176. The Power Of Consistency With Jackson Digney

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode, I interview Jackson Digney from Enduro Builders in South Australia. We dive into Jackson's journey, exploring how his niche, specialization and business systemization have led to a strong and successful building company. Enjoy the episode. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus Root will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

When I came across the concept of if you want to find a lot of success in business, you need to operate in a really clear niche. I will focus on energy efficiency and that will be my niche. It's very easy, particularly when you first start your business, to just take any work you can get. And we did that. And as the business grows, you suddenly start to notice that you've got they're like gritty jobs where something is not just not gelling with the operations of the business.

Welcome to Professional Builder 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 Jackson Digney from Enduro Builders in South Australia. Jackson, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Fantastic to have you on the show, Jackson. It's a long time coming. I can't believe we haven't had you on just yet, but you've been with the APB since 2016, so you just want to give a bit of a background on your building company and where it all started.

I started Enduro Builders right at the end of 2015. We didn't get our first contract going until early in 2016. We specialize in building energy efficient homes and building to the certified passive house standard. We currently do pretty much all design and build. We have a, we have two architects that we will work with who are really that they are really well aligned with how we work, but the predominant base of our work is all design and build. At the moment we're probably, I think we've got 21 jobs in construction and four of them are certified passive houses.

Very nice. What made you specialize in energy efficient homes?

I just saw that there's a lot of waste in construction. I also, I grew up in Perth and I grew up in a house that Was close to the ocean, but always ultra hot in summer, really cold in winter, and that it always annoyed me. And so as I got into building I just managed to keep coming across the right people that were interested in sustainability and energy efficiency. And actually through apb, I met another member of APB who Brent Chatterton is his name, who really opened my eyes to passive House. That for me, once I discovered passive house, I was like, ah, like this, this is what I've been looking for to sort of finish off going from knowing a bit about energy efficiency to really understanding all of the concepts that go into it. And the more I learned, the more I was like, this is absolutely like this is what I've been looking for. Which is a very clear, consistent way to demonstrate to homeowners that they're going to get a certain type of building performance for their money. And being able to do that before we build it. So just eliminates the guesswork of solar passive design, which is kind of a principles based approach. Whereas certified passive house, it's all about the numbers. And being a numbers guy naturally that of course, you know, just was singing my tune.

So you mentioned you've out of the 21 construction projects you got running at the moment, four Passive House ones. Are you trying to move towards like all of your projects being like that?

Yeah. And we're finding that in South Australia the growth in the number of people that are coming to us specifically because of that specialty is growing all the time compared to 10 years ago. We spent very little time in initial discussions talking to people about why energy efficiency might matter. It's, it's more, we're seeing more and more clients that the discussion is either leading off with, I've come to you because we want to build a certified passive house, or I've come to you because you clearly really experience in certified passive house. We don't want to go all the way, but we want to make sure that our house is built properly and will actually perform really well. And so that shift is something that I just see that continuing like the needle is just going to continue to go. It's like a lot of people, and a lot of people, a lot of builders that have been on the podcast say the like verbalize the increasing expectation from clients. Most of those builders that they're talking about all the things that we've seen here as well, which is that increasing expectations of finishes and having big cantilever levers and massive windows and all that sort of stuff. So layered on top of that, our clients are Also expecting their buildings to perform really well and be really comfortable and be healthy and require small energy input to maintain all of that.

So what's the reason you wouldn't go full passive as the consumer? Is it just a cost thing?

