18. The Systems That Changed Everything with Ryan Stannard

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely. Brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients. Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales, processes, financials, operations and marketing. Today I'm joined by Ryan Senard, owner and managing director for the Stanard Family Homes, headquartered in Adelaide. Ryan, thank you for being here today.

Yeah, no worries at all, Bosco. Looking forward to having a chat.

So, Ryan, let's start off with your story. How did you get started in the industry? You know, what year, how old were you? Tell us a little bit about how you got into this.

I was sort of born into the industry. My father was a builder and I was always going to be a builder. So I left school when I was 15, or even a little bit before I was 15, and started a carpentry apprenticeship with my father. And it just sort of continued on from there.

So is it fair to say that you had a passion for carpentry and building at the time? I guess you didn't know building would be where you'd end up, but it sounds like you had a passion for carpentry.

Yeah, and it was just a passion for building in general. It's just that's where the apprenticeship started out. Ever since I was a little boy, I was on sites with my dad building stuff. And being we're originally from country Victoria and we used to build farmhouses, shearing sheds, we would build all sorts of buildings. It wasn't just carpentry. We would do tiling, bricklaying, concreting, all different sorts of buildings. So I sort of learned the whole building phase. Yeah. With my dad as a teenager.

So tell us a little bit about that pivotal moment. When did you know that this was going to be a company, a career, a life decision? There must have been a pivotal moment where you said to yourself, this is what I want to do.

I think just growing up, I knew that I was. It was. I was always going to be a builder. It was just when it transformed from working for my father to. Then I went and worked for some other people. When I was like 18, 19, I worked for some other builders, learned a different way of doing things, understood a Bit of different sides of the building industry. And then when I was about 20, I think I set up my own subcontract carpentry game and we did mainly first fix framing, which is wall and roof framing basically. And I employed up to like 25 carpenters at a time just doing wall and roof framing. And then that went on for a little while and then work started to slow up. Probably in, in the GFC of like 2008, work started to slow up for the carpentry side of things. And I had a few friends that were looking to do extensions, so I just went and did the extensions for them. Then that side of things got gradually grew and then the extensions turned into new houses. New houses turned into a company that builds custom new houses. So it was sort of just a transformation that sort of. It didn't happen by accident, but I didn't actually have to push to make it happen. And then we gradually grew and then employed an estimator to help me with the estimating, then I employed a supervisor to help me with that. And then it gradually just grew and grew and grew until we got the company that we got today. So.

So it sounds like you always have a long term goal. It just sort of took this ripple effect as things progressed as well. What was it like running a company, 25 different Carpenters at that young age as well? I mean, you know, what was the experience like when you first started out?

Yeah, it was, it was, it sort of. Was it like saying it like that? It sounds like it would be daunting, but it was just sort of something that happened. Yeah, we just kept building houses and building and building and then we needed more carpenters for the demand that we had and then it just sort of snowballed. So yeah, it was fun. It was really fun times.

So what do you love the most about what you do today? And has it changed over the years, like in the last few years as well?

The thing I love the most about what I do today is my team and the team environment that I've got here. So I've built a really close knit team of. I think there's nine of us at the moment, all office based, which is completely different. So I've got three, three supervisors on site, but the rest of us office based. And it's very different to where I've come from with all the trades based people. But yeah, the thing I really enjoy now is the team environment around the office. The time I've put into employing the people that I've got. Yeah, they're all great. So I just love that environment now. It's great.

Tell us a little bit about the business. So you've seen some growth over the years. You've mentioned carpentry, led to other things. If you had to accredit some factors that led to this growth, what would they be?

I guess it would be getting outside of my comfort zone, much to my wife's despise at times. If she had known what I was doing in the background, she probably wouldn't have allowed me to continue on. But I just used to take risks, make choices that I thought I could make work.

Yeah.

And I just kept pushing ahead with different ideas and different things and. Yeah. And that's how we've ended up where we are today.

So let's talk about the highs and the lows. Right. So I've spoken to enough builders to know that it's not always smooth sailing. There's always journeys and obstacles that you have to overcome. So let's just open the curtain a bit and are you willing to share some of the biggest challenges you faced and how did you overcome those challenges as well?

