Quote properly, get paid on time, keep your apprentices and get your weekends back.
Book A Free 30 Min ChatStraight to it
Most trade businesses don’t have a work problem. The phone rings, the jobs get done, the reviews are good. The problem is that after wages, materials, the ute, the insurances and the accountant, there’s far less left than there should be — and nobody has ever sat down with you and shown you exactly where it goes.
It usually goes in the same four places. You quote off gut feel instead of a costed rate. You do variations without paperwork and then feel awkward charging for them. You invoice late and chase later. And you spend your evenings on admin because the office side of the business was never set up properly in the first place.
None of that gets fixed by working harder. It gets fixed by changing how you price, how you invoice and how the jobs are run — which is boring, unglamorous work, and exactly what a small business coach should be doing with you.
I’m Rob Ade. I’ve founded four businesses and sold two, I’ve had staff and vehicles and payroll, and I’ve coached trade and transport businesses through exactly this. I’m not going to talk to you about your inner journey.
Book A Free 30 Min ChatThe work
We build a real charge-out rate off your actual overheads, labour on-costs and vehicle costs — then price jobs off that instead of off what the bloke down the road charges. Most owners find they’ve been underquoting a whole category of work.
Every unpaid extra is your money. We put a simple written variation process in place that your clients accept and your team actually uses, so the free work stops.
Deposits, progress claims, payment terms that match your supplier terms, and a debtor follow-up routine that isn’t you sending an awkward text at 10pm. Cash flow is usually a process problem, not a customer problem.
Apprentices leave when they’re bored, unsupervised or unclear on where it leads. We fix the onboarding, the supervision and the conversations — the same approach that lifted one client’s staff retention from six weeks to more than twelve months.
You can’t grow while you’re the most productive person on site. We work out what only you can do, hand over the rest in stages, and build a leading hand or supervisor who can run a day without you.
There are plenty of decent job and quoting systems for trades. The trick is picking one that suits how you actually work, connecting it to your accounting, and getting the crew to use it. That’s an implementation problem, not a software problem.
The website question
Nearly every tradie I meet has paid someone for a website, and most of them get almost nothing from it. That’s not bad luck. It’s usually four fixable things.
One: the site never says where you work, so Google has no idea which suburbs to show you in. Two: it lists “services” in a single paragraph rather than giving each job type a real page. Three: your Google Business Profile is half filled in and has three reviews. Four: the phone number is buried below a stock photo of a hard hat.
I spent years running an SEO agency, and I’ll teach you the basics in about an hour so you stop paying a retainer for work you could oversee yourself. If you want the detail first, read the digital marketing and SEO strategy pillar, or run your site through my free SEO website audit.
One client cut their digital marketing spend from $5,000 a month to $1,250 once we worked out what they were actually paying for. That saving alone is the kind of thing that pays for coaching.
Get My Website ReviewedWho I work with
If you run a crew, quote work and invoice clients, the mechanics are the same. Typical clients look like this.
Receipts, not promises
The deal
No Contracts, Just Results
Fixed Monthly Pricing
20+ Years In The Trenches
Bi-Weekly Onsite Strategy
Straight Talk, Zero Ego
Founder-Speed Support 24/7Real client feedback
Roberts service is exceptional; not good, EXCEPTIONAL when it comes to action and communication. He created a new website for me and although I will not know for a little while if it does everything we want, I am convinced and believe it will. No BS with Robert is accurate and I look forward to having Robert work on more projects into the future. Thank you Robert.
The best! Rob commits to what he says and really is the No BS coach a business needs. Always finding and encouraging new technologies, a great soundboard and motivator to push ahead. Would highly recommend Rob to anyone who needs to step into the next stage of business.
I’ve worked with Rob across several of my businesses over the years, and I can’t recommend him highly enough. He’s one of the true pioneers of the SEO industry, having been involved since the early days of websites and search engine optimisation. That depth of experience really shows in the results he delivers. Rob has helped improve the Google rankings and overall search engine visibility for multiple companies I’ve owned, leading to increased traffic, stronger online presence, and more enquiries. He’s incredibly knowledgeable, stays passionate about what he does, and is always focused on achieving long-term, sustainable results rather than quick fixes.
Practicalities
We meet fortnightly at your yard, your office or wherever the paperwork lives, and the session goes in both calendars so it doesn’t get bumped by a job. Early starts are fine — I’d rather meet at 7am than lose you a day’s work.
Between sessions you can call me. When a client disputes a variation or a supplier changes terms on you, that’s not a problem to sit on for a fortnight. There’s one flat monthly fee, no lock-in contract and no travel charges — the business coaching cost page explains what that replaces.
I’m Melbourne based with regular trips to Sydney and Brisbane, and I coach trade businesses elsewhere in Australia by video. Read the guarantee if you want to know what happens when it isn’t working.
Let’s Have A Chat
Straight answers
Because trade qualifications teach you the trade, not the business. Nobody taught you how to build a charge-out rate, write payment terms, supervise an apprentice or read a job costing report.
That gap is why plenty of very good tradies stay busy and broke. Fixing it is straightforward once someone shows you the numbers.
Nine times out of ten your charge-out rate doesn’t carry your real overheads — vehicles, tools, insurances, super, leave, downtime, admin hours and the jobs that go over.
We rebuild the rate from your actual costs, then compare it to what you’ve been quoting. Most owners discover one type of work has been losing money for years while another has been carrying the business.
Change the process, not the customer. Deposits before you start, progress claims on anything long, terms that don’t leave you funding someone else’s project, and invoices that go out the day the job finishes rather than at the end of the month.
Then a simple, unemotional follow-up sequence that runs on a schedule. Most late payment is caused by late, vague invoicing — not by bad clients.
In stages. First we work out which hours only you can do — quoting, client relationships, pricing decisions — and which hours anyone with your ticket could do.
Then you hand over the second group deliberately, starting with a leading hand who can run a day on site. It usually takes a few months and it always feels expensive for the first one, then it pays for itself.
I don’t sell software and I don’t take referral commissions, so I’ll help you pick on the merits. The right one depends on whether you’re mostly small call-outs or long projects, how many people need access in the field, and what your accounting package is.
The bigger risk is implementation. A great system nobody enters data into is worse than the whiteboard you replaced. We plan the rollout and the crew training, not just the purchase.
Usually three things: they’re parked with whoever is free instead of someone accountable for teaching them, nobody tells them how they’re going, and they can’t see what the next two years look like.
Fix supervision, add a five-minute weekly check-in and map out their progression, and retention changes quickly. One client went from losing staff at six weeks to keeping them beyond twelve months.
No. I’m based in Melbourne with regular trips to Sydney and Brisbane, and I coach trade businesses across Australia by video between visits.
Onsite works well for trades because half the useful conversation happens while you’re showing me the yard, so I’ll get to you in person whenever I can.
No. One flat monthly fee covers the fortnightly session and the contact in between, and I don’t bill travel time, mileage or “extra” calls.
You’ll know exactly what leaves your account each month, which is the least a business coach can offer someone who quotes for a living.
Let’s chat business
Tell me your trade, roughly how many on the tools, and the thing that keeps going wrong. I’ll tell you straight if I can help.
Real business coaching client testimonials
