A-Grade Clients: The 10-Step Plan

In This Episode

• Intro

  Good day and welcome to the Trade Business School podcast. Today we're going to be talking about A-grade clients. What they are and how to get them specifically.

  And I'm going to give you a 10-point plan on how to do this. I'm also going to throw in a story of mine towards the end where using the two main principles that I'm going to talk about at the beginning of this podcast with one person, led to four A-grade clients and a niche for my electrical business. One of the things that I teach my coaching clients is that a great business has A-grade clients.

  And if you can get one to two new A-grade clients per year, over a 10-year period, that's 10 to 20 A-grade clients. That creates a very profitable, a very reliable and a very stable business. When I talk about creating something like that over 10 years, I can see a lot of people are like, "Geez, 10 years is a long time."

  And it is and it isn't. So I turned 50 this year and when I go back to when I was 40 and I set some goals for where I wanted to be when I was 50 and I was looking forward towards it, it was such a long way away for 10 years. Now, this year that I'm turning 50 and I look backwards to when I was 40, it's gone like that.

  And this is one of the things with time. Quite often when we look forward, it seems like a long way away, but when we look back, it seems like it's gone very quickly. So 10 years in business is not actually a huge amount of time.

  Over the course of those 10 years, if you can pick up one to two A-grade clients, in 10 years' time, you will have an amazing business. In the process of going out there and picking up A-grade clients, you're also going to get some B-grade, some C-grade and some D-grade clients. Now, there is nothing wrong with these clients.

  They're really, really good clients. They're really good business needs them as well. And this is the beauty about what we're going to be talking about today.

  If you follow this 10-point plan over a period of 5 to 10 years, you're going to build an excellent business.

• The Two Principles You Have to Get Right First

  Before we get into the 10-point plan, there's two main principles that you need to adhere to to develop a business that has multiple A-grade clients. And if you can't tick these two boxes, don't even try to go into the 10-point plan. The first box that you have to tick, the first main principle, is you need to be a person of integrity and therefore your business needs to be a business of integrity.

  If you can't tick that box, you are not going to be able to develop long-term relationships. The other box that you must tick is provide excellent service. Not adequate service, not average service, not good service, excellent service.

  You need to tick both of those boxes to be able to develop relationships with people that last for long periods of time.

• Step One: Define What an A-Grade Client Is for You

  So we're going to get into the 10-point plan now. The first thing that you've got to do is define what an A-grade client is for you. You can't go out there and find them if you don't know what they are.

  So for me, I had a very simple definition. It was a business that needed electricians regularly, placed a high value on service, had an average gross profit above 46%, did interesting work, were easy to deal with, and paid their invoices on time. If a company couldn't tick those seven boxes, they weren't classified as an A-grade client.

  It doesn't mean that we didn't work for them. They just didn't go into that particular box. So now that you've defined what an A-grade client is for you, and you can use my definition if you want, or you can go out there and you can develop your own definition.

  Whatever works for you.

• Step Two: Make a List

  The second step is to make a list. Now, the list should include the company name, the company contact, their title, their phone number, and their email address. How do you create this particular list?

  Well, I think firstly, know your area, know your neighborhood. You should have a visible presence where your business is, and by being in that neighborhood and that community, you should have a feel for who needs electricians, plumbers, builders, whatever your particular trade is on a regular basis. Another way of identifying potential A-grade clients is, have a look at who your current A-grade clients are and see who their competitors are.

  Quite often, if you're in a space where you've got a very good client, they've got a couple of competitors that could also be very good clients for you. Look for companies in industries that you want to work in. For me, that was the telco industry.

  The telco industry had a lot of money and still has a lot of money getting pumped into it, so I wanted to find A-grade clients that worked in the telco industry. Drive around and have a look at what's out there. I used to spend hours driving through industrial estates and having a look at the different businesses that were there.

