Level Up with Duayne Pearce
I take on the role of an authoritative voice that fearlessly communicates truths drawn directly from my lived experiences. With a genuine sense of ownership, my insights are free from any hidden agendas – they truly belong to the audience. My stories and journey add remarkable value, the key now lies in harnessing its power effectively to help others.
My purpose is to create a new residential building industry. My mission is to inspire unshakable self-confidence in my colleagues in the industry, empowering them to orchestrate prosperous, enduring, and lucrative businesses that bring exceptional projects to fruition for our clients.
My goal is to foster a deeper comprehension among clients about the identity and functions of builders, redefining their perceptions.
Level Up with Duayne Pearce
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In this episode Duayne sits down with builder Brett Fowler from Saltash Homes and designer Ashton Genrich from Midlight Building Design to discuss the importance of collaboration in the early stages of a build to aid in the success of the project.
check out Brett and Ashton's work here...
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Most people we talk to, it's one of their biggest fears just not knowing what things cost.
Speaker 2:You spend a little bit of money now and you save a lot of money down the track. And that's a pair of collaborations, because everyone is working together with the client's best interest.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of builders miss out because they don't take that time to educate the client.
Speaker 1:We've all done it. We've all taken something that was the cheapest option at the time 89% of builders would not have a clue.
Speaker 3:Scary thing. Would not have a clue. Scary thing going into building. It's a massive investment. G'day guys, welcome back to another episode of level up. We're back in the shed this afternoon for another cracking episode, because today is a conversation about preliminary processes. We do the pack process. I rave about it all the time, but it's really about encouraging all builders and tradies to do a preliminary process, whether you're a tradie that is charging a fee or a call-out fee to go and inspect a project or a job or whatever, or a builder that's getting involved through the early stages. So today we've got a good mate, brett, from Soldash Homes, back. He's been on a few times now and we've got the designer that he does a lot of work with, or one of the designers he does a lot of work with, ashton from Lighthouse.
Speaker 2:I like that better actually.
Speaker 3:Got that wrong, but we got Ashton here from Midlight Design, so how are you, mate? I'm very good.
Speaker 2:yeah, thank you for having me on First time on a podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, first time on a podcast in front of the cameras and, yeah, talking. So yeah, very grateful for the opportunity.
Speaker 3:No, all good mate, All good. Before we jump into it, just give us a little bit of background about your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm six months old. I started at the start of the year. Businesses, you're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got a six-month-old, haven't?
Speaker 2:you, yeah, eight months old and a two-year-old. Two-year-old and eight months old.
Speaker 3:All right, so you're a lot going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and it's just yeah. It felt like now or never.
Speaker 1:I've been talking about it for a few years, but yeah, you've been working together before that yeah, so we worked together when Ashton worked for Cyber Design, cyber Drafting yeah, but we've always dealt with Ashton directly through cyber so it's great that he's out on his own.
Speaker 3:I didn't poach Brett, he followed me so, yeah, tell us like you uh, obviously you've had a bit of ambition, you've gone out on your own yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:so I started out, um, pretty much as soon as I finished high school, I jumped into structural engineering and I was doing a lot of steel fabrication shop drawings for, like the sugar industry, and that gave me a lot of insight into drafting detailed shop drawings, gave me a lot of insight into steel and member sizes and how it all goes together, as well as being able to draw something that someone needs to interpret and build without you directly talking to them.
Speaker 2:So I sort of worked my way up from there, did three years structural drafting until I sort of landed in building design and it's kind of always where I wanted to land. And the moment I sort of got that first opportunity as a cadet, I loved it and I knew it was what I wanted to do, and very quickly, yeah, I sort of fell in love with the whole client interaction and the process and meeting new people and seeing how new people live and, yeah, designing more than just sitting in front of a computer drawing during your day-to-day, but actually going out and talking to people. And I did eight years of that, 10 years, 10 years of that. And I did eight years of that, 10 years, 10 years of that. And then yeah at the end of the year. I've been talking about it for a long time and it just. It was just like yeah, now or never. When?
Speaker 3:are you going?
Speaker 2:to start your own thing. It's always going to be you've got kids or you've got something, and I did it.
