208. Getting 1% Better Every Day With Jake Dornford & Nico von Wielligh

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode I interviewed Jake and Nico from Dawnford Building Group in Adelaide, Australia. Jake started out doing fly screens and small renovations and has built a company that is focused on design and construct and builds over 15 to 20 homes a year. Alongside his business partner Nico, who brings a strong corporate and business background, they've scaled the business, refined their team and and built systems that keep everything running smoothly. In this conversation they share how consistency, small incremental improvements and values driven leadership have shaped their journey and their success. Keep listening to hear more. 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 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 will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

Practice doesn't make perfect. It's. It's perfect. Practice makes perfect. If something's going wrong, you don't know it's going wrong, it's just going to use going to drift and it'll be too late to fix it. I didn't really realize it was a carpentry company and there was a building company and Nico and I sort of treated as one company. We're losing a fair bit of money with our carpentry side of the team.

It's much easier to say, okay, well these people just don't want to work. You know, they want to be on their phone, they want to be this, this new generation's lazy. But instead of that looking, saying, okay, cool, hey, but what, what have we actually done? Where have we fallen short and what have we allowed to happen? It means that you can then implement things to ensure that that doesn't happen.

And I did it myself for four years. But as soon as we got some coaching, as soon as we got some mentoring, as soon as I started reading, the amount of compounding that has had on the business has been huge. It's been 10x on 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 Jake and Nico from Dawnford Building Group in Adelaide, Australia. Welcome to the show, guys.

Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thank you, Will.

Yeah. Very excited to have you on the show, you guys have been around the traps for a little while with apb, but you've come along leaps and bound with your building company. Jake, do you want to take us back to the beginning and just share a bit about who you are and how you got to where you are today?

Yeah, fantastic. Well, yeah, we've been a part of APB for probably three to four years now, but before that we. Well, I started the company of the business off in probably eight and a half years ago now. Very humbling beginnings, doing fly screens and, and little odd jobs here and there for clients back in the day. And then from there before that obviously I had an apprenticeship in carpentry and then moved out of that after four years into doing these like small Decks, Pergolas, Renovations, Kitchen, Renault for people. And then from the sort of, from the start of that about three years in, I had about three people working for me doing smaller renovations, doing larger. And we, we, we sort of went from Decks, Pergolas, Kitchens, Renault and then progressed into probably two or three extensions. And then after about three years, Nico, now business partner, sort of came on and we've sort of grown that company from. Well, we grew it from about four people. I think Niko was the fifth person coming in and then we grew that to about 20 people, 21 people. And then now we've sort of shrunk back down to. After doing APB and figuring out where we wanted to be and where we wanted to niche, we sort of scaled that back down to about 10 people, really focusing on design and construct and. And now we probably do about 15 to 20 extensions or new homes a year in that custom realm. That's a very quick snapshot of the business and what we've done. But it's been a fantastic journey of being building and just being in the industry.

How many years was that journey from carpenter to now?

Cool. So obviously an apprenticeship's four years and I did a four year apprenticeship with my employer and then it was about two and a half years I actually went and worked for another company. So I went out and started my own little thing up before that for about a year and then I went and worked for someone else for two years which is where I actually did my builder's license, did my all the licensing for and the courses to become a builder. And during that two years is working for the other company is where I really learned waterproofing, bathrooms, a bit of the more specialized items that a builder needs to know. And then from, from that point there I Sort of. It probably took me three years to fully doing your decks, doing your wall removals, doing your kitchen renovations to sort of get some understanding on building. And then, yeah, really our journey from properly doing the construction of houses and extensions probably, yeah, it probably took us three to four years. And then now we're sort of in a way, in a. We're in a rhythm to be able to build on and probably do what we need to do.

Nico, how long have you been around for and how is it working for Jake?

No, it's been good. We've been doing this together for five years now. So my background's a lot more in corporate services. So I've got a degree in business management and marketing. Worked for a 700, 800 person organization under this COO, essentially learning how a big company runs and then came to Jake and said, hey, look, I think we can do something special together. And essentially went from there. It's, I mean, I guess a bit of an interesting story. We were best mates before it happened and I mean, I guess something we sort of joked about but never really thought about actually working together, but here we are.

So, yeah, we actually still best mates.

