By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a fencing job that looked priced right still leave no money in the bank?
Most fencing businesses price job by job: a boundary fence per metre, a pool fence per panel, a gate as a flat rate for a quick install. Each line item can look right against the supplier’s materials list and the standard labour rate for post holes and footings. But overhead, the trailer, the auger, fuel, insurance, the time spent quoting and chasing, often gets spread evenly across jobs or not attributed at all. A quick gate install might absorb none of the overhead that a long rural fencing run with deep footings and steel posts actually needs to carry. The diary can look full, the trailer always loaded, while the bank balance barely moves.
Why doesn’t the owner notice the gap while running every job themselves?
The fencer quoting, installing, driving the trailer, chasing the neighbour for their share of a dividing fence, and doing the books at night rarely stops to check the real cost of the resource, the crew, the truck, the trailer, against what it actually earns. Being flat out gets mistaken for being profitable. The gap between a busy diary and a profitable one is where many owners stay stuck, not from a lack of skill with a shovel or an auger, but from never measuring what a job needs to bring in before it is worth doing. It is a pattern a fencer inside their own business rarely sees until someone measures it from outside.
What does a good fencing business coach actually look at first?
A good coach does not start by asking you to describe your business, they start by looking at your own quotes, your materials runs and what each job actually brought in once overhead was properly carried. For a fencer that means separating a straightforward paling fence from a pool fence with glass or slat panels, from a long chain mesh run with steel posts and deep footings, because each one carries labour and overhead differently. A coach who has actually run a trade business treats gross profit margin as a number to protect and grow on every quote you write, not a figure you glance at once a month on the way past.
Where do AI agents fit into a fencer’s pricing and quoting?
AI agents are software that do a job the way you would, with your prices, your wording and your rules. For a fencer, AI agents can check a quote against your real cost per metre of post hole, auguring and footing before it goes out, not after the job is done and the margin has already gone. Once a coach has found where your pricing actually breaks down, an AI agent can be set in front of that exact point, so a quote for a dividing fence or a pool fence cannot leave the trailer until the numbers underneath it stack up. This is data first work: the fix sits at the quote, not in a spreadsheet review weeks later.
What should a fencer ask before signing up with a coach?
Ask whether the coach has actually run a trade business, or a fencing business specifically, because advice built for a desk business rarely survives contact with a trailer, an auger and a weather delay. Ask whether they start from your own numbers or from a worksheet that reads the same for every trade that walks through the door. Ask what happens when the answer to a problem is “hire someone”: a coach who reaches for a new hire every time is avoiding the harder work of finding where the job, or the quote, actually broke down in the first place.
What are the warning signs of a coach to avoid?
Watch for a coach who sells before they ask a single question about your jobs, a coach who has never carried a post hole digger or priced a rural fencing run, and advice that would read exactly the same for a plumber, a painter or a fencer. If every answer sounds identical no matter whose business is in front of them, the advice was never built from that business’s own data in the first place, and it will not catch the gap sitting inside your own quotes.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the fencer’s own quoting and job data through the Trade Business Intelligence, looking first at where a real job’s margin actually sits once labour on post holes, footings and overhead is properly carried, rather than at how busy the diary looks. Greg built this after seeing how easily a costly mistake can slip through without a structured framework to catch it. As he puts it, “Especially the business financial and the pricing too. Those two Masterclasses will ensure that you’re gonna be profitable.” The how, and the framework behind it, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins it.
