#45 The Builder’s Mindset: Why Jackson Digney Focuses on Healthy, Efficient Homes Part 1

G'day everyone and welcome to the Build Insight Podcast. We're continuing live on our day in Adelaide today. I've got Dean, my co-host, has flown over. Still got Mick on the production in the background over there from U2U Productions. Next guest we've got in today, we've got Jackson Digney from Enduro Builders and Climbersure. I've had the pleasure of knowing Jackson for a little while now, just on my venture over locally here. Jackson's got a bit of an interesting story compared to most, super passionate about his own personal and business development as well as giving back to the industry with his ventures through ClimaSure. I won't dive too much into it there because I know Jackson's going to be the best person to really unpack that. But Jackson, welcome to the Build Insight Podcast.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's good to be here.

Awesome to have you in, mate. I think when we are— we're talking another Adelaide day. Jess has been on twice.

Twice?

I think you wanted to bump her out the way and get in, mate. So I am pumped to have you in here, mate, because I feel like I've been Sort of through social media watching your journey for quite a while. And yeah, traveling in different states but doing similar things, mate. So awesome to get you in. You've got a lot to chat about. Mate, I'd sort of love to know a bit more about how you actually got started building and so forth back in the day.

Yep. So when I left school, I wanted to be a property developer. But at the time I was really heavily focused on sailing for a living. And I actually got offered a uni spot to do construction management, but that was an hour's drive away. And instead I went and studied accountancy 'cause I was also interested in that. And fast forward a few years and I met my now wife who was studying chiropractic in, in Perth and she finished her degree at the same time as I sold a manufacturing business that I owned. And so I was kind of at a loose end at the same time as her mother had organized a job for her in Adelaide. And I was like, oh cool. And it was sold to me as 2 years contract, we'll go and do this. And I was like, oh, it'd be a great adventure. Like I'll go and do something for 2 years and hang around, and then we'll come back to Perth and I'll, I'll pick up where I left off. And that was 17 years ago. Um, 4 kids and all of that sort of stuff.

Wait, so you're originally from Perth?

Yeah, I grew up on the beach in Perth.

There you go.

So when I moved over here, because of all of the various things that I did, um, traveling and work-wise, I kind of came here with a whole bunch of trade skills across a lot of different trades. So like working with composites, boat building, which covers carpentry and composites and working with aluminium and welding and all that sort of stuff. And I thought it's a good opportunity to do something different. So I was like, I might get into building. And that was helped along a bit by my father-in-law is a builder and he's retired now, but he's like a hands-on builder who does everything. And of course, he was somewhat interested in like, what are you going to do with yourself here? And he said, do you want to come and work for me for a bit while you work it out? Because my response was, I'm not really sure. I might buy a business. I might— I don't know. And I started working for him as a carpenter, obviously not a trade qualified carpenter, but you know. I then got, I was like, oh, this is actually quite good fun. So I went off and did my Cert IV and then did diploma and— What year was this? Got to a point where I'd kind of had enough of doing that. And I went and worked as a project manager for a commercial builder, which was really good because it exposed me to systems and processes and actually seeing them like working in the real world, which I didn't do that well with my manufacturing business. I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it. And so I then, while I was working for that builder, I met a carpenter who'd kind of morphed into a building company and he was doing all cost-plus work. And he was not so good with managing money and was in a bit of strife. And so I don't know how Carly, my wife, actually agreed to it. But I quit a pretty sound job that I wasn't totally happy in because pretty much all the way through from leaving school to moving over here, I'd run my own businesses. And so, while it was a good secure job, I wasn't fulfilled and there was a ceiling to where you could go. So, I went and worked for this builder and got on top of his books, got on top of paying his super and paying the ATO and getting like just put, and all they did was put a bunch of basic systems in. They got invoicing on track and made the clients sign proper contracts.

Yeah.

And fast forward about 9 or 10 months, I'd got the business back on good standing, money in the bank, growing really well. And he started like just ripping money out and spending. And I was like, that wasn't our agreement. And we agreed to part ways before things got really ugly because essentially there was a lack of integrity shown and like, Anyone that knows me knows that the quickest way to get under my skin is to suggest that I've done something without integrity. And so then I said to Carly, might as well start a building company. And as usual, there's always plenty of people around going, oh, it's a bad time and the market's really flat and blah, blah, blah. And I just said, well, no, that's, that's what we're gonna do. And, um, I had always had a really strong interest in sustainability, um, and that's come from, from my old man as, as much as any other sort of influence, um, and that obviously morphed into energy efficiency, which has then morphed into Passive House and— Yeah, here we are.

