Win more of your
£2,000+ referral jobs
by looking like the
safer choice.

Who this is for

We work with trades businesses across the United Kingdom. Established ones. The kind that already have work coming in, already have customers recommending them, already send out quotes most weeks — and who want to build something that lasts rather than just having a job that happens to be self-employed.

If you run a roofing company, a building company, a landscaping or groundworks firm, a painting and decorating business, an electrical contractor, a plumbing and heating business, a joinery or carpentry outfit, a plastering and rendering firm, a kitchen or bathroom fitting company, a tiling business, a bricklaying firm, a driveway and paving company, a fencing and decking business, a window and door installation company, a conservatory or orangery specialist, a loft conversion company, a garden room or outbuilding builder, a damp proofing or timber treatment firm, a tree surgery business, a scaffolding company, a flooring specialist, a stonemasonry business, a rendering or external wall insulation firm, a solar and renewables installer, an air conditioning or ventilation company, an interior fit-out or interior design business, a property maintenance company, a handyman service that's grown into something bigger, or any other trade where customers spend real money and think hard before they commit — this is written for you.

It doesn't matter whether you call yourself a builder, a contractor, a firm, a company, a business, or just your own name with "and Sons" on the side of the van. What matters is that you're sending quotes for jobs worth thousands of pounds, and that some of those quotes are going quiet.

We work with businesses turning over six figures and up. Not because smaller businesses don't deserve help — but because the thing we fix is only worth fixing if you've already got quotes going out. If nothing's leaving your quote book yet, there's nothing for us to stop leaking. Come back when there is.

Who this isn't for

If you've just gone out on your own and you're still finding your first customers, this isn't the right time. If you're chasing the cheapest job on every street, this isn't for you either — we're not going to help you win a race to the bottom, and frankly you won't like what we cost. If you want somebody to promise you fifty leads a month by Friday, there are plenty of people who'll tell you that. We're not one of them.

And we only work with one trades business per area. Two roofers in the same town can't both be the one that looks best when a customer compares them. So whoever gets there first gets it, and we turn the other one away. We've done it, and we'll do it again.

The quote that goes quiet

Here's the thing that happens to every established trades business in Britain, over and over, and almost nobody ever finds out why.

You get a call. Someone's been recommended you — a mate of a customer you did a job for last year, a neighbour, someone off a local Facebook group. They sound keen on the phone. You book in to go and have a look.

You turn up, you look at the job, you have a proper chat. You get on. You know what you're doing and they can tell. You measure up, you take some photos, you tell them roughly what you're thinking. They say it all sounds good and ask you to send something over.

So you do. You spend an evening on it after tea, because that's when quotes get written. You price it fairly. You send it across.

And then nothing.

You give it a few days. You send a follow-up: "Hi, just checking you got my quote — happy to answer any questions." Nothing. You leave it a week and try again. Maybe you ring. Straight to voicemail, or a very short conversation where they say they're "still deciding" and they'll "be in touch."

They're not still deciding. They decided a while ago.

This is the bit trades business owners describe to us on the phone every single day, in almost exactly the same words:

• "The quote's gone quiet."
• "They ghosted me."
• "Never heard back."
• "It just went dead."
• "Dead in the water."
• "They stopped answering."
• "I chased it twice, then gave up."
• "No idea what happened, it was all going so well."
• "They said they'd let me know and then just vanished."
• "I don't know if they went with someone else or the job fell through."

And then you tell yourself a story about it, because you have to tell yourself something. They went cheaper. The job fell through. Money got tight. They were never serious in the first place. Time-wasters.

Sometimes that's true. Often it isn't.

What actually happened

Anyone about to spend two, three, five, ten thousand pounds on their house does one thing before they say yes. Every time.

They look you up.

Not in a suspicious way. Not because they think you're dodgy. They do it the same way they'd check a hotel before booking a weekend away — and that's eighty quid, not eight thousand. It's automatic. They sit on the sofa with the telly on, they get their phone out, and they type your business name into Google. Or they type "roofer near me" and see who comes up. Or they search the town and the trade together.

