Summary
The video script discusses the experiences and insights of a builder in CRA, including the challenges of pricing, the importance of detailed quotes, and the benefits of using project management software like Builder Trend.
Highlights
00:01 The builder discusses the importance of filling up the pipeline and having a year’s worth of work ahead.
02:22 Taking breaks and maintaining work-life balance in the building industry.
05:10 The builder shares his journey from being a carpenter to starting his own business.
10:25 The process of becoming a builder in CRA and the different types of licenses.
15:45 The challenges of getting hours signed off by other builders to become a licensed builder.
19:30 The builder’s approach to pricing and the benefits of using a Quantity Surveyor (Qs).
24:40 The builder’s use of Builder Trend software for project management and accurate cost tracking.
INSIGHTS:
– The builder emphasizes the importance of having a sustainable pipeline of work to ensure the success and longevity of a building business.
– Pricing accurately is crucial for profitability, and using a Quantity Surveyor (Qs) can help ensure all costs are accounted for and avoid underquoting.
– The use of project management software like Builder Trend can greatly improve efficiency, cost tracking, and client communication in the building process.
– Building licenses in CRA have strict requirements, including gaining work experience, obtaining certificates, and passing exams.
– Taking breaks and maintaining a work-life balance is important in the building industry to prevent burnout and stay motivated.
– The builder’s experience with a failed development project highlights the importance of analyzing market conditions and making strategic decisions to minimize losses.
– Cultivating a strong team, including trusted tradespeople and a reliable project manager, is key to the success of a building business.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00 boom boom sweet nice bro um do you want a coffee bro um yeah espresso what what do you have cappuccino long long black long black take a look come have a look yo yo how’s it going um catching up today with this absolute Legend mark from Freedom built he’s traveled all the way down from CRA for this one um can’t thank you enough was real cool talking to him about um how passionate he is about his business he’s got his partner involved um he just does design and build new builds uh key couple key
00:30 points taken away from that was you know it takes a year for him to get a job in production from the moment he meets the client goes through Council goes through pricing tender and gets a job signed up so biggest thing for him was talking about pipeline how to fill up your pipeline and you know build a business that is sustainable and you’ve got a year worth of work ahead of you so take a listen on this podcast um if you’re a local Builder from camb tag your company name below um we’ll get in touch with
00:54 you we’d love to do a Qs report for you take a listen [Music] yeah I love being busy bro I can’t stand not doing stuff yeah I felt a bit out of touch on my holidays like yeah we took 3 weeks and it’s probably the longest break we’ve had for a while and I was just like coming back to it I was like how do you do this like what’s going on what’s a computer keypad again yeah I feel like you’re you’re work Fitness like gets to towards the back end of the year as well is really good and then do
01:36 you like um do you try and like set strict times where you do take some time off or like you pretty flexible just depends how busy you are yeah I think like building industry is always like usually shutdown periods end of December yeah to sort of mid gen so I’ll try get away like for a day or two here and there but I’ll try and keep it pretty much safe the end of the year so is it fair to say cuz we obviously do do all our um Qs stuff between yeah Aussie and NZ but is it fair to say Aussie doesn’t
02:05 really open back up until [ __ ] Australia day is done pretty is that pretty much it yeah yeah I saw a lot of guys stories today just being like I’m back back work I think a lot of people will sort of Shadow comeback like they’ll be they’ll be monitoring it but they’ll they’ll give themselves that break to the public and everything to say don’t email me until yeah yeah till Australia till Australia day bro there such a good break man I feel like in NZ you can’t get any done between like the
02:31 15th and it’s like the 15th or the 15th kind of that’s it but it’s more if your projects are based around um if your projects based around council stuff and you need Council sign offs that’s a [ __ ] [ __ ] but apart from that like you’re kind of just working around subies so yeah yeah yeah um So based in CRA How long have you been building in CRA for um Freedom’s been yeah open for 5 years now so 5 years in February actually I had a quick look um at my Instagram and I was like when was the
02:59 first post I made I looked back and it was like February 2019 so yeah we had a the podcast we got coming out this week the guy Adam we did in New Zealand he does um like real high-end Timber join in and I said to him I was like oh your first Instagram post was September 2018 he’s like [ __ ] am I that old [ __ ] is 5 years gone that fast yeah 100% yeah that’s cool man um so been building longer um but in terms of just freedom in the company yeah I’ve been going for 5 years so yeah I’ve been in the
03:26 industry just over 10 years now I think yeah sweet um just Carpenter by trade worked my way through the system and yeah just always had aspirations I suppose of running business and a to dictate my own calls and yeah bro that’s I feel it’s just like that freedom aspect there been told what to do I feel I feel like though there’s a bit of a catch that like a misconception when you’re like yeah I want to be able to work on my own terms and I feel like when you’re into that’s a lie cuz [ __ ]
03:54 you’re on seven days a week man and it’s the first thing you think about the last thing you think about every day yeah I think like yeah it’ll separate you pretty quickly whether you want to do it or you don’t want to do it and I think like yeah sort of high Achievers enjoy enjoy doing it so pressure and stress but I think it’s good for you 100% um so like is it the standard like in Australia is is the standard kind of model like go to school do you do a pre-trade cross afterwards would you go and work for a
04:19 builder like is it changing or How does it go yeah so I found it actually quite difficult um sort of getting to the stage of being a builder so I think the the standard would be doing starting your carpentry appers ship and then sort of working with either a contract Carpenter or a builder and just trying to develop those skills but we’ve got pretty strict guidelines on when you’re able to um apply to be a builder which I’m sure nz’s probably the same um but I think the minimum requirement now from
04:50 having your trade behind you is then to have something like 4,000 hours signed off from a builder true so is that would that just be like your practical completion yeah and what’s the what’s the standard called over here like our’s NZ 3604 and BC what’s the Aussie one um so it’s just a certificate you need to obtain a certificate for in building and construction yeah cool um and then from that there’s three different types of licenses you can get um C-Class being just sort of low resi um bclass can sort
05:22 of start to do the medium density town houses and things like that and then a class is sort of skyrise buildings like like we’re in now how do these like developers that are building Sky risers who’s who’s got the license for those do they have the license or are they just hiring the builders with the license I think there’s both so yeah yeah yeah cuz I’m fascinated by so that so so an a class license will be that’s when you need to go to UNI and do your four years in yeah um building and
05:47 construction um whereas um with the c and b class you can just gain those through b class needs to be diploma okay and then CCL class just needs to be aert for so I see I got mine through finishing my trade um and then I went into like night school pretty much yeah nice um couple of nights a week for a few hours um do all your theory stuff do all the the and get your so while you were doing your building that was allocating to your 4,000 hours um after so then yeah strict requirements and and I I sort of came into it when they
06:19 started to I suppose realize they were giving it to too many people too frequently so mine was there was a year cooling off period from Once I finished my course yeah to then I had to supply the hours from that I see cuz I feel like in New Zealand um the barri to entry to like do your own building work or handyman work is so low ver is there’s so many so I reckon that’s what drives our rate down yeah whereas in aie the rates are way higher but the barrier to entry is actually a bit harder which I think is good because it’s like
