Industry
Plumbing
Challenges
No business education
No financial literacy
Dysfunctional team
Results
Utilisation is such an exciting concept, making more with the same or less! Our profit goal is growing as our turnover grows.
The first thing Brendan did was create structure in the business, recruiting people in clearly defined roles to allow the business to become less reliant on him. There was a whole range of things done over the journey and they are still changing as they grow and evolve. Key people are vitally important to the success of any business. Recognising this has meant that his team are gold and they need attention and support. Brendan has learned that it is necessary to allocate resources to team growth and once he realised this the change in his team was enormous. As Brendan says “look at yourself and ask yourself first – how can I improve? what can I do to get better at growing my team?”
In November 2007 Brendan was working over his kitchen sink with two subbies and a bookkeeper. Today Brendan has 40 members of staff, of which 30 or so are out on the road and 10 work in the office. Turnover percentage increase from 2007 to today is now more than 660% and this level of growth is the continued expectation. The Drain Man is considered a benchmark business within its industry. Goals are set to increase utilisation, with the goal to reach 80%. Currently it’s at 67% which isn’t bad considering that it was at 30%. Brendan is excitedly tracking the utilisation rate. Why? Because he has come to realise that making more with the same or less means more profit from existing resources to reinvest back into the business.
