I think you will love today’s share on My Trade Story. It’s a real tale of determination and strength. Eve has used her strengths to create a successful business, Fully Booked Tradies, within an industry that can be unforgiving and slow to move forward. She has very cleverly filled a large void in the construction industry, that I am very excited to share with you.

My Trade Story with Eve John

8 years ago, my plumber husband, Alex, had a serious injury after falling down the embankment of the Murray River on a boys weekend.

The fall had resulted in an impact fracture of one of his vertebrae and there was floating bone in the spinal area that threatened to sever his spinal cord.

The doctors did not know the extent of the injury; he was going to have to undergo surgery before they could assess if he would be a paraplegic.

Alex spent 5 months in hospital. Much of this time he was staring at the ceiling as he was strapped to the bed, waiting for his injury to heal. They had managed to remove the bone from the spinal cord area but he still had serious injuries and required care and continuous physiotherapy.

He suffered through 3 more operations and painful, but successful, rehabilitation

Each day the physiotherapist would come in and demonstrate with the skeletal spine model, the damage that Alex had done and what the rehabilitation for that day would do to assist his healing.

It was during one of these sessions that Alex had a light bulb moment and thought, “If I could create a silicone nozzle that could be used for applying silicone and sealants that had the flexibility of the spine, I could take the headache and back ache out of hours of silicone application plumbers and tradies suffer through.”

He sketched, researched and consulted with his tradie visitors over the time in the hospital and the months to follow, stuck at home.

With no money and no knowledge how to get the product from conception to market, we were stuck.

Life happened, babies were born and happiness ensued.

But we still had this ‘big idea’

We would talk about how it could potentially make us money to give us the lifestyle that we wanted, whilst being the saving grace for the plumbing industry, saving their time and their health.

Alex really wants to make a difference in the lives of plumbers and tradesmen who often suffer with serious knee and back injuries because of the work they do with sealants.

At the beginning, it was a pipedream. We didn’t think that we were going to get anywhere with it. We were consistently told by people that it was too hard to start a business in this ‘economic environment’. With a condescending smile of their face, they would tell us we didn’t have any experience in sales and marketing and the biggest discouragement of all was, ‘Who is going to pay for something like that when there was something already on the market that’s available for free?’

Although we often thought otherwise, we listened to the nay sayers.

Until, the inevitable happened.

At a family function I overheard a conversation between two family members, agreeing that Alex just wasn’t smart enough to invent anything that truly mattered and perhaps it was best that all I was going to do was be a mum.

Frankly, you can say what you want about me, I’m a former cheerleader, bikini model and dancer, I’m used to judgement.

But ladies you stepped out of line, talking about my man like, that.

It’s on!

And so it was.

Enter my 2 years of learning at the feet of some of Australia’s best marketers, public relation experts and copywriters.

So REEECH Silicone Nozzle became available (previously known as the BENT OVER Silicone Nozzles, we had to change the name because the big guys in hardware said that it had a sexual continuation to it, we just thought it described what it did, go figure).

It competes with the FREE silicone nozzles that you get FOR FREE when you buy your silicone or sealant.

And it is available in over 22 countries.

So now I help other people’s dreams become a reality.

These pipedreams about being financial free and have the lifestyle that should come with owning your own business.

Basically, I help tradies make more money in their business through clever marketing.

You see, the tradies I have spoken to, and I have spoken to hundreds over the years, are really good at their chosen trade, but feel they are really bad at sales and marketing.

When I was sending out the marketing pieces about the nozzles to trade business, I would always get asked if I could help them with their sales and marketing material.

It was because what I had sent them (lumpy mail) had made them pick up the phone and call me, even though they knew they could get a similar type of product free.

I said yes to a few local tradesmen, doing their marketing for them, stuff that now runs automatically for them and they got sensational results.

And so ‘Fully Booked Tradies, Turns Your Quotes Into Paying Customers’ was born.

Now I spend my time helping trade business make more money and I love it.

Oh, and the two family members that thought that Alex and I should be satisfied with what we had and not to try to anything smart or worthwhile, well every year for Christmas, their birthday, Easter, Mother’s Day, infact any day I can, I send them a bottle of Moet, with a note, thanking them for the impact they have had on my life.

Isn’t it an amazing story! I LOVE the determination Eve and her husband show. If you are a tradie, looking for a solution to your marketing and sales systems, then do yourself a favour and check out the Fully Booked Tradies website and Facebook pages.

Is there someone you would like to hear from in our My Trade Story series? Do you have a story you would like to share?

Nicole xxx