Now most of the time. Yeah, we spend a lot of time together and. But it's good we've got family who are sort of on the same page. Like we share the same values, go to the same church, kids are roughly the same age, they really enjoy hanging out with each other. So yeah, it's been good to do life together and then also do business together. And I think even though we come from, I guess, different risk profiles in the way that we see things, because we share the same values, we offer different perspectives. Jake definitely is a little bit more of a risk taker. But then when we have conversations, we're not scared to challenge each other, we challenge each other's thinking and it tends to end up being a much better result.

Nice.

Well, I mean it's a, it's a, it's a long journey, right from carpenter all the way through to you, you know, design and build, especially from doing some of those smaller renovation jobs to full custom homes, I imagine is, you know, totally different ball game. But I want to dive into something we spoke about in the pre interview. Jake, you spoke about the importance of just small incremental improvements over a long period of time, kind of. And then you just look back and you're like, wow, like so much has happened. Can you talk to me about how that, what your perception of that is?

Yeah, well, I think I said it, in the, in the pre interview, it's like Nico and I, we do have the same philosophy on life and, and if you've read the James Clear Atomic habits book, it's 1 1% improvements every single day. And it would be very hard to pinpoint exactly where we've done the improvements and what we've improved on to say, hey, whoa. And to see the, the compounding effect of what it actually produces. But yeah, being consistent in, in life, just in general really helps you to build a company that can sustain what you want to do. And, but yeah, in life, Nico and I, we are very consistent people. Like in gym, in our dieting, in what we do with our family lives and, and then obviously that rolls over into business and, and staying the same person day in, day out, bringing that enthusiasm into your workplace and, and making sure that your staff know who's actually going to rock up to work and it's not, they don't know who's not going to be there. If it's going to be some grumpy, personal, angry, personal happy Jake or sad joke, whatever, being consistently being there for your team and growing with them. So yeah, it's, it's a huge, huge thing, I find.

And I think a lot of times people come and they see these successful people and they think, oh my goodness, it was a, it's an overnight success. But they don't see the long hours, the hard yards and like Jake said, the consistency of just showing up and being consistent in showing up, doing the right things over and over. Even though at the time it might not feel like, you know, it's, it's reaping the dividends that you want. But then all of a sudden everything just seems to click. Yeah. And it all seems to come together and I think that's sort of been, I guess, the, the motto of the journey or it's just doing the right things over and over again and getting the right people involved as well. Recognizing when we don't know something and we need someone who knows better and always love learning. Both of us, we do love learning from other people, love reading books and consuming knowledge because at the end of the day it's, it's fast tracking you. You're learning from people who've done it before. You get to avoid their mistakes, but then you also get to glean from some of their, their wisdom and yeah, just doing that consistently over and over again.

I think it's interesting you say doing the right thing over and over again because I think that's probably Something that trips a lot of builders up. You don't know what the right thing is. And so you might be working hard or doing what you think is the right thing over and over again, and it doesn't kind of get you anywhere, or maybe you lose, you burn out before it gets you somewhere. You know what I mean? So how did you, how did you balance that?

Nico and I both did Olympic wrestling, and my coach said to me, practice doesn't make perfect. It's. It's perfect. Practice makes perfect. But no, Nico and I, to answer your question about knowing what we're doing and when we're doing it and if we're doing it correctly, is we've got a mentor that we, we catch up with three times a month and we talk to him and we regularly go over what we're doing in the business. And, and then also, Nico and I, every single week, look at our numbers, look at our clients that are coming in, looking at the leads, looking at the qualified leads, looking at how many concept designs we're winning compared to, like, letters of intent and, and other bits and pieces around what we're doing. So if Nico changes something in marketing, we're going to say, cool, we had a dip in leads. We had a dip in this. Or we had an increase in leads, or just recently, we, we, we were like, man, why is our leads not coming through? And we saw that our website was actually down and it was like, well, yeah, well, at least we're checking all the time on the business, on the health of the business to sort of to see that. And then we also, once a week, catch up with our staff is like a core little. What do we call it?

Friday Reflections?

Yeah, Friday Reflections. And we get to have a tap and see how people are going every week and to just really see if there's any issues with our staffing as well. So. But now we've got a very good pulse on what's happening in the business, because if something's going wrong, you don't know it's going wrong. It's just going to use and drift and it'll be too late to fix it. Well, it's never too late, but it'll.

