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Most tradespeople who start their own business do it the same way. They leave a job, or a job leaves them. They have tools, a truck, a skill that people will pay for, and a phone number. They start taking calls. The first few jobs come from people they know. Word spreads. The phone keeps ringing. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, they realize that running a business is a completely different thing from being good at a trade; and nobody told them what to do about it.

A mobile heavy duty mechanic in the Fraser Valley had been running his own operation for six years. Four employees. Four fully equipped service trucks on the road every day. Steady contracts with construction and agricultural equipment operators across Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and the surrounding area. From the outside it looked like exactly what a successful trades business is supposed to look like. At the end of year five his accountant showed him the net. It did not match t

A drywall contractor in Surrey had no shortage of work. His phone rang consistently. He did good work. Clients were generally happy. But the same problems kept showing up, job after job, year after year. Clients called him to ask when he was starting instead of the other way around. Quotes went out and then sat in silence because he never had a follow-up system. Jobs started without a deposit being collected because the conversation never naturally arrived there. Invoices wen

A tile setter in Burnaby has been running his own business for four years. His work is meticulous. His clients are consistently happy. At the end of almost every job, someone says some version of the same thing: "I am going to tell everyone I know about you." He has twenty-two Google reviews. Seven of them are from the first year. The last three arrived over eight months ago. The clients who said they would tell everyone mostly did. Some of them told neighbours and colleagues

A North Vancouver roofer with eleven years in business and a spotless reputation lost a $14,000 re-roof job to a competitor he had never heard of. He found out because the homeowner mentioned it in passing three weeks later when they crossed paths at the supply house. The other company had been operating for two years. Their work was average. Their price was similar. But when the homeowner searched "roofer North Vancouver," the other company appeared first, had twenty-two rec

A Kamloops welder spent $1,600 on Facebook ads over two months. Four leads. One quote. Zero jobs. He was ready to conclude that marketing does not work for trades businesses and go back to waiting for the phone to ring. The ads were not the problem. The problem was that he had skipped six things that cost nothing and generate the majority of new work for every successful trades operator in BC. He tried to replace them with paid traffic that had nowhere to land. He had no Goog

A Chilliwack plumber called us fourteen months into running his own operation. Good work, growing client list, truck on the road. He had never registered for GST because he did not think he needed to. He had not registered with WorkSafeBC because nobody had told him it was mandatory. He was operating as a sole proprietor under his own name but had never filed a business name registration, and all his business income was running through his personal chequing account. The CRA a

A Mission HVAC operator spent three years winning almost every job he quoted. Hit rate somewhere around seventy percent. Phones busy. Schedule full. Crew working. His accountant sat him down at the end of year three and showed him the net. After materials, labour, overhead, and what he owed the CRA, he had made less per hour than his lead technician. The problem was not that he was losing jobs. The problem was the jobs he was winning. He was winning them because he was cheap.

A Langley framing contractor finished a basement renovation last fall. Original scope: frame three rooms, build a staircase, rough in two doorways. Clean quote. Signed contract. He mobilized on a Monday. By the end of week one, the homeowner had added a fourth room, moved two walls, upgraded the staircase design, and asked for a pocket door where a standard swing was spec'd. The contractor did the work. He did not want to make it awkward. The client seemed happy. He invoiced

A plumber in Abbotsford called us last spring. Forty-one jobs that quarter. Crew working. Phone ringing. QuickBooks showing a profit. His personal chequing account was empty, the business account had enough to cover one more payroll, and the materials supplier was calling because the account was sixty days past due. On paper, he had made money. In real life, he was days away from not being able to pay his guys. He is not unusual. He is the majority. The number on the report i

"What do you charge?" It is the first question almost every BC trades customer asks, often before they have even told you what the job is. Most operators have an answer ready. $80 an hour. $95 an hour. $150 for a service call. The number rolls out fast. The harder question, and the one almost no operator can answer cleanly, is the one that comes after. "How did you arrive at that?" Most rates in BC trades are set by looking at what the next operator charges, rounding by feel,

A Fraser Valley electrician sat down with us last month and ran his real numbers for the first time in twelve years. He had been billing $85 an hour. Steady work. Good reputation. Twelve years deep into his own business. His actual break-even rate, once we put the costs he had been quietly absorbing into the math, was $118. He had been undercharging by $33 an hour for over a decade. Multiply that by roughly 1,300 billable hours a year, multiply that by twelve years, and the n

Category: Business Operations | Tags: pricing, tariffs, materials, BC trades If you've priced a job lately and felt like the numbers didn't add up the way they used to, you're not imagining it. Steel and aluminum tariffs have been layered on throughout 2025, and by the time they worked through Canadian supply chains, the cost of doing business in the trades went up; quietly, consistently, and without warning. You need to protect your pricing in the Trades. This isn't a poli

Category: Compliance & Setup | Tags: WorkSafeBC, WCB, registration, insurance, liability WorkSafeBC; what happens if you're not registered is not the most exciting topic in building a trades business. It's one of the most important. WorkSafeBC registration is a legal requirement for most businesses operating in BC's construction industry. Not optional. Not something you get around to when the business grows. Required. And yet a surprising number of new operators launch wit

Category: Business Operations | Tags: cash flow, economic uncertainty, recession, risk management The economic noise right now is loud. Tariffs shifting month to month. Construction investment pulling back in some sectors while ramping up in others. Interest rates affecting client budgets. The Canadian dollar making material imports more expensive. Most tradespeople respond to economic uncertainty the same way: they try to get busier while running a trades business in an un

Category: Business Operations | Tags: overhead, profit, expense tracking, job costing If you finished a job last month and thought "that went well" but you're not actually sure how much you made then this post is for you. Profit isn't what's in your account after a job finishes. It's what's left after every cost associated with that job has been accounted for. And most tradespeople are only tracking the obvious ones. Your hidden costs might be eating your profit. The Costs

Category: Compliance & Setup | Tags: GST, CRA, registration, tax, new business GST registration every BC tradesperson needs to know. Here's a situation that plays out more than it should: a tradesperson goes independent, builds momentum, has a good first few months and then gets a letter from CRA because they crossed the GST registration threshold without knowing it or knowing what to do about it. It's not because they were doing anything wrong. It's because nobody explain

Category: Industry Insight | Tags: BC trades, labour shortage, independent operator, opportunity Seventy-two percent of BC contractors say they can't find enough qualified tradespeople. That number comes from the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association's most recent survey, and it tells you something important about the market you're operating in right now. Most people read that statistic as a problem. If you're an independent operator or thinking about going out

Category: Marketing | Tags: Google reviews, GBP, reputation, referrals, marketing When someone hears about you through a referral, a job site sign, a flyer, word of mouth what do they do next? They Google you. What they find in that moment determines whether they call. And what determines what they find is, in large part, your Google Business Profile and the reviews attached to it. Five solid reviews can be the difference between looking established and looking like you sta

Category: Getting Started | Tags: trades business, new operator, mindset, business foundations Nobody tells you this when you get your Red Seal.You've spent years (sometimes a decade or more) learning your trade. You've done the apprenticeship hours. You've worked under experienced journeypersons. You've built real skill, and you've earned it. Then you decide to go out on your own, and you discover that running a business is an entirely different trade. You need to know how