November 25, 2025 • 28 mins
Most tradesmen say “yes” to every job… and then wonder why they’re stressed, skint, overwhelmed, and never actually growing their business.
In this episode, Wayne and Andy dive deep into the reality most lads ignore:
Not all work is good work.
And some jobs are killing your business without you realising.
This episode is a straight-talking breakdown of how to choose the RIGHT work — the jobs that grow your business, increase lifetime value, build recurring revenue, and stop you being a busy fool.
Inside this episode:
🔥 Why saying “yes to everything” is the reason you’re stuck
🔥 The dangerous myth: “Combi swaps are the golden goose”
🔥 Why service & repair work quietly builds the strongest, most profitable businesses
🔥 How “lifetime value” actually works (and how to use it properly)
🔥 Why five boiler installs a month WON’T grow your business long-term
🔥 The difference between “profit now” vs “profit over 10 years”
🔥 The opportunity cost nobody in the heating/plumbing world talks about
🔥 Why working for builders & letting agents is often a trap
🔥 How to choose work that scales your business — not drowns you
🔥 Why customer acquisition beats short-term cash every time
🔥 The mindset shift every tradesman needs if they want to grow
PLUS:
Wayne and Andy share real stories from their own businesses — including walking away from £100k+ a year in “comfortable” work to unlock bigger, better opportunities.
If your diary is full but your business isn’t growing…
If you’re always busy but never ahead…
If you want to scale but can’t find the time…
This episode is a wake-up call.
Start choosing the right work.
Start building the business you actually want.
Stop surviving. Start growing.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Here we go. Welcome back to the next episode
of the Off the Tools podcast with myself, Wayne Bennis and my
Co host Andy Jones. How are we doing, Andy?
Good, good you. Yeah, very well, very well.
So today we are talking about choosing the right work to grow
your business. And for some people, the word
(00:37):
choosing the right work might bea little bit confusing.
But luckily Andy is very in tunewith this.
He is an expert at making sure that his business does the right
type of work. And I would say to float my own
boat, I've been very good at this over the years.
(00:57):
I've spent many years just focusing on the type of work
that was profitable to me. But before I waffle on, I have
to remember that Andy is not a guest.
Andy is a Co host. So I can't keep hogging the
microphone. Andy, what does choosing the
right work to grow your businessmean to you, my friend?
(01:17):
So I think from a trade perspective, there's always been
too much of A more work is better.
All work should be said yes to. I don't want to let customer
down. I will take anything that makes
me money, lots of that. So obviously we're going to
focus a lot because of our backgrounds and our coexisting
(01:42):
businesses. There's going to be a lot of
talk about gas and heating related work, but it applies
obviously to all realms and maybe slightly less so to
perhaps someone like a builder, but in terms of a jobbing type
trade business. So whether that's gas,
electrics, plumbing, whatever itmight be.
(02:03):
So in my opinion it the variableis what you want to achieve in
your business. So again, to use that gas as an
example, I would say a combi combi swap is always viewed as
the the golden nugget. It can be done in a day.
You generally make ÂŁ1000 or morefrom it and that would be viewed
(02:26):
as the prime target for guys doing that.
As a result, a lot of them may be hyper focused on trying to
find that type of work and they'll put a lot of money into
to market into to source that. The problem with that can be
you, if you do, let's say you do5 boilers in a month and you
(02:51):
don't do anything beyond fittingboilers, you will then have to
find 5 new boilers slash 5 new customers to work with the
following month and that processwill repeat.
However, if you was to target recurring work, so whether
that's something like a boiler service or ACP 12, then you will
(03:14):
grow the business by targeting work that will come back around
the following year. So that's kind of it in a in a
brief of trying to find the balance.
So the very two big variables really is where you want the
business to go and what kind of balance between growth and
(03:36):
profitability you want to achieve.
So again, the most short term profitable job in gas is going
to be that combi combi swap. However, from a long term
perspective and customer acquisition perspective, I would
argue a boiler service will giveyou the longest, the most
(03:56):
valuable customer lifetime valuebecause the likelihood is you
will get the boiler swap anyway.But it's an element of delayed
gratification because that boiler swap might only come in
five, 710 years. That's kind of it in a nutshell.
So, so to just quickly before you move on lifetime value.
(04:20):
So that that to me is one of themost pivotal things when come
when, when on this subject to choosing the right work, you've
got to fully understand lifetimevalue.
So do you want to explain that? Yeah.
So lifetime value is basically the amount of revenue you can
(04:44):
generate from a singular customer over the period of time
they will be your customer for. So that could be, you know,
someone might have an old dear if they've done work for for 20
years, then it's going to be a 20 year lifetime value and you
would have to calculate the revenue generated over that.
(05:06):
And the reason it's relevant to this conversation is by
targeting that kind of work thatwas going to is going to give
you the long, the best long termrelationship with the customer.
As I've just said, you can end up generating much greater
revenue. For example, you get ÂŁ1000 for a
boiler swap. You don't do any continuation of
(05:28):
work for that customer for the boiler.
Let's say you don't want to do servicing, you just want to do
boiler fitting all day. You fit the boiler, you walk
away, you make 1000 lbs. The company that will target
that customer for service and repair work, they might first
contact repair the boiler, make ÂŁ300, service it under a quid.