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So how, how far back are we talking, Jackson? When was that turning point on when you decided that you were having a, having a go on your own building company? How long ago are we talking?

Uh, end of 2015. So yeah, the end of this year is 10 years.

Congratulations, mate.

Congrats.

Yeah, you're still here and still have your hair, which I'm most surprised about.

Yep, and not much has gone gray.

And 4 kids, mate. Yeah, yeah, what am I doing wrong? I've got 4 kids and a building company. Here we go. Um, no, that's amazing, mate. Like, obviously it sounds like you saw all of the, the wrong, not what to do things and, and got the basis of business. And, um, I know for myself, mate, I'd probably sit here and like, I don't think I could work for someone. I love the, I suppose, challenging myself and, you know, getting the reward out of the the hard things and seeing the wins and the bumps along the way.

And it's not for everyone.

No.

Working for yourself can be incredibly lonely and it can be really stressful unless you get on top of managing yourself and managing your time. And yeah, I've just started listening to a book about micro stresses, which is fascinating. very eye-opening.

Yeah, I can imagine. Can we dig into it just to touch back over that, mate? You just said your dad was your inspiration with sustainability. So obviously growing up on the beach, so where does that stem from? Is that more from being immersed in the environment and so forth, or is it a little bit deeper than that?

It's lots of different things, but it's definitely deeper. So Before I was born, Dad was pretty convinced that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. And he'd actually bought land in Albany, which is like south, southwest WA, and was really heading down a path of like complete self-sufficiency and kind of bugging out on society. Then he met my mum, then he started having kids. And that resulted in dad not letting go of that, but deciding that he needed to make sure he gave us a good life, which then resulted in, well, if we're gonna do that, we at least wanna live near the beach, which is why I grew up near the beach. And he was at one point the managing director of Mitre 10 Australia.

Yeah.

Like back in the '80s. So like for Mitre 10, that's ancient, ancient history. And he was pushing really hard for all of the things that have come to pass now, bulk buying, having the stores really running the same stock lines and having a lot of agreement nationally on what was getting bought and sold through the stores. And back then, and that was all because he saw what was coming with Bunnings. And back then he didn't get much buy-in and then he had me and he was like, ah, bugger this. Like, I'm not gonna bash my head against the wall for this. And it all started with him owning a couple of hardware stores. So then as we grew up, we were just always exposed to the importance of thinking about what your footprint is on the planet and also how you can really, how one person can make a big difference if you choose to. And I suppose that the road that that also coincided with was my old man really teaching me about the importance of setting yourself up, making sure that you have a good financial standing and that you do the one basic thing of spending less than you earn. And then that, That kind of all just simmered away while I grew up. And then my mum passed away just after we got married. She'd had cancer for a long time and she kind of, I really think, really held on until we got married 'cause she passed away a month later. And dad was really lost for a while. And then he'd been looking into Earthships and then he kind of got himself sorted out. And about a year down the track, he went to his first Earthship build. And now all he does is travel around the world going and doing earthship builds.

Wow.

And so it's funny because he's right at the sustainable end where they're literally like picking up rubbish and mixing it with cement and putting it together and calling it a house. And then I'm at like the latest technology, you know, energy efficiency end of the scale. And the funny thing is that both things work.

Yeah.

They're just achieved a different way. One is really scalable, my way. His way is not, it's not scalable. And the amount of time that I've spent talking through with him about like, yeah, but to do it my way is very material and not so labor intensive. Earthships, very, very labor intensive. not so material intensive. And the hardest thing to get a hold of is the labor. So, but it's good to kind of have that. For me, the thing that draws them both together is they both create pretty healthy buildings to live in. And the actual outcome in terms of longevity of building is about the same. Because when you build something out of all earthen materials, they're there forever. And when you build something really well that is constantly drying out and doesn't go moldy and doesn't get wet, that'll last forever too. So I suppose that I just had the drive for sustainability from there.

Yeah.

And wanting to make sure that everything that I did tread really lightly on the earth, and that I could say when I'm, when I'm done, I can go, I can look back and I go, I didn't, I didn't do too much to contribute to the earth going backwards.

That's so good, mate. It doesn't sound though like you've convinced your dad to use some Proclima wrap in his fields.

No, no, no, in, uh, because we did his earthship in East Augusta, which is like south of Perth in 2019. And we did Mento on the roof there 'cause it was a really flat roof. And I said, you're gonna have massive problems with condensation. And he was like, fine.

So you've had a bit of experience with these earthships 'cause I think it might've actually been back at the start of the year, we had another big recording day over here in Adelaide and we tried to get you on and I got an automatic response from your email. You were in Hawaii.

