224. The Data Behind SORCI 2026 With Russ & Andy

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode I interview Russ Stevens, the co founder of APB and our head coach, Andy Scarter. We break down the insights and data from the 2026 State of Residential Construction Industry Report. It's the sixth yearly edition of this report and we've surveyed over 8,000 building company owners in that time. This year is particularly interesting because we draw on insights and data from across all of those cohorts. But we don't just talk about the data in this interview. We look at the real insights and practical applications that builders can put in place to be more profitable, more systemized, and grow the building companies they want. Enjoy the episode. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory. What we saw from the data was there is a gap between what builders say they want to improve and what they're actually doing.

They get into the office on a Monday morning at 5am the important things, the strategic stuff, the planning stuff, that just gets pushed into next week and then next week becomes next month.

The builders that were working over 60 hours a week, they were earning $15,000 a year less, working harder and longer. That does not equate to success.

They interpret that exhaustion as commitment. They don't see it as inefficiency. They don't read their books. They read the bank statement.

There's the blue pill or the red pill. You can take the blue pill. You can listen to what your accountant tells you or you can take the red pill and you can see what's really going on in your business.

Foreign.

Builder's 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 two of APB's leadership team. Russ Stephens, the co founder. Russ, welcome to the show.

Thanks Will. We're excited to be here.

Very excited to have you on. And Andy Scarter, our head coach. Andy, welcome.

Thank you very much Will. Thank you for the invite.

This is Russ's favorite episode of the year cause we're going deep into data analysis. The State of Residential Construction Industry Report has just dropped the 2026 version of the report. This is the sixth year we've been publishing this study and there's been over 8,000 participants in the survey, which feeds the study. So that's the high level view. But, Russ, tell me what SOURCEI is, which is the acronym for what I just mentioned.

Six years of fun, by the sound of it. Like you say, this is the sixth year of gathering data, digging into that data and really understanding what's going on in the industry. And being this in depth and over this period of time, it's really allowed us to identify trends in the industry and to see what the most successful builders are doing in their building companies in order to be successful. So we're looking at the data in terms of the outputs, what they're actually achieving, but we're also looking at what they are actually doing in order to achieve those outputs. And this is the information that really does support what we're teaching builders through our coaching program. And it really helps builders, I think, with their whole belief system as well, because it does show that with a bit of work, applying the right processes, you can get the same outputs as well in your building company.

Yeah. And this year's analysis was a little different, wasn't it, Ross? We took it a bit further than usual.

Yes. We did a lot deeper analysis this year than previous years, and that was because we were able to utilize AI. Now, in previous years, we've been gathering a lot of data, but it's a very manual process to look for the correlations between cause and effect. And by using AI, we've been able to go a lot deeper and analyze a lot more data points. Typically, we would look at two, sometimes three data points. You'd have a hypothesis and then you'd go and test that. By looking at the data, AI can scan so much more. It can go six data points deep and really uncover some hidden gems and really shortcut the process for builders that are looking to increase profitability and to work less hours.

Perfect. Well, what we're going to talk about for the rest of the podcast is four of the biggest insights that we've taken from that analysis that you mentioned. And then we'll talk about how builders can take real world action as well. Andy, I've brought you on because I want to hear about your perspective. You've got boots on the ground. You're hearing what builders are dealing with day to day. And so hopefully we compare Russ's data with what you're hearing from the builders on the ground.

Absolutely. Bring it on.

All right.

First one, let's get off. Let's kick it off with this one, Russ. So what we saw from the data was there is a gap between what builders say they want to improve and what they're actually doing in their business on a day to day basis. Can you talk to that a little bit more?

Yes. Well, a lot of business owners know where the problems are in their business and they know what they should be doing, but they get too busy and it sort of goes on the, the to do list. And, and I think what that demonstrates is they, they just don't understand how powerful these small changes that they can make, just how powerful they are. And small hinges, they swing big doors. But when you look at the data, a lot of builders are saying that they know they need to systemize. And we see this all the time in conversations with builders as well. But a lot of builders have been saying that for a number of years now that they want to get more systemized. But what we've been able to see is the builders that actually do systemize, they actually do put these things in place. They are also allocating time in their week to work on their business. And this is a really important thing because unless you deliberately plan to spend a percentage of your time working on the business, you're going to spend all your time reactively working in it. And by analyzing how much time is being spent by the top performers working on their business, there was a very clear correlation. These are the guys that are getting things done. They're actually moving their businesses forward. But key as well, they're actually working less hours. So although it is a lot of work initially to build a system rather than just do things the way you've always done it, it does take a bit more effort and time initially. You get those hours back with interest. And this is why we see so many builders that systemized and are working on their business actually working less hours than those that aren't.

