Olympic swimmers need coaches to succeed. Smart business owners know they need Business Coaches to win big.

The Outcome

Jamie Short is a changed man. And so is his business and financial outlook. He has achieved an enormous amount in such a short time.

If you were to ask him what were the main benefits he received from having an ActionCOACH Business Coach, this is what he’d say.

Take a look at it closely:

• Increased my turnover by 500% in twelve months.
• Increased my team from being a one-man band to managing 15 people.
• Saved over $100,000 in purchasing a business.
• Went from no strategic alliances to having over 6 that actively refer clients.
• Being able to systemize my business.
• 90% success rate with my marketing campaigns (and being able to measure the success as well).
• Increased my client base 650% in twelve months.

That’s not bad in any body’s language. He now has a profitable business that works without him. He has a gym, which was his dream goal, and has a team so he doesn’t have to do all the work himself. In fact, he can now even have a holiday for a couple of weeks each year, if he wants to. And he is turning over more per month than he was per year when he first got serious about his business.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s more of what he has to say.

“Looking back over the year, I can say that it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and there were some long hours doing homework (that I set for myself). ActionCOACH always loves to test the boundaries and find the limits (that’s why we get on … I think), but it was very rewarding.”

To see what has been accomplished and to have the future mapped out is so inspiring and fulfilling. Over the past 12-months, we have achieved an incredible amount of work. I have brought a gym with my new business partner and saved over $100,000 on the purchase price. Our services have expanded and we now offer the following (in addition to personal training, either in one-on-one or in groups):

• Massage (work or at home)
• Corporate health services (team building, massage, health seminars, exercise groups)
• Success coaching
• Packaged meals
• Nutritional analysis
• Yoga and boxing classes
• Health and fitness assessments
• Personalized exercise programs

“I could be here all day going on about how much my life and business has changed, but until you experience it yourself, you will never know the real benefits of having an ActionCOACH Business Coach.”

Brad Sugars comments on how this business thrived with the help of ActionCOACH.

Jamie came to ActionCOACH through a referral of a mutual friend. He was a very concerned at how he was going to pay for coaching as he was only turning over $35,000 a year.

Jamie was so full of passion and energy, however, he lacked the direction and focus to keep him on track to achieve his goals.

He needed to free himself of the $20 per hour jobs he was doing. Initially he had to do more personal training sessions with his free time to increase his cashflow. And he needed a more professional image to go with his profile. The price rise ActionCOACH put in place would make him the most expensive trainer around.

ActionCOACH introduced scripts and developed a referral program, which worked outstandingly well.

ActionCOACH started to test and measure everything, and concentrated on improving his time management/self-management skills.

ActionCOACH built strategic alliances with other health professionals as a way of generating new leads, as Jamie didn’t have the cashflow to invest in marketing. His conversion rate also needed some work.

As a way of increasing cashflow, ActionCOACH put in place some guarantees, and produced 10 paid-in-advance training session packs (at a reduced rate) to increase client’s training sessions per week. This worked very well. We discovered from our testing and measuring that the business was 90% referral. This convinced us to develop more strategies aimed at increasing the flow of referrals to the business. We produced an e-mail newsletter, and tried several different types of flyers, which didn’t work so we dropped them and went back to what was working – referrals and strategic alliances.

ActionCOACH certainly faced some interesting challenges along the way. Jamie’s time was limited, as he was already working over 70 hours per week, so we had to free him up from the non-income producing stuff. This was not easy, as he didn’t have anyone to delegate to.

We introduced systems to his business and got him to use scripts consistently. Keeping him focused on his weekly goals without letting himself set another dozen each week was also a major challenge. So was trying to get some balance back into his life.

Jamie’s passion and focus due to the clarity of his goals, I think, was the main driving factor for him. Coaching him was like having a tiger by the tail most of the time.

How does a gym go from chaos to control? Discover here ...

The Moment Of Truth

I was busy and earned a good little package, but I knew there was more. I was doing all my 30 or 40 sessions per week, trying to do the marketing, finances, admin and everything else. I was wearing all the hats and not enjoying it at all.

I had enough pain. It was time to call for some help.

I have always known a Business Coach did for a living, but I was scared to take the plunge and to take on coaching services. Yes, there was a lot of fear that came up. Issues like, can I afford it? Plus the fear of failure and thoughts of what other people where going to say.

