231. Small Changes, Big Results With Owen Gardner

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode, I interview Owen Gardner from Gardner Construction in Sydney, Australia. Owen has been in business for 24 years and he's transitioned all the way from a sole trader carpenter to a full design and construct business model where he has a full in-house design team. He talks about the challenges of that journey, the benefits of having a design and construct model, and all the incremental improvements he has made over that time, which has created an extremely successful company with some staff that have stuck around for 14 years. I hope you enjoy the episode. This episode of Professional Builders 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 at apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

I've been building for 24 years now. Back then I had 15 people working for me. You know, all you're doing is running around putting out fires and you're making less money. And then you realize it's, it's all about people. Running a good business is all about the right people. You look at these big CEOs who earn this big money or have big companies and they battle on for years and years and years until one day it happens. And then, then it's like, oh, this guy was the overnight success. And you look at it as an expensive lesson. And resilience is a huge thing. You have these points where you're at the high and you're like, we're killing it today. And I'm absolutely, you know, I've got lots of clients and we've got lots of money in the bank. And then 2 weeks later you could be at the lowest of low. The biggest thing for me that really turned our business and made it easier, profitable, is understand, completely understanding, you numbers.

Welcome to 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 Owen Gardner from Gardner Construction. Welcome to the show. Great to have you on. Funnily enough, I mean, you actually could be Matt and I wouldn't have a clue.

I don't know, mate. I get called Matt, he gets called Owen. It's not a big deal. I've had it all my life, mate.

For the listeners that don't know, you are in business with your identical twin brother, is that right?

Certainly are, yep. The only difference is his hair's slightly longer than mine. Very good to know.

Do you guys have the same haircut though? I can't remember.

Nah, he's got a little bit longer hair.

Okay, okay. Maybe that's one I'll keep in mind, but then he'll turn up with a shaved head next time I see you and I'll be completely thrown off.

I always just tell people he's the ugly one, so if you just look for the ugly one, I'm the good-looking one.

All right, that's good to know, good to know. Well, thanks for joining us today, Owen. Can you give us a bit of a background on, uh, what you guys do as a construction company and how you got to where you are today?

Uh, yeah, so we do residential construction based in Sydney, eastern suburbs. Um, I've been building for 24 years now, um, ups and downs like every, uh, construction company over that time frame. And we run a design company also, which is a branch of our construction company. And, um, yeah, we're busy and enjoy building. And I love building. I love taking someone from the very start right the way through the design process, right the way through construction. And that's the most, uh, satisfying thing about, uh, being a builder, I reckon.

So Owen, tell us a bit more about your background in the building industry and how you got to where you are today.

Yeah, so I've been building for around 24 years, been designing for about 15 years now. Got into building purely because I like building things from the ground up. Had the ups and downs like every other business, but we're busy. We're based in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, so it's been a fun journey, especially the last few years when we've got to know a bit more about how to run a business rather than just making it up as we go along.

So have you been guarding construction for 24 years?

Yeah.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

You must have been pretty young when you started that.

So I foolishly, or not foolishly, I don't know. I look back now to my boss and I left my apprenticeship as soon as I finished it and went out and worked for myself straight away. And I look back now when my apprentices do it to me and I'm like, yep, I did that to my boss as well. But yeah, it's baptism by fire, right? So you jump in the deep end and yeah. And you figure out a way to get, get through it. I used to, and I still do, I use the motto, bite off more than you can chew and then just find a way to chew it. So, and that's the way I've always done it. So it's been good. Had my hard times and had my good times. So man, I love it.

Did you ever have moments where you felt like it was too much to chew?

Yeah, I guess sometimes, but never to the point where I felt like not doing it. I've always been this one where if I feel overwhelmed, I'll take a step back and then just go, right, what do I need to do to figure this out? And then just take the time to go, all right, this is what I've got to do and sort it out and I'll work my way through it. I always look at it as though it's a challenge.

Yeah. And you always had your brother in the business or did that happen later?

No. So he was off doing, uh, so we both did our carpentry apprentices at the same time. So we're both carpentry background. We both did our carpentry apprentices at the same time. He went off and did something else, got out of carpentry for a bit. I kept my kept going through, did my, uh, my builders and everything, and then worked for myself for a long time. And then in 2010, 2009, he, um, he was working for me as a carpenter, uh, just as an employee. And so we decided to, uh, join up and make him a partner in the company. And I— that's when I become an actual company. Before that, I was a sole trader. And 2010 is probably the catalyst when we decided— well, I decided, let's make this a a proper go of it. And that's when we formed my company and that's when he became a partner. And that's, we had our moments, we, I kicked him out of the company a few times, had our arguments. But the, the joys of working with your family is you get over it pretty quickly. So we'd have a dust-up and an argument and I'd kick him out and he'd be back the next day and go, huh, what about that little dust-up? All right, let's get down.

