110. Demonstrating Your Value With Tom Coy

How many times have you used that line in a sales meeting?

I actually use it all the time.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt and today I'm joined by Thomas Coy from Coy's Constructions in Melbourne, Australia. Thomas, welcome to the show.

Hey Will, thanks for having me.

Yeah, great to have you on today. So tell me more about how you got into the building industry.

So I started off as a, as a carpenter like most builders and I started carpentry. I actually wanted to become a landscaper at the, in the early days and then discovered I love the, the hard aspects of landscape, of landscaping which drove me into carpentry. Like, loved building things with my hands. I was never really an academic at school. Chose subjects like agriculture and woodwork and things that marked me down and yeah, loved, loved carpentry and everything to do with it. And then you obviously develop your skills as a, as a carpenter and forces you into bigger and better jobs which naturally progression to push you into become a licensed builder as you're limited to what you can build.

Cool. So you were working for someone else obviously when you started out. How long did it take you until you really wanted to rip off the band aid and start your own business?

Obviously did my four year apprenticeship and then I worked for someone else for six months and then I want to run my own show and then yeah, six months out of my time. I started Cois Constructions as a carpentry company and then here we are today as a building company.

Straight in there. So what's the building model today, the business model you've got?

So we have a team of carpenters on site, we have a site supervisor, a project manager, internal accounts and a client liaison as well in the office and with a couple of virtual assistants.

Okay, so you do full end design, build model, correct?

Yeah.

Cool. How did you find that journey from being working from someone else and diving in headfirst yourself and getting the business started?

Yeah, obviously you trip yourself up a lot and you, I guess when you start losing money you learn pretty quick. So you, yeah like anyone you make, you make mistakes along the way and what you learn from that, rather than let it get you down, you just get better and better and just don't make the same mistake.

Okay, so how long ago was that that you started the business?

Business has been running for over 10 years. Being registered now for seven.

I think that's a huge, huge achievement. Register decade mate. Not, not many building companies make it that far?

Well, yeah, it's definitely been a roller coaster of emotions and blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the business. But yeah, now it's better than ever. And yeah, some days I find I look for things to do because the team we have now is amazing. And I say to the team, it's not my company, it's ours. You know, we value our clients money as if it's our own. And every home that we build, I build it as if with our own input into it. So I won't do things on their home that I wouldn't do on my own.

Cool. It's a really nice way to look out of it. Look at it. So what do you do in the business now? You mentioned you got a whole team around you. What's your role?

Yeah, so I've developed, moved into more of a sales salesman role and I oversee things on site. So I generally have a couple of days on site and the other three days in the office and we'll schedule the meetings, client meetings, finance meetings around those site days and obviously they move around weather dependent etc. I, to be honest, I hated it. I hated moving from site into the office. I became a carpenter because I loved building and then naturally saw my skill set that I could get other people to do the site work and I was more valuable in the office. And then I've I guess naturally good with people. So I, yeah, became the salesman, which I quite enjoy that. It's, I guess it's a thrill of the chase to get to get the clients and have that relationship with them. Yeah. So I guess to answer your question, yeah. Weekly site meetings, I'm in the office. A mixture between on site and in the office. But more in the office now than I ever have been.

You mentioned that you found that hard. You still miss being on the tools.

Definitely, yeah. Without sounding like a wanker, I could go to site and have, you know, have 15 guys on site and find things to do and spot faults or problems or things for them to do or the way I would like it done. Do that with my eyes closed where I come into the office and if I get tripped up with a bit of software or passwords or whatever, I'm not. That's not my natural area. I guess so. However, I know that you can't do it forever. So you need to naturally progress and do the things that you need to do.

What's your driver for wanting to make that change though? Is it a physical thing or are you your aspirations to grow the Business, that kind of stuff.

Correct. Yeah. Aspirations to grow the business to. I've got a young family, I've got three kids. To grow it into something that in one day we could either sell or. Or hand to them as like a legacy. That's. That is a profitable business.

Yeah.

Nice.

