Passivhaus Builder's Path to 100 Homes a Year | Enduro Builders | Ep: 126

I am most excited for the day that we hit 100 homes a year. I only really properly finished recovering from the trauma around the whole business thing about 2 years ago. I think that I just saw an opportunity to get really serious in construction, but I've done it with this big layer of stress of, if I don't do this, I'll go broke. We specialise in building energy-efficient homes. homes, in particular certified Passive House.

So you had that amazing dream and then you had that—

I always need a why to do something, otherwise you're just going through the motions. And I loathe micromanagement. And the thing is that micromanagement absolutely— Welcome to the Inspired Builders Podcast, your source for game-changing conversations with Australia and New Zealand's leading builders and industry experts. Each week we deliver real stories and proven strategies from those who've been in your shoes. Ready to build something remarkable?

Let's dive in. Jackson, how you going, mate?

Uh, good today. Yeah, it's been a good— it's been, uh, one of those, one of those weeks, but that's— that always makes you really appreciate when things are going well.

You just traveled all the way from Adelaide this morning for the podcast. I've been very, very excited to dive into like different topics and things 'Cause there's some really interesting aspects that I've found over this time that we've been working together. So I guess just give us a quick glimpse of who is Enduro Builders, like what do you guys do?

So we specialize in building energy efficient homes, in particular Certified Passive House. When I started the business, I was always going to build high performance homes. And one of the reasons for that is that our kind of our big why, our reason for existing is that we want to improve the quality and health of the housing stock in South Australia. And the reason that I've really focused on growing the business is that the only way to have a bigger impact doing that is to build more houses. And that does include renovations. It's not the centre of our business, New homes is definitely our primary focus. But, you know, in there, there are a lot of really major renovations that we've done on homes, particularly older homes. So, those sort of character homes from the 1900s through to sort of the 1930s.

Yes.

When they did build really good homes that are worth improving and saving. So, yeah, we do. That's kind of the mix of work. that we do. I'm also really big on— I didn't come from a building background. Yeah.

Where did it start? Because that's an interesting story.

Yeah. So I've probably had building around me from a young age anyway, because my old man used to be the managing director of Miner 10 back in the early, late '70s, early '80s. As a kid, I was so focused on sailing. There was a part of me that was saying, oh, I'd love to be a property developer. There was a part of me saying, I'm going to go and sail for a living. And I essentially picked my university degree to be able to be near the yacht club because that was where I was earning my money.

Yeah.

I then went and spent during all of the first year and a half of my degree, which was as far as I got through my degree, I did more and more traveling, more and more sailing, and that culminated in us doing a big trip to Sweden where we kind of— it was to Europe, but we based ourselves in Sweden because we knew a whole bunch of sailors there. And that led to lots of different opportunities that wound up with us having dinner one night with Russell Coutts. And I explained to him how we'd gone about getting sponsorship to come over and, um, and, you know, just basically said, we, we're gonna, we're gonna be like you. And he just laughed and he goes, you guys are, you guys are wasting your time. And of course, you know, it was a guy that we, we'd obviously, you know, like everyone knew who he was and we just managed to have a whole bunch of things come together to end up sitting there talking with him. And he then said, you've put on— you've put an accounting degree on hold. One of you guys has put an engineering degree on hold. The other one has put a construction management degree on hold.

Wow.

And the way that you went about getting that funding, is brilliant.

Yep.

And then he went and said, well, you have got a very small chance of getting there, but the way you guys went about raising the money to get there shows me you're a bit smarter than this. 2 weeks later, we were back in Australia and we went back to our degrees and got settled back in and worked out that finishing my accounting degree wasn't gonna happen. Then Went back to a business that I'd been working at and I created a role for myself there to sort out the business, which the owner of the business was very graceful really when I went in and told him all the problems with his business and that he should make me the general manager and I'll sort them all out. And he agreed to that and that's what I did for a couple of years.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then I bought the business.

Oh, wow.

That was, I think I'd just turned 21. Certain that that comes from my parents because certainly my old man, he'll just give anything, he'll give any idea a go because ever since mum passed away, he kind of travels around the world building Earthships, which was the reason I was in Hawaii in January because he got into my oldest daughter about going and doing this earthship build. And the response, of course, from Ellie, who's my oldest daughter, she's, any opportunity, she just says yes. So of course then I was like, right, this is also a good culmination of a big year in the business for me to Have a month off and see that everything actually works the way—

And that was in January now?

Yeah.

So we're currently mid-February 2025.

Yeah.

The start of January, you took a month?

Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

So yeah, I mean—

How did that go?

Good. My business mentor kind of pushed me a little to just go. He's like, Your business is in better condition than you give it credit for. You'll be fine. And yeah, things went really well. I manage my business by objectives and everyone is ultra clear on what our objectives are and what the KPIs are and who has to do what then just flows out from that.

So is this like every person in the business?

Everybody.

So give me an example, from what to what? What type of people are we talking? Like what type of positions?

So we have 2 estimators, 2 people that kind of, they're like, well, we call them planning and design managers. So they are the client contact from the first phone call through to signing the building contract. We have 2 building designers. And then we have a construction manager, a business manager, an admin assistant, and 4 site managers.

Wow.

And everyone has their own set of KPIs and all the KPIs are on a dashboard that everybody can see.

Wow. So it's live for everybody to be able to see the other person's KPIs.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Yeah. Wow. And every meeting starts with touching on the KPIs that relate to that meeting. So yeah, in the pre-contract meeting, we obviously talk about how the pre-contract numbers are looking from initial leads all the way through to contracts getting signed. And yeah, the other meetings obviously have different things. So it's—

Why do you do that? Why have you gone so specific with KPIs?

Because I loathe micromanagement, absolutely loathe it. And I've been micromanaged, I've seen it, and unfortunately I've had to let people go because they couldn't let go of being micromanagers. And the thing is that micromanagement absolutely kills productivity and most, it also kills people enjoying what they do.

And the freedom to innovate and to do things and to execute.

