Testimonial

Steve Deeth - Touchwood Kitchens and Joinery Pty Ltd

With Mark’s help, we have achieved so much…

Before I started coaching with Mark I knew I had to do something but I didn’t know what. I was anxious and worried about my business all the time. I was always at work - late every night, every Saturday, not seeing my family, missing my kids growing up.

I was working so hard and still not making any more money. I was at the point where either we do something or we close down, I was that frustrated. No one in my circle knew what to do in this situation. They didn’t have solutions. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t step back and work the problems out myself. When I did get an idea, knowing if it was right was another thing - I didn’t want to waste time doing something that wasn’t right.

Since I started coaching with Mark I’m not anxious and worried anymore. I feel like I have more control and I’m not governed by my business - it doesn’t control me.

I’ve found direction - now we work towards our goals and get results.

The big benefit is my personal life. Now I’m home every day around 5pm. I maybe work one Saturday a month. If we’re really busy I might do some work after the kids are in bed but not often. I’m getting all this extra time during the week and the weekends to spend with my family that I was missing out on before.

Our turnover has grown more than 45% in 12 months. Our profit margins are much better - and we’re banking the extra money.

We started with time management. I was running around doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been. Now I organise my time properly - this was huge. The other thing was goal setting - setting clear goals, writing them down, sticking them on the bathroom window and focussing on them every day - this is good. It always brings you back if you start doing something different that doesn’t move us towards the goal.

We’ve made some major changes in the business. Working out our true margins - that was a key. We made some big changes as a result.

Increasing profits - proactively selling our product - we do this a lot now and a lot of tradespeople still don’t.

Staffing and productivity were big issues. I’ve changed my role to be much more sales and management. I got staff to install and produce and now we’re looking at outsourcing because the volume went up so much. This is a whole new way a joinery business can be run.

Quoting can be a big time waster. We’re working on getting it easier and quicker. We screen for tyre-kickers now - we qualify quotes better and only concentrate on the ones we think we’ll get. This helps with the time management too.

If I hadn’t been doing coaching with Mark, I’m sure none of these changes would have happened. Zero. I would have given up I’m sure of it.

Now when issues come up, we work on them straight away and get them fixed immediately.

Steve Deeth Touchwood Kitchens and Joinery Pty Ltd