And here's the part that costs you money: most recommendations aren't exclusive.

Whoever recommended you almost certainly gave that customer two names. Maybe three. "Try him, he did our roof. Or there's another lot my sister used." So the customer isn't just looking you up. They're looking up you and someone else, one after the other, in the same five minutes, on the same sofa.

That's the moment the job is won or lost. Not on the quote. Not on the chat in the driveway. Right there, on a phone screen, in about thirty seconds, while you're at home with no idea it's happening.

What they see

On one side, a business that looks like a real company. A Google profile with the right name and the right phone number. Forty, fifty, sixty reviews with recent dates on them. Photographs of actual finished work — not stock images, actual roofs, actual patios, actual kitchens. Replies underneath the reviews from the owner. Regular posts. A website that loads properly on a phone, tells you what they do, shows the work, and looks like somebody cared about it.

On the other side, a name and a phone number. Three reviews, the most recent from 2022. No photos. No website, or a website that hasn't been touched in six years and looks like it. Maybe the wrong phone number entirely, because nobody ever claimed the listing.

Same trade. Same town. Similar price. Both perfectly capable of doing the job well.

Who gets the job?

You already know. You'd pick the same. Everybody would.

And here's the frustrating part

The other bloke usually isn't better at the work than you. He might be worse. He might be a lot worse. His finish might be sloppy, his timekeeping might be terrible, he might leave your garden looking like a bomb site.

But when a customer is sat there comparing two businesses they've never met, they can't judge the quality of the work. They can't see the flashing detail on the roof or the way the joints line up. All they can judge is what's in front of them on the screen.

So they don't pick the better business. They pick the one that looks like the safer bet. The one that looks more established, more reliable, more like a real business that'll still exist in six months if something goes wrong.

And their brain does something you'd do too: if this lot can't be bothered to look after their own shop window, how much care are they going to take with my house?

That's the whole thing. That's the leak.

What that's actually costing you

This isn't about losing a fifty-quid callout. The jobs that go quiet like this are the good ones — because the bigger the job, the harder the customer looks you up before committing.

Rough figures for what's typically on the table when someone's comparing two businesses:

• Full re-roof or new roof — five to six thousand at the bottom end, often a great deal more on a larger property or anything with complicated detailing.
• Flat roof replacement — a few thousand upwards depending on the system and the size.
• Fascias, soffits and guttering — a couple of thousand on a standard semi, more on anything bigger.
• Full house repaint, inside — two thousand minimum, and eight thousand or more on a large family home with high ceilings and a lot of woodwork.
• Exterior decoration and render painting — several thousand once you factor in access and preparation.
• Landscaping, patios and garden transformations — two thousand at the very bottom, and considerably more on a full garden design and build.
• Block paving or resin driveways — several thousand on a typical drive, more with drainage and groundwork.
• Full house rewire — a substantial job running into several thousand.
• Extensions, loft conversions and garage conversions — the biggest domestic jobs most trades will ever quote for, running well into five figures.
• Bathroom and kitchen fits — thousands, and often the start of a longer relationship with that household.
• Boiler installation and heating system work — thousands, and repeat servicing after that.
• Bespoke joinery, staircases and fitted furniture — thousands, with customers who research heavily before they choose.

Now be honest with yourself. In the last twelve months, how many quotes have gone quiet where you genuinely thought the customer was keen?

One? Two? More?

Even if it's just two, at a couple of thousand a job, that's four thousand pounds. Gone. Not because your work isn't good enough. Not because your price was wrong. Because of how you looked in a thirty-second search you never knew was happening.

And two thousand is the floor. Plenty of the quotes going quiet on you are the five, eight, fifteen thousand pound jobs — because the bigger the number, the harder that customer looks you up before they commit. Lose one full re-roof, one extension, one full garden, and you're not talking about four grand any more.

But here's the question that actually matters, and it's the one nobody wants to sit with.

Is it really twice a year?

