Business Mentoring to Make Working in Your Business Optional
The way out isn't more hours or more staff. It's a higher net profit margin.
40 years in business. 1,067+ businesses mentored. Recommended by accountants.
One free call. One profit leak found. No obligation.
Have You Made Significant, Measurable Progress in the Last Six Months?
It's the question I ask owners I meet. Most can't point to any — not because they aren't working hard enough. Working hard isn't the same as progress.
Most of the businesses I'm called into have stopped growing.
The ones that are still growing have a quieter problem.
Of the hundreds of Profit & Loss statements I've been through, more than 90% show a Net Profit Margin slipping year on year — and almost none of those owners had noticed.
Income was up from last year. Profit dollars were up from last year. Everything looked good.
Growth hides it. You can grow your revenue, grow your profit, and be running a steadily less profitable business the whole time.
What you notice is a decrease in cash. It gets harder to pay bills on time.
Income is what arrives. Net profit is what's left after the bills are paid. Only one of them is yours.
Recommendation for you: Compare this year's net profit margin to last year's. It takes two minutes, and for most owners, the number isn't what they expected.
After 28 years and more than a thousand businesses, both problems come down to the same thing — and most owners have three of them at once.
The Big 5 Challenges of Business Ownership
You have no time. You work fifty to seventy hours a week, and you have to be there every day or things don't happen.
You can't hire good people — or keep them accountable once you do. The good ones cost a fortune and the rest won't take responsibility.
Cash never builds up. This is almost always a low margin problem. Cash flow challenges are the symptom of low margins.
Marketing doesn't produce leads. Despite spending money on ads and agencies. Still quoting the same price shoppers.
Achieving your goals. Not having to be there all the time — never gets closer.
That last one has a name. I've called it Business Freedom since 2007, where there's no stress, and no frustration. You are free of all of that.
You love your business and your life. And it is the only thing on this page that matters. The other four are what stand in its way.
He Was Away From His Business - For 6 Years
Clint was an electrical contractor in Townsville, working 80 hours a week with three employees. When his wife first suggested he talk to me, he said he didn't have the time.
It began with a Strategy Planning Meeting to identify his growth priorities, not his workload. That resulted in building the team. Rewriting the marketing he already had — no new spend. Sharpened how he sold his services.
His income tripled, and the business grew to ten people - one fully functioning, accountable team.
The weekly team meetings and the metrics did what they are designed to do: the business stopped needing him. He bought investment properties in a town 430km away and moved there to work on them.
A year later, he bought a motorhome and took his wife and two kids around Australia - three times. All the while, his business kept operating - without him. All thanks to the structure put in place.
He isn't the Only One
Chris Hislop, electrical contracting. Took two months off in remote Indonesia with no internet access. The business ran without him. Revenue went from $1.5M to $4M, net margin from 8% to 25%, the team from 8 to 26 — and his own week from 65 hours to 32.
Allan Baggs, Precision Powder Coating. From $18–30k a month and one employee (when we met) to twelve employees and over $2M. When he isn't there, he's with his family, fishing, or restoring motorcycles.
“The best money I've ever spent. Invest in yourself, get some freedom, because that's what you're going to get.”
“Now that I have a full time manager, I don't have to be working in my business. I choose to work in the business.”
A retail music shop owner. Six months after starting, his team were running things so well they asked him to stop coming in. So he stopped — and started a second business.
You Can't Hire Your Way Out at 5% Net Profit
Low net profit margins are one of the biggest challenges in business. It hurts cash reserves, and unfortunately, the figure decreases as income rises because overheads and expenses increase with it.
Increasing net profit margins by reducing expenses may add 1% to 3%, but when it's at 5% or under 10%, that's not enough to move it to my recommended figure — 15%, when yearly income is over $800,000.
Most owners who want out of the day-to-day management consider a manager. Someone to run it for them, but then look at what a manager costs, and look at what's left at the bottom of the Profit & Loss and realise they can't afford one.
I've been through hundreds of Profit & Loss statements. Among established service businesses turning over more than $800,000, nine in ten run on less than 10% net profit.
At 5% on a million dollars of revenue, that is $50,000 for the entire year. You cannot pay a general manager out of that.
Where most businesses are
At 5% net profit
$100,000 short of a manager.
The Freedom Goal
At 15% net profit
$150,000 left over after the manager.
Without that margin increase, you stay on the tools or in the manager role. The business stays dependent on you. And nothing changes, no matter how hard you work.