It's not just a cost thing. I'm probably not always the poster child of passive house. I really believe in the principles of passive house, and I would love to be building all passive houses, but I also understand that they do cost a little bit more. And my focus is always on our hitting our the why for enduro existing, which is to improve the quality, the health and the comfort of the housing stock in South Australia. How that plays in answering a question is that it's great if everyone can do certified passive house, and certainly everyone that we build, we get more and more efficient about how we build them, which brings the cost of building them down. But I'm just happy to see people build a better house. And there are certainly some areas in Adelaide, like by the coast, for instance, where you could build a house that has a lot of the same characteristics and ticks a lot of the pillars of a passive house, but not worry about going for certification. And so as a homeowner, you can get nearly all of the benefits but not the tick to say, this is, you know, this is built to and certified to an international standard. But you can say it was built following all those principles and it performs beautifully and it's a lovely home to live in. And for some homeowners, they're really comfortable, you know, not having that. That plaque on the wall. And for me, there's no ego in it. For me, I'm like, if you don't want the plaque, then we won't go through that. Those extra steps, it's no drama. And equally, though, you get clients who are chasing that plaque because as an industry, we have done a lot to convince clients that a builder can't be trusted. And one thing about certified passive house is there are a lot of. There's very stringent requirements on photographing and documenting that you have built exactly what you said you were going to build. And all that information gets audited by someone in Germany who then says, yep, you have done it the way you said you would. Here's your certificate. I mean, for us, it wasn't a big shift when we did our first passive house, because a lot of the checks and balances and recording information we were actually already doing anyway. But for a homeowner, it's that extra layer of, I know I'm Going to get what I pay for. That I think drives them to certified passive house. But I say if they come to us and they're like, we want all of the benefits but we don't want that last little certificate part, then I'm always going to facilitate that because for me that's ticking. My big goal of improving the quality, health and comfort of the housing stock.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think that trust factor in the industry is getting better, but I still feel like it's pretty low across the board.

Right. How's building changing? Like the people coming into the industry are changing. I didn't come into the industry in a traditional way. I came from other industries, but always wanted to be a builder and kind of retrained, which meant that I brought along my preconceived ideas about customer service and getting it right and not mucking people around. They came, those skills came with me from the marine industry, which is a really hard mistress and in some areas makes construction look like a, like a pretty great place to be.

There's not many industries I've heard builders refer to as more challenging.

There's a few boat builders that would be agreeing with me. So. But there are, there seem to be more people coming in going, oh, those, those high expectations, we can meet them, we just have to get out together.

Jumping back to the original question I asked, I must admit I was expecting you to start talking about the benefits of energy efficient homes and how your positioning in that space has led to better marketing and niching down in the industry, that kind of stuff. Because that's what we see from the builders that actually find their niche and get known for that, which it sounds like you've got known for. Not just the passive houses, but the energy efficient homes. It can have a real pull effect in the market and attract better clients and stuff. So have you noticed those types of impact as well?

Yeah, there was a portion of. I always wanted to do something better than just building houses and doing additions and renos. When I came across the concept of if you want to find a lot of success in business, you need to operate in a really clear niche, it was easy for me to go, oh, oh, I really want to do energy efficiency. I don't really want to do the other stuff. So I'll focus on energy efficiency and that will be my niche. The biggest thing I learned along the way is that when you decide to go into a niche, it's very easy, particularly when you first start your business, to just take any work you can get and we did that. And as the business grows, you suddenly start to notice that you've got these jobs that are, that, that is stone. They're like gritty jobs where something is not just not gelling with the operations of the business. And they're always like, they wind up being that, oh, that's, that's that pain in the ass job with that pain in the ass client. And it's actually not a pain in the ass job nor are their clients a pain in the ass often. They're really lovely people. They're just not interested in building an energy efficient home. They just want a different type of result, which is not the result that we do. I think that we, as the business has matured and developed, I've become a lot better at going this type of project is not our type of project and referring people to a builder that I know where it is more in their wheelhouse. It was the toughest thing, but getting out of it got really easy as I grew my team, because as I grew my team, my systems were there and written down for people to then pick up. And of course in those systems it was like, this is what we specialize in and this is what we don't do. And when you're the one that wrote it, you kind of, you feel like politicians, they write the rules and then don't follow their own rules. And it's the same when you're a business owner. Sometimes you write your rules and you're like, oh, but this is an exception. And, oh, that's an exception. Whereas then you employ a really good team of people and they go, these are our rules. Like these are the guideposts that we are operating in. And all of a sudden they're like, why did you take that job on? That's not in the, it's not in the box. And for me, my biggest growth thing was actually going, you know what, you're right, I shouldn't have said yes to that job. Actually, I'm going to go back and we're going to unwind ourselves out of that. That kind of really started to happen a few years ago. It had a really profound impact on the growth of the business and on the general happiness and stress levels of everybody in it. Because suddenly we were only dealing with the right type of people that have the same mindset as we do and the same interests. And all of a sudden you're like, all this talk that you read about in marketing schools and business coaching and all that, you're like, well actually this really Happens a lot of people have said, as you know, I've been involved with APB for a while and I have seen lots of builders come and go and I've seen them pop up in other mentoring circles and they're often the ones that don't implement the things that they're paying to learn about. They continue to say stuck. And I think one of the things that, like with the niche and sticking to it and all of that, that was just a case of me paying for advice and then just in some cases blindly following it to get value for money out of the advice. Cause you get value one way or the other. If it's bad advice, then you implement it and you discover it was bad advice. Well, you got, you got your value because at least you know it was a bad idea. The reality is that when you're getting advice from people that give it to lots of builders really regularly, it's, it's always going to be, there's always a better chance than not that it'll work. And for me that's been the biggest flaw.

