By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What does the wrong business coach cost an earthmoving contractor?
A coach who has never run plant, never floated an excavator between sites, and never carried the risk of a wet day shutting down a bulk earthworks job can only offer advice that sounds right in a meeting room and falls apart on site. Most earthmoving contractors who try a generic coach end up with templates built for a trade with none of their fixed costs: no float, no fuel, no machine hours sitting idle, no tipping fees eating into a trenching job's margin. The real cost is not the coaching fee. It is the time spent working from advice that was never built around how an earthmoving business actually makes its money.
Why does generic coaching miss where the problem starts for an earthmoving business?
Most business coaching starts with the owner explaining the business, job by job, machine by machine, before the coach even looks at a number. That explaining takes hours a busy earthmoving contractor does not have, and by the time it is done, the picture is already out of date because another quote has gone out and another machine has moved sites. What gets called the problem, like cash being tight through a quiet stretch, is often a symptom. The real start of it might sit in how long an excavator sits on dry hire between jobs, how wet hire and dry hire jobs are actually priced against each other, or how long invoices sit unsent after a site cut wraps up. A coach who starts with questions about how things feel instead of the business's own data will usually treat the symptom again next month.
What should a good coach for an earthmoving business actually look like?
You want a coach who has actually run a trade business, who starts from your own job and machine data rather than asking you to explain yourself for an hour, and who fixes the root of a problem with a system rather than handing you a worksheet. Greg Allan built his own trade business before coaching others, which is the kind of background worth asking about directly when you are choosing someone to guide you. A good coach for an earthmoving contractor will look at your gross profit margin as the number to protect and grow, not a one-off figure to check at quoting time, because it moves every time a job runs over on machine hours or a tipping fee comes in higher than expected.
A good coach will also be honest about where AI agents can help and where they cannot. AI agents are software that does a piece of office work the way you would do it yourself, using your prices, your wording and your rules. For an earthmoving contractor that might mean chasing an invoice after a site cut, following up a quote on a trenching job, or keeping servicing records on your plant in order without an operator having to remember it. The point is not the software itself. The point is that your crew and your customers get more of your time, not less.
What should you ask before signing with an earthmoving business coach?
Before signing with any coach, ask direct questions that tell you whether they understand how your business actually runs, not just how to run a coaching call.
- Have you run a trade business with plant, hire and crews, or have you only coached one?
- Will you start from my own job and machine data, or will I spend the first sessions explaining my business to you?
- How do you tell the difference between a cash problem and a pricing problem on a bulk earthworks job?
- Will the systems you build be shaped around how I quote, hire out and invoice, or will I be pushed toward software built for every trade at once?
- When something is not working, is your default answer always to hire someone, or do you look at what the data shows first?
The answers tell you fast whether a coach is selling a service or actually solving a problem.
What are the warning signs of the wrong coach for an earthmoving business?
The clearest warning sign is a coach who sounds like a salesperson before they sound like someone who has run a trade business. Watch for advice that would read the same for a plumber, a painter or an earthmoving contractor, because a business built on excavators, floats, dry hire and wet hire does not run like one built on call-outs and small jobs. Be wary of a coach whose answer to every problem is to hire more staff rather than look at where machine hours, fuel, servicing and idle plant are actually going. And be wary of anyone who asks you to describe your business in detail before they have looked at a single number, because a data first approach starts the other way around.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, created by Greg Allan, starts from your own job and finance data through the Trade Business Intelligence rather than from a conversation about how things feel. For an earthmoving contractor that means looking first at how machine hours, dry hire, wet hire, fuel and tipping fees move together, so the real start of a cash or margin problem shows up instead of being guessed at. The how of it, the systems built and the agents put to work, is worked through inside the Academy, with other members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member and the Academy is built for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