Net profit margin is the closest thing there is to a scorecard for how well a business is run. Unlike income, it is comparable to every other business in your industry.
Before I compare financial figures to anything, I adjust for the owner's wage. A $1.5 Million business paying its owner $200,000 isn't necessarily badly run if the net profit margin is low, even if it just looks that way on paper.
Put that wage back into what the manager's job would cost to fill, and the real margin appears. That's one of a few checks I carry out before deciding on the true margin and performance of the business.
Your margin isn't a vanity metric. It is the thing that buys your way out.
The Freedom Goal: Ten People, $2 Million
The point where the business earns enough to pay someone else to run it
With around ten people, seven are doing income-producing work, one or two are in admin, and one is estimating.
In Australia, that is a business near $2 million. At a 15% net margin — a minimum I aim for with most clients — that is a $300,000 net profit.
With that net profit, the business can pay a general manager $150,000 and still have profit left over.
That is the point at which working becomes optional.
Most owners have never been given a target like that. They have been told to grow, without anyone explaining what they are growing towards.
What I aim for
My minimum goal for every client is a 50% increase in net profit, or $50,000, inside twelve months.
And my aim is to be free as a cost — to increase your net profit by considerably more than you pay me.
I can't promise that, and I won't pretend otherwise: what you get depends on what you implement. But it is the standard I hold myself to, and the results further down this page are what it looks like when an owner commits.
One free call. One profit leak found. No obligation.
The Profit is Already in Your Business. It's Leaking.
Picture your business as a bucket. Leads pour in the top. And as the business grows in income, it develops inefficiencies — leaks — and every one of them takes something off your net profit.
So what do most owners do to grow?
They pour in more water. More leads, more marketing, more staff, more hours. The leaks stay exactly where they are.
And what that looks like is that the net profit margin decreases. That means less available cash, so it gets hard to pay invoices on time.
Not a great plan.
It's a common belief that increasing leads is how to grow a business. It is.
It's just not a profit-margin-increasing way. Or a profit-leak-reducing way. So sales and income increase, which means more employees are needed.
And the leaks get bigger with income growth. Your own energy to hold people accountable is 'diluted' with each additional employee.
Every hole is a profit leak you are already paying for.
What I look for are the corks. They cost nothing to put in, and once the leaks are plugged your margin rises without chasing a single extra lead.
Same lead and sales volume in. Nine of my 111 possible strategies in place. All increase profit with no marketing cost.
Six businesses that lifted their margin
Metal engineering
$6.2M income
4.8% → 9.8%
Six months, six fewer employees, and around $310,000 more in operating profit.
Benchtop manufacturing
$17,000 → $100,000+ a month in 35 weeks
15% → 28%
Gross margin nearly doubled on a price rise of about 18% — yet his income went up six times.
Fibre optic services
$757k → $1.5M income
8% → 22%
Net profit $63,000 to $330,000 — without using marketing or adding a single employee.
Vehicle radiators
$2.1M → $2.4M income
5% → 16.6%
Operating profit $106k to $404k — close to four times over.
Mortgage broking
A team of four
9.6% → 18.6%
Without hiring anyone or running a single ad.
Security sales and service
$750,000 income
−5% → 15%
Losing money, then 10% — and 15% in the final two months. Same number of staff.
Every one of them came from the same place — pricing that had never been tested, job types that had never been measured separately, and teams with no accountability structure.
Two Generations, One Business, 13.9% to 27% Net Profit
A mechanical repair business in a trade where most workshops run on single-digit margins. Every figure below comes out of their own monthly Profit & Loss.
The year before I started
13.9%
on $1.93M of income
The first full year
18.4%
on $2.27M of income
The last four months
27%
on $839K of income
The margin nearly doubled. Not one extra technical employee was hired to do it.
The owner didn't want mentoring for himself. He wanted it for his son, who had just stepped into the General Manager's chair and now had to run a business he had grown up inside.
So our focs was on the numbers rather than the workload. Gross margin by job type, so they could see which work was paying and which was quietly costing them. Metrics the son could hold a team to without standing over anyone. Pricing that had never been tested in all the years the business had been running.
Income went up by a third along the way. But income was never the point. The margin is what changed what the business could afford.
December had always been the worst month of their year.
The December before I started
−7.8%
A loss of $8,917
on $113,743 of income
The same month, two years on
34.7%
A net profit of $71,352
on $205,498 of income
Same month. Same business. Same customers. Same trade.
And it wasn't a fluke year. The December in between came in at 31.6%.