Get worse than, I think it's surrounding yourself, like, with our mentor. But then also, you know, through the reading we do, the membership with APB is another one where we get to check ourselves against what's happening in the industry. But it's constantly reassessing and not just thinking, okay, great. Well, like, our sales process was fantastic. Here but checking what we're actually doing, our clients happy doing, looking at our NPS scores. Is what we're doing working? Is there something we can change? And we're always looking to improve by that 1%, do something a little bit different, but then also seeing, you know, what the results are to make sure that we're actually not just sort of blindly going in direction, thinking we're doing the right thing, but then the results aren't coming.

How did you. Jake, you mentioned before that positive attitude in terms of consistency in turning up every day. And, you know, I think that really is passed on to your team, like, massively. Like it's underestimated how important that attitude is, I think. How do you maintain that when things aren't going well?

I'm pretty good at putting a fake face on. Like, even. Even when things are stressful, you got to go home to your family still and still be, pray, be present, be positive and. But this is probably going to be a little bit weird, but obviously I am a Christian, so I've got a very solid faith in Jesus. And to be honest, man, I've got a lot of faith that I've got someone looking out for me, that there's someone there looking over me. And I know that in the end of the day, I can lose absolutely everything and I'll still be happy, I'll still be my. I'll still be who Jake is. Might maybe a little bit less money, but you can always rebuild. But, yeah, I just. It is who I am as a person. I just. I don't really worry about things when it's going wrong. Like, and the other thing is when you've got a business partner or someone who you're very close with, or if you've got friends in relationships who you can actually release some of that stress, too, it's very useful to be able to do that so you're not keeping all up inside of your body and then letting it flow out into your team. But then obviously we're not. It's. We're not like this perfect company. We do stress and we do. And that does flow into our team. But when you've got a good Friday reflection meeting every single meeting, and then you're vulnerable enough to talk to your team about it, the team obviously rap on, get on board, and you can get through most things. Like, there was some tough times during COVID and there was some tough times even last year. Even last year. It's like. But we just spoke to the team, told the team, we all yeah, it's.

Just rallied together, got around each other. And I think it's also that. That saying, you know, a burden shared is a burden halved. And because we're on the same page in terms of our values, in terms of where we want the business to go, it just. It helps when you share that. I remember when Jake went away, he went away on a holiday for three weeks or something, and time zones were different and stuff would pop up and everything was just a little. It just wasn't as good because I wasn't able to just share ours openly with someone. I had to keep some of that bottled up or kept it in. And that does take its toll on them. And that was only three weeks, so it's something you can get through quite easily. And we still had a fair few phone calls and that sort of thing. But it just proved to me that, you know, we do need people around us who we can actually open up with, be honest with shareholders, because it really does take some of that stress off our shoulders. But like Jake was saying, a big thing for us is actually, you know, as part of that daily rhythm and routine, we go for a walk around the block and we talk to each other about the business, we pray about it, and that for us is a, like. It is a release, and it takes some of that pressure off our shoulders rather than feeling like, you know, the weight of the world is upon us and we have to do everything.

That in itself, just walking around the block can be powerful. If you do that every day.

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that's how we deal with stress.

How do you draw the line between being vulnerable to your team but not telling them too much that could impact their motivation?

It's a very fine line. Nico and I, before we share anything with our team, we talk about it together and we make sure saying, hey, every scenario is completely different. We couldn't actually give you a recipe on how to do that, but we.

Have a bit of a game plan before we go in.

Yeah. Like you, we don't talk losses with our teams. We don't talk massive numbers with our team. We. We talk to the team with things that we don't want to overburden them, but we just want to tell them, hey, this is going on. And most of the time, they.

They pick up on things. Right. So they'll know if things are going bad or like, even just. They. They can read you half the time. As much as we try and, you know, put on a bit of a stoic face, people. People aren't like people are aware of what's going on in the company, so we're honest in terms of that and just sharing them where we're at. But then also some of the game plans and things that we have, you know, come up with. Whenever there's a problem, we do have a plan for it, and we would share that with the team, or at least, you know, a broad overview so that they feel included. So it might not be all the details. They don't have to worry about this or that, and they don't feel like, you know, it's their responsibility, but it's also a good way for them. If we need their input, then everyone's keen and ready to jump on board.