That's ÂŁ400 for year one, year 2the service it year three-year 4
(05:51):
service it. Year 5 maybe gets a repair, you
get another ÂŁ500. This goes on until perhaps year
7-8 or whatever they fit a new boiler and you've had the boiler
anyway from it. I would argue that even from a
servicing perspective, let's sayyou're only fitting boilers.
A boiler lasts 12 years, you fita boiler.
(06:13):
So you could say that every 12 years that customer will need a
new boiler. If you spread that across the UK
and use use that as a metric, itmeans that there's 12.
Every 12 years there's a new opportunity for that individual
property as opposed to a boiler service strategy and repair over
(06:38):
that 12 years. Even just from servicing you
would generate probably slightlymore revenue than just fitting a
new boiler every 12 years. That's probably a strange
concept and I've maybe not broken it down as well as a
shortcut. If you're getting 1000 LB every
12 years from fitting new boilers for that property and
you're getting ÂŁ100 per boiler service on that property, just
(07:02):
on the servicing alone, you've generated more revenue.
So see, there's all the repair work and whatever as well.
But in a nutshell, being conscious of the work that
you're targeting not only can generate more revenue, it will
also then scale and grow the business.
What I think most trades business owners struggle with is
(07:25):
delayed gratification. Yeah, it.
It I, I definitely agree and it's, I've got a really good
example of the lifetime value inaction.
So yesterday we were out servicing the boiler and the,
the old guy had a pile of paperwork.
So I thought, you know what, I'll have a little look through
that. And it turns out that we went
(07:48):
out back in 2010, right for a repair.
We then fitted a new boiler off that off of that repair.
We then serviced it every year and then he had another new
boiler last year. So the lifetime value of that
customer has been, we've got what, five, 6000 lbs at least,
(08:12):
you know, because we've, not only did we go to that repair,
we obviously then fitted the boiler.
Then 15 years later we fitted a new boiler.
And in between that we've serviced it and maintained their
system that whole time. So when you understand lifetime
value, it lets you be a little bit more choosy on what you do,
(08:32):
doesn't it? Because you're, you're not just
thinking of that instant reward,which is so, so common.
I think it's common in all businesses, but obviously we're,
we're tradesmen. So we're going to like focus on
trades. But you know, you see that
carrot, don't you? Of that, that, that, that boiler
swap, for example, boiler in, inthe heating industry, boilers
(08:53):
are always like seen as the golden goose, aren't they?
When in reality. Your.
Approach of service and repair at the forefront, actually, in
the longer term can be a lot more lucrative, can't it?
Yeah. So even beyond what I was just
saying about the value of something like servicing of the
(09:16):
years, you've got to also think about a slightly different
variable, which is the, I think the right phrasing for it, the
positioning with the customer, let's say.
So if you get a fresh lead and acustomer's looking for a new
boiler off the bat from a fresh lead, it's going to be much
(09:39):
harder to bring any more value to the customer other than the
price that you quoted. Yeah.
Firstly, if you acquire that customer as a service customer,
you, let's say you fix the boiler on 1st interaction.
That's that sector is less competitive because as we just
said, it's the golden nugget to get the new boiler.
(10:01):
So the repair sector is less competitive.
There's less guys doing it, lessguys trained to do it.
So you're more likely to win thejob.
It's also less of a price war for something like that than a
combi, brand new combi swap. You fix the boiler, you service
it, you get it back up and running, then you look after
that customer for a few years. When that comes time for a new
(10:24):
boiler, you can, when you put your price in, you can continue
to be strong with your pricing. Again, like I said, I've said on
a previous episode, based on your value.
So if you've been bringing greatvalue to that customer, they
know like and trust you, they'remore likely to to be happy with
(10:45):
the strong price that you chargebecause of the value that you
bring as opposed to that price war of, you know, I'm just
getting prices, I'm just gettingprices always the cheapest, I'm
going to go with them. So it allows you to build that
rapport with the customer in advance of fitting the boiler
anyway. So like you've described there
(11:06):
for from your other business. So yeah, that's why we've
beginning our other business. We've targeted that from the get
go really because customer acquisition if you're scaling a
business, in my opinion is more valuable than than profit, than
(11:27):
the immediate profit. If you've reached the point
where you don't want to scale any more than yeah, you can
pivot. If you're at capacity for your
team, customer acquisition is nolonger the priority for that
business. Profit becomes the priority.
So the topic for and podcast that we've we've got planned on
(11:49):
pricing and stuff, but it's relevant in the fact that the
type of work that you target is also dependent on where you want
your business to go and where it's currently at.
So if you're a one man band, youwant to stay that way.
You're, let's say you don't planon working for, you know, you
(12:11):
only want to do the next 5-10 years, you don't want to scale
the business, you don't want more staff out on the road, Lads
out on the road. Then customer acquisition is
probably of less value to you than the company that intends to
have 10 lads out on the road because the only way he's going
(12:31):
to get to 10 lads out on the road is by customer acquisition
and scaling the business. So it's not a finite thing.
It has to be fluid, as I was just saying.
So it needs to be, let's say youare gearing up to take on a new
engineer. Then again, you have to make
that pivot to customer acquisition and sacrifice some
(12:54):
profit. So admittedly, yeah, doing a
combi combi swap is going to give me the most profit, but
sourcing more customers in the same day is going to help you to
scale the business through acquisition.