How did you balance, like in theory makes sense and obviously the results talk for themselves over a period of time. But, but there's obviously a flexion point where you need to say no to jobs and obviously like, you know, you've got mouse to feed, you've got staff, you've got cash flow that you need the business to keep running. How did you find that those decisions and how did you overcome those challenges?

There's no one simple answer. There was a lot of different things. So the first one, following some very sage advice, which was put more money into your marketing and your advertising. Because the flip side of all growth is that you have more money to play with and more money gives you more options. But before that comes investing money that you might not really have into advertising and marketing to grow your workload to give you more options. So at the front end, that was how I started to tackle the issue. What we did was we set some budget floors. So you have like a ceiling and a floor. So, so we set some flaws that we just didn't take jobs on below that budget. And that was hard in itself because it made me feel like a really arrogant up myself builder, like I'm too good for your $300,000 job. It was actually mission critical to growing the business and to getting that taking, taking a step forward in being pickier about projects. So that then meant that because lots of builders would know like you spend, you can spend the same amount of time putting together a $2 million project as you do putting together $500,000 project. So your return on investment is far better with bigger projects, particularly if your business is set up for those bigger ones, which was the case with me. What we then did was of course we took on some projects that fit the budget criteria, but maybe didn't fit the energy efficiency criteria or didn't, you know, weren't, weren't an ideal client or things like that to continue to tick those revenue boxes. Because from that flows all the things, gross profit and net profit. And then as the extra spend on advertising started to come through, we just gradually got pickier and pickier and pickier about what we did. And we had a few points in there where our marketing wasn't on point the way it needed to be. So we weren't attracting quite the right clients as often as we should have been. So we did have a stage where we actually went backwards again. We had to go back to taking on some projects that were budget wise. Great projects, interest from the client in energy efficiency, not great projects, but they, they kept the wheels turning while we worked out how to fix the issue of why, why are we getting leads that are ticking some of the boxes, but not all the boxes and all of that. All of what I've run through has kind of occurred over the last probably six or seven years as we've, as we've really, really hooked into growing. And this is our 10th year. And I think that occasionally I have. We've had a couple of projects where before we went to contract, I told the client that we weren't a good fit and I actually gave them all of their money back that they'd spent with us. I know plenty of people would be like, you idiot, why would you do that? You know, you've done the work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In my opinion, we cocked up at the beginning by taking them on when we probably shouldn't have because they weren't a good fit with us. And I don't want anyone to walk away from my business feeling like they had their time wasted because of how hard we work and how much time and effort has gone into the systems and processes of how we run the business to make sure that we don't waste anyone's time or their money. Every time that I did that, we always had an influx of new leads that were good after. We always had an uptick in how happy everyone in the team was. Instead of looking at it as giving someone their money back, I looked at it as an investment in team morale, making sure that our mix of work was better aligned with what we actually do. Or I did it twice when we really didn't want to lose a job. At that point in time, the thing that helped me make the decision was considering the bigger picture and looking at, you know, these are our goals and this is where we're going, and this is our nation. Knowing all of my numbers, which include one of the things that I do a lot. Every Friday is cash flow forecasting day, and so I have a rolling cash flow forecast for the next 52 weeks. It's taken a long time to get that accurate because it's. It's. Yeah, it's a bit tricky with building now that we've got it dialed in. It's. It gives me a lot of confidence when I make those sorts of really hard decisions. And when we say no to jobs, particularly if one is already in the pipeline, it's. It's really easy to pull it out and have a look without the emotion of like, well, how bad of an impact is this going to be? And I think that that's, you know, that's been turning jobs away and doing it with respect and doing it in a way where those clients never have a reason to say anything bad about us. Has been something that, to me is a. You know, that's where I really matured as a business owner.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Jackson, because I think it's important for builders to hear that it's not necessarily a linear journey. It's not as simple as saying, okay, we're going to specialize in this. Let's cut everything else off day one. Like, it's. It's up and down, and you need to make strategic decisions which will keep the business going as well. So. Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that.