It's a good driving force, I guess, to get off the tools and to do more.

Right. Like if you, you know, rather than swapping time for money, you know, as an hourly rate, as being a carpenter, I can grow and leverage off what the knowledge that I've learned and the people that I have around me that we can grow and give back and do more. Like our joining apb. They give you a BHAG goal, that big, hairy, audacious goal. And, you know, I don't know if I should say, but I'd love to go and have the business that's profitable and big enough to go and build a village in Africa or maybe in Australia.

Yeah. Awesome. So that's the bhag.

Yeah. To go have enough connections, suppliers around us, people, community to go and do that. And that's when you. I guess when you. When you finish your career and you. You're on your deathbed, you go, what did you do for your life? You go, hey, we built a business and we built a village in Africa and we all did it. Yeah.

Do you have, like, a time frame for wanting to achieve that?

I've got six years. Yes.

Oh, wow. Okay. I was thinking even longer than that. That's. That's a big hairy one.

Well, I want to set up a charity within two years, and then once the charity set up the plan, and then you've got four years to plan to do it, to get. To have that collaborative approach to go and get it done.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, what. I mean, have you actually laid out the steps to get there?

No, but I've started putting the connections in place, who I need to speak to, how they connected, what supply I need to do. Yeah. Got a rough idea.

Yeah. Cool.

We'll figure it out.

You might have to check back in, in six years and see how you're going.

Call me when I'm in Africa.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let's just go back a step and talk about how you transitioned from being on the tools to being working on the business. What are some of the things you had to do to make that transition?

Yeah, look, when I think about it, now is really challenging. A lot of guys out there will be on the tools during the day, coming home, quoting at night. We had a young family at the time and it puts enormous pressure on your partner at the time and additional pressure because you got to find the energy within to go there and do the paperwork. And as being on the tools all day, you want nothing more to just knock off work and have a beer or something, you know. But you've got to go, no, I've got to get these quotes out because I'm not going to have work next week. So that transition from on site to growing a business that we have today is, is challenging. Because of that you've got to, you've got to go out and quote after hours to meet clients, to sell the jobs, to quote, to win the work. Yeah, that, that I'd say was most challenging part. And then finding your skillset of what you're good at in terms of right, where, where am I, what's my best use of time? You know, you've only got 24 hours in a day. Am I best to use, you know, to best use of your time, you know, and protecting that time?

Yeah. So how did you start putting that puzzle pieces together and finding the right team for you?

I worked out. I started off with one apprentice, then two, then three, then four, then I. Once they developed into, into tradesmen I could put a bit more trust and rely reliance on them. Then you could always leave them on a job. And I said how good's this? I've got two jobs running and then you'd have three jobs running and then you'd work out. Right, we need to schedule this because my head's a mess. I used to keep everything in your head and all the costs and everything. It's a smaller company, it's okay, you can sort of figure out if you're losing money, but once you've got six to eight jobs on you don't know what money is yours and not. And I guess we're lucky we found APB early on and I felt the pressure with trying to study. I knew I had to do something different. Finding the time to work but also knowing that I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. So trying to find time to do the trainings and learnings was, was also.

Very challenging with hiring those apprentices. What, what were the other roles you were looking to hire when you were kind of creating this leverage so you could move into more of a sales role?

To be honest, I never really had a, had a long term plan. I knew it was never going to be. Be what? The way it was at the start. I just, just Sort of working out. And then I guess you just realize you. I can't do it all. I can't do it all myself. Every day. My. My wife was helping me with the book work and the quoting. Once that got. Got too big for me, then we hired external bookkeepers because that got. That got too big. That was the biggest problem. Again, not my skill set. So that I can do it. I can handle everything on site. I can handle the clients. I just can't handle the paperwork. So that's. A wife helped me with that. And then we outsourced the bookkeeping and then came to go. Right. We're either gonna stay small or we're gonna go big. And yeah, that's when I said I need to work on the business rather than in it.