And the reason it's kind of a hot topic right now is as we
(13:14):
roll into winter for the lads that do do the boiler breakdown
side of things, because you should be putting your prices up
over winter as the demand increases like any business
would. You can, if your pricing is
right, generate the same amount of revenue per day from doing a
(13:37):
day of repairs, breakdowns and repairs then you can do in a
combi combi swap anyway. But you've also got the the
cherry on the top then of much greater customer acquisition.
So to go a little bit deeper into this side of thing, if you
are only doing a combi swap a day, or maybe let's say you get
(13:58):
a conversion, a system conversion, conventional heating
system to a combi boiler and maybe you're doing a power flush
on it as well and a couple of rads or whatever.
And it's 3 days worth of work. Most guys will think she thought
I've got three days worth of work Now that's good.
And it's, and it's generally viewed as a good thing to, to
get a job that's going to fill the diary more because it takes
(14:20):
some pressure off. However, you've also got to
think about what you stand to lose by doing that, and you're
only. The opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost, which are phrase that I hammer into the
group all the time, The opportunity cost is substantial
for something like that. So let's say you get that
(14:41):
conversion and let's say you getanother conversion that's only
going to take you 2 days and that's a week done.
You've got 2 customers for the whole week versus let's say
you're smashing service repair breakdowns.
You could be doing 6-7 jobs a day.
You know, if you want to grind it, if you, if you're
self-employed, working for yourself, I'm, I'm a lot of, you
(15:01):
have to excuse me, a lot of the time I'll reference in terms of
staff because of the, our heating business has engineers
on the road. So obviously the capacity is
reduced. But if you're working for
yourself, you're probably going to take advantage of the winter.
You might do have capacity to domore jobs per day, but let's say
you want to work off 6-7 jobs a day for the whole week.
(15:23):
That's substantially more. 2835 customers of, isn't it?
So yeah, even even at 5 a day, there's 25 customers acquired
that week as opposed to the two that's 25 new reviews.
If you're if you're requesting multi platform reviews, that's
(15:46):
going to be even more. By that I mean, if you have
something in place that sends out a maybe a singular link that
asks for a Google review and a Trustpilot review all in one,
you're happy. Customers tend to leave more
than one review. So you've got 25 to 30 potential
new reviews or more, 20 to 530 new customers in the system.
(16:10):
So when you you track that trajectory, if you've, if you've
done a lot of repairs and eitherservices there and then are then
they've been rebooked as a service that's recurring work to
come back around the next year. So 30 new customers in the
system is going to scale the business much better than two
(16:32):
new customers for that week, even if, and again, winter is
the variable because of the pricing throttle.
But even if you generated less revenue for that week, you'll
have improved and grown the business off the back of doing
the job in work. And that's something that I
think some guys really, really fucking struggle with, in my
opinion, Yeah. I agree.
(16:54):
Yeah, and they like the the theysee the numbers 15 grammes worth
of work that that would be nice this time of year, but not
thinking actually what what am Ilosing by doing this?
How many customers and then get to get a bit deeper again when
you block and you block your diary out like that and your
phone's ringing. Oh yeah, my boiler's gone off
(17:15):
Can can you get out to it? Sorry you can't stacked this
week. You're leaving money on the
table from that you're leaving customers on the.
Table you're basically passing them to your competitors, aren't
you? Every time you're stacked up,
you're, you're, you're just opening the door for your, your
competitor to take that customer.
And it circles back, doesn't it,to the lifetime value because
(17:37):
not only that customer acquisition that's you mentioned
the reviews and everything like that, but it's also 20 to 30
potential referrals as well, which then compound that
customer acquisition beyond that, don't it?
You know, even if only 5 people that we recommend you, that's
another five for the for the next week.
(17:58):
And I think lifetime value comesback to the centre of that
though, doesn't it? Because if you don't, you
embrace that and you don't fullyunderstand what that means,
you're going to be stuck lookingin the short term of oh, them
convert to combies. That's 10 grammes worth of work,
all great. It's amazing.
(18:19):
Whereas looking at it from your approach that you've just
elegantly told us about it completely changes it because
the repeat work, the reviews, the everything you've, you've
just, you've just said it. It becomes a no brainer, doesn't
it? So let me, let me like sort of
still man this a little bit. But like the, the so someone
(18:42):
rings up today and says, you know, I want 3 radiators doing
and, and you look at it and you give them a price and it's like
a good day's work or, or whatever.
It's hard to say no, isn't it? It's hard to say no.
So how, how can you, it's all well and good us sitting here
saying, yeah, how does the person on the other end of this
(19:04):
actually start this process? What what what are the?
What are the things they they need to start doing?
So obviously this is much, much easier if you're busy.
It's also much easier if you've got girls.
Oh, that's in the office answering the phone for you.
So again, for, for the heating business, the the other business
(19:25):
that we've got, when somebody rings up asking that question,
it's pretty much as simple as wedon't take on that kind of work
at this time of year in a nutshell really.
And if they ask why, it's just we're prioritising keeping
boilers running rather than cosmetic kind of job.
(19:47):
Putting radiators in it's service and repair is priority
at this time of year. Some people love boilers that
have gone down and that's what we're focused on.
If you're quiet, that's a challenge.
