Barry Szulc –
BASC Services

Barry went from being overworked, making sh*tty margins and having little time to a 4 day week, less time on the tools, a team of 4 and 20-25% margins on EVERY job.

Barry from BASC Services used coaching as a way to implement change in his business. It gave him direction and the ability to focus on and implement the strategies that were needed to grow the capacity of his business.

Background

Barry owns a property maintenance and electrical services business up near Brisbane. He’s been working in the electrical industry for 27 years and has been managing property renovations and maintenance for 16 years.

The Frustration

Barry sought out Jon, and Small Fish Business Coaching because he had demand; jobs were coming in but he was lacking focus. He needed direction.

He needed someone to help him advance his company. To make it more systematized. Someone to help him build processes; more effective and efficient ways of running his business.

He told me, “we knew what we knew but we needed more and different knowledge “ which is where Jon and business coaching comes into play.

He came across Jon and chose Small Fish as he liked the fact that Jon had trades businesses as a niche. Barry felt confident in the fact that Jon specialised in helping trades businesses grow and scale.

The Fix

Barry wanted growth and he wanted a healthy profit on every job.

He started coaching with these aspirations in mind. They focused on relationship marketing first.

Barry made and strengthened relationships with Property Managers. Marketing his services to them through the delivery of muffins and coffee; symbols of goodwill. And he got busier and started to grow steadily with more jobs coming in.

With this growth and job demand came the expansion of his team. Jon helped Barry build a process for hiring the right people. He hired more tradespeople which enabled him to take on more work. He hired a VA, outsourcing much of the administrative work to them, which took the pressure off of Barry and freed up his time so he could focus on the marketing side of his business.

The Follow Through

As general demand increased, his business capacity increased. And as these things happened Jon and Barry could then turn their attention to Barry and focus on him. Barry now had time to work ON the business instead of in it.

They now had time to look into the nitty-gritty of the business; the numbers and profitability.

They began measuring profitability on jobs, started tracking it with timesheets and invoices for materials; they documented these things (in Tradify) and a system began to take shape. Evolving around measuring the profitability of the business and doing so continuously.

With Jon’s encouragement, Barry put his prices up. Barry raised his margins on jobs, so he could make a consistently healthy margin of 20% – 25% on every job.

This price increase “Brought our profitability up,” and other positive changes were then able to take place. A price increase is a fantastic catalyst for positive developments in a business.
Barry and Jon worked on creating a price list to individually price each service Barry provided. This was a long and detailed process but worth every minute of the headache it caused. As a result of having a price list, they could charge at a consistent rate and quoting was easier and less time consuming.
Another change they implemented was to cover the costs of site visits. This made a huge difference in saving the time of Barry’s employees as well as saving him money. He was able to use the fees from site visits to cover the costs of his admin assistant. And overall this change has made Barry’s business more profitable.
These structural changes have given Barry more confidence in his business, its cost-effectiveness as well as confidence in its continued expansion.

Barry is still working with Jon and they’ve made a lot of progress in terms of implementing systems so the business can grow and profit in a more automated fashion. But they are still on their journey, with a lot of aspirations about growth and furthering the businesses capacity.