How Alan Colins Used the 1-Page Marketing Plan to Build Two Businesses

Lean Marketing Podcast — Episode 72

Alan Collins: How Simplified Sparky Used the 1-Page Marketing Plan to Build Two Businesses

[00:00:00] ALAN COLLINS: I sought coaching. And that's where I kind of stumbled across your stuff as well, and I just gripped onto the 1-Page Marketing Plan. It spoke to me. This makes so much sense, having a pathway. I'm a very systematic person. I basically follow that model, implemented a lot of that into my electrical business. And with your model, I tweaked and adjusted it to my service-based business, and that is essentially my model today — what I've learned from you. And I am now passing that on to the people I work with, which means it's gone full circle.

[00:00:38] ALLAN DIB: Welcome to the podcast. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time, for a couple of reasons. First of all, you've had massive success, which is really cool. But you've done something I get asked about all the time — how do I monetize my knowledge, my experience, my skills in a particular field and make a real living out of it? You've done that. You've cracked the code. I really want to go in depth and talk about how you did that, what you did, what you're charging, all of that. But before we get there, what's your background? Who are you and what do you do?

[00:01:18] ALAN COLLINS: I'm an electrician. I've got my own electrical business, and at the same time I work with electricians. Essentially who I help is people who are currently employed and looking to jump across into starting their own electrical business, predominantly within Australia and New Zealand. I'm also working with people in Ireland at the moment. And then there are guys who started a business, kind of winged it a bit, got a flow of leads, but the business is a mess. They need a little bit of help to sort it out.

ALLAN DIB: So you're helping solopreneur electricians scale, get new clients, all that sort of stuff?

ALAN COLLINS: Yeah. And my huge thing — which I think aligns with you — is I obsess on lean. I want a lean, systematic business. What I obsess about with small businesses is being profitable, having a chunky bottom line, and basically having a business you enjoy running — not a stressful one with ten guys on the road.

[00:02:42] ALLAN DIB: Okay, so this is your reality today. But it wasn't always like this. Talk me through that. Where did it all start?

ALAN COLLINS: I started my apprenticeship in 2005. The Celtic Tiger boom was happening — every farmer became a builder, there was work flying out the door. That all came tumbling down in 2007. I finished my apprenticeship in 2009, knew it was really bad in Ireland, and a mate said, "You should give Sydney a crack." So I came out here in 2010. Spent about three years between jobs, then fell on my feet with a good company. Did my time there, decided I wanted to do my own thing. Started my own business in 2016. Kind of winged it a little. After about two years, I sought coaching. And that's where I stumbled across your stuff and gripped onto the 1-Page Marketing Plan.

[00:04:12] ALAN COLLINS: I've always wanted to do coaching. But I was afraid — a lot of imposter syndrome. So I decided to just stick a toe in the water and started a podcast. What happened was people started reaching out to me on Instagram saying, "Love the podcast. When are you doing your own thing?" It took about five or six people asking before I finally said, "Let's see what happens." I set a target of working with 20 people. I thought: if I can get to 20, I've proven my model.

ALLAN DIB: And where are you now?

ALAN COLLINS: We've got about two or three months left in the financial year, and I'm at 26 members. So, onward and upward. My end game is to make the electrical business attractive for a sale and then move on completely.

[00:05:32] ALLAN DIB: I love that. What were the key things you changed in your business to go from kind of faffing around to: now it's systemised, it's profitable, I'm getting the clients I want?

[00:05:57] ALAN COLLINS: Number one — have a look at your pricing. And your target market. I think it's a big myth in the service industry that clients won't pay more. If someone does a good job and does what you want, you'll happily pay over and above. The biggest levers I pulled were niching down to residential service and maintenance only, delegating my admin so I could concentrate on doing the work, and getting my pricing dialled in. If you're charging $100 an hour for 40 hours, that's $4,000. Put your rate up to $200 an hour and you only need to do half the hours. Change your pricing, work for better clients, tweak how you quote. That's what I teach my members now.

[00:07:35] ALLAN DIB: What were some of the key moments where something clicked?

ALAN COLLINS: I changed the messaging on my website, and I was afraid to do it. I made the change, took the risk, and then I started getting the work I actually wanted. And that is something I emphasise so much inside the mentorship — dial in your messaging, and the right work will come your way.

ALLAN DIB: I remember we also talked about targeting more affluent suburbs. A lot of people say, "We'll do anything for everyone," and then they get people who are just price shopping. Whereas in the areas you started targeting, price comes third or fourth down the list.