Think about how many quotes actually leave your book in a month. Now think about how many of those you never hear another word about. Not the ones who ring back and say they've gone elsewhere — the ones that just go silent. Be honest. Is that genuinely a once-every-six-months event?

Or is it closer to one a month?

Because if it's one a month, that's not four thousand pounds a year. At two grand a job that's twenty-four thousand. If some of those were the bigger jobs, it's a good deal more than that. And that's every year, running quietly in the background, for as long as you've been trading.

Go back five years and do that sum. That's the number that should make you feel sick.

You can't get any of it back. But you can stop the next one.

Where we work

Anywhere in the United Kingdom. The problem is identical whether you're a roofer in Dorset, a decorator in Manchester, a landscaper in the Midlands, a joiner in Surrey, an electrician in Yorkshire, a builder in Kent, a plasterer in South Wales, a groundworker in Essex, a kitchen fitter in Lancashire, a heating engineer in Hampshire, a tiler in Bristol, or a bricklayer in County Durham.

Customers everywhere do the same thing. They get a recommendation, they look up two businesses, and they pick the one that looks safer. Village, market town, suburb, city — it makes no difference. If anything, the smaller the area, the more it matters, because there are fewer businesses to compare and the gap between them shows up more clearly.

The one-business-per-area rule is exactly what it says. If we're already working with a roofer in your town, we won't take on another one. That's not a scarcity tactic invented for a sales page — it's the only way the thing works. We can't make two competing businesses both look like the obvious choice.

The jobs this matters most for

It matters more the bigger the job, because the bigger the job the harder the customer looks. Here's the sort of work we're talking about, trade by trade.

Roofing

Full re-roofs and new roofs. Stripping and re-covering. Pitched roofs, tiling and slating, natural slate, concrete tile, clay tile. Flat roofs in EPDM rubber, GRP fibreglass, felt and torch-on. Leadwork, valleys, flashing, chimney stacks and repointing. Ridge tiles and re-bedding. Fascias, soffits, guttering and downpipes. Dormers, velux installation, roof windows. Storm damage and leak repairs, moss removal, roof cleaning. Insurance work. Commercial and industrial roofing, warehouse roofs, box gutters.

Building and groundworks

Single and double storey extensions, rear extensions, side returns, wrap-arounds. Loft conversions — dormer, hip to gable, velux, mansard. Garage conversions and outbuilding conversions. Full house renovations and refurbishments. Barn conversions and period property work. New builds. Structural work, steel beams and RSJs, load bearing walls, underpinning. Foundations, footings, groundworks, drainage, soakaways. Basement and cellar conversions. Knock-throughs and open plan reconfigurations. Party wall work. Building regs and building control sign-off.

Landscaping and outdoor

Full garden design and build. Patios in Indian sandstone, porcelain, limestone, natural stone. Block paving, resin bound and resin bonded driveways, tarmac, gravel drives, dropped kerbs. Turfing and artificial grass. Fencing, closeboard, feather edge, panels, posts and gates. Decking, composite decking, raised decking. Retaining walls, sleeper beds, planters. Sleepers, steps, pathways. Garden lighting and outdoor sockets. Ponds and water features. Tree surgery, felling, crown reduction, stump grinding, hedge cutting. Groundworks and levelling. Garden rooms, offices, summerhouses and outbuildings. Driveway and patio cleaning, sealing and restoration.

Painting and decorating

Full house repaints inside and out. Interior decorating, walls, ceilings, woodwork, skirting, architrave, doors and frames. Wallpapering and feature walls. Spray painting, airless spraying, kitchen respraying, staircase spraying. Exterior decorating, render painting, masonry paint, pebbledash, weatherboarding. Sash windows and timber restoration. Coving and cornice. Preparation, filling, sanding, stain blocking, damp stain treatment. New build snagging and finishing. Commercial decorating, offices, schools, landlords and letting agents. Communal areas and blocks of flats.

