Grant Chugg picked up his first set of tools in 1986. By 2020, he had a 30-person plumbing business in Launceston, Tasmania. And a nagging feeling that something wasn't working.
The business wasn't broken. But it wasn't delivering either. Revenue was inconsistent, the bank balance was his only real metric, and Grant was carrying everything on his shoulders.
"I had goals. The business was the vehicle that would achieve them. And it wasn't."
That's when he found Business Benchmark Group. Six years later, he's a Hall of Famer. The business, the team, and his life look completely different.
Before Business Benchamrk Group: A Good Business Going Nowhere Fast
Grant is a plumber by trade, not a businessman by training.
"I went to TAFE. I went to plumbing school. I was pretty good at putting pipes in the ground. But I didn't go to business school. Then someone comes along and says, do you want to go into business? So you do that. But you've got no intuition as to how to run one."
For 25 years, he ran on relationships, hard work and instinct. It got him far, but not far enough. He was doing huge hours, driving everything himself, and watching the bank balance to figure out if the business was healthy.
"That was my indicator as to how we were tracking. And it wasn't telling me I could do what I wanted to do with my life."
He was tired. And he didn't know what levers to pull to make things change.
What Business Benchmark Group Changed
1. He Learned to Run a Business, Not Just a Trade
Business Benchmark Group gave Grant the business education he never had. Financials, forecasting, team structure, client grading. The fundamentals that most tradies-turned-business-owners have to figure out the hard way, or not at all.
"I had no understanding of the numbers. Business Benchmark Group changed that."
2. The Business Got a Scoreboard
One of the most transformative shifts Business Benchmark Group introduced was visibility: transparent revenue targets across each of Grant Chugg Plumbing's six divisions, tracked weekly and owned by the team.
"That was a game changer."
Now, his accounts team monitors every one of the 100-120 invoices raised each week against a weekly number. When they hit it, they celebrate. When they're behind mid-week, it's the team (not Grant) who hunts down the gap.
"She'll get up out of her seat and high-five the operations manager and come up to me saying we've reached the number. Everything beyond here is extra."
His operations manager cares more about the weekly target than Grant does. "He goes home shitty if he doesn't get there. But on Friday night, when he hits it, he's up and about enjoying himself."
3. Founder Dependency Dropped Dramatically
Before Business Benchmark Group, Grant was the business. Every decision, every relationship, every fire to put out.
Today, he could leave for a month. The business keeps running. He checks the dashboard when he chooses to.
"I'm not doing any of this. That's my team, who are empowered because they have a number."
Business Benchmark Group's coaching helped Grant make the shift from operator to leader, building a team that owns outcomes, not just tasks.
4. He Started Thinking Strategically
When COVID hit, and stimulus money flooded the market, most trade businesses chased the housing boom. Business Benchmark Group had taught Grant to think longer.
"Stimulus isn't real. At some point, it's going to finish. So where do we want to be in 18 months?"
His answer: recession-proof clients. Nursing homes, hospitals, schools. Clients whose needs don't dry up when the economy turns.
While others were flat out building houses, Grant quietly secured those contracts. His operations manager thought he was crazy. Eighteen months later: "Thank you. That work is underpinning everything we do now."
5. Predictability Replaced Chaos
Before Business Benchmark Group, Grant's business had wild swings. Feast one month, famine the next.
"Easter happens every year. Christmas happens every year. Shouldn't be a surprise. But if you're not prepared for it, you just ride those waves."
Business Benchmark Group's frameworks brought structure: cash flow forecasting, work-in-progress tracking, capacity planning across commercial and maintenance divisions. The result was a business that could see what was coming and act on it.
"Predictability reduces stress. You know what's coming. And you've got 3 to 6 months to do something about it."
The Result: A Business That Works Without Him
Six years after joining Business Benchmark Group, Grant Chugg Plumbing generates over $7.7 million in revenue across six divisions. The team self-manages. The numbers are tracked. The clients are graded, loyal and recession-resistant.
Grant can go to Africa for weeks at a time and come back to a business that kept moving without him.
That's not luck. That's what Business Benchmark Group builds.
What the Business Made Possible
Here's the part that goes beyond revenue.
In 2016, Grant made a New Year's resolution: stop saying "someday" and start saying yes. The next morning, a friend asked him to come to Burundi.
He went. And it changed his life.
Burundi is one of the world's poorest countries, and yet it has everything: lush land, water, sunshine. What it lacks is education.
"I could not walk away from that. My business was the vehicle that needed to fulfil that purpose."
But the business couldn't fund that purpose at the time. That's the moment Grant realised he needed to fix it.
Today, as Chair of the Board of Villages of Life, Grant funds schools across Burundi and Rwanda, with the goal of building 20 schools by 2030. The business generates the predictable profit that makes his annual contribution possible, year after year.
"I have confidence that every year, the business is going to deliver what I need to deliver on my promise. I feel like one of the luckiest men alive."
Business Benchmark Group didn't just transform Grant's business. It gave him the platform to transform other people's lives.
Six Years. Hall of Fame.
Grant's induction into the Business Benchmark Group Hall of Fame isn't a participation trophy. It's the result of six years of consistent work: building systems, developing leaders, making hard decisions and trusting the process.
"It's not a 6-day course. It's six years of doing this and turning up. At the end of that? Time and financial freedom."
Stefan Kazakis, Business Benchmark Group founder, puts it simply:
"You carry yourself with full grace. Welcome to the Hall of Fame."
Is your business the vehicle for the life you actually want?
If it's not delivering the way it should, Business Benchmark Group can help you change that.