Oh, I was in the States. Yeah, that's right. So I, Dad, bless his cotton socks. He got into my eldest daughter, who is 13, or she's 14 now, about going to an earthship build. That particular build, it was doing all of the process of an earthship, but we were actually building an Asclepion, which is a Greek, it's an ancient Greek Healing Temple.

Okay.

So you, but it was all the same processes and it was, that was about more about Dad was like, I want my grandkids to be involved in this. And Jackson's not gonna push it 'cause he's too focused on his career. So he presented it to Ellie as, I'll fly you over there and 'cause you're all going camping tents. So they like camped in tents in the tropics month and built this thing. And of course, and he, I'm sure he knew, he's a sly old dog. He would've known that I'm like, there is no way I'm letting my eldest daughter travel around the world with my father because he's out of control. So I was like, well, of course I've got to go.

Yeah.

And it was good too because I mean, anyone listening to this that has a teenage daughter, will understand then this next bit, which is she'd had a pretty rough year with friends, like most teenage girls seem to, 'cause every parent, including the ones that she was having a rough time with, were like, yeah, our kid's having a rough time too. Like, why don't they just get along? But it was good to go to an earthship build because the type of people that go to those things are, They're very earthly people. They're really kindhearted and they're very self-confident, self-reliant people. And to expose a girl at her age, and the other thing is it's always female heavy. You go to an Earthship build and it's like 70% women.

Wow.

Yeah. And so to have her go and meet and hang out for a month with all these really strong female figures meant a lot to know that. Yeah. And of course I got sidelined welding window frames 'cause they were making, they wanted to do it all in steel. And she got a great kind of period of time with all these women and it's definitely, you know, it gave her a lot of self-confidence and it also, I think, helped her to see a bigger picture outside of all of the things, the petty squabbles of teenagehood.

Dino, so I rocked up to site last week, got scratched benchtops, paint all over the windows.

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No Goop. And now we're spending big bucks trying to fix it.

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Yeah, I'm on the cusp of all that too, mate. I think we've just gone through that with like my oldest daughter's just gone 12, but the friendship stuff, the technology these days as well, which it's like pretty ruthless. But, um, so mate, like that's, uh, yeah, it's super, super fascinating.

We went way off track.

Yeah, that's, that's, um, that's a good one, but, um, So mate, yeah, you've gone through, um, obviously got the backstory there. Um, so obviously very busy too with, um, Climashore. And, um, you know, we're all big advocates for Pro Climber and building science. It's, um, where did the sustainability lead you down the rabbit hole, as we say, to building science and building better and Climashore?

Yeah, so I, when I started enduro, I I had a very different plan to the one that I have now, in that I was gonna exclusively work with architects and just build beautiful homes. And as you guys know now, I'm very big on design and build and how that delivers a much more economical outcome for clients, which I can say with great confidence 'cause I've experienced both. And the first architect that I worked with was really focused on sustainability, uh, and they made me blow a door test the first house that we built with Enduro. Yep.

So this is going back 10 years ago?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So, um, I— and by the end of that blow a door test I was like, I'm blower door testing everything. And that was Josh Mollison, who I can't remember the name of. Him and Mark Clayton have got a company together, but he was working for Suho back then. And I just said, oh, you're coming to every build, because the stuff that I learned just from that blower door test made me go, ah, be like, we need to be doing this every single build.

Yeah.

Now you hear me say we've blower door tested every house we've built. And then I got into some business coaching and as part of that, I went to an event on the Gold Coast and I got talking with this builder who said, led off with, you know, what do you do? Like, oh, I build sustainable energy efficient homes and we do blower door testing and we've got this air change rate and that air change rate. And he patiently listened to me and he was like, I think you better go and do the Passive House tradies course before you kill someone. And I was like, okay. That's Brent Chatterton. And Brent and Claire, they're from New Zealand and they're just the 2 loveliest people you'll ever meet. And I always admire Brent's patience as he must have stood there listening to me telling him how good I thought I was. And so that resulted in me going and doing the tradies course, which then quickly led to me doing the consultants.

Yeah.

And from there on, I just have not looked back because once you know and understand what's going on there, and then I went and became a woofie professional in amongst all of that, you just, you can't unsee it. And every time we walk into it, like we went, there's a house for sale down the road from us and we just went there just to have a look. Just to check it out. Right. And funnily enough, as we pull up, another builder that I know that we do consulting for through Climashore, he comes from the other way. And the two of us, before we'd even got in the front door, we'd found like 3 major non-compliances with the building code. That just makes me go, man, we've got so far to go.

Is this a new home?