Exactly. And the reason that lots of people fall into it, in my opinion, is they fall into it because they don't set good KPIs for their team. They don't micromanage and then it's open slather for everyone to just interpret how they would do it if it was their own business, which means that you have no kind of, I want to say coagulation or coordination between people.

Yeah.

So my approach and I didn't pick accounting for no reason at all. I'm a numbers guy. And I really, I find that the numbers helps me be a less emotional leader. And generally whenever, you know, 'cause as emotion goes up, logic goes down.

Yeah.

And so a good way for me to keep that side of me in check is by having the numbers because whenever, you know, if we have like a slow month for leads, The emotion goes, oh, the leads have dropped off, the whole thing's gone, we're going to be broke in 3 months, which is completely false.

That's the emotion, eh?

But that's the emotion, right? Whereas you look at the numbers and you're like, we have work booked up for the next 2 years, so calm your farm. The leads compared to this time last year are up by 33%. Yes, they're down on the previous month, but they're up on the previous year.

Sure.

That all came from when I owned the manufacturing business because when I owned the manufacturing business, I was young, dumb, and very inexperienced. And I didn't— although what I did, the thing that I learned from it was that there was a whole bunch of stuff that I thought I should be doing, but I didn't do it for fear of what other people would think. The day that I got the cheque for, and we settled on the sale of the business, I got home and I was obviously really elated because a big stressful period. And of course, Perth, because I'd grown up in the marine industry in Perth.

Mm-hmm.

I owned a really well-known business in the marine industry in Perth. And everyone knew that I was in a bit of strife and everyone knew I was trying to sell the business and everyone knew everything.

Wow.

And I went from being someone that everybody knew. And of course, the way I went about extricating myself from the business was done with integrity and that no one was left owing any money or anything like that. No one had— there was no one in Australia, in the Australian marine industry, had anything against me, and there were plenty of opportunities available to me.

Yeah.

But I just at that point wanted to leave it all behind.

Yes.

And, um, and those— the guys that I sailed with, those are guys that I grew up with, and we were really a really close bunch of guys. So I was kind of ripped apart from them, ripped apart from my marine life. and plonked in the Adelaide Hills with an opportunity, of course, now looking back, to redefine myself and what I do and start again. Um, but I was definitely very unhappy about that opportunity for the first 3 or 4 years.

Yeah, having to move to Adelaide and having to leave that behind and not go on with what you wanted to achieve there.

Yeah, it— a little bit of that and a little bit of That feeling of having to start again from scratch.

Yeah.

Obviously, I had Carly and I had her family and that was great, but I was ripped apart from being in a place where I could get just about anything I wanted done with a few phone calls to not knowing anybody.

Wow.

And one of my best mates, he said, mate, you keep saying you want to move back, but you just talked Carly into buying the chiro clinic where she got offered a job. which she's doing. You just bought a house. You're talking about starting a business. Those don't align with you saying you want to move back. And Sam just rolled it all out to me and he's like, your actions don't line up with your words. Why don't you just stick with the actions? Because they're all like, you're building a life there and you're actually doing a pretty good job of it.

Wow.

And I only really properly finished recovering from the trauma around the whole business thing probably about 2 years ago.

Wow.

And that was thanks to a business mentor who I still work with, who put me in touch with some different books to read that made me aware of what trauma actually is. and how trauma actually works. Because usually if you say trauma, most people think of like, you know, kids getting beaten up or something.

Car crash.

A severe, yeah, a severe kind of immediate event.

Yes.

Yeah. Whereas trauma can take lots of different forms. And that also means there's lots of different ways to get over it. Uh, the way that, the way that I got over it was he, he, he just said, you know what, I want you to try something. Just stop. Just stop.

And when he says stop, what does he mean by stop?

Just, just, just stop using it as your little coat of armor. But then back in enduro days, that, um, that was coupled with, uh, when I started the business, I started working with APB. And Carly did a lot of business mentoring with the chiros. It's a pretty common thing. And so there was a part of me going, oh, I knew that one thing that I missed that I should have done when I had the other business was I should have had a mentor. It was the thing that set In motion dealing with that emotional logic thing. Before I understood as emotion goes up, logic goes down, I was looking for a third party to help me stay sane because one of the things that didn't happen, like I said before, with the other business was that there were things I knew I should do, but I didn't do them. And part of that was there wasn't a third party. who I was sharing those ideas with, who was then going, why don't you do that? So that little bit of external accountability is the thing that I was seeking out.

Yeah.

So now she looks back and she's, and funnily enough, I spend the same amount of money now on the business mentor I have, who's a different, completely different guy. But Carly has actually met him and she came away from that saying, oh, if you were paying double for him, I would still, I would be encouraging you to stick with it.

Wow, that's awesome.

So Carly's father is, well, he's retired now, but he was a builder and he said, well, why don't you come and work for me? while you work it out, because I know you can build boats, I know you can do rigging, I know you can do sailmaking. I'm assuming you're pretty confident with most power tools. Like, yep. He's like, well, you, you can probably bend your skills to carpentry. I'm like, yeah, carpentry doesn't faze me at all. So, um, actually, the biggest shift really with going to building from boat building was things Like not having to cut curves and make straight things into round things. So we— well, I settled in with Trev, and he does everything. So from digging footings through to putting the roofing on. That meant that I got exposed to the whole of the building process. And while that was going on, I started doing Cert IV Building Construction, which is what you needed to do to get your builder's licence. And I basically did that for 4 years.

So you were working for him 4 years, doing the Cert IV as well for 4 years?

Yeah. And I did a Cert IV and I did a diploma. Of project management, I went and got my builder's license, which covered me for building houses, but I wanted commercial on my license. So I went and worked for a commercial builder as a project manager. And as far as applicants for the role go, I was really inexperienced. The only reason they hired me was because of my experience running the business, and most of the interview was finding out about what I did with that business from when I made myself the general manager through to when I sold it.

Wow.