  You would be surprised at some of the businesses that operate out of relatively small premises, the amount of work they do and the amount of work that they can generate for subcontractors. I remember one in the telco space, they had a relatively small workshop on the outskirts of Melbourne, somewhere around Bayswater, I think. We ended up doing millions of dollars' worth of work for them.

  Looking at the factory that they worked out of, you would not know that they did tens of millions of dollars' worth of work in the telco industry every year. So drive around and have a look at the particular businesses that are out there. Ask your friends and family if they know any particular companies that need your trade on a regular basis.

  Always be looking. It's similar with employing people. You should always be looking.

  I know I've spoken about that in previous podcasts. Always be hiring, always be looking. Keep an eye out for potential clients, for new clients, for A-grade clients as you're driving around, as you're talking to people.

  In conversations with friends and family members, you'll pick up different things about different companies in your area or different areas. If you've got friends in your trade in different states, talk to them about who their A-grade clients are. Those particular clients might move into your state or territory.

  I think the attitude behind this is you are always looking and adding people to your list. You don't sit down and create a list once. You continually add to this list.

  So what do you do after you've completed step number one, which is define what an A-grade client is for you? Step number two, you've made a list and it has the company's name, the company's contact, their title, their phone number, and their email address. What's the third step?

• Step Three: Make the Call

  The third step is making the call. Now, the purpose of the phone call is to get a meeting with this person. There's two kind of phone calls that you're going to make.

  One of them is going to be a warm call. One of them is going to be a cold call. The warm call is by far and away the easier and the better one to do, but you can't always do it.

  How do you get a warm call? Well, let's just say that you've identified company ABC as a great potential A-grade client for you and Bob Smith is the property manager that you need to talk to, the man in charge of all the property managers. First thing that you're going to do is you're going to go out and ask your friends and your family members, "Hey, do any of you guys know Bob Smith, who is the property manager for company ABC?

  I'd like to get a meeting with him." Regularly, you will know somebody that knows this person. Another thing that you can do is you should be involved in some form of networking group, and the one that I recommend to almost all of my clients is B&I.

  Now, you can go to B&I and your referral request for that particular week and subsequent weeks is quite simply, "Hi, I'm looking for an introduction to Bob Smith from company ABC because we'd like to do some of their plumbing work." Once you know somebody that knows Bob Smith, one of the things that you need to do is ensure the referral is warm. You don't want them just to give you Bob Smith's details.

  Ideally, you'd like them to go to Bob and say, "Hey, Bob, I've got a friend of mine. He's got a plumbing business. He's looking to expand it at the moment, and he's identified you guys as a really good potential client for him.

  Now, I can vouch for this guy. He's a very good plumber and he's a really good guy to deal with. Would you mind if I passed your details over to him for him to give you a call and have a chat?"

  That is how you want to educate your friends, family members, associates to set up a warm call for you. Now, it's time to make the call to Bob. So, you pick up the phone and it should be relatively simple.

  "Hey, Bob, it's John here from 123 Plumbing. I got your details from my friend Trev. Did Trev tell you I was going to call?

  Bob's going to say yes, mate." He did. "Great.

  Great. Trev, I was wondering if, Sorry, Bob, I was wondering if you might have 15 minutes to have a coffee with me. I'd love to talk with you about what your business does.

  More often than not, that person's going to have a coffee with you." Then you can move into step four, which we'll talk about shortly. Step three, B.

  What do you do? How do you make a call when you haven't got an introduction, when it's not a warm call? And like I mentioned before, this is not ideal, and it's a lot more difficult, and it's a lot more awkward, and most people won't do it.

  No one likes this, so you need to figure out or you need to know, how badly do you want your business to grow? Most of your competitors aren't going to have the courage to do this. It's like anything.

  The more you do it, the easier it becomes. So if you didn't have a warm introduction to Bob Smith, I would do something like this. Get on the phone, give him a call, and I'd say, "G'day, Bob.