06:51 otherwise you just get flooded with [ __ ] idiots you know I think it I think it’s good but the only thing that I struggle to get my head around is when so so for those 4,000 hours you need to sign off from another Builder I feel like there’s a big conflict of interest like who’s signing them off yeah who’s signing them off and like some sometimes people don’t want to sign you off because you could one day be a competitor of their so I found when I was a contractor and I had really good relationships with Builders and I’d work
07:18 for them for years and then I’d say hey can you sign this for me I’m I’m trying to do this and I’m trying to progress into this and they said I’m not doing that oh man and like that that when you have good relationship with people so I feel like there’s that’s hard needs a little bit more um tweaking just to be like obviously yes you have to weed out the guys that don’t belong there and the guys that are in experienced and like don’t deserve to have it but for the guys that have done their trade and
07:43 they’ve put in the time and then they get shut down from someone who’s just willing not to sign it off yeah I think there’s a bit of a gray area with that yeah that sure and especially like you probably get away with it in Sydney more not so like competition you can move to another suburb but cber would you consider it quite small everyone knows everyone yeah 100% yeah yeah um so going back like when you were doing your apprenticeship obviously your boss was signing your stuff off Y is he still working there now are you his competitor
08:08 no so my boss was actually um he was more of a contractor so um we worked for bigger townhouse sort of Builders and um yeah that was the first path that I took um but yeah he’s he’s still doing that same thing but I always just wanted to um you you know it is every trade knows that’s probably going to listen to this it’s quite Cutthroat working to builders absolutely man the rates are the money’s not there yeah and then it’s just like finding the guys as well like it’s the cost of like having direct employees or
08:38 or even getting subbies now like and that those meter rates aren’t changing a huge amount no man um yeah I think yeah the difference uh obviously yeah I’d love I want to talk about the yeah supply of contractors and obviously the money stuff but the way I see it like guys that are doing labor only they’re really only clipping the ticket on labor versus if you’re full contract you can clip the ticket on you know four or five different items and still putting a contingency on yeah that’s right um in
09:03 so where was I there so in so in cber you were working for that Builder and then how did you get your first job or how did you start Freedom like cuz that’s always a big question we get is you know what do you do how do you get your first job or like when do you know when going out on your own is good yeah yeah so funny enough I um yeah when I first started I was subing to so I first left my boss that I did my apprenticeship with and then I started subing to one of my friends okay and yeah from the start he put a lot of
09:33 confidence in me being like you don’t need to be working for me like I think you should be out doing your own thing so he pushed you into it yeah and then he he pushed me in said like while I was still under him he said I want you to get an apprentice and I’ll start man shifting you more work yeah shifting me more work and more responsibility and things like that and then it literally was like a 6mon probably phase and then it was like yep here’s a few builders that I can’t keep up with and then it
09:56 was just putting me straight onto him so yeah so you were going from labor only to full contract yeah so I’ve got a lot of respect for um yeah his name was Jack who helped me with that and um yeah I was just straight in the deep end straight out on my own and um you kind of sink or swim and then bro 100% man so I feel like you didn’t really have to take the approach of so much looking for work or doing sales you were kind of just doing a good product for one guy correct word of mouth this guy seems to
10:23 happen all the time too busy here I didn’t go down that marketing aspect for until about 3 years ago so that’s interesting my my first two years um was yeah just purely Word of Mouth stuff and all all I thought was if I do a good job for one guy he’s probably got a friend or something like that and it’s just going to continue from that which it did um but I feel like he’s kind of get capped out to a stage there where it’s like where’s the real development and I was like same thing with Contracting I
10:51 was like there’s not a huge amount of money in this and it’s tough on the body you’ve got to move quick yeah make Mone yeah the plan was was always to get into building um but then it was just like steps to put in place to how to get there and then that’s when I turned to a bit more coaching um down the business side of things cuz at the end of the day I scraped my way through school I wanted to be a rugby player back then yeah you’re a pretty big dude and and yeah and then I was like you don’t learn like
11:20 business while you’re at school and so going from a carpenter that’s one thing but then actually learning the business side of things is a complet so yeah it’s almost like you know they always go on about a shortage of Builders short I’m like okay there’s probably not a shortage of really good Builders but there’s a shortage of good businessman Builders that’s right you don’t get taught anything there that’s right and and the one aspect that actually really annoyed me when I was doing um my tech
11:44 to become a builder was um they they go on about statistics of like how long it takes people to fail and what what they fail on and I think in a in a Year’s course we spent I think like two nights on finance and that’s like the biggest thing that we fail so it’s just like it’s crazy to me that like yeah they’re not pushing enough on the are giving you a chance really the biggest failure yeah so when you when you were first started like what were your payment schedules with labor only cuz obviously money and
12:13 cash flows can anything how are you fig out depending on the size of the Builder to be honest so the smaller resi guys I found were better they were every fortnite stretch it out to every month but then we did a lot of stuff with town houses for a while and that stretched to 60 30 to 60 days and when you when their invoice dat say at the end of the month and then you tick over to the first day that month you can’t invoice that till the end of the month so you’re sometimes going 60 to 90 days and yeah that’s
12:42 ruthless that was that was tough at the time yeah did you have periods where you were like [ __ ] I haven’t kept up with my invoicing and I’m out for 4 weeks or yeah like definitely yeah like uh the good thing at the time was um two of my Tradesmen were my close mates um so it’s a hard convos yeah comos be like hey boys it’s going to be a little bit delayed but I promise you’ll be there next week and yeah like that was good for them like the guys apprentices that work directly for me on trades like I
13:09 was always able to continually get those but I could stretch the subbies that I had at the time a little bit further with those things so yeah yeah yeah that’s the one thing man cash flow can just s and like obviously labor only is not too bad you’re just floating like labor rates and maybe fuel for a vehicle but [ __ ] when you get into like subes and materials 20th of the month and then if you’re on like what do you guys do for GST here E4 two month gsts uh quarter so that’s not too bad but I mean
13:34 yeah in New Zealand two month that can catch up with you like quickly it’s man it can be a slippery slope if you don’t catch and that’s the stuff you don’t learn like and I think I was I’m grateful that I had a good accountant with me from the start to say this like when your pay comes in this is what you need to be putting aside and teaching those early Steps From the Start because what were they advising 30 35 uh 40 actually so and that was just like having a buffer and then having enough
14:00 for tax GST and then yeah like just anything on a rainy day which yeah has always been good um how did you track that you good on EXL do you use spreadsheets or was your accountant were you just very close with your accountant yeah so it was always through like zero with us um just tracking costs sofware I’ve yeah I’ve definitely become like one of my strong points is being very focused on the numbers so gone from rugby Jo to nerd nice and I swear a lot of that is just I think it’s a healthy thing to be a bit in a mindset of like
14:32 scarcity in like you need to be constantly looking at where things are going and what’s coming in and what’s in the future because yeah like quick stuff can happen quickly and if you’re not seeing that then it can get really bad and yeah I suppose I feel like a a bit of I’ve had like employees for a while now and I always feel bit of a um what’s the word like I I’ve I’ve got to do right by them and i’ I’ve got to be in front of this so yeah yeah that was why I’ve sort of been very close to that