And, um, I was there for 14 months, and when I resigned, they, they were— a whole bunch of things happened. The first thing was the CEO rang and said, um, because it was a national company, He said, I'm surprised that you stayed as long as you did. And is there anything we can do to turn around? I said, no, what I'm going to do, it's an opportunity I can't knock back, but I appreciate it. And in the end, I actually gave a month's notice and I was there for 2 months before I finished because when we went and because it was a— the way that business worked was you kind of catch and kill your own. And I was mainly focused on councils, and I was doing a lot of work for Coca-Cola. And that was kind of branching out into working for Schweppes and starting to talk to some of the breweries. And it's just doing maintenance work, maintenance and building work. And when we started writing up on the whiteboards in the boardroom who all my clients were, where I was at with them, what the opportunities were, and we ran out of whiteboards, that was when everyone was like, even I was like, geez, it wasn't until I started this that I realised just how much I had going on. And so yeah, Things finished up really well there. The reason that I finished up at Programmed was I'd met a guy who was a carpenter who'd morphed into being a builder and had very bad personal financial management. And if you've got bad personal financial management and you put that in a business, all you do is put it on steroids.

Yeah.

And he was in a fair bit of strife and only did cost-plus work and employed, I think he had 6 or 7 carpenters.

Wow, so yeah, a bit of a team.

So he had a big team, was struggling to pay them, hadn't paid super for a while, was quite behind with the ATO, suppliers also like haphazard payments. And what happened was just over a few catch-ups, I sort of was like, your business sounds like it should just be going great guns. You shouldn't be in this strife.

Correct.

It's just systems. It's got to be systems. And then I started to look a bit more deeply and then I, I said, well, if you hire me, you gotta hand over like full financial control of the business and your personal. And he agreed to that. And Carly agreed to me going from a very secure role, um, with plenty of growth potential to, um, giving this, giving this crack. So I sorted that business out. It took 6 months. It was really hard work, but we just did the basics. Like, I implemented a system for collecting all the guys' hours and using software, collecting the guys' hours and what they'd bought at the hardware store and just got that collated into a system that allowed us to start invoicing weekly. All of the existing clients suddenly had to sign building contracts and there was a bit of pushback from a few of them. And I'm like, look, that's cool. We can either do the contract, but at the moment there's no contract. So we actually have no obligation to carry on here. And at the moment the deal is not working for the business. So if you want us to still be here to finish it, we need to formalise what we're doing here.

100%.

And that slowly meant we started to get on top of super, started to get on top of tax, got to the point where everyone was being paid on time, all of the liabilities were being covered, the business was starting to accumulate some cash in the bank. And then the owner, we went around there for dinner one night. To his house and there was a brand new one of those Samsung curved screen TVs.

Yep.

Like bigger than that. And this ginormous white leather couch. And I'm like, if I look at the business bank account, am I going to see some money missing? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But things are going well and it's my money and I can do what I want. I'm like, Okay. We had a very pleasant dinner and then over the next few weeks, I just lost respect for him at that point. And so everything just went—

Sure, went the other way.

Went slowly down and he lasted for about 13 months and then he went broke in a big way.

And so you got out before—

Well, when I left, the business had about $140 grand in the bank. It had been profitable for the last 4 or 5 months and had a good pipeline of work, had a whole bunch of systems in place. We had a project manager. There was still a lot to do because it always is with any business, but it was paying its bills and meeting its liabilities and It was in good— it was in a good healthy spot. So then it was Carly's turn to encourage me to do something.

Yeah.

I did go back to the commercial builder and let them know where I was at and I got offered. And also at that point it was like, oh, let's review moving back to Perth. And because they're in Perth, so I got offered a job in Adelaide and a job in Perth and it was like, take your pick. And after thinking about it and talking to Carly, I was like, no, I really want to improve the quality of the housing stock in South Australia, the quality and the health. Now, back then it was quality, now it's quality and health.

What triggered that?

I think that thing of the property developer thing that I mentioned once ages ago.

Yeah.

Early on in your career. That's still there. So, um, I then— and I had, I had the licensing that I needed, I had everything that, um, that, that we needed to do it.

Yeah.

The only thing we didn't have was a name.

Yep.

Um, and the name came up as a result of a week of evenings sitting around that island bench with me going, what about this name? And Carly, nah. What about this name? Nah. What about this? And eventually, towards the end of the week, I was like, I can't endure any more of this back and forth on these names. And I was like, ah, what about Enduro? And I looked it up. And, uh, there was no one had registered the domain name, so I registered it then and there.

Oh, locked it in.

And Kylie's like, do you want to talk? I'm like, nah, enduro, enduro builders, that's what we're doing. And that, that was how we got there.

So at that stage, obviously now you're starting the business, and then looking back at all your experience, you had different experience— commercial, working with this other guy, even owning your own company, etc. What were kind of the things that you were like, okay, this is what I'm going to take into my company? I've learned a lot of stuff, I've been through some interesting times. I'm going to take the accumulation of this worked well in this company, this worked well in the commercial company or whatever, and I'm going to take this into Enduro Builders. What were your sort of at that point that you're like, cool, this is what I'm going to bring to the building industry and how I'm going to kind of impact?

Yeah, there was pretty much all of those things. I— where do I start? So in the marine industry, I had to learn a lot about customer service. In the marine industry, Certainly the leisure side, commercial, completely different bag of bolts. But in the leisure side, you are spending people's spare money. It's their play money.

Yep.

And what that means is that the expectation for getting it right is really high.

Of course.

And that meant that I learned a lot about the importance of customer service. Now, not discounting the fact that I was like, my old man was a business mentor. Like, once he was done with Mitre 10, he set up the— or he didn't set up, he got asked by a bunch of guys to help them agree on how to set up what is now the Professionals Real Estate Group. And then from there, they wanted him to be the chairman of the board and stay on. But he was like, no, I'm going to do business consulting because I want to— help people balance their life and work. But I was brought up with a lot of those traditional values, particularly around integrity and doing what you say you're going to do. And certainly if you failed to demonstrate any of those two in our household, you knew about it. And so I'd learned those two things between my upbringing and the marine industry. I'd learn about, you know, in the commercial construction world, I had some pretty unforgiving teachers in the clients that I had. Those clients were, yeah, they didn't care about hurting your feelings. So if you didn't do a good job, Yeah. A bit more brutal, a bit more cutthroat. Straight up. Yeah. And so, and I didn't enjoy that. So that's a good motivator and get it right. And then of course it always amazed me how bad the reputation is on the building industry. Like how do people just cock it up so much that so many people think that everyone's hopeless? And I was like, construction, it's just a process. Everything is a process. And I just don't get why it gets so hard.