If you don't like letting peopledown, that's a challenge.
If you're if you are quiet and you want to start making that
pivot, you're going to have to accept that you're going to have
(20:08):
to start to invest in the business.
So again, this is a separate podcast on stuff like this on
marketing, but you can no longerscale a business without
investing in marketing. You know, we spoke about this on
the on the long podcast at the end of season 1 of the guys that
(20:29):
were it like a badge of honour. If I've never had to do any
marketing and I stand by what I've always said and say they
are, they will be leaving money on the table.
They won't be charging the rightpricing.
And if by some reason they're charging good pricing, which I
don't think you would be, then in terms of scalability, they
(20:51):
could not compete with someone who is investing it.
I could not. I know I made the the reference
in the last podcast about that. We've grown the business to
greater than some guys that havebeen going 20 years in the space
of 2 1/2 years. And that was only because we've
invested so heavily in marketing.
(21:12):
You could not open a business now and wait for the organic
growth off the back of that which is going to come back onto
topic. That's the hack.
The secret sauce of scaling is by being selective of the work
that you take on, you will struggle to scale a business at
pace. The heating business, sorry, at
pace if you're only picking those big jobs, yeah.
(21:38):
I agree. Deeper into it, again, while
we're on topic, I would argue that this also transcends across
to when you do guys do work for builders or letting agents
because that analogy that we've just used of the two customers,
the two system conversion customers, that's only two
(22:00):
customers a week. If you're doing work for a
letting agent and it's 50% of your diary, then you're losing
50% of your operating time. There's always variables to
that. Admittedly if you've got some
labs out working for you and you're using the letting agent
(22:23):
work to make profit off a singleengineer then it's a it's
different story then isn't it? Because it becomes a self
fuelling machine and it and it'sviable.
But when it's you on your own inmy opinion no self-employed sole
trader should be working for letting agents or builders for
(22:46):
that matter. Because not only could the rug
get pulled from you very quicklyand shit at the farm, you're
also then hindering your own business growing to help their
business make money. And that's which is what
obviously they do. So something else to be mindful.
And I'm sure we'll get some interesting comments and replies
on that. And we've got a lot of lads in
(23:10):
the group, some that have then have now bend off the letting
agents because they've sort of seen the light.
And some that have been, we've got a new lab that's just joined
who's quite smart with it. And he's using the letting agent
work to fuel an engineer's diarywith profit.
So that that's that's a little bit of a variable.
(23:32):
And it's, it's a scary, it is a scary step to start being picky.
But I, I can think of three examples in my own heating
business where I've had to make the those decisions and I'll
just quickly share a couple of them.
So one of them was we did over 100 grands a year worth worth of
work. Excuse me for an estate agent
(23:54):
and one day, obviously it wasn'tjust a split decision I thought
about, but one day I literally just emailed them and told them
that I was no longer available for for the for the work.
And it was a nerve wracking time, but I had work come to the
same conclusion as you're you'vejust you've just explained is
that I realised that it was filling up over half of my diary
(24:18):
and the opportunity cost was toogreat.
So although I had that security and that well what I saw as
security when in reality it wasn't secure because they could
just turn it off overnight, I was losing so many potential
customers that we wanted to workfor new boilers servicing
everything we've just discussed.So anyone that is sitting there
(24:41):
thinking, well, I can't just turn away that work.
You've got to really think aboutthat opportunity cost because
the minute you have more capacity, you can't fill 2
buckets of water if you've only got 1 bucket.
So you have to createspace, whether that be in employing
someone, whether that be relinquishing some work to, to
be able to get the work that youactually want to do.
(25:05):
And that ultimately leads to theprofit and the business that you
want. So yes, it's a brave step, but
and it and, and it is a risky step.
There is risk to it, but business isn't meant to be easy.
Business isn't meant to be risk free.
That is the point, you know, business is taking risk for a
reward down the line. So I would, I, I would tell you
(25:29):
to, to really look at it, look at the work that you're doing.
If you're happy doing that work and you're happy with your
business, then hats off to you, you know, brilliant.
But if you're waking up for workmiserable, you're stressed out,
you're, you're never home, you've not got the money that
you feel you, you deserve, then ultimately you've got to make
(25:52):
the changes. And choosing that work is the
first step to that, isn't it? It leads you down a new pathway
because when you start choosing the right work, you start
attracting the right work. And then you also then have the
capacity to be a Better Businessbecause you're not just being a
busy fool doing stuff that you don't want to do.
(26:13):
If you want to do stuff you don't want to do, go and get a
job. Go work for someone and do shit
jobs that you don't want to do. To jump in on that, on that,
there's something that I said inthe in the the long podcast is
that I would, I would say probably 50% of guys who would
say they have their own businessslash self-employed are doing a
(26:38):
degree, either their diary in its whole like I used to do, or
in part like you've just your business used to do working for
someone else. So essentially A subcontractor,
you're working for a Latin agents controversial statement.
You're basically a subcontractorto them.
Yeah, like then I don't think many guys maybe see it from
(27:01):
that. Same with the builder.
So if you've got 2 builders and three electing agents and that's
all your diary, you're a subcontractor.
You're not a business owner. Yeah, yeah, no, I, I agree.
And again again though, if that's if you're happy, great.
