Trade Contractor Operating System
Twelve months from now, your business runs without you carrying it.
I'm Peter Wesley. I've run trade contracting businesses up to $100M — and I've made most of the mistakes you're making right now. TCOS is the operating system I coach into electrical, plumbing, HVAC and civil contractors doing $100K–$500K a month. It starts with one move: Pipeline First.
5 minutes, 30 questions, you get a full report naming your constraint AND the pathway out.
Real client results from the last twelve months: $1.2M net profit at a $9M electrical contractor · a –$84K month turned into three straight positives · 12 GP points recovered in four weeks.
FY26 net profit, ahead of forecast — $9M commercial electrical contractor, rhythm installed 3.5 months earlier
Monthly profit swing, then +$48K and +$61K in consecutive months — $2.6M electrical contractor
Real gross profit on priced work within about four weeks — $2.9M Melbourne electrical contractor
Open jobs cleaned up in ten days — the cleanup that makes real job costing possible
Client-reported figures from coaching records, July 2025 – July 2026. Not audited. Not cherry-picked from a decade ago.
Who you're dealing with
I'm not a marketing guy who found tradies. I'm a contracting guy who found the numbers.
I spent decades inside trade contracting businesses — from founding my own Electrical and Plumbing business to COO of a $100M+ contracting business. Before that I navigated warships for a living, which turns out to be useful training. I then had a 8 year career in accounting and finance where I learnt the numbers before getting into contracting.
I've carried payroll on a credit card. I've priced work too cheap and worked hard all year to lose money. I've made millions and generated millions of recurring B2B work. The real learning didn't come from the wins — it came from the mistakes I made, and from watching good operators make the same ones over and over.
Now I run TCOS — the Trade Contractor Operating System — for owners doing $100K–$600K a month. We work inside your actual SimPro and Xero, not a slide deck. One constraint at a time, one system per quarter.
Simple is not easy. But it is simple.
The problem you actually have
You didn't build a business. You built a job that owns you.
A crew to keep busy. Work in waves — feast, then famine. Every quote, every hire, every hard decision still lands on you. Sound familiar? It's one of three leaks — and usually you're springing more than one.
Demand leak
Pipeline is thin, lumpy, or depends entirely on you. Marketing and sales are the choke point.
Delivery leak
Work comes in, but the systems live in people's heads. Gross profit per crew per week is invisible.
Engine leak
Numbers are six weeks stale, your own wage is a plug figure, and cash is always a story about last month.
Why Pipeline First
Everyone says fix your leadership. Fix your team. Fix your systems.
None of it matters until demand is predictable. The pipeline pays for everything else — fix the pipeline first, and every other fix suddenly gets affordable.
That's not a slogan, it's a sequence. You can't hire your way out of a demand problem, and you can't system your way out of an empty order book. Get the work predictable, then fix delivery, then fix the engine. In that order.
Owners who did it
Results from the last twelve months. Real businesses, real numbers.
Names withheld until each client signs off — but every figure below comes straight out of coaching records and meeting transcripts, most of them read off the client's own dashboard.
$1.2M net profit in FY26, ahead of forecast — with the weekly rhythm installed only 3.5 months earlier.
Winning tenders at 8–12% GP, 60% dependent on one builder, the MD stuck in operations. Four months in: weekly financial rhythm, a margin floor at quote, three new builders signed, and a $14M forward pipeline.
"We didn't really do any forecasting in the past… now they can see what we're aiming for… Really helpful. Yeah, really helpful."
From a –$84K month to +$90K, +$48K, +$61K in consecutive months.
Started at roughly 1% net profit with builder pricing that hadn't kept pace with costs. One six-week cycle: rates lifted, a material levy introduced, true labour costs loaded into SimPro. Gross margin now running 33–34%.
"It was just [an] absolute game changer… it showed us what we need to be charging, how we need to be charging, where the cracks were."
Real GP lifted from 22.5% to ~28% on priced work — in about four weeks.
SimPro was overstating gross profit by five points, and one mega-job was dragging the whole year negative. Within a month: true labour costs loaded, a 25% margin floor on jobs over $50K, and the profit planner in daily use. Your software might be lying to you about your margins too.
"My first point of call is this profit plan — to get this thing up and running and on the server… so we can all have a dabble and make sure we're all involved."
Most profitable month on record, six months into coaching — with an ops manager now running the day-to-day.
Joined with messy job lists, invoicing delays and labour costs overstated by about $10K a month in SimPro. Six months later: systems cleaned up, GP holding 45–50% without discounting, and the owner preparing to take a holiday while the team runs the business.
"Biggest month ever."
Every client above had the same first fix: labour mis-costed in their job system. If your SimPro says one number and your Xero says another, that gap is where your profit is hiding.
The plan
Three phases. One system per quarter. Twelve months.
Stop the bleeding
Get the numbers current. Name the true constraint. Kill the work that loses you money — the quickest way to make money is to stop doing the things that lose it.
Fix the bottlenecks
Rebuild the operating system — sales, delivery, cash — one system per quarter. Break-even known. Margin floor enforced at quote. A weekly rhythm the team actually runs.
Build the business that runs without you
A-players in the critical seats. You stepping off the tools, then off the calls. The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle — so we move the bottleneck.
Twelve months from now
The pipeline runs without you posting on it. The crew runs the job without you on-site. The numbers land on your desk on the 3rd of the month, and they're right. You take Friday off and nothing breaks.
Fair warning — there's a price. It's weekly work, it's your real numbers on the table, and some of what we find won't be flattering. Not everyone wants to pay that price.
A business that runs without you carrying it.
Where are you at?
Two ways in. Pick the one that fits.
Not sure where the leak is?
Take the Scorecard — free, 5 minutes, 30 questions. You get a report that names your constraint and what to fix first.
Take the ScorecardWant me to find the exact dollars?
Book the Business Audit — I go through your SimPro and Xero live with you, 60 minutes, founder-only. We usually find the leak in the first half hour.
Book the AuditReady to talk?
Book a gameplan call and we'll map your next 90 days. No pitch deck, no pressure — just your numbers and a plan.
Book a callAn honest word before you click. If you're after a silver bullet, I'm not your bloke. TCOS works because you do the work — weekly, on your real numbers, one system at a time. If that's not where you're at right now, take the Scorecard anyway, keep the report, and come back when you're ready. No hard feelings either way.