Hmm.

So all of those things kind of melded into me making sure that the business that I built was going to continually wow clients. And, and we've really achieved that. Like, we've managed to grow. And, um, we've had a couple of clients that I would agree there were portions of their build where we let them down a little bit. But our version of letting people down, even those clients—

It's a high level.

They, they're like, compared to the other 3 builds that we've done in our life, your idea of letting us down was way above the best experience we'd had before we built for you. So getting that feedback at the end of builds, that's happened for so long now that I'm quite, like I sit here going, yeah, I am really confident that we are really anal about how we do things and how we operate the business, but it pays off in the way that we are received by clients and respected by even the ones where it wasn't a perfect dream run. And that, so there's that customer service thing and wowing everybody with what we do and just getting it right, 'cause it's not that, it's just not that hard. And then of course, building better buildings has just come from, you know, construction is a really wasteful industry and we, use a lot of resources. And what I see with volume builders is they, they— yeah, like one thing they do fantastically well is they build a really cheap house. The problem is that if a volume builder ever had to kind of account for its waste, and that includes houses demolished within the 30-year like design time frame, That would not be a very good scorecard. So, you know, we build homes to last 100 years. Doesn't cost that much more to do it properly. And I wanted to, or in order to do that, we had to build better homes. And better homes comes hand in hand with building energy-efficient homes.

Okay, so for those that, let's say people listening to this that don't know what that means, being energy efficient and better homes, give us some examples of what that looks like in your perspective.

Yeah, so the, I mean, the basics of energy efficient homes is that you have a complete thermal envelope and you build them to be airtight and ventilate them correctly. So the thermal envelope is the insulation layer around your house. And there's a lot of like, batt insulation is probably hands down the cheapest line item in your build cost. And if it's done really well, it's brilliant and you will have a complete thermal envelope and you won't have thermal bridges, which is where the cold can get in, which then creates mold problems. And it's not hard to get that right. And, and then airtightness is about making sure that everything's joined together well and that air can't leak into or out of your house. Because if air can leak into or out of your house, then any effort you put into heating or cooling it is just literally lost through, through those leakage points. And if you have a good thermal envelope and it's airtight, then you don't spend very much money to heat or cool. Yes, you always need to heat or cool. One of the biggest things that annoys me about builders that try to pick up the terms and say, yeah, we're energy efficient, you won't have any heating or cooling bills, you won't need an air conditioner. Like, that is just not correct at all.

So that's like a false belief out there.

It's like you still need to You're lying to your clients if you say that, because even a certified Passive House has both a heating and a cooling system.

Okay.

The difference is that a house that gets the airtightness and the thermal envelope right will need a lot less energy to heat or cool it. So like, if you've got like a 4-bed, 2-bath house, you put it in practical terms, if you've got a 4-bed, 2-bath house and you build it to minimum code, You'll probably need a 15 to 20 kilowatt air conditioning system. Our display home, which is a certified passive house, we put in the smallest system that we could buy that could pump the gas the distance we needed. So we actually only needed a 4 kilowatt system. We got to put a 7 on because of that particular technical need. But yeah, it runs at like 30% of its capacity. And it heats and cools the whole house as one single split system instead of a ducted system. So, there's less materials went into it, there's less waste, less everything. And that's the big difference.

I see. And how does that impact the clients in the long run?

Well, it— so, the last bit is ventilating, right? So, There's a couple of things. It'll impact the clients in the long run with a lower energy cost because people go, oh, well, you know, I don't need heating and cooling. I'm like, yeah, but I bet you accept a higher temperature on the hot days and a lower temperature on the cold days. We're always talking about keeping the house at 20 degrees and what the difference is between one type of construction and another. So, you know, I can make volume-built houses really cheap to run. You just switch the breaker off. But the— for a homeowner, if they want to keep that stable temperature, they're going to spend less money to do it. And then with ventilation, they're going to keep the air in their house fresh. And with the new building code, it's pretty— Not— Not perfectly, but it's starting to enforce the need to put in ventilation systems, constant ventilation systems. With certified Passive House and most of the houses that we build, we put in heat recovery ventilation, which filters the air on the way in, filters the air on the way out, removes excess moisture, removes CO2, removes particulate matter. And so you wind up breathing really healthy, clean, fresh air all year round without losing heat or gaining heat.

Hmm.

So where that benefits a client is, yeah, there's some bottom dollar stuff, but the other things that are always harder to define is the health benefits. Like recently, you know, when I got here, I was talking about when we came back from Hawaii, we went and stayed in the display home. So, the cleaners, the night that we flew into Adelaide, it was like 32 degrees at quarter to 11 at night. And the cleaners had been there the day before and left all the windows open upstairs, which they're not meant to do. Goodness knows what— why they did that. So, when I looked up the temperature in the house... It was like 31 inside the house. And I looked up the temperature in Mount Barker, which is where it is, and the air temperature there was 31. Like, okay, well, that makes sense. So, the windows are open. So, when we got there, we closed the windows, we turned the air conditioner on. But most interestingly is that the house, even at that temperature, once the windows were closed, it was pretty dry, but the HRV started to move the air a lot better 'cause the windows were closed. And the house dropped to about 25 in sort of, it took about 30 or 40 minutes. So, one drawback is if you have a smaller system, it takes a little longer, but it's, yeah, that was a unique thing having the windows left open.

Of course, definitely.