Yeah, it's pretty new. The owners had just finished it, but they've been living between 2 places and for whatever reason they decided they wanted to sell that one. But the thing that all of this stuff has opened my eyes to is looking around at every building and going, Oh, that's gonna be a problem. Oh, that's a problem. Oh, that's a— so, and it's, I just, I then of course got into Proclimber and then I was Proclimber's biggest customer in South Australia. And Thomas, who's the general manager of like New Zealand and Australia, he got in touch to say, do you wanna become a distributor? And so that's when Climbershore was born, because we didn't want to do it as part of Enduro, because I didn't— I didn't— I was worried about builders, other builders sort of—

Buying from a builder.

Yeah, feeling like they couldn't talk, talk to me, um, even though I knew that that wasn't just— that's not my thing, um, which goes back to the integrity thing. And also a lot of the other distributors are builders as well. As you guys would know.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Well, that's interesting 'cause it just go back a little bit in that topic that we're talking about. When you mentioned that you had a conversation with a builder in Brisbane, that's not where I thought the topic was going. When you said that he obviously coming from New Zealand, their building style is a little bit different to ours as well, that he was the one that suggested you should go do the Passive House course. 'Cause there's a few, not picking on Queensland builders, but there's a few, northern builders that I've had conversations with that they are pretty well dead against Passive House and building airtight because they—

Very much.

He's from New Zealand and was in Brisbane.

Yeah, which is where, when you first mentioned the Brisbane builder, that's not where I thought you were going with it. That was, nah, you don't need to build that way. We need our homes to breathe. And so that's, yeah, that was an interesting one.

Yeah, well there's, you know, there's a lot of, like when you hear people say things like that, Like, oh, it's not important in our climate. I'm like, it's physics, so it's important in all climates in different ways. It's like, to get technical for a second, you wouldn't specify Extasana, which is the wall exterior weather-resistant membrane, in the tropics. you would specify a different membrane there that is less vapor open because there's more humidity up there. So that's an example of where you can still get the benefit out of using the membrane, but you have to use the right one.

Yeah.

And it's, sometimes I simplify it down and I say, look, no matter where you are in the world, if you drop an apple, it's gonna get bruised when it hits the ground. And the same thing applies to buildings. They all have the same physical efforts being put on them no matter where you are in the world. Heat's trying to get in or out, and humidity is trying to get in or out. And understanding how it works in the different climates is the key thing for builders in those climates to understand.

Yeah, and I think regardless of the climate you're in, we all have moisture in different ways. And water is the number one thing that kills our buildings the fastest, whether it's inside or outside. So yeah, I mean, that's one standing strong point we have a conversation early with clients. We had a client right now, late last year, we gave them the information about Proclimber and she came back to me and she's like, wow, like I just thought wraps wrap, like, you know, and she's read all the data on it and she's like, She was absolutely pumped. This was— yeah, she was absolutely pumped. This was like the level we're going to, you know, with our builds. And, um, you know, I think that's the— from our side of things, that's the biggest thing is we want to build a structure that's durable in all ways. Um, so it's a bit hard to put your head in the sand these days with the information that's out there.

Yep.

Still happening, isn't it?

Yeah, and it's always frustrating when We compete against builders like for owners that are really early stage in their, whatever their buying process is, who maybe just think that you can just compare a builder on price or if you like the salesperson or any of those things without actually understanding, well, how does that builder build and how does that—

Yeah.

What products are they using? And the thing is that homeowners, there's also a portion of homeowners need to do some level of research, but you also shouldn't expect a homeowner to be an expert in construction.

Mm-hmm.

Which is why we always go down the path of like, if you don't trust us, don't build with us, go and build with someone else. Because if you don't trust us now, Yeah. It's unlikely you're ever going to. And that's just gonna be painful. It'll be as painful for you as it is for us. And there's certainly been times where it's resulted in us avoiding working with a bad client. And there's been other times where a nervous client has had that moment of, these guys aren't gonna screw me over. They're really serious because they're happy to walk away because they'll only work with someone where the trust is mutual. Yeah.

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So Yeah, yeah.

I think it's a pretty powerful thing to be able to do in in being in building business is to say no at times?

It's scary. It's definitely scary. All I can say is that every time that we've said no to someone, something better has always popped up for us. Not always immediately, but always in enough time that that core one of if we let a job go, there goes, you know, and for us, most of our builds are over $1 million. So they have big, just big chunks of cash flow disappearing off your forecast. There's always something else that comes along. And the thing that I try to catch is when that happens, 'cause nowadays my team, especially the sales side, are really empowered to say like, If you've got a bad feeling about those people, just, they go down the no road, which is we talk, we just, we have a whole set of pathways that we go down question-wise that sort of help clients to decide that maybe we aren't the right builder for 'em.

