By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a generic business coach struggle with a gasfitting business?
A coach who has never run a trade business usually treats a gasfitter the same way they'd treat a cafe owner or a retailer, and that is where the advice falls apart. Gasfitting carries its own compliance certificates, licence conditions, pressure tests and safety checks that shape every quote and every callout, and a coach without that background has nothing solid to measure against.
Most generic coaching focuses on sales scripts or motivation, not on the actual cost of a hot water install versus a cooktop swap, or the margin difference between a straightforward appliance service and a gas line extension through a ceiling cavity. The owner ends up with advice that sounds good in a workshop but does not survive contact with a real job sheet.
Why does coaching that starts with a questionnaire already go wrong?
Most business coaching begins with the owner explaining the business: how many crew, what the average callout looks like, how servicing work compares to new install work. That explanation takes time, and it is already out of date by the time the coach acts on it.
A gasfitting business changes week to week. Appliance call volume shifts with the seasons, LPG bottle swaps spike at different times to natural gas servicing, and a flue inspection backlog can build up without anyone noticing until compliance certificates start running late. A coach working from what the owner remembers telling them weeks ago is working from an old picture, not the current one.
What should a good gasfitter business coach look at first?
A good coach for a gasfitter starts with the numbers already sitting in your job and finance system, not with a conversation about how things feel. The number that matters most is gross profit margin on the work you actually do, broken down by job type, because a hot water install, a leak repair and a routine servicing callout rarely carry the same margin even though they might be priced the same on a quote template.
That number tells the truth when memory does not. An owner might feel busy running from callout to callout, while the data shows the margin is being eaten by travel time between jobs, or by underpricing compliance certificate work because it has never been reviewed against the licence and admin time it actually takes. A coach who starts here finds the real problem instead of treating a symptom, such as “we need more leads” when the real issue is that half the booked jobs are low margin servicing work filling the diary.
What should you ask a coach before you sign up?
Ask direct questions before you hand over a cent, because the answers tell you more than any testimonial.
- Have they run a trade business themselves, or only coached one from the outside
- Will they look at your own job and finance data first, or start with a generic questionnaire
- Do they fix root causes with systems, or hand out worksheets and call it done
- When a problem comes up, is their answer always “hire someone”, or do they look at what work could be taken off the plate first
- Can they explain, in plain terms, how a gasfitting business differs from any other trade they coach
If the answers are vague, or the pitch moves fast into signing a contract before any of your numbers have been looked at, that is worth noticing.
What are the warning signs of the wrong coach for a gas business?
The clearest warning sign is a coach who sounds like a salesperson before they sound like someone who has run a business. If the first conversation is about packages and pricing tiers rather than your gross profit margin, your callout volume or how compliance certificate work is priced, the coaching is unlikely to go deeper than that.
Another sign is advice that would read the same for a plumber, an electrician or a builder. Gasfitting has its own rhythm: appliance installs cluster around certain seasons, LPG servicing follows a different pattern to natural gas work, and a leak or a carbon monoxide callout cannot wait the way a quote follow-up can. A coach whose advice never touches any of that is coaching in the abstract, not coaching your business.
A third sign is a coach who answers every capacity problem with “go hire someone” without first looking at whether AI agents, which are software that do a job the way you would, with your prices, your wording and your rules, could take the non-billable office work off your plate first. Sending quotes, chasing compliance certificate paperwork and booking servicing jobs can often be handled this way before adding a wage to the business.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Greg Allan built Data First Coaching after running his own trade business, and it starts the same way every time: with the owner's own numbers, read through the Trade Business Intelligence, rather than with a conversation about how the business feels. For a gasfitter, that means looking at margin by job type, how compliance certificate and servicing work is priced, and where AI agents could take on office work your way, before any advice is given.
From there, the work is about finding where a problem actually starts rather than treating the symptom again next month. The how, the systems and the step by step, 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.