How are you seeing that turn up in the real world, Andy, in terms of that intention versus the reality builders are facing?

Yeah, look, I mean, I think I would go as far as saying, certainly the builders that I interact with genuinely want to fix things, but they never get the clear air to actually be able to do it. You know, so they've got this wonderful intention and then, you know, they get into the office on a Monday morning at 5am and they've got to deal with client issues and trade delays and, you know, variations and admin stuff. And the important things, as Russ said, which is the strategic stuff, the planning stuff that just gets pushed, you know, into next week and then next week becomes, becomes, you know, next month. So it's, it's a loop that we see them in. They're working longer hours so they have less thinking time because they've got less thinking time. They make poor decisions because they make poor decisions, they got more firefighting. Because they've got more firefighting, they're working even longer hours. So it's really a scenario where the problem isn't their motivation. In most cases, it's much more structural overload. And this myth of the way out is for them to work harder rather than differently. And they're adding hours instead of structure. They're buying new tools instead of changing their behavior. It's just a sad reality of the can getting kicked further down the road until things calm down. And unfortunately for a lot of them, things never calm down. So they just stay in that, in that loop.

Basically that's the reality for so many builders. How do they end up breaking that cycle, Russ?

Well, what I've seen with the, the guys that have worked with Andy and the, the other coaches, the ones that are truly successful are the ones that prioritize working on the business before they end up working in the business. So they end up setting their alarm clock for half, three, four o'clock in the morning because they know this is the most important thing can do. So they get up earlier and they start working on the business and then they do their regular stuff afterwards. And it's tough, but that's what needs to happen in order to effect change. And we've seen phenomenal results from the guys that have done this.

And you know, it's, I mean the beauty of the coaching relationship is that fundamentally it's an accountability relationship. And you know what we find with the kind of people that Russ is talking about is when they commit to the coaching process and they trust the process. We give them bite sized chunks to do every coaching session so they don't sit in this place of overwhelm with trying to change the entire business in one go. We help them to understand which piece that Russ said it earlier. That small hinge that's going to swing the big door, which is that piece and we help them to work on that and then when that's done, we go to the next one. It is literally, it's a system that we using to help them systemize their business.

So what you're saying, Russ, is essentially they need to start their day, ignore any emails from clients Ignore any fires and just focus on that strategic thing that they're working on.

That's right. And if there are things that they have to be doing at 6 o', clock, maybe they're still in the position where they have got to organize trades, etc. Well, you can't push that stuff back because that's going to have a knock on effect. It does mean that you've got to get started earlier, create that time at the beginning of the day when you're fresh, when energy is high, to start building these systems that are going to give you your time back.

All right, let's move on to the next insight, which actually ties in perfectly to some of the things you were saying, Andy, in terms of working harder but not seeing the results. The data showed us, Russ, that working longer hours doesn't lead to higher earnings for the business owner. Can you tell me more about that?

Yeah, this is where AI got really exciting because this is where we able to do some deep analysis. But the AI was actually going and looking for things as well. And this is where it uncovered some quite incredible stats that I guess they've always been there, but we haven't really seen them in such clear black and white scenarios as this. But we've already mentioned that you can't scale a building company by simply working harder and even longer. That will work to a certain degree. When you start out, Instead of working 40 hour weeks, you can put in 60, 70 hour weeks. But there comes a point where you simply can't scale the business any further by doing that because your time is limited and it's not something you really want to be doing for a sustained period of time. And when we looked at the data, what we saw was the builders that were working over 60 hours a week, they were earning $15,000 a year less than the guys working 40 to 50 hours. Now that is conclusive proof that working harder and longer, that does not equate to success. And when we actually look at the hourly rate, because this is important as well. A lot of people, they get hung up on just the net profit and the salary. But you've also got to factor in how many work in because when you actually do that, you look at what you're drawing out of your building company each year versus the hours that you're putting in and you calculate your hourly rate. A lot of builders realize that they'd actually be better off going and working for someone else. Too many instances, builders are or owners of building companies are the lowest paid employees of the company. And the builders that were working less than 40 hours a week, they had an effective hourly rate of $73.53. Not nearly enough for the work that they're doing. But when we compared that to the builders that were working over 60 hours a week, those guys were only earning $32.05 an hour. So the guys that were working less hours had an effective hourly rate that was more than twice as much as those other builders. And going deeper into these comparisons, builders that have an org char, this is just one of the basic steps towards getting systemized and organized. But that one thing saved builders 168 hours annually. I mean, that 168 hours, that is the magic number, isn't it? It's how many hours we get in a week to spend. You're pulling that back just by doing this one thing. And how long is that going to take to create an org chart and you're going to get all those hours back. It's not going to take you anything close to 168 hours to actually do that. But only 55% of builders actually do have an org chart in place. So that's probably a very simple step for almost half of the listeners to do straight away.