[00:08:55] ALAN COLLINS: Totally. What matters more is the type of client. Price comes maybe third or fourth. What they want is someone who shows up, keeps them informed, treats them with respect. I've got a tracker that sends an Uber-style notification when I'm on my way. It's those one percenters that earn you the five-star review. And I tell my members: the five-star experience starts when you pick up the phone. Everything in between — how you do the work, how you communicate, how you wow them — that's what makes the difference.

[00:10:15] ALLAN DIB: Let's talk about the five-star experience from start to finish. Walk us through it.

[00:10:48] ALAN COLLINS: When an enquiry comes in, whether online or by phone, it gets professionally handled. If it's online, they immediately get a template acknowledging we've received it. That moves into our job management system, and a form is sent asking for photos. They send the photos back, I review them and send the quote. If they accept, we book a date, they get a confirmation, a 24-hour reminder before the booking, and then a tracker when I'm on my way. On the job itself — little things like not parking in their driveway, putting on boot covers at the door, keeping them updated throughout. And then at the end, wrapping up, taking payment, and asking for the review. I've tipped over 600 five-star reviews, and the simplest thing is just to ask. We've got a three-step follow-up sequence so if they didn't get a chance to leave one, they get a gentle reminder.

[00:14:13] ALAN COLLINS: I quote about 95% of my work virtually. I almost never go on site to quote.

ALLAN DIB: That's a huge friction point removed — because going on site costs you time and money, and they may or may not accept anyway.

ALAN COLLINS: It's such a time suck. And the virtual system acts as a qualifier. If they don't send the photos, they drop off. We don't chase the bad fits. And pretty much all the clients who come out the bottom of this funnel are fantastic. The messaging, the reviews, and the experience all come together to attract the right people.

[00:15:17] ALLAN DIB: I'm assuming you've got a nurturing sequence if you've sent a quote and haven't heard back?

ALAN COLLINS: All automated. Once a quote is sent, they get five follow-ups, one every three or four days. I tell them: I want a yes or a no. People underestimate how much is going on in a prospect's day. You are one tiny factor in their whole day. So you need those follow-up touchpoints just to stay top of mind.

[00:17:17] ALLAN DIB: I love the concept of clients for life. If one client can become two, three, five clients through referrals, that massively decreases your cost of acquisition and increases lifetime value. That's what makes a business valuable.

ALAN COLLINS: Absolutely. And it's so powerful when you deliver that experience, because that's when they're talking about you to their friends. I've ended up in WhatsApp groups for groups of people who know each other. I did a job for a lovely older lady recently and while I was there I ended up trimming half her tree with my saw. I know that little touch is going to be very powerful. When someone asks her for an electrician, she's going to talk about the trees.

[00:18:46] ALLAN DIB: What I love about this is nothing here requires genius or some trick nobody else knows. I call it doing the common thing uncommonly well. Anyone doing the basic common sense stuff has a massive advantage.

ALAN COLLINS: It's so true. I carry boot covers in the van. I ask if they'd like me to put them on. I've got drop sheets. And I've started sending clients a little PDF before the job that answers all the questions they're going to ask — do they need to be home, do they need to move anything. I've been doing this long enough to know what they're going to wonder about, so I get into their head before they even think of the question. They're like, "How did he know that?" But it's just common sense to me.

[00:20:25] ALLAN DIB: Each one of these things seems small on its own. But they add up to delivering a world-class experience, which leads to people remarking on it. But I think it's interesting that despite delivering all of that, you still ask for the review. You don't just hope. Asking is the beginning of receiving.

ALAN COLLINS: If you don't ask, you don't get. Some of the biggest things I've ever gotten in my electrical or coaching business came simply from asking the question.

[00:21:53] ALLAN DIB: So you've cracked the code on running a profitable, solopreneur electrical business. How did people start asking you, "How do you do what you do?"

ALAN COLLINS: I started a podcast. The real traction came when I moved across to Instagram. Instagram drove people to the podcast, and then word of mouth started. People would listen and reach out asking when I was going to start my own thing. At the beginning I had nothing to offer — I was just trying to build authority. So that when people listened, they could see I knew what I was talking about. Two sources: Instagram and the podcast. Then I started the Simplified Sparky Mentorship.

[00:23:00] ALLAN DIB: Who is it for?

ALAN COLLINS: It's for the electrician currently employed who wants to start their own business. Or the person who started a business with no idea and is maybe a year or two in, with up to five staff, spinning their wheels. Completely unsure if they're making money. Completely unsure of their marketing. They just need everything dialled in to start running a proper business. What happens is people take on staff and actually scale a loss. They don't know their numbers, they don't know what they should be charging. My job is to prevent that.

