TradesCarpentersHiring and team
Carpenter Business HiringYou need a second chippy, but the last one you put on cost you more than he ever made you.
Hiring for carpentry businesses: putting on an apprentice or a qualified carpenter, paying them right under MA000020, working out whether a subbie is really a contractor, and keeping good people once you have finally got them.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Carpentry Business?
You cannot work out what a chippy really costs
The award rate is one number, then there is the industry allowance, the tool allowance, super, workers compensation, leave and the days it rains. You have never added it up properly, so you do not know whether the next hire pays for himself.
You hope the ABN makes them a contractor
Three blokes turn up in your ute, use your tools and work the hours you set, and they invoice you weekly on an ABN. Under the whole of relationship test that arrangement may not be contracting at all, and the super and the penalties land on you.
You train them and they leave
You take an apprentice from first year to fourth, teach him to set out, frame and fix out, and six months after he gets his ticket he goes subbying for the builder you work for. Nothing about the job gave him a reason to stay.
Without a crew you can rely on, the business never grows past what your own hands can build, and every holiday costs you a month of income.
Hiring and team
Here Is What We Do About It.
The Academy's hiring, team and leadership training covers what a carpenter actually costs, how to recruit, how to induct and how to keep people. Greg works through the big hiring calls with you directly. And the hires have changed: agents can now do the quoting, invoicing and chasing your way, so the people you add are the ones facing your customers and leading your crew.
Free tool, no sign-up
Apprentice cost calculator
Wages and on-costs are the easy part. This adds the weeks they are at trade school, the on-site hours that never reach an invoice, and the supervision time that pulls a qualified tradesperson off their own work, then gives you what one billable apprentice hour actually costs. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Work out the real costHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
Hire before you are desperate
Every bad hire in this industry happens in the same week: the week you were already too busy. The training covers hiring on a plan instead of on a panic.
Give them a system to follow
People do not fail because they are lazy. They fail because nobody wrote down what good looks like. That is why systems and hiring are the same problem.
Lead them, then get off the tools
Greg works the bit that is genuinely hard: running a team when you were trained as a tradesperson, and letting go of work you can do faster yourself.
Why you get me
I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.
Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.
I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.
And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.
What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.
So I restructured the whole thing.
When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.
And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.
Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.
Who you will be talking to
I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.
A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.
I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.
What AI actually changes
The old way. The new way.
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.
The old way
Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.
Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.
So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.
None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.
Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.
The new way
Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.
Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.
Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.
No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.
So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.
A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.
What changes
What Carpentry Business Hiring Actually Changes.
Three things carpentry business owners walk away able to do.
Work out the true weekly cost of a carpenter or apprentice before you hire
Classify your crew correctly so super and penalties do not land later
Hand a job to a leading hand and have it finish without you on site
Questions
Carpenter Business Hiring, Answered.
What does an apprentice carpenter actually cost me each week?
Is my regular subbie actually an employee?
How do I keep a good carpenter once he has his ticket?
Carpenters
The Other Ways We Help Carpenters.
Carpenter Business Training
Structured training that turns what carpenters know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingCarpenter Business Coaching
Greg Allan in your corner, holding carpenters to the plan. By application.
SystemsCarpenter Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when carpenters are not standing there.
The free appCarpenter Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for carpenters with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsCarpenter Business Marketing
How carpenters get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Pricing and profitCarpenter Business Pricing
The number carpenters should actually be charging, worked out properly rather than guessed.
Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.
An hour with Greg, one on one, about anything in your trade business. By application: if his diary is full, you join his waitlist and he invites you. He only takes owners who are committed.