Then I attended a sales training course hosted by ActionCOACH. During the workshop, the presenter mentioned a few keynotes, like playing above the line and taking responsibility for my actions and having ownership. This really struck some emotions; I had certainly had enough pain running my own business.

So after finally making the call, my ActionCOACH Business Coach and I got under way. The Alignment Report was first, and as the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Well, I certainly didn’t know what had to be done to run a successful business. ActionCOACH and I put together a plan and away we went.

The first thing we did was to increase prices (wow, what a head shift that was!). I quickly became one of the most expensive personal trainers in Sydney and was defiantly the most expensive in the main gym where I was training.

People certainly took notice of that. Other aspects of the plan involved filling in quiet parts of the day, such as the down times during lunch time and in the early afternoon with special training sessions. Forming strong strategic alliances proved to be very successful within the first 3 to 4 months.

I had increased my revenue (turnover) by 20% in a couple of months and was testing and measuring all inquiries. This provided me with very valuable information down the track.

I then began to realize the importance of working ON the business instead of IN it.

I began training up another trainer and getting him to do some of my sessions as well as more work. This freed me up to do some marketing.

As the months passed, I found myself getting busier and busier. I had formed some strong strategic alliances and was receiving great referrals from them. Systems were in place and they were working very well. Referrals from existing clients were coming in, as we did a promotion involving massages for those who referred on clients who signed up for a set amount of sessions. This was so successful that I had to slow down the marketing campaign – I had become busier than I could cope with.

However, the real challenge began with the next step – acquiring a studio.

Ever since I was 14-years old, I had a dream of owning my own gym – a place where people would come to train, have fun, and enjoy hanging out at.

Well, this dream came true.

I teamed up with an old friend whom I went through university with and played rugby against. We decided to tackle the gym together. We merged our businesses and formed Ignite Health Pry Ltd.

We were then on the hunt … with my ActionCOACH Business Coach being the General back at the Officer’s Mess, and us being the front line soldiers being sent out to receive all the hits and war wounds while searching for, and finding, a business and business premises.

We wanted to start up our own gym from scratch, but my coach convinced us to find an existing one that was doing poorly – one whose owner’s wanted to sell for a reason – as this way we’d get a better deal than having to wear the set-up costs of a new one.

Every Saturday we’d read the “Business For Sale” section of the paper as well as “Business for Sale” magazines.

We looked at dozens over the next few months, putting in offers that were all rejected. Then one day we finally came across a hot one. The ad read, “Gym for Sale. Require urgent sale for personal reasons. Great price.”

Well, after looking at the business and using ActionCOACH’s business buying checklist, this looked too good to be true.

After 8-weeks of negotiations and going back and forth from the solicitors, accountants, financial lenders, and of course, ActionCOACH, we struck a deal.

This is how it worked:

The original asking price for the business was $160,000. Equipment was insured for just over $100,000 and would sell second-hand for around $80,000 as most of it was only 18-months old. They wanted $50,000 for the goodwill/income it was producing. The business had been going for 6 years, however, it showed little profit – the systems were in a mess. The owners were a husband and wife team and she was pregnant with their 3rd child. Furthermore, she was ready to give birth in the next few weeks – now that’s real urgency to sell. Initially my business partner and I were prepared to pay up to $120,000 for the business, as we loved it, its location, and its potential. However, my coach wouldn’t let us do that and he kept saying we needed to get a better deal.

It was as if it was his money that was on the line.

My coach asked what our absolute dream price to pick this business up at would be. He wanted to know the dream price at which we could sell it for a profit the next day without doing anything to it. I replied $70,000, so my coach asked how good would it be if we could get it for $60,000?

I got very excited and asked how could we possibly do that, as the owners had already knocked back offers in excess of $100,000.

My coach said those buyers had now gone, and the owners wanted to sell urgently, so all we had to do was to find out what, other than money, they wanted, and then give it to them, provided we got the business for a great price.

We came up with a strategy and said this was the best offer they were going to get and we were their only option to take over the lease. The final price was agreed on at $60 000, with a clause that we had 30 days from the agreement date to walk away before exchanging contracts.

The learning curve that Darren (my business partner) and I went through was absolutely incredible. I have learnt more in the past 3- to 6-months than I did over the past 5 years of operating my own personal training business.

The gym now consists features equipment on one whole floor. We offer a unique service where we guarantee that one of our expert trainers will look after four members at once, each having their own program depending on their goals and needs. This is a guaranteed personalized service. We also offer yoga groups, boxing groups, massage, as well as a solarium. We have nine trainers, hundreds of members and made a profit within the first 2-months of operation.

