SA startup looks to help tradies build a business
The owner of Build Clean, an Adelaide company that cleans up commercial and residential properties before handover, is launching a platform to share the industry skills he has developed with other tradies looking to start or grow their own business.
Build Clean founder Sam Ackland, centre, is launching Alpha Tradie, a start-up to help tradies establishing their own businesses.
Sam Ackland, who started Build Clean in 2018 and has grown it to have offices in Queensland and Victoria, said he hoped his new venture, Alpha Tradie, will usher in a new era in the trades and services industry.
Launching on 1 July, Alpha Tradie is an online interface that helps tradespeople looking to expand their business skillsets in order to start a business or grow what they are doing now.
As a long-time passion project of the InDaily 40 Under 40 alumnus, Ackland said he wants Alpha Tradie to provide the support and insight tradies need to venture out on their own and achieve.
The launch of Alpha Tradie comes off the back of Sam’s success with Build Clean, which recently won the APAC Insider 2023 Construction Service of the Year Award.
Founded in 2018 as Ground Control, the business rebranded to Build Clean in 2019 and has won a string of awards, including Ackland winning the 40 under 40 Entrepreneur Award in 2020.
“In 2020, I won the InDaily 40 Under 40 Entrepreneur Award and I was just over a year into running Build Clean,” Ackland said.
“I thought I was the bee’s knees. I thought I knew everything after getting that accolade and I went out and tried to do trading, mentoring, and it was a monumental flop.
“So I went back to the drawing board and we’ve now grown to a national company open in Brisbane and in Melbourne, along with Adelaide.”
Ackland said the Build Clean offices now have their own directors and manager so he now feels like he’s got the space and skill set to properly give back and add value.
“So that’s where Alpha Trading has come out. What we’ve done is map out the systems our companies use and provide them in an easy-to-use interface for someone who would be like myself three years ago,” he said.
Ackland said the new platform would help tradespeople take the leap into running their own businesses.
“Everybody has this dream to do a little bit more than what they’re doing and they go and voice that dream to the only people that they’ve voiced dreams to before being their parents, their friends,” he said.
“Everybody comes back to them and says, ‘Oh, don’t do that. It’s too risky’ or ’90 per cent of businesses fail in the first three years’.
“I want to make sure that we’re providing something that actually pushes them to do what they need to do, but also support them so that they’re not just another statistic.”
Ackland said that unlike other business support platforms, which charge a subscription for an ongoing course, Alpha Tradie will provide business management tools focussed on strategy, marketing, sales, operations, finance and people as a “one-off step-by-step blueprint” specifically for tradies.
“We’re providing them with the templates and frameworks that they need to be able to manage those business departments as a small-to-medium enterprise would, when they are owner, operator or sole trader level,” Ackland said.
According to the pre-launch website, the introductory package is $535 and the full scale-up system is priced at $3,400.
Ackland said he also wants Alpha Tradie to cultivate positive masculinity in the trades and services community to counter the toxic masculinity culture he sees daily in the industry and on the social media channels many of the tradies follow.
“I feel in the marketplace on social media there’s a lot of pro-toxic masculinity,” Ackland said.
“What we’re doing is providing guys with the business systems. I believe once they have the foundations for success ingrained within their company they’ll have the free-flowing energy to be able to provide and show up better for their families and their community.”
