As a kitchen cabinet expert, David Webb knows how to fix a crack. When he noticed cracks in his business, he saw an opportunity to renovate – and innovate.

Breakwater Kitchens is one of the longest-serving kitchen renovation businesses in Geelong, family owned and operated for more than 30 years by Alvaro and Maria Del Gallo.

When they were looking to retire five years ago, they approached their cabinet maker and asked if he would be interested in taking over the business.

That cabinet maker was David.

“I started with the company back when I was 18 years old, doing my apprenticeship with them,” David tells Kochie’s Business Builders. “I left after a few years to go travelling, then returned to the company around eight years ago. All up, I have been with the company for around 12 years so far.”

Having never considered himself a business owner, David mulled over the offer with his wife and decided it was something he wanted to do.

“We had a staged handover; I paid down the cost of buying the business over five years while I did my ‘second apprenticeship’ – learning how to run a busy renovation business from Al and Maria,” he shares.

After the takeover came the makeover

David officially took over the reins in mid-2021, though it was during the transition period that he decided it was time to tackle the considerable list of administrative jobs they had always done manually – right down to having a paper diary for their appointments.

“I realised we needed to automate a lot of our processes so I could have more time for life,” David recalls. “Patrick Somsong, our external marketing representative, was aware of the problems I was juggling. He suggested Thryv had a few solutions that could be perfect for us.”

David and Patrick sat down and went through the online tutorial and tour of the Thryv system, and sufficiently impressed at what he saw, David decided the small business software could fix some crucial problems with his business.

Fixing the filing, folder and appointments systems

The new system allows clients to book appointments online, which is a huge time saver for the company.

“They can also include extra information about the job we are quoting on, which helps us turn up more prepared and look more professional,” David says. “Thryv automatically sends a reminder to our phones, including the address we are headed to. It will alert the client when we are on the way as well, which they appreciate.”

Clients are sent an automatic follow-up half an hour after the appointment and the system neatly files all correspondence – including messages or documents, in the client’s digital file.

“This means we have a dated record of all our interactions for reference, which is handy for a business of our size,” David shares.

And as anyone who has ever undertaken a renovation would know, clients often forget to ask vital questions during a consultation.

“They can – and do – reply to this follow-up email with anything they forgot to raise, and these are also saved to their file,” David explains. “When you’re juggling multiple projects, often with lots of minute detail, being able to pull up an organised file wherever you are saves time and mistakes.”

Breakwater Kitchens breaks a social habit…

Not all small businesses can afford to have a social media or marketing person in house. For a lot of owners, like David, wearing the ‘social media’ hat can take a lot of extra time and effort.

David now uses Thryv to manage Breakwater’s social media accounts, with the ability to connect all Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn content to the system, and post articles, photos, links and videos to all of the pages with one click.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Breakwater Kitchens (@breakwaterkitchens)

Instead of managing it himself, David uses Thryv’s full-service social team to put together the content, sending him drafts he is then able to tinker with before they’re automatically posted.

“If we want to add anything to the website, we just send it off and they take care of having that loaded up too,” he adds.

…And makes some new habits for the future

David has his eye on continuing to grow the already thriving business, saying even the current short-term COVID-related pain won’t stop them.

“There are issues with getting staff, especially within the glass industry and tilers, but none of that will last forever and we look forward to pushing forward and becoming bigger over time,” he says.

Thryv will continue to be a part of their business and its growth. In David’s words: “The time it has saved us across the business easily equates to an additional full-time person.”

The team behind Breakwater Kitchens. Image: Supplied.

Breakwater Kitchens is located at 30 Leather St, Breakwater, Victoria.

Got Thryv yet? More than 45,000 business owners use it. With one login and one dashboard, you don’t have to use 20 different apps to get the job done. From calendars to payments to marketing tools like the genius little Google Review link generator you can send to clients, it’s full of features to help small business owners spend more time doing what you love and less time on admin. Get a free demo and check out pricing here.

This article is brought to you by Kochie’s Business Builders in partnership with Thryv.

Feature image: Supplied