15:02 side of things and making sure we’re making money and and making sure I’m getting three quotes or making sure we’re keeping the cost down yeah I think um man I’ve definitely had periods where and I say every Builder will say this they’ve made a stack load of money but when it’s good it’s always there’s always going to be a downturn somewhere or a small side but man we joke about this heat but guys going buy you big Ford Rangers raised up snorkel and I’m like BR 50 Grand could do so much better
15:28 yeah 100% yeah I was thinking about that before I came here cuz yeah I was FL Ranger I’m joking but yeah it’s just like when guys start to it’s like there’s a big adrenaline buzz when you start to land them big jobs but if you don’t truly know like what your costs are cuz then or what’s profit like you get 100K payment and you’re like man you’ve only got 10 10k of that’s yours and then you got to pay tax on that and and then one of the things that we find a lot with clients when we enter quotes
15:57 is will’ll be 50 $100,000 less than us and I’ll always question and say can you give us some feedback on where we were more expensive and what areas sometimes a lot of the time we find it’s in the preliminaries like in has have they actually accounted for um project management supervision or Administration on that job and that’s where we’ll always be over and it’s like we’ve accounted for it but this guy’s coming cheaper and then it’s like he’s if he’s just making enough money on it who’s
16:24 paying for him to run that job so exactly that’s the hard thing um and I want to ask you more about this but um yeah when for same thing when we get Quotes come back and they’re like oh you’re too expensive I always ask for a breakdown and be like was it the labor or the materials like where were we but then it’s tag outs in that are huge as well like if your quote’s high but there’s no tags and they’re taking a lower quote with 15 tags it’s like do the math man you know what what are you
16:49 missing out on what’s your kind of company process between like um if you could go into it like um new lead to First Sight visit to quote to how does your say for a new build how do you step it out and how long does it take for you roughly yeah so we offer design and construct cool and currently how it sits is we don’t have in-house design we’ll Sub sub that out to who we think is necessary um and I suppose a part of that process as well is we spend a good amount of time from the start with questionnaires and phone calls with the
17:22 customers trying to actually understand them see if they’re your ideal client yeah I think when I first started I went really wrong with how I’d approach that sales process and quoted everything for free yeah I’d go to a quote I’d bring my tape measure i’ just say what do you want like and and I’ll measure things up and I’ll say I’ll have a quote to you in 3 days but I’ve now realized I’ll make a point of it now I won’t bring a tape measure with me to a quote and I’ll
17:45 actually just try and understand the client and what they’re after that’s interesting eh yeah and it’s just it’s more about and I think the other thing that I’ve realized is it needs to like not every client’s right for you um so if you can understand them quickly I think of face value and a conversation you you gauge whether you want to work with them or not and and vice versa for them so that first side inspection I use as a bit of a vetting process to just say is this someone that we want to tie
18:12 up a million dollars with is this someone like that we have a bad Vibe or or anything like that so and spend 12 months in in in their back pocket all the time as well but yeah going back to that sales process it’s more like um we we’ll run ads and I can probably touch on marketing a bit later um but yeah once the inquiry comes to us we’ve just got a form on our website how many questions is it on average um it’s it’s about 6 to 10 yeah okay that’s pretty in depth yeah so it it first used
18:41 to be a little bit more in depth um but then we’ve yeah sort of refine that a little bit and but that’s just business 101a like I feel like every year or every you know 6 months you’re always refining stuff so did you notice more inquiries or less when you refined it from 10 to 6 um or more questions more more inquiries definitely and I think yeah the the first one we used to ask budget and everything like that but I think for people to be asking about budget that first time off can be a little bit offputting didn’t want to
19:07 disclose it up front but in the same token on our end we kind of want to know that from the start whether we can actually see it feasible or not yeah um but now once the questionnaires in we’ll sit on a call with them and then we’ll ask cool a few more in-depth questions and do you um when you go through that sales process do you give any indications of price ballparks verbally or like do you so we get a mix um and sometimes it’s really hard and that’s one of the harder things of design and construct when it’s literally just an
19:34 idea in someone’s head and you’re having to try and picture what they’re after and then try and give them a ballpark yeah it’s tough um we find it a little bit easier with um like the when people already have plans that come to us and we can give them that guide and ballparks um but without sort of really dialing into it then like it’s hard and and everyone wants that quote like they want to compare it with a few other guys they want to know a number eight yeah yeah and then and that number they’ll
20:01 they’ll really like Leverage from from the very start and it’s like oh you said this or you said that so that that’s a tricky one for us and a question we almost try and Dodge a little bit like we’ll give them that range obviously cuz you have to start somewhere um yeah it’s it’s we’ve always um sorry I I feel like um in we’ve always tried to give like rough square meter rates Square meteres are really dangerous I feel people take them out of context but I’m always like you know if you want to go real budget
20:29 townhouse nothing too fancy 2 and a half to three and a half if you’re looking in yeah maybe design and building correct me if I’m wrong here maybe 4 and 1/2 up to 5 and 1/2 six luxury 6 Plus up to 10 would that be pretty fair 100% And when you give those do you know if like other builders are giving those out like do they come back to you and say oh well we had someone say 3,000 a square you’ve said four and a half what’s the yeah like I feel like sometimes there is a bit of a divide of like what the
20:56 information actually give to us cuz when they feel like these questionnaires when we used to have the price in there I don’t feel like they’re entirely honest from that first part cuz sometimes people are maybe trying to get it a little bit cheaper or or just test you to see oh what’s he will he try and compete here or or how is it so the best way of me mitigating that was based on previous projects we’ve done I’ll give them an indication of what that cost me send them some plans I feel like that’s
21:22 the easiest way to try and get around that and say this is what this cost us you can have a look at what was included and I can send you specs and everything like that but based on a 5 minute look at yours it’s it’s too tricky for me to just be like 5,000 a square meter I feel I feel like there’s no what there would be other Industries but like you buy this laptop for example it’s like 2 and 1/2k there’s no the only thing they can tack on is a warranty you know but with building it’s like I mean bathrooms vary
21:48 from $10,000 to $200,000 yeah building so painful um so tell us a little bit more about yeah sort of what you do so you just do design construct new builds do you do anything smaller Renovations smaller stuff as well yeah so we do yeah predominantly knock down rebuilds um yeah you do the full demo full everything yeah everything from start to finish um and and that’s where I suppose why we kind of got into the design and construct cuz at the very start we had a lot of people come to us saying we don’t
22:18 actually know where to start like so and I feel like it’s really powerful when you can get the Builder from the start and whether it’s not designed with the builder it’s the Builder will work collaboratively with the architect or building designer with that process so yeah we our main um yeah source of income would be knock down rebuilds and also extensions Renovations yeah cool um we only try and work in the inner ring within Cambra so um we don’t have like my passion is sort of building people’s
22:47 dream houses and um in established areas where you can bring in the landscape with the actual house I don’t have a big passion with all of the newer suburbs where people are trying to cut cost and build for as low as they can and also they just they’re on top of each other there’s no plants or anything like it’s all just house so we actually and we do get a fair few inquiries in those newer suburbs and politely turn them down yeah yeah and then like we we’ve also got processes for that as well um that I’ve