[00:23:48] ALLAN DIB: Talk me through what the model looks like. How did you design it?

ALAN COLLINS: The people who reached out were all in the same demographic — solo operators, some a year or so into business, others thinking about making the leap. I initially built a course and thought I'd sell it to many people at once. That was the wrong approach for my business. After working with my own coach, I realised I could have a very simplistic coaching model with one live call a week. All the content they need is broken into levels, and they have to go through the levels in order. That's the key.

[00:25:15] ALAN COLLINS: I start with niche. I want to be specific about why. One of the members who just joined is targeting level two electrical work, more specialised than standard, and also residential. On Instagram, if you take a picture of a switchboard, it appeals to electricians but it's not going to stop the scroll for a homeowner. I tell my members: think of a gardener posting a picture of two hoses going through a brown garden bed. Are you going to stop and look at that? Get very granular about who you're talking to and what they actually want to see.

[00:26:43] ALAN COLLINS: When they join, they get onboarded and move through the levels in sequence. Nine levels total. Level one is niche. Level two is target market. Level three is messaging. Level four is media. Level five is lead handling. Level six is lead converting.

ALLAN DIB: How do they know at each level whether they did it right?

ALAN COLLINS: There's a proof of implementation at the end of every module — a few simple questions they submit. It shows they've done the work and understand it. If there are gaps, I step in and look at their plan to see if they've filled it out correctly before they move forward.

[00:27:41] ALLAN DIB: What do you do proactively if they've signed up but stopped doing the work?

ALAN COLLINS: That's where they plateau. I tell them coming in: this isn't a silver bullet. If you don't do the work, you're not going to get the results. Just like the gym — you can walk in, but if you don't do the work, you won't get the results. The roadblock is simple: to move forward, you have to progress through the levels.

[00:28:49] ALLAN DIB: What does the model look like in terms of pricing and delivery?

ALAN COLLINS: There's a monthly fee, and if you do annual you save on the total. I tell them from the start it's a 12-month commitment. My price started too high when I launched. I found the entry point needed to be accessible for the startup businesses I'm targeting. Kept as affordable as possible but meaningful enough that they take it seriously. And I'll tell you — if they join one live session and just pick up one thing they can compound over and over, they've returned their investment. One of the members was at a real estate complex he'd been to many times. He noticed something I'd mentioned and investigated the switchboards. He now has seven levels of switchboards in the pipeline — potentially a $20,000 to $30,000 job. Just from observing. He said, "It's something I just never would have thought to do."

[00:30:09] ALAN COLLINS: There's one live group call a week. Plus you'll have a couple of one-on-one calls with me at key points — one after level three to course-correct anything, and another further down. And then Slack for everything in between. I've built this business so my time isn't eaten alive by Zoom calls. I keep it extremely simple. If you want to ask me something, ask on Slack and I can get back to you quickly. Because if I had a packed call model, members would show up with nothing to say. You can get most questions answered in 30 seconds on Slack.

[00:31:23] ALLAN DIB: And to pass through each level, are they watching course material?

ALAN COLLINS: The modules are very short and to the point. Each video is probably under five minutes. There might be an hour to an hour and a half of content per level. Then it's just about implementing. When we get to the lead handling level, that's where we start implementing the templates — the five-star experience stuff, building their pricing, building the correct quote bundles in their software, and getting that deployed in their business.

[00:32:18] ALLAN DIB: So: very specific target market, it's not just anyone who does electrical. Common things done uncommonly well. And that recurring theme of niche.

ALAN COLLINS: Absolutely. Before I started working with my coach, I was working with all tradies — my podcast was called Simplified Tradie Marketing. My coach said, "Dude, just go all in on electricians." And there are plenty of electricians out there. I wanted to practise what I preach. I teach niche. So I went all in on electricians. It's been extremely fulfilling because I can talk electrical jargon all day. And the members who are coming in are the best because they've already consumed enough of my content to know exactly what they're getting.

ALAN COLLINS: I don't run cold ads to a cold audience. I just let the podcast and the content do the work. They naturally come to me, and if they're a good fit, they join.

[00:34:36] ALLAN DIB: We were talking earlier about a concept a friend of mine, Taki Moore, calls brand width — how much time someone has spent on your content, and how much that affects the quality of a prospect and a client. You mentioned that if someone hasn't spent enough time in your content, you actually send them back?