Well, it's lots of people, a lot of business coaches simplify it, you know, and they make it sound. They make it sound easy. And one step, it's how you end up with a lot of despondent people out there. If you can just be really crystal clear about what it is you stand for and why you exist. And like I've said, like, you know, we exist to improve the quality, health and comfort of the housing stock in South Australia. Everything we do here comes back to that and everyone that works here, it's the first thing on the first slide in the induction, like, this is why we exist. This is why enduro builders exist, period. The thing is that even for those clients that didn't want energy Efficient homes. We still built them a really good home and we still built them one that was healthier and more comfortable. They'd perhaps gone somewhere else and nothing, nothing's ever linear. So. Yeah, I like the way you put it, you know, because I always talk about like for our clients, what we do is we take the often discombobulated thing that some clients come to us and they're like, we spoke to this consultant and they told us this and this consultant told us the total opposite of this consultant. And what we do is we take that kind of think of it like a bird's nest of just stuff. And we, the way I describe to clients is like, we straighten that out into the linear process of building, but behind that is the very non linear process of business. Yeah, that's.

I think that's one of the biggest challenges in business is like being okay with that complexity, not expecting it to be simple. Because as much as it can be simple at a high level, once you get into the weeds, it's certainly not.

Yeah, yeah. And we've noticed that I spent a month in Hawaii building as a volunteer, building an Earthship style building with my eldest daughter. And that meant that I was still available and still contactable, but essentially I was on holidays from, from the perspective of the team. And that probably exposed them to a lot more of the ambiguity and the, you know, the things where, where as a business owner you resolve a lot of ambiguity. And the biggest bit of feedback that I've had from the team about what without it was hard because what I wanted to find out is what, what is it that I do that you guys noticed was missing when I wasn't here? Because for where I'm at in my journey, the business is largely systemized. The organizational chart is very clear, the roles are very clear. The objectives that everyone has to meet is very clear. All their KPIs are clear and everyone can see each other's KPIs. And it's, it's as dialed in as it's ever been. It still needs to be improved and it still needs to grow, but it's in a really good place right now. I'm spending a lot, significantly less time on the day to day. But I know that there are things that I do that I don't realize that I do. It's like that, you know, you can be unconsciously incompetent or you can be consciously. Then you're consciously incompetent. Like you go, oh, actually I don't know that. And then you Become consciously competent and then you become unconsciously competent. And unconsciously competent is the one where you have to ask the most questions, because there might be stuff that you do that you don't even realize you do until it's absent from the business. And the biggest one, that my team kind of consistently said the same theme, obviously different wording, but they said when problems arise, your attitude is always like, there is absolutely a way to solve this problem somewhere. No problem is insurmountable. And I said, well, how did you guys go with problems? And they're like, oh, well, we had this. And I said, what'd you do? Oh, we sorted it out. And we sorted it out and we sorted it out. So what was the difference? And they said, well, it was a lot more stressful at first because my construction manager is the most self aware about it. He was like, I had to first get out of my head about how much of a big problem it was and just get on to fixing the. Fixing the problem. You know, it's like we had a big problem that I didn't even know about until middle of February that was hidden from VUE because of a mistake I made in rolling over our KPIs. When I set up a supermetrics query that returns the ad spend on AdWords, I clicked the wrong thing. It was returning the wrong months. So I didn't realize that we'd overspent on AdWords significantly. Like more than double. I'm talking like a 20 grand overspent. It was obviously an error on an AdWords guy's part and I could have gone completely off the deep end and got so focused on the fact that a problem occurred and have lost a heap of time and a heap of heap. More like wasted hours being upset about it. But instead my attitude is like, well, it's done now. The money is. It's gone, spent. We did get a lot, a big uptick in initial phone calls. So that's positive.