Oh yeah, I mean, there must be so many dynamics there, I can't even imagine.

Oh, but do you know what it is? Is because I worked for myself for so long, and because as a business owner you've got to be a control freak, and because I did everything, when it wasn't done how I wanted to do it, that's when I'd blow up. And it took me a few years to pull myself out of that role and of doing everything and just allowing him to do what he does best. And so now we have a really good relationship where he does his thing. I don't touch on his thing. I don't step on his toes. He doesn't step on my toes. And we don't have that clashing anymore and the arguments anymore. So it's once you figured out that role and who does what and not who's doing everything, it's become a lot easier. But it's good. It means that we bounce off each other. We have meetings constantly where we're just talking and hashing ideas and come up with ideas together. And it's a family business as well. So both our wives work in the business. My younger brother used to be my apprentice. I got a younger brother, 14 years younger, used to be our apprentice. He's off doing something else now. But yeah, it's had its moments, but it's been a long time since he's been kicked out of the company, I'll tell you now.

That's cool. How did you get over being a control freak? You still are.

You just kind of— I still am. Realizing that you can't do everything. And I used to do everything. I used to do absolutely everything. I used to do all the payroll and the accounts and invoicing and estimating and work on the tools every single day and, and, uh, you just slowly realize that you can't do everything and you've got to get them good people around you to start taking on them roles. I guess that's one of the hardest things about running a business as well is making sure you get the right people.

Yeah, but that's not easy though, right? I mean, obviously you had your brother and you've hired other people in the family, which at least you know you can trust them, you'd hope, but it's not easy to find good people.

No. So back then I had probably 15 people working for me. And I was just con— and you hear the same old story and off thousands of different builders, you know, no matter where you go, you know, all you're doing is running around putting out fires and you're making less money. You're turning over more money, but you're making less money than what you were when you had yourself and an apprentice on the tools. And then you realize it's all about people, like running a good business of any sort, whether it's construction, whatever, is all about the right people. And so we went through a bit of a purge when Maddie come on board and we got rid of the deadwood and kept the good people. And I've still got people with me now since back in 2010, before 2010, that have been with me for a long time that we just won't let go because they're really good employees. And they're some of my project managers now or office staff. So it's, yeah, so it's a balance.

Was that the experience you had? You felt like you were putting out fires, that whole thing you spoke about where you had money coming in, but you didn't, it wasn't showing up in the bank account, et cetera.

Oh, it shows up in the bank account, but it goes out.

It goes out again. Yeah, it doesn't stay in the bank.

You know, it doesn't stay in there long enough for you to admire. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it was constantly all about putting out fires and putting out employees' fires, putting out the poor work that they did, managing clients' expectations. And because it's a really hard— and I talk to young guys about it now, it's that hard transition when you're first starting out and you're getting big enough to needing to put on extra staff, but not big enough to actually pay them properly yet. And so you kind of at that point, do I do it myself or do I pay someone, bite the bullet? And, and I look back now and honestly, the best thing that you could ever do is bite the bullet and put it on and push yourself to that next level quicker. Otherwise you're sort of stuck in that limbo for a longer time.

Yeah, that's like a lot of business decisions, right? Like whether or not you're investing in marketing or investing in a new team member or, you know, investing in outside, you you know, help, whether it's an accountant or coaching or whatever it is, it's always, you're always stretching when you first do it, right?

Oh yeah, exactly. So coaching's a prime example. Estimating is another example where you just do it yourself and you don't need a coach. You don't need an estimator because you do it all yourself until you get to that point where you're paying someone to do it and you're going, why did I ever get, why did I last for so long without doing this? And why didn't I bite the bullet sooner? Because it means it frees you up to actually, and you read all the books about it and the books will tell you, you know, you've got to do it. And if you look at your time versus you could pay someone else cheaper to do it, but it's a hard thing to start with. It's really hard to go, sure, I'm going to pay someone $100 grand. Where do I get that $100 grand from? I might not even earn $100 grand myself out of after I've paid everyone else out. And until you do it, you stand back and go, oh, yep, yep, should have done it earlier.