But the chances are if you're listening or watching this
podcast, it's because you're, you're, you want to change, you
want your business to be different.
(27:22):
So right, on that note, nice controversial subject statement
to end. I would, I would encourage
everybody to whether you agree, whether you disagree, whether
you have any questions around this to reach out via social
media in the Off the Tools groupor e-mail Wayne or
andy@offthetools.co.uk. And we can obviously respond to
(27:46):
those engagements as they come in when we do other shows.
Any other closing points for this session?
Other than yeah, take a look at your your diary for the
foreseeable, have a look at the work and make a decision if it's
the right work for your business.
If you want to scale and you've got big jobs booked in, that's
(28:10):
the wrong work for your business.
If you don't want to scale, thengo for the bigger jobs for the
security of it. All right, on that note, have a
good one everyone. See you in the next session.
Here we go. Welcome back to the next episode
of the Off the Tools podcast with myself, Wayne Bennis and my
Co host Andy Jones. How are we doing, Andy?
Good, good you. Yeah, very well, very well.
So today we are talking about choosing the right work to grow
your business. And for some people, the word
(00:37):
choosing the right work might bea little bit confusing.
But luckily Andy is very in tunewith this.
He is an expert at making sure that his business does the right
type of work. And I would say to float my own
boat, I've been very good at this over the years.
(00:57):
I've spent many years just focusing on the type of work
that was profitable to me. But before I waffle on, I have
to remember that Andy is not a guest.
Andy is a Co host. So I can't keep hogging the
microphone. Andy, what does choosing the
right work to grow your businessmean to you, my friend?
(01:17):
So I think from a trade perspective, there's always been
too much of A more work is better.
All work should be said yes to. I don't want to let customer
down. I will take anything that makes
me money, lots of that. So obviously we're going to
focus a lot because of our backgrounds and our coexisting
(01:42):
businesses. There's going to be a lot of
talk about gas and heating related work, but it applies
obviously to all realms and maybe slightly less so to
perhaps someone like a builder, but in terms of a jobbing type
trade business. So whether that's gas,
electrics, plumbing, whatever itmight be.
(02:03):
So in my opinion it the variableis what you want to achieve in
your business. So again, to use that gas as an
example, I would say a combi combi swap is always viewed as
the the golden nugget. It can be done in a day.
You generally make ÂŁ1000 or morefrom it and that would be viewed
(02:26):
as the prime target for guys doing that.
As a result, a lot of them may be hyper focused on trying to
find that type of work and they'll put a lot of money into
to market into to source that. The problem with that can be
you, if you do, let's say you do5 boilers in a month and you
(02:51):
don't do anything beyond fittingboilers, you will then have to
find 5 new boilers slash 5 new customers to work with the
following month and that processwill repeat.
However, if you was to target recurring work, so whether
that's something like a boiler service or ACP 12, then you will
(03:14):
grow the business by targeting work that will come back around
the following year. So that's kind of it in a in a
brief of trying to find the balance.
So the very two big variables really is where you want the
business to go and what kind of balance between growth and
(03:36):
profitability you want to achieve.
So again, the most short term profitable job in gas is going
to be that combi combi swap. However, from a long term
perspective and customer acquisition perspective, I would
argue a boiler service will giveyou the longest, the most
(03:56):
valuable customer lifetime valuebecause the likelihood is you
will get the boiler swap anyway.But it's an element of delayed
gratification because that boiler swap might only come in
five, 710 years. That's kind of it in a nutshell.
So, so to just quickly before you move on lifetime value.
(04:20):
So that that to me is one of themost pivotal things when come
when, when on this subject to choosing the right work, you've
got to fully understand lifetimevalue.
So do you want to explain that? Yeah.
So lifetime value is basically the amount of revenue you can
(04:44):
generate from a singular customer over the period of time
they will be your customer for. So that could be, you know,
someone might have an old dear if they've done work for for 20
years, then it's going to be a 20 year lifetime value and you
would have to calculate the revenue generated over that.
(05:06):
And the reason it's relevant to this conversation is by
targeting that kind of work thatwas going to is going to give
you the long, the best long termrelationship with the customer.
As I've just said, you can end up generating much greater
revenue. For example, you get ÂŁ1000 for a
boiler swap. You don't do any continuation of
(05:28):
work for that customer for the boiler.
Let's say you don't want to do servicing, you just want to do
boiler fitting all day. You fit the boiler, you walk
away, you make 1000 lbs. The company that will target
that customer for service and repair work, they might first
contact repair the boiler, make ÂŁ300, service it under a quid.
That's ÂŁ400 for year one, year 2the service it year three-year 4
(05:51):
service it. Year 5 maybe gets a repair, you
get another ÂŁ500. This goes on until perhaps year
7-8 or whatever they fit a new boiler and you've had the boiler
anyway from it. I would argue that even from a
servicing perspective, let's sayyou're only fitting boilers.
A boiler lasts 12 years, you fita boiler.
(06:13):
So you could say that every 12 years that customer will need a
new boiler. If you spread that across the UK
and use use that as a metric, itmeans that there's 12.
Every 12 years there's a new opportunity for that individual
property as opposed to a boiler service strategy and repair over
(06:38):
that 12 years. Even just from servicing you
would generate probably slightlymore revenue than just fitting a
new boiler every 12 years. That's probably a strange
concept and I've maybe not broken it down as well as a
shortcut. If you're getting 1000 LB every
12 years from fitting new boilers for that property and
you're getting ÂŁ100 per boiler service on that property, just
(07:02):
on the servicing alone, you've generated more revenue.