23:14 learned along the way where it’s just like actually when someone you say no to someone it’s also being able to provide them value still and pass them on to someone else who may be interested in that job yeah if you know someone that’s good in that in that space you can say yeah here’s a referral for you that’s right yeah so um yeah that’s pretty much what we’re doing at the moment and and where our passion lies and we’re also um trying to do our own development on the side as well so oh nice have you
23:40 completed any successfully yeah yeah we we’ve completed one um one unit uh knockdown rebuild of custom home um yeah which is on our website and stuff and that was our actually our first family home that we lived in for a while um and we sold that uh that exchange September last year so that was our first one that really really got the ball rolling and yeah was like a yeah really profitable job for us which we were happy with um but yeah on the on the the flip to that as well as um we also had a development
24:09 that didn’t go so well I love talking about problems man cuz everyone’s got them yeah so um so you had one that went peer shaped had one that went peer shaped and we didn’t we didn’t even actually get to the build so [ __ ] um we purchased Pro and this is only pretty fresh as well like we actually settled on both of them I think a week apart oh W um but yeah we we purchased a block um we went through the design phase um the feasibilities worked for it at the time when we purchased it um and then we were
24:39 just sort of waiting to sell our previous property to then pull the pin on it and in that space the last 12 months you guys would be the same as here like that Market’s dramatically changed and chopped off I was just watching that and it was it was really hard because I’m like yep we’ve purchased this we’re paying mortgage on it we had tenants in there at the time which helped offset that a little bit but then interest rate started to go up and then there was so many questions um and yeah I was it was a tough time and
25:08 like we spent 15 to 20,000 on the plans but I was happy that I think in the 5 years that I’ve been in business now and the mentors that have helped me along the time have really reinforced that there’s no room for an ego in business um so yeah there was some tough conversations that had to have with my partner um and then we kind of came to it and just said look we just the best thing for us to do right now is offload this yeah and we offloaded at a loss like over $100,000 but it was just like if we then
25:42 had the payments on that for another year then you know what I mean would be another $100,000 yeah yeah I just had to remove the emotion from that and just say we’re better off taking a hit on this now and then recalibrating good waiting and then going again with the right block and the right area so as hard as that was in $100,000 things I think I remember he30 huge bro but off that best 3 years after that like it was yeah so you’re probably going through that now I don’t know so now I’m just like okay like I
26:16 was pretty down in the dumps for a little bit there but then I was like look what I did with this development like look how well that went look look at the things that I’ve learned and I know that that won’t happen again and your DD process moving on the next one is probably going to be twice as strict you know yeah 100% so so your core business now still is obviously working direct for clients correct correct so what’s your sort of like pipeline for this year 24 months looking like at the moment but how many projects ahead are
26:41 you kind of sitting yeah so we’re doing about um give or take at the time just depending on when they start and finish but um we’re taking on about four to five projects a year okay cool um which is pretty much capping us out for our Builder warranty insurance so it’s not like we can take on anymore as well but at the moment like we’ve had a fair bit of growth over the last 18 months where I’ve almost like um five times our sort of turnover for the year so that’s exciting there’s there’s definitely like
27:10 a lot of learning things in that and you’ve got to put new people on that you can trust and yeah man that’s um and that’s that takes not so much like a cost expenditure but a experience expenditure cuz getting someone in a management position yeah [ __ ] can you tell us about like your internal company structure how you run it like what’s your day-to-day y project manager Etc yeah so obviously as a business owner I play a lot of the hats sure I’m obviously the director and I I look after like talking with clients and uh
27:39 sales process and things like that and then I’m also construction manager on site where running the jobs um I’ve got a team of five Carpenters nice um any apprentices or yeah a range of I’ve got two Tradesmen and three apprentices nice man um and those guys have been with me for yeah quite a few years now so it’s a it’s a really tight-knit team nice um which has yeah definitely helped me get to where I am that’s hard to get a yeah and then the biggest one uh the most valuable one has been actually bringing
28:07 my partner on fulltime in the office as a project manager so was that a scary transition quit your job come work for me well it’s funny everyone is like oh what’s she doing the books but she’s actually a project manager and she was working for like a a billion dollar company prior to starting with me so in construction or in construction yeah was it like a tier one must be a tier one tier one yeah what was it are you allowed to say what they called um RPS RPS them are they like bigger than icon icon level or I would say so like they
28:36 pretty much look after all the defense infrastructure around Australia big company and like she had a lot of experience and we always floated the idea around but obviously there’s that thing where it’s like we still need to have a relationship but yeah business to five and then relationship after 5 p.m.
28:53 so I was like it took me a long time to and I was like meanwhile I’m on site every day like struggling like working like 70 hour weeks and and what just to make ends meet um just cuz I was scared to make that decision but yeah best best thing I’ve ever done um I don’t yeah there’s no one I think that’ll care more than your partner with your business and I suppose whatever we both put into it we get a direct yeah get a direct out of it and I think we’ve been able to navigate that sort of work life balance
29:23 quite well when it’s like tools down or computers off like we can switch off and and then go to our thing so how does it work with uh you and your Builders do you just have one format on each site with an apprentice and then one Apprentice swaps around a team of two yeah yeah pretty much works like that um a lot of the time I actually try and keep them together like we’re currently doing a dual occupancy where there’s two on the one block and I find um five’s not a like a massive team it’s not and
29:49 sometimes people say maybe if they’re all on one side it’s overcrowded but I feel like culturally um and actually getting things done when they’re all together I feel like stuff’s way more effective yeah cool um so yeah I typically try and keep them all together and like I was saying like they’re they’re a tight-knit crew and um they all enjoy being around each other and yeah when when they’re all together I feel like I’ve tested quite a few different ways and I was going to say
30:12 you’re the only one that knows splitting a team at works or keeping them together is better for the business yeah yeah so when I first would think about it I’d be like five guys doing frames or something it’s just like oh are we going to there but then it’s like when they get it done in a day then you’re like okay cool yeah this is good I can be like sweet man we’ve allowed 200 hours for frames and we’ve done it in 150 so yeah that’s good are you big on like uh labor back costing how long stuff takes like
30:38 setting deadlines targets do you use a project management software or how do you so we’re using Builder Trend build a trend um yeah we’ve we’ve only pretty recently adapted that and done some training with an external company yeah um which has been a big help I did actually get it probably 18 months ago and when I first jumped into it I was like it was a bit overwhelming like and it’s it’s quite a lot like it’s I think over the year it’s about 7,000 Australian so you want to be using that
31:05 to its full capacity otherwise you feel like you’re just wasting wasting coin yeah so we got some training on it which has been massive and it’s it’s really beneficial for me to actually know my true numbers now yeah man so every bill that comes through a job will go through Builder Trend and then it’s also got um for my direct employees it’s got time clocks so they can put it time clock on every single thing they do per job so there’ll be one for frames there’ll be one for trusses there’ll be one for pre-
31:35 Sheet sweet um and I can literally cost and then in the long term that also helps me with quoting and yeah you know where you’re making marginal where you need to beef up on items yeah for sure and I feel like that was one of the biggest things I was scared of when I started to grow was I was like gez like there’s a lot of money starting to come through now and I want to make sure I know like that it’s all sound so yeah Builder trans being a massive one for that um and then it’s also just got yeah