Electrical

Full and partial rewires. Consumer unit and fuse board upgrades. EICR reports, landlord certificates, periodic inspections. Fault finding. Additional sockets and lighting circuits. Lighting design, downlights, LED, feature and garden lighting. EV charger installation. Solar PV and battery storage. Smart home, networking and data cabling. Kitchen and bathroom electrics. Outbuilding and garden office supplies, armoured cable. Fire alarms, emergency lighting, CCTV, security systems, alarms. Commercial and industrial installation, three phase, distribution boards, testing and inspection. Part P notification.

Plumbing and heating

Boiler installation, replacement, servicing and repair. Combi conversions, system boilers, unvented cylinders. Full central heating installs, radiators, TRVs, pipework. Underfloor heating, wet and electric. Power flushing and system cleaning. Air source heat pumps, ground source, renewables and grant work. Full bathroom installation, wet rooms, en suites, downstairs WCs. Showers, pumps, mixers, electric showers. Kitchen plumbing, waste and appliances. Leaks, burst pipes, blockages, drainage. Gas safety certificates, landlord gas safety records, Gas Safe registered work. Commercial plumbing and maintenance.

Carpentry and joinery

Bespoke fitted kitchens and kitchen fitting. Fitted wardrobes, alcove units, media walls, home offices, understairs storage. Staircases, spindles, handrails, newel posts, staircase renovation. Bespoke furniture, tables, shelving, bookcases. First fix and second fix carpentry. Doors, internal and external, hanging, frames, linings, architrave and skirting. Timber flooring, engineered wood, parquet, laminate and LVT. Stud walls and partitions. Roof carpentry, joists, trusses, flat roof decks. Garden joinery, gates, pergolas, sheds, bin stores. Period property joinery, sash windows, panelling, restoration and heritage work.

Plastering, rendering and finishes

Skimming and re-skimming. Plasterboarding, dot and dab, overboarding. Ceilings, artex removal and covering. Coving, cornice and decorative mouldings. Float and set, bonding, hardwall. Rendering, sand and cement, monocouche, K-Rend, silicone render. External wall insulation. Pebbledash and roughcast. Lime plaster and heritage work. Screeding and floor levelling. Damp proofing, tanking, injection DPC, basement waterproofing. Wet and dry rot and timber treatment.

Kitchens, bathrooms and tiling

Full kitchen supply and fit. Kitchen refurbishment, door and worktop replacement. Worktops in quartz, granite, laminate and solid wood. Full bathroom design and installation. Wet rooms and level access showers. Tiling, floor and wall, large format, mosaic, natural stone, porcelain. Underfloor heating under tile. Splashbacks and feature tiling. Bathroom and kitchen waterproofing and tanking. Grouting, sealing and regrouting. Commercial tiling.

Brickwork, stone and structure

Bricklaying, blockwork, garden walls, boundary walls, piers. Repointing and tuckpointing. Brick matching and restoration. Stonemasonry, natural stone walling, stone cills and lintels, cut stone. Chimney rebuilds and repointing. Cavity wall work, lintels, arches, openings. Structural repairs, crack stitching, helibar, wall tie replacement. Retaining walls and engineered structures. Heritage and listed building work, lime mortar.

Windows, doors and glazing

uPVC, aluminium and timber windows. Double and triple glazing, sealed unit replacement, misted glass. Bifold doors, sliding doors, patio doors, French doors. Composite front doors, security doors. Conservatories, orangeries and conservatory roof replacement. Roof lanterns and skylights. Sash window installation and restoration. Shopfronts and commercial glazing. Secondary glazing and heritage windows.

And everything alongside it

Scaffolding, access towers and edge protection. Skip hire and waste clearance. Property maintenance and handyman work, the odd jobs that turn into big ones. Flooring supply and fit. Guttering and fascia cleaning. Pressure washing. Insulation, loft and cavity. Asbestos removal and surveys. Pest and preventative work. Interior design and fit-out. Snagging and remedial work. Insurance and reinstatement work. Landlord, letting agent and property management contracts. Commercial fit-out, offices, retail units, pubs, restaurants and schools.

Every one of those is a job somebody is comparing two businesses for. Every one of those quotes is going out to a customer who's going to look you up before they say yes.

