By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a bricklaying job hit the rate but still not pay?
A bricklaying job can hit the agreed rate per thousand bricks or match the day rate and still lose money once everything around the brickwork is counted. The wall goes up fast, the builder's happy with the face brick, but labourers waiting on mortar mix, scaffold lifts running late and a weather day halfway through the job all eat into a margin nobody measured.
Most bricklayers price the job on the brickwork itself, the thousand bricks laid or the day on site, because that's the part everyone can see. What gets missed is the time around it: the crew standing idle waiting for a scaffold company to finish a lift, a labourer sent back to the yard for more cement or blocks, or a run of weather days that pushes a retaining wall or a footing job out by a week with no extra charge to cover it.
None of that shows up as bad brickwork. The pointing's clean, the damp course is right, the cavity's done properly. But the job still didn't pay, because the business around the brickwork was never measured, only the brickwork itself.
What is a bricklayer not tracking that a coach would spot straight away?
Most bricklaying businesses track the quote, the invoice and the brickwork laid, but not the hours lost before a single brick goes on. Time spent sending a labourer off site for sand or cement, waiting on a scaffold lift, or standing round after a weather day rarely gets written down anywhere, so it never gets priced into the next quote and quietly chips away at margin on every job.
A coach who has actually run a trade business will ask a different question first: not how many bricks the crew laid, but how much of the crew's day was billable. That's the gap between a bricklayer who feels flat out every week and a bricklaying business that's actually profitable. The work can be excellent and the week can still cost money, because the hours that pay the bills are fewer than they look from site.
It also shows up in how a day rate or a rate per thousand gets set in the first place. If a bricklayer prices off what the last builder paid, or off site reputation alone, the rate never accounts for the load outs, the material runs and the weather days that come with every job.
What does a good business coach for a bricklaying business actually do?
A good coach doesn't teach you to lay brick faster or point cleaner, that's not their job. They start with your own crew's numbers: how much of the day was genuinely billable, where labourers and load outs are quietly costing hours, and whether your rate per thousand or day rate actually backs what the crew is worth once all of that's counted.
This is where the coaching has to be data first, starting from what your own jobs and your own crew's time actually show, rather than from a generic checklist built for every trade. A bricklaying business has its own shape: face brick for a builder is priced differently to a retaining wall or feature blockwork, and progress payments on a builder's job run on a different rhythm to a cash job off site.
Some of the non-billable work around a job, chasing a builder for a progress payment, booking a scaffold company, logging materials for a load out, can be handed to AI agents, which are software that does a job the way you'd do it yourself, with your own prices, wording and rules. AI agents can chase that progress update or log that load out the same way you would, freeing the crew's time for laying brick and your time for quoting the next job properly, instead of cleaning down a site all day and chasing paperwork after hours.
How do you know if a coach understands brickwork rates, not just balance sheets?
You'll know within one conversation whether a coach understands a rate per thousand against a day rate, or whether they're reading off a script built for a different kind of business. Ask how a run of weather days affects a job's profit, or how a builder's progress payments change your cash flow, and listen for whether the answer is specific to brickwork or generic enough to fit any trade.
Greg Allan, who built his own trade business before coaching others, has talked about a tradesman unsure of his rate needing to work out what he's actually worth and back it, rather than take whatever a builder offers. For a bricklayer, that confidence only holds up if it's backed by real numbers on what a day on the tools actually costs and returns, not just a reputation on site.
The warning signs are the same for any trade: a coach who sells hard before asking a single question about your business, who has never run a crew or chased a builder for payment themselves, or who hands out the same advice to a painter, a plumber and a bricklayer. If the advice would read the same for any of them, it was never built from your numbers.
What should you ask before you pay for a business coach?
Before you sign up, ask a coach what they'd look at first in your bricklaying business, and listen for whether the answer is your own numbers or a worksheet. A coach worth paying wants to see your actual jobs, your actual crew hours and your actual rate structure before they say anything about what's wrong, because every bricklaying business carries its own mix of builder work, retaining walls and feature brickwork.
- Have they run a trade business themselves, or only coached one from the outside
- Do they ask for your own job and crew data before giving advice, or start with a generic framework
- Do they talk about billable time across the whole day, not just how fast a wall went up
- Do they offer systems that fit how your jobs and your crew actually run, or the same answer for every trade
- Do they treat every problem as hire someone, or help find where the issue actually starts
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts with a bricklaying business's own numbers through the Trade Business Intelligence: what the crew's day actually looked like, how much of it was billable, and where load outs, scaffold waits and weather days are eating into the rate per thousand or the day rate. Greg Allan has said “the most important metric in understanding operational efficiency is billable hours for the day”, and that's where the coaching begins, not with advice about laying brick.
From there the work looks at whether the rate itself is backing what the crew is actually worth. The how of building that out happens inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who's open minded, innovative and willing to share what they find.