Speaker 3:It's always an excuse. Yeah, exactly yeah, you don't have to look hard to find excuses. Yeah, exactly that explains a lot because Brett talks. He's told me how good your drawings and that are, so having that like I think the best designer, the best architect, the best builder are people that have multi skills. Yeah, because you would know, you would understand how the structure goes together doing all the shop drawings for steel and stuff, which would obviously help you in the way that you design.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then as well, having access to builders who can give you that uh extra level of those construction details and how things go together.
Speaker 2:And I know brett right now is about to school me big time on uh falls and floorways, and just from the last, meeting we had, uh, I thought, well, there's a lot to learn here and you know, with the whole, uh, like the weedy products that you're using, and there's just so much that you learn from, uh, talking to builders and other consultants and specialists, and so, yeah, just yeah, as many people as you can bring on, I think, uh, it's reflecting the drawings and, at the end of the day, a successful project yeah, working together, yeah.
Speaker 3:so the main point of being here today is um collaboration, um, because it it's been an absolute game changer to well, not just my, I think, my life as well, I think you could go for that as well.
Speaker 1:Yep 100%. So much easier to bring other people's expertise into it. It's just that it makes for such a better outcome for everyone involved.
Speaker 3:But even just getting involved early, even when you there's too many benefits to even try and there's hundreds. But even just being able to have those conversations before a contract signed and like have worked together as a team, review the drawings, discuss any issues that there might be. Any might be an issue with structural steel and design. Maybe they don't line up or something like. Most of that stuff, nine times out of ten, isn't getting resolved until the builder's on site and trying to build a job, yeah, and then it has a massive effect and flow on effect.
Speaker 1:It costs very little to change things in design at that design stage and if, the more we can pick up there and make that smoother transition on site, it just makes everyone's life so much easier yeah and look.
Speaker 3:So we're like with traders and stuff as well, like we're. We're talking to quite like like our main ones, like, say, a plaster, a plumber, sparky cabinet maker, um. But we've been talking to them for a while now about charging us a fee to um give us more time, so the any of the ones that come out and meet the client have a site investigation, those types of things, because we're getting paid for our process now. So I think we should be giving a little bit back to them. That's the point we're at now. But even just again, we never used to do that.
Speaker 2:And is that a cost that you're covering, or is that something that the client?
Speaker 3:We include it in our PAC process Awesome.
Speaker 2:It's not like the client's getting hit with invoices every few weeks, it's like they, you've given them your quote and this is what we'll cover for you. I don't know, seeing yours, it's the soil test. It's um, even potentially going out and doing life size again. It's all these extra things that get along the way under the one big fee. And you're then looking after everyone else that's coming out onto site. And I'm the same. I don't want to go out and talk to people necessarily for free. Sometimes I will, but sometimes I don't. The same thing for you as builders. And then the trickle down Everyone else who's involved is coming out and giving their expert advice and opinions, and once you've got that information, you've got the power now to go with the next cheapest person. So I think if you're being, you know, paid for your experience and your knowledge and, um, yeah, yeah, I haven't even thought I could just trickle down to everyone else who's everyone.
Speaker 3:At the moment we don't look the sparky with a couple of our sparkies we paid a fee to just to do like a permanently electrical layout. Um, yeah, uh, a couple of times we've paid our spaces, got to come out to do uh, inspection just to like quantify. Paid our asbestos guy to come out to do inspection just to quantify how much asbestos is on the job and those types of things. But again, all that stuff is stuff that, like, probably our plumber is a good one for it, like he'll quite often review the drawings and send us feedback. Or actually even our roofer like our roofer will email back and go, oh, look, that skylight doesn't meet standard, or that it's too big, or we need to do this, we need to do that. Or actually we just had one recently, first round of costings, and the roofer come back and said, hey, look, those sheets to get into that street where that job is, those sheets are too long and it's going to require a special truck and escort vehicles and those types of things.
Speaker 2:So, um, and what was that problem going to cost when it happened versus you know whatever it was going to cost for him to give you that bit of advice and and cover yourself for that foresight. And now it's smoother, and so you spend a little bit of money now and you save a lot of money down the track.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a no brainer.
