When Winning Too Fast
Kills Your Business

In This Episode

• Intro

  John: Brad, Chelsea, thanks for being here. Why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about yourselves.

  Brad: I'm Brad Teasdale from Teaslec Energy Solutions. We've been going for about 13 or 14 years now, specialising in electrical and solar, predominantly renewables over the last few years. Outside of work, I'm a family man with two young kids, three and eight. When I'm not doing that, I like to get out in the bush and clear my head.

  Chelsea: Chelsea Briggs, owner of Profit by Numbers. I've been running it for about 18 months, and had a business doing the same thing before that, advisory to trade business owners. I'm an accountant by trade, but don't hold that against me. I do have a personality, I think. Outside of work I have a one-year-old who unfortunately fractured his leg this week, so running on not much sleep. I used to race go-karts, sold mine when I got pregnant, and I'm hoping to pick that up again. Anything near water and I'm happy.

  John: I've known you for a few years and I never knew you used to race go-karts. What's the story there?

  Chelsea: Dad wanted boys. He got two girls. So we raced go-karts. I always had the slowest one because I was in the lower class, so I had to be really good at the corners to keep up, which actually helped my ability to race. My partner races sports bikes, I race go-karts, and our son Archer is going to be a petrolhead one way or the other.

• Why they went into business

  John: Brad, tell us about your business, why you got started, what you do, what you like, what you don't.

  Brad: I liked the flexibility early on. Just being able to control my hours and what I'd be doing. I didn't like being told what to do on site. And the passion's always been in the electrical and solar space, even as a kid I was fascinated by solar panels. Sounds a bit nerdy, but it's an industry that's booming now, which is awesome.

  John: Why did you decide to go into business for yourself?

  Brad: Better life, basically. More opportunity, sky's the limit. You can earn more money if you do it right. And my dad ran his own business in irrigation, so seeing that when I was young, going with him on school holidays to nice clients in Toorak and Camberwell, it was a real good experience that I always wanted to replicate.

  John: Chelsea, why did you start your business?

  Chelsea: To choose my own adventure. I had a successful career in corporate, making other people rich and growing other people's businesses, but I always felt limited. I've had a novelty cheque from my parents pinned to my board at home since my 21st birthday, it said "when Chelsea realises her lifelong dream of owning her own business." I always wanted it, I just never knew exactly what it would be. What I love about what I do now is that trade owners are great at being trades, that's why they became trades. But they don't get business education through becoming qualified. That's where we can really support them.

  John: That's one of the things I find really interesting throughout my career. It doesn't matter whether it's an electrician, a builder, an accountant or a lawyer, if you're good at your field, you end up in business for yourself. But the skills aren't transferable. It's a completely new set of skills. Being good at installing solar panels doesn't mean you're good at growing a business on the sales side, or managing growth, or putting in a management structure, or getting KPIs in place so you actually know what's happening inside the business.

  Chelsea: And there's a mindset shift too. Tradies became tradies because they didn't like school, they didn't like computers, they didn't like admin. They're kinesthetic learners. And then the better you get, the less you're on the tools and the more you're behind a computer. It's kind of what they want, but it's also not why they went into business. Some of my clients now, their businesses could run themselves, but they'll go out on the tools for half a day a week because that's what fuels their soul. And I say, do that. You became a tradie for a reason.

• The isolation of being a business owner

  John: Brad, you're at an interesting stage right now, you're starting to put in a management layer. What do you think about what Chelsea just said?

  Brad: I've felt that frustration a lot over the years. Being stuck in the office, off the tools, the team out in the field, feeling really alone, especially when there are work stresses or financial pressures happening. It can be isolating. All those emotions at once.

  John: How do you deal with that?

  Brad: Get good business coaches. But seriously, just having someone on your side. Having mentors, people who've actually done it. That's been really important.

  Chelsea: And networking groups help too. BNI, master plumbers, whatever you're associated with. Being able to connect with other people who are going through the same things and knowing you're not alone, that makes a real difference.

• The biggest challenges

  John: What are the three biggest issues you've faced, Brad?

  Brad: Number one is cash flow, and that's probably tied to a lot of other problems. When I started to grow, things happened, COVID, builders going under, and I realised I was making some serious mistakes along the way. And then just the frustration of trying to grow and getting kicked back down. The consistency. You feel like you're going well and then all of a sudden you get knocked back.