Cool. So what kind of systems and processes do you have in place now that like, for example, if you lost a supervisor or an estimator tomorrow and you needed to bring someone else into the team, what have you got in place to kind of onboard them and make sure you uphold the standards?

Yeah. So we've got full manuals from the inside out. We've developed systems and processes with an external company that we actually documented and created flowcharts. We've got a hiring process which we've worked with HR companies to develop. We have full sales process. Again, we're always changing it, changing things with the ever growing, ever changing market. We have. Yes. Software that we use. We've got two virtual assistants that know where to find all the documents and things. Yeah. It's a hard question to answer. I know.

You've answered it really well. I think what you're trying to. I mean, the feeling I'm getting is that you could go away for a holiday next week and things would keep moving because you've got it systemized.

Definitely, definitely. Look, nothing's perfect. You always. There's no perfect setup. There's always something that needs to be changed or tweaked or we do something. Hey, we should add this in or let's take that out or that's too long or that's too short. Clients need more information here is never going to be. I don't think any system that you develop will ever be like, yep, that's done. That's perfect. Forget about it. It. You'll always be changing things. So that's quite hard to be. I'm a bit fussy. Or that way. I don't. I'm not systems and process driven. I'm very. People describe me as unorganized. Or disorganized. But I somehow in my head I make it work. But. Or I have all these thoughts that go on all the time. I go, hey, we should do this. Like just relax. Let's focus on what we were doing. So I tend to distract a lot of people.

Um, but we have instinct, I think.

Yeah, maybe. But yeah, if you compare. Yeah. You know, if you compare to bigger companies, we go, geez, we could be better. You compare to small companies, you go, hey, we're actually pretty good. So.

Yeah, I mean if we just lasered into your sales focus. Sorry, sales process. Talk me through how that works.

So we have an initial couple of different ways where the clients will come in. They'll either get. Come off from a referral or a site sign or they'll come through as a lead from the, from the website. If that's the case, they'll fill out a form or they'll, they'll call our. We've got a 1300 number which, which soon changed from my mobile because that was crazy. When I was on site I was getting phone calls that was driving me crazy. And they'll either fill out an inquiry form, ask a list of questions. If they qualify through that then I'll, then I will call them then in that, in that secondary qualification will work out their budgets if they, when they want to start, et cetera. And then we will in that call, I'll sell them into our pre construction process which works really, really well.

Yeah. Nice.

And aim for that is to get them out of the market and to give them the service that we promise. Right. So we're going to have an in depth look. We're going to act as a consultant for them to, with a consultant to align their budget and their plans together to make sure that they haven't designed something that's over budget and they're getting what they dreamed of when they went to the designer or they come right at the start and they've got nothing. And we have those meetings with the designer. So very collaborative approach to really handhold the client into building.

When you say getting them out of the market, what commitment are you getting from them to make sure that you're like they're locked and loaded.

Yeah. So we charge them for that. So some clients come to us and go hey, we just got really no idea what this is going to cost. And we'll charge them for a ballpark figure which gives them a breakdown round numbers of breakdown how much that's going to cost and that's okay. Cool. Yeah. We've got the money or no, we're way out. Sometimes we incorporate it into our larger fee which incorporates all the meetings. So when I say getting them out of the market, they're paying us to offer that service. So they're obviously not going to pay. A number of different builders, they go, yes, we like them, we trust them, we feel they're going to build it, do a good quality product. Actually just came from meeting just before this and showed a client through a house and they go, hey, before we commit to this fee, can we just see some of your work? Said sure. So completely understand it. And what APB's taught us is once they, when people pay, they pay attention, right? Yep.

So you've not always charged for quotes and stuff?

Oh no, no. In the early days when I said young family and spinning the wheels out most nights, some days seven days a week, going out looking at jobs and people were just price checking, I said this is just killing me, wasting all my. So as soon as I started, I think I started charging to go do site visits at $197, which is crazy now, but that's where you gotta start.

And what are you at now? I mean you have to say, but.

Oh, we charge people six, six grand now to go.