Speaker 1:It's so often the case, I think by having the builder involved as well, it's just allows us to make sure we only get the third party consultants or them trades we need to pay, we only get the ones we require in. We can go through and not every plan say we're designing something and it doesn't go near a boundary, like there's no need to get that boundaries pinned or anything like with a surveyor, so like there's certain things that will that are required on some jobs and some that aren't, and for us to be able to determine that as soon, just the bare minimum that we need to get to the first round of costings to give them confidence that they can move forward and they're going to be able to build what they want. I think that's one of the biggest values that we can offer.
Speaker 3:Yeah 100% In reality for a client, like any clients that are listening to this, but even builders, so you can educate your clients.
Speaker 3:But every there's every builder runs a different business, so it is absolute.
Speaker 3:Like I've talked about this a lot, it is absolutely impossible to have two builders quite a job the same, like brett would quite his job, far different to I'd quite my job, like I've got supervisor brett doesn't.
Speaker 3:Like it's different structures, different business sizes, like so that alone can change the overall cost of a build by a lot. And then, on top of that, then you've got builders that have no understanding of their overheads, aren't making any money, are chasing the tail and pushing the client to go ahead, and they're always going to be cheaper, valuable. This process is like the way I think about it is whether these costs are picked up in the early stages or not, you're still going to have to pay for them. So whether you're doing the homework early on yeah, and you're, and it's included in your contract and you know the overall cost or you go with a builder because he's 100 grand cheaper and then he's figuring all this shit out and charting new variations yeah, yeah, but the end cost isn't like it's much better to have the opportunity to make changes or at least be prepared for it.
Speaker 1:It's like anything. It's like we set an expectation and when something doesn't go as expected, there's no wonder they get pissed off or clients feel like they've been hard done by, and it's it's our role as professionals to be able to forecast what that process is going to be to the best of our ability, and then highlight the bits that we can't so that people are at least aware that this is a possibility and duane's great at it.
Speaker 1:He's videos out there on all the time that he's there'll be a variation on site. He's already known it's a possibility and he's briefed the clients there that it's not a for the first time. They're hearing about it when they're just starting to get out of the ground. Sorry, it's just the start of the job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like even at the design phase, when you're talking about town planning and, as you said before, building to boundaries, I love it when you give them the design fees and then the surveying fee and like, oh, do I really need to fork out another couple of grand for the surveyor? Like, well, we're building a carport and there's no fences anywhere, so I really am going offline of site and it's close to the house, it's just peace of mind. Yeah, and inevitably you're going to have to pay for it, because the builder needs it, he needs to peg it all out, so we might as well pay for it. Now the design can be schmick, exactly where it is, and then it's not getting to building approval and it's like, oh, you don't need that, he'll go and just build it and then yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you get the phone call and he's like why am I exactly 600 mil out? And it's like, well, you should have got the stuff there. It's not just that.
Speaker 1:There's things like underground services like build over infrastructure. There's things that need to be thought about so far, so early in the whole process that can just make such a big difference and literally determine, have a big play, a big role in the design itself, knowing them, parameters.
Speaker 2:Oh, just like. The best example for that would be Waterview Ave, craig and Jen. At the moment, where, going through the whole debacle of what do we need to retrofit the house to make it comply with liveable housing standards, you talk to one certifier and he says that you're going to have to widen all the existing hallways so that you can access one toilet. Blah, blah, blah, and I've been passing on that advice, and then Brett put me in touch with his certifier, who I will be using all the time now.
Speaker 3:Michael Van.
Speaker 2:Dyke from Anyone Certifies. And he turned around and says, well, no, because there's an extract from the australian building act that says about renovations. At the time of it was built blah, blah, blah, around the 50, and suddenly we can just leave everything how it is and this whole, like it, would have added tens of thousands.
Speaker 1:It just completely changed the design.
Speaker 3:100 and that's a pair of collaboration like no one person knows at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, traditionally I was taught building design, soil test engineering, uh certifier, builder certifier and you didn't know about anything until they'd spent all the money on everything up until then oh, Ashton, we need to go back through and have to change it all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so now it's part of the pre-design process is talking to the builder, talking to the certifier, talking to the town planner, anything that you think is gonna be flagged, having everyone's advice on board, and then that dictating the project. And you know, again, with craig and jen hyde, we've got this issue with the traditional building character. We've got, you know, original windows on the front facade and just talking to all the consultants finding out the likelihood of it being approved, the costs involved, and suddenly it's going to be a six thousand dollar exercise just to move the windows.