  John: That's business, isn't it, two steps forward, one step back. What do you do in your own head to deal with both ends of that, the bad periods and the good ones where the ego can get away from you?

  Brad: Now I know the numbers. I can forecast. I know what's happening on jobs at a granular level. Back when the bad times were happening, I didn't know what was happening because I was just stressed out. Now I can see what work is coming up for the next month or two. It's an ongoing process, but it's a lot better.

  Chelsea: And that's the thing, those proactive steps become the indicators that tell you when to pivot. If your work ahead is going down, if your win rate is dropping, you know about it before it's too late. Before you're looking at no jobs next week. Some of my clients are on a hamster wheel working really hard and nothing's getting better, and sometimes that's never going to change with certain clients or certain pricing. Do less of that.

  Brad: Even just seeing my own closure rate on a monthly basis is really good. I'm closing around 40-something percent. And when I look at the ones that didn't go ahead, most of them I shouldn't have been quoting anyway. It validates that.

  John: A 50% conversion rate is excellent. How much of that do you think comes down to the fact that you, as the business owner, are doing the sales?

  Brad: I think it's huge. To have a salesman come in and replicate that would be hard. The DNA of the business, it doesn't get better than the business owner being there.

  Chelsea: It's passion. No one is going to care about your business like you do. It's knowledge, you know it like the back of your hand. And it's power, you can pivot, give a discount, change the product on the spot without second-guessing yourself. You're the chameleon. When you get staff in, you're looking at 80% of what you would have done, and that's good enough, it's never going to be a hundred. But there is a ceiling to you doing it all yourself.

• Why Brad got a coach

  John: Why did you get a business coach?

  Brad: Honestly, I was about to give it up. I was tired, burnt out. I'd had a really good period and then everything fell down around me, and I'd been fighting my way back for two or three years. I was exhausted and felt like I was going nowhere. I found you through Dave, Dave the plumber, and I just needed someone with experience in the electrical field who knew the numbers. A power team. And I got it.

  John: How has coaching helped you?

  Brad: Just having a level head. When you're burnt out and in reactive mode, it's good to have balanced, experienced people there to float ideas with, or stop you making a reactionary mistake.

  Chelsea: I think what's been good for you is that you're trusting your own decisions more. You push back now. John and I are always aligned, go with your gut, it's your business. But you're validating your own thinking more. The decisions you've made over the last 12 to 18 months have paid off, and you can see that.

  Brad: I've probably made the hardest decisions of my life in the last year. But in doing that, I've restored my gut. The creativity's coming back. I'm not just in fear mode all the time.

  John: Things happen when you've got the courage to make the tough decisions. And some of yours have been really tough. I remember saying to Chelsea a couple of times, let's just see if he's got the courage to do it.

  Brad: It's essentially killing the people-pleasing part of my personality, which has been a big problem over the years.

  John: But without becoming an asshole. You don't have to be a people pleaser and you don't have to be an asshole either.

• What to look for in a business coach

  John: What do you think people should look for in a business coach?

  Brad: Someone who aligns with your values, and someone who actually has experience in your field. There are a lot of coaches out there who haven't got that and pretend they have. Avoid the startup meet-up at a cafe coach.

  Chelsea: I hate the term business coach, but I don't know what else to call myself. I think the same, stick to what you know. I've been in the trade industry for over ten years and I only work with trades. I know the channels, the pay rates, the material markups, all of it. All of my clients have come from other coaches who just rocked up, had a conversation for an hour, and left. What John and I do is metrics-focused. We want your facts and figures in front of us. If your coach is just turning up for a chat, you can pay a mate to do that at the pub for a lot cheaper.

  John: And find someone who's going to tell you things you don't want to hear. If your coach just agrees with you or won't ask you hard questions or is scared to upset you, they're not the person you want. You want someone who challenges you, asks awkward questions, probes in a way that helps you figure out where you actually want to go.

• Failure and what they'd do differently

  John: What would you do differently if you had your time again, Brad?

  Brad: Get help around me sooner. Grow a proper business from the start instead of wearing all the hats and fighting it out alone. I kept the old mentality of just work harder, for too long. And when the money was rolling in pre-2020, I got the big head. Bought a house, started renovating, made a lot of dumb decisions. Didn't have buffers in place. Then COVID hit, builders went broke, and everything came apart at once. It wasn't just one thing, it was everything at the same time. And I was completely exposed.