What we actually do

Most people you hear from when it comes to "marketing" want to sell you leads. That's the whole industry. Fill your diary, mate. We'll get you twenty enquiries a month.

We do something different, and it's worth being clear about it, because it's the reason this works.

We fix how you look at the exact moment a customer is deciding between you and someone else. That's it. That's the first job. Everything else comes after.

The website

A proper website. Not a template with a stock photo of somebody else's roof on it. Your business, your trade, your area, your actual work.

It needs to do one thing above everything else: make a stranger who's holding your quote feel comfortable. That means it loads fast on a phone, because that's where they're looking at it. It means your phone number is obvious and tappable. It means there are photographs of jobs you've genuinely done. It means it says what you do and where you do it in plain English. It means it doesn't look like it was built in 2011 and abandoned.

We build it, we host it, and we keep it updated. When you finish a job you're proud of, the photos go on. When you add a service, the site gets a page for it. You don't have to learn anything, log into anything, or fiddle with anything.

The Google Business Profile

This is the bit most trades have never touched, and it's the single most important thing on this page.

Your Google Business Profile is what comes up when somebody searches your business name, or your trade and your town. It's the box on the right on a computer, and the map listing with the reviews on a phone. Most people just call it "the Google thing," or "my listing," or "my online," and most trades business owners have never logged into it in their lives. A lot were set up years ago and never touched again — so the number on there is an old one, or the hours are wrong, or half of it was never filled in.

We build it out properly. Correct business name. Correct phone number. Correct opening hours. Correct service area. The right categories so you show up for the right work. A description that reads like a real business wrote it. Your services listed out. Your website linked to it, which matters more than most people realise, because Google treats the two as evidence of each other.

The heartbeat

And then — this is the part that actually separates a live business from a dead listing — we keep it alive.

Every week, we're generating new reviews from your happy customers. Honestly. We ask the people you've done good work for, and we make it easy for them to leave a review.

We reply to reviews, because a profile where the owner responds looks like a business that's paying attention, and a profile where fifty reviews sit there unanswered looks abandoned.

We upload photographs of your work. Before and afters. Finished jobs. Progress shots. The stuff you've got on your phone that never goes anywhere.

We post to the profile regularly. Jobs completed, areas covered, services offered, seasonal work.

All of that activity is a pulse. A customer looking at it sees a business that's busy, active, and cared for. And over time, Google sees it too — because Google's whole job is working out which businesses are real and active and which ones are ghosts.

What that means for you, in order

First: the very next customer who Googles you sees a real business instead of a name and a number. You start winning quotes you're currently losing. That's the four grand back. That starts from the next quote you send after we've set you up — not in six months.

Then, over the following three to six months: all that activity starts pushing you up in the local results, and Google begins putting you in front of people who were never recommended to you at all. New enquiries, on top, from strangers.

That second bit is the bonus. It's real, and it's very good when it lands, but it isn't the pitch. The pitch is the money you're already losing.

What this looked like for Jonathan

Jonathan runs a handyman and painting and decorating business in Surrey. Knows his trade. Plenty of work coming through word of mouth. Well liked by his customers.

When we started, his Google profile had one review on it. No photographs. His business name and a phone number — and the phone number was wrong.

Think about that for a second. Every single person who was recommended him, went to look him up, and found that listing, was looking at a phone number that didn't reach him.

Here's what we did.

We corrected the name. We corrected the phone number. We built him a website and linked it properly to the profile. We added photographs — real ones, specific ones, before-and-afters of actual jobs. We added a video testimonial from one of his customers. We started generating new reviews to the profile every week. We started posting to the profile. And we kept building out the website alongside it, so the two matched and grew together, with updates going on constantly rather than being built once and left.

What happened

The first thing was the credibility. People who were already being recommended him now had something to find when they looked. Instead of a wrong phone number and a single review, they found a business that clearly existed and clearly did good work. He started winning more of the jobs he was already quoting for.

The second thing took a little longer and was, in his words, the thing he'd always wanted. Enquiries started coming in from Google itself. From people who'd never heard his name from anyone.

