Client Stories

• The Electrician

• The Architect

• The IT support person

• The Builder

• The Web developers

• The Rehabilitation therapists

• The Shop owner

• The Author and academic

• The Interior Designers

The Electrician

Once upon a time there was a client who runs an electrical contracting company, Lets call him Simon. Simon employs about 10 people and has a number of vans on the road. When we started working together about 6 months ago, his company had actually lost nearly $50,000.00 in the year to date. 6 Months later, by the end of the year, we had turned the ship around, and the full year net profit ended up $20,000.00.

The main way Simon achieved this with my help was through focus and clarity. Working with me nearly every week and rigorously asking the question week in week out: "What is one small step you can take this week?" meant that slowly but surely efficiencies increased, quality improved, customer service turned round until Simon suddenly saw the company running in the black again in the last two months of the year.

The Architect

Once upon a time there was a client who is an architect, lets call him Rob. Rob owns and runs the practice with his wife Jane, and when I started working with Rob, the company just employed the both of them full time. Jane is the founder of the practice and the company was her baby, until Rob and Jane decided to have real babies.

Rob and I worked together intensively to transform the company so that Jane would be able to withdraw from any day to day involvement and would no longer produce client work.

Changes that had to be made amongst other things were that the profit levels had to be increased to compensate for Jane not producing any client work. This meant employing staff and introducing systems and procedures, and it also mean that a lot of the day to day knowledge and experience that Jane had, had to be transferred out of her brain, to allow others to use it.

6 Months later, Jane was heavily pregnant, and happy in her role as non-executive chairman of the company. There were two employees working hard producing client work and the practice was on track for a $120.000 full year net profit.

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The IT Support person

Once upon a time there was a client called George who owns an IT support company. George had run his company on his own for 3 years prior to taking me on as his coach. In that time George had built up a great reputation with his clients, but he only just earned a slightly above average annual wage, while working 60 hr weeks most of the time.

George decided that the time had come to capitalise properly on his reputation for quality work and customer service.

Over the period of our engagement George and I created a business plan and a comprehensive operations manual that allowed him to take on 2 technicians full time, and have two service vans on the road.

At the end of that year, George was able to take out a mortgage on a property in Sydney after paying a substantial deposit on it.

The Builder

Once upon a time there was a  client who is a builder, lets call him John. John used to spend all day in his car rushing from site to site sorting out crises, supervising and checking the work.

 All his Quoting and admin he had to do at night and at home on the weekend.

 For years John found himself hitting a barrier to further growth because he just can't talk on two phones at once, and there simply are only 24 hrs in a day.

 After working with John for half a year he now has a totally new way of looking at himself in the business and the business is organised entirely different.

John spends 2 hours every day in the office with the phone turned off. From 10 to 12 he works “on” the business, and will not take any calls relating to the works.

John still works on Saturday mornings just to do his quotes but for the rest of weekend his family have him back again. Now the business is set up so it can start to grow again and work for John... and his family

The web developers

Once upon a time there was a client who is a web developer, lets call her Stephanie. Stephanie was one of the two owners of the company. Until the time we started working together, Stephanie and her brother Mike had always simply shared all the work between them, both coding and developing and admin and everything else.

However, the company was growing and it was time to employ staff. With employees came the need to start separating roles and responsibilities between each other…Stephanie felt that she was best suited to the managing director role and Mike would be better off looking after all the actual work with the "Team"….

You can imagine that there were lots of “issues” to sort out and managed between the siblings around these changes in the company.

Over a period of 6 months Stephanie and I worked through these issues and now 2 years later the company has really come of age.

Mike is fully occupied getting a team of 5 developers to produce the work, and Stephanie runs the company and builds the business like a true CEO
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Rehabilition

Once upon a time there was a client called James, who owns a business that works with people to rehabilitate them while on workers comp.

The business had become very successful and an opportunity came up to take on another partner and duplicate the same business model first in Newcastle and later in Wollongong.

To be able to do so, James really needed to create a cast iron operations manual for every facet of the business, effectively to be able to create a turn-key business model.

James and I worked together for a period of 8 months to create exactly such a system. He took on the partner and they set up shop in Newcastle 6 months ago. The Newcastle operation took off like a charm and James plans to roll out the same model in Wollongong in the second half of this year.

Shop owner

Once upon a time there was a client called Richard who owns a large neighbourhood shop in the inner-city. I started working with Richard quite recently. The business is turning over about $25,000 per week at the moment, grown from $15,000 a couple of years ago when he took it over.

Richard believes that the turnover can get up to and average of $35,000 per week. Such a turnover figure would effectively double the value he could sell the business for...

The work we have done to date centers on finding the clear swimming pool for his business: What can Richard's shop offer that others in the area don’t ... and there are lots of opportunities. For example we realized that the nearest good quality fruit, vegetables, flowers and organic food is at the other end of the suburb.

So Richard has reorganized his shop and created new space for fruit and flowers and organic foods, which has also changed the look of the shop quite drastically. Richard is getting really enthusiastic feedback from his clients. What is more though is that Richard has achieved the $35,000.00 turnover 3 weeks in a row now, another few weeks of this and we can say confidently that this goal has been achieved.

This increase in turnover means that the value of the shop on goodwill alone has increased by $200,000.00. in Other words, Richard earned $200,000.00 in 4 months. Which translates as a return on investment (ROI) on what he invested in his business coach of significantly over 2000 percent

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Artist/ academic

Once upon a time there was a client called Margaret, who is an academic and author, who has given up the hallowed halls of academia for business. Working with me Margaret decided that she wants to create a business in philanthropy.

It became clear that all her training and core values and interests came together in this area at this time of her life.

Obviously this is not an easy area to set a business up in, but over a period of a year she created a some events for local charitable institutions, like a well known refuge for homeless people.  From those events Margaret came into contact with some very wealthy and well connected locals.

These locals were very enthusiastic about finding someone who was able to help them and advice them about how to be involved with philanthropic organisations and which ones to be involved with.

Margaret's' business “Passionate Philanthropy” has taken off and she will do well.

Interior designers partnership

Once upon a time there were two clients called Steve and Mary who are interior designers. They have been together for nearly 5 years and have decided that now is the time to take the business to another level.

Steve and Mary are concerned that to date they have been able to rely on word of mouth from one client to the next… passive, and they feel that they have little control over whether the business grows or not.

It is time to become more pro-active and actively manage the growth of the business. This means that they have to open the big bad marketing book: They have to decide who they are and how to tell the world that they are here. They also have to learn to communicate with potential clients in such a way that they can ask for and get the business.

Steve and Mary and I have gone through some very big processes so far: First about getting clear who they are; What is unique about their business; What do clients get from them; Who are clients?

Once we started to get clear about that, the question obviously became: Where are these clients? and How do we communicate with them.

This new focus led to the creation of a series of stretegies for interacting with potential customers. We developed a a marketing plan, a simple business plan and a strategic plan to take the business forward.

Last month Steve and Mary employed their first staff member in order to allow the owners to start to do this marketing and development work.

Steve and Mary are excited to think that they will be employing a second staff member by the start of the new financial year.

 

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