  My name's John. Look, firstly, mate, my apologies for calling out of the blue." I'm currently expanding my plumbing business in your area, and I'm really interested in the kind of work that you guys do, and I think we'd be able to help you.

  Would you have 15 minutes to have a coffee with me? With an approach like that, not everyone's going to say yes, but you're going to get more people say yes than say no. The trick is when somebody says, "No, don't take it personally," it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

  It just means that they're not interested in having a chat with you about this, probably because they don't know you. Or maybe their existing plumber services them really well, and they're not looking to change.

• Step Four: The First Meeting

  So once you've made the call, Step four is to have the meeting. Now, a lot of people get the purpose of this meeting wrong. The purpose of the first meeting isn't to go there and bombard your prospect with everything that you can do to fix their problems and with how good your business is and with the history of your business and with why they should deal with you.

  The purpose of this meeting is just to build rapport. There's lots of different ways to go out there, build rapport. You need to find ways that work for you, and one of the things with building rapport is it's got to be genuine.

  The best book on dealing with people and building rapport is called How to Win Friends and Influence People. That's a book that I strongly suggest everybody reads. It talks in there about becoming genuinely interested in other people, like have a level of curiosity.

  The best way to build rapport with somebody is to ask them questions. Get people talking about themselves but be genuinely interested in what they're saying. I had a friend of mine, he has got, I believe, the best story that I've heard around a first meeting.

  He'd identified a particular A-grade client. It was a cold contact. He went out to the meeting.

  The guy had promised him 15 minutes, and when he walked into his office, he noticed on the shelf, there was a picture of this guy with a racing suit on, a helmet in his arm beside a racing car, and my friend said to him, "Do you race cars?" If I remember this story correctly, about an hour and a half later, my friend walked out of there and he hadn't spoken about his business once. Within a week, he had his first purchase order for that particular client and the business between the two of them grew into millions and millions of dollars.

  That's a perfect execution of the first meeting. Go in there, talk to the person about themselves, be genuinely interested. Don't say too much about yourself, then leave.

• Step Five: Marketing

  So what's the fifth step? I'll just go through the steps again. The first one is to define what an A-grade client is for you.

  The second one is to make a list. The third one is to make the call. The fourth one is the first meeting.

  The fifth step is marketing. Just have some marketing going in the background. I always liked and still like a very simple email marketing campaign that goes out once a month.

  You're not spamming the people that are in your database. Quite often, you can produce things that are actually interesting for them to read. If you've had good meetings with these people, they're going to be interested in what you're doing and they're probably going to read your email.

  A really good story from when I was building my electrical business is I had identified in my local area a rather large shopping center that it'd be a great A-grade client. I had contacted the person that was in charge of maintenance for the shopping center and I had had a meeting with her. It was a cold call.

  I had been doing the sixth step, which we'll talk about in a second as well, following up. I wasn't really getting anywhere. I wasn't getting any no's, but I wasn't really getting anywhere.

  We had an email marketing campaign that went out that was around test and tagging. I got a phone call from her either that day or the next day. She said, "I didn't know that you guys did test and tagging, but I've got your email here."

  I said, "Yeah, we do." She said, "You wouldn't believe it. I got into huge trouble yesterday from my boss because we haven't done our test and tagging for a long time at 12 and Surely Overdue."

  "Can you do it for us?" I said, "Of course I can." "When do you want it done?"

  She said, "Can you start tomorrow?" I'm like, "Of course we can." "Sure."

  Now, I didn't have anyone available to do the work tomorrow, but I wasn't going to say no, so I rang up my office, spoke to my operations manager, and I said, "What do we have to do to get one of our guys over there today or tomorrow to start this testing and tagging?" We did it. We offered excellent service.

  That was the first job that we did for them. We did every single electrical job in that Shopping Center since, afterwards, including two major redevelopments of wings of the shopping center. That particular client was worth millions and millions of dollars to me over a good 10, 15-year period.