The margin got strong enough to pay for a manager. So the son hired someone to replace himself in the General Manager's role, and moved up. The business stopped consuming management capacity and started generating it.
That is the whole argument of this page, happening in one workshop, to one family.
And the reason they called me at all: the father had been a client ten years earlier.
Ten years is a long time to keep someone's phone number. It is a longer time for what you built together to still be working.
One free call. One profit leak found. No obligation.
Three Owners, Three Reasons it Wouldn't Work
Every owner has one. Here are the three I hear most, and what happened to the businesses that had them.
“A manager won't run it the way I do.”
A metal fabrication business
One business and three employees when our work started. He was the estimator, the quoter, the problem solver and the man who did the difficult jobs himself, because nobody else could be trusted with them.
He now owns two businesses, each with its own General Manager, and around twenty staff between them. He didn't find one person who runs it the way he does. He built a business that two other people can run without him.
“I can't get the people I need.”
A civil engineering company in a small country town
Six months of work had produced $387,935 of income and a net profit of eighty dollars. Not eighty thousand. Eighty.
The constraint was never demand. It was that no civil engineer would leave a capital city to work in his town, so every job was capped by the hours he and one other person could physically do.
That was solved with offshore engineers, who returned about ten times their salary cost, and one more hire in Brisbane. The next six months looked like this.
Up from $80 in the six months before.
“Will it actually show in my P & L?”
A law firm
Strategy Planning Meeting on the 9th of December. Implementation started the following week, with weekly team meetings. The goals set were $225,000 a month and a 15% net profit margin — for the year.
Both twelve-month goals were beaten within three months. The income goal was beaten by 18%, the margin goal by more than two and a half times.
A large part of that came from one decision the numbers made obvious: she was losing money on every wills and estates matter because of the outsourcing cost. That service line stopped.
The goal for the year
Her net profit went up by removing revenue.
That is not a decision anyone makes on instinct. It is only obvious once the numbers are in front of you, measured by job type, which is why the measuring comes before the strategy and not after it.
Tell me your reason it won't work. I'll tell you what I'd look at first.
I Don't Give You Advice. I Give You Proof.
If I told you to raise your prices 10%, you'd refuse. And you'd be right to — I'd be asking you to bet your revenue on my opinion.
So I don't ask you to take my word for anything.
Before a single strategy goes in, I measure. Every client gets a full management reporting system built in Airtable: gross profit, margin by job type, job-level performance, true work in progress, in real time. Then I watch what the numbers say.
They are remarkably blunt. They show which job types are quietly capping your margin. They show what your leads actually convert at. They showed one owner he was losing money on an entire service line. They show, in your own figures, where the profit is leaking.
And once you can see it, you act — fast. Not because I convinced you. Because your own numbers did.
That is also why I measure before anything changes: when you raise your prices and your conversion rate doesn't drop, you can see that it didn't. The relief is the point.
Confidence comes from evidence, not encouragement.
Where this came from
Penrith, 1999.
A general manager at Cumberland Newspapers showed me the reports he had to send Rupert Murdoch every week. Sales figures. Production figures — what the journalists actually produced. Financial figures.
That was how a man on another continent ran a business he was never inside: by numbers, weekly, without exception. Not by visiting. Not by trusting. By measuring.
It also showed me the shape of it. Every business does three things. Each has its own failure points, and each has its own metrics.
One
Gets the sale
Two
Does the work
Three
Gets paid
Get the right measures across all three and a business can be run by someone who isn't the owner. That is what the reporting system is for. It isn't bookkeeping, and it isn't reporting for its own sake — it is the instrument that lets you hand the business to a manager, or leave it running while you're not there.
I work at the coal face
I'm not an adviser who hands you a report and leaves.
I act as your marketing director and tell your web developer what to build.
I go into the admin panel and change the words myself — I've been doing on-page SEO for over 20 years.
I write the recruitment ad.
I teach your people how to sell on value.
I build the reporting system with you, live.
Most advisers can only tell you what to do. That's why their clients don't execute.
One example: hiring
Recruitment isn't my headline service. It's the problem most owners have personally failed at, repeatedly — so it's a fair test. Every result below used the same proven ad template, measured against Seek's own benchmark for similar ads.
An accounting firm that couldn't hire experienced staff
4.8× the clicks · 4× the applicants
Three experienced candidates in the first week, and the position was filled.
An IT role on the Sunshine Coast, unfilled for four years
112 candidates, against an average of 16
Four years of nothing. One ad, and the position was filled.
A boilermaker role that had never attracted good tradesmen
Filled twice over
Enough good applicants for two positions, not one.