So see, there's all the repair work and whatever as well.
But in a nutshell, being conscious of the work that
you're targeting not only can generate more revenue, it will
also then scale and grow the business.
What I think most trades business owners struggle with is
(07:25):
delayed gratification. Yeah, it.
It I, I definitely agree and it's, I've got a really good
example of the lifetime value inaction.
So yesterday we were out servicing the boiler and the,
the old guy had a pile of paperwork.
So I thought, you know what, I'll have a little look through
that. And it turns out that we went
(07:48):
out back in 2010, right for a repair.
We then fitted a new boiler off that off of that repair.
We then serviced it every year and then he had another new
boiler last year. So the lifetime value of that
customer has been, we've got what, five, 6000 lbs at least,
(08:12):
you know, because we've, not only did we go to that repair,
we obviously then fitted the boiler.
Then 15 years later we fitted a new boiler.
And in between that we've serviced it and maintained their
system that whole time. So when you understand lifetime
value, it lets you be a little bit more choosy on what you do,
(08:32):
doesn't it? Because you're, you're not just
thinking of that instant reward,which is so, so common.
I think it's common in all businesses, but obviously we're,
we're tradesmen. So we're going to like focus on
trades. But you know, you see that
carrot, don't you? Of that, that, that, that boiler
swap, for example, boiler in, inthe heating industry, boilers
(08:53):
are always like seen as the golden goose, aren't they?
When in reality. Your.
Approach of service and repair at the forefront, actually, in
the longer term can be a lot more lucrative, can't it?
Yeah. So even beyond what I was just
saying about the value of something like servicing of the
(09:16):
years, you've got to also think about a slightly different
variable, which is the, I think the right phrasing for it, the
positioning with the customer, let's say.
So if you get a fresh lead and acustomer's looking for a new
boiler off the bat from a fresh lead, it's going to be much
(09:39):
harder to bring any more value to the customer other than the
price that you quoted. Yeah.
Firstly, if you acquire that customer as a service customer,
you, let's say you fix the boiler on 1st interaction.
That's that sector is less competitive because as we just
said, it's the golden nugget to get the new boiler.
(10:01):
So the repair sector is less competitive.
There's less guys doing it, lessguys trained to do it.
So you're more likely to win thejob.
It's also less of a price war for something like that than a
combi, brand new combi swap. You fix the boiler, you service
it, you get it back up and running, then you look after
that customer for a few years. When that comes time for a new
(10:24):
boiler, you can, when you put your price in, you can continue
to be strong with your pricing. Again, like I said, I've said on
a previous episode, based on your value.
So if you've been bringing greatvalue to that customer, they
know like and trust you, they'remore likely to to be happy with
(10:45):
the strong price that you chargebecause of the value that you
bring as opposed to that price war of, you know, I'm just
getting prices, I'm just gettingprices always the cheapest, I'm
going to go with them. So it allows you to build that
rapport with the customer in advance of fitting the boiler
anyway. So like you've described there
(11:06):
for from your other business. So yeah, that's why we've
beginning our other business. We've targeted that from the get
go really because customer acquisition if you're scaling a
business, in my opinion is more valuable than than profit, than
(11:27):
the immediate profit. If you've reached the point
where you don't want to scale any more than yeah, you can
pivot. If you're at capacity for your
team, customer acquisition is nolonger the priority for that
business. Profit becomes the priority.
So the topic for and podcast that we've we've got planned on
(11:49):
pricing and stuff, but it's relevant in the fact that the
type of work that you target is also dependent on where you want
your business to go and where it's currently at.
So if you're a one man band, youwant to stay that way.
You're, let's say you don't planon working for, you know, you
(12:11):
only want to do the next 5-10 years, you don't want to scale
the business, you don't want more staff out on the road, Lads
out on the road. Then customer acquisition is
probably of less value to you than the company that intends to
have 10 lads out on the road because the only way he's going
(12:31):
to get to 10 lads out on the road is by customer acquisition
and scaling the business. So it's not a finite thing.
It has to be fluid, as I was just saying.
So it needs to be, let's say youare gearing up to take on a new
engineer. Then again, you have to make
that pivot to customer acquisition and sacrifice some
(12:54):
profit. So admittedly, yeah, doing a
combi combi swap is going to give me the most profit, but
sourcing more customers in the same day is going to help you to
scale the business through acquisition.
And the reason it's kind of a hot topic right now is as we
(13:14):
roll into winter for the lads that do do the boiler breakdown
side of things, because you should be putting your prices up
over winter as the demand increases like any business
would. You can, if your pricing is
right, generate the same amount of revenue per day from doing a
(13:37):
day of repairs, breakdowns and repairs then you can do in a
combi combi swap anyway. But you've also got the the
cherry on the top then of much greater customer acquisition.
So to go a little bit deeper into this side of thing, if you
are only doing a combi swap a day, or maybe let's say you get
(13:58):
a conversion, a system conversion, conventional heating
system to a combi boiler and maybe you're doing a power flush
on it as well and a couple of rads or whatever.