Like I should have been right?

Yeah, yeah. Like the money returned a result. Let's have a look at, you know, what was the cost per lead? And actually the cost per lead stayed about the same from previous months. So I was like, well, that's good. We almost linear connection. It went up a little bit, but almost linear connection. So then I was like, okay, that's now led to. What did we learn by having this massive amount of money go through our AdWords account? Like, how did that help us? The net result of all of that is actually that, because I do. I'm not the golden child of the APB mantra of 3%. We probably spend about 1.2, but that's now going to increase because that little overspend made me go actually something that last year I thought I was led to believe putting more money into my AdWords wasn't going to get a result by accident. We discovered actually it does. So yes, it's annoying. It was a big cash outflow. That is always annoying when you don't expect it. But there's a positive to it and the focus is, well, let's focus on the things that went well because the things that went bad can't be changed, they've occurred, they're done and cause of it has obviously been looked into, identified and resolved. So there's no, there's no need for any further stress or aggravation about it. And I've also just spent a bit of money training my AdWords team to be on top of that stuff. And I use that example because that's the most recent example of a really severe like, error occurring that generated a problem with money going out. But it also, once you flip it around and go, oh, that's done, let's look at what went. What went well as a result. And I think that what my team really noticed was that I wasn't there to catch them on the way down. When you're going, oh, it's a problem, that's bad. Bad is really bad. How bad can it be? Can it get any worse? Like, where else is it wrong? I suppose I've only. I'm on the flip side nowadays where internally that used to be my thought process all the time. When something little went wrong, I used to go off down the rabbit hole and I think when I talk to a lot of builders, they do the same thing. Which is probably the other reason for me squeezing the story in is the moment that I switched my thinking and just went, I'm no longer doing the rabbit hole thing. Everything started happening faster in a positive way.

I do love the idea of going on a holiday. I think I've heard about other builders talk about it before in our community around you go on a holiday, see what breaks in your systems and then you can come back and improve them after that. The Google Ads story is probably not so much related to that. But just in general, your Hawaii holiday was obviously you need to have a pretty systemized business to comfortably do that though.