Speaker 1:So it's like, well, let's just keep that and not go through any of that process and we'll just leave the windows in there yeah, once we can get to a stage where we can put a dollar figure on things for people to make a decision whether they value that for that, for that amount of money, or not. That's just it's really hard to get to and we need a certain level of documentation prepared to get to that, to give people that level of information. But it's it's. I find it's one of the people, most people we talk to. It's one of their biggest fears just not knowing what things cost and the implications of little things like that, which look it wasn't a massive change to their overall design than.
Speaker 1:Windows, but it's. They know what it was cost. They don't value it. We're moving in different directions.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yep, and and and. It's a beautiful conversation all the time because everyone is working together with the client's best interest. I'm not walking around saying it would look better if we could get the windows and put a nice set of symmetrical front doors, and what's the town planning? You're going to get it approved, blah, blah, blah. It's not my house, it's their house. And just giving them all of the facts that they need to know, then they make the decision. And if they want to go and spend six grand to get two windows moved from town planning and council, like council's going to say, thank you, you've just given them two thousand dollars, uh, but yeah, that's your decision. I'm not going to be sad one way or the other as long as, at the end of the day, you've got your house and you love it.
Speaker 3:So what? Just go back a little bit, I guess what? Why did your pat like you obviously saw value in this very early, but like if you've worked in another design business for seven or eight years that wasn't doing this or wasn't doing it as well like what's made you go this way you years and years ago, uh, um, uh, in tripoli, golf course.
Speaker 2:Uh, I went there to do uh, or just listen. I suppose I had a panel of people talking about some people from council. Um, I forget what it was, but you hopped up in the end and you were talking about exactly what we're talking about now the preliminary process and builders getting paid to do their due diligence and do all of this kind of searching. And it resonated with me and it was digging around in my head and I thought, yeah, of course we charge $300 to go out on site and talk to people and we're there for an hour. You guys back and forward late at night sending tendered or plans out to window manufacturers. And I thought, yeah, just, it's a no-brainer. And, uh, made me even think about myself again. Look what is three hundred dollars enough for my time. Like it takes me an hour just to get there and back. I'm an hour there on site doing all my desktop searches and stuff at home, so maybe there's more value in that.
Speaker 2:And then you talk to you know another colleague comes along and they work somewhere else and oh, we charge five thousand dollars. You just think, holy crap. So and then looking for the value and then finding way, and so I just started following you more and just hearing more and more about it and then finding people that you've influenced, like brett. And then brett mentioned your name. One time. I thought, oh, it's real, because, uh, it's working. And I've done I don't know how many jobs with you now, brett, um, like, uh, on two hands at least.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, we've done a few now, and they've all been through. It's all been perfect.
Speaker 2:We've never had we've never had a client halfway through that got an unexpected surprise, of course, and we were just talking about it before they get the first set of plans and it always creeps up, but they're aware of it. They're aware of it's going to cost more. It's going to cost more, let's see, let's see. And there's never a big slap in the face at the end where it's like you never told me. So it's tried, it's tested, it works and, um, not so.
Speaker 2:At my last company, I was the principal designer there for the last two years and was really trying to drive that and it was like chalk and cheese between the old builders who were getting used to having someone come out, give all the town planning information for free, all this for free, blah, blah, draw the plans and then they'd always say don't talk to me until you've got engineering, and like building approvals around the corner and a few of those builders they drop away because your prices start going up, because you're paying yourself and I was taking advantage of you and new builders start coming on board, like brett and a couple of other builders, um, who are open to it as well. You are like the one that is there from day one email emailing ceasing. There is still some builders that are on board, but they're still like yeah, talk to me when the design is wrapping up. I'm like, well, your influence is crucial.
Speaker 1:It's too late. You just missed out so much opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all my work is renovation work mostly, so like, like you really Like.