Do you have any examples, Andy, of where you've seen builders do less and then start to actually see better results from that?

Oh, absolutely. If you just think back to some of the win stories that we talk about, you know, on Facebook and the stuff that we review, the number of clients that come into coaching, working, you know, 80 hours plus and making no money. And then really by a combination of a couple of things, often org chart and structure being one of the first things that we put in place. And then that giving them the time to focus on their margins, all of a sudden what happens is they can do half as many jobs and make twice as much money. And of course, even if you go with the base calculation, if you running half as many jobs, you're going to spend half as much time, even if that time is being badly spent. It's really a scenario of if you're going to try and fix this by working longer hours and working harder, you end up in that burnout cycle where you're exceptionally busy but highly inefficient, you're making no progress on the thing. And a lot of the problem comes from those. Builders are the bottleneck. They are the ones that literally there's no planning, there's no systems improvement happening, but they become the everything. Every decision needs to go through them. And the business runs, but it's only running because the owner is actually propping it up. And it's. This is again, one of those traps where the harder and the longer they work, the less capacity. They've got to actually work on the cause. They then exhaust it. So what they do is they interpret that exhaustion as commitment. They don't see it as inefficiency. And then what starts to happen is that stress comes into the process, cortisol rises, clarity starts to drop, and with it, sadly, often their margins, and obviously they largely are going to get paid out of those margins. So, you know, the sad part in this is that the builders that are working the longest hours, they aren't lazy or unmotivated. They literally just trapped in a business that cannot function without them. And that is actually the key is to get to a place where this thing will run without you. That will fix it immediately.

Yeah, it sounds like that reliance just continues to rise the more and more you work.

Well, imagine if you're the bottleneck and you're running four jobs, and then you remain the bottleneck and you're running eight.

It's why we hear so many builders say, oh, yeah, I used to do 12 or 20 jobs a year. Now I just do six. And I make way more money by doing. Doing less. And yeah, they're correct. They are making more money, but they haven't really understood why they're making more money. They just think, oh, getting bigger, it's too stressful. But you didn't have the systems in place. That was why it doesn't have to be stressful. You know, you can earn a lot more money. You can do all these jobs. But, yeah, it's quite sad, isn't it, when we see this build only go backwards and stay in small simply because they believe it's. Yeah, scale means stress.

Yeah.

All right, let's move on to the next insight, which I know you're going to be excited about, Russ, because I've titled it the Illusion of Profit. Anything related to unpicking profitability and finances, I know you get excited about. So talk to me about what we found in the data. When it comes to builders believing they're profitable or believing they're successful, but the numbers telling a different story.