• Steps Six to Ten: Follow Up

  So the 10-point plan. To find what an A-grade client is for you, make a list, make the call, whether that's a warm call or a cold call, go to the first meeting and build rapport, have some marketing in the background, it's step five. Step six is follow-up.

  Step seven is follow-up. Step eight is follow-up. Step nine is follow-up.

  And step ten is follow-up. Now, why have I got steps six through 10 as follow-up? Because these are the most important steps and these are the steps that people don't do.

  You're going to need to be a little bit organized here. One of the things that I will always do after the first meeting is say, "Hey Bob, do you mind if I get in touch with you in a few weeks, if I haven't heard anything from you?" And most times people like Bob are going to say, "Yeah, sure, mate, that's fine."

  I've found as I am following up potential A-grade clients, I want to touch base with them every one to two months. You don't want to be spamming them every week, but one to two months depending on the situation. Now, I'm going to give you two examples of this particular principle.

  One of them is a good example that worked. One of them is a bad example that didn't work.

• The Follow-Up That Worked

  So there was a particular ASX company that I bought stock in during the global financial crisis. They were a property trust and a lot of property trusts in the GFC had their share prices severely depressed. It was just a company that I always liked.

  So we bought some of that and when things rebounded, we sold it and made a really nice profit. And I always thought, "You know what? If I ever open an office in Melbourne, I'd love to work for these guys."

  So when I opened an office in Melbourne, they were the first guys on the top of my list, but I didn't know anyone in there. I didn't even know how to reach out. Now, it turns out that one of my friends in another state did work for these guys.

  So I asked him, "Is there any way that you can talk to the guys in Sydney to find out who the guys in Melbourne are so that I can go and have a meeting with them?" The response came back as, "No, we can't do that. The Melbourne and Sydney guys don't really talk much to each other."

  So I had to go about it another way. Now, it's a little bit convoluted how I ended up working on one of their sites, but we did. They had a site where a very, very large track of land and they were putting a new building on one section of that land, but they'd realized that there was a very large amount of electrical communication cables running through that particular area and it needed to be diverted so they could install the drainage and the foundations for the building.

  Now, because we'd done a little bit of work somewhere else in that facility, they came to us and said, "Hey, can you help us with this?" I said, "Yeah, sure we can." So I went out there and I had a look at it and it was a challenging job.

  First of all, we had to identify all the cables. We had to mark them. I had to come up with a plan on where we could divert them.

  We needed to do all the civil works to get the conjutes and pits in place and then we needed to do the diversion of all of the cables, which we did. We planned it meticulously and we executed meticulously as well. Everything went...

  It couldn't have gone better. So at the end of that, I wanted to talk to the project manager that we were dealing with and he had a coffee with me. I sat down and said, "I've always really wanted to do the electrical maintenance for your company."

  He said, "Well, you know, I'm on the construction side. I don't handle the maintenance side of things." I said, "But can you introduce me to the guys that do?"

  He said, "Yeah, sure. I'd love to. You guys were great out here.

  I think you'd be a great asset for the maintenance team." I left that meeting and I rang... I think his name was Chris.

  About a month later, I said, "Hey, mate. Just touching base. Have you managed to talk to the maintenance team about us yet?"

  He's like, "No, sorry. We forgot about that. I'll do it next week."

  I'm like, "Okay, no worries. Do you mind if I give you a call in a couple of weeks if I haven't heard from you?" And Chris said, "Yeah, that's fine."

  So another month goes past. I haven't heard from Chris. I get on the phone and I'm like, "Hey, Chris, mate.

  Just touching base." He's like, "Oh, shit, John. I forgot.

  I'm going to talk to them in a meeting tomorrow. I'll send you an email." Now, tomorrow came and the email didn't come, so I gave it a couple more weeks and I got the phone to Chris and he's like, "Oh, geez.

  I'm sorry. I forgot again. Do you know what?