But how did you get to that point though, where you're confident? Everyone's got to go on the same, the same journey, I think.

How do you get to that point where you're confident? Good question. It's, uh, it's trial and error. Like, it's, it's expensive lessons. So I never look at it as a mistake. I always look at it— whenever you have something that a client rips you off, or you quote a job poorly or something, you look at it as an expensive lesson. And, and it's how well you can ride out of that expensive lesson, whether you can actually weather the storm. And depending on how big that lesson is— what, did you go to university, or was it just primary school? Uh, and, uh, where— if you can ride it out and get past, then you go, not doing that again. And then you'll figure that you can now outlay that cash to make sure that lesson doesn't happen again. But yeah, to get into that point, to understand, it's a tricky one.

It's good to hear that because business is pretty messy, right? Like you might look at yourself, 24 years in business, you got a lot of stuff in the right place now. And like from the outside perspective, like you're on a good wicket, but there was a messy period there where you're just trying to figure it out as well.

For sure. And you look at about my trajectory and you think 24 years, wow, it's been a long time. But for a good solid chunk of that, and it's the same with everyone, like they— you look at these big CEOs who earn this big money or have big companies and they battle on for years and years and years until one day it happens. And then it's like, oh, this guy was an overnight success. And you look at it and go, well, actually he wasn't. It took him years and years and years and years and lots of failure. Like you can just take Apple for example as well, right? Failure until they find something that works and then you sort of latch onto that. So that's all this is, right? It's just you get a lesson, you learn from it, you hopefully don't get too buried that a client takes you to the cleaners or you've made a huge mistake, you've got to go back and fix it and it costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars and then you get past it and it's super rewarding and it's super satisfying with standing back at the end going, yeah, I've worked through it and it's It's tough. Like, this didn't happen overnight, not even close.

That's the scary part about this industry, I think. In a lot of industries, you could start businesses, fail here or there, whatever. Like, it doesn't have a huge impact really, apart from money in, money out. But in construction, like you just mentioned there, there's a lot of cash going in and out. There's risk. There's all this stuff. Like, you're building structures which people are living in, right? So it's a much higher risk industry than others.

Yeah. And the thing with construction is you can operate insolvent for a long time, and as do lots of businesses, because all you're doing is getting the deposit from someone else which pays off the last client. You can keep rolling that forward for a long time, which is why you get to these big companies that were going bust recently during COVID and they've been around for a long time and they've got $20-30 million on their books. And you're like, how does this company fail? It's because they're operating insolvent for so long. You add that to the mix. Even if you're a small guy, you can operate and solve it easily, but you add that to the mix. But then you also add the fact that it's so easy for a client not to pay you. It's so easy for a client to drag you out. And I use an analogy, and this is probably going off the side a little bit. I use this analogy to clients all the time when they don't pay a bill. It's the only industry where you can get to the end of the job and decide that, hey, you know what, I actually think I might not like it. I'm just going to hold them to some money. And, but you can in construction. So you can't walk into Coles and get a 3-liter milk, take it home and go, you know, I'm just going to pay for 2 liters right now and I think I'll pay the last liter later. And then, but you can do that construction, but you can't do it anywhere else. Like, as if Coles was for that.

How do you protect yourself against that?

It's communication with the client. We now no longer leave ourselves exposed towards the end of the project. We now give our clients so much more lead time into when we're going to invoice. Hey, you got an invoice coming up in in 3 weeks' time, make sure you're prepped for it. So I remember vividly, I got to the end of a project, and again, this is a lesson. I got to the end of a project with a client and gave the final invoice and everything. And she said, I don't feel like I owe you that much money. It was like $20,000 or something. And she gets to the end and she goes, I don't feel like I owe you that money. Can you show me how we owe you that? And so this is after the job's finished and she's living there. So I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I showed her how she owed the money. I showed her all the invoices and all the expenses and all this sort of stuff. And then she's like, okay, yep, it all makes sense. I just don't have the money. And at that point there, you got two options. One, take it to court, or B, ride it out. And so I— and to take it to court, you're not going to win. Like, you might win in court, but you take it, you're going to lose in lawyer fees. So there goes your—

you end up losing money anyway.

