140. The APB Retreat Recap With Andy Skarda

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If you could imagine six coaching sessions in a day for two days, it's. It's pretty intense.

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 APB's head coach, Andy Scarter.

Andy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Will. Nice to be here. As usual.

It's funny, someone told me that I sounded like I threw on a radio voice for that intro. And every time I do it now, I can't help but think that I've, I'm almost playing it up.

Well, I mean, I think it is an announcement, isn't it? So, you know, it needs to have a bit of, a bit of punch to it. So I think you do it very well. So, you know, what, what do they say if one person tells you're a horse, ignore them. If 40 people tell you you're a horse, enter the Melbourne Cup. So if it was one person, don't worry about it.

Not quite entering the Melbourne cup, though. That's what you say anyway.

Andy, you're looking tanned.

You've just come back from Fiji. Why have you been in Fiji?

We, we ran our annual APB strategic retreat at the Mommy Bay Resort in Fiji from last Wednesday until, until Saturday morning until Friday night officially. And then everybody started heading back to wherever they'd come from from Saturday. And it was an, it was an interesting three days, was really good before.

We dive into the content of, of what that retreat was. I've only seen photos, but did it live up to expectations? The Mummy Bay Resort?

Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a stunningly beautiful place and, and one thing that our events team does incredibly well is, is find us venues that, you know, we will get into the detail. But part of what we want people to experience is a separation from the day to day which, you know, allows them to get into kind of a headspace that gives them some time to think and think differently and reflect on things. And we, you're surrounded by, you know, that Kind of natural beauty. It's just, it's the absolutely perfect scenario for that kind of thing. So, yeah, it was excellent. The, the, I think the island mentality maybe gave our director of awesomeness a few more headaches than what she's normally used to. Things were very much on island time and I think she had to get quite firm on the first night to kind of get everybody lined up. But once she'd done that, the rest of it ran very smoothly.

Was that the locals or the builders on island time?

No, no, no, that was, that was the local event team that weren't, weren't quite up to the standard that Kayla required.

Okay.

She did some, she did some attitude realignment work on the first evening and that seemed to sort things out very good.

Well, what is the APB annual retreat? What's its purpose and you know, know who, who attends?

So it's a two day strategic planning workshop that we wrap up in a three day experience. And what I mean by that is that we teach, we challenge, we direct builders into a strategic thinking mode and realm. And because it's done as a workshop that lets them get not only the understanding but also the, the fundamental knowledge they need to then start planning their resources and their tactics in order to be able to execute the plan they've come up with. If you say who attends, I would say the short answer to that would be probably our top 1% of APB members. So a lot of the elite mentoring group were there. In fact, the only, the only current member of the elite group that wasn't there couldn't make it purely because of a prior family commitment. But otherwise we would have had our entire elite cohort. We certainly have our top commitment and results driving members of the business coaching group as well. And this year for the first time, which was very interesting, we had people in the room that aren't in either of our coaching groups, which, which was. It brought a different dynamic into the room, maybe to some degree broadened the scope of what we were looking at because obviously with our guys that are in coaching, there's some fundamentals that are already in place. We know they're in place. Whereas in this particular situation we had to go back on some of the basics to make sure that people understood those protocols before we could build on top of that. So that's. I would. And certainly those people that were there that aren't yet in coaching, they are the people that have the kind of mindset that they would do very well in coaching and for a variety of reasons Just haven't been able to or haven't made that commitment yet.

Interesting. And just for context, for people out there that aren't familiar with the concept, it's literally 20 companies, isn't it? And that's it. We kind of book out a resort and everyone. That's as many as we can fit in.

Yeah, I mean, we had people that wanted to come, but we just didn't have the space. Obviously we have no choice but to do it on a first come, first served basis. And yeah, it's limited. And it's limited primarily because we want to make sure everybody gets a level of personal input, which means we have to build in the opportunity for the coaches that are there to be able to interact with everybody individually on any subject. And obviously that means that it can't be unlimited. It has to be kept at a number that everybody feels they get the value and the attention that they're looking for.