ALAN COLLINS: Yeah. I think it creates FOMO. My team says, "If you don't sign up, where are you going to be in 12 months?" But I genuinely don't let people in unless they've had enough of my content, because I don't want a member in there who isn't the right fit. And I haven't had that yet. Everyone who's come in has been exactly the kind of member I want. One of the guys who just joined said, "I've made a lot of money from listening to your podcast. It's time to see what's on the inside." You give away your best stuff for free, and naturally reciprocity kicks in. They come back.

ALLAN DIB: That's a core teaching in Lean Marketing — having marketing so valuable that people would potentially pay for it. Because most marketing is annoying, interruptive, spammy. It's completely different when someone is genuinely generous with their best thinking. Whether they become a client today or in two years, it builds a massive pipeline of goodwill.

ALAN COLLINS: It's a long game. But it's reciprocity and it works. Some people won't have the money right now. That's fine. They'll be back.

[00:38:30] ALLAN DIB: I want to double-click on something. You've built this business around your lifestyle, not your lifestyle around the business. A while back people said "lifestyle business" in a derogatory way. But I'm seeing more and more people — myself included — building what I'd call lifestyle empires. Because that cute little lifestyle business? You're now making more from it than your electrical business. When you get alignment between your lifestyle and your business, so many things get easier. But it does require you to say no to things. You're not going to have a sales team. You're leaving some money on the table. But you're choosing what to leave on the table.

ALAN COLLINS: I love money, but money isn't my number one thing. It's time, freedom, travel, and family. And personal brand has become such a big asset. I've only really embraced it in the last two years. Look at Elon Musk — the brand comes first, the business second. I lean into being a down-to-earth guy: I've got cuts on my hands, I'm an electrician just like you. I'm not performing. I'm just being exactly who I am on the podcast and on the tools.

[00:41:21] ALAN COLLINS: I'm going to be exiting my electrical business. That's the next step. Because to grow the personal brand and Simplified Sparky, I need to create more content. In my heart and my passion I want to go all in on Sparky. Something has to give — and that's going to be the electrical business. Ideally within 12 months, maybe sooner. Because the flame is burning out in the electrical side. This is my new thing. I absolutely love helping people.

[00:42:23] ALAN COLLINS: I've been playing around with Claude and I'm excited. I can't say too much, but I'm brewing something up — a plug-in implementer so each module has a tool to help complete it. It's going to make it a lot easier to implement and accelerate results.

[00:42:45] ALLAN DIB: Where I'd see a slight gap in your model right now — and you're relatively early so you may not have hit this yet — is churn. It's one thing to have a really good program. It's another thing for people to actually go through it and get results. Not because the program is bad, but because people get stuck, get busy, forget. A critical role — and it can be a virtual team member — would be a customer success person. Someone who proactively reaches out: "Hey, noticed you haven't logged in in two weeks. Is there any way I can help?" This keeps lifetime value high. But more importantly, it helps people get results. Getting someone into the program is the easy part. Getting them through it? That's the harder bit. It's like the gym — easy to sell the membership, three months later they cancel and blame the program.

[00:44:21] ALLAN DIB: We had a program that took 12 months to complete. Now, using AI, we've been able to shrink that to four months. Same results, faster delivery. We created a tool where clients input their business data. It scans their website, helps them get their messaging to maybe 80 or 90 percent, and then they edit and refine. Previously we'd say, "Let's put together a five-step email sequence," and it would take weeks of back-and-forth. Now the system generates it based on their specific business. They get to 80 to 90 percent, make a few edits, and they're off. AI is an acceleration tool, not a replacement for coaching. But it's a serious accelerator. And part of acceleration is retention.

ALAN COLLINS: It's more of an implementation tool — taking what needs to be built and making it easier to build. I've been playing around with Claude and it excites me a lot.

ALLAN DIB: The magic of AI is not "go into AI and say, make me a marketing plan." You'll get garbage. The magic happens when you have a clearly defined approach — like the 1-Page Marketing Plan — and then feed it the right context. Your industry, your team size, your target market, your ideal customer, your tone of voice. We help clients build tone of voice guides. When I write copy, I'll have AI do a first draft, but I've got a document in there that tells it how Allan Dib writes. It still doesn't get to 100 percent, but if it gets to 80 percent, that's a massive win.

ALAN COLLINS: Garbage in, garbage out. One of my members just joined and I immediately emailed him to welcome him. He replied and it was clearly written by an AI assistant that had grabbed the wrong context and just run with it. That showed me how important it is to set up the right prompts and context before you let AI respond on your behalf.