Big difference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That involves the team and everything and they're getting the expertise not only from me, but from my whole team.

So are you. Have you noticed any significant drop in like conversions or you feel like there's a strong commitment there from people?

No, I think people actually, they definitely respect you more when you charge, when you say, hey, we don't do this for free. There's a fee associated to this. Look, you do get some that go, oh no, we're not paying that. Okay, well you're not our client anyway. So they learned that they would have been, would have been a pain or they were just price checking. So when they commit to that or they're aware of their fee, they respect your time more. So if you say, hey guys, I'll meet you on site, but I've only got half an hour, is that okay? And they really respect your time and you're getting a better quality of client with that so you're much less time wasters, I guess. And that's the idea of it. And it really works.

Is that a non refundable fee or is that offset on the build cost if they go forward?

No, it's a separate fee. So it's a. Yeah, some. Look, I hear some people, they do say hey, you'll get that discounted off your build. It doesn't work that way. You've got to. We disclose where the costs are going anyway.

Yeah, I mean, they're paying for your expertise, your team's expertise in the end of the day, right?

Yeah, they're paying for our time. We have a number of. Some have three, four, six meetings with us. Some go for over an hour long. So they definitely get in the money's worth. And, you know, the six grand fee they pay, I might. One suggestion from myself and project manager would say might save them $10,000 just on steel on one suggestion. So nine times out of 10, they're going to save that fee on our recommendation anyway.

How many times have you used that line in a sales meeting?

I actually use it all the time.

Yeah, of course. That's a good one.

I've got another one as well.

That's why it's good. Right.

Let me tell you. Another one. Another one I use all the time is when I say, hey, we've got a factory which we can store. Store your materials here. And you know, that will save. If we see a price increase coming, we'll buy your products and store them in a factory. And they go, oh, that's really good. That's really good. And someone took us up on it the other day, and Kane was there to go, hey, someone's taking you up on your sales spiel. I was like, no way. Yeah.

Well, that's pretty topical over the last 18 months, isn't it?

Yes. Yeah. But no one took me up on it, but someone did.

Okay. Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. I guess you got to be prepared for anything you say in a sales meeting to follow through with.

Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, did I talk too much? I feel like I talk too much. I give myself a headache.

Well, that's right. As long as you can get. Get the sales across the line at the right margins and also deliver a great product, that's all that matters, right?

No, that's right. And you sort of. People judge you. I forget the metric, but they judge you in the first few seconds they meet you. And you've got to make that first impression count. And I get a lot of feedback saying, hey, we liked you from the first moment we met you, and we felt that trust. And that's really what drove me coming into the office, because they say that's. You're like a natural. People say salesman, you think of a sleazy car salesman, you know, But I don't like to associate myself with that.

What other factors do you think helps you build trust with clients and making them comfortable to hand over that six grand for a quote? Is it beyond just your charisma or immediate impact? What other things are they looking?

Definitely showing value, right? Like, clients have got to see value in what you're saying. They've got to believe what you're saying. And we do. We mean every word. We have our core values printed in our entry. When clients come to our office and we mean what we say, like I said before, I'll do every job as if it was my own. We value the clients as if money as if it's our own. We do that. We don't cut corners. If something's going to cost us more money, but it's a better job, we'll do that. I'm an open book. Everyone can. Can read me like an open book. I said, ask me anything. There's no, there's no such thing as a silly question. Show them ensuring they're going to get, I guess not get ripped off, they don't get that feeling, but ensuring they're making the right call. So saying, saying things like, we will find out your needs and wants and ensure that this home delivers that. That's the most important thing. We'll find out. Rather than looking at the floor plan and the layout, I want to find out how you want to live in the home. Is that home and the layout going to suit your lifestyle? Rather than worrying about what floor cuttings are going to have, let's work out the functionality, the buildability of the project, the way it lays on the land, the orientation of it. Do you want to see your kids play in the backyard from your kitchen window? How high is that window? Those are the sort of things I ask them rather than before we get into the fixtures and fittings and where your taps are.