  Chelsea: Every business, even ones doing a hundred million plus, doesn't succeed in a linear fashion. They all have failures. What matters is what you do with them. Even some of my clients who've been through bankruptcy are some of the best people to work with, because they've learned the valuable lessons. Sometimes you need the ouch.

  Brad: And that's the blessing, learning those lessons at 35 rather than 55. I'm stronger for it.

  John: That's what's so good about failure. You can hear it in a book, you can be taught it, but it doesn't mean anything until you've lived it. And when you've gone through it, somewhere down the bottom there's the lesson: I'm never doing that again. I had my own version of that. Back in 2010, during the Victorian bushfires, I had the contract for electrical maintenance at a broadcasting facility at the top of Mount Tassie. The fire came up the mountain and destroyed about a third of the building, the main switchboard, the generator, 20,000 litres of diesel exploded. It was also the emergency services broadcasting that went down. Complete chaos. I was not long in business, I was completely out of my depth, and at one point up on the roof tying a cable back to the switchboard, I nearly started crying, which for me is very unusual. I was going to go down and tell the project manager: mate, this is too big for me, I'm not your man. But I thought, I can't just leave this cable half done. I'll just finish tying this off first. And by the time I got to the board, I'd calmed down a little. So I thought, I'll just run one more cable. Then another one. By the end of that project, I'd made a substantial amount of money that became the financial base to build my business from. The lesson: you've got to have the courage to back yourself. And if you haven't got the courage to go all the way through, just have enough courage to get to the next step.

  Brad: It's like going up a big hill. Just look down, keep going, step by step.

  Chelsea: Mine was a business partnership I went into partly because I didn't trust my own abilities enough yet. I needed a security blanket. There were a lot of lessons in that, about who you go into business with, what you both want, whether your values align. I don't regret it, because it got me to where I am. But now I have a faith in myself that I didn't have back then.

• Backing yourself

  John: What would you go back and say to yourself at the start?

  Chelsea: Back yourself. I was raised to trust my gut, but I was also raised as a female and I think women really struggle with believing in themselves. When I left corporate I didn't even have the business set up. My partner asked if I wanted to wait and get something in place first, and I said no, because then I'd just keep delaying. When is the right time? That leap was the first step. And now I don't look back.

  Brad: Same story. Self-belief was quite low and I kept putting off starting the business for a year or two. Then I ended up on a site with a foreman who was an absolute asshole, toxic to the whole crew. One day I just said, I'm done. I had maybe one or two solid days of work, and I just built from there.

• Sharing vs secrecy

  John: One thing that comes up a lot in business peer groups is how different people behave around sharing information. What have you noticed, Chelsea?

  Chelsea: There are two types. There's the old guard who keeps everything secret, won't share their rates, their margins, their methods. And then there's this new breed who share everything, because they want to lift the whole industry. I've talked to operators with 60, 100 trucks on the road, and the bigger and more successful they are, the more openly they share. Because they're not scared that you're going to take over their business. They're like, trades don't make enough money, no one's charging enough, if we all lift together we're all better off. It's refreshing.

  John: I saw the same thing in mastermind groups over the years. The really successful people shared everything, their figures, whether good or bad. The people who were a bit secretive were usually the ones who wanted others to think they were more successful than they were.

  Chelsea: Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is king. Everyone will tell you their turnover number. No one talks about what's actually in the bank.

• What they're working on now

  John: Last question, what are you working on that interests you right now?

  Brad: Growing the business in a measured way. We've been hovering at the same level for a while while we repaired and rebuilt. Next year is going to be the real push.

  Chelsea: Two things. Personally, I'm trying to decide whether Archer grows up on a hobby farm or in the city, he'll be at school in three years so the clock is ticking. And work-wise, I live in dashboards, as you both know. I'm doing a lot of work in the background on the next phase of that, really dialling in which measurables have the greatest impact on helping clients understand how their business is actually going. Showing them the opportunity cost of a callback or a wrong margin, not just the number, but what it actually cost them.

  John: Brad, Chelsea, thank you. It always is a great conversation with you both.

• Connect with the guests

  Brad Teasdale, Teaslec Energy Solutions
  Chelsea Briggs, Profit by Numbers