222. How Builders Become Leaders With Andy Skarda

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode, I interview APB's head coach, Andy Scarter. Andy breaks down what real leadership looks like in a building company, why some teams thrive and others struggle, and what holds many building company owners back from stepping into that leadership role they really need. If you own a building company, this episode is a must. Listen. 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 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.

Leadership in our industry, it's the transition from doing the work to developing the people who will do the work. It's probably the single defining factor that moves them from being a builder to being a professional builder. They become the owner of the business rather than the person that's making everything happen. For a lot of builders, they live in a world of chaos and heroics and brute force effort to get things done. What happens to most builders is they wake up and say, this has to change. I can't continue functioning like this. They don't know what to do to make that change. You cannot scale a building business by working harder.

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by APB's head coach, Andy Scarter. Andy, welcome.

Thank you, Will. Nice to be back.

Love having you on the show. We're at a mad rush to the end of the year, so I appreciate you giving up a little bit of your time to talk to me about leadership today.

It's a pleasure. My favorite subject.

Why is it your favorite subject? What does leadership mean to you and why is it so important to builders?

Well, it's probably the single defining factor that moves them from being a builder to being a professional builder. And essentially what we mean by that is they become the owner of the business rather than the person that's making everything happen. If I was to define leadership in our industry, I would say it's. It's the transition from doing the work to developing the people who will do the work. That's probably the thing. And what, what does that entail? Well, to do that, you've got to have Clarity of where you want the business to go. So there's some work on self to get you to that place that's then going to allow you to set expectations. And what you really want is to be the person who's guiding your team. And here comes probably the key word to consistent performance. You don't want, you know, kind of flash in the pan things. You want to be able to deliver at that level consistently. And you know, the problem is for a lot of builders, they live in a world of chaos and heroics and kind of brute force effort to get things done. Leadership is really the change that gets them away from that and kind of puts them in a place where they start to develop a new range of skills. I guess that's probably the way to put it. Part of what we see is that, that particularly in the business coaching group, what a, what a building company looks like when people come into coaching and what it looks like a year to 18 months later is a completely different animal which basically says what the builder was doing 18 months ago is no longer even suitable for where that business actually is now. So in that initial phase, it's really dependent on the builder's skill as a builder. Okay, that's kind of what gets the, the business going and growing. But all of a sudden as it transitions from being a job into becoming a business, they've all of a sudden got to be able to influence people. They've got to be able to communicate their expectations very clearly now, which is obviously not always easy systems. They've got to be building and installing the systems that will actually make the, the difference. And really all of that is empowering other people to lead. It's taking the business from a reactive space where the owner is the bottleneck. He's actually the problem. Stress is the default operating system in most of those kind of building businesses. It's taking it to a building business that all of a sudden is predictable. We actually know what's going to happen because it's planned. The team becomes self managing and all of a sudden the owner has got back a piece of his life. He's got more time, he's got more focus, he can actually control what's going on rather than being in the thick of it trying to deal with the chaos.

Is this a concept that builders wake up one morning and say I want to be a leader. Or is it something which builds over time, like you mentioned, through these different stresses that they're dealing with?

Well, I think what happens to most builders is they wake up and Say, this has to change. I can't continue functioning like this. Now they, most of them, and this is not because there's anything wrong with them. It's just a. It's a product of ignorance. They don't know what to do to make that change. And that is. That's obviously what we do in the business coaching and the elite mentoring program is we start to bring those elements in. In a lot of cases, they aren't labeled leadership, but that's what they are. It is the building of a profitable business which gives you the fuel. It's the building of systems which allows you to operate consistently and for a lot of builders, gets the IP out of their head and down into a documented system that can then be taught to other people. So they probably don't wake up one day and go, I want to be a leader. Some of them do. Some of them understand that that's the piece that's missing. But I think it's more an awakening to, I can't carry on like this. I have to make a change. And then as those elements start to come together, all of a sudden they wake up one day, I think, and go, I am a leader. I'm actually leading this team forward. So it's more of a gradual progression than a, you know, kind of instantaneous change.

I was going to ask, is there a typical sequence, like the building companies typically need to have, you know, their sales and marketing working and their financial management and everything. And then obvious sudden, you're like, okay, now I need to work on my leadership, or is it gradually just chipping away at it over time?

Initially, it's going to be just chipping away, but what will happen is there will be a. A point at which the realization hits that actually the. And I think where that really becomes apparent is when all of a sudden they do have the time to work on the business instead of in the business. That's kind of the place where you start to see the lights coming on around how important this is.