So what are the drivers that send builders to the retreat? What's the purpose behind them turning up?

Well, we work pretty hard to stretch them. So because it is a strategic retreat, it's going further than we normally can and do in any of our other coaching programs. If you look at the way everything else runs, we tend to be driven quite tightly by what we can get through in a 45 minute session because we found that that's kind of what people's brains and bums can handle at one go. The beauty of, of the retreat is because we have everybody for two days solid, we've got time to go a lot deeper into things than what we can coaching wise. So I guess if I was trying to sort of summarize it, if you could imagine six coaching sessions in a day for two days, it's pretty intense. Russ comes in and gives us a bit of a historical look in the rearview mirror in terms of how the last year's panned out for the industry. Sets us up with where he sees the industry going for the next year. And then against that backdrop, we then obviously start to open up people's minds and take them into that, that longer term thinking and you know, and strategic planning. So it's, it's that kind of combination. We, as you probably know, we, we have our professional builder levels at the apb and essentially what we're doing here is, is bringing everybody to a point of them considering what their business would need to look like if they were at professional builder level 10, which is where they are, certified professional builder. So, you know, we've encapsulated that in you are running a building business that is producing at least $10 million a year and you are making at least a 10% net profit on that. And we talk to them at that level. And so really what we're doing is we kind of getting them to constantly compare where they are today to where they want to be and then we help them to understand what it's going to require for them to get there. Now they're obviously all on a separate individual journey, but the analogy I gave them this year was that I wanted them to consider this as if they were climbing a mountain and pick any mountain you like, except the Blue Mountains, because they too low. But pick, you know, whether people talk about Kilimanjaro or Everest or any of the, you know, the kind of, the well known ones, the process is exactly the same. You know where you're starting, you know where you want to finish. You're going to put together a bunch of waypoints and camps along the way and each of those is going to prepare you for the next one and then you're going to get to the next one and recuperate. And essentially that's what what we do is we help them to see what that overall journey looks like and then what the strategic waypoints would be that they would need to hit between here and there on, on that journey. So it's, it's, it's kind of getting them to, to assess their own, I guess, level of capability above all else. And we try and put together the content in such a way that they are able to take from it what they need now. So, you know, we've got some people that insist on coming back every year and this is the third one we've done. So I have a little bit of a challenge every year in making sure that, you know, that we don't just rehash the stuff that's happened before. But the fundamental concept remains the same. Every year we look at what the industry is doing. We very, very attentive to the trends that are showing in particularly the elite mentoring cohort. And then we put the content together that's going to help them to understand what's got to be done to get them to the next level and then help them with the actual planning to get there. So there's a lot of stretching, there's a lot of mindset kind of stuff. There's a lot of you, you're not going to get to 10 million at 10% if you are one of the herd. This, this is a, this is A, this is not for everybody, this is not for the faint hearted. This is going to take some fortitude to, to actually achieve. So it's, it's that kind of mindset that we're looking to develop.

It sounds like those builders that are coming back year on year are getting, you know, an element of intangible value as well, would you say?

Oh, absolutely. I mean I, I say to people who've never been before that there's as much education happening outside the classroom or outside the presentation room as there is inside. And that's on two levels. One, you know, there are relationships that were formed in year one that just get stronger every year. You know, we have a, we have a core of, of guys that this is their annual opportunity to get together and benchmark themselves against each other. There's a level of competitiveness in it. We have some incredible characters in this group. So you can imagine some of the, some of the dinner events and situations that happen post dinner can be quite interesting. There's a lot of laughter.

Because when the cameras are turned off, you mean.