Speaker 3:it's not For a builder and yourself probably, but definitely from my point of view just getting the opportunity to sit in front of clients and get to see how they react to things, learn more about them personally, learn more about their financial situation learn more about their timeframes. I can take all that information back on board and use it to forecast my jobs and grow my business. Figure out, figure out, oh shit. Three of these clients are pretty serious. Like we're gonna have to grow a team or like all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:Like it's yeah, it's a no-brainer, yeah, it's just a massive opportunity and just the rapport you build with with clients, I think by the time you get to site it's exciting. Everyone's there, they're at ease because they've already worked through and talked through all the harder conversations around design and I just just think and it's been a good process so far. Yep and if you're not doing it, you just miss out on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You really you'll be starting behind the eight ball when you get on site A lot of people feel that the process like people, especially with Live, like Build, and that now the amount of messages we get from people saying, oh, I'm doing a similar process or we, oh I'm I'm doing a similar process, well, we're already doing that. They're not like because they've never done a course, they don't know it like um, and so that's something we've been really cautious of because we don't want people to say they're doing it. That's why we do our pack train. You've actually got to get approved by us.
Speaker 3:But um, because and even builders, like a lot of builders I think, try, but they won't pay the money to learn what the pack process is. The pack process isn't just come and sit at a few meetings, price a job once. Like it's a whole detailed, like site investigations, go to design meetings. Like our process allows for four rounds of costings because, as you've touched on, like the, the first one is always over yeah, always, and a lot of times the second one's over, but the client's educated, they know it's going over because you keep guiding it.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people want to know how much it will cost to build exactly what they want or have exactly what they want, and they'll know in the moment if it feels right to find that extra bit of money and pay for it, because it's something that they and I don't know how many clients we've done as well whether it starts out at one fee and it does end up being three, four hundred thousand dollars more. Yeah, not because we keep drawing what they don't want, but because it creeps and it changes. And this is 700, they go. Oh well, this is what we can get for 700.
Speaker 1:They learn a little bit more about what they want as well through the process, because a lot of them haven't done it before. So sometimes we just don't know what they want at the start they think they do and as we go through and put other ideas in front of them and assess that yeah, oh, that's $20,000?
Speaker 2:Suddenly it's not that important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but in some people it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can give you examples. Either way, I did a first costings review yesterday with the clients and the designer and this is a pretty extreme example. But these people come to us. It's a. It's a house that, um, they purchased about four years ago, not knowing at the time that the the job it had two builders go broke on it never been finished properly.
Speaker 3:Qbcc has come in, done some rent rectification work still not done correctly, um to a point where the christmas gone. They come back from holidays. The house was just full of mould from the amount of water that had gotten into it and the house got condemned. They couldn't live there. And this is a multimillion-dollar house to start with. But they come to us knowing, like they knew, that around the edges the house needed some work.
Speaker 3:But they come to us with a plan to spend $400,000 to $500,000 to just tidy the house up and fix what they thought needed to be fixed and through Aaron from Green Case Design and myself having meetings with them explaining this process and what we do and basically just saying look, you tell us what you want to do, we'll educate you on what it costs, and you tell us what you want to do and what you don't and, like I said, this is an extreme case but that has now grown.
Speaker 3:Like we are, basically all that's going to be left is a ground floor, slab, block, work floor structures and external walls. Anyway, we really did a shit job. Anyway, with the pricing point of view, like full on finishes, lots of off on concrete, and so first round of costing is 2.9 million and we basically left that meeting. So there's things there that will just come straight out, big item, big ticket items, um, and so what we've got is a client that was thinking about spending four or five hundred to get their house back to a livable scenario, realizing to do that they've got to basically touch a lot of the house to rectify dodgy work that in the beginning, which means while they're doing that, they may as well get the house of their dreams, asking for their dreams, us putting a price on it and then walking out of the design meeting yesterday basically setting on look, let's pull a few things out. Um, we're happy to spend around two to 2.2, yeah2.2 million.