Absolutely. And look, I, as Andy knows, I spent a big chunk of the last quarter of last year meeting with anyone that Would listen to have them go through my business because I was looking for all the problems. Now I was doing it partly because I was going away, but also partly because I was at the end of a really big growth phase in the business and a really big, like we went up like a whole flight of stairs in terms of professionalism and systemization. Just having really clear processes. I was uncomfortable, really uncomfortable because all of a sudden I had much freer days. I had a lot less on my plate of day to day minutia because it was all being dealt with by the people whose job it is to deal with it. That of course left me going. What I was doing the what's wrong with the business? Like there's got to be some hidden problem under, under all this stuff. There's gotta be something that's about to go on me. And the net result was and then going away for a month. So it meant that I felt a lot better when I hopped on the plane to go away. Yeah. And the little bits and pieces that went wrong, like where we're now firmly in that phase of improving our systems. Like one thing we learned some of our systems have got a little bit too complex. Like in the interest of making sure that we don't miss this and we don't miss that and we don't miss the other, there's a few too many layers of stuff to do this year. We're doing. It's. I've said to my team like this is like a, it's like the year of the 1%. We're going to be looking at the little things that are causing the little irks and we're going to fix them. We're not making wholesale changes this year because the system we've got, we know it works and it's been delivering pretty consistently for over a year now. And that's definitely, I definitely feel a lot better about the business this time this year than I did last year. But it's, it's, I think for a builder listening to this, it takes, it takes a lot of consistent effort. In some cases repeating yourself with your team over and over and over and being, being unwilling to bend when something pops up is like you said, like business is a very, it's a very fluid environment. And when you're the guy at the top providing the structure for everyone, like riding the scaffold for everyone to work on, you're the one that has to take all the weirdness of life and turn that into something structural and solid that everyone can hang on to. So they know what they've got to do and when they've got to do it. Doing that and holding that for a long period of time really takes it out of you. And for me, the big one that I felt by the end of last year was just the routine of life was driving me demented. And I mean, like, every day you get off and I do this and I do this and I do this and I do that and. And it. And it was all. Because that's just how life is. And the thing is that I'd fought really hard to get that regimentation to my life so that I had consistency, so that I could get the success that I wanted, but it was driving me demented. So the month off in Hawaii with a completely different routine. You know, we were living in a tent in the middle of a paddock and getting up and eating with. With. With the community of people who we were building this house with. And then we'd go and work all day and then you'd go and swim in the waterfall and then you'd go back to bed and it was. It was just a completely different routine from normal. And to do it for such a sustained period of time really helped me. I think it was that mental break that I needed. And that's one of the cool. Like I'm a big believer in everything happens for a reason, and everything happens at the right time. And sometimes bad stuff happens and you're like, I really don't want to believe in this. Everything happens for a reason. Because that's only meant to apply to good stuff. I believe more than ever that all of it happens for a reason. The more chilled you can be about. There's a lesson in this, or there's something that. Something that I'm meant to be getting redirected to or whatever it is. There's always something in there. And I think for me, coming back from Hawaii, I've been really fighting back to that same routine that was driving me demented in December. Because of course I got back then. I. Then I managed to get gastro, which just meant that as I was trying to settle my routine, I then got crooked and I couldn't. It was bad. The worst gastro I've ever had. And now trying to fight back to that routine that I hated before.

Yeah, I mean, careful conversation for a few hours. If we're talking about human psychology.

Sorry. No, no, no.

I mean, I think it's. There's a famous saying. I. I can't for the life of me figure out who said it initially, but it's about the, the journey, not the destination. I think that summarizes kind of what you're talking about. And even the way you deal with problems in your business, you're happy to allow it to play out so you can learn from it, rather than being worried about the destination you're at or the destination you need to get to. It is funny, though, that you put so much effort into trying to develop consistency in life because that does result in success. And then once you do achieve success, you're looking for something else.

And look, Hawaii meant meeting and hanging out with a bunch of people who were. Because I am definitely, here's the objective, that's where we're going. Don't really care too much about the journey, but, like, just focus on where we're going. Whereas I spent a whole month living with people that couldn't for the life of them tell you where they're going. But I could definitely tell you about how much fun the journey was or is always going to be. But if you said, like, what's your objective in life? They'll be like, I don't know, I just suppose I'll see what happens today. And like, for me, I'm like, how do you live like this? Like, I'm rocking in the corner going, doesn't this just make you insane? But for me, it actually helped me to, you know, come back and gone, hey, this year I've got a whole team of people that I've got completely focused on numbers and objectives. This year I'm going to work on, on everyone as a person and we're going to help to find each other's, like, a better way of being and find a bit more empathy in the business, which I think might help some of our sticky points with clients. It's also given me perspective. And that's one thing that, you know, I think that had that opportunity not come up, it may have actually prevented me taking the next steps in my business as fast as I'm going to because I had that mental break. Just suppose is the other reason for me thinking of it as something to dwell on. When I was talking with you once I read all your questions because I was like, I think I wish I had heard that, you know, when you, when you get really close and think your business is systemized, go and do something really different. Don't go on a holiday, go and do something like. I call it a holiday. I basically spent a month welding up window and door frames for this house and doing all the structural steel for it, but that was just a complete break from the norm and a completely different just way of being for a month.