Yeah. So what I did was I said to the client, all right, sure, you can't pay it, give me some sort of plan that you can pay it off. And so she did. And she was super grateful and she ended up becoming a really big advocate of ours. And so then I took it away. The lesson I took out of that was, one, don't wait until the end to show them how they owe the money. Make sure it's really early in the piece. And so that's what we do now. And two, the last bit I took out of that is that because I was nice to her in the end— and you don't have to be nice and get walked over— but I come up with a plan with her, she'd become one of our biggest advocates. And so she ended up referring us to so many different people that I looked at it from an advertising perspective because we didn't advertise back then. It was just advertising for us. So yes, she held my money for a little bit. I eventually got all my money. She got an interest-free loan, but the advertising I got out of it, the work I got done from the future, I kind of took that away and went, you know what, there is a silver lining to this cloudy storm.

I mean, you still found a way to get paid even though the diminishing returns after a while, et cetera. But yeah, you still found a way to get paid, which is good.

Yeah. And that's one example, but I've been ripped off a bunch of times as well.

Yeah, might be a long podcast if we go into those. All right, let's, let's get back on track here because you mentioned in our pre-call but also in your introduction around, uh, you, you being like into design and all that kind of stuff. How did that journey start and how did you move the company into a design-construct model that you mentioned you've got now?

So I guess the big thing for that was frustration. I used to get plans from a client who'd been told by a designer, this is going to cost you X amount of dollars to build. So we'd go away, do our construction costing, we'd come back, and we didn't know at the time they'd been told what it's going to cost from a designer. We'd go do our construction costing, and the client would ring me back and say, look, sorry, Owen, uh, this is way over our budget. And, and I'd ask the question, you know, what other costings have you got? And they say, we've got other costings, they're all the same as yours, and my designer's led me down this path, I can't afford to build. And I'd be like, what are these designers telling people? You know, they're telling them how much this costs and they're just making stuff up. So out of frustration, I was like, well, I've just spent 3 or 4 or 5 days of my life quoting a project that I never had a chance of getting because the client never had the money. So I got into design. I thought, you know what, I'm going to get the design here. So we started by, as most design and construction companies do, as in they'll get an outsourced drafting, uh, outsourced design, and I'll pair up with them, which a lot of people do. They'll pair up with them. And we did that for a couple of years, 18 months, a couple years. And, um, and then I found that the, uh, designers were sometimes cutting us out, not meaning to, but, you know, dealing directly with the homeowners. So I just wanted a bit more control. So I employed a, um, an architect in my office so we could manage the design process in-house. So then I can manage the costing, the construction costing throughout the process. So what we're presenting to a client is actual real costing and not just a guess or a square meter from a designer who has no real idea, no real building experience idea. And so then that then turned into one designer, then turned into two designers, turned into five designers. So we've currently got five full-time architects in our office and we are a true design and construct company. I split the company in 2012, so I have a separate design company and a separate construction company.

Okay.

For the reason that we don't build everything that we design because we design more than what we can actually build. So what that does for a client, it's really from a client's perspective, is it allows a client to— allows us to send out to tender for a client. So we have a true design company and a separate construction company, so we get to pick and choose what we want from the design company. Whenever we want to fill our capacity, the jobs we like, the locations we like, or the clients we like, and at the costing we like, 'cause we don't compete on costing. So we simply say, this is our cost, you can send it out for tender, but we're not competing. Most people, we have a really high build rate if we're designing them. We build probably 90 to 95% of the stuff that we design, and the other stuff's really coming down to timing or the fact that we just don't want to do it.

So if someone comes to you who's been referred or however they find you with their own design, Will you work with them?

We do. We still do other designs, other clients' designs, but we're very picky and choosy on it. So we're really— it's got to be something that we really want to build. It's got to be something that looks good or it's different, or it's something that would interest us. It's not just going to be your standard stock standard build that they're trying to get the cheapest builder out there. We wouldn't bother competing. We don't need that. It's got to be interesting to us.

Well, that often happens, right? Like, it's almost a red flag when someone brings a design and they're probably shopping around a bit, right?

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why we hardly do that, because you don't know how many people they're quoting for, you don't know who to send it out to, you don't know where their bottom line is. At least with the design perspective, I know where their budget is, so I know we're quoting, and I know we're quoting irrespective of their budget. Our construction team costs it as it is, so there's no bullshit along the way. There's nothing made up.

So does that mean you spend, like yourself, spend more time in the design company because that's like your thing, or you're a bit of both?