Yeah, yeah. And as I say, we have some real characters that, that you know, just never, never cease to amaze us in terms of what they can get up to, you know, in a limited amount of time. But yeah, I mean there's, there's being, being able to be in a group of people that are like minded that, you know, although, I mean if I think about who was in that room this year, the diversity of personality and, and background was, was huge. But they're all there with a similar purpose and a similar desire and that is to, to be a professional builder, run a professional building business and set themselves and their families up for a long term solid financial future with choices with options available to them. You know, so it's a, it's a very nurturing and positive environment. And what always amazes me is how much people are prepared to share. We, we had Max Mills come out and join us this year for the first time from Utah. And he said what blew him away was the fact that he could walk up to any one of the other guys and say, I heard you talking about X, could you explain that to me? And he said not only did people explain it, they pulled out their KPI workbooks and showed him their numbers. And he said he's never been in an environment where builders are that open and ready to help each other. Certainly in the environment he's used to, it's all very kind of closed and hidden and nobody shares anything. And it's all a little bit fast bookie in terms of everybody's always doing wonderfully well when actually they aren't. So it's a, it's a very positive environment for the guys to be in. And, and I think what that does is it simultaneously challenges them but at the same time kind of ignites that fire to be. I want to be like so and so, you know, and there's a lot of people in the group that are, are certainly worth emulating.

Yeah, that sounds really powerful because I imagine there's an element of theory where you think, oh, I should be doing something, but you don't necessarily know how that plays out practically and, and speaking to other people that have already done something or you know, can help you get through a challenge is going to be really powerful.

Yeah. And you know, I mean, obviously you, you know that at this point in, in the APB's evolution, we are, we're working very hard to stay in front of the AI curve. I mean it was interesting just that as a subject in the room, listening to what the different guys were doing and little, little you know, sub programs and bits of software that they found that they could link with AI and were doing things and you know, those sort of tips and tricks that get shared, I mean some of those things will be worth more than what people paid for the retreat. One comment that was made at a dinner. Oh, I'm using xyz. Bang. They go and implement that. Their life turns around and away they go. You know, so it's, it's. Yes, we work very hard to make sure that the content we offer them is world class. But as I say outside the classroom, that, that one on one interaction and, and relationship building which lasts beyond the retreat. So I saw guys swapping email addresses and telephone numbers and they're all linked now on Messenger. You know, there will be conversations that continue happening throughout this next year and as always happens, we announced the next year's retreat at the end of the current retreat and of course there were people that signed up immediately. It wasn't even a, Let me think about it. They've just got the value out of it year after year and they're definitely coming back next year. So that probably more than anything else is a great litmus test on, on the value that people are getting.

Yeah, that community aspect really rung true to me. When we were at the summit last year in, on the Gold coast in Australia, there was builders from all around Australia and different countries, even a couple from New Zealand and they all Got together for a dinner because they'd known each other from their retreat and other experiences like that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So talk to me about the long.

Term growth and development impact on a builder's business from attending the retreat. We've now got three years, like you mentioned, where some builders have been to every year. What kind of impact have you seen over that time and what do you see it continuing forward?