By three or four months in, that was running at roughly one enquiry every three or four days. Six or seven months in, it's fifteen to twenty enquiries a month.

He'd also come back to us and asked whether we could make those enquiries more reliable — he didn't want the odd one here and there, he wanted a steady flow he could count on. That became a further piece of work, and it's what got him from sporadic to consistent.

The bit he actually talks about

What Jonathan mentions most isn't the number. It's what the number does to how he feels.

He's told us it gives him peace of mind. When word of mouth goes quiet — and it does, every trade has quiet spells — he's no longer sat there worrying about it, because there's work coming in from the profile regardless. He's got enough coming through that he can pick and choose rather than take whatever turns up.

He's also said the enquiries are the right sort. Ceilings, decorating, the work he actually wants. And some of them are small jobs — the kind of thing he can slot into a spare day between bigger pieces of work, which he described as invaluable. In his experience, those small jobs have a habit of turning into bigger ones, and into repeat customers who come back the following year.

He's said we've re-established his business outside London. And he's mentioned that other agencies have tried to sell him the same service since, and got nowhere.

And a roofer in Dorset

Same story, different trade, different end of the country.

We built the website and built out the Google profile. First thing that happened was exactly what happens every time — he started winning more of the jobs he was already quoting for, purely on the strength of how the business looked when customers checked him out.

Then the enquiries started arriving from the profile itself.

That one's still building, and we're scaling it. Watch this space.

Things people say to us on the phone

We've had a lot of these conversations. Here are the ones that come up most, and honest answers to them.

"I don't need it — all my work's word of mouth."

That's exactly why you need it. This isn't about replacing word of mouth. It's about not losing the word of mouth you've already earned.

Every recommendation you get is a warm lead — the warmest there is. Someone's already told them you're good. And then, before they ring you, they look you up. If what they find doesn't back up what they've been told, the recommendation quietly leaks away and you never even know it happened.

Word of mouth is your best asset. We're stopping you throwing chunks of it away.

"I'm booked up till March, I don't need more work."

Two things.

First, being booked up isn't the same as being booked up with the right work. When you're winning more of the jobs you quote for, you get to be pickier. Better jobs, better margins, less driving, less messing about.

Second — and this is the one nobody wants to hear — the time to build this is exactly when things are good. Not when the phone's stopped ringing and you're worrying about money. When you're comfortable. Because it takes a few months to properly take hold, and if you wait until it's bad, you've got a stressful three-month wait in front of you at the worst possible time.

The wrong time to put a roof on is when it's already raining. Best to do it when you're not in the middle of a massive problem.

"I've had a website before, it was a waste of money."

Probably was. Most trade websites are.

Somebody built you a site, took the money, and vanished. It sat there doing nothing, because a website on its own does nothing. Nobody's searching for it, nothing links to it, nothing points at it, nothing on it ever changes.

That's the difference here. The website isn't the product. The website is one part of a shop window that also includes a properly built Google profile and — this is the actual work — somebody feeding it every single week. Reviews, photos, posts, updates. That's what makes it do anything.

A website nobody maintains is a business card you paid too much for. That's not what this is.

"There are so many people trying to sell me stuff."

There are. You probably get rung three times a week by somebody promising leads.

Fair enough. All we'd say is: we're not selling leads. We're not promising to fill your diary. We're fixing the specific thing that's costing you jobs you've already won and don't know you've lost. That's a narrower claim and an easier one to check — because you'll see it in the quotes that start converting.

"Not sure it's worth the money."

Do the maths on one job.

Not ten jobs. One. If this stops one two-thousand-pound quote going quiet over the course of a year, it's paid for itself several times over and the rest is profit. And it isn't one — for most businesses we speak to it's two, three, four a year that go quiet on them.

That's before any of the new enquiries that come in later.

"Something else would be a better investment right now."

Might be. New van, new tools, another lad, a bit of plant.

The difference is that a new van doesn't win you jobs. It helps you deliver the jobs you've already won. This sits further up the chain — it decides whether you win them in the first place. And it keeps working every week without you doing anything.