And this is really only a recent thing that we've started doing, probably within the last year, but. And the way this came about with. With sharing with our team was, like I said at the start, we did have a team of about 21 guys and office team and designers. And I didn't really realize. Nico probably didn't really realize either, but it was a carpentry company and there was a building company, and Nico and I sort of treated as one company. And you can't really be running two companies as one company because there was no real leader for the carpenters. There was a leader for the building company and the people in the office. But where we went wrong was we didn't clearly separate those two companies and share the issues we were having with those key staff. And we didn't really raise the key staff up to really manage the people. So it was sort of. We were losing a fair bit of money with our carpentry side of team and lucky the building company was running profitably to be able to sustain the loss.

But, yeah, I mean, it's. It's one of those. Those tricky things, right? We actually, before we found apb, is like we were probably relying more on the profit that the carpenters were making on renovations and those sorts of projects. So when we did the numbers initially, it looked really good to have the. The carpenters on board because we were making good margins, even though we weren't charging that initially, if that makes sense. So we'd make money off their hourly rate and what they were doing. But then as the team grew, the, I guess, supporting structures to support that team didn't grow because Jake was still on site a lot early on and setting sort of that culture. So the culture in the office has, generally speaking, always been fantastic because we've both been here, we've been Motivating the team. And then when Jake wasn't in the office, like I was still in the office a fair bit, like he might be more on site, but then when we got probably project managers, they started being the ones taking care of the projects. And then all of a sudden Jake was in the office more. But then the team on site didn't get that leadership input. They didn't get that same cultural values that he holds. And that wasn't really being passed on to them. So there was a lot more, you know, apprentices on their phone, people taking their time just because there wasn't anyone setting the expectations, setting the example. And then that sort of slowly drifted into us realizing, okay, like Jake said, we are losing a fair bit by having these carpenters and moving to that subcontractor model. A lot of them still work with us, but it's been better for them, it's been better for us. And yeah, it really just shows the importance of having like a good leader who sets the tone, sets the expectation for what you want.

And going to the apb, that event last year really, really explained like, that really highlighted there was a lady talking there about your team and taking responsibility for not being there for your team and making sure that you, you encourage them. And there is a leader there. And yeah, I was like, man, we really, if we ever do it again, we need to make sure that the person leading those carpenters or leading the team and even for our own personal teams that we've got here, so the project managers, the design, we need to make sure that there is a clear leader and they're passionate for the business to be able to help push it.

Forward and they fit the cultural values. I think that's something we've kept coming back to. And the people who work out are the people who share our values. They're the people who are on board with what the company wants to do and to achieve. And like, it's intrinsic, it's something that they want because they feel like they found their tribe, they belong. And I think that's one of the things she spoke about was not. Was essentially taking accountability for poor performing teams as a leader, which it's hard to have a look at yourself because it's much easier to say, okay, well, these people just don't want to work. You know, they want to be on their phone, they want to be this, this new generation is lazy. But instead of that looking, saying, okay, cool, hey, but what have we actually done? Where have we fallen short and what have we allowed to happen. I guess it was hard. Hard to take that look, you know, intrinsically and see. Okay, cool. Well, where have we failed? But it's been really good actually doing that. And then it means that you can then implement things to ensure that that doesn't happen.

Yeah. What are some of the. I mean that's APB summit for anyone listening that wants to check it out.

A little book.

Good. Yeah, fantastic.

No, I mean, yeah. So through that journey and Nico or Jake, whoever wants to answer it, what have you put in place to make sure that the, the managers or the leaders that you hire moving forward will be values aligned and take that leadership role with the rest of the team?

