By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why do most business coaches not work for a cabinetmaker?
Most business coaching is built for a generic small business, and a cabinetmaking workshop is not a generic small business. A coach who has never quoted a kitchen, booked CNC time, or chased a builder for a progress payment usually ends up giving advice that sounds sensible but does not fit how joinery actually runs.
A cabinetmaker's week is shaped by things a lot of coaches have never dealt with. Site measures that take longer than planned. Shop drawings that go back and forth with a builder three times before approval. Board and hardware lead times that slip and push an install date. A two pack finish that needs curing time the client did not budget for in their head. Generic coaching treats all of this as noise and focuses on things like mindset or marketing slogans, when the real issue is usually sitting in the numbers on the job.
Most coaching also starts the same way: the owner spends the first session or two explaining the business, the crew, the workshop setup, how quoting works. That explaining takes time, and by the time the coach understands it, the business has already moved on. For a cabinetmaker juggling multiple kitchens, a run of wardrobes and a vanity install in the same month, that lag matters.
What do a cabinetmaker's own numbers usually show about where the problem starts?
For most cabinetmaking businesses, the real answer is not in the owner's memory of how a job went, it is in the gross profit margin on that job once board, hardware, edging, labour and workshop time are all counted against what was actually invoiced. Memory tends to remember the big, satisfying kitchen and forget the small vanity job that quietly lost money.
A business that feels busy in the workshop can still be thin on margin, because a flat pack run that looked quick on paper ate more CNC and edging time than quoted, or because a design with a lot of two pack finish took longer to cure and install than the quote allowed. The symptom an owner notices first is often cash feeling tight despite a full order book. The real start of the problem is usually buried in how individual job types are priced and costed, not in how hard the crew worked.
A coach who asks the owner to describe the business from memory is working from an old picture. A coach who starts from the business's own job and quoting data is working from what actually happened last week.
What should a good coach for a cabinetmaker actually do?
A good coach for a cabinetmaker starts with your own numbers, not a template, and builds systems around how your workshop actually prices and runs jobs rather than handing you a worksheet built for a generic trade. That includes looking at where AI agents, software that does a job the way you would, with your prices, wording and rules, can take non-billable office work off your plate.
For a cabinetmaking business, that office work is real and it piles up. Chasing a builder for a deposit before a job starts. Following up a client who went quiet after a site measure. Checking a supplier's lead time on board or hardware before you commit an install date. None of that is billable, and all of it eats into time that should go on quoting, designing, or running the workshop.
A coach worth paying should be able to point at your own margin by job type, your lead times, and your cash position, and show you where an agent could sit in that process so a job cannot move forward until the right information, a confirmed measure, a signed quote, a deposit, is actually there. That is a data first way of working, starting from what the business is actually doing rather than how the owner remembers it.
What questions should I ask before I sign up with a coach?
Before paying anyone to coach a cabinetmaking business, ask whether they have run a trade business themselves, whether they will start from your own job and quoting data or ask you to explain the business first, and whether they build systems you keep or just deliver advice session by session.
Ask specifically how they would approach your quoting process, since that is where a lot of a cabinetmaker's margin is won or lost. Ask whether they have ever looked at a workshop's CNC scheduling, board wastage, or how progress payments are staged against a build program. A coach who has never thought about any of that will usually answer in generalities.
Ask what happens to the office work, the quote follow ups, the supplier chasing, the invoice reminders, because a coach who only talks about sales and marketing is leaving the part of the business that eats the owner's week untouched.
What are the warning signs of the wrong coach for a joinery business?
The clearest warning sign is a coach who sounds like a salesperson first and a tradesman second. If the pitch is all enthusiasm and no questions about your actual jobs, margins, or crew, that is worth noticing.
Another sign is advice that would read the same for a plumber, an electrician or a landscaper. Cabinetmaking has its own rhythm, between design, site measure, workshop production and install, and a coach who never mentions any of that is working from a script, not from your business.
A third sign is a coach whose answer to every problem is hire someone. Sometimes the right call, under the right hire and the right capacity, is to bring someone on. But a coach who reaches for that answer before looking at your numbers is guessing, not coaching. Greg Allan built Data First Coaching on the opposite approach, starting from the business's own data before suggesting any fix.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts by looking at a cabinetmaker's own job and quoting data through the Trade Business Intelligence, built on ten years of coaching trade businesses, rather than asking the owner to describe the workshop from memory. That means looking first at margin by job type, cash flow against deposits and progress payments, and where office work is eating time that should go on the tools or the design.
From there, the work is about finding where a problem actually starts, not just where it shows up, and putting the right fix, sometimes an AI agent, sometimes a system change, in the right place. The how is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Academy is built for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, and the Trade Business Intelligence gets smarter for everyone because every member feeds it.