Yeah, I love that because it's an emotional decision. Any purchase, but especially buying a home for your family.

Yeah, definitely. And how they live, how they're going to live in the home. I said, when you wake up in the morning and you're going to make your coffee, do you want to walk this far or this far? Do you want to have a sink next to your coffee machine? Things like, prompt those sort of questions so they think about, like, the client we had before, just before this meeting, he was like, oh, I like how you have the mixer tap right at the front of the shower. I was like, don't worry about all that. We'll ask. I'll ask you all these Things how you want to, you know, so they don't have to reach under the shower to turn the shower on. Things about all the layouts and different things that don't cost any more money. But just think about how they want to live in the home. So makes a big difference.

I mean there's a part of that understanding functionally how things work, but a part of it I think what I heard was you really do understand your customer because you know what they're looking to have from the end product.

Correct? Yes. We always ask in those initial qualifying questions, do they have any kids, you know, how long they lived in the home? I lived in the area. You know, people often ask, hey, should I just knock it down or should we just sell and. And move? I was like, well, got a lot of factors to consider when you want to move. So a buying a house isn't that easy now. You could move and have annoying neighbors. It's a nightmare for traffic route to school. So if you. If all those things some people may not think about. So that will prompt them to go, right, that's made the decision. We'll do a renovation extension rather than a sell and move. So yeah, that's awesome.

You kind of gathering that information in the qualifying calls, discovery call so that you can then use that to create a better experience for them.

Correct. And another tip I've learned is using the words that the clients use. You know, there's some annoying terms that people use that. It could be trendy words like what's one I can't stand? Yeah, bespoke. I can't stand that word. Like I'm a bespoke building or bespoke builder. I hate it. But things. But some clients will use and they. The way they phrase a sentence, we pick up on those key words. And then when we talk back to them, when we reply, we use similar. I guess it's mirroring them. Right. And then they feel that naturally feel more comfortable.

Well, at the end of the day it's just, it's just listening, actively listening. So you can provide better information to get closer to their ideal outcome.

Correct? Yeah, yeah. If they naturally, if they feel more comfortable, they're going to open up to you. And I say, look, we ask their budget. When I call them in the second round of qualification, I say, I don't ask you that. So I can get every dollar out of you. If you've got a $500,000 budget, I'm not going to come back to you and say, hey, guess what? It's 499,000 under budget. Who would have thought? It's your lucky day. But you know, that's from that point you can go, I can have a quick glance at the plans and go, hey, these guys are miles out. This is what we suggest. And yeah, yeah. So more than yeah, I guess there's. You've really got to find that ideal client, work out what your niche is and who you're willing to work with. You just take on every job which what I was doing in the early days, you pull your hair out because they're not the people you want to work for. Could be a great, a great project, a great, a great build that you want to do for great budget. They're a pain and they're just not the right personality for, for us as a company. And it's not. And it's going to be a hard process for them because we don't relate. So our pre construction process, I say that to them it's like a try before you buy ye. So we could go through this. You're going to get a guaranteed fixed price. You'll get a schedule. You get everything with this is what you're paying for. But you might find that you don't like me and you don't think that we're a good fit, but you'll definitely know that and what you see is what you get.

So fixed price contracts you mentioned just then, have you always charged fixed price?

Yes. In the last couple of years it's obviously been challenging. There's a lot more provisional sums and PC items that go included. We don't have a cost escalation clause here in Victoria. So that's made it very challenging in the last couple of years. Obviously cost overruns, price increases and the delays in terms of materials and subcontracts has been so busy through the boom is that money's got to come from somewhere. So we've lost a lot of money in the last couple of years which has created an added stress for everyone. But I think it's turned a corner. It's stabilized now.

So yeah, how do you handle that with a fixed price without the escalation.