Yeah. Building industry people, looking at it from the outset, think that builders are all rich, doing well. The building industry is not all beer and skittles. The highs are high and the lows are low. Like, it's when things are great, things are great. When things are bad, things are really bad. And in the building industry, things go bad. You don't just lose your job, you lose your house, your car, you lose everything that you've got. So it's building an empire, I suppose, but building an empire that's protected, that's the main thing of it, I think, is you've got to grow to a sustainable rate so that you can protect your assets.

So if you look back at that journey you mentioned, it's not always beers and skittles. Can you give me some examples of some of those challenges? What are some of the things that you face that were really tough times for you?

Well, the thing with our industry, it gets so affected by things like, obviously, global financial crises. A few years ago, we dealt with the Banking Royal Commission, so all of our contracts that we had signed that hadn't gone into construction, we had eight contracts that their finance had to get reviewed when we were just about to start construction, which stole three months of our turnover at that point in time. And that hurt. Yeah. You take three months of your turnover out of your business overnight, it's hard to come back from that. So that was A really challenging time for me. And, yeah, there's just different things throughout, over the years that have created these sort of challenges. But that's one that springs to mind off the top of my head, for sure.

And, you know, every business owner has a lesson that they've learned the hard way that, you know, they've always applied or done differently.

Right.

I think it's fair to say that we all even know learn. Entrepreneurs learn through mistakes.

Yes.

Has there been any mistake that you've experienced that has thought you to be a better business owner or better business leader as well?

Yeah, and it's probably like. Probably that. That I was talking about before, like, the Banking Royal Commission was one thing that hit me really hard because I hadn't. I hadn't prepared for it. I didn't know. And it literally took all of our, like, 90% of our work for that time. So the way that. And back then I was building, building, building, and it took. It took like 12 months, probably for me to recover from that. So the biggest thing I've learned from that is now you've got to have enough reserves to cover your business can keep running even if you don't have any work. So you've got to hold the reserves to keep your business running for at least 6 to 12 months in reserve to make sure that things like that happen again. You can power on through it.

So when you talk about cash reserves, you're talking about controlling your expenditure then, essentially, because from what you're telling me, do builders just end up spending more when they don't have that financial awareness?

Yeah, well, it's just. Yeah, it's spending and it comes back to wipa. Like you work in progress and bits and pieces and builders spending money that's not theirs. But the whole Whipper thing is probably a whole nother discussion again, but. Yeah, but it is. It's. It's builders and we're all. Every builder would be guilty of it at some point or other. You've got money in the bank that's not yours and if you. If you spend it well, then. And then you don't have any work, well, then it comes back to get you. So.

Right. You mentioned the WIPA calculator. You know, we have talked a little bit about it in previous episodes, about the. The work in progress accounting adjustment calculator. I'm assuming this is when you came, when you were aware of the association of Professional Builders. How did that relationship start and how has it changed you?

When I started with the association of Professional Builders, it was pretty much my last straw in the industry, to be honest with you. And it was probably not, I'm not sure when I joined the apb, but it may be just after that Banking Royal Commission, maybe after the hard, hard, hard hits of that. But when I joined them, I was sort of. I was lost. I'd been working in the industry, my who, and I hadn't really made heaps of money. I'd made enough money for me to live, survive and pay my mortgage, but I hadn't made enough money for the amount of work that I was putting in. So back in those days, I had a young family and I was working, you know, 15 plus hours a day and I was lucky that I only ever worked Monday to Friday. I never, ever worked on the weekends. That was my family time. But during the week, it would be 15 hours a day most days, doing book work at night, building houses during the day, all that sort of stuff. You do that for 10 or 15 years, it starts to take a bit of a toll on your life. And I hadn't really seen the rewards of that. And it wasn't because I wasn't good at what I did. Like, I was great at building a home, but I wasn't a great business person. And that's the biggest, probably the biggest take out of the industry is us tradesmen. We might be great tradesmen, but we're not business people. So what you don't know, you don't know. And you can't feel stupid if you don't know something when you've got people like the APB to lean on and ask these questions. Because at the end of the day, we're tradesmen, you know, we're uneducated. We're not uneducated, but we're generally not academically minded, if that makes sense. So then we end up running businesses.