Yeah, it's great insight. What I'm hearing throughout this whole interview and what we discussed offline as well, is that consistency and systemization have been key to your success. I'm interested to hear what impact you think APB has had on that journey, because you've obviously been around the traps for a while now, but you've also got previous experience working in business before you started a building company. So there's lots of factors which I think have contributed to your success. How do you think the APB community has contributed?

APB gave me the final push and some new ideas. So with my first business where I cocked it up a bit, there were lots of things that I knew I should do and I. And in a lot of cases, I knew how to do them, but I didn't do them. And that contributed to that not going that well. So when I started Enduro, I was on the hunt for a business mentor and I came across you guys before I came across anyone else and really got a direct lesson in good marketing as from the client's perspective. And then of course, once I got involved, all of the things that we were being taught to do and given examples of and, you know, and coached on, they aligned really well with some of the stuff that I wanted to do. And then of course, there was a big expansion on things that I hadn't even thought of. That just meant that without, like, I can very confidently say, without those things, I would not have advanced the business as fast as I have. And that's across. I knew about business systems and the importance of them, but really needed some. I needed direction in, like, how to. How to actually implement that. Like, what's the thing? And in your head you're like, well, it's just about writing the systems. But then you're like, well, how do I do that and where do I go? And whereas APB just. They're like, yeah, that's exactly what you do. And here's an example. And here's how. Here's a sample pack of systems. And yeah, every business owner will go through them and go, that won't work in my business. Or that'll work, but it needs, like, I do it a bit differently. The thing is that all of a sudden you've gone from nothing to a whole bunch of like, Launchpad foundational stuff to build off that. The marketing training that I got early on in the business I knew the importance of good marketing, but I was very much at a flat footed start as to like how it all works on the Internet. I just went from zero to really knowledgeable in under six months because of the training. And that has then carried on. Now that we have, you know, we have guys engaged doing that, doing the AdWords work and doing the Facebook work. But because of the training with apb, I can jump into my ads account very quickly, discern what's going on and what is and what isn't working, which means I ask really high quality questions. And I think that's one of the things about doing that. Training with APB taught me all the basic skills and how to do stuff at the same time as teaching me how to get somebody else to do it for me and giving me the skills to actually understand what was going on so I could ask really good questions because I'm a big believer. There's a guy called John demartini, he's a bit of a weirdo, but he does say some pretty pertinent stuff. And one of the things is the power of the results in your life is directly related to the power of the questions you ask. And so a lot of the APB training taught me about what questions to ask to get the things that I wanted done done and the framework. There were two really big things in addition, like the support to go. Yeah, that idea you've got about writing systems, you definitely need to do that. But the two sort of big deliverables was the KPIs. I knew I needed KPIs and I had a rough idea of what KPIs I should have. But APB just completely closed over all of the knowledge gaps with like, these are the KPIs you need delete indicators, lag indicators. This is what you want to watch. These are the interconnections. For me that's really important about managing my emotions because when emotions up, logic's down. And I know that although I'm a very logical thinker, I have a tendency to very quickly jump to emotion. And so having those numbers there helps me stay level. And the other one was the sales process. Because the sales process, that sales process that I created when I first started with apb, that's still the mainstay. Like after people read about our why in the induction, the next one is that the next slide is the sales process. Now it's expanded and it's got, you know, extra bits in it and all of that and it's changed over time. As our systems have changed a bit. But the thing is that that foundational thing of this is what happens from when a lead contacts us to when we give them the keys to their house and pop the champagne is just. I can't. You couldn't even put a value on it. And that's, that's not me blowing smoke up, right? Yeah, but it's, it's something that, where I see the value of it is every time we hire someone new because by the end of day one, they are ultra clear and they start to ask questions about parts of the sales process, which means not only did they read it, but they. It was in a format that they actually took it in and remember. They might not remember, they never remember all of it, but they remembered enough bits to make them come and ask a question about. Well, I noticed that you do this and then you do this. But how come, how come it's in that order? Because especially people who come from other building companies, they'll be like, why do you do it in that order? Because we always do it like that. And then that then opens up a conversation for further learning. And it's one of the reasons why I've stuck around because there's always continuing value. And the last few years, I think the biggest one of late has been with AI. It's really helped me with implementing AI in the business. Those action plans that have been done, they just. It helps me unravel all the. Like you could do this or this or this or this or this and just get it into something clear. So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, it does. No, thank you for sharing. I mean, think about how much easier it would have been to do all of your systems and documentation if AI was around five or six years ago anyway for builders these days. No, look, I appreciate you sharing that. I think a lot of the things you've put in place is the APB playbook from our perspective. But you've got to take a ton of credit, like, to your point, like, it's easy enough to hear theories and think that it's just going to be a quick fix, but you've put the work in. You've brought your own experience and adaptations to the table as well, and that's why it's been successful. And it's pretty clear to say that. So, yeah, you've got to take a ton of credit with that. But yeah, I mean, regular financial monitoring, investing in marketing, understanding your customer and your niche, getting a sales process in place, systemizing your whole business, like that is the playbook. So, yeah, you've done it all.