Good question. We started with the hiring process. So we've essentially come up with a recruitment process that is values driven, values aligned. So we put more of an emphasis on, you know, the kind of character that the person has before. We were probably more based on experience, how well they interviewed. And really that hasn't been a good factor indicating success, long term, success in the role. Maybe for short term, yeah, it can work. But the people who've worked out, other people who've shared our values. So that's been something that, you know, we've put an emphasis on. We've started incorporating that into every Friday reflections, talking about our values, people who've really shown our values, encouraging the kind of behavior that we want to see. So making a real conscious effort of that. But then at the same time as part of our performance reviews and catching up regularly with our staff, both of us as leaders try to, I guess embody that, pass that on to our staff. So as part of all of our quarterly reviews, we've got like a section where it goes through just our values. How well? So we've got the regular performance section, but then also there's a section on how well they're living up to our values, but then also how well we as. Yeah, as their managers are living up to the value as well. So it's not just a one way sort of accountability, but it's more getting that feedback from staff. How are they actually perceiving the manager? Is the manager living up to the values of the organization. So really integrating that and with our performance reviews, it's more of a goal setting. Yeah, it's less bringing up all of the stuff that they've done wrong. That's something that we believe you should do straight away. If there's an issue, we just deal with it. There's rather than waiting till the end of the quarter. But the Goal setting really is. And that's part of a sort of a mix between apb, some of the things that we read, but it's essentially setting that 90 day goals. The QSP is a quarterly strategic planning, but setting that specifically for each individual. So we've got work goals, but they've also got some personal goals in there as well. So combining it and making sure that people are, it's not just work and life, but rather combining it so that the people who work with us actually achieve what they want to achieve in terms of a professional but also a personal sense as well.

Yeah. What we sort of wanted to, what we wanted to bring in was more of a mentoring section there for our staff. Like Nico and I obviously do mentoring twice a month. And then this is an opportunity where we get to sort of help people set goals, help people reset every 90 days, but then also to help mentor them and see where they're progressing in, in their own personal lives.

Yeah.

It's interesting, Nico, you mentioned like providing feedback more regularly, but also, but then using that opportunity to, to set the goals and stuff because if you just wait till the end of the quarter and then dump all your, your feedback on them, then it's not going to, it's not going to go well, it's going to blow up.

Exactly. So that quarterly performance review is a lot less stressful, I guess than some other places where it's just, oh, I'm going to find out everything I've done wrong the last three months.

But then, then it is, it is hard to bring up things with staff straight away and to nail it in the box. But yeah, we try and we try and do that.

Yeah. And I guess it takes courage as a leader and something that you grow into and build up, but when you deal with the issue straight away, it prevents it from becoming a bigger problem. And I guess the hardest part about problems, and it sounds obvious, but it's actually dealing with the problem and it's hard to deal with the problem, but it's actually harder if you just let it fester and because it becomes a bigger thing and, and then all of a sudden it blows up and then it's way harder for way longer. Rather than just that short term pain, we actually deal with it and then everyone in the organization realizes, okay, cool. Hey, when there's a problem, we deal with it, we fix it and we move on. And it's not something we let linger because that's not who we are.

Yeah, it's a balancing act. Right. If there's something which has happened like a problem, an issue, you've got to deal with that you got to rally together and get what the best outcome is from there. Right?

Yeah.

So that's not necessarily the time to provide the feedback but you know, it's got to be soon after that so that it's fresh and you can provide the example and all that kind of stuff. Famous quote actually that I wanted to share from, and you've probably heard it before from the former CEO of Porsche, which is higher character train skill. I think that really kind of sums up what you were talking about, Nico.

A lot of our questions are in the interview question, like in the interviews they are based around our core values. So it's like we've got, we've got a list of 20 questions and Nicole and I are sitting in that interview and we sort of get to pick which ones we ask the interviews. But it is like our core values is like we care for the business, we're growth orientated, we take responsibility, we win and then obviously excellence as well. So there's a lot of questions around those core values that we get to ask someone to say, hey, if you had an option to work an hour overtime or do the job tomorrow, what would you rather do? And we get to see what, where their sort of minds are at and if they would care about helping the company for an extra hour instead of going back there for wasting five hours the next day setting tools up and doing the work. So now we do like to hire on character and, and then because you can always train the skill, we've all.

Done it before though. I mean I've hired dozens of people before and not just apb like I used to run my own business as well. And every time you have someone that meets all of the criteria from a skill perspective, it's so tempting because you're like this person is going to come in, they won't need as much training, they're going to get going, that kind of stuff. But every single time the character option is, is a better one long term for sure.

Crazy. We've had a few, a few like that as well. So 100%.