  I can see Mark right now. I'm going to give you the phone to him right now." And I heard him walk up, say, "Hey, Mark.

  This is the electrician that I was telling you about. You need to talk to him. Mark gets on the phone.

  He's like, "Hello?" I'm like, "Hi." And I explained who I was and I set up a meeting with Mark.

  It was about a month later. He had a little bit going on, so I went into the city. We sat down.

  I had a coffee. And I went through building a rapport. Mark was an interesting guy.

  He'd done a lot of interesting things. And at the end of the meeting, he said, "Look, your timing's good because we need to find another electrician to help service all of our sites, so I'll get you on boarded." About a month went past and maybe two months we hadn't been on board, so I reached out to Mark and he's like, "Shit, John.

  I forgot. I'm going to get the paperwork over to you later on today." I said, "That'd be great, mate.

  No worries." And later on today came and the paperwork didn't come, so I gave it a couple more weeks and I rang Mark back. And anyway, this happened for around about 6 to 12 months.

  I was starting to get a little bit dejected because this is this great client that I wanted to work for. They're supposed to be sending me the paperwork and they don't. I remember I was walking across, it was 5.30 on a Friday afternoon, I was walking across the pedestrian crossing outside the Arts Centre in Melbourne and I got a call from Mark.

  And I picked it up and I'm like, "Mark, how are you doing?" And he's like, "Good, John. How are you?"

  I said, "Good." He said, "Mate, I know I've been meaning to get that paperwork across to you. I haven't done it.

  I feel really bad. I'm going to send it to you right now." I said, "That's great."

  He goes, "But can you help me out with something urgent?" I said, "Of course I can, Mark. What do you need?"

  Now, he needed us to go to a particular facility and make something safe. I can't remember what it was. When I tell people this story, I say, "Why did Mark call me at 5.30 on a Friday?"

  It's because the electrician that he usually uses didn't answer. When you're looking at picking up A-grade clients, quite often this is going to happen. They're going to call you at an inconvenient time because they can't get their existing trade company to help them.

  This is when you get your foot in the door and this is when you've just got to say yes. If you need to, move mountains to help them and get that job done because that's when the opportunity comes. Long story short, well, I guess it's not really a long story short, is it?

  The end of the story, We did that job for Mark. We got on board with that company. We have done millions and millions of dollars worth of work for them.

  They are one of the best companies that I've ever worked with. Their facilities are great to work on. Their people are great to work with.

  They pay their bills within side of one week, which is unheard of in this industry. The company that I sold still works for them today on a regular basis. Almost every other day, they have an electrician on one of their sites doing something.

  That's the right way to do step 6 through 10 follow up.

• The Follow-Up I Didn't Do

  Now, I'm going to give you an example of a wrong way of doing it. Back when I was building my electrical business in regional Victoria, there was a property developer that did really good property developments and it was a really nice guy. I'd sort of see him around town and we got to the point where we just wave at each other.

  We'd say hi if we run across each other during the street, but never anything more than that. He had a very good relationship with all of his subcontractors. He was very loyal to them, they were very loyal to him.

  I didn't even think about asking him if I could do his electrical work. The electrical contractor that did most of his electrical work was getting ready to retire. I was in a cafe one day and I saw this particular gentleman and he waved at me.

  I waved at him, I sat down and he got up and left. Then I finished my meal, I got up and I went to pay and the guy at the counter goes, "Oh no, he's already paid for you." I said, "What do you mean?"

  He said, "Leo paid you a bill." I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting." "Okay."

  Anyway, I didn't have his phone number. I tracked it down and I give him a call and I said, "G'day, Leo. What you doing here, mate?"

  I just wanted to say, "Thanks for paying for my lunch at that cafe today." Like, "Did you mean to do that?" And he started laughing and he said, "No, I didn't mean to pay for you.

  I meant to pay for Jim who was sitting on the table beside you." That was interesting. We had a good laugh about that.