32:00 really good scheduling tools um the training we did on it um this is how in depth it goes and like I I really recommend it um but so our schedule will have 50 to 100 things through the schedule and then for each um item on the schedule have to-do notes for it so say before we pour a slab there’ll be a a checklist that we need to go through similar to like an ITP yeah and that’s what your Foreman’s checking on site yeah that’s right and then it just has that benefit to say when you’re teaching
32:29 someone and you’re going through it you can say hey put your head into this program and it should be like fault proof like even though they can have experience in it should be like nothing will get missed so it’s like take photos of where this this and this is exactly just tick tick and flick so did your did your boys get around that pretty good they were all open to it on them yeah and then it’s got the the other bonuses which has been a good cultural thing is it’s got a thing called time clocks in
32:56 it um and the time clocks they can actually sort of interact with the client a little bit so where they finish say they knock up a frame and then they can take a photo of it and they posted into a portal that our client and we sit in so we they get notifications they get notifications and do they see like the photos uploaded and stuff as well that’s right yeah that would be a dopamine hit for the sitting at work and they get a that’s cool cuz I think one of the yeah from talking to a lot of people that
33:23 haven’t built with me but that have built previously one of the biggest fears they is like not knowing what’s going on at any stage so yeah I feel like people don’t do enough of that it’s like if you have a SPN nightly site visit and then you post dat daily logs every now and then just to show even if it’s something like minuscule like hey I built this bulkhead today like and it’s just like oh cool like they it’s bringing him in on that Journey a little bit more than yeah I think that’s
33:46 important a like the emotional emotional side of it like I haven’t spent a million dollars on a house yet but I could imagine if you’re yeah sitting in an office and you get a ping and you can see oh sweet the frames just went up today you know they can show their Co workers put it in their family group chats like it’s kind of exciting 100% And that’s a big thing that I’ve noticed like when you go on a journey with a client you get all of their friends and family like follow you and and then
34:08 follow on for that Journey as well so yeah it’s like and then they they’re like oh jeez it’s going up quick and you’re getting all these notifications and you seeing the Instagram go and and the daily go so it’s a good thing to put then you get hits at the next barbecue people are talking about you um few key things you’re a great Talker by the way um few key things I do want to kind of talk about though was so like pricing stuff obviously we’re q’s and I love like I talk to heaps of business owners
34:33 every day and I just love to know how you’re doing your pricing Y where have you made fuckups in the past how to you know give me a bit of a rundown on how you price and I’ll probably put a disclaimer at the start of it to say we are using a Qs at the moment but it’s not you and I thought like that was why I I wanted to come on here and just be like man the power that I’ve seen over the last 18 months with that has been huge and if I could pass that on to one or two people to be like make that jump
34:59 then and do it so that’s a I reckon it’s a huge investment 100% And and at the end of the day with what most people are putting in place now and what we’re putting in place we’re charging our clients from the start to do that quote so we’re offsetting that cost straight away it’s not a cost to your business that’s right so what’s your um back on the sales process and can we mix in that at what point do you get a is it do you call it a buyers commitment fee or like a yeah so um ours is called a
35:26 preliminary agreement yeah um so yeah we’ll send them a bit of a package and um it most likely typically includes uh structural drawings concept um a soil test and then the estimation fee yeah sweet what’s that varying 7 and 1 half to 10K so we do it based on contract price of the job when it comes out so perent yeah 0.
35:49 04% which on a million dollar build roughly works out to be about three just over three grand y sweet um and then yeah we’re using an external company for that at the moment and I didn’t for a long time and I would get to the end of a job and be like I felt like I was like hitting most of the prices but then I wasn’t making money and I wasn’t diving deep enough into it it’s a tough one man the thing I’ve seen you’ll be able to correct me on this is you’ll be like cool we made heaps on pngs burnt [ __ ] hours on labor made on materials average
36:17 on subbies but how do you on every job and I suppose you’re always doing similar type of jobs like you’re in a niche industry how do you just do 10% on each you know yeah each area of the build yeah so so now with the going down more the Qs thing um and I’ll I’ll come back to that question but that’s cool um I will say what I was kind of doing wrong and the like the our proposals are like 50 to 60 Pages now and there’s thousands of like there’s over a thousand light items so for an example
36:50 stuff that I wasn’t quoting prior to it was um even things as simple as going to the site putting up your notice of building work on scribbling your details on it and then leaving like I previously I’d just be like I’ll go do that on a Saturday yeah so it’s like you an hour for that yeah vehicle charge sight sign you’ve got to charge for that [ __ ] yeah so like and I think that’s where I was like there was so many little things like that where I just be like oh I’ll just do this one and like it won’t
37:18 notice but you do that like 50 times over the job and that’s like that’s big money so it’s a lot of money man and it’s your time at the end of the day it’s not like you’re unfairly charging for it it’s just purely stuff putting into the job for sure so that’s been the big benefit of actually having all of those things accounted for um and the other one would be like having confidence in knowing that you’ve sent it off to a team of professionals and that it’s getting done right and cuz I
37:43 think most Builders problems that will listen to this will be you’ll get a quote come in but you’ll be on site for 8 hours of the day and then it’s just like chaos at night trying to be like oh I’ve got to quickly pump this quote out and you miss things like really easily it’s it’s like even if you’re sitting down trying to do it say you get a break you do your site visits your home at 10: and you can be like cool I got three hours and then you take a phone call from your Builder problem phone call
38:05 from your and you’re like I’ve just got a 20-minute job here but I’ve muddled with all these other numbers and things and then you forget to put something in and it’s like oh game over yeah so like yeah purely like the time factor and then being able to actually put enough time to make sure the numbers lie I can say that most Builders don’t have the time to do that and that’s why they need to start Outsourcing yeah for sure and then also just when you actually enter it and you’re like jez I know this guy’s
38:31 accounted for all these little things like a sight fence that I used to miss and that I used to miss and and then yeah straight away we’ve been doing it for about just over 12 months now cool man and our jobs are running much more profitably than they were that’s nice man um and then the tradeoff as well which which is what I speak to clients about is I say if a builder’s done his due diligence from the start and taken it to a Qs I feel like the client should have more confidence 100% because when
38:58 they see a 5050 page proposal come through and they go most of it will mean absolutely nothing to them but just to show that like every item of that build is detailed through that process yeah I’ve always said yeah if I was a homeowner and I see one Builder send a four line item zero quote versus 50 I’m kind of like [ __ ] man and that’s that’s where Builders sometimes get their bad names from is that they’ll just pump like thousands of provisional sums in yeah and then Miss stuff and under quote
39:28 stuff and then they’ve just got the leverage at the time to then go back and seek costs when they’ve kind of just under qued it from the start so so are you on all the projects you’re doing now are you predominantly fixed price only fixed price only like yeah we do have a portion of um like provisional sums for like soil and things like that where there’s just things you can’t determine um whether you’re going through that but I think what we say up benefit is is we’re only kind of putting a provisional
