By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does quoting take over the whole week for a fencing business?
Because most fencers price from memory, and memory has to be rebuilt for every job type on every quote. A boundary fence, a pool fence, a gate, a rural run and a retaining or feature slat job each carry a different mix of posts, footings, panels and materials, so pricing one the way the owner prices another usually gets the margin wrong on one of them.
A fencer who carries post hole depths, footing mix, steel post counts and paling or sleeper costs in his head is doing a fresh estimate every single time, even on a job type he has quoted fifty times before. That is not a pricing system, it is a memory test, and it only gets harder as the business takes on more variety, chain mesh for a rural client one week, a glass pool fence the next.
Why does every new offsider need walking through the same steps on site?
Because there is nothing written down for them to follow, so the owner becomes the manual every time a post hole is dug, a footing is poured or a panel is set. That costs time on every job, not just the first one.
Greg's core teaching here is that when a job goes wrong on site, a footing poured too shallow, a gate hung out of square, a panel line that drifts off the boundary, it is rarely the apprentice or the offsider's fault. It is a missing system. The fix is to document the steps so the right way of digging the hole, setting the post and checking the line is written down once, not a fencer repeating the same instruction to every new face on the crew.
What number actually tells a fencer if a job type is worth taking on?
The number that tells the truth is gross profit margin by job type, not by the business overall. A fencing business can look busy and still be losing ground on one category of work, say pool fencing with its glass and gate hardware, while boundary runs quietly carry the business.
Checked only once a month in the books, this is old news by the time it is seen. Checked at the point of quoting, job type by job type, it is live information the owner can act on before the quote goes out, not after the job is done and the materials are paid for. That is the difference between a decision made on a feeling about how a job usually goes and one made on what this fencer's own jobs are actually returning right now. This is the data first approach: start from the fencing business's own numbers, not from what fencing jobs are supposed to cost.
How can AI agents take the quoting and induction work off a fencer's plate?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way the owner would do it, using the owner's own prices, wording and rules, not a generic script. For a fencing business, that can mean an agent that holds the priced components for each job type, boundary fence, pool fence, gate, rural fencing, retaining, so a quote goes out built from pre-priced items rather than rebuilt from scratch each time.
The same idea applies to training a new offsider or apprentice. Instead of the owner repeating how a footing is dug, how a panel is set or how a gate is hung on every new hire, an AI agent can hold the documented way of doing it and walk a new crew member through it, freeing the fencer to be on site running the job rather than standing over every step again.
AI agents do not replace the judgement a good fencer brings to a tricky retaining job or an awkward neighbour boundary. They take the repeatable, non-billable parts, the quoting, the induction, the reminders, off the owner's plate so that time goes back onto customers and the crew.
What does owning your own fencing systems look like, instead of renting an app?
It looks like a quoting and job system shaped around how this fencer's jobs actually run, boundary panels priced one way, pool fence and gate hardware priced another, rural runs and trailer loads priced a third, rather than a one size fits all app built for every trade at once.
Some off-the-shelf tools do suit a fencing business well, particularly for simple scheduling or materials ordering, and the fencer's own data is what shows which of those are worth keeping. The choice is not to throw everything out. It is to build the pricing, the site steps and the induction around how this business actually quotes a dividing fence with a neighbour, loads a trailer for a rural run, or sets a slat feature panel, instead of bending the business to fit software that was never built for fencing.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the fencing business's own numbers through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a description of how the owner thinks the business runs. For a fencer, that means looking at margin by job type, boundary, pool, gate, rural, retaining, slat or glass, to find where quoting is actually losing ground, and looking at where the same instruction keeps being repeated on site to find the missing system behind it. Greg Allan puts it plainly: “It's not my people, it's my systems.” The how, building the priced components and the documented steps, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
