Rachel Tūhoe  |  Owner, Tūhoe Amenity Services  |  Rotorua

She was growing a $4m business in the wrong part of her market, winning volume where margins were tight. With a clear view of where growth and value actually sat, she shifted focus, freed up capacity, and started building a stronger pipeline.

Rachel Tūhoe didn’t plan to run a grounds maintenance business. She planned to be a teacher. Three years into a degree, she came home for a summer, helped her uncle with a mowing run, and never really left.

Twenty-two years later, Tūhoe Amenity Services had grown to 23 staff, 14 vehicles, and $4.1 million in revenue.

It grew the same way every time. One yes at a time. Someone needed help, she helped them. Someone needed more, she figured it out. The business got bigger. It also got harder.

“The numbers were going up. The effort was going up faster.”

Rachel knew her customers well. Councils, schools, property managers. She had strong relationships and a steady flow of work. What she didn’t have was a clear view of the market she was operating in.

• Where it was growing?

• Where margins were tightening?

• Where the real opportunity sat?

“I’d built the whole thing on gut feel. That had worked. But I could feel it wasn’t going to be enough for whatever came next.”

What we found

We started by mapping the business from the outside in. Demand across her sectors.
How the competitive landscape was structured. Where value was being created and captured.

Then we asked a simple question: Which part of your market is growing fastest?

Rachel said local government. It’s where she’d spent years. It felt like the core of the business. But the data said something different.

The commercial property sector, which she’d treated as secondary, was growing faster and delivering stronger margins.

She’d been pushing for volume in a tightening market, while a more valuable one was opening up beside it.

“It felt like someone handed me a map of a place I’d been working in for twenty years.”

There was more.

We identified a gap in compliance reporting for commercial property managers. Work adjacent to what her team already did, but poorly served by the market.

Larger players weren’t delivering it well. Smaller operators couldn’t resource it. She hadn’t seen it. Not because it was hidden. Because she hadn’t been looking at the market that way.

What changed

Rachel didn’t try to do everything at once. She made a small number of deliberate moves. She stopped renewing a set of domestic contracts that were high maintenance and low margin. That freed up two crew members.

She shifted her focus toward commercial property managers she’d previously overlooked. One became a contract. Two are still in progress.

Her pipeline began to change. Fewer small jobs. More structured, higher-value work.

The compliance reporting opportunity is next. Not now, but planned.

“I don’t want to start something new before I’ve bedded in what we’re already changing. But I know it’s there.”

The result

The business didn’t suddenly transform. But Rachel did. She became less reactive. More selective.

“I’m not chasing everything anymore. I know what I’m chasing.”

For the first time, she has a clear view of the market she’s in, and a way to make decisions within it.

“I used to think I didn’t have time for strategy. What I didn’t have was a way in.”