39:54 sum down for that one line item like it’s not like a whole like lock up stage and it’s all under provisional somewhere they can hide costs or anything so what do you do in regards to like bathroom and kitchens where specs can range from you know huge sums yeah do you provide like do you go for a like is that a part of your package of signing up like physically we’ll always have a um an inclusions list okay um based on what like we usually put like we’re not sort of low range we’re not super highend
40:23 we’re kind of that mid to highend range so we’ll give everyone a guide and then based when they going into the if they s it before we sign the contract great we’ll lock it all in but there’s some people that it takes a little bit longer for them to understand exactly what they want so we’ll just make that allowance and then update that allowance from when they start to make those selections rough rough figure what’s the most expensive kitchen you’ve put in and the most cheapest kitchen you’ve put in um
40:50 in CRA I think the cheapest kitchen we’ve put in will probably be like under 10k [ __ ] um that’s a rental man yeah um and the most expensive kitchen um would be yeah pushing pushing 100 yeah nice what about bathroom vedes um seen some expensive stuff there not not too yeah not too far with that’s probably been one of the things that I’ve always suggested as a bit of a cost saver yeah um like I feel like they all look the same man to buff sh and like yeah when we get into that state like people go
41:23 down the road of um concrete ones and like that um but sometimes functionality at the end of the day like the simpler ones are more like um functionable and yeah they’re they’re cheaper on the cost so yeah I feel like I just I wouldn’t personally see the difference between a $700 W Hong and 2,000 I just feel like as as it’s got a draw with like how much price increases we’ve seen over the years like they’re definitely always the ones that I’m like you can save $2,000 here if you just pick a cheaper
41:53 alternative which isn’t actually that much worse than one um standard size house you’re doing how many bathrooms two story single story what’s kind of happening in your Market standard size would probably be I’d say 250 internal living y CL garage yeah cool we found the single story nowadays is a lot more popular than double yeah um and I I even think the real estate market reflects that um so we noticed that with our development that there would be twostory houses in the same area that had similar
42:25 traits and they would be trying to fetch higher price and they wouldn’t sell but whereas the single level ones that still have like decent rooms higher ceilings and things like that people are going for so they snapping up yeah I suppose you just build to what the market wants for your development kids and elderly people um like obviously that’s the first thing that they look at so I suppose it’s just not trying to just really hone in on one section of the market like it’s being able to be open
42:48 for a few and I think there will be the time comes where then you want to go all right I’m going to with this one I’m going to try and attack that twostory pool and go go out but um yeah what uh what What’s like a big sort of shortage of trades in CRA what’s the hardest subbies to get easiest ones over supplied is anything that’s very scarce Brick Layers and NZ are hard to get yeah definitely the same Brick Layers um I think joiners join is also makers yeah cabry um is a hard one um yeah I still
43:19 feel like there’s a lot of people at the moment that are were previously subing the last 12 months that are looking at sort of going back wages so I do feel like there’s a bit of a retract in actually just other sub like with everything kind of out there do you see a slight downturn of work in CRA for sure we haven’t noticed it too much and I think um I’ve definitely noticed it on the lead front um but I feel like with marketing and everything that really I’m so happy we did that back then cuz it
43:49 really put us ahead into the future and I think we’ve made subtle changes because the NCC um which is like the naal code of um like who makes all the rules and regulations within Australia of what we work under they’ve put out a series of changes which have upped the energy ratings um yeah changed like Australian standards and things like that of products that go in so we’ve and it’s all to basically be more sustainable and energy efficient we’ve started changing things like that with upvc Windows and that’s right building
44:21 WS like the Proclaim of building wraps and things like that so when we started to make those changes I just generally wanted to do it because I wanted to give the client a house that performs more but but I feel like that’s actually attracted a lot of people as well yeah so back to that question I feel like we’ve been okay but in terms of what I’ve noticed is 12 months ago we used to spend thousands of dollars on ads to try and find carpenters and things like that we wouldn’t get a hit whereas nowadays
44:48 probably the last 3 to four months I’ve probably get a call every week to say hey I’m I’m subing at the moment but I just want to get back to a more stable income and I want to go on wages like do you have anything around yeah I see so uh bit flow of work probably seeing chops and changes in work did you find that a have you ever had struggles with that like that can be pretty tough man you said you know get a really good team of five on wages and gaps in your workflow that’s stressful man yeah
45:17 that’s probably one of the biggest stresses I’ve had because um each time we finished up a project it doesn’t always turn out perfectly when the next one starts just with how that process starts so sometimes yeah we’ve gone like there was a period at the start of last year where we had three big jobs that were starting and they ended up all starting at once but that’s ugly that February to May was like we were doing the most random things you you could imagine like like there was days where
45:44 it would be like 7:00 at night and we I wouldn’t have the next day organized so and like I’m grateful that it always ended up turning out yeah but yeah no one sees that sometimes when you just like but I was going to say like a huge portion of our followers and that you know advice going out and doing your own thing and it’s like people don’t see yeah yeah when is the next they all just think ah they just yeah cruise around and make a shitload of money but man there are a fuckload of problems yeah
46:10 100% so many problems so is that kind of why you’ve used extensions renovations to kind of like maybe just fill in fill in those gaps yeah diversify a little bit and that’s probably yeah like almost Recession Proof a little bit as well cuz I felt like I was very zoned in on one area and now my partner actually come on board she had the Commercial background and we’re starting to do like um commercial fit outs and good um insurance work and things like that just because having the Carpenters on site
46:37 for me working every day like I find even with four projects sometimes they’ll be burned through the work and I’ll still be like okay I’ve got to find them to on the side man yeah work man if you’ve got a good team he work can go you can smoke through jobs yeah yeah so yeah that’s that’s one of my biggest challenges is just keeping them busy for sure keeping that tick over um on the pricing perspective so you’ve been working with a Qs for 12 months now um when you do like this is more of a
47:04 indication on sub trades like you would obviously have a rough idea of what your subes are charging you Etc y you and your Qs communicate these fees have you ever done cost estimates and then you’ve gone out to subbies and they’re like n our rates have gone up they haven’t told you you’ve submitted a fixed price how do you deal with that [ __ ] yeah so obviously over the years um and we’ve kind of worked with a lot of the same track for a lot of the time beneficial yeah we’ve got a pretty good base set of
47:31 rates that we work off obviously when you get into the more bespoke stuff it can change a little bit the window but yeah I suppose that communication with the start and giving all of that um sort of information over to you or the the Qs at the start just helps basically limit room for error yeah um and then I think the other thing to mention as well is it’s not like once if you Outsource it to a Qs and then get it back it’s just like send it off to the client like you need to still have a detailed like look
48:02 at everything and and then still think of it cuz the way you’ll operate is probably slightly different to how they’ll think it’s going and yeah well every business is different so it’s like a really a can only provide like kind of the blueprint or the majority of the the grunt work but there’s still so much that does go into it when you get a you know four or 500 line item sheet back and I’ve always found if you can just you know go to your big key items highlight all your labor hours c 2 and