When you look at the building companies that are run well that you've worked with, whether it's at our annual retreat or through your coaching relationships, what stands out about the way they're led?

Probably the calmness and maybe the. Something I mentioned earlier, there is a clarity around the mission of the business as a whole. There's complete clarity around every person's role in the business and in executing that mission. And there's a clear understanding of what success looks. Looks like for that particular business. Whatever it happens to be, you don't have gray areas and people guessing. It's kind of, that's almost what the other things do is they start to remove areas where people might be unsure. It starts to give people that sort of confidence. The word I mentioned earlier, which is kind of the key word is consistency. So what you've now got is you don't have major swings in their revenue or their gross profit or the number of deals they're closing. It starts to become normal that they will get in 300 leads. In a quarter of those 300 leads, X number will convert into concepts into prelims. They'll sign X number of contracts. Their construction side is set up in a way that they know they can handle. Eight starts in a year. So they fill up those. It all becomes, you know, kind of consistently, this is the way we do things. And that's probably the biggest thing. And then the, the other thing is when they really become leaders, all of a sudden you find builders stop blaming people. All of a sudden they understand that they need to own the outcome. And if the outcome they're getting is not the one they want, it's their responsibility then to coach their team and keep the standards that they expect. But do that in a way that doesn't really. It's not an emotional thing. It's not them screaming at people. It's actually a very calm kind of understanding of this is where we're at, this is where we need to go. Let's talk about how we get there rather than, you know, hair on fire kind of stuff on a daily basis. So it's that change is. It is calm, it's not chaotic. The owner himself is not firefighting anymore, which he was doing in his pre leadership days. Now he's largely coordinating those people that were doing things. As I said, he takes responsibility, doesn't make excuses. He understands that that's the reality. And what really shines is the culture of that business. Because all of a sudden you can see it, okay, you don't have all of the side issues going on that are distracting people. It's actually very, very clear. So if you were to say to me, what does leadership look like in action? I'd probably say to you it's going to be intentional, number one, not by mistake. And it's very clear and very measured. And that's the kind of, that's the, the feel that you get in a professional business that has a strong leader.

That word calm is interesting. It was the first thing you said when I asked the question about what, what Good leaders are like. And immediately I was like, calm's correlated to personality. But then when you explained the structure and the deliberate nature of setting up the business in a way that created calm, it became the outcome rather than, you know, a personality trait.

Yeah. And I mean if you look at where most builders start with us in a coaching journey, it's planning. And most of them are amazed that we can come up with a strategic plan for a three year, one year and 90 day period in, let's say a two hour session, they're amazed. And what they walk away from that is all of a sudden instead of I'll deal with whatever tomorrow brings, they are now happening to tomorrow. They now predetermine what's going to happen tomorrow, which gives them control. We don't always get it right from the get go. Obviously there's, it's a bit of, I'm simplifying it. But that transition from reactive to proactive is what starts to bring that calm. All of a sudden they're not working till 11, 12 o' clock at night and then up again at 4 o' clock in the morning. And there's this growing realization that hey, this business of mine isn't just going to survive. I can actually see that if I get this right, it can actually thrive. And I think it's that kind of realization that changes things.

Lots of Cs going on. Consistency, calm, certainty.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Control. You know what's funny as you were describing that, it made me think of the relationship between a builder and their client as well. They're essentially trying to create that feeling of calm through certainty and control in the sales process. Which is exactly what you're describing from a leadership perspective. Perspective internally as well.

Yeah. And in executing the build site visits that are preset communication, that's preset process that's being followed. I mean, exactly. That calm eventually permeates the whole process.

What do you think gets in builders way from becoming better leaders?