  Then I thought, "I'm going to see this guy." I said, "Sometime over the next month at a cafe somewhere." I did.

  So I walked up to him once I'd finished my meal and we had a little chat about it and we had a laugh and on the way out I paid for his meal. Then I get a call from him and he's like, "Thank you very much for paying for my meal. You really didn't need to."

  I said, "Well, I know I didn't need to, but I kind of felt like I should." Then I had the opportunity to say, "Hey, I understand that your electrician that does all of your work is actually retiring. Can I have a chat with you about potentially doing your work?"

  He said, "Of course, mate. When are you free?" I think we caught up a week later and we sat down and that was one of the best first meetings that I'd ever had in my life.

  At the end of it, he said, "Look, we're definitely looking for another electrician because our current one is retiring. So the timing is perfect, mate." You'll hear from me.

  I've never done a single job for him and I never did step six through 10. I didn't follow up. Now, why on earth would I not follow up?

  I know this process. I've used it. I've used it to create A, B, C and D grade clients for years and now I have the potential to get another A grade client and I don't do it.

  There's two reasons, I think, that I didn't do it. The first one was because I was stupid. The second one was because that meeting was so good, I just expected things to happen and I shouldn't have done that.

  I should have rang him a month later and just say, "Hey, mate, just touch and base. Is there anything that we can do for you?" If I'd have done that, they would have become an excellent A grade client for that business.

• The 10-Point Plan Recap

  So, to do a recap, what's the 10-point plan for obtaining A grade clients? Number one, define what an A grade client is. Number two, make a list.

  Number three, make a call. Number four, have the first meeting. Number five, have some marketing going in the background.

  Number six is follow up. Number seven is follow up. Number eight is follow up.

  Number nine is follow up. And number 10 is follow up.

• Developing Your Sales Skills

  Couple of little things to add to this while you're out there trying to develop A grade clients using this 10-point plan. You're not going to be good at it at the beginning. Nothing that you do at the beginning, you're going to be good at.

  And you're going to need to develop some sales skills. I remember reading book after book after book on sales, going to seminars. Back then, I think I had to listen to tapes.

  There was two people that I really identified with. One was Zig Ziglar and the other one was Brian Tracy. I read and I consumed everything that they had.

  And I tried a lot of the tactics that they had listed in their books and their communications. And I realized that these don't work for me, a lot of these. As I was out there refining my sales skills, I realized the main reason these things weren't working for me is because I wasn't comfortable with that particular approach.

  Once I figured out what I was comfortable with, that's when things really started to work for me. And I think the reason for that is when I was comfortable, my potential prospect was comfortable. When I was comfortable with what I was saying, it came across as genuine, not as salesy.

  And that was a very, very important step for me. The other book that was crucial, and I mean, I think this book should be read in schools. It's called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

  It's a book written, I think, in the 1920s by a guy called Dale Carnegie. And almost every book written on human behavior since has its seed in that book. It was the first book, to my understanding, written about human behavior and how to integrate or get along with people better.

  If you haven't read that, that's a book that you need to buy and read today. Don't just listen to it, read it. If you have read it, pull it back out and read it again.

• A Story: Two Principles, Four A-Grade Clients and a Niche

  At the start of this podcast, I mentioned, I'm going to talk about a story where using the first two principles led me to four A-grade clients and one niche market over a 10-year period. Those two main principles, be a person and a business of integrity and offer excellent service are crucial to this 10-point plan. And like I said, if you can't tick those boxes, don't even try to do the 10-point action plan.

  But this is a good story and I like telling people about it because it exemplifies what I've been talking about here today perfectly. I was new to business. I had picked up a new construction project for a small school.

  And whilst I was out there working on it, it became evident that the engineer that designed the incoming mains had designed it wrong. And I went back to the builder who went back to the architect and long story short, it came back that the school was going to have to pay for the variation itself. Now, the school had a parent there.