Well, it sounds like where you go to earn your trade isn't where you learn how to run a business. It sounds like there weren't sort of the same education hub. It's probably why the association of Professional Builders became really more relevant to you. But it also, you bring up a really good point that most builders who run companies, they tend to be in a very isolated circle. It sounds like you were isolated before you met the association of Professional Builders as well.

Yeah, and to be honest with you, I thought about throwing the towel in a few times, but I honestly didn't know what I was going to do because of that point, because I was uneducated. All I could do was Build stuff. So if I stopped being a builder, I didn't know what I was going to do. So it does. It becomes a very isolated place. Yeah. You feel like you're on your own. You feel a lot of pressure on your back when the bills are rolling in, and then you've got to go and get the jobs done so you can pay the bills and it can be a really lonely place.

So tell us a little bit about your relationship. So, obviously you started working with the association of Professional Builders. It sounds like you were applying some new techniques. Then once you started working with them, how did things start to change? And how did you start to not just earn a living, but actually make a living?

It was just starting to implement things and having systems and processes. And probably one of the biggest things that took me a bit to get my head around was that I could make money if I wasn't actually out there working. So I seen the office side of things as something that I had to do after work because I had to be out there working on the tools Monday to Friday to actually earn a living. And then it's letting go and then it's having the ability to let go of that side of things and believe that you're not the only person that could do that job. Yet there's other people that can do that job. And to be honest with you, I found out over the years there's other people that can do the jobs that I was doing a lot better than I could. And now I manage these people and it's a match made in heaven.

So it sounds like you're actually now working on the business, not in the business. Do you prefer working at the office side of things? Do you miss working on site or do you still show up on the site when you have to?

This is a question I get asked all the time. And if I said I missed working on the tools, I'd be lying. I enjoy building stuff, but to go out and work on the tools five days a week, every week of the year, like I used to, my body wouldn't be able to handle it. So now I really enjoy the office side of things and I really enjoy managing people. So the thing that I take a lot of pride out of is planting a seed and watching it grow. So creating a role in my business, getting someone to fulfill that role, coaching them along the way through using my own knowledge and my coaches at the APB and watching that part of it grow, and then move on to the next part of the business and then the next Part of the business as it grows. And that's what I really enjoy.

And it sounds like, Ryan, you've gone from being a builder and a craftsman to now being a leader. Tell us a little bit about that journey. How has this experience transformed you as a person?

Yeah, it has. It's completely changed me. I've got a complete different outlook on the world, you know, and it's probably going back five or six years ago when I. When I got well, I started to work on the business a bit more, you know, I could hardly read, hardly write because I left school when I was 14 and a half. I'd never read a book, no one could read my writing, I couldn't use a computer. I've sort of just learned all this stuff in the last five to 10 years, which totally changes your perspective on everything. So now I see myself more as a leader or a mentor than a boss to the people that work with me. Yeah, and it's good.

And it sounds like you enjoy mentoring the people that you work with as well.

Yeah. And the key to that is employing the right people. So you want to employ the right people and APB have got a really good processes for doing all of that. But, yeah, employing the right people and getting them into the right space so that they're there to learn off you and sponge up what you. What you've got to offer.

So when you are hiring the right person, do you prioritize the skill set, the attitude? A bit of both. Like, what do you look for? What defines that right person to work for you?

It's sort of. It's defined by a whole series of events in our, in our recruitment process. The biggest thing I look for is someone's ability to follow a process. So I don't want to employ someone that knows how to do everything. 100% is going to come in here and tell me what to do. I'd rather employ someone that's willing to listen to what we've got to offer. I've created a process for everything in my company. So I want someone to come in that can actually follow that process, is happy to take criticism and advice, criticism, all this sort of stuff, so that we can work on this as a team. And I'm very big on my staff on a problem's a problem, but the problem only gets bigger if you don't involve me in it. So if they involve me in a problem, I'll take ownership over it. Whereas if there's a problem and they try and hide it from me, then the problem gets bigger and then you bring it to me when it's massive and then we've got a big problem. So I like to be involved in everything that's going on. Yeah. So that we can control it the way we do.

It sounds like you're looking for someone who can collaborate as well and also hold their own, but also work as a team, which I think it's important today as well in this landscape. Running a professional building company certainly has its own challenges, obviously. Tell us some of your biggest achievements to date. You've got this proud sign behind you that says stan out family homes. When you look back at this incredible journey that you had, what are some of those achievements that you look back and are really fond of?