I mean even in our own, the partnerships, because we've shared the same values. Even though, I mean I came into a building company knowing nothing about building and a lot of people told us, well, it's probably not a good thing. It's middle of COVID You know, it's a small building company. Building companies are notorious for going under, especially during COVID That really became A thing. But having that shared set of values meant that we could push through a lot of things.

I think that's a huge advantage for you guys. And I've seen it across other building companies where there's a partnership where someone's bringing a different background and experience to the ground, especially when it's business focused on business because you're bringing a totally different perspective to the relationship and you're both bringing different skill sets.

Yeah, I got, I got told by, I reckon five or six people, Jake, it's not a good idea. It's not a good idea, Jake. But it's probably been one of the best ideas that we've, we've actually done and it's proven very, very valuable.

It's been a lot of fun too. We enjoy what we do and it's. Yeah, it's a real privilege to come to work every day and you know, love it. And sometimes when I'm on holidays and like it's to the end of it, I'm like, used to dread coming to work on. I'm like, I'm actually kind of glad get to go back to work and that, that really something that I think is quite special.

What do you think the secret is? Because business can end good friendships, it can end family relationships. It happens a lot because it's high stress, there's money involved, everything like. So what do you think the secret is to you guys working well together and still maintaining that?

I know, I know what Nico's going to say. He's going to say you got to hug for seven seconds a day.

Release. Jake hates it. Maybe it's annoying each other on purpose.

Well, one of the key things is that you've got the core values. You guys are both aligned, you both know what you want to work towards. The second would be obviously communication. You've got to be communicating well. Like Nico and I can have an argument, annoy the heck out of each other, but then we do sit down, we talk about it, we sort it out. As strange as it is, it is like a marriage. It's weird. You gotta, you gotta talk it out, you gotta run stuff past each other. You don't want to just do stuff willy nilly.

And I think it's also partly a commitment to each other where you're committed to working through it. You know, you're gonna annoy each other. You know, there's gonna be times where you don't see eye to eye, but you, you have a commitment to each other that you're not gonna give up. On it, and you're gonna make sure that you work it out. And sometimes it's. It's not fun to have those conversations and to bring up things that are frustrating you, annoying you about the other person. But like Jake said, because we come from a shared set of values, we're able to actually work through those things. And knowing we're not just the other person's not just going to give up because it's hard. And, you know, we've seen each other do a lot of hard things throughout life. So, yeah, I think that that really does help. But we also do things other than just work together. Like we'd go out for lunch and, you know, once a week, we sit down for breakfast in the mornings, and we talk about the business, what's going on. But it's also an opportunity to connect. There's those. Those walks that we do in the morning as well, just to check in with each other, check in with the business, see how things are going. So it's not just all about work, but there's actually a relationship there that you're building as well.

Do you both attend your mentor meetings? You mentioned you get mentoring as well.

Yeah, so we do. We do one each a month, and then we do a one together, which we run over. We. We run over the business and talk about that. And then the separate ones is sort of personal growth, personal learning, and. And he sort of gives us advice for our. What we're doing.

That's when you can vent about the other person.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Our future pro knows everything about each other. Yeah, no, it's. It's. It's been good. So. Because you do. You do need a trusted person that you can talk about and get advice from because. Yeah, it's important.

Can you think of one example? And you've given tons of them. But I'm going to go back to this question where a small change you've implemented has had a really big impact on your company.

Yeah. So one. Yeah, I was trying to think about this the other day, and I remember when Nico first came into the business, I was. Obviously had some of the ways that I do things, and one of them was paying people. Now, obviously, we were only paying 20 people back then, obviously a week or. And now we're paying 200. So it wouldn't work now, but I used to pay every single invoice. So it's like $10.95, $434 and whatnot. And then every single time, there'd be one or two wrongs. And Nick, I'd be getting all upset and he'd be telling me there's a better way to do this. And I'm like, nah, there's not, mate. I've tried looking into it. And then, and then he spoke to our accountant and there's like batch payments and you can just do a massive batch payment and it costs 2 cents per payment, but it all does. Gets done in like a second and it all reconciles through zero. And I was thinking, I was like, man, that there has saved us hours and hours and hours of time just from a small little thing, if you think about. Because it would have taken me an hour to do it and now we do it, it would have taken me someone, four hours to do it, how I was doing it. But now it's like done in 15 minutes. So it's like, that is. That's one. One example of a small change that has had pretty big impact to the business.