[00:49:46] ALAN COLLINS: I have a mate with a successful business in Sydney who tried AI phone answering. He calls it the lead killer. A robot answering the phone — most people just want to speak to a human. There's a specific pause that happens with AI phone answering where the caller just knows it's not real. He trialled it and said the client experience was horrible.

ALLAN DIB: Especially if you're pretending it's human. I think it's fine to have AI answering the phone as long as you disclose it. "Hey, I'm an AI. I can help you right now, or if you'd prefer to speak to a person, I can have someone call you back." Then the caller can make a choice.

ALAN COLLINS: After hours is a much bigger acceptance for it. If it's 10pm and someone answers, you can say: "This is an AI assistant — but don't worry, I'm actually smarter than Alan." Just disarm it with a bit of banter, break the ice. "What I can do is get Alan to give you a call back first thing in the morning. If this is an emergency, press one and I'll put you through to him directly."

ALLAN DIB: If you disclose what it is, you're not misrepresenting. And most people will be fine with that.

[00:51:38] ALLAN DIB: The other place we're using AI — and telling clients to use it — is looking at every area of inefficiency in your business. Our head of coaching was spending hours manually reviewing client calls to make sure coaches were delivering correctly. Quality control is critical, especially at scale. Now we have an AI that processes every call and flags anything unusual — a coach saying something off, a client who seemed unhappy. She can see it flagged in the system and address it rather than listening to hours of recordings. We do this for every call now and have a dashboard that shows trends. You can start to see if one coach consistently gets lower scores, which might mean a training issue or a people issue.

ALAN COLLINS: Is that self-built software?

ALLAN DIB: It's a self-built workflow. We use Fathom to do the call recordings, pull the transcript, run it through N8N, analyse it through a large language model — I think we use Claude — and it scores the call and puts a green, orange, or red flag into a Notion database. We're also building custom software now.

ALAN COLLINS: I'm getting my bearings with Claude and ChatGPT. And then the other platforms — N8N, Automate, Claude Code — those are the fighter jets.

ALLAN DIB: I wouldn't even worry about the tools first. Look at the workflows. Look at where the inefficiencies are. Think of your business as a customer and revenue factory. Leads come in, then sales, then delivery, then reviews and referrals. In a factory, you identify inefficiencies by where materials are piling up and people are standing around waiting. That's a constraint. Every business in the world is constrained somewhere. As the leader, your job is to identify the current constraint, unblock it, then move on to the next one.

[00:55:50] ALAN COLLINS: It does scare me a little bit though. I love AI and it's going to make my business fantastic. But with the rapid growth of AI, what does that mean for my electricians? Are their clients going to be made redundant?

ALLAN DIB: I think it's going to be reallocation. Have you heard of Jevons Paradox?

ALAN COLLINS: No.

ALLAN DIB: Back in the 1800s, as steam engines became more efficient, people thought, "Great — we'll need fewer of them." What actually happened was the opposite. Usage increased, because now that they were efficient and cheap, you used them in places you never would have before. I think the same thing is going to happen with AI. Usage goes up, not down. Some people will be displaced — someone doing hours of manual data entry may find that redundant. But in my business, I'm not looking to cut people. I've spent years training them. I'd rather ask, "What greater value can we extract from the existing people we've got?"

ALAN COLLINS: It's like putting on an Iron Man suit. Your existing ability plus a sidekick that accelerates your productivity. You can work more hands-off and delegate to what is essentially a robot assistant.

ALLAN DIB: Exactly. We're augmenting your abilities. Not replacing, not fully automating — augmenting. Putting on that Iron Man suit.

ALAN COLLINS: It's exciting. It's not replacing people. It's just making Simplified Sparky into an absolute machine that gets results. And that's all that matters.

[00:58:14] ALLAN DIB: Well, it's been super fun talking to you. Where can people find you?

ALAN COLLINS: Jump on Instagram and search Alan Collins — spelled A-L-A-N, not greedy with the Ls. And the podcast is Simplified Sparky Marketing — search for that on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you'll find it there. And just DM me on Instagram.

ALLAN DIB: Awesome. It's been such a pleasure. And if you're a sparky and you want to make a lot of money, go join Alan's program.

ALAN COLLINS: Really appreciate being on, Allan. I've been following your stuff for nearly ten years, and to see myself in this chair is a bit surreal. Looking forward to seeing where we're both at in a year's time.

ALLAN DIB: Amazing. Thanks, Alan.

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