Built on Grit: How the Wilks’ Scaled Their Electrical Business

From Humble Beginnings to Multiple Locations

Mark and Jody Wilks are from Inverell, a country town of about 12,000 people in northern New South Wales. This is not a disclaimer, but a point of pride for Mark. His aspirations growing up, as he puts it, "were not more than just to live a good life."

He and Jody have been together since she was 16. They married at 19 and 20. They were in business by 23. They had four children by 30. None of that came with a grand plan. It came with proximity, work ethic, and the love they'd grown for each other.

Today, they run Level Electrical and Air, part of the Level alliance, across four locations — Inverell, Tamworth, Muswellbrook, Gloucester — with approximately 60 staff covering electrical, refrigeration, air conditioning, solar, and data work across roughly a third of New South Wales. The business they never set out to build has become one of the most operationally consistent trade operations in the region.

But it didn't happen in a straight line. And for nearly a decade, it almost didn't happen at all.

Taking Over the Family Business: Building on the Foundation

The business started in 1976, when Mark's father and a friend opened an electrical contracting shop in Inverell. Mark grew up in it, working after school and weekends from the age of nine. He actually wanted to be a motor mechanic. At 15, he did work experience at a garage and loved it. But he also recognized what was already in front of him.

"I loved working. It didn't matter what it was. But my happiness is probably not in the specific task — it's in working with my hands, fixing things. If it's broken, I like to fix it.” Mark Wilks

He bought the business from his parents in 2003 and ran it with a small team of about 16. Jody came on to manage the financial and administrative side: bookkeeping, HR, compliance, the operational spine that holds a trade business together.

"He's a big thinker. While he loves the tools, the business is actually probably more his job today than the trade. He's been able to use his mind to create something bigger than just the trade itself,” Jody Wilks

Between the two of them, they had every angle covered: Mark in the field and thinking about what's next, Jody behind the systems, making sure it all held together. It was steady work in a small town. And for a while, that was enough.

A Mindset and a Business Shift

In 2005, the business experienced a workplace tragedy that changed everything. It reshaped how Mark approached employing people, about safety, and about whether growing the business was something he was willing to do at all.

"Mentally, from that point, I subconsciously didn't want to employ anyone," he says.

Over the next eight years, the business contracted. Staff numbers dropped. The energy that had kept things moving quietly drained out. By late 2013, Mark was contemplating closing the doors entirely.

"I was going to go drive a truck or something," he says.

But even at the lowest point, Mark hadn't fully let go. Somewhere underneath the exhaustion was a condition he'd set for himself, a line in the sand that said if things could be made better, genuinely better, he'd keep going.

The Turning Point and the System That Made Growth Possible

Around the same time, Mark and Jody became part of a national network of electrical contractors — the predecessor to what is now Level Group. That combination of system and structure became critical.

It was through that network that they discovered Simpro in late 2013. Simpro gave them visibility and control inside the business. Level provided the broader framework — shared standards, peer network, and a model for how to grow beyond a single location.

Mark will tell you he signed up for one reason, and it wasn't the quoting engine, the scheduling, or the reporting — though, those are important, too. It was a safety compliance feature: the system wouldn't let a field technician proceed with the commercial side of a job until the Job Safety Analysis was completed.

"I know it sounds small, but that was probably the thing that needed to change in my head to be able to pursue progress as a business person. There was a criteria: if we were going to progress, we had to get things better. And when I saw that part of it, I thought, well, that's better." Mark Wilks

For someone who had spent eight years unable to separate the act of employing people from the fear of something going wrong, that single gate — safety before everything — was the permission he needed to move forward.

The previous system, TSM, had cost upward of $20,000 and they'd used maybe a quarter of it. Support alone ran $1,500 a day when they could get it. Simpro was different, not just in what it could do, but in the fact that it came with people who helped them actually use it.

"It gave me a whole program I could put our business into. Everything is user friendly. It's easy to set up. And once you learn how to do one thing on it, it's the same process. If you know how to create a job, you know how to create a quote. We've just built upon that for ten years now." Jody Wilks

By the end of 2015 — less than two years after implementing Simpro — the company’s financial position had turned around. The business wasn't just stable. It was ready to grow. And for the first time in years, so was Mark.

From One Location to Four

The first expansion came in 2015, when a contractor in Tamworth — about two hours from Inverell — was ready to walk away from his business. Mark bought the phone number for a small price and built the location from the ground up.

Expansion didn't happen by chance. With a consistent operating system through Simpro and the backing of the Level alliance behind them, each new location followed a proven model — same workflows, same standards, same expectations.