When I first started with Pat, the business had a turnover of about $35,000 a year.

We now do that in a month.

Our new vision is to have four of these gyms around Sydney within the next 3 or 4 years. And by that I mean we actually buy the property first, and then establish the gym at the premises.

A true business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.
- Brad Sugars -

The Business
Name: Fitness Shortly (now Ignite Health Pty Ltd), New South Wales, Australia
Owner: Jamie Short
Business Sector: Health & Fitness

The Challenge
Being self-employed has a certain ring to it that many find appealing.

But running your own show is not a bed of roses. A self-employed person normally starts out with just one employee.
And that suits them fine. There is no one else to worry about, and none of those other people who make all the mistakes, it’s just a single person.

The self-employed person usually trusts no one other than themselves to get the job done. They’ll say things like: “I am my business.” Or, in their sales pitch: “You’ll be dealing directly with me and I’m the owner of the business.” Or, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Or, “Everything is under my control so I know that it’s done right.”

Being self-employed is usually the first jump on the entrepreneurial ladder and for most, it’s the only jump.

In fact, most entrepreneurs never seem to get past this level of growth in their business.

The truth is, you really can’t call this scenario a business; you’ve really got to call it a JOB. And of course, you do know what J-O-B stands for, don’t you? Just Over Broke.

What’s more, this job is most probably one of the worst jobs in the world.

I think this quote puts it best, taken from one of my live seminars: “Most people thought they worked for an idiot BEFORE they started their own business.”

I really don’t think most people who start their own business know what they’re getting themselves into. In fact, most look at it as something glamorous, exciting, and with such a sense of newfound freedom that they’re fooled into believing wealth is just a few days, weeks or months away.

The self-employed person is trapped by the limited “doing” vision that is a part of being an employee. As an example, computer technicians who start their own businesses usually see themselves servicing people’s computers and would be extremely happy if they could get enough business to keep themselves, and only themselves, extremely busy.

This results in your business life feeling just like a see-saw. You’ll spend half your life chasing the work, or doing marketing, sales and administration.

Then you’ll have so much work to do you’ll have to flip over and start doing the work…

Doing the “work” is one side of the see-saw, while “sales and marketing” is the other.

Chase the work, do the work, chase the work, do the work, chase the work, do the work … and so on …

It’s this see-saw that stops a self-employed entrepreneur from ever really getting ahead. It’s also this see-saw that gets self-employed people to make one of two decisions: either give it up and go back and get a job, or take the plunge and jump in at the deep end of business and make the decision to grow their business by moving up the ladder.

This is what Jamie Short did.

This is what he has to say …

Jamie’s Story
I was pretty much a one-man band. I had one guy doing some personal training sessions for me, and that guy was me! I was the technician, manager, owner and entrepreneur all at the same time. The different hats that I was wearing could have filled an entire hat store.

So, what exactly do I do, you may ask? Well, if you ever get up really early, around 5 or 6am, you might see those crazy people running up and down the beach or in the park. Yes, that’s me, encouraging people to get into shape at weird and ungodly times of the day.

I spent the other half of my day running around Sydney training clients at their homes, their offices or at a couple of different gyms. I didn’t have many systems in place at all, and the reality was it was going to be a miracle if I could achieve my goal of owning my own gym in the next 12-months.

Their goals are to franchise the company, first in the Sydney Metropolitan area, then within the state of New South Wales, before going national and international.

The owners also aim to work more on the business instead of in it. They also aim to become financially free and to have other business interests besides this company.

During their first year with ActionCOACH, they completed a business plan and doubled their profits. They have also bought a factory at Blacktown, and now have a boardroom, two offices upstairs, a lunchroom, an area for storage and a reception area downstairs.

This is something that, at the end of the day, they can call their own. This has been all achieved by doing all the hard work themselves.

But not only hard work; a lot of smart work on the part of ActionCOACH for helping them achieve these results.

Moving into their factory in Blacktown has given them a new perspective on where they are heading and what they are actually doing.

They also underwent changes as far as their team was concerned. Some of their team didn’t like the changes that were taking place; the owners were probably stricter and the company was structured better. These people have since departed and a new team with very clear guidelines as to what their role within the company is, and who fit in with their new structure, has been established.