Causes in those particular contracts we had signed, you've just got to wear it. We can't, we couldn't increase the price. We, we had fixed certain things. There were some things that was flexible, some things are variations. We've got one job at the moment. The client's got over $400,000 worth of variations. Sounds great on paper it actually causes delay because you can't can't reach that next stage to get that. We've got progress payments that we're due to hit through to our cash flow forecasting that we can't hit because they've made so many changes. We're going to get more money in the end. But the delay caused to the job. We've still got to cover our overheads and wages which is in turn end up costing you money.

So how do you calculate your fixed costs for a job? How do you quote that up?

We know what certain items are. You get as many items quoted then we actually in the process of developing purchase orders at the moment. That's definitely the way to go to track it. We haven't finalized that process yet. Again systems, they're never finished. That's the way to go. Now we get as many things as we, we can quoted. So big ticket homes such as a roof or your windows or things like that. We. Yeah, we have our project manager estimator, he's got lots of experience in that. And then anything that he finds challenging he'll say hey Tommy, what do you reckon of this? And I said sits around here. He goes yep, sweet. That's exactly what I thought. And we sort of bounce, bounce ideas of each other.

So that's kind of like cost materials and then you got labor. How are you piecing all together, come up with a price for, for a customer.

You break it down into different. We're using build exact for pricing now. Yep. The software quoting software we'll still, like I said, still send out the big ticket items, the windows and the roofing and etc. But everything else, the plaster, the bricks, the carpentry, concrete and we, we can all price that ourselves. If there's something a bit more complex we will send it out to that trade or supplier to get priced. That creates another issue in itself because it could be a delay in getting that price back when if we've told a client this is your quote slot, you'll receive your quote in X amount of days hence what keep updating that software and putting the pricing into that. So we can do everything in house. Yeah. And then we use buildertrend as our project management software scheduling. We found the estimating side of that hasn't been very good. It's. It's American based company so it's just different. It's harder to use. BuildXact is, is much better.

Interesting. So I guess your choice is to use a couple of different softwares rather than, than one all in one.

Correct. Yeah. And it May not be that way forever, but that's what, that's what we're doing for now. Yeah, I did so in the early days, obviously I was doing all the estimating myself, project managing, doing all the carpentry myself when I was smaller. Now it's copy's too big. I can't, can't do that. And now I don't, I, in terms of hiring people, I don't, I don't enjoy estimating. It's not a, I hate it to be honest. So it's, yeah, it makes me anxious. So I don't like doing it. So now we employ a full time estimator.

That's right. You can do the things you're best at.

That's right.

How do you factor in overheads and everything to a project cost?

Yeah, so we work out our cost per week, a number of weeks that job's going to run. So we won't give a client a schedule until their contract signed. So obviously where it overlaps with shutdown periods or holidays, things like that, we'll schedule that project around that time of year, et cetera. And then that job may take say 26 weeks and you've got, at that point in time we'll have four or six or eight jobs running. It's covering that percentage. APB have a spreadsheet for that, what's that one called? Or use our KPI spreadsheet. And even when we're pricing jobs we have a pricing for profit spreadsheet, which is amazing.

So what type of margin are you charging on your jobs?

We at the moment are running the 33% margin.

And have you ever, have you always been at that level or you've worked towards that?

Oh no, no. So at, when you come out of carpentry school, builder school, even the master builders will tell you it's just cost, labor, materials plus 20% and that's everything. And then when you put that on paper and you're coming from a carpenter, we're being an apprentice to a carpenter, you go, jeez, it's great, earn heaps of money. But then you don't even realize how much money you're losing on how much it actually costs to run a business, on all the software, your team, everything. So yeah, we were, I think if we worked that out, I was running about 8% and now we're at 33. So big difference.

Massive. And have you found any pushback from, from clients or they don't know about the margin?

No, no, they do. If they, if they are so Tell them. But there's no secret to say that we're putting a builder's margin on. Same as when they say, can we supply our own trade? Just say, I don't mind if we don't have to pay for it. We're not going to charge you. However, as long as they stick to our schedule. Because if it doesn't, it's going to cost us and your money. Yeah. Fully understand it. And now they. Yeah, they like when people pay, they pay attention. Right. So they know that if, if you know, you wouldn't want someone working for you that, you know, they're losing money. So we're happy. We're going to do a professional job. We're going to do what we say.