Jody will tell you she's the cautious one. When Mark floated the idea of a second location, her reaction was immediate.

"I freaked. We'd been through so much just to get the first one stable. But Mark said to me, 'It's like just putting on another eight team members.' And in a way, for me, it's like one big business. It's not adding another business — it's like just adding another team member." Jody Wilks

That framing only works because the system underneath is the same everywhere. Every workflow, every process, every safety protocol — it's Simpro in Inverell, copied across to the next town and the next.

Gloucester came in 2021. The previous owner was retiring, and his business was already running on Simpro. That changed the entire calculus.

"It was definitely a plus to be buying a business that was already on Simpro. We didn't have to say, 'Hey guys, forget everything you've learned in your working life.' It was just about helping them get up to the level they needed to be with Simpro." Jody Wilks

In 2023, Mark successfully introduced his first shareholder, Dave, into the business giving more energy and support to the now growing network.

Muswellbrook followed in April 2025 — same pattern, same platform, same ability to walk in and keep things running from day one. That acquisition kept eight jobs in the town.

Four locations. Sixty people. Roughly a third of New South Wales. And a system that made each expansion feel less like a gamble and more like a known quantity.

Structure, Visibility, and One Job at a Time

What holds it all together day-to-day is deceptively simple: structure, focus, and real-time visibility.

Jody manages her role in all four locations remotely from a home office. Her admin team works from a separate location 15 minutes away. They have a team member in Manila. Nearly all of the business operations run through Simpro — job creation, quoting, invoicing, safety compliance, plant and equipment monitoring. They're as close to paperless as a four-location trade operation is going to get.

"It's real time: Real-time tracking, real-time jobs, real-time invoicing. I can invoice a job before the tech is even back to the shop. And I know what's happening at this moment, across all four towns." Jody Wilks

For the field teams, the system is built around one principle:: one job at a time. Each technician gets a run sheet with a single job in front of them. No juggling, no split attention.

"That's when the job's going to get done safely. That's when it's going to have the highest level of quality, and it's done most efficiently. Our whole customer service program is designed around how Simpro flows — from the moment the customer rings in and the job's created, right through to when the invoice goes out." Mark Wilks

The result is a business where the people sending the invoices have sometimes never spoken to the people doing the work — and it doesn't matter, because the system carries the information between them. In a single-location business, that would be unthinkable. Across four towns, it's the only way it works.

The Values Behind the Systems

About a decade ago, Mark and Jody took a hard look at their culture and formalized something they'd always believed but never codified. They built a set of core values around dependability, teamwork, respect, participation, and extreme ownership. Every new hire reads Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. It's not optional. The language from that book shows up in contracts, in daily conversations, in how problems get solved.

"We knew we had our values, but our team didn't know them. So when we put that in place — everything about our systems and our business became related to those core values. Even right down to their contracts. They're spoken about, they talk about them. And I've had a lot of people say, 'You actually changed my whole way of thinking.' Not us personally — but just putting something into the business that gave people a framework." Jody Wilks

Mark conducts quarterly reviews with every one of his approximately 60 employees. He sits down with each person individually — not as a checkbox exercise, but because he believes it's the only way to mean what you say about developing people.

"If we are genuinely going to try and make every individual the best we can in the business, you've got to put that effort and time in. To be totally dependable — to our customers, to each other, to our suppliers." Mark Wilks

In a rural region where trade jobs are often the economic backbone of a town, that kind of investment doesn't just build a business. It shapes how people show up — at work and everywhere else.

A Business Built to Keep Growing

Seventeen years after Mark nearly walked away, the business looks nothing like it did back then.

For Mark, the work has never been about the specific trade. It's about the act of building: with his hands, with his mind, and with the people around him.

"I love being a tradie. I've renovated houses, I work on cars, I'm building a boat at the moment. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's broken, I want to fix it. If it's not working well, I want to make it better. That's probably just how I'm wired." Mark Wilks

The difference now is they have the systems, the structure, and the confidence to keep going.

"I don't think Simpro would ever be something that would restrict you if you were to continue to grow. If we were to add another five locations, it would still work." Jody Wilks

They didn't start with a vision for four locations, 60 employees, and a third of a state. They started with each other, a trade, and a willingness to keep going when most people would have stopped. It’s still about doing the work properly. One job at a time. Building something that holds up, for their team, their customers, and the towns they operate in.

Together, the combination of Level and Simpro has allowed the business to scale with consistency — maintaining quality, safety and performance across multiple locations.