So I guess my role is, I wouldn't say primarily design. So my role is really, I do, I take everyone through the design journey and then I take them through the construction contract finance journey. And then my role is really high level that I make sure that from a costing perspective, budgets and finance is all on board. And make sure the clients know what they're up for from a costing perspective throughout the job. I then hand over to the construction team and my brother who heads up the construction team, and he does the day-to-day construction. So he sorts out all the project managers and sorts out the clients' day-to-day questions about how it's going to be built and what it's going to look like. And if he needs to get more drawings done from the design team, he'll go and organize that. So yeah, so I oversee the whole operation. My brother oversees the day-to-day operation for the construction site.

Does that mean like if you get a new inquiry, you're taking them from start to finish, or like do you have someone else who brings them and then once they're— the contract signed, you take it through the rest of the journey, or?

No, I generally take clients from the start. So I'll do the client phone call, site visit, whatever, and then work them, walk them through the whole process, whether it be design or straight to construction. I'm usually the first guy and the last guy they speak to.

Okay. How did you get to a point with those defined roles with even just you and your brother? I know you've got a bunch of other people and defined roles in your company, but How did you get to that point and how did you document it so it was really clear? It's like, this is my thing and this is his thing.

One of the things that you're always told, you know, make yourself an organization chart and you do it and you've got yourself at the top and it branches down all this sort of stuff and you kind of don't really do much more with it. Coaching is one of these things for us, and I don't want to preach on about coaching, but I'm a big advocate for it. It's one of these things that you— they give you these little things and say, what about if you just finish that little bit there? Because you've done— most people do bits of it, they don't do all of it. You just finish that little bit, and then it allows you to go back to your workers because you've got a clear plan of what they need to produce for you. And they also have a clear plan of what they need to produce for you. So then you've got better workers instantly because they know where their work lies and they know what they've got to do. So it's really just those little bits and pieces that they need to do to sort it out. Sorry about that phone.

That's right, someone wants to build a house. Talk to me about the benefits of having a design and construct model under one roof. What have you found from that?

It's control. It's really, it's about quality control of the designs. And you speak to any, any builder, any builder will tell you that you've got, they've got plans from an architect or plans from a drafter or plans from someone else, the homeowner drawing himself, and it looks good on a bit of paper, but you just can't build it for whatever reason, or it doesn't align with the, with the structural or something. Designing from a build perspective, I get to look at a plan and go, that's not going to work, or that's going to cost the client a lot of money, and you're going to spend $50,000 that's going to be buried in the ground. What about if we change it like this? And so you can find you get quality control on the design, but quality control on the costing, and it means that the client gets more value for their money. You know, you spend the money where you see it, not where you don't want to see it, because then everyone's looking for that resale perspective. So at least that way you can design it so that they get the most bang for their buck and they can see what they're spending their money on.

Yeah, from a consumer's point of view as well, like, if I come to you with a design and then you go, you can't build it for the budget you thought, it's just really deflating. Whereas if I'm from you at the very start and you're like, well, actually you can't do it this way, but if we do it this way, you know, it would be within budget, and you're like, okay, and then you're on that journey the whole way, so you're more bought into the whole process.

100%. And this— and that's why from a true design and construct model that we tend to build most of the places we, we design because by the time they go through that whole process, you build up this whole bunch of trust with them. Yeah, but they completely believe and agree with everything you're telling them because they— the stats don't lie, the numbers don't lie because you're looking at it from a cost perspective. Yeah, you're telling them things that from a design perspective and we look at multiple different options all the time. We always ask clients to explore all the options because you don't want to sit there and die wondering. You don't get the end and go, oh, what about if we thought about doing it this way? And what about if you thought about that? And I always tell this to clients, and everyone's got that one smart-ass friend who comes in there and goes, oh, you should have done this, you should have done that. And with our clients, we say to them, you can turn around and say, you know what, we thought about it, but that was going to be $10,000 more than what we wanted to spend. And you can— they can have the information for them. So with us, and I use it with clients all the time, it's all about as much information as possible to make informed decisions. Yep.

What type of contracts do you use?

We use fixed price contract.

Okay, so I guess that— I thought you must because that's what we recommend. But also, I want to understand through the design process, if you're looking at all the detail of every little bit and piece and the costings and all that kind of stuff, how do you then dovetail that into a fixed price contract?