The company is now running very smoothly with high work ethics, high morale and everyone is working towards achieving the same goals. Each team member is rewarded for the input they provide.

The company now employs 11 team members. They have appointed an Operations Manager who oversees the day-to-day running of the company out in the field, while John is currently the C.E.O and Scott is working on franchising the business. They can now see more light at the end of the tunnel and this, they say, is going to be one of their greatest achievements.

First Choice Protective Coatings is now one of the largest graffiti removal companies in Australia. The owners say they have achieved a lot more than they would ever have hoped, thanks to ActionCOACH.

Their turnover is higher, their profits are higher, their morale is higher still and their business sense and knowledge has grown dramatically.

And they’ve re-named the company Graffiti Off. They say this was very definitely money well spent.

One last thing; thanks to taking a Business Coach on board, Scott has brought his first luxury car, a beautiful Jaguar.

For him, life’s exciting, and it’s fun.

They were a fairly typical trades-type company where they did everything themselves – there were no systems and they had no real team. But they had the desire to move beyond where they were at the time.

They were, however, owners who never made excuses; they just asked, “What can we do?”

They were eager to learn. So it was best to start them with our Success Model Planning System, which would get them focused and clear, as they were a bit lost. This proved to be the best strategy. They grew so much through this 9-month process. They actually re-did certain modules as things became clearer.

Scott was obviously thirsty for knowledge and he tried many different things, including some innovative marketing which was completely new to the company.

Their first task was to solidify all functions in the business, build and train a real team and then increase the business. Increasing the business turned out to be fairly easy, which showed they had great potential in the market place.

It’s fairly simple to be successful with trades-related companies; just solve whatever frustrations the customers have when dealing with that particular industry. This was the basis upon which we developed a very professional operation.

Obviously, Scott and John have grown immensely since being coached by an ActionCOACH Business Coach.

They are now very dedicated business owners, willing to try new things and continually going the extra mile. Never once during the planning or coaching sessions were they negative; never did they say this or that wouldn’t work.

They were open to new ideas, enjoyed trying new things and were always eager to gain more knowledge through coaching, external courses, or the books and tapes their ActionCOACH recommended.

Scott now regularly establishes budgets and targets for the team, and knows his break-even point. He can now read and understand Profit and Loss Statements and Balance Sheets, something that was only done before by his accountant once a year.

In fact, he previously never even looked at them!

Something kept worrying me as we had grown fairly fast until then. To go from a rapid growth-rate rate to suddenly standing still scared me. I began to wonder whether the company was actually in decline and started thinking that we should sell before it was too late. I began to think about looking for another job again, and wondered when I should start firing people.

I didn’t know where to go for help, whom to turn to, or where to get advice, because I didn’t have the business skills myself to answer the questions that I needed answered.

I was travelling home from work late one night, listening to the radio and thinking about the company, when I heard an ActionCOACH advertisement. It said they could help companies or businesses reach their next level, achieve their goals and provide financial freedom. This made me take notice, so I wrote down the number and thought I’d give them a call the next day.

The next morning I gave ActionCOACH a call. I spoke to one of the Business Coaches and told him of our situation. I said we felt as if we had stagnated and didn’t know which direction to take. I wanted to get his advice and find out what he could actually do for our company.

The Business Coach said he would start by sending us some testimonial tapes of other companies that had been successful with ActionCOACH and I thought, “Oh yeah, here we go, bring out the tapes.”

I was fairly skeptical, but asked for the tapes anyway, as I was in dire straits and clutching at straws.

After receiving the tapes, I listened to them and read the literature that was sent. I must admit I was quite intrigued and hyped up after listening to these tapes. I thought they were very good. I actually rang ActionCOACH and told them had listened to them and was quite impressed and wanted to meet.

During that meeting, the ActionCOACH Business Coach sat and listened to our story, where we were going and what we actually did. I didn’t realize until after the interview that what he was actually doing was just sitting back and taking it all in to find out where we were at and where our interests lay.

The Business Coach then suggested we draw up a business plan.

This involved looking at modules over a 3, 6, 9, 12, and 18-month period (or however long it took to find out exactly where we were at in our own company). From marketing to our personal stuff, from business structures to administration – in fact, everything from start to finish, including where we should be achieving results, where we had been achieving results, where we hadn’t, and what we should actually be doing.

Even though I didn’t realize it during the first interview, I actually had a great rapport with ActionCOACH. You feel a certain bond or something with that other person and you feel they can help you achieve certain results.