Yeah, it's a difficult question, Bosco. There's been so many small ones over the years, but I guess probably the biggest achievement is for me to be able to transform the out of day to day operations in my business. And I've done it before a couple of years ago, but I had the wrong person in the front end and then they left and then I jumped back into the sales role and the management role. The same thing for about a year or so now. About six months ago I employed another sales guy so he takes over all that sales part of it. And now I actually don't have a role in the business, I'm just the manager. So I'm here working on high level stuff in the company rather than day to day operations. And I think that's probably the, you know, probably the biggest thing that I've been able to take out of it is now the business doesn't need me here to run on a day to day basis. So if you can create a company where you can go away for three or four weeks at a time and come back and everything's still as it was when you left it, I think that's probably the biggest take that I, I could take out of it.

I think some business owners call that nirvana. But it's interesting because for the listeners who are listening to this, and some of them are business owners, they're probably sitting there going, ryan, how do you trust and get out of your own way? Because I think it sounds like every business owner has to eventually learn to trust the right people and get out of their own way. Is there a magic sauce? Is there a formula for this? How do you go about going, I've got the right people and I'm going to empower them, but also trust them and hold them accountable.

Yeah. And a Lot of people say luck, but I don't believe in luck. I believe luck's created. So I think the way that we've been able to do it, and I don't know, I might be a bit different to a lot of other people, but it's working on systems and it's creating a system for every single role in your business. So we've got a system in place for every single thing that has to happen in this building company. So it doesn't matter whether I'm doing it, somebody else is doing it, whoever's doing it, the systems are there to be adhered to. So if you've got staff that have the ability to follow a system, then there's no real problem because the system creates accountability and the accountability creates progress. So when I go away and I haven't been away for four weeks, not for a few years, but if I go away for four weeks, I would come back and expect that everything would be as it was when I left because I can go back and see the accountability steps of where you're not there, the fear of people thinking that when they're not there nothing's going to happen or if it's not, if they're not there, people aren't going to work as hard. I don't think that fits. You know, in our company culture everyone works here and works for each other.

And you talked about the systems, it's interesting, you know, you referenced a few times. Does this system look like an operational manual? Is it something that's documented? And also is the system there to protect you from a compliance issue as well?

Potentially the systems, we use a program called System Hub and we've got everything added into the system. And System Hub is a system for creating systems. So we've created a, like a, literally a system for everything that every person does in the company and it's documented so that a 10 year old child could read through the documentation, watch the videos and potentially do what we do. So we try and even though what we do is very high level, we try and dumb it down as much as we can so that if somebody that's not as clued on as the person that's actually doing the system has to take over and try and do it. You know, they can actually understand where it goes by a step by step manual pretty much.

So interesting. What's your plan for stand at homes in the future? I mean do you focus just on the Adelaide area? Do you, do you know, national contracts? What's the long term play?

Standing out family homes. I think it would just stay in Adelaide or at this point in time would just stay in Adelaide. We're probably reaching our capacity of where I thought I would ever go as a building company at the moment. This next year I reckon we'll build 35 houses and that's about as many houses as I'd like to build. So we build 35 houses and our average house is somewhere between 4 and 700,000. So we build good family homes. I don't think I'd want to get any bigger than that.

It sounds like you're having fun doing it. So as long as you're having fun doing it, that's the vision I guess.

Yeah, that's right, that's right, yeah.

If you had to give yourself, you know, a younger version of yourself, any advice looking back on this amazing journey or for any listeners out there that own a building company or are starting out, what advice would you give them? And a younger version of yourself.

Yeah, this is a tough one I guess, isn't it? As a younger, well younger me, I was probably pretty pig headed and I didn't take advice from a lot of people like I should have. Probably the biggest, biggest advice I would give is to listen more than talk and absorb the information because that's where you're going to learn.

So you talk about listening as well and I think there's a lot of listening when you're dealing with clients as well. How do you manage clients expectations? Have you ever had a scenario where a client's expectations was a little bit too much? How do you approach those scenarios?