Yeah, this is something. The number one reason comes back to work in progress, and we've been studying this for the last six years. The amount of builders that believe they know what work in progress is and the work in progress calculation, and then how many actually know. And it's always A big concern in the most recent data. Just to give you an example, 60% of builders claim that they knew how to calculate work in progress. But almost 80% of those builders that thought they knew how to do it actually were doing it wrong. So they were using the wrong methodology. And I think there's only one thing worse than not knowing your numbers. Just saying makes no sense. The P and L, the balance sheet makes no sense. So I don't look at it. All they look at is cash and revenue. There's only one thing worse than that, and that's looking at incorrect numbers, numbers believing them to be true. This is what gets so many building companies into trouble. Fortunately, we've been in a position to save probably hundreds, I would say, of building companies by bringing them back to the right path, showing them what's real, and then they've been able to restructure, reorganize, change the way they price their jobs, become profitable, and it's actually saved them from going off a cliff. But one thing that we uncovered, or I say we, I'm talking about us and the AI. Now, the AI kind of figured it out for us. It identified four key metrics in the financials. The work in progress accounting, adjustment, markup versus margin, which builders are getting better at understanding the difference, fixed expense ratio, very important number to know, and net profit margins. And only 12% of builders understand all four areas correctly. So I mean, these are fundamentals really for any business owner to know. You've got to understand those things, especially when you're working in an industry like this where it's high revenue and small margins. You really got to know those four things, but only 12% actually do. And when you look at that, only 12% know those numbers. How many builders are misunderstanding the work in progress calculation? It's no surprise that in the US 17% of builders actually reported operating at a loss for the last 12 months. But even more concerning, when we analyzed the data in a number of different ways, we were able to establish that the figure was probably closer to 51% that were operating unprofitably once we'd factor in all the inaccuracies in the other numbers they'd reported to us. And again, with AI, we were able to do that, do some quite sophisticated analysis analysis this year. So it really does help to explain why this industry gets into such a mess when sales are not growing because they're simply relying on cash flow.

Andy, have you seen that play out in real life when a builder's come in to Coaching, for example, and they think they've got great numbers, but when you get under the hood, it's just.

A totally different story, sadly. Yes. And I mean, we've had a couple of notable ones where, you know, the coaches ended up in a stand up fight with the builder because the builder is absolutely adamant that the jobs are profitable and you know, the books look fine. But as Russ has said, the problem is they're only looking at half the dashboard. They're not looking at the numbers that are actually critical. And the, the way that this manifests for them is that they're pretty confident that they're doing okay, but they've got constant cash stress. Tax time rolls around and they're very, very anxious. And probably the short term symptom is that they're very reliant on the next deposit from the next job they sell. Which ties into what Russ said about the fact that in an environment where the number of jobs they're doing is not growing or they're not seeing that kind of constant sales cycle happening, they get themselves into, into a lot of trouble quite quickly. So the reality is a lot of builders will measure profitability, often in just the job. They don't think about the impact that the overheads of running the business has on that profit. As Russell said, they don't understand work in progress at all. And I think the biggest one for a lot of builders is they don't read their books. They read the bank statement. And you know, the sad part is if they don't understand WIPA or if their books are inaccurate, even if they're at the best benchmark level that we would want them to be, 75% of the money in their bank account isn't theirs. And you know, that's the problem. They've got this kind of, this illusion of the fact that they're doing okay, you know, and then the way it manifests then later on in the business is again, we go back to what we're talking about earlier. They don't pay themselves enough or at all in some cases. And obviously they start to push supplier payments because they're now borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. And it's really a scenario that as soon as there is a slowdown in their business, they're in trouble, that pressure is on and they have no way of actually fixing it. So the sad part in this thing is that often when we get them to correct their numbers, they're almost relieved because at least now it makes sense. I think Russ touched on the fact that a Lot of builders talk about the fact that these numbers just don't make sense. So, you know, one of the big things about what we see when we work with them in, in coaching is when the numbers at least make sense, you can do something to fix it. But until you get those numbers to the place where they're accurate and comprehensive, if you're just reading how well your company's doing off your bank statement, you're in trouble every day of the week.

Andy. That's part of the scary part, I would imagine, for builders if the numbers don't make sense, because they may be thinking, this sounds very complicated, you know, whip adjustments and all of the different things they need to plug into spreadsheets and accounting software, whereas they may not come from a financial background. So what would you say to those builders?

Well, I mean, exactly like they do on site, they don't build every part of the home themselves. They subcontract the plumbing or the electrical or the whatever. They can subcontract the management of those financial things to people that do understand them, you know, and get the numbers right that way, rather than, you know, them battling their way through it. So that, for me, that would be step number one. If you don't know what you're doing, acknowledge that and pay somebody that does know what they're doing so that you at least know where you stand and then make sure that you're covering everything. You're looking at your work in progress, accounting, adjustment. You are measuring those. Those four metrics. What are your overheads doing to your business? What is the difference between markup and margin? You understand that, and then obviously, what net margin are you really making? If you can get to the place that you understand those four fundamentals, that in itself will make a huge difference. I think, though, the piece we see the biggest pressure in, though, is in some ways when the numbers make sense, even if the sense they make is ugly. That's better than a situation where the numbers don't make sense and they just can't find a way to fix it. Neither of them are great. But it's better to know what's really going on so that you can plan a way out of it than be living in this false sense of security that doesn't exist.

