Seven years of mentoring trade and service businesses through Business Mentors New Zealand and the same challenges arrive over and over, from a tiler, a plasterer, a professional designer, a mechanic. None of them are bookkeeping problems. All of them are a fair use of two hours. This session is the open one: less structured than the other threads, a journey of exploration and problem solving, built around your North Star.
The North Star — the one thing the business is aiming at, so the decisions in between get easier.
This thread is broader than the other five. We are not fixing one job or one report, we are framing the business so the smaller decisions get easier. It suits an owner who is not sure where to start and equally an owner who already thinks in systems and just wants the framing.
The one thing the business is aiming at, written in your words: what good work looks like and feels like for you, your staff and your customers. Every decision after that has something to be measured against.
We go over the terms in the Kaizen glossary, waste, flow, 5S, the five whys, so you can name what you are seeing. Without the vocabulary you cannot have the thinking.
Most likely we will talk about you. Which decisions and admin route through you that never should have, who could take them and what has to be written down first so delegation actually holds.
How an owner of a small crew grows a culture: staff meetings that surface problems, training that gets used, people bringing initiative instead of waiting. Problem solving as the habit of the business, not just the owner.
Illustrations of the kind of work that happens in this thread, described by trade. Free mentoring through Business Mentors NZ is confidential, so these are examples, not case studies.
The business builds its North Star around what good work looks and feels like, on site and in the office. The next three decisions, a hire, a bigger job, new software, get tested against it instead of argued about.
A short weekly staff meeting and a simple training rhythm are built so the staff raise problems early and bring their own fixes. The owner stops being the only one who notices things.
The owner is the bottleneck. The easy tasks that can come off the plate are identified, a simple framework is built for them to be done by someone else with reporting back to the owner, and the foundation for delegation is set.
This is the exploring thread in the truest sense: a journey of problem solving and growing your culture through small leadership. Broad and open on purpose, it plants ideas and gives the rest of Exploring Tradie somewhere to point.
I am inside trade workflows every day as a bookkeeper and I build and use AI on them. That is the only way to know where a small trade business gains from the new ways of working and where it does not, you have to be on the ground using it. So Exploring Tradie has no prescription. We explore, one piece at a time and keep what works.
Volunteer mentor with Business Mentors New Zealand for seven years. Handouts on this thread are coming, free.
Try this. Ask your own AI about me. Download the briefing pack and ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini can talk you through what I do, what it costs and whether I am a fit for your business.
Download the AI briefing packTell me what is bugging you this month and we will spend two hours on it.
Book a session