A trade assistant
Hired in seven days
Seven days from the ad going live.
Seek's own dashboard — the Sunshine Coast IT role
An eletrical contractor
Every green figure on it is Seek comparing the ad to similar ads for the same role. The averages are printed underneath.
And one where it didn't work
A law firm client needed a senior lawyer. My ad didn't do it.
So I told her to use a recruiter — an approach neither she nor I like — and to spend the $40,000, because the net profit it would unlock was worth far more than the fee.
I'd rather tell you that than pretend the system never misses. My job is to find what works in your business, not to sell you mine.
Tell me your reason it won't work. I'll tell you what I'd look at first.
How These Results Are Achieved
Clarity Through Measurement
Most owners don’t know their real margins or one of a few.
Clients access a full management reporting system, in Airtable system that shows gross profit, job-level performance, and true WIP - in real time.
Team Development with Metrics
A weekly accountability structure is introduced where your team see their performance, own their outcomes, and becomes more autonomous while enjoying their work more.
Proven attraction + Selection System
Growing a business requires hiring more employees.
Clients receive a proven ad to attract the best candidates, 1st and 2nd stage interview questions and a personality profiling tool. This is a complete system.
Marketing Selection & Implementation
From identifying your best lead sources, what works, and what doesn't, to measuring before and after implementing the strategy.
You'll learn advanced insights as your leads and sales increase.
Each Strategy is Powerful. Combined, they are Transformational
Trusted by Accountants Who Have Seen the Net Profit Results - First Hand
Colin Gair - Principal of Wheeler Accounting - Sydney
"Tim delivers what most coaches promise but rarely produce. His strategies are timeless, practical and immediately improve team alignment, productivity and cash flow."
"Sounds unbelievable - that’s what I thought as well until I experienced it."
Ken Robertson - Principal - Nexia Accountants Brisbane
"Tim is the best adviser and business mentor I have worked with in my 30+ years in the accountancy profession.
He brings substance, systems and profit tools - not hype.
"Tim is the real thing with experience and tools that actually grow profits."
Accountable for Results
How Mentoring Results Are Measured
Business mentoring focuses on these figures...
Net Profit / Margin Increases
This is the most important figure in any business. A 5% increase on $1 Million income is a $50,000 net profit increase, and regularly is achieved with clients in months.
Every business has the potential to increase the Net Profit Margin from 3% to 32%, which clients regularly see achieved. A 3% increase is $30,000 more in Net Profit, per million dollars of revenue.
Revenue
Increased revenue seen in Profit & Loss Statements is an easy way to see financial improvement. When margins are increased first, a revenue increase significantly increases Net Profit and cash in the bank, solving cash flow issues permanently.
Hours of Working In Your Business
How many hours you work in your business is a great way to determine progress towards a fantastic lifestyle - where working at all is optional.
B2C results are best achieved with Facebook, measured by...
Business Page Likes
Page Likes for $0.90 to $2 is the goal by the second week, and is commonly achieved, to allow for cost-effective boosted posts to generate leads.
Website Visitors from Facebook PPC Ads
Visitors to business websites is a great opportunity for B2C service businesses.
Achieving that for under $1 per click/visitor is commonly seen by clients, even with a $20/day budget.
Results are seen for organic search traffic with Search Console
Organic Search Impressions
Website impressions, Seen in Google Search Console are appearances in search engine results. When impressions increase so does the number of website visitors and usually the number of leads and sales.
A 20% jump in impressions in the first month is common. This rate of increase can usually be maintained for months, unlike many SEO companies that say it takes 6 to 12 months to get results.
Organic Clicks/Website Visitors
Increasing impressions by 20% also increase website visitors, although sometimes not at the same rate. Still, 20% is a worthwhile goal to expect in the first month and beyond.
The Performance & Candidate Numbers from Seek
Marketing results are measured by...
The Number of Leads
Tracking the number of leads by lead sources every week before starting makes it easy to see results, by the numbers. This accountability ensures you're never guessing as to the value of this services.
Number and Income from Sales
By monitoring the number of leads and sales from each lead source, it then provides accurate conversion rates, the number of sales and the income from leads.
Conversion rates can be increased, commonly by 10% to 50% in one to two months with our proven strategies. The same increase in monthly income is the result.
A sequence of strategies to achieve financial goals
Breakthrough Goals Are Set
It starts with a detailed questionnaire to identify frustrations, growth limitations and growth opportunities. From that specific, breakthrough goals are achieved.