Yeah. And it's constant. It's like, you know, I said. I said a little while ago, like, I feel like the business is in a really good place, and it is, but there are always things to be improved. And I'm. I'm only a quarter of the way towards my total growth goal, which was set way back with Russ in, like, 2017, I think maybe 2018, you know, and we're certainly looking at. It's kind of hockey sticking a bit. But that means that there are systems that we use now that might not work when the business is double the size it is now. I think that's the thing that I love the most about business, is as one thing changes, everything changes. And I enjoy, you know, a couple of our staff are brilliant at that role. They are just some of the best in the business. But give them the level of ambiguity I manage. That's not their wheelhouse. But it's the thing that I love the most is the fact that by continuing to grow, I continue to create new challenges to overcome, which I think is keeping me, you know, it's keeping me very interested in what I'm doing. And it's a real key part of that continuing growth is having the continuing support of knowing, like, these foundational things and knowing where to go for help is something that is. Is worth a lot. And, you know, I signed up with APB in 2016. I'd only. I only had one contract on the go. I had a couple in the pipeline, but definitely didn't have enough surety of revenue and income to really support the cost of apb. Certainly my wife was none too pleased about it at the time, but to her credit, she. She stuck with me over it. And we. And I look back now and I know she does as well. And we were both like, oh, thank goodness. We took. You know, I took that leap because we both run our own businesses, but we. We both run vastly different businesses. I mean, she's a chiropractor, but she runs her business very emotional side. Very. Everyone gets along and look, and her business is very successful and works. And lots of people laugh at us because they're like, both of you run successful businesses, but there is no similarity between the two in terms of how you do it. And I know she really puts a lot of value having those support mechanisms and certainly looks back and goes, yes, I was very annoyed at the time, but in the fullness of time, I agree with what you said at. At the dinner table that night, which was, trust me, it'll work out.

So you made it work out just basically to prove that to your wife?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. If it had not gone well, man, I don't know where I'd be now. Very good. Very good.

Well, Jackson, we have been chatting for almost an hour now, so we probably should wrap it up so you can get back to work. But I appreciate you coming on the show. Your story's a phenomenal one and I, you know, thanks so much for sharing it. And a lot of those tidbits I think throughout are going to be really valuable to a lot of the other builders out there. So thanks so much for coming on.

No worries. Thanks for having me. Anytime. Cool.

Also, a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. Also, highly recommend checking out Jackson's website, endurobuilders.com It's a great representation of how you can display your niche and attract the right type of customers. So check that out. But until next time, have a great day.