Speaker 3:Yeah wow, and that's from an inquiry that we thought was going to be a $400,000 or $500,000 job and then look, it goes the other way as well. We get clients that come to us and say they've got a million-dollar budget, but the reality is they've only got a $700,000 or $800,000 budget. A lot of builders miss out because they well I don't think I know a lot of builders miss out because they don't take that time to educate the client and because they don't have a system or a process behind them. They don't value their input or their time and so they walk away from it. When they leave, they leave the money and jobs on the table. It's a crazy You've got to.
Speaker 3:You've got to assess every single inquiry and take a little bit of time. Well, you know, brett, from like you have an inquiry form, you suss them out, you ask them some questions, get the information. You need.
Speaker 1:Usually get half the budget that they want to spend in the questionnaire first up Usually got to do a bit of digging. But a big part of the budget, I think, is understanding how do they get to that budget, is that? Just what they think it should cost. Is that the maximum that they can financially achieve? What's the reason behind that? And often it's not. Often it's just oh, we have friends that renovated Ten years ago, ten years ago.
Speaker 3:Well, these days, if it was 12 months ago.
Speaker 1:It's out there Six months ago. It's literally that it's just not worth its weight. But yeah, it's understanding how they got to that budget and then understanding what they actually value and what they think they want and what they want they need first and then what they want, and it's very rare that I get a client that I say what's your budget and they say this is what my budget is.
Speaker 2:They all say I have no idea how much it's going to cost. I know what I want, but I have no idea how much it costs. I say great, okay, well, how much? If it came in and someone said 500, are you going to flip or are you going to go? Oh, we've got that, we can work with it. And you always get an answer out of that and it always comes back oh, we've got 300, blah, blah, blah. The jobs always go ahead to 600. Like it always creeps up there Sometimes. Like sometimes I got more, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I always think like, is it from a design perspective, where they're like I'm going to tell you a smaller budget so you don't go and charge me like 10 of the fee or something like that? So I always think like, okay, well, you've told me what you've, what you want to work with, you've told me what you absolutely need. Uh, I can go off previous jobs recently where I've heard what the the cost is, but I can't actually sit here and that's why you need a builder in at the start to to collaborate and be there with you. So I'm not having that conversation, I'm not pretending like I know what it is, uh, so that I can, you know, win the job or confidently proceed them falsely or whatever, and uh, even with what we're talking about now.
Speaker 3:But like you, I I only know from. Like I, I believe, by going by being involved with multiple designers and architects like I'm a better builder because I understand more about what's why they're doing things but and knowing what I know now, like you, if you don't spend enough time to educate a client, talk to them about your process and build that relationship with them to get to make them have the confidence to give you a realistic, like their real number, it changes your lines on paper yeah but, you're if they tell you 300 on a renovation, yeah, you're going to approach the job very differently to if they told you 600.
Speaker 3:Yep, so they they're actually. And something that like being involved in this process and, um, understanding you work, like how a designer architect works, like I get it now because Aaron educates me all the time and that's the other powerful part of this like building those relationships with other consultants, but Aaron educates me all the time. Like, if someone tells me 300 on a renovation, it completely changes where my brain goes and how I start designing.
Speaker 3:If they tell me 600, it's very different. But then when a client says they've only got 300 and I start designing for 300, but then it's traveling right and it's on spend and then they choose to spend more, it actually ends up costing them more because then it changes his whole design. It's a redesign. Yeah, actually ends up costing them more because then it changes his whole design. Yeah, it's a redesign. Yeah, yep, so like honesty, like building that rapport and that relationship and that trust and confidence is huge, like it. Just at the end of the day, if you're not, you're wasting everybody's time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like we were just talking about it before, um, with another client that we have, they got their budget. It feels pretty healthy, uh, but they're extending to the front of the house. They're excavating over a meter to build a big garage and pretty much getting from a subfloor garage up some stairs into a new front extension to their house and very confident that the budget won't quite reach it there. And so I'm out on site and doing the measure and laid some tapes around and said we can get your stairs inside your envelope and definitely save all of this work out the front, which will save more money for your subfloor garage. And it was. We'll know this is something that we definitely want, like.