Well, I mean the biggest, the shortest answer I can give you is that three years ago we had, we had Ryan Stannard from Stannard Family Homes leave our first retreat saying it is my intention to be a level 10 professional builder by next year's retreat. And we had the absolute pleasure of being able to confirm that in Hawaii last year that he'd actually achieved that in a year, which you know, was, was an exceptional achievement that spurred a whole bunch of people on, you know, and it's, it's not in any way, I don't think denigrating Ryan, Ryan shares this openly himself. If he can do it, then anybody can do it. It's not, you know, it's not this lofty thing that Russ and Sky and myself dreamt up that nobody can ever achieve. No, I mean Ryan will tell you openly. He, he describes himself as somebody who walked out of school at the age of 15, never finished it. Today he's running a multi million dollar business incredibly professionally. So you know, that, that, that sort of spurring on that impetus. Norm Wells from Norm Wells Construction didn't quite make it, but only because of time, because we measure it year on year and we don't want to water it down. We need to keep the standard where the standard is. Norm is at level 9.875. I mean it's, it's, there's no question he will hit that 10 million dollar mark for the year this year, but it's probably only going to happen around about September or October. So you know, anybody that's coming to the summit later on this year, you probably will be able to ask Norm if he's made it and he'll be able to, if he hasn't already made it, it'll be pretty close. So there's that kind of thing there, there are a lot of other people that it, it enables them to really, really zero in on what's important in their business now. So maybe they haven't made those kind of big strides that, that people like, like Ryan and Norm have made, but they've identified that they've got a real problem in let's say their team and that gives them a focus that they can then get stuck into for the next 12 months so that when they come back next year, it's okay, I've now built the team that I need. Now what do I need to do next in order to get me to that, to that level? So it's, it's a, we're always going to measure the growth in development of the business, but, you know, there's more to it. Ryan got back from the retreat and left on a six week caravanning holiday because not only did he want to get to a level 10, but he wanted to be able to install a general manager and she officially was taking over at this year's retreat. So he basically handed the baton over and said, right, you've now had a year of instruction and learning, you've now been to this retreat, you've heard what's got to be done by, I'm off to the Kimberley's for six weeks and off he goes, you know, so it's not, it's not just can he make some money? It's, he's got a fully systemized business that will, will hit every one of its targets, financial and otherwise, in the six weeks that he's on holiday. I mean, that's, that's huge. You know, so it's, there are a lot of those kind of ancillary things that are coming with the process as well.

Yeah. And I think that shows that every building company has their own goals. Right. I mean, a lot of them are going to be similar, related to, you know, having more time to spend with your family or do whatever you want to do and obviously have a profitable business. But everything is, is individual.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, that's the beauty of what we've done at the APB is we haven't, we've, we've put together the protocols that you need to be able to build your future the way you want to build it. We're not, you know, we're not prescribing, you should do it this way. We just saying we know that if you start here and you stop at these 10 waypoints, this is where you will get to.

All right, Andy, so what was your biggest takeaway from this year's retreat?

Um, I, I went into it with a, an overriding theme of simple, not easy. And what I was really trying to do with that was to unpack the complexities of business and the building industry and convert those into palatable things that people could get their heads around and de jargonize the process. So, you know, a lot around strategic planning, there's. There's all the long words like wheelbarrow and marmalade and teddy bear that, you know, we all pretend to know what they mean, but we're not 100% certain. I think this is a very good example. We created a brand new tool for the guys that came to the retreat to help them with their strategic planning. And we gave it the formal names, but I put in a line underneath that literally said, what, why, how, when, who should or shouldn't. And basically what that did was if ever anybody got confused around, well, what does it mean when we talk about mission? What's the difference between a target and a goal? You know, those kind of things. They could literally go back to that second line and a simple word would explain. This is what we're after, you know, in this sort of area. So seeing, seeing people get comfortable with. With quite complicated concepts, but, but watching the clarity. And I think that is. That is probably the big thing that we saw. We saw the lights come on, you know, for people around certain things. The biggest takeaway, I think, probably confirmed by what we saw in the saucy report is that in that room full of. I think there were 22 building companies in the room from. I don't think we had any Canadians, I think from three countries, and obviously big countries like the United States, common problems. And the good news in that is, well, then common solutions will fix them. You know, the fact that you've got a builder in Utah, there's exactly the same problem as a builder in Auckland and Bundaberg, it's, you know, you kind of go, well, how can Bundaberg be the same as Utah? It isn't. But the fundamental issues that Norm Wells is dealing with in Bundaberg are exactly the same as what Max Mills is dealing with in Utah. You know, so it's those kind of things. Realizing that what we are teaching has global value and the beauty. And I mean, I say this on so many podcasts. I get this incredible luxury of being able to talk from a data proven point of confidence. It's not. This is no longer a theory. This is not something that Russ dreamed up over his cornflakes. We literally have that diversity of type of business, place of business, age, years of experience, the entire diversity. And yet there is a. There's a common core that if we can get that right, we see exactly the same outcomes, no matter where people are kind of situated.

