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Business coach for tilers in Australia

By Luke Tadich · The Tradie Owner

Most tilers don't have a work problem. You're booked out months ahead, builders are chasing you, and the reno clients keep coming. What you've got is a pricing problem, a wastage problem, and a callback risk that can wipe a month's profit in a single weekend. A good business coach for tilers doesn't hand you mindset talk. They get into how you quote per square metre versus what a job actually costs you, your waterproofing exposure, and your real labour rate, because that's where the money is hiding.

Who this is for

This is for tiling businesses already turning over $1M or more. Residential reno tilers, new-build bathroom and kitchen work, commercial and fit-out crews, stone and large-format specialists, pool and outdoor tiling. You've got tilers on the payroll, you're subbing to builders, and you're running your own reno clients on the side. You're well past survival. The catch is the business runs on you, and the profit at the bottom never matches how flat out you are.

If you're still a solo tiler doing one bathroom at a time on the tools, that's a different conversation. The work here is the jump from a flat-out tiler to a business that runs jobs, quotes, and crews without you set out on every floor.

What a good business coach for tilers should understand

Tiling isn't like other trades, and a coach who's only ever run an agency or read the books will miss what actually costs you money. Before you hand anyone your numbers, make sure they get the trade you're in.

• The difference between charging per square metre and charging for the actual job. A detailed bathroom with niches, mosaics and a hundred cuts is priced the same per m² as a plain laundry, but takes three times the labour
• Waterproofing compliance to AS 3740, and why a failed shower is the single most expensive event your business can have
• Materials wastage: breakage, dye-lots and batch mismatches, offcuts on herringbone and large-format, plus the adhesive and screed nobody counts
• The true cost of labour, not a day rate. Super, insurance, the ute, downtime between jobs, and the set-out and prep hours that don't look like tiling but eat the day
• How domestic reno margins differ from commercial tender work, and how the cash flows differently through deposits, progress claims and retentions
• How to hold a crew and a pipeline through the feast-or-famine of reno work, so you're not carrying wages in the quiet weeks

If a coach can't talk about waterproofing risk or a per-m² quote without you explaining it first, they're learning your business on your dime.

Where the money leaks in a tiling business

In a tiling business the profit leaks from a handful of predictable places. Nearly every tiler we speak to is losing money in at least three of them.

1. Quoting per square metre on jobs that aren't square-metre jobs. A rate that's fine for a big open floor sends you broke on the detailed bathrooms, where cuts, set-out, niches and mosaics are the real work. Detail is where you lose money, because it's priced like plain field tiling.
2. Waterproofing callbacks. A failed shower means ripping up finished tiles, re-waterproofing, re-tiling, and often replastering, all at your cost. One callback can eat the profit off five bathrooms. Work that isn't to AS 3740 is a risk you can't insure your way out of.
3. Wastage that never made it into the quote. Breakage, extra cuts on large-format and patterned work, a dye-lot mismatch that forces a re-order, adhesive and screed you didn't count. Ten per cent wastage on premium porcelain is real money you ate.
4. Labour priced like it's cheap. You quote your own and your crew's hours at a tools rate and ignore super, insurance, downtime, and the unbillable set-out and prep. Your effective hourly rate is often half what you think it is.
5. Being the last trade in. You cop every other trade's delay, lose dead days waiting on the plumber or plasterer, and have no way to bill for the downtime. Feast-or-famine reno work means you're paying a crew through the quiet weeks.
6. No job costing after handover. You never compare quoted against actual on labour, tiles and adhesive, so the same under-quote quietly repeats across the next ten bathrooms.

Fix three of those six and the numbers move fast. That's usually where the first $100,000 comes from.

How The Tradie Owner works

The Tradie Owner is run by Luke Tadich and built for $1M-plus trade owners. It works in three steps, in order.

1. Your first session. A paid, working session where we go through your numbers, your quotes and your pipeline and find at least $100,000 of opportunity. Under-priced detail work, wastage you're absorbing, callback risk, the reno clients quietly costing you money. If we don't find $100,000, you don't pay. That's the guarantee.

2. The 60-day plan. You walk away with a written plan. Not theory. The specific moves to make over the next 60 days, in order, with the dollar figure attached to each one so you know exactly what it's worth.

3. Ongoing coaching. From there it's a flat monthly rate to keep the plan on track, hold you to it, and work the next problem as the business grows. You keep the coaching for as long as it's paying for itself many times over, and not a day longer.

Why an operator beats a career coach

Luke isn't a career coach. 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.

That means he's sat where you're sitting. He's priced jobs, run crews, carried wages through the quiet weeks, and made the jump from doing everything himself to running a business that runs the work. When you talk about a job that blew out on labour or a callback that ate your margin, you're not explaining an industry. You're talking to someone who's lived it.

If you want the full picture of how the coaching works, start with our [trade business coach](/trade-business-coach) page. If you're a tiling owner over $1M and you want to know exactly where your $100,000 is hiding, book your first session. Worst case, you spend a session and find nothing, and you don't pay a cent.