But I went to bed in a house that was 27 degrees and was comfortable as, whereas our house, which eventually is going to be Demolished and rebuilt as a Passive House. But our current house, um, at 27 degrees, it was just a sweatbox. Horrible. And most people's homes are at that sort of temperature. So that, that really drove home to me like the benefit of houses with heat recovery ventilation. And in the UK, it's pretty much a building code requirement for all homes now.

One very interesting topic that you have brought up before is that All builds tend to work out the same in price. Sorry, I'm butchering it a bit there, but maybe I'll let you run with that topic.

Yeah, so when you, when you choose to build energy-efficient homes and certainly build certified Passive House, there are things that we do that add to the cost of the house. They add a little bit to the cost of the house, but they add a lot to the health of the house and the longevity of it and therefore the enjoyment by the homeowner. The other thing that we do is we're not afraid to be really honest about what it's going to cost someone to build a house. So whenever we have an initial call with someone, we'll find out about what they want and what they're after, whether it's a reno or a new build. And Once we've made sure that we understood what they're after, we look at previous projects that we've done and what they cost. And nor are they— well, in our case, what they contracted for is what they cost at the end unless clients change something. But what they ended up At, so that we can say to the person on the phone, well, for what you want to do, it's really similar to this house. And sometimes there might be houses that we've already showcased on the website, sometimes they're not. And that costs this much to build, and it included all of these things. And sometimes people will go, oh, that's, that's really expensive. I'd heard you guys are expensive. But I, I, um, I didn't think you were that expensive. And that's when I often say, well, the reality is that the building industry as a whole is very competitive. Um, timber is really competitive and plasterboard is competitive. Like, pick your building product.

Everything.

It's competitive. Um, yes, there are some specialty products out there that are definitely overpriced. And those ones, we call it for what it is with our clients. So like, if you want to use that fancy product, there is actually a more economical option which is delivering better value for money. But on the bulk of your house, the thing is that those specialty things, they might make up like 3% of the cost of your house, top max. Max. The rest of it is stuff that everyone buys. And I say to homeowners, you want to be wary of comparing a builder based on the price they give you in an initial phone call because ultimately you want what you want and you're going to get what you want. If you do it with us, we're going to really facilitate with you getting what you want and making you aware of where you're spending money that isn't in alignment with your wants or your needs. But in the end, you're paying pretty much the same from one builder to the next. The thing that you actually need to be comparing on is How stressful is it going to be for you to get from here to moving into your new home?

Yeah, it's something that's—

And what is that worth to you? And how important is it to build with a builder that's got the on-time record that we have, even through COVID? And I think that for some people, They hear that and they go, oh yeah. And for the ones that argue with me a bit, I'm like, just ring around the hardware stores, pick some products, ring around, see how much of a price difference there is. And there just, there won't be. You might get a dollar here or a dollar there or a couple of bucks here, a metre on timber. But ultimately, you're gonna pay what you're gonna pay. And one of the other big differences that happens at that initial phone call level Is honesty about what's in and what's out.

Yeah, the transparency of it.

Yeah. So like I could look at a, um, take a million dollar house for instance, and you go, well, the client hasn't selected their cabinetry yet, so we'll just take that out altogether or severely reduce it. Whereas I go, well, no, you sound like you've got the similar sort of taste to To these guys and they spent $60,000 on their kitchen. There's no shame in it. You could spend $30,000 on your kitchen or you spend $150,000. I don't care. I want you to have what you want and I want to help you work out where your value for money is. And you can apply that logic to everything, flooring, finishes, plumbing, electrical. Whereas I just go, well, this couple spent this amount of money and these are all the things they got. And the good thing there is that if they want to know more, I can provide them all that information. I can justify out the money. And I just find that for a lot of clients, they, or people that are looking to build, They get very focused on the price, not realising that that's a truth no matter where you go in construction. There's really no dodging around it. And then of course there's the issue of when we're talking to clients too, sometimes they might not be being totally forthcoming with their total budget, which I understand because the beauty industry does a great job of encouraging people not to trust them.

Yeah.

And I have to remind my team because we know how hard we work in the background to maintain our integrity and put the client's needs first. And, and the things that we wear, costs that we wear in order to maintain our integrity. And the hardest thing is you can't— it's very hard. There's something I've talked to JP a lot, like, this year I want to find a way to, to get that behind-the-scenes thing out in front of people. Because when someone rings up and talks to us like they don't trust us, we almost get offended. And I've got to remind my team, like, hang on, we know what we're doing. They think they know how the entire industry works. Our job is to close the gap up entirely with them. And to do that, we've got to be patient and we've got to listen and then just weave stuff in and provide opportunities for the clients to see that we do have their best interests at heart because we do. And it's not, we don't have to put it on because my whole business is built around operating a certain way. And my site managers have, they've spent money to maintain the business's integrity, then told me about it and I've been like, yep, no drama.

Yeah, that's good.

Whereas I— yeah, and then of course for that, the other component to the cost part is you can also look at it from the point of view of it could be done this much cheaper. And what I say to people that are talking to us Is this is what somebody else spent. Yes, you could do it for less. And the best way to kind of get started on that is like, let's turn your idea into a design and then we'll work through what your options are. Because some of the things that you think you want, like really, really have to have, once you know what that'll cost, you might not want them anymore. And we get that a lot. We do a lot of rammed earth. Love rammed earth. It's a great thermal regulator.

Ground earth?

Rammed earth.

Oh, yeah.

So, rammed earth is basically they mix up aggregate, sand, and usually 3 to 5% cement, and then ram it inside shuttering to build just a mass wall. But rammed earth has a lot of porosity, so there's a lot of solid material and then and then air gaps in between. So it actually is like a self-insulated masonry product, which means that the thermal lag is really, really long. So, and the thermal lag is basically the amount of time it takes for, for any sort of thermal mass product to heat up and then cool down. So that means it's a regulator. It's really good at just helping to maintain temperature in a building. And we often have homeowners who are like, we want, you know, we want it there and there and there and there. And when we do the initial costing, we're like, so the rammed earth component of your build is X amount of dollars. We reckon you could just cut it back to like put it in the entry hall and put it in the master bedroom and maybe just get rid of it everywhere else. And that would save you this much. And often, once homeowners sometimes have to recover from the shock of the initial figure, they— that rammed earth that they absolutely had to have throughout the house, they've pulled back on. And, you know, I went through that with when we did the display home. I had a budget, and because it was money that Carly and I had saved up to do the display home. And in the initial design, I did exactly what I encourage our clients to do. Like, let's chuck it in with a forewarning that it's going over the budget.

