These guides are for the professionals who sit around a trades business, and for the owners who want to see their business the way those professionals do. They are practical rather than promotional. Each one includes checklists or worked numbers you can apply straight away.
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The digital assets checklist for trades businesses
A trades company's domain, website, Google listing, ad accounts and phone number are worth real money, and they're often registered to the wrong person. This checklist helps owners list them and bring the right questions to their lawyer.
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Marketing numbers for accountants of trades businesses
Marketing shows up in the books as one expense line with no explanation. Five simple figures turn it into something an accountant can test: is this spend paying for itself, and how would we know?
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The referral partnership playbook for advisors to trades
A good referral protects the client, the professional and the specialist. This playbook sets out the eight steps that make that happen, with the questions to ask before agreeing to any referral arrangement.
Who these guides are for
Most marketing writing aims at the business owner. These guides aim one step to the side: at the accountant preparing the year-end, the lawyer drafting a shareholder agreement, the lender reviewing a growth plan. Those professionals already influence how trades companies spend and grow, but rarely have a plain explanation of how marketing should be organised and measured.
Trades owners will find them useful too. Knowing what your advisors are looking for makes those conversations faster and cheaper.
The referral partnership playbook
The referral partnership playbook explains how a professional can refer a client to a marketing specialist without risking the relationship. It covers spotting the right moment, consent, written terms, disclosure to the client, what the professional should and shouldn't receive back, and how to end an arrangement cleanly.
You'll learn: a step-by-step process that works with any specialist, not just us, plus a list of questions to ask before agreeing to any referral arrangement.
Marketing numbers for accountants
Marketing numbers for accountants turns marketing into figures an accountant already understands: cost per booked job, contribution per job, payback and the effect of seasonality. It uses worked examples from typical Ontario trades jobs and shows how to tell whether a client's marketing is paying for itself.
You'll learn: five numbers to ask a trades client for, how to calculate break-even marketing spend, and the warning signs that a client's marketing is quietly losing money.
The digital assets checklist
The digital assets checklist for trades businesses lists every marketing asset a trades company typically depends on: domain, website, Google Business Profile, ad accounts, phone numbers, review profiles and social pages. For each one, it explains what goes wrong when it sits in the wrong hands, and the questions to raise at incorporation, partnership changes, purchase or sale.
You'll learn: how to build a simple asset register, who should control each asset, and which issues to flag for a lawyer. It doesn't tell you what any agreement should say; that remains legal work.
How to use the guides
- Accountants: start with the marketing numbers guide, then the playbook.
- Lawyers and paralegals: start with the digital assets checklist.
- Lenders and brokers: the marketing numbers guide explains how demand behind a growth plan can be tested.
- Trades owners: the checklist first, because protecting your accounts costs nothing and prevents expensive problems.
Why we wrote these
Every guide here started as a question we kept hearing. Accountants asked how to tell whether a client's marketing was working. Lawyers asked what marketing assets they should ask about before a closing. Lenders asked how to judge whether a trades borrower's growth plan had customers behind it. Owners asked why their advisor kept asking about "cost per job."
We've answered those questions as plainly as we can. Where a guide touches on law, tax or lending, it stops at the edge and points you to the professional who should answer. If you read a guide and think something important is missing, tell us; we'd rather improve a page than leave a gap.
What the guides don't cover
None of the guides tells a professional how to apply their own regulator's rules, and none tells an owner what any agreement or tax return should say. They also don't rank marketing platforms or recommend specific tools, because those choices depend on the individual business.
After reading
If a guide raises a question about a specific client or business, call, text or email. Professionals can also read the service page for their own field, starting from the services hub, and trades owners can see what referred clients receive.
Frequently asked questions
Are these guides legal, tax or lending advice?
No. They explain marketing practice and how referrals can be organised. Anything touching on law, tax, accounting or credit should be checked with a qualified professional.
Can I share these guides with clients?
Yes. Link to them freely. They're written so a trades owner can read them without background in marketing.
Will you add more guides?
We may add guides over time when we can write something genuinely useful for advisors to trades. We'd rather publish three good ones than twenty thin ones.