And it's 3 days worth of work. Most guys will think she thought
I've got three days worth of work Now that's good.
And it's, and it's generally viewed as a good thing to, to
get a job that's going to fill the diary more because it takes
(14:20):
some pressure off. However, you've also got to
think about what you stand to lose by doing that, and you're
only. The opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost, which are phrase that I hammer into the
group all the time, The opportunity cost is substantial
for something like that. So let's say you get that
(14:41):
conversion and let's say you getanother conversion that's only
going to take you 2 days and that's a week done.
You've got 2 customers for the whole week versus let's say
you're smashing service repair breakdowns.
You could be doing 6-7 jobs a day.
You know, if you want to grind it, if you, if you're
self-employed, working for yourself, I'm, I'm a lot of, you
(15:01):
have to excuse me, a lot of the time I'll reference in terms of
staff because of the, our heating business has engineers
on the road. So obviously the capacity is
reduced. But if you're working for
yourself, you're probably going to take advantage of the winter.
You might do have capacity to domore jobs per day, but let's say
you want to work off 6-7 jobs a day for the whole week.
(15:23):
That's substantially more. 2835 customers of, isn't it?
So yeah, even even at 5 a day, there's 25 customers acquired
that week as opposed to the two that's 25 new reviews.
If you're if you're requesting multi platform reviews, that's
(15:46):
going to be even more. By that I mean, if you have
something in place that sends out a maybe a singular link that
asks for a Google review and a Trustpilot review all in one,
you're happy. Customers tend to leave more
than one review. So you've got 25 to 30 potential
new reviews or more, 20 to 530 new customers in the system.
(16:10):
So when you you track that trajectory, if you've, if you've
done a lot of repairs and eitherservices there and then are then
they've been rebooked as a service that's recurring work to
come back around the next year. So 30 new customers in the
system is going to scale the business much better than two
(16:32):
new customers for that week, even if, and again, winter is
the variable because of the pricing throttle.
But even if you generated less revenue for that week, you'll
have improved and grown the business off the back of doing
the job in work. And that's something that I
think some guys really, really fucking struggle with, in my
opinion, Yeah. I agree.
(16:54):
Yeah, and they like the the theysee the numbers 15 grammes worth
of work that that would be nice this time of year, but not
thinking actually what what am Ilosing by doing this?
How many customers and then get to get a bit deeper again when
you block and you block your diary out like that and your
phone's ringing. Oh yeah, my boiler's gone off
(17:15):
Can can you get out to it? Sorry you can't stacked this
week. You're leaving money on the
table from that you're leaving customers on the.
Table you're basically passing them to your competitors, aren't
you? Every time you're stacked up,
you're, you're, you're just opening the door for your, your
competitor to take that customer.
And it circles back, doesn't it,to the lifetime value because
(17:37):
not only that customer acquisition that's you mentioned
the reviews and everything like that, but it's also 20 to 30
potential referrals as well, which then compound that
customer acquisition beyond that, don't it?
You know, even if only 5 people that we recommend you, that's
another five for the for the next week.
(17:58):
And I think lifetime value comesback to the centre of that
though, doesn't it? Because if you don't, you
embrace that and you don't fullyunderstand what that means,
you're going to be stuck lookingin the short term of oh, them
convert to combies. That's 10 grammes worth of work,
all great. It's amazing.
(18:19):
Whereas looking at it from your approach that you've just
elegantly told us about it completely changes it because
the repeat work, the reviews, the everything you've, you've
just, you've just said it. It becomes a no brainer, doesn't
it? So let me, let me like sort of
still man this a little bit. But like the, the so someone
(18:42):
rings up today and says, you know, I want 3 radiators doing
and, and you look at it and you give them a price and it's like
a good day's work or, or whatever.
It's hard to say no, isn't it? It's hard to say no.
So how, how can you, it's all well and good us sitting here
saying, yeah, how does the person on the other end of this
(19:04):
actually start this process? What what what are the?
What are the things they they need to start doing?
So obviously this is much, much easier if you're busy.
It's also much easier if you've got girls.
Oh, that's in the office answering the phone for you.
So again, for, for the heating business, the the other business
(19:25):
that we've got, when somebody rings up asking that question,
it's pretty much as simple as wedon't take on that kind of work
at this time of year in a nutshell really.
And if they ask why, it's just we're prioritising keeping
boilers running rather than cosmetic kind of job.
(19:47):
Putting radiators in it's service and repair is priority
at this time of year. Some people love boilers that
have gone down and that's what we're focused on.
If you're quiet, that's a challenge.
If you don't like letting peopledown, that's a challenge.
If you're if you are quiet and you want to start making that
pivot, you're going to have to accept that you're going to have
(20:08):
to start to invest in the business.
So again, this is a separate podcast on stuff like this on
marketing, but you can no longerscale a business without
investing in marketing. You know, we spoke about this on
the on the long podcast at the end of season 1 of the guys that
(20:29):
were it like a badge of honour. If I've never had to do any
marketing and I stand by what I've always said and say they
are, they will be leaving money on the table.
They won't be charging the rightpricing.
And if by some reason they're charging good pricing, which I
don't think you would be, then in terms of scalability, they
(20:51):
could not compete with someone who is investing it.