Yes.

But let's get it all in, we'll cost it all up, and then everything is included and we can work back from there. And the thing that of course happens is, yeah, you do, you run a bit over budget. But that's okay because then it's all there. And I think that, um, that's where the, the transparency of what is included— a lot of people hear us say, oh, you know, you guys said you're really transparent, but we want line-by-line costing. I'm like, no, no, that's not true. Everyone, when everyone hears the word transparency and construction industry together They think line-by-line costing.

Yes.

What I do is have really detailed specifications that spell out really clearly what is and what isn't included. And then based around knowing what's important and not important to clients, we then put together suggested paths forward for managing what is and what isn't in to meet with that budget. And one of the reasons that line by line or costing in construction, we don't do it. The times where I have, it's always led to more confusion and misunderstanding. Yeah. And that's because clients, all builders run a little different. Some builders, their carpenters will do a whole bunch of things that another builder might have 3 different specialty trades for. And so if you just had line-by-line costing and you saw a massive bill from the carpenter or a client who's not an informed buyer when it comes to looking at the That level of information would say, "Oh, your carpenter's too expensive." We're like, "Yeah, but the carpenter on this house is going to do the framing, the cladding, the second fix. They're doing the roofing on this one because it's a simple roof." Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And so all it does is chew up a bunch of time talking about stuff that is just not relevant to getting homeowners. into the home that they want, which is why what we do is we, we get really clear about what's, what's a want, what's a need, what's important and not important. And the items that we can pull out a cost for, because like rammed earth is a stat— a real standalone thing that has a handful of little flow-on costs, but that they're minor compared to the cost of the rammed earth. We can focus on that. Or if we're looking at taking out whole bathrooms, if someone's gone for 4 bathrooms, which we have actually had this situation where we're like, well, a bathroom is roughly $60 grand, but that's including the bit of slab under it. So, as long as the redesign also includes making the house smaller. And that's where line by line, because a bathroom— That's like minimum 18 different lines that I can just think of off the top of my head that are all in different parts. They're not all like 18 lines one after the other because one's a bit of carpentry, one's a bit of plasterboard guys, one's a bit of plumber, a bit of electrician. Like, that's all through the cost. So that's, that's why what we go for is that transparency of these are your options. And we've had a lot of positive feedback, particularly from people that have built before, where they're like, you guys talk us through the options. Whereas some builders will just say, oh, it's too expensive, or no, that can't be done because it's too expensive.

Yeah.

But they don't include the 'cause it's too expensive part. Whereas I'm like, no, just like I would wanna make my mind up about something. I know that our clients would. And value for money is something that is such a variable thing. It's like if everybody— there'd be a lot more Ferraris on the road if everyone saw value for money in owning a Ferrari. And for me personally, I see no value in a Ferrari. None. And I'm sure there'd be plenty of people that would watch this would go, you're crazy, man. Like, you got screws loose. You're like, yeah, what is— like, yeah, yeah, someone hit you on the head. Whereas like, I look at a— this is true, showing my age and the fact I got 4 kids. But you know, I look at like a good 7-seater, in my case a Land Cruiser.

That's funny.

I can take the kids, we can go camping, we can drag the caravan. There's nowhere we can't go four-wheel driving, and it gets us around as a family with a friend, no drama. So for me, I'm like, yeah, there's value there. But there might be someone else who goes, no, that's a really expensive car. I'd never spend that much money on a car like that. And so that's just like case in point of Finding out what is value to a homeowner is the key goal that we have for working through the pre-sales process with a client. And that's where our transparency lies, not in the focus of line-by-line costing.

Yeah, that's so good. 'Cause like focusing on value, 'cause each, like you say, each client will be different. And if you can understand their wants and needs, important, you can really value manage and do everything so that they get what they want at the end of the day. But yeah, that's really good. And I think one thing that's like kind of— when you've said it a few times through the discussion today, the chat, Jackson, is systems. Like, I guess when you look at construction now, where you are now, 10 years in with your company and all the previous experience, like, where do you find systems to be very important throughout? And where do you kind of really, yeah, value having that systems.

So the point where— the reason I smile is the point we're at right now is we've, we've realized that there are portions of our systems that have become too complex. So this year is a bit of a year of simplifying.

Again, simplifying.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, however, that doesn't change the underlying benefit, which is that systems in the business Allow us to recruit and induct people really quickly and get people up to speed knowing how we work, how decisions are made, who makes what decisions. We have an internal thing about where the buck stops. And that is Good for the business. It's also good for anyone new coming into the business because they go from feeling a little bit useless to feeling really useful really quickly. It also enables the business to grow. It allows me to, with a reasonably low degree of stress and pretty much no impact on the business, go and— do some of the things that you're in business for in the first place, which is take one of your kids on an adventure of a lifetime. And of course, at the end of all of that, those systems ensure consistency in what gets delivered to a client and consistency in what gets delivered to the shareholders of the business, which of course is me. But those 2 things are really what you're there for is you want a whole bunch of happy clients and I want to be happy. And if we're ticking those boxes, then it's great. And systems is absolutely the way to do it. It's the hardest work that you do as a business owner is developing those systems. and encouraging your team to start developing them. And that's how we've ended up with some systems that are a little overcomplicated. And that's cool. We're better off overall for those systems. We just have to tweak them up a little. And that's no drama, 'cause like I said, we're better off overall. And we've managed to triple in size in 4 years without letting a client down in a way that was insurmountable. And that's probably me being a bit harsh because the more I think about it, I can really only think of one client who their house got handed over a week late because of a 3-week delay we got because of weather. And I think that Potentially they may fall into that category of client that I think even if I'd offered to pay for their house to be built and paid off their loan on The Block, they'd still be unhappy 'cause we were a week late. But the thing is that as a team, we walked away from that going, we recovered a 3-week loss of time.