48:27 1/2 to 3 and 12,000 hours that sounds about right happy with that but then like you said you’ve got a back costing software you can go back and actually check but I think the other thing is as well is when I found it um and it’s always sometimes unders and sometimes it’s overs and like not huge amounts but I feel like once you’ve got the report back you’ve got a budget to work with so if you’re usual contractor is $2,000 more for the plumbing yeah maybe it’s worthwhile going to Source another few
48:55 quotes but yeah for sure and that’s where you can always you know what I mean use that cuz it’s not always going to be perfect but the other sorry do you go to guys and like so for example do you have like a roughy of what you allow for joinery like 2 and a2k a unit or 2.2 yeah and then if you get a quote come over you just like hey I’m pretty firm on my budget here can you do these units for 40K yeah or or or we go back to the client and we PIR back like selections wise and things like that so we’ll
49:20 always let them know if they haven’t selected anything what the budget is for that and then it’s like once we get to that stage and it doesn’t work once they’ve sort of designed their dream kitchen then then we’ll go back to that sweet now that makes sense but a huge what I’ll add to that as well is um what the Qs has been doing for us as well is Bill of quantities yeah um and that’s been like massively like I would say the bill of quantities is worth paying the fee just alone um so bu what what I mean
49:49 by Bill of quantities is like every piece of material like whether it’s if you do a cut frame and doing a Timber takeoff um you’ve got James Hardy vroo or whatever you do the take for that you can get your total square meters plaster and paint doors yeah and you can just send that straight onto the suppliers cuz most suppliers will do takeoffs for free if you’re buying products from them but you’re waiting sometimes 2 weeks sometimes longer and it’s too long but if you can just send them and go hey
50:15 this is what I need they can get you back a price that same day and you go bang order it or we need this on the 10th of June or something like that yeah exactly and if you can program all of that in at the start M like building gets so much easier cuz you can actually just focus on actually running the job and making sure everything’s working on site so that’s the yeah the power that I’ve seen both confidence with clients and everything with that and then yeah going I think yeah man 100% I’m on the
50:42 same page as you and I think from a project like if you were doing smaller let’s say smaller jobs like 50,000 and let’s say you’re more of like the project management style business it’s very easy to go cool I’ve got a 40K or um a $5,000 Labor budget here that’s gone sub out a fixed price for $4,000 materials boom 15% you can see your margins yeah uh I think it’s easier yeah um what’s your average charge out rates in camber like what do you price at on a for a trading perspective yeah so we’re
51:10 roughly around $100 an hour for Tradesman y um and about $65 $70 for an apprentice okay so when you break out your labor do you do say if you’re doing a day of frames will you put 9 hours at 110 9 hours at 60 or would you just do sort of 18 hours at 110 um yeah like I’ll add whoever’s on it like soce vers trady and then and then just however hours that how many hours are on that for the day okay yeah some guys get real confused cuz on jobs we’ll go you know Trad trades person one Apprentice one and put two rates but
51:41 then some for additional margin and contingency we’ll just do sweet uh 1 hour rate well 18 hours at whatever 110 and 60 so 160 how I was doing it before as well which I’ve sort of got taught from a another Builder which I actually think is quite a good way but I’ve kind of just been going with the the way that the Qs does which key does ours but we always used to do rates um so for a cut frame say you do um $25 per square meter for that cut frame I see yeah um and that so even though that I’ve got the employees one I can
52:17 make money on them doing the job but if any if we’re super busy and I can’t get to the guys I can get another crew in of subes and have enough in my allowance to do that so I think that’s also a good way as well if you’re doing it on the meter rate actually doing the market value of what that ex rate is rather than just obviously I can do it for a lot cheaper than that but it yeah if if you need to get a sub super busy then you’re covered and you’re not going to lose money on it yeah how many times a
52:45 year would you call in a crew of subbies and are they FL are there many of them floating around in Cambra maybe not as much now yeah um we’ve actually not had to use too many just with carpentry like obviously we’ve got a huge subie base for every other trade um but yeah we’ve I’ve always and that’s people are going oh I’m a subie can I get some work of you and I’m like yeah only if you come on wages with me so yeah good way to negotiate it down I always prefer to have them sort of under my banner for
53:11 sure man I feel like there’s more yeah they’ll take pride in their work they don’t really care if they make a [ __ ] up they’re not just going to [ __ ] off at the end of the day yeah and it helps your brand as well yeah um do you have is it have you you’ve got a good team now but before you did was it tough finding a good crew of five likey they and have you trained them up from the start or how have you done it yeah pretty much all of them from the very start nice um and that’s one sort of
53:35 thing that I’ve always had in the back of my head is to play the long game yeah man um and as hard as it was sometimes having sort of more apprentices than um yeah is probably normal and having a few other trades or whatever like Traders will cost you more at the time but I feel like I’m very OCD with the way I like things done and like i’ I’ve tried to let go of control a little bit with some things but when I feel like I train people up the way that I’ve learned and I feel like that way is kind of
54:04 bulletproof obviously there’s tweaks and that that I let the guys do um what they pick up from other people and same thing but there’s like a bass way that I’ve always like just showing him from the ground up and showing him everything and not hiding him from stuff um then that I feel like now is really starting to pay off but that’s taken like four or 5 years to get it’s a long-term investment eh yeah um councils and cber easy to work with tough turnaround times on plans turnaround times is depending on
54:34 what you go through so building approval if you build within the requirements you don’t have to go through development approval so you can that roughly you can do a knockdown rebuild and you can build it within the guidelines and you can be on the ground running within sort of 6 to 8 weeks okay Prett good if you go and push your envelope a little bits um then you go through the development application or if you’re sort of subdividing the block or something like that doing a bit more work 6 to 9 months
55:02 wait okay Co so so your average time frame between say signing someone up for the prelim costings the day they do that what’s the rough time frame to get a year a year yeah it’s probably fair right yeah it’s it’s slow and like and that’s yeah and then sometimes like that process is even longer so when that sort of prospective client first comes into your um database and Pipeline and what like sometimes I’m I’m working on that for further 12 months before that and just they checking in with them and and
55:32 and whatever else just cuz I’ve realized that when you when someone reaches out to you they’re not always ready to go straight away they’re just sort of going oh I’m thinking do this we just want a rough idea of what this is going to cost and it’s super important to nurture yeah like that client through that phase yeah that’s a long time he like a year a year to nurture someone a year for plans it’s like man you got to be planning your pipeline 2 years out I suppose that insurance work and the other work would
55:57 be handy together yeah 100% absolutely um do you notice a big difference uh is it harder to get sort of higher end Builders obviously you’ve trained your guys as per but y I feel like there’s so much difference between a general you know a commercial Carpenter highend Builder a general Builder like how do you differentiate that and what yeah what kind of work is in Cambra for those kind of guys yeah so we’ve we’ve actually had like with the team we’ve got at the moment they’ve been Rock old
56:23 for the last few years but we’ve had a lot of guys sort of come and go and um same thing with clients like I was saying earlier like they’re not always the right fit for you um and I feel like we’ve had a lot of our success from honestly just like doing the right thing and not always being so conscious about the price tag like just making sure the quality is there premium product yeah you got a premium product and I think like with anything that’ll money will follow that over time but you you need
56:48 to get those like Staples right from the very start um so yeah we’ve had plenty of people come through and like they’re just like I get good feedback from the guys on site now that I’m off the tools and just saying like yeah he’s trying to change some ways we’re doing things and cut corners and like yeah it just it doesn’t always work sometimes with those guys which is hard but um yeah if you can point them in the right direction to maybe someone else who can yeah um give them a give them a bit of work or yeah