Because we do actual construction costing throughout the design process, so we don't offer an estimate. Went to a job today where it was a potential design job. They decided to go with a different designer. He's now rung me back up and said, look, we— they went to another design construct model company. They got blown out of the budget, with budget blown out of the water. And he's like, can you cost it? I'm like, but they should— he said what they did was they gave him an estimate at the start and they gave him actual costing after they got their approvals. And I'm like, the problem is that an estimate is just a guess. Yeah, somewhat a calculated guess, but until you do it properly and do all the numbers properly. That's why we do actual construction costing right at the start. And yes, we spend a lot of time with our estimators, but we know that every single design we present to a client, the client can have 100% confidence. If they turn around and said, oh, we want to build this plan tomorrow, we can build that plan and not have to worry about elevating our price for 20-30% because we were only guessing or estimating the first time.

But you still charge for that process.

No, we don't, we don't charge for our estimates.

Right. Okay.

And I know it's a big thing from a coaching perspective. They're always telling you charge for your estimates and everything, but we look at it from a part of our marketing budget.

Okay.

We roll that into and say, well, if we're spending X amount of dollars in estimators a year, that's what we'd potentially spend to get more clients in because we would lose jobs if we're charging for that.

So it's a carrot for a client to stick with us through that process, get into the design process Do you qualify clients in other ways then to make sure that you feel like you're going to all that work for someone that's got budget, etc.?

100%. So I always find out the client's budget before we start. And the one caveat I tell the clients is that yes, builder technically knows your budget before you start, before you're starting, but our estimators don't. So our estimators aren't told our client's budget because our estimators are purely looking at what's on the plan in front of them. And we want them to do that because we don't want them to be biased, because we don't want them to push the price up or down. We just want them to quote what's real so we know it's real. So yes, we do, we do qualify them. We do make sure that if they come to us and they say, look, I've got a million dollar budget and I want you to build a 5-storey house on the cliff face of Vaucluse, I'd be looking at going— I just tell them straight up, your budget's just not going to match. And what I tell people is because we've built so many houses, all around the country, I just tell people what a similar house that I've built for that kind of cost range would be. So I'm not telling them what their house would be, I'm just saying this is what you can get for that kind of money. That's what we've built before, and this is where I'd expect yours to be. But knowing that there's so many different selections and choices and finishes and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, so they'll check out your portfolio and you'll be like, you'll place them somewhere in the ecosystem of what you think they're going to build.

Yeah, 100%. Cool.

Have you run into any challenges with the design and construct model, or smooth sailing from day one?

Uh, no, no, definitely, um, definitely challenge. Part of the, the challenge for us originally was, um, when you first start to actually do it properly, and rather than go with a— so originally when I first started, we haven't had the problems using drafties. When you first start, you've got— you just don't have enough work for someone full-time, so you've kind of got to make up work for that person. And then also them designing something and then speaking with the clients and then not thinking about it from a construction perspective. Or so, yes, there is things like that. So it's just a matter of continually reminding the employees. But I've got one of my designers who's been with me for 14 years now. So she was one of my first designers and she's amazing. I'll never let her go. But it's again, it's about making sure you've got the right people And I've had the wrong people sometimes. I've had to let people go, but it's all about making the right people. But I guess the hard part is really quality control, making sure you still check everything. And I still check everything because I'm a control freak.

Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I'm interested to find out how you retain a staff member for 14 years. You must be doing something right there.

We actually really look after our staff. We spend a lot of time doing team building events. We've taken all of our crew, our whole staff before, down to a snow trip. We do a big couple of events a year. We do a monthly lunch with our workers in the office. So we sit down and just sit there and just chat for a month, for a month, for an hour, because we found in the office especially everyone just does their work, sits and stares at the computer. So I do, and I am conscious of making sure that we do think about and care about our employees' wellbeing and obviously provide a decent workplace for them to come to, otherwise they wouldn't stick around.

Yeah, cool.

And I'm a nice guy.

That only takes you so far. Yeah, people want other things out of work, but you've obviously got, got a good formula there. One thing we spoke about before the call, actually before the interview, was you mentioned like over this long period of time that you've been working in construction, I asked you like what's the thing that's, you know, had the most success for you, and you reflected on the fact that it was just like small incremental improvements and changes over a long period of time Can you talk to me about that mindset and, and what you feel is like the, the key to that?

