By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why can an electrician be fully booked and still run short on cash?
A switchboard upgrade or a commercial fit-out can be quoted with a margin that looks healthy on paper, but between the quote and the money landing in the account, material prices move, an apprentice spends longer on site than budgeted, and a warranty callback eats labour that never gets billed. Most electricians feel this rather than see it as a number: the diary is full, invoices are going out, yet the account never seems to hold what it should.
The real answer sits in gross profit margin, tracked job type by job type, service and maintenance work against new home fit-offs against commercial fit-outs, not as a one off figure worked out at quoting time and forgotten. A coach who never asks to see that split, month on month, is coaching the feeling and not the business.
Why does most coaching advice miss this gap entirely?
Generic business coaching often starts with the owner explaining their business and ends with a template margin target meant to fit every trade and every job. It can sound sensible and still be wrong for an electrical business, because the cost structure behind a compliance certificate job looks nothing like a solar and battery install, a switchboard upgrade or an after hours callout.
Coaches working off old benchmarks also miss that customers are more anxious about rising costs than they were, which puts real pressure on margins that a template figure never accounts for. An electrician coached on a number that was never built from their own quotes, invoices and supplier accounts is, in effect, being coached on someone else's business.
What should an electrician ask a coach before signing up?
Ask whether the coach will look at your own quotes and invoices before handing you any target at all, and whether they separate gross profit from net profit on every job type you run, not just one blended figure for the whole business. If the answer is a template percentage, you already have the answer you need.
- Will you look at my own job costing before suggesting a margin target?
- Do you track gross profit separately for service calls, new fit-offs and commercial work?
- Have you run a trade business yourself, or only coached on theory?
- How do you use AI agents to free up office time rather than just talk about efficiency?
A useful question to put to any coach is how they would help you use AI agents in your electrical business. An AI agent is software that does a piece of office work the way you would do it yourself, with your own prices, your own wording and your own rules, for things like following up quotes, chasing certificates or putting job costing in front of you without touching a spreadsheet. Many electricians could already be using AI agents for parts of their admin without realising it. A coach who has never thought about where an agent fits is coaching the business you had years ago, not the one in front of you now.
What are the warning signs of the wrong coach for an electrician?
Watch for a coach who is a salesperson first, talking about mindset and goals before they have asked to see a single quote or invoice. Watch for one who has never run a trade business and does not know the difference between a service call margin and a commercial fit-out margin. Watch for advice that reads the same for a plumber, a builder and an electrician, because a business that has never separated its own gross profit from its net profit cannot be fixed with a line written to suit everyone.
Also watch for a coach whose answer to every bottleneck is to hire someone. Sometimes the fix is a system that catches the problem before it reaches the invoice, not another wage going out every week.
Why does it feel risky to change coaches, even when the current one is not working?
Changing who an electrician relies on for business advice carries a perceived risk, and most owners stick with what is familiar even when the numbers say it is not working. That is a normal reaction, not a weakness, and it is worth naming rather than brushing aside.
The coach worth moving to is the one who removes that risk by showing you your own numbers clearly from the first conversation, rather than asking you to trust a reputation or sit through a pitch. Data first coaching exists because proof should come from your own job and finance data, not from a promise about how things will feel once you sign up.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from the electrician's own numbers through the Trade Business Intelligence rather than from a conversation about goals. It looks first at whether gross profit and net profit are being tracked separately on every job type, because that gap is usually where the real problem starts, not where it shows up on the bank statement. Greg has said “I think my biggest challenge was at the start, you try and do everything,” which is exactly the pattern this approach is built to catch early. He also points out “there's risk in them changing tradies,” which is why the method proves itself from the owner's own data rather than asking for trust. The how of it is worked through inside the Academy, with members who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member.
Looking for a business coach who starts from your numbers? Electrician Business Coach or every answer for electricians.