I could not. I know I made the the reference
in the last podcast about that. We've grown the business to
greater than some guys that havebeen going 20 years in the space
of 2 1/2 years. And that was only because we've
invested so heavily in marketing.
(21:12):
You could not open a business now and wait for the organic
growth off the back of that which is going to come back onto
topic. That's the hack.
The secret sauce of scaling is by being selective of the work
that you take on, you will struggle to scale a business at
pace. The heating business, sorry, at
pace if you're only picking those big jobs, yeah.
(21:38):
I agree. Deeper into it, again, while
we're on topic, I would argue that this also transcends across
to when you do guys do work for builders or letting agents
because that analogy that we've just used of the two customers,
the two system conversion customers, that's only two
(22:00):
customers a week. If you're doing work for a
letting agent and it's 50% of your diary, then you're losing
50% of your operating time. There's always variables to
that. Admittedly if you've got some
labs out working for you and you're using the letting agent
(22:23):
work to make profit off a singleengineer then it's a it's
different story then isn't it? Because it becomes a self
fuelling machine and it and it'sviable.
But when it's you on your own inmy opinion no self-employed sole
trader should be working for letting agents or builders for
(22:46):
that matter. Because not only could the rug
get pulled from you very quicklyand shit at the farm, you're
also then hindering your own business growing to help their
business make money. And that's which is what
obviously they do. So something else to be mindful.
And I'm sure we'll get some interesting comments and replies
on that. And we've got a lot of lads in
(23:10):
the group, some that have then have now bend off the letting
agents because they've sort of seen the light.
And some that have been, we've got a new lab that's just joined
who's quite smart with it. And he's using the letting agent
work to fuel an engineer's diarywith profit.
So that that's that's a little bit of a variable.
(23:32):
And it's, it's a scary, it is a scary step to start being picky.
But I, I can think of three examples in my own heating
business where I've had to make the those decisions and I'll
just quickly share a couple of them.
So one of them was we did over 100 grands a year worth worth of
work. Excuse me for an estate agent
(23:54):
and one day, obviously it wasn'tjust a split decision I thought
about, but one day I literally just emailed them and told them
that I was no longer available for for the for the work.
And it was a nerve wracking time, but I had work come to the
same conclusion as you're you'vejust you've just explained is
that I realised that it was filling up over half of my diary
(24:18):
and the opportunity cost was toogreat.
So although I had that security and that well what I saw as
security when in reality it wasn't secure because they could
just turn it off overnight, I was losing so many potential
customers that we wanted to workfor new boilers servicing
everything we've just discussed.So anyone that is sitting there
(24:41):
thinking, well, I can't just turn away that work.
You've got to really think aboutthat opportunity cost because
the minute you have more capacity, you can't fill 2
buckets of water if you've only got 1 bucket.
So you have to createspace, whether that be in employing
someone, whether that be relinquishing some work to, to
be able to get the work that youactually want to do.
(25:05):
And that ultimately leads to theprofit and the business that you
want. So yes, it's a brave step, but
and it and, and it is a risky step.
There is risk to it, but business isn't meant to be easy.
Business isn't meant to be risk free.
That is the point, you know, business is taking risk for a
reward down the line. So I would, I, I would tell you
(25:29):
to, to really look at it, look at the work that you're doing.
If you're happy doing that work and you're happy with your
business, then hats off to you, you know, brilliant.
But if you're waking up for workmiserable, you're stressed out,
you're, you're never home, you've not got the money that
you feel you, you deserve, then ultimately you've got to make
(25:52):
the changes. And choosing that work is the
first step to that, isn't it? It leads you down a new pathway
because when you start choosing the right work, you start
attracting the right work. And then you also then have the
capacity to be a Better Businessbecause you're not just being a
busy fool doing stuff that you don't want to do.
(26:13):
If you want to do stuff you don't want to do, go and get a
job. Go work for someone and do shit
jobs that you don't want to do. To jump in on that, on that,
there's something that I said inthe in the the long podcast is
that I would, I would say probably 50% of guys who would
say they have their own businessslash self-employed are doing a
(26:38):
degree, either their diary in its whole like I used to do, or
in part like you've just your business used to do working for
someone else. So essentially A subcontractor,
you're working for a Latin agents controversial statement.
You're basically a subcontractorto them.
Yeah, like then I don't think many guys maybe see it from
(27:01):
that. Same with the builder.
So if you've got 2 builders and three electing agents and that's
all your diary, you're a subcontractor.
You're not a business owner. Yeah, yeah, no, I, I agree.
And again again though, if that's if you're happy, great.
But the chances are if you're listening or watching this
podcast, it's because you're, you're, you want to change, you
want your business to be different.
(27:22):
So right, on that note, nice controversial subject statement
to end. I would, I would encourage
everybody to whether you agree, whether you disagree, whether
you have any questions around this to reach out via social
media in the Off the Tools groupor e-mail Wayne or
andy@offthetools.co.uk. And we can obviously respond to
(27:46):
those engagements as they come in when we do other shows.
Any other closing points for this session?
Other than yeah, take a look at your your diary for the
foreseeable, have a look at the work and make a decision if it's
the right work for your business.
If you want to scale and you've got big jobs booked in, that's
(28:10):
the wrong work for your business.
If you don't want to scale, thengo for the bigger jobs for the
security of it. All right, on that note, have a
good one everyone. See you in the next session.
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