And we see that, don't we? Because what we're showing builders isn't pleasant. It's not pleasant to look at your balance sheet and just see it get destroyed. Where all this equity that you thought that you'd built up simply gets taken away by Someone giving you some new information. And it also, it shows that the building company isn't as profitable as you'd believed it to be. And that's not easy to take. It's a classic case of don't shoot the messenger. There's the blue pill or the red pill. Yeah, you can take the blue pill. You can listen to what your accountant tells you because 90% of them don't understand how to do this calculation. So what they're telling you is wrong. But it's quite nice when you look at your accounts. Problem is you're going to pay tax on those profits you never made. So you can take that blue pill, but you can only live in the matrix for so long. Or you can take the red pill and you can see what's really going on in your business. But that will not be a pleasant experience. But like Andy says, once you understand what's really going on, we see a switch. Builders change. They get very annoyed to start with because they realize been working for nothing. And it's like why didn't anyone tell me this years ago? I've wasted years of my life, I've been doing jobs for free. But then they get really focused and determined. They put proper margins onto their jobs. To their surprise they still win those jobs and then they start operating a profitable building company and then we can start building the finance the foundation. We can start addressing some of these losses that have gone on and it's just up from there on in.

I had a client recently who we did a post job audit on a home that he'd built for his best mate and we worked out that he donated his best mate's main bedroom and en suite. The builder had paid for it, not the client.

And this is such a common story as well. And this comes down to the fixed expense ratio where builders don't understand the fixed expense ratio. They don't realize that just to break even you've got to add 15 margin.

Exactly.

That's not 15 markup, that's margin. And what's that? It's probably about 18, 18 and a half percent markup you've got to add. And your brother in law or your sister won't understand that. They'll think you're ripping them off. You're better off not doing the job at all.

That's often the case. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Because they, they all think, oh yeah, they know someone that's a builder, they're going to get their house half price.

Exactly.

Because builders make fortunes, don't they mate? I mean, you've got to be able to do it half price.

That's the problem. When a builder's buying a new fishing boat every year with somebody else's money, it looks like he's doing really well. But the sad part is when that comes home to roost, it's. It's very ugly.

Yeah.

And the ATO love you because you're paying taxes on profits you never made. You're their best friend, and good luck.

Trying to get that money back. If you do ever go back and resolve what the reality was, you'll never get it back.

So, Andy, you said that if builders don't feel comfortable with the numbers, they can get someone to help them do that and outsource it like they do to a subcontractor. Ross, you said 90% of accountants don't understand the WIP calculation or the numbers themselves. Which for me as a builder, if I'm listening to that, other than getting told to work with APB and uncovering it, how can they feel confident with the person they're working with actually understanding the numbers themselves?

Yeah, it's got me in a lot of trouble over the years, that statement, especially from accountants. I think I was on the most wanted list in Australia for a while.

You have softened, though. I will say that.

Yeah. Well, I used to say 95, so I have softened to 90. But let me clarify that. When we say 90% of accountants, obviously the 10% are industry specific, so they understand how to do this calculation. So if you're working with a generic accountant, it's not their fault they don't understand it. They've been taught a different calculation. Work in progress generally means something very different to accountants than it does to builders.

But.

But the accountants that are industry specific, they understand this term. They understand how to do the calculation. But I did a podcast just last week and I actually said that same thing and the builder jumped on in the chat and said, True, 99% don't understand it. He was adamant.

Well, I think there's two pieces to this. There's a piece before it gets to the accountant. So there is somebody in your office who understands accounting and bookkeeping and is at least entering the data accurately into your bookkeeping system. You getting accurate and up to date profit and loss statements, balance sheets, they may not be tax efficient yet, but to be totally honest, we have realized that that's actually a better place for a builder to be if he's getting reports every month that are, are actually reflecting what's happening in the business. And he completely ignores taxation. He just leaves that for the accountant once a year. He's going to be in a way better place than if he's running his business on tax accounting reports every month, because that's just going to distort the picture completely for him. So it's when I say get some help, you know, I know a lot of builders that at 11 o' clock at night are entering invoices and things into MYOB and you know, zero and all the rest of it. Don't do that to yourself. Get somebody in who literally can do it in a quarter of the time and you can pay them a hell of a lot less than what you should be earning. And then you can go and use that time to systemize your business.