Yeah, that happens all the time and it used to happen more so than what happens now. So we manage the client's expectations a lot better through clear communication in the early stages of the build. So we won't start construction of the home unless we've got their full specification all signed off in co construct so that we know exactly what we're going to build, the client knows what we're going to build and everyone's on the same page because in the early days we'd rush jobs through into construction. Selections are still being done. Clients are expecting one thing, we're building another thing and then. And that's where you end up with unhappy clients. So the client expectations are met through good organization.

I believe you talked about mentoring people and you love mentoring the people that you work with. If you were to mentor a builder that's into the space trying to make a difference obviously that you know they're getting, getting started, what Advice would you.

Give them to join the apb? Probably. Because the big take out of all this, when I was starting out, there was no textbook on how to run a building company. So you start out and you just have a crack at it and hope you don't go broke was pretty much the motto of every builder until we probably thought all thought that we were better than that. But at the end of the day, anyone, any builder in the old days that said that they didn't have tough times and probably nearly went broke would have to be liars. But now the APB have a full textbook on how to run a building company. Pretty much it's even better than a textbook because it's comes with videos and tutorials. So yeah, would be join the APB and absorb all the information that they got to offer. Because if I had to join the APB 20 years ago, I'd be in a hell of a lot different position than what I'm in today.

What's your focus moving forward and what are you preparing for in the future? Right now you mentioned you're on the business, you're sort of managing things now, but you don't have to have a defined role for the next 12 to 24 months. Where are you putting your energy and time?

So the business is running as it's running at the moment as a company. We're just about to build a whole new headquarters for the company, so which will be all new offices, warehouse, all that sort of stuff. So the next sort of 12 months when I'm not working on the business, I'll potentially be project managing that and getting that under construction and getting that built and moved into. So that'll chew up a lot of time because that'll be the premises that will be in until basically I'm ready to retire. So we need to get that right. So the next 12 months we'll be doing that and then it'll be just fitting in and watching the systems that are in place do their thing and then refine the systems. Refine the systems. Because even though you have a system, it's not always going to be the right one. So you go back and refine and refine the system to keep it right.

How much time do you spend on the systems and monitoring? Because it sounds like you're monitoring things every. Is it week, every month. Like how much time do you spend on this?

It's constant. It's just all the time. It's not so much a, it's not so much a thing that we say Right. We work on this for a few days a week. It's always so during our staff meetings, we're discussing what's going on, say in the sales process or the estimating or the design, and then we might find a better way of doing it. So we test that way of doing it and if that way of doing it is better, well, then we update the system as to that being the right way to do it.

So it sounds like you also are transparent with the people that you work with. It sounds like they know what's going on from what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So everybody in the business knows everything that's going on and we're all working on it together. Because the end or the, the goal is to have happy staff, happy clients, and then that creates an easy company for everyone to work in. So the better the system and the process, the easier it is for everyone to understand.

I know this is a hard question, but it's my final question for the day. What's your take on the future of the construction industry and how are you preparing for the changes that are coming up in the future?

Yeah, the construction industry set for some big challenges and my system at the moment, or my goal of it all, is I want to be the best builder in my market, I want to have the best advertising, I want to be building the best homes so that when the good times that we're experiencing at the moment do start the shut down, I'll be the only builder left there that people will be willing to build with. Because we're out there, we're telling people what we're going to do and we're delivering on what we're going to do. So. Yeah, because even in the bad times, people with money are still building. So I want to be the builder there that's building the houses that are there to be built.

Does that mean that you're planning a little bit more and preparing for changes as well and challenges?

Yeah, yeah. So it is definitely. So we're setting up ourselves so we, we do our marketing and stuff in a 12 monthly block. So we've set our marketing at the moment. We're in the process of doing all of that and that'll be, that'll be done in about March, ready to put out for the next 12 months. And then when it gets to around September, October, we start doing it for the next year. And at that point we're focusing, focusing on the challenges and pain points of our clients, the industry, the whole lot, and how we can educate people to make the right decisions when they're, when they're choosing a builder, basically.

Brian, this has been insightful as always. It's been a pleasure speaking with you as well. I've truly learned a lot about the building industry, specifically with your company as well. Thank you so much for your time today.

Yeah, no worries at all. Bosco. It's been a pleasure, mate. Anytime.

Cheers mate. Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at the association of Professional Builders can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com See you next time.