Speaker 2:And so it comes that point where, okay, we've got four hundred thousand dollars. Uh, do we want to spend that and and actually get a product because we could afford it, but then sit there at the end and go, ah, it was four, was $400,000, and we don't have the big grand entry that we want. We've still got a dicky little bottom landing straight from the front door. So do you spend the extra $200,000?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you might be living a bit more frugal for a few more years, but you're not going to get three years down the track and go oh, now it's going to cost another $400 to do that extension, so it is the budget, yeah, flexible, but it's the conversations and understanding where the value truly lies and what you are trying to get out of it, and then having someone that listens to that and that again draws for what you want for your budget, what actually works, what the builder can build. And that process is, um, so and you said before, like, why are you doing it now? Why weren't you doing it your last place? So why have I chosen to continue that? Not what I was taught? Um, because I've never had a bad experience doing it that way, but you've had bad experiences the other way, and time and time again it's proven. It's like there's only one way that I like to work now and that's with the builder at the concept stage like, come out to the meeting with me.
Speaker 3:So how do you approach it? Like to give listeners, like if you two can talk about how you approach it, because I think that's a big thing that holds a lot of people back. They don't know where to start. Yeah well, it's all from Brett, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Well, so it's not. I don't sell other consultants that we need and our homeowners, our clients, will engage them directly. So I'll generally go out to site. Sorry, even further back they'll inquire. We've got an email with a link. It's an online questionnaire. You can add attachments if you've got plans or if there's surveys or anything, pictures, all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:We just try and get as much information out of that first email questionnaire as we can. From there I determine whether we're suitable. We'll give them a phone call just to touch on a few things, to try and just to really try and hone in whether we're going to be suitable for them and they're going to be a suitable client for us. If that's the case, we'll arrange a meeting and I will go and meet with them free of charge, first up, and it's usually an hour and that's when I'll just we more or less just run through the process. We don't really look at the house so much in that step. It's not really important to me at that stage, although it's often what clients think you're going there for.
Speaker 3:Well, that's where a lot of bills go wrong, because they'll spend an hour walking around the house.
Speaker 1:Yeah look, we can point and talk and speculate about all these sorts of things. It's just a waste of everyone's time. It doesn't give them any more clarity. If anything, it probably gives them more questions. It's just not a good way to start the process and then we'll calculate what ourit fee is going to be and the pack process fee is going to be and we'll send that through. The pack process outlines the whole process from start to finish and how Ashton will be engaged or designed. If they have designers of their own, we're happy to work with them. We prefer to work with Ashton because of this relationship that we've got, and then that design process happens from there. So the first meeting I'll meet with Ashton and the clients on site. That meeting's pretty much completely to get their ideas out of their head and give Ashton an understanding of what that scope of that design's going to be, so he can prepare his fee proposals for the design work.
Speaker 3:So how are you selling it to the client? To to build the team but and not just sign your your fee and go and get a design done like?
Speaker 1:the pro when they read through our process, it probably sells itself. It's just the step-by-step part where we price. So we priced from first concept design. We'll have they'll have accurate figures around the concept designs, as opposed to going right through to BA level and wasting a lot of money through all that sort of stage. So it's about having our professional input with the knowledge that we've put together over the years in our previous jobs in the process as early as possible.
Speaker 2:That's enough to sell me straight away. If I can know where I'm at roughly more or less, without someone throwing a dart at a board but actually taking a little bit of time to do it. I'd be like, oh great, like I just want to straight away go and do that, like even getting the soil test at the start. And I saw your list that comes with your pack process and I was like holy shit, like it must cost a lot of money. I have no idea what you actually charge, but just looking at all the things that you do, I was like it's way more involved. My list is probably half that at my initial stage.
Speaker 2:And uh, it's not that you just like sitting there, you get the plans and you go. I'm going to tell them it's $300,000 and that thank you for your money. And here's your process. Like there's a and, knowing you as well, you're going to be methodical, you're going to go through every single thing and they will get it very close to where they are. And you nailed it before when you said they engage Ashton directly, not me. I hate the strong word, but I love it when that happens, because when the builder engages you, he is looking at his bottom dollar and he does not like getting a fee proposal from me. He wishes it was free and that he could just pay for me. Right, when this client signs him on and he's gotten his first deposit fee proposal from me, he wishes it was free and that he could just pay for me. Right, when this client signs him on and he's gotten his first deposit, they can pay me and it's always the cheapest.