And especially when you're dealing with way more transactions doing 300 odd compared to what, 15, like, it would have been an absolute. It would have been a hectic task to do it. But, you know, setting up the approval systems, making sure that, you know, the people who know what need to be approved, getting them to do it, it's all. It's all little things like that. There's plenty of things throughout the business that are automated. Yeah, they might save an hour or two here, five hours there, 15 minutes here, but it all ends up adding up.

And something, something else that we sort of implemented and this is very recently that we've done this. But if. If a tradesperson who we're working with doesn't respect our values and doesn't respect the team and is making our life tricky. We do have to, We've decided now sort of cut that trades person and find someone else. Even though it's very hard for the company, but we've had to do it recently and it's worked out tremendously well for us and for the team and for the culture on site as well. So just doing small things like that, making up and making your mind up and not lingering on decisions has been very. Has been very useful too. And something else I was thinking about too, was having a clear role for Niko, for myself, for the team members to know exactly what each person does in the business. I know it takes a little bit of time to sort of set up, but once you've got it set, it's very useful and people, you can start actually building a company that way can you think of anything else that's small things. It was, it's, it's tricky because we, there's so many small things that go.

I like to think that every process we have is a small thing that makes the, makes the company a little bit better and we've got hundreds of them. So yeah, I mean every time we see, see something that we think we can improve on a little bit, that's something we do. Recently actually on Friday we had our first like full day business improvement. So we got everyone in the team to spend a whole day in the office essentially just thinking about ways to improve the business. And that's been really good. We got some fantastic insights and ways where people improve their own roles. They looked at roles, you know, across the company on things that we can improve, looked outside of business. So yeah, it's been something that I guess our teams adopted as well so that you've got that improvement mindset throughout the team, growth oriented, wanting to actually improve the company. So I mean that's something that was small but, but at the end of the day we've got some fantastic ideas out of it and new programs, new software, new things, new ways of doing things, wowing clients. We haven't seen the results of some of that, but I think that's something that's going to pay dividends as well.

Yeah, you've mentioned systems and processes a few different times, but we haven't actually spoken about it anymore. How are you documenting all of those a hundred plus processes that you mentioned? And how are your team accessing that information? So you know, they're doing it in the way that you expect them to.

That's a good question. So essentially we have all of our documentation stored on OneDrive. Depending on your role, it depends on the kind of access that you get. So the project manager, they have their own file and so then they've got listed documentation like it goes through 0 to 20 or 25 or however many documents that they have. So they can see all of their documentation there and then it goes sequentially and how we would like them to do their role. So we'd start off with, you know, a position description, like an overview of what it is that we expect from them and then it'll go specifically into, hey cool, this is how you do this part of your role, this how you do that part of your role. So there's different sections for each staff member, essentially gives them a bit of a roadmap of their role, but then also where to find things and they've all got links throughout the document. So, you know, if they see, okay, cool, I need to manage variations, then there's a link to the actual variation section where they can get a detailed breakdown. Okay, this is how we do variations, this is why we do them and that sort of thing. So yeah, every, every part of the business, business, depending on your role, is sort of integrated. But then in terms of like overall management, we break it down. Yeah. Like I said, into specific sections for each role that someone has. Does that make sense?

Yeah. What do you do when someone comes to you and asks you a question you know is covered in that documentation?

Yeah, happened, happened yesterday. I said, okay, cool. When's the last time you read, when's the last time you read the policy? What do you think? And essentially that's something that we want to. Teaching and training our staff and it's that problem solutions sort of mentality, like not, not just leaving the problems with us, but actually, you know, coming to us with, with solutions and then, then taking action on it. So refer them back to the policy essentially or the, the process to say, hey, cool, like is this in the process? And if it's not, do you think we should update it? Like this is kind of, you know, your role. It's not, not something for me to solve your problem, if that makes sense.

Nice.

Right.

You mentioned zero before and you've touched on software a little bit. What software or tools have you implemented that you found have had the biggest impact on the business?

That's a tricky one.

