Stories

Over the years we engaged several Business Advisors/Consultants to help us build the foundations of our business. When we started up, our business grew too quickly and we felt out of our depth. We were making plenty of money, but no profit and wanted to know where we were going wrong. We needed to understand the fundamentals like pricing, cash flow, management of debtors, profit and simply when we could afford to put on an additional staff member. We needed to establish easy yet meaningful measures and transparent reporting to monitor how our business was performing.

Desperate and stressed, we signed annual contracts and paid previous advisors as much as $3000 per month to try and get answers. Instead, we got the opposite of what we asked. They insisted on us giving marketing advice, time management advice and asked us to read books of success story that weren't relevant to us. They thought they could bring their corporate experience and processes to our trade business and it just didn't work. We'd constantly asked them to provide the information that we thought we signed up for, but frankly they didn't have the answers. Worse still, they were so full of their own self-importance that they had no idea that they were getting it so wrong. We ended up more stressed and burnt out than when we started with them.

Recently, we attended a Master Plumbers series of talks called "Know your Numbers " run by Sebastian and Sam at SP Solutions, and were blown away by the depth of understanding they have about running a trade business. In a few short hours, we got the information that no one else could give us, in language that we could understand. The sessions were interactive, so we got to ask questions relevant to our business. These guys are passionate about educating tradies on how to run a successful business.

We have now taken on SP Solution as our Tax Accountants and Business Advisors, for nowhere near the cost of our previous advisors and couldn't be happier. In a few short months they have already transformed the way we run our business and held our hand through the transition. We feel confident to make decisions as we now know our numbers and we are making more profit on our jobs. We can't wait to see what happens next.

The team at SP Solutions are knowledgeable, empathetic and always available to answer our questions.

I couldn't recommend the team at SP Solutions more highly.

I recently read SP Solutions' book, The 5 Levels Of Business Ownership, and I must say I loved how they were able to explain the usual problem of spending too much time working IN your business, as opposed to working ON your business in such simple terms. The 5 levels of business ownership described in the book are very much what I'm used to seeing in the SME world, where the majority of my clients would be in the owner-manager and owner-director stages.

I will definitely pass this book on to a couple of my friends who run their own trade-based micro businesses as it is a much easier read than many other business books out there and as such, will have a much higher likelihood of actually being read by tradesmen.

I first met Sam during his time as partner of CP Partners in the late 1990's. When Sam left that partnership to establish SP Solutions in 2002, I immediately followed him as his client. Since then, Sam has been instrumental in advising me and my partners on all tax and business matters through the entire business lifecycle; from the establishment of our first venture, to the acquisition of several businesses, and finally to guiding us through a business sale process we are currently undertaking. I regularly reach out to Sam to gain his thoughts on issues of a strategic nature. His practical thinking, ability to think outside the square and easy to understand advice have contributed enormously to the success of our business.

We had been through a change in ownership structure and needed help with key decisions to adjust and keep the company moving forward. We were faced with some big challenges including meeting the need for a new, state of the art, accounting system and a workflow management system. We also needed to improve cash flow and I wanted to find someone I could trust to help our leadership team develop and execute a strategy for success.

As a first step I attended an SP Solutions workshop on improving cash flow. I was so impressed with our results that our whole leadership team completed another workshop with them, which really focussed the team and brought them together. As the relationship deepened, SP Solutions seamlessly transferred our accounting to Xero and helped us integrate a new time and cost job management platform giving us a dashboard to monitor our performance in real time. They have also helped us formulate and execute our business strategy to make sure we achieve our goals. We’ve found it really helps to work with someone who has an intimate understanding of your business.

I can now run the business remotely which delivers huge lifestyle benefits from implementing a cloud-based business solution; in particular the workflow management system and having complete visibility in terms of cash flow. This has put me in a position to invest and develop my wealth in property. Since working with SP Solutions I’m much more emotionally invested in the success of my business and have grown into a much more knowledgeable and confident owner. 

We were experiencing much slower growth than we had expected and we were lacking any clear direction on how to address this. We didn’t want to be perceived as another ‘me too’ business doing the same as everyone else, but we weren’t able to penetrate into different market areas or achieve organic growth.

SP Solutions helped us through the full process of turning things around over a period of 19 months. We started from the key foundation of strategic planning to ensure our personal goals aligned with our goals for the business. From there SP helped us create and successfully execute a plan to purchase an existing operational business within our target market segment, including guidance on due diligence, business feasibility and finance applications.

From feeling aimless with a business that was not performing to our expectations for growth we are now running not one but two successful businesses in separate markets and enjoying significant business growth in all areas. With clear direction we’re now looking forward with relish to the next five years!