It starts with the fact that they're too busy. There's a difference between being busy and being effective. Okay. So when people are too busy, they reacting to issues. Because of that, the issues keep coming and they therefore actually can never work on their leadership. So that's probably the starting point. As they become more proactive and they start to plan, what we see is this kind of gradual move where initially they were running flat out, just reactive, no time to work on leadership. Then all of a sudden they get an hour a week, which often comes from them joining the business coaching program. Because we require at least an hour a week for them to be working on the business. And now what starts to happen is as they start to work on the business, they start to see the changes happening. So the thing that gets in the way initially is they just don't have the time to do it. That's the first thing. Most of them don't have systems or structure in place at the point that they come into business coaching. And obviously if you don't have systems and processes in place, that consistency is very difficult to produce because you're kind of reinventing the wheel pretty much every time you do something. They're habitually used to doing everything themselves. When they start their business, when they grow their business, initially they are the doers. They've got that tool belt on, they are arranging everything, they're overseeing everything. All of a sudden now they've got to let go. And often that is a very uncomfortable and unfamiliar place for them to be in. We talk a lot in business coaching about we're going to take you out of your comfort zone. And it's the old story, we want them just outside their comfort zone because that's how they grow. So we don't want to stretch them to the point that they're going to break, but we need to take them into places that they've never been before. You know that saying, you keep doing things the way you've always done them and expect a different result. They've never done this leadership thing, they've been a builder, they've been building things. So that needs to change. A lot of them have a. Whether it's a fear but a concern that if they delegate and this is tied to not having systems, obviously, but if they delegate, what happens if the person does it wrong? And it's maybe not perfectionism, but it's that thinking is going to keep building company owners stuck in low value things because they're too scared to give them up to somebody else. But because of that, they can't do the things that are really going to move the needle. So that's number one. That's where I think where it comes from. And then tied to that is the belief that nobody can do it like them. Which if you think about it, that kind of mindset is automatically going to limit growth because what they're now doing is limiting the ability of the business to grow to just what they can handle. And actually the reality is they've already hit that ceiling. You know, they're trying to break through that and go to the Next level. So really, what we're saying there is, if you bring all of that together, if we can actually get them enough time to build the systems they need, and because they built the systems, they will trust those systems. That means they prepared to delegate. And all of a sudden, when they start to delegate, they get more time, and now the positive cycle starts to run in their favor. So it's almost a shift from I'm in control to I'm trusting other people to actually get this stuff done. That's probably the biggest shift.

Is there an undercurrent of mindset? You mentioned taking responsibility and ownership, but I can imagine there's some that maybe just never make the shift.

Mindset is probably the key. It's getting to that realization of I am the biggest limiting factor in this process. If I can be better, then my business can be better. That's fundamentally what we're talking about here. You and I have discussed this on podcasts before. My belief is that very few builders got into what they do to own a business. They got into building because they wanted to build. And basically, what we're saying, if you think about it from a leadership perspective, is, yes, you will be able to keep building ultimately. But to get to that point, if you really want to scale this business professionally, safely, securely, you're going to have to reduce the amount of time that you spend building to put these systems in place so that you can move to a proactive world. And then you'll have time and choice. And then if you want to go back and put the tool belt back on, do it because you're choosing to do it, not because you have to do it. And the rest of the team can run the rest of the business. And you only build pink houses because you like pink houses. But now it's your choice. That's the difference.

Talk to me about more practical steps that the listeners today can take to start making this shift from builder to business owner to leader, to start delegating things to more people and feeling confident in that process.

All right, so practically, they've got to own it. As I said earlier, one of the things that moves is leaders take responsibility. They don't look to blame other people. And what that does for anybody, largely. And I know exactly what's about to come out my mouth. So if you're half listening to the podcast, forget everything else I said before and what I'm about to say, but listen to this next sentence. When you own every outcome, you are forced to fix the system, not the symptom. Okay. Because what happens to a lot of builders is they spend their lives, the firefighting world is largely sorting out the symptom, not the system. And the reality of leadership is you want a system that is repeatable, that you know is successful because that's what gives you the, the consistency. That's kind of the. The first one would be own it. There's a wonderful book by an ex Navy SEAL named Jocko Willink called Extreme Ownership. And if anybody is seriously keen, I mean being a seal, it's straightforward, in your face, he punches you on every page. But largely what the entire book is about is saying you own everything and no matter what happens, you are responsible. And that starts to give you a very different mindset. You've got to empower your team. That's not a maybe and that comes really from systems. So whichever way you want to look at it, you're probably going to be building systems first. Because once you've built the system, you can then delegate. Clearly you've got to address the culture, things, so things like your mission, making sure within your structure of your organization you've got clear definition of roles, responsibilities, accountability, decision making, boundaries, those kind of things. If those are in place, the owner can now step back without losing control. And that's really what, what you want to do. And the other thing that, that is a. It's a soft skill to some degree. We generally put it under the heading of communication. But things like weekly and daily huddles, where there's a rhythm of communication that the team gets used to and makes them more efficient, that allows you to be setting clear expectations, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. And that is going to literally allow that team to function without the owner needing to micromanage them. And of course, as soon as they stop micromanaging, they start to get time back, which is actually what we're after. So they need to move from being the chief problem solver to becoming the leader of the company and they empower other people to be able to solve those problems.