So I'm going to, I'm probably going to say there's lots of softwares out there that builders use and we've stuck with our sort of tool stack is probably zero build exact dext. And then we've got something called Creatio, which is another Nico's CRM, a CRM that captures all of our client data and, and whatnot. And. But that one there, that has a lot of our workflows built into it and Nico's gone through the manual and he's gone through how we run the business and once I click a button in that, in Creatio and it says a fee proposal time or sending it to a fee proposal, it will send an email to my client, but then it will also send through emails automatically through our team to create the workflow. So our admin will go, cool, this leads come through, I need to do X, Y and Z. And then once he completes X, Y and Z, it obviously goes into all, all the other processes that we've got. And then once we actually have a concept design, we'll click another button once I. Once we sell the person on the concept design and that will then feed through more information to the designer, to myself, to the admin person. So the admin person will have to set up a time the ad and then. Yeah.

So yeah, it's essentially automated all of the manual steps and then also told everyone who needs to do something what they need to do. So essentially if anyone leaves within the business and then someone else comes and takes their place, you still just essentially move that stage and they'll get specific instruction step by step on what they need to do. So even someone who works remotely, who has no idea what the business does, can do those steps as long as they know how to use, use the software. But even then that's like. That's all covered in manuals and processes.

So yeah, that tool looks really cool. I just, I just googled that tool while you were talking. I'd not heard of Cray show before. That looks pretty epic actually.

Is it, is there a bit of.

A learning curve with that?

Yeah, a little bit.

And there's. It's really big in Europe so a lot of the support and text that you get up European based. But yeah, it's, it's worked really well for us. A bit of a, I guess hidden gem. Something we sort of just found. Did a demo and we're like, okay, this is the capacity for this. It really is phenomenal and you can.

Add workflows to it. So if you've got another. If we've. So we also just run a design company as well and we've set new processes up just for the design company. So when we get sales calls for that we. It gets allocated to another section of Creatio and it's been, it's been fantastic. That's what we've run. It does require.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's no code essentially, but platform. So you can build apps and things without knowing specifically how to code. But still in terms of the logic and things to make things work between different environments and whatnot, it does take a little bit of getting used to. But then there's also people you can pay if you get stuck when their support team's fantastic. So yeah, it's been a really good investment for us.

Nice. Well, thanks for sharing.

Very welcome.

Let's wrap it up with one piece of advice you would give to other builders looking to grow their business. Now I want to hear both of.

You answer it Actually, so younger builders, when I. Because obviously I meet up with young builders and some of our staff has left and gone to do their own thing, I normally tell them, hey, make sure you train yourself, read books, get knowledge from people that have done it before in the past. And. And whether it be mentoring, whether it be APB or online coaching, get something to actually help you implement things faster because you can do it yourself. And I did it myself for four years. But as soon as we got some coaching, as soon as we got some mentoring, as soon as I started reading, the amount of compounding that has had on the business has been. It's been huge. It's been 10x on the business. Obviously, having Nico in as well, it's getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. It's so important. And Nico and I've really been realizing that of late. And. Yeah, so my thing would be make sure you learn, train yourself, because that's the most important asset. Really.

Yeah, I think that's really good. One thing I would add to that is make sure that you do have a support network in place. I think a lot of builders, it's a very lonely journey and that's something that really did come out in the APB summit as well. There's a lot of people that feel like they're doing it all by themselves. And, like, that's tough. Like, really tough. I mean, even just three weeks doing it by myself, I was like, yeah, no, this is. This is not fun. This is not really something that I want to do long term. But then, you know, as soon as you have someone who's there and who knows what you're going through, it doesn't necessarily have to be a business partner. Like, maybe it's just someone else, a mentor that you can share with intimately, who knows what's going on about the business and that you can open up to about some of the things you're feeling, some of the fears and anxieties, like, at the end of the day, like, we all have them and it's a part of business. Running a business is stressful, so having that release is someone that you can actually confide in and help you navigate all of that as well. Be a bit of a sounding board, I think, is. Yeah. Something that I would recommend.

Yeah. And I think you've touched on there, like getting to events where other builders are as well. In a good environment, doesn't have to be apb, like wherever you can find access. Other builders that are in a similar stage to you, like and you can share and talk and all that kind of stuff is going to be really valuable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Jake, Nico, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I've had a lovely chat, enjoyed all the insights you shared about growing your business and this time, tons of value there for everyone out there. So I appreciate you coming on. Cool. A big thank you to our listeners as well, 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. But until next time, have a great day.