By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why is choosing a locksmith business coach so hard to get right?
Most locksmith owners start looking for a coach after a run of bad weeks, maybe an after hours callout that cost more in fuel and wages than it brought in, or a commercial access control install that ran over on labour. The word “best” gets typed into Google because the owner wants certainty, but certainty is hard to judge from a sales call. Plenty of coaches sound confident whether or not they have ever quoted a rekey, carried van stock, or dealt with a strata manager who wants three quotes by five o’clock.
A locksmith business is not run the way a general trade business is run. Pricing often has to cover a callout fee, labour, parts, key cutting margin and, on master key or restricted key systems, the extra time spent on signed authorities and keeping track of who holds a key. A coach who has never worked through that structure can only offer generic advice, and generic advice is the same for every business whether it is a locksmith, a plumber or a painter.
Why does generic business coaching fail locksmiths?
Generic coaching fails locksmiths because it treats a lockout at two in the morning the same as a daytime lock change, and treats a safe opening the same as a routine deadlock replacement, when the pricing, the risk and the paperwork behind each one are different. A worksheet built for a trade in general cannot explain why a locksmith’s margin on commercial access control work keeps shrinking.
The real cause is usually buried in the numbers, not in the owner’s effort. It might be after hours jobs priced the same as daytime ones, van stock bought without being tracked against what actually gets used, or restricted key system work taking far longer than quoted because the time spent tracking who holds a key is never counted as billable. A coach without access to that detail, or without a way to see it, ends up guessing.
What should a good locksmith business coach look at first?
A good locksmith business coach looks at your own numbers before offering an opinion, because a locksmith business changes every week with every callout, every rekey and every new strata contract. The coach should want to see what is actually happening in your quoting, your after hours pricing and your gross profit margin before suggesting a single change.
This is where AI agents come into it. An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, using your own prices, your own wording and your own rules, rather than a generic template. A coach who works this way, often called data first, can look at your locksmith business through its own job and finance data and find where a problem actually starts, instead of treating the same symptom again next month. Greg Allan built his coaching this way after running his own trade business, because he found most owners were explaining their business over and over instead of getting time back to fix it.
What should you ask before signing up with a locksmith business coach?
Before signing up with any locksmith business coach, ask enough questions to find out whether they have run a trade business themselves and whether they will start with your own data or with a template.
- Has the coach run a locksmith business, or any trade business, themselves
- Will they look at your own quoting, callout and margin data before giving advice, or start with a generic plan
- Do they fix the root cause of a problem with a system, or hand out a worksheet and move on
- Will every answer eventually be “hire someone”, or do they look at whether AI agents could take on repetitive office work such as quoting or follow up first
- Can they explain, in plain terms, why a particular number in your business matters
What are the warning signs of the wrong coach for a locksmith business?
The clearest warning sign is a coach who talks like a salesperson before they talk like a tradesperson, pushing a program before they have asked you a single question about your locksmith business. Confidence is not the same as competence.
Other signs include advice that would read the same for any trade, a reluctance to look at your actual numbers, and a habit of answering every problem the same way, usually by telling you to hire more staff rather than look at what is eating the time of the staff you already have. A coach who has never carried van stock, never quoted a master key system, or never dealt with an insurance claim after a break in, will struggle to understand what is actually driving your margin.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts with the locksmith’s own numbers, not an explanation of the business, because those numbers change every week with every callout, rekey and strata job. Greg Allan built the method after running his own trade business, and it runs on the Trade Business Intelligence, which reads a member’s job and finance data alongside years of coaching trade businesses to find where a problem really starts, rather than where it shows up. The how, the systems and the step by step work happens inside the Academy, with members who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member, for every member.