Symptom versus system. I can't get my wife out of my head. She's a physiotherapist. And it reminds me of when you have an injury, let's say you injure your knee or something like that. Sure, you could go to a physiotherapist and they can treat the symptom, the pain, give you some painkillers and you know, do some releases or manipulate things so that you feel better for a short period of time. If you don't fix the reason that happened, it's going to come back again in a couple of months.

There's that story about the guy that goes to the doctor and the doctor says to him, what's wrong with you? And he says, well, when I push here, it hurts, and when I push here, it hurts, and when I push here, it hurts. And eventually I find he's got a broken finger. It's that kind of syndrome. If you only deal with the symptom, you have to keep dealing with the symptom, because you haven't. You haven't fixed the system. You know, Russ Stevens, he taught me this principle. It's a wonderful principle. If you have a system in place, you first have to get people to follow the system, because if they're not following the system and you're not getting the result you want, it's not because of the system. So you've almost got to force them to follow the system so that it can fail, so that you can fix it, and that's how you're going to build that consistency.

Yeah. I think there's a line in the leadership training you you just created, which is coming out in February next year. This year. I don't know when this podcast is going out.

Yeah.

You shift that mindset away from fixing the symptom to actually understanding where the system is broken when something goes wrong.

Yeah. I mean, my clients will tell you they go away on leave. Now, that is a concept that's foreign to a lot of people listening to this podcast. They go away on leave. They know. The first question I'm going to ask them in our next coaching session is, what broke? And all of a sudden, what broke is something to be celebrated, not to be concerned about, because when it breaks, we know where the problem is, and then we can go and fix that problem at that point. So, I mean, there's a mindset shift just in itself. Most people would say, oh, no, I'm away on leave and something broke. Like, that's terrible. No, it's not terrible, because what it's doing is showing you exactly what you need to be putting your attention into.

All right, so what's one piece of leadership advice that you think every builder needs to hear?

John Maxwell, who is arguably alongside Peter Drucker, one of the great leadership gurus of our time, he wrote a book called the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And if my memory is correct, he starts that book with a law that he calls the law of the lid. Lid. And quite simply, what that is saying is that your building company can never outperform your leadership. So, you know, I think earlier on you asked me what stops builders getting this right? And I said themselves. And it's really the flip side of that coin. When a builder starts leading intentionally, everything else in the business starts improving. So the piece of advice would be improve yourself, become a better leader. Because as you become a better version of yourself, you will find that your building company will absolutely improve. And it kind of happens automatically as those things that we've spoken about get put in place. It doesn't take energy anymore to make the changes happen. It comes about naturally as a byproduct of what you've done. I'm going to throw a bonus in. I know you said one, but I just want to make sure that people understand you cannot scale a building business by working harder. That is never going to fix it. More hours or, you know, just nose to the wheel, shoulder to the grindstone, mixed metaphor, done wonderfully there. You've got to get to a place that, first of all, your business is profitable. That's number one. That gives you the fuel to scale. And then the only way to scale is you need to teach other people how to do what you do. That's basically the recipe in a nutshell.

Right. Well, Andy, thanks so much for sharing all that advice on taking builders more into this mindset of being a leader in their companies and handing over a little bit of responsibility to others.

Great pleasure.

You're coming on. What do you think's the best next step for the listeners today to take if they want to improve their leadership skills? Obviously, I know the answer.

Look, I mean, we'd love to have them as part of our business coaching program, obviously, but. But in terms of our mission, you know, we talk about what's good leadership. Well, we have a. We have a clear mission. We want to improve the residential construction industry globally for builders and their clients. Get with somebody that can help you become a better leader. It doesn't have to be us. We'd like it to be us. But if that doesn't work for you, find a way to become a better leader. Start maybe by reading Extreme Ownership. That might be a very good place to go. Jocko Willink, and he co authored it with another Navy SEAL named Leif Babin. Read the book. It'll get you thinking along the right lines and then get some help to get those skills developed. That's the best next step.

Perfect. Yeah. Well, I'll include a link to Extreme Ownership as well as the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by John Maxwell in the show notes and if you want to start with APB membership or if you're already a member, we're dropping Leading a building company in February 2026. So depending on when you're listening to this, that training will be available. Packed with a ton more advice that has come straight from Andy's brain.

So and don't forget the Leadership Proficiency Accelerator. The LPA drops early next early 2026 as well, which is a four week pure leadership intensive and certainly in the early days of it because it's brand new. I will be running those sessions. I'd love to have people that maybe this podcast has sparked something. Talk to your contact person at the APB and sign up for an lpa.

Yeah, perfect. Great place to start. Well Andy, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

No worries. And a thank you to all of 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.