"I'll think about it."

This is the honest one, and we'll be honest back.

Most people who say this already know it works. They're not confused about the value. They just don't want to make a decision and spend money today, because things aren't bad enough today to force it.

That's completely human and we understand it. But nothing changes while you think about it. The quotes keep going out, the customers keep looking you up, and the same thing keeps happening. Every month you wait is another month of the leak running.

And there's one other thing: we only take one business per area. Wait, and you may find you've lost the chance permanently in six months — the decision gets made for you.

We know what your week actually looks like

Seven o'clock starts. Sometimes earlier, depending on the drive and the traffic.

Quoting in the evening, after tea, when you'd rather be doing anything else. Quoting during the day too, squeezed in between jobs, sitting in the van with a notepad.

Chasing invoices. Sending the invoice, waiting, sending it again, ringing up, being told the cheque's coming, waiting some more. And the same customers who go quiet on your quotes go quiet on your invoices — and then wonder why trades businesses ask for money up front.

Lads not turning up. The van in the garage again. Materials delivered late, or delivered wrong, or delivered to the wrong address. Weather that's too hot to be on a roof and too wet to render, and the job still has to get done because the customer's booked time off work for it.

Scaffolding that's not up when it should be. Skips that don't arrive. Building control. Somebody's dog. Somebody's neighbour.

And then, on top of all that, you're supposed to somehow also be doing marketing. Sitting down of an evening to write a Google post, or work out how to ask a customer for a review without it feeling awkward, or find out why your website says you're closed on Saturdays when you're not.

You're not going to do it. Nobody in your position does it. Not because you're lazy — because you're already working eleven hours a day.

That's the actual reason this gets outsourced. Not because it's complicated. Because it needs doing every week, forever, and you've got a job.

Getting off the tools

Most people who run a trades business are still on the tools. Most would like, eventually, not to be — or at least to have the choice.

The thing that stops it isn't ambition and it isn't ability. It's that you can't step back from the tools until the work coming in is predictable. If the diary depends on referrals arriving at the right moment, you can't hire, you can't plan, and you certainly can't take a fortnight off.

The way that actually changes is in two stages, and they happen in this order.

Stage one: you stop losing the jobs you're already quoting for. You're not getting more enquiries yet — you're just converting more of the ones you get. Same effort, same diesel, same evenings spent quoting, more jobs won. That's the fastest money in this whole thing and it starts from the next quote you send.

Stage two: the profile starts generating enquiries on its own. That's the bit that becomes predictable, because it isn't dependent on who happened to recommend you this month. It builds. It compounds. It keeps going.

And once the work coming in is predictable, everything else becomes possible. You can hire properly. You can turn down the jobs you don't want. You can plan more than three weeks ahead. You can take a holiday without the diary emptying out behind you.

That's the honest version of "get off the tools." Not a course, not a mindset, not a system in a box. A steady enough flow of work that you're not the only thing holding it together.

And most of it comes down to something surprisingly small: winning one more job a month than you're winning now.

Questions we get asked

Do I have to do anything?

Send us photos when you finish a job you're proud of, and tell us when a customer's been particularly happy so we can ask them for a review. That's genuinely it. Everything else is us.

Do I need to know anything about computers?

No. Most of our clients don't, and it's never been a problem. You won't be logging into anything or learning any software.

I already have a website. Is it wasted?

We'll look at it on the call and tell you honestly. Sometimes there's something worth keeping. Usually it's quicker and better to build fresh, because most trade sites weren't built to do the job we need them to do.

What if I don't have many photos of my work?

Everyone says this and everyone's phone is full of them. Have a look. And going forward, we'll tell you exactly what to snap and when — it takes about ten seconds at the end of a job.

How do you get reviews?

We ask your customers, properly and honestly, at the right moment, and we make it as easy as possible for them to leave one.

Happy customers leave reviews when you ask them and make it easy. Most trades business owners never ask, or ask once and forget, which is why most trades profiles have four reviews and two of them are from 2019.