I think you summed it up beautifully. Simple, not easy. And Cutting through that complexity, I mean, at its core, that's, that's a, that's the value proposition that we offer is not absolutely.

I mean, you know, any builder listening to this knows just how complex and difficult it is to run a building business. But the truth is it breaks down to three things. Strategy, execution, and marketing. If you get those three right, you know, your life becomes, becomes simple. You know so well, as I say, simple, not easy. There's a wonderful quote that I came across when I was preparing for the retreat where Albert Einstein is attributed with saying, we want to set our lives up in such a way that they are as simple as possible, but not simpler. And that's one of those things that you kind of, when you, when you hear it the first time, you get the superficial meaning and then you just let it sit for a while and you realize, oh, okay, wait a minute. There's actually a lot more in that than, you know, what first meets the eye. But it really is saying that. And you and I have discussed this often on this podcast. One of the biggest problems that all builders face is that they get taught to be technicians. So they're great builders. But unfortunately, you can be the greatest builder in the world if you don't understand the dynamics of business. And particularly in this case, we zeroed in on the dynamics of growth. What, what causes a building company to grow and what stops a building company from growing? And you know, just getting people to understand those two fundamentals immediately informs the way they think into the future about, well, which one is this? Is this going to help me grow? Is this going to stop me growing? And we did a lot of start doing this, stop doing that kind of discussions to get people to understand those kind of concepts. So it's a, it's a, we don't, we, we know this is not easy. We know it can be lonely, we know it can be incredibly challenging. But if you just stick to the basics and execute those well and consistently. It was the other thing that I said to them. As leaders of your building business, you don't want to get a decision right. Occasionally you have to get every decision right, always. And if you don't, you better make sure that it's a failing forward scenario and you learn from it so that the next time that ball comes around, you know, you're able to react to it differently.

Yeah, it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day, isn't it? I mean, the industry's complex as it is. Running a company in general is complex. And just taking a step back and saying like, to your point, these are the things you need to do to grow. These are the things you do which might be stopping you from growing. That can be, that must be a really powerful and interesting conversation to like lean into.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, some of the simple things we got them to do, we got them to, to. I know you've done this exercise with your team, I've done it with mine, but we got them to kind of rank their entire team on that ABCD matrix where we measure their adherence to core values versus their productivity and the insights that people got from that. In virtually every case, their headaches weren't in the A or the B group, they were in the C group. And without fail, always somebody that showed up in the D group problem, you know, and so, and, and the, the university, the universality, the universality, whatever that word is of that in the room across diverse size businesses from all over the world. The fact that there was that universal concept is, is mind blowing.

You know, the builders that did attend this year's retreat, what are they going to do now to make sure that they can implement the learnings from, from the two days in fij, I mentioned.

To you that we had people from kind of three groups, we had members and then people that are in our two coaching cohorts. It's a fairly simple scenario for the two, the guys that are in business coaching or elite, because what will happen is the workbook that we give them at the retreat speaks very directly to their KPI workbooks that they get as part of their coaching package. So it's a lot easier for them because there's that commonality. And also they've got a coach. So, you know, the one thing that I challenged them all on was I want you by the time you leave to know what your number one most important thing is for the next year. Find the domino that if you tip that domino, they'll all go. Now they can take that back into their coaching and say to their coach, okay, this is the thing that I have to work on. And obviously their coaches then there to work through our normal strategic planning process, review that quarterly, work out the rocks with them and then help them to implement. The guys that are going to really have to knuckle down are the guys that are not in one of our coaching programs where to some degree they're obviously going to get help from the mscs, but they don't have anywhere near the depth or frequency of interaction with their membership success Coaches as what the guys in the coaching cohort will do. So, I mean, obviously we'd be very happy to have any of the guys that aren't yet in coaching join either business coaching or elite. But it's, it's, as we say, relative to everything. Everybody at our membership level can achieve exactly what anybody in our coaching levels can. It's just probably going to take them longer to see, you know, to get there and obviously to see the results.