Sure, with only 1 week really.

Exactly.

And what helps you to kind of build these systems? What kind of mindset or frame of mind, when do you notice you need a system in a certain area within the business?

So we have this, we have this, I don't know what you call it, a rule, a guidepost. Like if something goes wrong, like what caused that to go wrong? Because we need to make sure that does not occur again. And that's where a system gets created.

Yeah.

Um, and there's, there's never any— everyone, everyone— I find that I don't have to worry about getting annoyed about something going wrong because everyone gets way more annoyed than I ever do. Um, and so once I'd Once I'd kind of got the thing over of something went wrong. Okay. Have we fixed the immediate, like, you know, have we put a bandaid on the wound? Yes. Okay. Will it heal up without any further attention? Yes. Okay. How do we prevent that happening again? Oh, well, we need to do this and we need to check this, or we need to have this organized, or this needs to be put in the schedule or whatever it is. And we're like, okay, where in the system does that go? Oh, there's nothing written for it. All right, you're right to write that system. All right, can just send it to me tomorrow. This tomorrow, like, is that enough time? Yep. And that's how those conversations go. And that has definitely meant that we've just, I say we've had that real consistent growth with very few— headaches and a team that takes a lot of ownership over the systems that, yeah, I kickstarted them and I certainly was writing systems when it was just me. And some of those systems are obsolete because they only worked for where my head was at for the team growth at the time. And the thing is that as the business has grown, I've expanded who's writing systems and that's meant that the systems have continued to improve. And this thing of simplifying the systems, it's not just me that has identified that they're getting a bit complex, a few people have. So again, that is going to be a— it's a team effort to pull it back and get the basics sorted.

That's awesome. Yeah, I love that way of thinking, how you said like if something happens, it's almost like problem equals opportunity. You fix it and then you kind of go, yep, let's write out a system for that.

We had a corker in January. Oh really?

Yeah.

Which Which not within, impacted my business, well, it didn't happen in my business. So the guys that run our ads, I only found out about this 2 days ago. The guys that run our ads—

Is it a local company?

Yes.

In Adelaide?

Yeah, in Perth.

Yeah. Oh, in Perth.

So to me it's local. We had a bunch of campaigns, old ones, that hadn't been used for a while. And they decided to do some testing with those old campaigns, to switch them back on in January. And that resulted in a massive overspend on ads. And I'm talking $20 grand. So big, big overspend.

That's a healthy budget.

Yeah, given that the advertising budget's $14,000 a month across Facebook and AdWords. Yes, I was like, that's annoying. There's no point flying off the handle about it because it's done, it's finished. And it certainly explains why we had such a ginormous uptick. I just thought our ads were working really well and everyone's coming back to work and wanted to build.

Everyone's just excited for 2025.

Yeah, yeah. Turns out that wasn't the case. It was our ads were working. The thing is that that's something that went wrong, but we're getting a bunch of benefit out of it. We got a whole bunch of leads, so big boost to the start of the year. We got a whole bunch of data about how people are interacting with our ads because they went out on such a wide scale for such a short period of time. So we now have a heap of data across all of our AdWords campaigns. So yeah, there's always positive in everything that goes wrong. Like when you get bogged down in what went wrong, you get stuck in what went wrong, not what can be done to prevent that happening again and/or find the benefit out of it. Because there's always a benefit when something goes wrong.

You know, running the business size that you're running now and all the experience you've got in the many years Since, I guess, what is your perspective in marketing now and getting your brand and who you guys are and getting that out there?

From a bigger picture point of view, it's absolutely critical if you want to grow your business. If you want to grow, you have to be out there and you have to be visible. And I think the biggest thing that has changed, I'd almost say since in the last 15 years, is that people really care about what the founder is all about. And what their why is.

Yeah.

And they're happy to accept that when they ring the business, they might talk with someone different. It'd be like working with you guys. I think I've worked out that the 3 of you are in partnership, but I still don't really know. Um, and, and, but it doesn't bug me, right? Because I see all 3 of you pretty equally across your marketing. And I never expected to have one of you come and do the filming in Adelaide. So that's one thing that I think a lot of founders go, oh, I don't want to do that because then everybody expects they're going to deal with me. Now I've been through the bit of really tearing yourself away from the sales and feeling like you have to be the person that interacts with all the clients. The biggest thing that I've learnt from that, and I know I'm going off topic, but—

No, go for it.

The biggest thing that I've learnt is that because I've done that, I'm able to better position the business to support the people who are supporting my clients, which means I'm actually achieving the outcome that I want, which is I want to make sure all my clients are happy. That doesn't mean I have to do it. It means I have to facilitate it happening. And I'm only able to do that because I'm growing the business by marketing. And for me, I'm seeing now the importance of putting a lot more of myself, uh, and not like, this is our business and this is what we do and blah blah blah. People don't care about that as much. They care about like, what's, what's the go with this Jackson guy who owns Enduro? Like, you know, he won, he won the Young Guru Award. Like, why should I care about that?

Yes.

Like, what is that? What is that actually like? Why is that my thing? He wants to do energy-efficient homes. Why is that important to me? That's what, I mean, it's what we think when we're looking at businesses. We're like, why should I care about what that person cares about? And the only way to share that message is through really well-amplified marketing. Um, and, and the other thing that I look at marketing, like marketing for me is 50% attracting, 50% detracting, because there, there are people who I've, I've even spoken with them who have heard me say something about being happy to help out clients that don't want to work with us but get, get stuck in a situation where they feel like they're being fibbed to by the builder. I'm happy to field a phone call and help anyone out and have done quite a few times, including helping a client understand a contract that they'd signed. So, well, they weren't a client of ours, a client of somebody else's.

That's right.

But they were getting screwed over.

Yeah, wow.