That sounds like a good segue because the final insight that I want to unpack is the benefits of systemization. Russ, talk to me about the difference between the systemized and the non systemized builders that we survey year on year.

One of the most noticeable places that this shows up is the builders that have a sales process and more so the builders that tick all the different boxes within the sales department on being systemized, because those are the guys that are marking up their jobs way higher than the builders that don't have the sales process all documented. The builders that have these systems in place, they're marking up by 32%. The guys that don't are only marking up by 20. And really that just shows by being systemized, by being organized, having a repeatable process, that actually translates to the supply and demand formula. Because now they've got more demand for their limited supply than they can service. And that's what enables them to put their margins up. So that's one where it really does show up. But it's across the board, really. It's all areas of the business where builders that are more systemized, they not only achieve better markups, but it also helps them to break through this revenue ceiling. It comes back to what we were talking about earlier when we hear about these builders that I used to do 12, used to do 20 jobs, now I just do six. They weren't able to successfully break through that revenue ceiling because they didn't have the systems in place to support that growth. They chased growth and thought they'd fix it kind of on the way up. But no, you've actually got to build the systems before you put the growth in place. That's probably where we see a lot of builders come unstuck because your margins get destroyed. Any other way. But the builders that are not systemized, they seem to have a revenue ceiling of 2.3 million. That's what the data is telling us. But the systemized builders are averaging 3.9 million in annual revenue. So I mean, that is not quite double, but it's significant. The other area this showed up is in the total owner returns because both these groups, systemized or non systemized, they were still working 50 hour weeks. The difference was the builders that were systemized had a total return of $490,000 a year. So that includes the salary they pull out and the net profit that was left over behind. The non systemized builders, 235,000. And they're both doing 50 hour weeks. So you translate that to an hourly rate, it is absolutely huge.

What were some of those? Just before we move on to Andy and he can dive into the details of what's happening in the industry at the moment. When you mentioned the core sales systems, can you just provide a bit more detail on what exactly they are?

Yeah. So we've got the sales process. We've then got a qualifying process. Because if you don't have a systemized repeatable process for qualifying your leads, then you're going to be dealing with a lot of time wasters. Another system is the objections manual. So having an objections manual in place that then enables you to obviously convert more of these people that are maybe just not quite there at the death. Using sales scripts as well is another big one for builders. It doesn't mean you've got to read off a script. A lot of builders have an objection to using scripts because they, they don't want to sound fake. Now that's not what sales scripts are about. Sales scripts actually give you a foundation and then you add your own words to them. But very, very important that you have these in place. Charging for qu quotes is another big one for builders. We've seen this consistently. Builders that charge for quotes significantly outperform the builders that are doing quotes for free, having sales meetings. That another big one for builders as well. Because unless you're constantly training your team, getting them to do things in the right way, then performance will drop. So yeah, there's a lot of these fundamentals that go into getting the top margin. Cool.

And if anyone wants to grab the 2026 Sourcei report to look at more detail about what Russ is talking about, the sales section goes into it in great detail so they can download that for free. But Andy, we talk a lot about systems and systemization. What does that look like? On the ground, what does it actually.

Look like for builders? To be honest, the way it looks to a builder is not very attractive. If he compares spending an hour systemizing his business versus an hour on such, systemization is going to feel slow, potentially unproductive. And in the day to day it feels non urgent. And a lot of builders I think look at the fact that they need to systemize, but they worried that if they stop to do that, they're going to lose the momentum that they've got on the jobs. They could potentially even slow the business down. Because the truth is, let's go right back to what we spoke about kind of as the first point, which is builders working longer hours, thinking they've got to work harder. The sad part is, despite them working longer hours, what they throw out first is thinking time, planning time, actually taking the time to think through the current processes that they're using to decide what's working and what's not working. Because there's no point in systemizing something that's not working, working. You literally want to make sure that what you're capturing is the things that are working. So it's, they don't have the time to think and therefore it just seems too hard. If you're going to systemize your business, you've got to understand that there will be a short term effort spike or discomfort that's going to happen as you go through that. And I mean, let's be honest, a builder that's working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, he's exhausted just from that. And now what we're saying is, well, now you've got to do this extra work. This admin stuff is the way that it appears to a builder. Sadly, the truth is completely the opposite. Because what a system will do is give them back time, it will reduce their stress. And the biggest thing that systems do is they protect your margins. So the resistance isn't because they necessarily don't believe in systems. I mean, the crazy part is, is you cannot build a house without systemization. Like it's, it's not possible to go from a bare piece of ground to a double story beautiful custom home unless you already have a degree of systemization. But the thing for most builders, the problem is they resist them because they don't have the breathing room to allow them to build those systems properly. And it just seems too hard. What often happens when they actually work with a coach is again, because we take it back to the bite sized chunk, we take it back to the thing that's going to make the most impact, all of a sudden it starts to look manageable. And once they get into the swing of it, it starts to happen quite quickly.