And they need to be pretty extraordinary. Extraordinary. I'm stumbling on my words, like you now in terms of their discipline to apply everything day to day.

And I mean, that's, we all know it. You know, I buy a gym membership and some new Nikes and what really helps is when my other fat mate knocks on my door at five in the morning and says, fat guts, let's go. You know that I'm going to be standing waiting for him to arrive because there's now accountability, you know, and that's, that's, that's the secret sauce in coaching is that, you know, the coaches know exactly how to hold your feet to the fire. And it's what we always say, it doesn't matter what you know, if you don't convert that into action, it's, it's useless information to you.

For those that didn't attend the retreat this year, what can they take away from the insights that we've discussed today?

Well, you know, the beauty is we obviously monitor the kind of questions we get. We listen to the conversations around what people are battling with that finds its way into our future action plan content, obviously, because we dynamically are constantly updating action plans. If there is a new subject that we haven't heard of before, that's becoming an issue like AI, we will do the research to be able to synthesize that for the industry. So that's, that's really the direct benefit down the road. I mean, anybody that's listened to this, this podcast will, will have heard things like find your most important number where you know and focus. We were talking about how easy it is to get into the daily grind. One of the things that, that we consistently hammer home over the retreat is you've got to be able to identify your rocks, those big ticket things that are going to move the needle. And as the leader, you've got to stay, you know, manically focused on those things. Yes, the other sideshows will need to be dealt with, but not at the expense of the rocks because, you know, I mean, I had, I had a discussion with, with Somebody who was at last year's retreat who's made progress, but nowhere near the progress he wanted to make. And part of the reason for that, he, he, you know, this is the beauty of these guys that attend the retreat. He quite openly owned it from the word go. It's his own faults, but he's allowed himself to become distracted. And because of that, a lot of what he could have done has been diluted. And he feels like he's nowhere near as far down the road as he could have been if he'd stayed 100% committed. So, you know, it's really, if, if somebody want the recipe, it's. It's identified that, that one thing that is the main thing. Keep the main thing, the main thing manically, and don't get distracted by all the other things that are going on around you.

Yeah, great advice. And I guess the question on everyone's lips, including mine, are we doing it again next year?

Yeah, we. I mean, I, I can't see us ever not doing it, to be honest. Also, in 2019, didn't predict coronavirus, so don't, don't take this to the bank. But unless something really weird happened, we will do this every year. It is set up for next year. I happen to know the details. Do you want me to share them now?

I don't think we've made them publicly available as this show is going live, so might need to keep that one close to your chest.

Okay. I mean, it's definitely happening. It's happening in a stunning location again. And the only little tip that I'll throw out there is that we do jump the equator every year. So whereas this year was in the southern hemisphere, in Fiji, next year is in the northern hemisphere. And I'll just, I'll just leave it at that point. Point.

Yeah. I mean, the main reason I, I don't think it's necessary to. To bring it up at this point is because I do imagine with only 24 slots, I think next year that they, they'll get snapped up pretty quickly. And yeah, by the time this goes to where we're probably going to be all maxed out.

Well, maybe. And I think, I think then the message to people would be if the kind of picture that I've tried to paint of what happens at a retreat is something that is interesting and exciting for you, you need to be watching the communication from the apb, you know, to make sure that you grab the opportunity whenever you can. Don't let it slip you by.

Perfect, Andy. Well, thank you so much for taking some time. I know you've just had a trip to Fiji, but I appreciate you coming back and sharing your insights about the retreat with everyone.

Very welcome. Always a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

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