Yeah. As long as you're up front. As you said, it almost builds trust in a way.

That's right. That's right. For sure.

Cool. So you mentioned that APB in the KPI dashboard, the pricing for profit calculator, what's the one thing that's had the biggest impact for you working with APB? I think you've been a member since 2018. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes. Yep. Got a plaque somewhere. Five or six years. Yes.

Very good.

Yeah.

What's had the biggest impact on you?

Knowing, I guess them keeping us accountable. That's a hard question to answer the. Definitely. The price and profit WIPA calculator is amazing that knowing your liability because you know the whole story of like, hey, I've got 300 grand in the bank and then builders will go go out and buy a ski boat, but the money's not theirs. They owe that money to the plaster or the plumber or whoever, but they don't realize at the time. So making. Knowing your liability, the knowing the numbers, how the marketing relates to into sales and how it flows down the funnel, guess how many leads you need, how much you need to spend on. On marketing in order to get those leads. Whereas previous I thought that was just dead money. I was like, well, you know, I don't. Didn't want to spend money on marketing because I didn't see an ROI on it. Whereas now you know that you need to spend 10, 20, 30 grand a month on marketing to get the leads, to get the better jobs, to get the higher margins and focus in on the margin rather than the contract value.

Yeah. Awesome. So it's just that whole kind of.

Oh, the whole flowchart. It's not, it's not a. Yeah, it's a. It's a hard question to answer. The guests being kept accountable. And then you. The APB will have. It's like, keep pushing you. Right. Keep pushing you to get to. Right, you've done that. You've nailed that. Now this is what we need. Now this is what we need.

Working towards that bhag.

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Cool. So, Tom, it's been an awesome chat today, but is there any advice you'd give other builders out there looking to run a profitable building company?

Just, yeah, don't get. Don't get too disheartened in the down times. Try and in the down times, really take the lessons that you learn from that and go, right, what can I do better? Don't, don't. Don't let it beat you up. A lot of builders get down. And speaking to one of my team members today, and I said, it's great how you're mates with a lot of these builders, because I think years ago it used to be a competitive as another builder, as our competitor, whereas now you can come together. And I'm a host one of the chapter meetings here in Melbourne, and we get together once a month and we talk about our challenges. And some of the conversations can be quite negative, that we've got supplier issues or the price increase for this or insurance for that or. And you can, you can pivot that conversation into go, right, what can we learn from that? What can we get? What can we do better? And in the down times, it is tough. There's a roller coaster of emotions running a building company. You have big, big swings in revenue. Cash flow is very lumpy. Trying to steady that. And you can plan for the most perfect job and then something out of the blue will happen. And you always feel like the builder's losing. But, yeah, trying to learn and just trying to better yourself, keeping up with technology and finding a niche. I'd say find a niche would be my biggest advice. Don't just do what everyone does market differently. Look for something that. That is going to make you stand out from the pack.

I love that. Tons of good advice there for builders out there. Thomas or Tom, I'm sorry, I've called you a couple of different names.

Call me Thomas if I'm in trouble.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you're not in trouble. I'll call you Tom for now. But I've learned a ton today about systemizing your business so you can get from the tools into something that you're really much better at and you're comfortable with so you can grow the business. You know, getting the right things in place from a pricing and margins perspective. Even just some of the tips you gave around the sales process and creating a connection with your customers and charging for quotes. So much to take in, but I think just a ton of value for all the builders out there. So thanks so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome, Will. And I'll just say one more thing. I'd just say protect your time, know your value of your own time. And some people get stuck on site picking up rubbish, for example, because that's. They can do that, can. If it clears your head, that's great. But just protect your time and know where you're. Where you're most valuable in the business and to other people around you.

Awesome. Let's leave it there. That's a great way to finish. So thanks, Tom. And a big thank you to all our listeners out there, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.

Cheers.

Will.