And with AI these days, resources available like APB membership, where you can actually just get pre made systems which are close enough to good to go, and then adapt that with AI to your own situation, like you can, you can pump them out pretty quickly.

Absolutely. And you know, I mean the, I say this to clients all the time. They have a system, it's not documented, it's maybe not working very well, but they have a system. Start there, capture what they're doing now, that's step one. And then go and start working through what's working, what's not to determine what else needs to happen.

Okay, well, let's wrap it up. We've got one last question for both of you. There's so much data we've only covered, we've only really scratched the surface in today's podcast. So for anyone listening, if you want to get your hands on the 2026 source report, there's 139 pages worth of information, insights and data you can unpack in there and pick and choose the things that are going to work for your building company right now. But Russ, if you were to steal today's conversation and all of that data that you've analyzed into one practical step for builders listening today, what would that be?

Yeah, well, it doesn't matter where the biggest challenge is in your building company. It could be marketing and advertising, it could be sales operations, could be in the financials, could be in your own self, development, leadership, whatever that issue is. It's just like Andy says, the thing that will solve it is to get systemized. And to get systemized, we're not just talking about buying a software package off the shelf and implementing that, that like project management. We're talking about building systems, processes, policies and procedures that support your building company so that whatever one of your employees need to do, there is a system and a process for them to follow. This is how you free yourself out of the business. Everyone knows what to do and those systems. I think it's very, very important when you put these things in place that you build exception reporting, which will then show you when things aren't being the way they're supposed to so that you can then fix that gap and address it. But the easiest thing is what Andy's just alluded to as well. You need systems, APB membership. This is what we provide. And now with AI, those systems and processes that we're providing are getting even better. But it's not just a case of putting systems in place. A lot of builders need accountability, in which case you need coaching. And if you're not ready to step in for full blown business coaching, we've got a mini coaching course available which will get you started. It will really get you kick started. It's the builder's profit accelerator. That is where builders need to start. And investing in yourself, that is the best investment you will ever make. Forget about buying spec homes, building spec homes, putting investment money into retirement or whatever. The best investment you can make as a business owner is in yourself. That will come back tenfold a lot faster than any other investment you make.

Yeah, sounds like a pretty good way to finish it up. Andy, anything to add?

I would just. Just to kind of flesh out a bit of what Russ said, I would start with the owner doing what they need to to stop being the bottleneck. If they're looking for where should I start systemizing? Start systemizing with the things that you do so that you can stop doing them. That would be the biggest thing because as soon as you can clear half your plate, all of a sudden you got back the most precious resource we all need, which is time. And if you've now got the time now you can start thinking and planning and then obviously that's going to make the difference. I think the hard part is that that for a lot of people starting to systemize their business doesn't look dramatic enough. It actually looks boring. It might be boring to start with, but it's going to give you consistent results. And that is why it works, is it takes it from nothing gets done the same way ever to the things that work get done exactly that way time after time after time. I use this analogy in a mastermind we ran with our coaching clients the other day. I said, you've got to think about the fact that all of us, when we are in London or we're in New York, we're very happy to go to the West End or to Broadway and we'll go and watch Les Mis or Cats and we'll pay £250 or whatever for a ticket. And you got to understand that some of those productions have been on in the west end for 25 years. And for 25 years, every single night, somebody has come out dressed exactly the same way, stood in exactly the same place and said exactly the same words, exactly the same way as they've been saying them for the last 24 years. You know why they do that because it works. That's why they do it. And that I can't think of a better example of something that you can relate to from a systems perspective than that.

J.