Month: March 2019

Northwest Air Conditioning Coaching Testimonial

I’m Ben from Northwest Air Conditioning Geelong. We install air conditioning in the Geelong and Melbourne region.

Northwest install, air conditioning systems, and heating and cooling systems, and our niche market would be the boutique style builder and your retail builders, where you’re building the custom design homes. We do a lot of work where a lot of other companies can’t do, and we kind of say, “Well we can do it.” Yeah, so our target market would be the retail builder and any custom built homes, in terms of air conditioning.

Hugh has been our action coach for 18 months now and has been helping us with profit, which we’re actually up by 200%, which is fantastic.  Since we started with Hugh we have work on:

– processes with all our work, making sure that our processes are nice and streamlined, which is ongoing, and that’s been a huge, huge help in that area. 
– our target market, making sure we’re targeting the right work for our business.

Coaching has really helped us just step out of the business and look back into the business, say you get out of the hustle and bustle, and you get to actually have a good conversation with a professional and just get a better clarity in moving forward and making sure you’re making the right decisions. Yeah, it’s just really good to have a professional there to have conversations around issues, you know daily issues.

Hugh’s really helped me understand the P and Ls of the business. So when I first bought into the business, I kind of didn’t have any idea really what I was doing, but I would just want to jump in the deep end and figure that out.

That’s when I got Hugh on board and then just understanding our profit and loss, he’s been really, really good for me personally, just to understand where we’re at with the company and just makes me feel more comfortable with the direction heading forward.

It’s really helpful with us three owners to sit down with Hugh, any issues that we have, Hugh always has some sort of tool to help us to move forward and implement a strategy or anything moving forward to resolve that issue. He’s just an easygoing bloke with a lot of industry knowledge I guess.

Another really good thing about Hugh is he has a lot of expertise and a lot of good tools that he can forward on to us to resolve any issues at hand, quite quickly as well. So, I think his expertise is really good with helping us move forward, especially to resolve any issues quickly.

BM Floors – Newtown, Geelong

Hi, I’m Ben from BM Floors in Newtown. We’ve got a showroom at 23/5 Bridge Street, Newtown. We do custom design projects, engineered oak, parquetry. I manage the project from start to finish, so you’ll get expert advice, 25 years’ experience in the industry.

Business Planning Session

Doing the business planning session with Hugh and others was great. We met some fantastic people, first and foremost, so we’ve got an insight into their businesses because a lot of the fundamentals in business are very, very similar.In terms of Hugh running the process, I suppose from start to finish, it was run very well. It sort of reinvigorated my business because I’ve got a business plan to focus on.

It was like analysing a lot of the business that I’ve got and a lot of areas of the business that I needed to focus on. You can’t do all that yourself. Having that sort of stuff in front of you and being able to look at that sort of stuff, as a rolling business plan, would be invaluable for my business.

I find Hugh easily relatable to, speaks on my level. His insight and knowledge over years, has been fantastic. Just getting a lot out of it at the moment. He’s actually got me to read a book, which is quite interesting because I haven’t read for years. It’s been really good for my business. From a coaching point of view, I would certainly recommend not only Hugh, but ActionCoach. I think it sort of relates to my level in terms of business.

I’m only a new startup business. I wanted the right people and the right processes in place, which he’s developing for me, which is fantastic because you can’t do that yourself when you’re just a one-man show running a business in a warehouse. I would certainly recommend Hugh’s ActionCoach. Definitely.

D.A. Beretta Plumbing & Gas Fitting, Geelong

Hi, I’m Chris Beretta from D.A. Beretta Proprietary Limited. We are a longstanding plumbing company in Geelong. We specialise in hydro excavation, directional drilling, and civil works. We work mainly for local government utilities. Baum Water, V/Line are customers and several civil construction companies.

I went to Hugh Bowman to improve my business skills and to generate more business and do things a little better, basically to tidy up the loose ends. Hugh’s helped me to put a lot of things on paper and to get a lot of my ideas actually up and running.

I’ve been with Hugh, oh gee, over a year now, maybe a year and a half. We have, as I said, taken a lot of the ideas that I had and we’ve actually put them on paper and worked out a business plan around them and been able to implement them. Most of those quite successfully with a few more still in the pipeline.

Streamlining Our Business

We’ve looked at our future growth. Obviously, we’ve set goals, et cetera, along the lines of the coaching program. Within our business, we’ve actually improved our turnover and our profit margin a little just by tidying up a few loose ends and streamlining a few of our systems. We’ve started off a new business within our D.A. Beretta umbrella of traffic control.

It’s been small steps starting off, but we’re starting to grow that now and seeing some returns from it. We’ve basically turned a cost… What we were paying out we’ve turned from a cost now into a profit so we’ve turned it right around.

As far as Hugh’s strengths go, what I’ve found is that that Hugh is actually very good at helping his customers and myself is actually getting things out of your head and off paper and actually implementing and making it move. I’ve found that to be very helpful for me because I’ve got a hundred ideas, but it’s hard to actually get them up and running. To have somebody that can encourage you, help you along the path, and give you the right guidance is a benefit to any business.

Business Planning Day Testimonial

My name is Ben Couch. I have a business called Melbourne Land Surveyors, and starting up a business called Geelong Land Surveyors here in Geelong. We take care of all land surveying requirements, such as land development, title surveys, feature surveys, anything to do with any sort of planning or development projects.

I basically learnt that setting up a business plan allows you to focus in on smaller aspects of your business to progress your business forward and making it a very systematic approach to business management.

Hugh’s very good, very clear, and also looked at your personal business, not just the whole, entire group, but made it also personalised towards your own projects and business models. Also, it was good to listen in to other companies and businesses, their ideas and what they’re doing. He’s going to be coaching with me for probably the next six months to see how things go.

Yeah, with the business planning day, it gives you confidence going forward, in implementing strategies into your business to make your business more successful.

Looking At A Maximising A New Business Venture

Steve Miller’s my name. I run Diligence Bookkeeping and I’ve recently taken on a new caravan storage business, and today was figuring out how to operate that business at the best possible way. Three things I got out of today, the first thing was that I knew that I had to be aware of some cost changes that were coming with increasing interest rates and what have you, for my business.

And I’ve been able to figure out my new pricing strategy to meet that demand. So, that was one massive one for me. Another thing I was able to look at was some changes in how I had my internal systems so that I could bring in a little bit more money.

The other thing that was important for us, was that I was able to look at some marketing strategies that would help me attract a new market, which we’re prepared to pay a slightly higher price. So, all in all, it was a massive day and fantastic, really worthwhile.

Hugh Bowman has been a fantastic facilitator today. He knows what questions to ask to make you give the answers you need to give yourself. So, from that point of view, he’s able to bring up conversations and topics that make it easy for you to navigate the knowledge you need to bring out to solve your problems.

Being in the group environment enables you to interplay with the different business owners and it makes you think outside the square and it helps you use other people’s understandings to help you shape your viewpoint on your business, which you just don’t get a chance to do on a day-to-day basis. So, collaborating with other business owners has been super valuable.