How long before it does anything?

Two different answers, because there are two different things happening.

Looking like a real business when a customer checks you out — immediately. From the next quote you send after we've set you up.

Google sending you new enquiries from strangers — three to six months, building from there. It's not instant and we won't pretend otherwise.

What if I don't like the website?

You'll see it before you've committed to anything. If you book a call, we build you a design first, and we go through it together on the call and change whatever you want — colours, photos, wording, layout. You're not booking a sales call, you're booking the first look at your own website.

Do you work with more than one business in my town?

No. One trades business per area. If we've already got someone in your patch doing what you do, we'll tell you on the call.

What does it cost?

We go through that on the call, once we've both worked out whether it's a fit. What we'll say up front is that this isn't a few quid a month for a website builder — it's priced for businesses that lose more than it costs every time a quote goes quiet.

Am I too small for this?

If you're already sending quotes and getting recommendations, no. If you're just starting out and the phone isn't ringing yet, there's nothing here for us to multiply, and we'd be taking your money for something you're not ready for.

"The Google thing"

That's what most of the trades business owners we speak to call it. The Google thing. Or "my listing." Or "my online." Hardly anybody knows the proper name for it and there's no reason they should — knowing what it's called has never helped anybody get a roof on.

So here's what it actually is, in plain terms.

When somebody types your business name into Google, or types your trade and their town, a box comes up with your name, your phone number, your opening hours, your reviews, some photos and a pin on a map. That box is the Google thing. It's usually the first thing a customer sees about you, and very often it's the only thing they look at before deciding whether to ring you.

Most trades have never logged into it. Plenty set one up years ago and never touched it again — so the number on there is an old one, the opening hours say you're shut on a Saturday when you're not, or half of it was never filled in at all.

And a customer looking at that doesn't think "they've been too busy to update it." They think something's off. Why's the information wrong? Why's half of it blank? How you do one thing is how you do everything — so they go elsewhere.

That's worth sitting with for a second. If the number's wrong, every person who's ever been recommended you, gone to look you up, and tried to ring — didn't reach you. And you'd have no way of knowing. That's exactly the state Jonathan's was in.

What actually matters on it

How many reviews you've got, and how recent they are. Both count. Sixty reviews where the newest one is from three years ago looks worse to a customer than twenty that are all from this year — because one says "this was a busy business once" and the other says "this is a busy business now."

Whether you reply to them. Takes ten seconds. A profile where the owner writes back under every review looks like somebody's paying attention. Fifty reviews sat there with no response looks abandoned. Almost no trades business does this.

Photos of actual work. Not stock pictures. Your roofs, your patios, your kitchens, your before-and-afters. This is the single biggest thing that separates a listing that looks real from one that looks like a placeholder.

Whether anything ever happens on it. Regular updates — jobs finished, services offered, areas covered. A profile that hasn't been touched since 2021 reads like a business that might not exist any more.

Whether it's joined up with your website. The two should point at each other. It's one of the basics and a surprising number of trades businesses don't have it.

And one more thing about the website

Nearly everybody looking you up is doing it on a phone. Evening, sofa, telly on. So the site has to work properly on a phone above everything else — load fast, be readable without pinching and zooming, and have your number right there where they can tap it.

If it takes too long to load, or it looks like it was built years ago, or it doesn't tell them what they want to know within a few seconds, they're gone. Back to the search results, on to the other business. That's the whole decision, and it happens in about as long as it takes to boil a kettle.

The short version

You're losing jobs you've already won.

Not to better businesses. To businesses that look safer for thirty seconds on a phone screen, at the exact moment a customer is choosing between you and them.

You don't see it happen, nobody rings to tell you, and you'll never know which ones they were.

We fix how you look at that moment — proper website, proper Google profile, and somebody feeding it every week so it stays alive. You start winning more of the quotes you're already sending, from the very next one. And a few months down the line, Google starts sending you people who never heard your name from anyone.

One trades business per area.

If that sounds like it's worth twenty minutes of your time, the calendar's further up this page.