  Sorry, the school had students there. And one of their parents worked in the electrical distribution field in that area. And I started to work with him on a solution that would be very cost effective for the school.

  And because I acted with integrity and offered great service, we started to build a relationship. And that particular project finished, and this gentleman's name was Paul. Paul reached out to me and he said, "Would you be interested in working with us to do some light pole projects around the region?"

  And I said, "Yeah, sure, mate. What do you need?" And he said, "Well, the local council has come to us and they want us to do an audit of every single one of their light poles.

  Can you do that for us?" And I said, "Yeah." So that's what I did.

  That was my starting point with Paul's company. And in the process of doing that, I also started to build a relationship with the property managers for the local council. And they came to me and they started to ask me if I could price some projects for them, which I did.

  And those projects went well. And they came to me and said, "Hey, you should tender for our maintenance work," which I did and which we became one of the electricians on the panel. And because we were doing such a good job for the project guys, they spoke to the maintenance guys and set up a meeting for me to talk to the maintenance guys.

  And we started to do a lot of the maintenance work, becoming one of the main contractors on the panel. Paul's company was also doing a lot of power upgrades for the local water board. And as part of it, there was network works, which they took care of, but AS3000 works that required an electrician.

  And he came to me and he said, "Would you be interested in helping this out with this?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." And because we offered him great service and were a business of integrity, when we were working with the water board, he recommended them directly, us directly to them, for some of their project work that Paul's company wasn't involved in.

  So we tended that and we won that. And then one day out of the blue, I got a call from the builder who had the maintenance contract for all of their works. And he said, "My current electrician has given me the shits.

  I've been talking with people at the water board and they just rave about you. Can I come and talk with you about you doing the maintenance or the electrical maintenance work?" And I said, "Yeah, sure."

  And I remember his name was Glenn. He came in that afternoon. We had a coffee in my brew room and that night I had my first purchase order from Glenn.

  So just there with Paul, his company became an A-grade client. Through him, we got an introduction to the local council who became an A-grade client. We also got an introduction to the local water board that became an A-grade client.

  The client that I mentioned before in the follow-up segment also came from Paul. In a roundabout way. And I'm going to explain that to you quickly.

  When we were working with the local council, there was a tender that was put out to upgrade the airport lighting. And I had a great relationship with the project manager that was listed. His name was Les and I rang Les and said, "Man, is this something you think I can attend her for?"

  And he said, "No, John, it's actually the specialized airport contractors are going to do it." I said, "Okay, that's fine." Les rang me the next day and he said, "Actually, I've been talking to one of the suppliers."

  And he said, "No, no, they need electricians to do the work. Do you want their details?" And I said, "Yes."

  So I reached out to them. Long story short, we ended up becoming the electrical contractor that did the airport lighting scheme upgrade. Now that was a big step outside of my comfort zone.

  But if you want to build and grow your business, you're going to need to step outside your comfort zone. Airport lighting became a niche for us. And we started to do upgrades on various other regional sites and also some work on some metropolitan airports.

  We were the electrician fixing some lights on the runway of the ASX listed client that I mentioned before. And that's why we got the tap on the shoulder to move all of those circuits that were running through the block of land that they needed to divert so they could install their new building. All of that, I find this very, very interesting, came from the first meeting that I had with Paul when I was new to business.

  I liked telling people that story because right there is four niche, sorry, four A-grade clients that were worth millions of dollars to me over the years. And one niche area that we made a lot of money out of. If you offer great service and if you're a person of integrity and you have a long-term view, you can easily build a business like I did that had multiple A-grade clients.

  I hope this might resonate with some of you out there. And if it does and you want to know more or you want to talk about it further, feel free to reach out to us on our website. And we can catch up and have a chat over the phone or online or in person if you're in Melbourne and I can see if I can help you further on developing A-grade clients.

  Thank you and have a good day.