57:14 anything like that until they’re ready for that sort of stage but um yeah that’s been our biggest one just sort of driving that um Quality and then yeah everything flows from that what’s your sort of direction for how you want to take the business in the next four to five years from a client build and a development build yeah so I just want to um the biggest thing would be being a bit more of like a household name so my like the root kind of goal that I have is when someone’s like I want to do a
57:42 knockdown rebuild like Freedom build will be the first thing that Sparks their mind um and then like I just want to set those expectations high so and I feel like we’re getting there a little bit with the guys on site when people ask us for work or anything like that they’re like you won’t pull the wool over his eyes you won’t let anything buy him so and I feel like that is just down to those core values of getting the quality right and everything like that so what’s the average um house demo cost in cber
58:11 roughly 30 30k and is that how much consenting and application work is there to do a house demo um is there much or yeah same sort of thing it’s more or less those building approval time frames so um there’s a few forms you just have to submit with the government um and yeah it’s roughly that sort of four four weeks yeah that’s not too bad for for that yeah um but yeah longer sort of term goals is um I’m really happy with like the like the workflow and everything that we’ve got on at the
58:41 moment like we’re with the power of marketing and um finding the right clients for us like we’ve got like awesome clients at the moment and over the next part of this year so we’re super Keen just to like pump out really really good jobs for these guys um which makes it easier and then just refine the process um just get better at the day today um find more time for my family like M and I are getting married in September so that’s a yeah longterm goal of like both of us so yeah just being able to get the business into a
59:13 position to be able to switch off of that and just completely let go and enjoy that and then hopefully also get on um like a honeymoon at the end of the year as well so man bro do do you see anyone in your team that you could promote to kind of yeah 100% yeah which which I do now as well yeah and that’s that’s what I’ve noticed um like Joey want to he’s actually one of the younger guys but yeah he’s just motivated is motivated as and he understands like we understand each other very well now I
59:41 feel like sometimes I’ll be telling him to do something and he’ll finish my sentence like he’ll be like yeah I know go get back in the office mate I’m I’m all over it yeah so having people like that that you can rely on like is massive and I suppose the other part of of one of the goals for 2024 is I felt very um stuck into the business sometimes so being able to put more people in place and and get back it’s just like simple things like when you want to have a sck day and you don’t
01:00:08 want your phone to call 50 times yeah but it does anyway and who’s going to take that are you strict on your time like do you do like a bit of a Time audit and be like yeah I I am now like I I have to be cuz you need to be in so many places at once things like that and it’s even like when I’m in the office with Maddie and she’s sitting on the other side of the table to me yeah and then I’ll have to even Zone like questions for her out to like time frames and it’s like not like you’re
01:00:34 being rude or anything but it’s like if you if your phone rings or like you just get questions and like I’m the type of person where I’m in there and I’m just like you just completely lose track of thought and there’s some days that I used to get at the end of the day and I’d be like what did I even do I even do anything oh man I’m just I’m a do not disturb guy now I’m like 10 till 12 I’ve got six things here no one can call me so I think you have to be a little bit selfish with your time and prioritize it
01:00:59 otherwise yeah you just come unstuck and you lose the days you lose the days and I think it’s important for guys at the start like like me that you don’t have five six other people in the office where you can delegate all this stuff to like you’re you’re wearing so many hats so you need to be like super conscious of your time and what where you’re putting it into absolutely um for guys sort of thinking that um building owners just make e some money and do stuff would be some like um things you would
01:01:28 tell them or like things to be aware of or before they’re going out on their own bit of advice yeah so one like honestly first thing I’d do is if I priced any job it would be through a Qs yeah for sure um because yeah you’re still only like when guys are coming from being a carpenter into that space you still don’t have a huge amount of experience in buying products and setting up the right trades and things like that so yeah having that cost dialed in from the very start and even making sure project
01:01:56 management and supervision is on that because I swear that’s something that I didn’t even think of pricing prior to yeah man doing it so yeah that would be a huge one um I think is finding a good base of like contractors and people who are going to work within you and I think at the start sometimes that works with a lot of your mates yeah yeah but then going into that further I wouldn’t always be don’t be like obligated to use your mate sometimes like and don’t want to ruin a friendship man yeah when you
01:02:25 start to reach out to people for prices and things like that like sometimes it feels so hard just to reach out to one person yeah but then when you gain the like the confidence to be able to reach out to three people and then you realize this guy’s been charging me this the whole time I’ve just got two other quotes and I’m I can make $10,000 more by by just making a like a phone call another phone call reach out to one new contractor so yeah like that would be another bit of advice um yeah and then
01:02:51 the last bit of advice I’d do is just um actually like self personal self-development um I’ve done a lot of work on that recently um both like personally with just learning how to like regulate um like quarter all and not be so wound up all the time and like management huge that’s a big one and also um like like I said a bit earlier like business coaching um by far like that’s the best money that I’ve spent on either putting you in a network with other people where you can relate to cuz sometimes it feels very lonely yeah who
01:03:26 do you talk about your problems who else has G through it yeah I’m in quite a few different um things now where like we catch up every um 3 months with a group of Builders from all around Australia and like we talk through our problems and things like that so that was yeah once I was able to reach out and say you’re not in this alone people are going through similar situations yeah um and if you have a little bit of money to like put into your progression like you will not like you’ll never see it as a
01:03:53 cost to your business yeah it’s an Roi you’ll go from here to here sort of thing yeah and what do you do outside of work what’s you and your partners sort of what do you guys do do you get on holidays much do you go camping yeah so we actually just bought a camper at the back half of last year so big RV lifestyle sick we um and to be honest prior to that I’d never camped in my life before and like I’m the type of person where I’m like if I’m going to do something I’m going to do it and it was
01:04:17 like all right go bu a caravan get everything set up and then everyone’s like don’t you just want to like go high one maybe see if you like it and I like let’s go B man I’ll I hate it loved it um I’ve done a bit of traveling previously like all around the world um I actually noticed you’ve done a fair bit as well so try to bro I really want to Stack it in there as much as I can while I can so yeah so yeah that’s that’s a big passion of ours and hopefully we can get somewhere good um
01:04:42 good Stu man like on the slopes maybe in Canada for our honeymoon or something like that and then um other than that just yeah spend time with family play a bit of golf here and there nice man and um good stuff cool bro I think we’re about done there thank you very much appreciate it sh for coming in thank you sir leg man awesome oh wow you’re a good talk that was easy yeah that was good flowing that was first one as well have you yeah have you done what what what made you so Keen if you don’t mind me asking um like one
01:05:13 of my goals this year and like I was saying previously I’m getting coaching from another builder in Melbourne um and nice we do this like immersion every couple months we go away and we’re just about to do like we have a theme for each one whether it’s like systems um Vitality was the last one like actually like check in with your own self and