Commonly, a 50% to 300% increase in Net Profit is the goal that is set to be achieved in a 12 month or less timeframe. Often that goal is smashed with clients often seeing over 1,000% increase in Net Profit in far less than a year.
Net Profit Increase
A Net Profit increase is the primary focus of the Strategic Planning process. It is checked for increases each month with Profit & Loss Statements.
Introducing Tim Stokes
Business Mentor, Profit Multiplier, Marketer, Team Builder & Growth Strategist
Tim Stokes - Founder
SMS Tim a chat request about your business - 0422411369
Learn Strategies from Premium Quality Blog Posts
Business Mentoring FAQs
What exactly does a business mentor do?
A business mentor provides clarity, direction, and experience-based guidance to help you make better decisions and grow with fewer mistakes. They don’t run your business for you. Instead, they help you see blind spots, refine strategies, strengthen leadership, and improve profit margins by focusing on the underlying structure of the business, not just tactics.
How is business mentoring different from coaching or consulting?
Coaching focuses on personal performance and mindset. Consulting focuses on delivering expert solutions for specific problems.
Business mentoring sits in the middle. A mentor brings real-world experience, helps you build systems that scale, and teaches you how to think strategically so you become more capable, confident, and independent over time.
What types of businesses benefit most from mentoring?
Any business owner who wants to grow their business substantially, to improve margins, or reduce stress benefits greatly from mentoring. The strongest results tend to come from businesses that have grown past the early startup stage and now need structure, systems, and clearer decision-making to reach the next level without burning out the team or the owner. That said, clients from grown by over 800% to 100% in a year starting mentoring at $10,000/month income.
How long does business mentoring usually take before I see results?
It really does vary, and it depends on the business. Many businesses are not ready to grow by 50% in months, while others are. A client grew from $17,000/month income to $76,000/month income in 5 months as an example. While some clients, like a radiator service business increased net profit by $331,000 in a year, while only increasing revenue by $205,000. So growth can be about profit increase or sales, and what's needed most determines what the strategies are and how fast they can be implemented. All that said, six months can make a world of difference in terms of financial, bottom-line improvement. But results have been seen in weeks, sometimes even days.
What areas of my business can a mentor help improve?
A good mentor helps with:
• Strategy and planning
• Profit margins and pricing
• Leadership and team performance
• Marketing clarity and positioning
• Systemisation and scaling
• Recruitment solutions
• Removing bottlenecks and hidden inefficiencies
It’s not just problem-solving — it’s building a stronger, smarter structure for long-term growth, with freedom.
Do you provide marketing mentoring?
With 30+ years of hands-on marketing creation and implementation, Tim gets results fast. A secret he shares is that premium quality marketing hides in plain sight. Examples of outstanding website designs that convert visitors into sales at 6% to 8%, way above the industry averages, yet to an untrained eye, the website may not seem anything special. Converting more visitors into sales is an area where Tim excels. Without a high-converting website, it's all too easy to burn cash on advertising for little return. Check out the short video on digital marketing results on the marketing mentoring page for example results.
Got More Questions?
Why Consider Tim to Be Your Business and Marketing Mentor?
Tim Stokes is one of Australia's most experienced small business entrepreneurs, coaches and mentors. He's built six businesses over his 40+ years in business and worked with thousands of businesses in six countries- Australia, the USA, Canada, England, New Zealand and India.
He's a researcher into entrepreneurship, extreme business success and setting businesses up so that working can become optional. He has invested over $150,000 in learning from marketing experts, entrepreneurs, business gurus and legends of international business.
With over 20,000 hours of research, development and refinement of his strategies, systems, management tools and methodology, he is respected and recommended by dozens of accounting firms, who see his results in their client's financial reports.
Tim was a pioneer in the business coaching industry being one of the very first, starting in 1997 as a "pilot" franchisee. He became the "Worldwide Business Coach of the Year in 2000" with ActionCoach, the first time they created the award. ActionCoach is the largest business coaching organisation in the world.
Tim has also spoken to thousands of business owners in self-marketed seminars, webinars, workshops, and courses. He has worked one-on-one delivering business mentoring programs to businesses in all industry sectors. He is highly respected by dozens of accounting firms who have been clients or referred hundreds of their clients to his business and marketing mentoring programs.
If you want results that not just improve, but transform your quality of life, your team, your profits, and business, follow him on LinkedIn or Facebook, or talk to Tim about your business, challenges, goals and dreams.
PO Box 789 Kenmore
QLD 4069 Australia
P: +422 411 369
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