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Business coach for plumbers in Australia

By Luke Tadich · The Tradie Owner

If you run a plumbing business and you're flat out but the profit doesn't match the effort, a business coach who understands trades can fix that faster than another year of trial and error. The catch is finding one who has actually run a trade business, not someone who learned coaching from a course.

Who this is for

This is for plumbing business owners turning over $1M or more. At that size you've got vans on the road, licensed plumbers and apprentices on the payroll, and the whole thing runs on your decisions. You're well past survival stage. The problem now is that revenue has grown but margin, cashflow and your own time haven't kept up. If you're still quoting all day, chasing invoices at night and can't take a week off without the wheels wobbling, you're exactly who this is built for.

What to look for in a business coach for plumbers

Most business coaches have never priced a job or managed a crew. Here's what actually matters when you're choosing one:

• They understand trade economics. Charge-out rates, labour recovery, overhead recovery and job costing, not just vague mindset talk.
• They've employed tradies. Hiring, retaining and getting real billable hours out of licensed plumbers is its own skill.
• They give you numbers, not affirmations. A good coach can read your P&L and tell you where the money's actually going.
• They've built something real. Someone who has scaled an actual trade business carries scar tissue you can't fake.
• They back themselves. If a coach won't put their own fee on the line, ask why.

Where plumbing businesses quietly leak money

Most $1M+ plumbing businesses are leaving six figures on the table without realising it. The leaks are almost always in the same handful of places.

Charge-out rates that never got properly costed. Plenty of plumbers set an hourly rate years ago and nudge it with inflation. But the rate has to recover wages, super, the van, tools, insurance, admin and travel time, then leave profit on top. When you cost it properly, most owners find they're under-charging by $20 to $40 an hour on every technician.

Vans and techs that aren't billing enough hours. A service van costs money the moment it leaves the yard, whether it's on a paying job or parked. If your plumbers are paid for 38 hours but only billing 25, that gap is pure loss. Lift billable hours per van, even by one hour a day, and it drops straight to the bottom line.

After-hours and emergency work priced like normal work. A burst pipe at 2am is worth a premium and the customer knows it. Too many plumbers roll out on standard rates because they never set a proper after-hours structure. That's revenue you're giving away for the worst possible hours.

Not knowing your margin by work type. Reactive call-out work, bathroom renos, new builds and commercial fit-outs all carry different margins. If you're not costing each stream on its own, you're probably chasing big project jobs that feel busy but earn less per hour than the quiet maintenance work.

No recurring maintenance revenue. Hot water servicing, backflow testing and planned maintenance contracts for commercial clients turn one-off customers into a book of predictable, high-margin work. It smooths out the lumpy cashflow every plumber knows, and it makes the business worth more when you eventually sell.

Losing good plumbers. Licensed tradies are hard to find and expensive to replace. Every time one walks you lose productivity, training and often a customer relationship. Retention is a profit lever, not just an HR headache.

How The Tradie Owner works

The Tradie Owner is Luke Tadich's coaching business, built for trade owners at your stage. It runs in three steps.

1. The first session. A paid, focused working session where we go through your business and find at least $100,000 of opportunity, whether that sits in pricing, utilisation, margin or waste. If we don't find it, you don't pay.
2. The 60-Day Game Plan. You walk away with a written plan. Specific moves, in the right order, with the numbers behind them, so you know exactly what to do first and what it's worth.
3. Ongoing coaching. From there it's a flat monthly rate to work the plan together, hold the line and keep finding the next lever. This is for owners who want a sparring partner, not a one-off report that gathers dust.

Why an operator beats a career coach

Luke isn't a coach who read about business. He's an ex-paramedic who went on to build and scale Australia's leading sports-court construction company, and was named 2023 Melbourne and Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He has hired tradies, priced jobs, managed cashflow and made the calls you're making right now. That's the difference. A career coach hands you a framework. An operator tells you what actually happens when you lift your rates or restructure a crew, because he's already done it.

If that sounds like what your plumbing business needs, start with the main [trade business coaching](/trade-business-coach) page, then book your first session. Worst case, you walk away with a $100k plan for free. Best case, it changes how your business runs.