We signed up with ActionCOACH, and started our first module. At the end of each week, John, Heather and I would sit down together and work through the material, page-by-page, question-by-question. After going through each one, we pooled our answers to come up with the best result. That proved successful, as we often came up with similar answers.

After completing the modules, a process that took about 9-months, we received our draft plan. We noticed that many of our goals had actually changed from the time we originally began writing them down. We had actually grown so much during those 9 months it was incredible. Our attitude had actually changed and we had a clearer picture of where we should be heading.

We were quite happy and I thought this was a bit of a success for us.

We were sent our final business plan leather-bound with a priority listing of what we needed to do. We needed to pay immediate attention to our marketing strategies – to target more private customers. That’s when our Business Coach suggested that, seeing we had completed our business plan, we should start weekly 1-hour coaching sessions whereby we’d talk over on the phone what we had actually done during the week.

Each time we talked, ActionCOACH would suggest work we needed to do to complete our goals (in our business plan) and I would ask questions.

We went through this procedure every week, and our Business Coach would come out to see us whenever he needed to. He also would come to our staff training days and spend a couple hours talking to the team. Not asking for anything extra, he truly just wanted us to succeed and to push us forward.

I’d just like to add that the Business Coach doesn’t actually do the work for you. They don’t even tell you what to do. You have to work out the answers for yourself. They’ll guide you and push you, but you’ve got to do the work. I truly believe that this way you gain a lot more knowledge than if the coach were to simply tell you what was to be done.

We had to learn to think for ourselves and work out how to do things we wouldn’t normally do.

I thought my future was going to be in optics. I could see myself moving up the corporate ladder, and this is something I wanted to do.

My brother John’s background is plumbing. He’s been a plumber all his life. He then moved into the wholesale side of the business and started a company that sold bathroom vanities, toilet suites and that sort of thing.

He spent his time wholesaling plumbing supplies to hardware stores.

Then one day this chemist said to him, “When you’re out selling your plumbing products, can you just go to hardware stores and see if you can sell my graffiti removal products?” John replied, “Oh yes, no worries.”

He took it on but nothing ever came of it.

His business struggled on for about 2 years until one day his partner left to move to Queensland, placing him in a bit of a predicament. He asked me if I would like to join him in the business. I thought about it long and hard before deciding to take a gamble. I thought if all else failed I could always go back to optics, as I’m qualified in more areas than most people and would therefore find it fairly easy to get a job.

I would give it 12-months, and if it didn’t work out, I’d revert back to my old occupation. My wife wasn’t very happy about it at all.

But I took the plunge and started selling plumbing products and hardware items. Even though our sales increased, we still had problems with our suppliers, making it difficult for us to supply our customers on a regular basis.

I began taking a closer look at the graffiti product and said, “Why don’t we try to do something with it?”

Well, eventually we began selling three products: a graffiti remover liquid spray, a graffiti remover in gel form and a sacrificial anti-graffiti protective coating.

We decided to make-up a few labels and began promoting the products to hardware stores and local councils. People were amazed as they had never really heard of anti-graffiti products before.

It started selling; hardware stores began putting it on their shelves and it was proving quite a success for us.

The only problem was, people were buying it but not re-ordering, so we wanted to find out why.

We started putting our phone number on the labels. This generated calls from people asking us to remove graffiti for them, as they still weren’t sure how to do it themselves. We also had no experience in removing graffiti ourselves. We were working out of John’s home in Epping. It was a home office set-up, which wasn’t really adequate at all. I was living at Seven Hills in Sydney’s West; John was living in Epping, in Sydney’s North.

But once people started asking us to remove their graffiti, we thought we might as well give it a go. So we bought a little pressure cleaner and we thought this was the way to go – we could make decent money by providing a service and selling our products at the same time.

We began receiving more and more phone calls from clients. I then started searching the internet and found that the Holroyd Council had put out tenders looking for someone to clean their toilets and remove graffiti. We began debating whether we should do this or not. So we thought why not, we’d take a gamble – working hand-in-hand cleaning the toilets and removing the graffiti. We were the successful tenderer.

But we didn’t know how to clean toilets either. We had an outline of what we were supposed to be doing, but we weren’t too sure.

We started working about 18-hours a day, because toilets had to be cleaned after hours. We worked these hours for 18-months, not sure where we were going.

