But I will point out how much could...
Cost Plus – Why You Shoudn’t Do It, Tradies
Recently, I’ve been chatting about quoting and the difference between Fixed Price and Cost Plus quotes. And lots of people have been sharing their opinions about how they price jobs. So I thought I’d weigh in with my perspective to solidify why I believe one is better...
How Not To Give Up – 5 Things You Need To Push Through
I'm sorry if this sounds like one of those awful motivational posters or memes - you know the ones “never ever give up” or those cartoons where the guy stops digging just before he gets to the diamonds. They’re silly and they ignore the fact that sometimes (if you’re...
Christmas Message – Have A Holiday!
You've probably had lots of ads in your feed and lots of emails in your inbox trying to entice you with Christmas or New Year's special offers suggesting you use the time off to reflect on your business and make a plan for next year and hit the ground running in...
Best Back Office and Personal Organisation Tools For Your Trade Business
Organisation An overused word in this day and age. Something constantly on the minds of the populace as we try to cram and fit every little thing we can into our packed lives. People are always asking - how do you organise yourself? What’s the secret to staying...
Do You Need a WHS Management System for Your Trades Business?
Short answer: yes. If you employ people or run construction projects, you need a documented WHS management system. The longer answer matters too. A WHS management system is the organisation-wide framework you use to keep your people safe and stay on the right side of...
How much should you pay and charge?
This is important, isn’t it? I know there are no real rules to either of these things and I also know that you face upward pressure from your tradespeople to pay them more and downward pressure from your customers to charge them less. So, if you get this wrong...