How Do You Step Off the Tools Without Losing Control of Your Business?

The short answer

You step off the tools by getting the job knowledge out of your head and onto paper or video, then handing real decisions to someone you trust, one area at a time. You keep control with a few simple habits: a weekly update to the team, regular ride-alongs and one place where every change gets posted.

What does it actually mean to step off the tools?

When I started Smartfix in January 2018 it was me, one ute and a set of tools in my garage. Most sparkies, plumbers and chippies I talk to want to step off the tools at some point. The trouble is nobody teaches you how. Your apprenticeship teaches you the job. It teaches you nothing about running a business.

By the time we had eight to 10 guys, I was still about 50/50 on the tools. Half my week was on site and the other half was quoting, answering the phone and sorting out the team. A lot of owners get stuck there for years.

For me, getting off the tools meant the business could run a normal day without me on site or on the phone. I still go out and quote. I still sign off on the big changes. But the day to day runs through other people now.

Why does the business wobble when you leave site?

Because everything lives in your head. How you price a switchboard upgrade, what a tidy job looks like, which customers need a call before you turn up. You know it all, so you never wrote it down. Then you leave site and the questions start.

When Dr. Mitch Catterall from Unveil Development Partners came on the podcast, he put it better than I could. He said a savvy buyer will look at a business like that and say, “It’s got good profit. It’s got some good systems in it, but without the owner, it’s worth nothing.”

Mitch learned this the hard way. His family ran a commercial fencing business for years. When his dad’s knees gave out, the accountant told them the business was worth the price of the assets, because it was all in his dad’s head. Mitch said there was 250 grand of contracted work in the pipeline, and it got folded for the price of a ute.

You might never want to sell. That’s fine. But one day you’ll want a holiday, or you’ll get hurt, or you’ll want to be at your kid’s assembly. Same problem.

What has to be written down before you step off the tools?

Mitch said the biggest misconception about systems is that they have to be complicated. In his words, “A system is a process of getting from point A to point B.” You’re already doing it. It’s just stuck in your head.

Peter Craft from ASAP Trades, a Perth plumbing business, is doing this right now. Peter keeps his procedures in Google Drive, with photos marked up with arrows and circles and dot points at the top. When one of his guys rings asking how to do part of a job, he tells them, “Have a look at the procedures.” If someone doesn’t know how to do something, Peter wants it brought up so he can write a procedure and train the team on it, because someone else probably doesn’t know either.

I’ll be honest, we were slow on this at Smartfix. We were nine years in and had barely done any proper training. Taking guys off the road for a couple of hours every week or two costs real money. I worked it out at $5,000 to $10,000 a week. Meanwhile I was having the same chat about leaving too much copper behind the terminal on switchboard upgrades with one guy, then the next, then the next.

If you want to step off the tools without callbacks piling up, start with the jobs that cause them. For us that was air con services. A 30 or 60 second video of how you want it done gets watched. Most tradies don’t love reading a ten page document.

The other thing to fix is any role that only one person knows. When only one person can show the new starter how something works, that’s a crack in the system. I’ve written more about this in what systems a residential trade business actually needs.

How much should you expect from your team?

Less than you’d do yourself. That’s hard to swallow when your name is on the van.

Peter told me his biggest lesson since starting ASAP Trades was thinking he could just win the work and go find plumbers who’d do it exactly like him and his business partner Jay. In his words: “Anyone you get in to work for your business, they’re not going to do anything as well as you’re going to do it.”

The number I’ve heard is about 70%. You can expect around 70% of what you’d get done yourself. Once you accept that, you stop getting frustrated and start closing the gap with training and clear standards. If they did it exactly like you, they’d probably be running their own business.

Who makes the decisions when you step back?

The hard bit is handing over the calls: whether a variation is okay, whether to charge for the extra hour, what to do when the job’s not what the customer described. If those still come to you, you can’t really step off the tools yet.

Mitch works on what he calls a 3X model. Depending on the size of the business, it’ll probably take two to three people to do what the owner does. You won’t hire all of them at once. You build toward it over a few years.

At Smartfix the first big piece was my brother Finley Dearlove. He started with me as a fourth year apprentice, worked his way through installing, sales and the phones, and is now Head of Installations. He runs all the guys on the road. On our episode together, Fin explained how it works now: the managers talk through an idea among themselves and bring it to me for a final sign off. I don’t do all the thinking anymore.

I like bringing people up from inside. We’ve hired for senior roles from outside before, and people can have a great resume and know nothing about our business or what we’ve been through. Josh has done five years with us. That kind of experience is hard to hire.

If you’re not there yet, the first step is often getting the office side sorted so you can stop answering every call. I cover that in when to hire your first admin or operations manager.

How do you stay in control once you’re off the tools?

I learned this one the expensive way. At our peak we had 130+ staff, four offices and about $30M in revenue. It looked huge from the outside. Inside, we had managers managing managers, I was stressed out of my mind, and we lost money. Being off the tools with no grip on the numbers is worse than being on them.

These are the habits that keep me close now:

• Every Monday I post an update in the company chat: what happened last week and what’s changing. I started it during the restructure to stop rumours and I still do it.
• One place for every change. We use Microsoft Teams with channels for operations, leadership, management and the installers. If I change something, I screenshot it and post it.
• Quote days and ride-alongs. I still go out on the road. I pick up small things, like two fields on a job form that should be one, and we fix them.
• Regular toolbox meetings, so the guys know each other and hear about changes from us first.
• Everyone under one roof. My accountant warned me that once you separate yourself from the team, things slowly fall apart. He was right. We’re back in one building now and it’s better for it.

Where should you start this week?

You won’t step off the tools in one go. It happens in small pieces. Here’s where I’d start:

1. Write down the five questions your team rang you about most this week.
2. Turn the most common one into a procedure or a 60 second video.
3. Pick the one person who could own a decision area, like variations under a set dollar amount, and hand it to them properly.
4. Book one day off site and see what breaks. Whatever breaks is your next procedure.

Before you add more people to fix this, read what to fix before hiring more people. If you want the full story of how I got here, including the bits that went wrong, I went through it on this podcast episode. Mitch also made the point that it’s worth planning this years ahead, and business.gov.au has free material on succession and exit planning if you want to start there.

If you want to talk it through with other owners going through the same step, come along to one of my Perth networking nights or have a look at Hypotential membership.