Then one weekend we were surfing the internet and came across another tender for graffiti removal from schools and railway stations for the Department of Public Works. We tendered and made the preferred supplier listing ranked 3rd. At first, we picked up small jobs, because the other companies couldn’t deliver. Then one day the preferred supplier folded and we moved up the ladder, which enabled us to get more work.

We decided the time had come to move out of the home office and a mate of John’s, who owned a factory at Pendle Hill, asked if we would be interested in renting the rear of his factory. We went and had a look. It was dirty, run-down and had mould on the walls, so we cleaned it from head to toe. We fitted the cheapest carpet we could find, and made use of some old desks and chairs. But it was better than the home office and it was something we could call our own. The rent was very cheap; they looked after us and gave us help whenever we needed it.

After setting the office up, we applied for a central phone number, making out we were bigger than we actually were. People started taking us more seriously.

The business was growing more and more. We were still working 18-hour days, but we found with more and more work coming in, we just couldn’t handle it. We knew we had to put someone on. We “bit the bullet” and employed a friend. We gave him some training, sent him out on his way and thought we were doing fantastically well.

At about this time, my pregnant sister, Heather, had just been made redundant. She used to come in 1-day a week to answer the phones. This soon became two days a week and now she is with us full-time.

Getting back to our 18-hour work days, we worked very hard, but we enjoyed what we were doing. We knew we couldn’t go on like that for much longer, even though we had employed another person, so we decided to sub-contract out our toilet cleaning work, preferring instead to concentrate on the graffiti removal side of the business.

Work started rolling in, so we decided to employ another person, again a family member. Everything was rosy and sweet. Business was going well – in fact, it was thriving. Public Works and Holroyd Council kept giving us more and more work. We decided to employ another person, which made 3 all up. With that also came another three cars, so we had 5 people on the road, including John and myself. I was out there removing graffiti during the day and taking my paperwork home at night.

But I knew something had to give.

I decided to take myself off the tools for a couple of days each week just to concentrate on running the business and this proved quite successful.

We soon found that through working with Public Works and Holroyd Council, we began building quite a reputation for graffiti removal.

By the end of the 1999 financial year, the company actually made a net profit of $70,000.

We were stoked with that result and bought more machinery and planned to make some improvements. We diversified slightly, but still 98% of our work was contract work, which was secure. It was steady, reliable and we knew we were going to get paid.

After doing so well that year, I knew we could do even better but I didn’t know how to go about it. I didn’t know where we should be going, what we should be doing, what direction we should be taking, whether we should be taking more risks or even whether we should stay where we were.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most creative endeavors you can ever undertake.
- Brad Sugars -

The Business
Name: First Choice Protective Coatings, New South Wales, Australia
Director/Owner: Scott and John Paterson
Business Sector: Construction

The Challenge
The Paterson brothers came into this business from different routes – Scott from the world of optics and John from plumbing.

Both could be regarded as fairly typical trades-people, and neither had any real business expertise to speak of.

They did, however, have something going for them. They were enthusiastic, dedicated and hard working. And they happened to stumble across a product they believed could sell well.

After 6 good years in business, the company had reached a plateau; they didn’t know which direction to take next, and although they were doing quite well, they had reached a level where they were bogged down. Try as they might, they couldn’t seem to grow the business.

They weren’t making a profit, but they weren’t losing anything either. And like most people in business, they had aspirations. They also realized that, with their lack of resources and knowledge, they wouldn’t be able to take their business to the next level on their own.

They acknowledged that they needed professional help.

After 6 months, cashflow forecasts indicated an inventory challenge. This was tackled with new contracts put in place and “dead” stock cleared. The conversion rate was now better than 80%. A 10% increase in profit per month became our target. A new key team member was employed when an existing salesperson was promoted to General Manger, freeing up the owner. 500 people were enrolled in the VIP program.

They then secured the distribution rights for Brioni and Paul Smith suits, and introduced Made To Measure in Milan and Zegna suits. Turnover increased by 10%, with profit up 40%.

After 12-months Tim is able to go on holidays whenever he wants to. The business now only services A-grade clients and does not cater for price-shoppers or discount hunters at all.

The store has a fun, happy and professional atmosphere. Revenue (turnover) is up by 12%, and profit is up by 600%.

The business is now cashflow positive. Business systems are in place and the owner is looking at multiple outlets.

This is a result of a business owner realizing he or she needs help, and being willing to change and being held accountable.

It is a great case study in how business coaching can guide an owner to great success.

All the best.

Brad Sugars