Yeah, and like we touched on just briefly before, it's all about the lesson, and it's all about finding out what happened from that little mistake you made and figuring out what that lesson is out of it and just chipping away constantly. Like we talked about before, about clients not paying. I know I remember a client didn't pay for whatever reason they decided to come up with, and then I looked at it like, well, what did I do wrong in this situation? And part of that was the contract I had at the time wasn't airtight. So, and they knew I was young, you know, and so then they take you to the cleaners on that. So then you just slowly just do little bits and pieces, little bits and pieces, you know. One of the biggest things that I found in working and understanding and staying this way for a long time is that it's really about your numbers. It's really about understanding what those numbers are and constantly evaluating and constantly drilling down on them because it's such an important part of business. It's such an important part of understanding where you sit. It's not just a matter of the money sitting in the bank account and going, oh, it's a good day today, we've got a couple of grand in there. It's really about understanding how that money is and whose money it is, because you can look at money in the bank and it's not yours, could be the tax man's.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point, especially in this industry, right? Like, it's just, there's a lot of cash going in and out.

Yeah, yeah. But it's really hard to pinpoint that one little thing that, that catapults. It's so many different things that really gets you to the point where you understand what you're doing. And I'm still learning. I'll never forget when I was an apprentice and my TAFE teacher at the time said to me, he said, you can learn from anyone, even an apprentice. And I take that with me all the time, and I tell everyone that all the time because I still strongly feel about that. I can meet you for the first time and you've never been in construction, but you've been to university and you've learned something, then just goes, that's something we could, we could change in our business. And it's the smallest little thing and it has a snowball effect.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like there's a couple of things. Number one, resilience sounds critical to being able to get as far as you've got, because those things where like you get ripped off by a client or something, I mean, that could break, break the average person, right? But the other part is just having that mindset of continual learning and growth, right?

Yeah, never letting it— uh, resilience is a huge thing. Never letting it beat you up, even though it does beat you up. I talk to people about this around the country because we do building jobs around the country. I talk to other builders about it, especially young builders, and I talk about the, the the highs and the lows are building. So you have these points where you're at the high and you're like, we're killing it today. And I'm absolutely, you know, I've got lots of clients and got lots of money in the bank. And then 2 weeks later you could be at the lowest of low and you're just like, this is shit, I'm leaving this, I'm out of here. And the longer it's got me doing this, the peaks and troughs are still there, but they're really just gradual, you know. So your peaks aren't as far away from your troughs because you are, you've got more of an understanding of how you got to the peak or how you got to the trough. And that's the biggest thing is really making sure that you don't let it beat you up. You don't let it just pile on top of you and you look for the solution. There was something I listened to recently. You look for that little key inside that you just have that lesson that you can find and you just go, right, that's one thing I'm going to change.

So what you're saying is near the beginning you have big peaks, but big troughs as well. These days it's a little bit more boring, but it's a bit more stable.

It's because you know where it's coming, so you can kind of Yeah, we do. I do some TV building for a bunch of TV shows, and whenever I set up a new builder in a different state or somewhere, I always chat to them about the process for building. So I finished a show down in Melbourne in December, and it's a really short time frame. So it's a 6-week build, big build, as in for a 6-week period, you know, spend $2 million plus on the build, 3-story house, blah, blah, blah. And I said to the builders at the start, I sit them down, I'm like, I've done this many times. I've been on your side of the coin. I was project managing. So I said, I've seen this from all angles. I said, you're going to have these times when you think you're really ahead of schedule and you're right at the top, and then you have these times where you're like, there's no way we're finishing it. I guarantee, as long as you keep on top of it and you can ride out the troughs, you'll get there. You've just got to keep working through it. And I look at that as the same way as I look at business. It's exactly the same, just in a really short time frame.

Yeah, no, it's a nice metaphor. All right, you mentioned coaching a couple of times. Talk to me about why you see value in coaching?

Coaching is a huge one for me.