Mm-hmm.

And I've really empowered our salespeople to be happy to do that and know that I'm not gonna chew 'em out over it. Because the number of times you ignore that little voice in your head, you then have to put up with that person for 2 or 3 years. And if they don't like you and trust you at the start, I said the feeling ends up being mutual. And I noticed that like as soon as you try to, as soon as you have a bad feeling about someone, you treat them differently, which can then result in them treating you differently.

Yeah.

And it becomes a bad, really bad loop. Like this morning we went and put that plaque on the house and the site manager was off to another site and he said to me, oh, 'cause I said, how's the client going on that job? 'Cause we're putting the frames up. He said, oh, he's so happy. He's like writing notes on the stud work saying, you know, thanks and this looks great and you've done a great job. That's the type of client we really wanna have.

Yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, definitely trust your gut. We had a horrible kind of build years ago that you always, always look if something's not right, always look within to be like, what could have I done different? What could we have done different as a business? But I did finish that and got out of it. And it was, I said to my brother, business partner, and my wife at the time, I was like, just if I ever have a thought down the track, like just tell me, trust my gut, whatever, what's my gut telling me? And 'cause generally, you know, you kind of know how you feel and what the vibe's gonna be within. But so Jackson, we go back to your building journey, like, so you've 10 years ago, you're 10 years in, what were some goals and some things you've done along the way with building your team? And, you know, how's that? It's always a work in progress, isn't it?

Yeah.

But what's some things, mate, that you could pass on to the up and coming?

The, I mean, the number one thing is planning. So planning and accountability. So we, I've personally put a lot of my time into planning every week and that planning time is planned throughout the year. We also have, For every role in our business, they have what's called a default diary. And that default diary is like, in these slots within the week, you'll do these things. And a big chunk of that is planning. Like the site managers, Mondays through till lunch is planning. Now a lot of people go, no, no, no, Monday I gotta be on site. And I'm like, no, no, spend the morning planning.

Mm-hmm.

A waste of time going to site on a Monday, and at least until lunchtime. And then the same thing occurs on Fridays. And the accountability part is we have really clear KPIs in the business for all of the roles and they're visible to everyone and they get brought up at the beginning of every meeting. So obviously the meetings, like a construction meeting, we deal with the construction KPIs and the individual KPIs of the site managers. which also means that they can see if one of their workmates is slipping or doing really well. And same for all of the other teams. And all of that is underpinned with, I've had a plan for where the business would be now 10 years ago. And that has come from my old man. He's ex-military before he did the Mitre 10 thing. So he was like, If you're not planning, you're gonna fail. And we've managed to run a bit ahead of my plan in some areas and in other areas we're a bit behind. But without the clear plan, you then don't have anything to hold yourself accountable to. So once I have a plan, I then can go, okay, the goal for this quarter is we're gonna do X, Y, and Z. and we're gonna produce this content or we're gonna improve these systems or we're gonna get the business to a point where we can hire this person or we can have a rewrite of a few of the roles and just move the org chart around a bit. Whatever it is, that then becomes shared with everyone, which also holds me accountable.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause nothing's easier than going, oh yeah, I did all this planning and I've got this list of things I'm gonna achieve, and then you keep it to yourself.

Yeah.

So what I do is, as scary as it is sometimes, I share the plan with the team, which means that they hold me accountable to doing the things that I said I was gonna do because it's a two-way street. And I certainly meet the odd business owner where the accountability runs one way. And it's always a problem for them. And yeah, sometimes it's hard, but overall, yeah. So between, if you're planning and then finding ways to hold yourself and others accountable to the planning, you are always going to go forward really quickly. And the other one is having good mentoring. I've had a few different Mentors over the years and, or business coaches, depends how you want to describe it. The main one is you're paying for their time. And the ones that I've had that didn't hold me accountable and weren't willing to go, hang on a minute, you said you were going to do this. What happened there?

Yeah.

Those ones, they stood out really, really quickly to me and then didn't last very long. So my last business coach, he's been with me for 6 years now and yeah, he's an unpleasantly good person at holding me accountable, which is why he's still got the job. 'Cause he gets just as much of me going, ah, I just, sometimes I just wish you'd leave me alone. He's like, well, you're paying me to. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I know, I appreciate it, but can you leave me alone now?

Tough love. Yeah, yeah, that's the one.

All right guys, that brings us to the end of part 1 of episode 45. If you wanna find out more about Build Insight, head over to the website buildinsighte.com.au. Over on the website, you'll find links to previous podcast episodes as well as links to our YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Catch you on the next one.

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