They thought they were, but they didn't know how it was happening. So that's the sort of thing that you're only You can only get out there with good marketing. But the other part is to attract the people. So, people might look at me talking about energy efficiency and the importance of building houses that will last 100 years and keep the occupants healthy and safe the whole time. And they might go, yeah, but I just need to get my foot on the property ladder. I just want to build the cheapest thing I can so that I can get my foot on the ladder. And I'm like, if there's anything I can do to help you do that, I will. I won't be able to build your house, but if I can help you, great. And one of the ways is to help you not waste your time chasing me down, which sounds really harsh and really—

Yes. But it saves time.

A little bit egotistical.

Yeah.

But I've just learnt that you're actually doing each other a favour. And we've also had that in initial phone calls where I've had some really lovely initial phone calls where we've got partway through and the people have gone, I don't think you're the right builder for us. And I've gone, you know what? I agree with you. I do know some guys that are a bit more up your alley and I'm going to refer you to them because you're right, we're a bit oil and water with what we're trying to achieve.

But that's fantastic because now you might not work with them, but they're working with someone that's probably more in that area.

Suited to them.

And everyone's obviously better off.

Yeah. And That example I gave, that was 3 years ago and we get significantly less of them now. And as our marketing gets better, that number's just gonna keep, like the people that sort of go in the not appropriate lead bucket, that's always an emptier and emptier bucket every month.

Why have you put so much emphasis on that why and getting that out there?

I always need a why to do something, otherwise you're just going through the motions. And I find too that it helps for people that we're recruiting that we tell them about this is our why, like, how does that gel with you? And the answer to that often helps us decide whether they're Whether they're right or they're not right, regardless of the answer. And so, I think there is a lot of power in the why because if you are crystal clear about why you exist and why you are here and what it is that you want to leave, then the why flows to the what, which flows to the legacy. And it's a great— I've just found that it's always a powerful way to get a whole bunch of different people pointed in the same direction really quickly and have them all be motivated and happy because at the point they understand the why, they can go, no, that's not for me, and bail out. And the ones that understand the why and go, That's me. That resonates with me. That's what I want. They're in. And there's then no hesitation and everyone's on board and then everybody has a lot more fun.

That's right. If you had to kind of give advice to your younger self?

The basic ones are having a business mentor, particularly one that you're paying for, is worth every cent. And that hands down is a major contributor to my success, doing what they suggest without overthinking it. I've been in so many of the mastermind groups and this, that, and the other. And you hear, I've heard builders argue black and blue with these guys about, no, that doesn't work here and that doesn't work there. And I just, I'm like, oh, I'll give it a go. And those builders, you see them again in some other mastermind and they're like, they're still in the same place they were and they're still arguing. Whereas I just went and gave it a go. And yeah, some ideas were bad, but I gave it a go. And because I gave a whole bunch of things a go, I got a whole bunch of, I reaped a bunch of benefit from the money spent on having a mentor. The, the second thing would be, um, spending money on marketing and advertising, and they're two separate things. You know, you spend money on AdWords, that's advertising. Um, Facebook advertising, if you, um, why you do it, but if it's your thing, putting, putting an ad in the newspaper is advertising. Marketing costs are like the preparation of the the material for it. So shooting videos, taking photos, getting copywriting done, all of those things. And I would say that it is critical that if you're just starting your business, go and get training on how to do those things and understand how they work and do it yourself. Then the moment you can afford to pay someone, to do it for you, do it. And usually that comes at the point where you are running out of time in the day and that part is starting to slip and you know that it can't, but you don't feel like you can afford to do it. That's the time to do it. And it's also the scariest time to do it because you're like, I can't afford it, but you actually can't afford not to. And And I think the third thing, which is probably more advice, for me, I was already really clear on picking an area of expertise and being really good at that. I've talked about energy-efficient homes. We also specialise in building on steep, difficult sites, and we get a lot of referrals from other builders. who go to a site and go, oh no, I didn't really want that.

This is too steep.

And that's just because we enjoy the challenge. And homeowners building on steep sites that come to us end up with an energy-efficient home, whether they like it or not. But picking that niche that you want to like stick to, it's a big marketing speak. Like, I know a lot, you know, all marketers, oh, you gotta have your niche. It is actually true. It's not just the— yeah, it's not just COD's wallet that they're talking about to try to sell you into something.

Yeah, 100%.

And one thing that I would say that is important advice on that is that the last bit that you often don't hear dwelled on enough which is stick to it. 'Cause there's been plenty of times where I didn't quite stick to my niche. And as our business systems got better, every time we did something that wasn't in our niche, it was like having a beautiful gearbox and just chucking a handful of gravel into it. It was just horrendous every time.

Oh man.

And once we were like, no, we're getting enough work in our niche and we're gonna focus our marketing in our niche, We don't need the work that's not in our niche. We always manage to fill our books with work. And well, that only happened 'cause we were marketing and advertising. But that's what gets you, if you can get those 3 things sorted. And the thing is that I led off with mentor because mentor is gonna cover you for all of that operational business stuff.

Hmm.

That is why I didn't dwell on any of them because I'm like, just get a good mentor. And there's a lot of good ones, there's a lot of shit ones. If you start working with someone and they're not, they're just not dwelling with you or gelling with you, the first thing is work out whether they're not gelling because you're just actively disagreeing with everything.

Yeah.

And if that's the case, then just start implementing everything they say. Do it for 3 months. If they're still not gelling, then change. But certainly don't stick with one that you don't like.

Very good. Yeah, that's awesome, Jackson. That's, that's fantastic. Um, look, we could probably go on for ages. There's so much more that I wanted to dive in, but I'll leave that. There's a couple, especially with like the, the fitness side of things and things like that, but let's make that the next The next podcast. Final question, and we'll leave it at this after this question. What are you most excited for, Jackson?

I am most excited for the day that we hit 100 homes a year, um, and, and that at least half of those homes are certified Passive Houses.

Wow.

Because for me, that will be my major goal achieved. And it will mean that I know that I'm really making a dent in improving the quality and health of the housing stock in South Australia.

Jackson, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.