It's—

and my wife says this to me sometimes, she says, what do you keep doing that for? Like, she goes, tell me one thing, one big thing that they've ever done for you. And I'm like, it's not one big thing, it's these tiny little things. And if I sit there and I think about it for an hour or two, I'd rattle off all these tiny little things. Again, that's like the snowball effect that ends up getting to the point where you are. But it's just, it's not like this silver bullet where they go, all right, we're going to make sure that we're going to do this for you. In 3 months' time, you're going to be sailing around a yacht in Monaco because you've just made an absolute ton of money. It's about, right, we're going to make you better by making you take a look back at yourself and fix up the small little things and just chipping away at you, chipping away at you, and then to the point where it just kind of explodes and you go, holy shit, look what we've just done. And that's what coaching is so important. It's really— they keep you responsible. They're not like your parent. They're not going to sit there and yell and scream at you if you don't hit a benchmark or a goal or a task that you said you're doing. You're a grown adult. It's just really, it really is. Like, some people do think that. They think that, uh, this guy's going to keep me responsible because he's going to give me these things, and if you don't do them, I'm going to get a smack over the wrist. But they're not. Like, it's your business. They're just trying to help you. But I find it's super important to have that outside person that's been— that can take a look on the outside, an unbiased look, and go, right, let's have a real look at it. Let's really look at where your things are. So one of the big things— I've been coaching for a while now— that we start— when we started doing it, we're looking at numbers. And I always— I've always looked at my numbers, but never to the point where we actually looked really, really in detail with them. And then we started looking into detail because I've already— I've always tracked them, but I never actually looked at them in detail. And I started looking into detail and I'm like, oh, that's strange, what about that? So we look at this one little number And then we're like, okay, that makes up carpentry, which is 3 or 4 different categories. Let's start breaking it down to see what of those 3 or 4 categories is actually costing us the money. And we end up figuring it out that there's this one item that was just costing us money. And it was across the board, across all these projects. And it was just such a small thing. When you figure it out, you're like, holy shit, it's just across the board. It's changed an immense amount. So I'm really a strong believer and advocate for coaching, whether it be paid coaching or dealing with an older builder or just having a conversation with other builders, it's all coaching, right? It's all discussion. It's all finding out what other people are doing.

So Andy's never slapped you across the wrist and told you— surprising.

No, he's really good. Andy's really— he just, he puts a little worm inside my brain and just gets me to think about something, and 2 days later I'm like, Oh right, let's have a look at that. And then you go back and chat to him in the next meeting and you go, I just figured this out. And he goes, remember we spoke about that? And you're kind of like subliminal messaging drops in there sometimes. But that's all he's doing is looking at it from an unbiased opinion. That's, you know, because you get so stuck in your business and so stuck in the day to day. It's just kind of like, let's look at it from an outside perspective. Cool.

All right. Well, let's round this out. What's one final piece of advice you'd like to give to anyone listening today, the builders out there about running a better company?

One final bit of advice. I really think the biggest thing for me that really turned our business and made it easier, profitable, is understand— completely understanding your numbers, really getting a real drill down on that. That doesn't mean looking for every single little cent. It's just going in there and drilling down of where your money's spent, what's costing you your time. And I guess the last little sort of add-on to that is, is the right staff. Yeah, it's really good stuff, goes such a long way, and holding on to them.

I mean, we've been speaking for 40-odd minutes now. I reckon you've given hundreds of small incremental little things that people could implement, but if you summed it up to numbers, that's pretty good.

Yeah, well, if anyone takes anything out of this, like especially if you're new, is really about understanding the numbers before you go into anything. You can charge for quotes all you want, but you know, If you're quite— if you're charging for a quote and your quote's still wrong, then you've just made $1,000 on your quote, whatever you're charging for your quotes, but you still lose money in the build. It's pointless anyway. So it's really understanding what those numbers are. And, um, software is a big thing as well. Like, that's also one of the things that you go back to at the start and go, well, yeah, do I need it? No. But is it easy? Yes. But it's a big expense. So some of them things you look back and go, I should have done it sooner. But yeah, numbers and employees are probably the, um, The biggest things for me.

What software do you guys use?

I use so much software. One of the main ones we use, we use Buildertrend for our project management software, PlanSwift for our takeoffs. We use Cordells. I'm developing a new software for our estimating for the company in New Zealand. We just build a price in New Zealand as well for other stuff, for our financial stuff. And Xero, we use DEX, we use Deputy for our scheduling. They all benefit in different ways because I'm such a control freak about how I want stuff to look and how it needs to fit into what we need. No one program does everything that I need yet. So if I was a smarter person and I knew how to code, I might code the perfect software. But until then, I'll just get lots of software.

With AI, mate, coding's all about prompting these days. So maybe you can soon enough.

Well, I've got to find time to do that actually.

So, well, I mean, you should just hire someone really, like you said. So to do that, never mind. Well, that's another conversation. Owen, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I've really enjoyed this chat. Tons of value in there for other builders as well about the journey you've been on. And I really appreciate your mindset to growth, but also sharing your journey too.

Well, thanks, Will. Thanks for the chat. Hopefully I didn't waffle on too much and go off on too much of a tangent.

Not at all. It was cracking. So thank you.

No worries, mate.

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