Speaker 1:So the main reason at the start of our process the idea of that sort of thing paying all the consultants directly. My whole focus is getting the client certainty that they can build what they want to do and get to a stage where they've got certainty for the lowest amount of outlay.
Speaker 2:You don't have control over what you want to build.
Speaker 1:I don't want to make any. I'm not in it to make money off that stage, I just need we cover our time and our expertise. But we want to get the client's certainty that they can push forward and invest in all the rest of the consultants, the further design, for the cheapest amount of financial possible, because that's a big problem in our industry. It's really hard to give for clients to know what something's going to cost without spending a fair few thousand dollars.
Speaker 3:It's like, honestly, it's um, I've got a million things I can in my head trying to talk about here but don't want to go all over the place but like, at the end of the day, like I'm, I don't even listen now when I hear building designers and architects and builders whinging about things because they're creating their own issues. Any builder that I sit here, everything I talk about is honest because I've got the experience. I've had it. I remember the days when I would get calls from architects saying hey, I've got this client that wants a 300 square meter house. It's on a bit of a sloping block, they want this type of cladding and like literally on the phone expecting me in two, two minutes of conversation. So, yeah, what do you think that it's going to cost? And and I remember me going oh look, we've just built this one. It was, yeah, 700. Yeah, oh sweet, all right. Well, I'll tell the client that and like, sign your name here please.
Speaker 3:That was the and so they go off and work together and then three months later you get a call or an email hey, we finished that design. Can you put it? Put some numbers on it and you, the plans come through and like, oh, like, oh it would be, it would be hundreds. Like back, well, back in the day when, like I think I've talked about before, like we did all our data, we averaged for a 10-year period, we quoted, we were quoting around 40, 42 jobs a year because we were stuck in that stupid tendering scenario. So that's hundreds of jobs, and I remember them. Like you would literally click the button to open the attachment and the attachment would pop up on the screen and be there for two seconds. You go fuck, that's double like, that's, that's one and a half million like and. And then it goes the other way as well. Like you hear architects, designers whinging about um, I just feel like I'm reworking all the time and I'm redesigning all the time, like I'm not getting paid for it. Do, do they have a process?
Speaker 2:exactly, yeah, have a fee proposal. At the last place I worked at for six years, the fee proposal was four document like four pages long, and the the scope of work, the brief, what we would deliver them was a paragraph and people would come back all the time with the. He said, he said, she said, do it for free. And so it's like, well, how do you fix that If you just have a solid fee proposal with exactly what I'll deliver you sections, elevations, how many of, how detailed will they be?
Speaker 2:There's a big difference between building approval plans and construction. During plans outlining that, you are delivering concept prelim building approval and then it's up to you to work with the builder, or you know, to get construction, or here's a fee to do construction drawings. And then here's your brief down to the T, like you want a double range, showerhead, this or that, and then when it deviates, there's the scope of work is five bedrooms, three bathroom, raised building under. If it changes within that, it's your free amendments. But when you start going, oh, actually, let's do the granny flat out the back, and is that a free amendment which I've had before, a totally new thing included in your scope of free amendments, and it's like, well, no, and well, where's it um?
Speaker 3:say that it isn't yeah where's your description of what a free amendment is, and I was like a lot of designers and architects would would do that yeah, we'll do it, and then whinge about it, for and exactly, and it's like well, we all create, like this industry creates its own problems, like it is so old-fashioned and broken.
Speaker 2:It's not funny and it's um and I think I was just listening to helen's podcast and she um said it, uh, that we're building designers, we're draftsmen, you love building a house, I love drawing and I love software, but we're not accountants and we're not, you know, document controllers. We're not all this, but we are.
Speaker 2:When you start your own business, you're doing it all yeah, yeah, exactly, and then it costs money to go to consultants and you can get a little bit of advice to to keep yourself going. But yeah, if you're not reaching out to those people, or or the professionals yeah yeah, exactly, and, and trying to be the whole, I'm gonna try and keep as much money as I can.
Speaker 3:Then you're gonna lose all your problems too. Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, that's a good way of putting it, mate. Yeah, it's um, it's just like it. It's like it's I do struggle with. Like it's easy to sit here now and talk about this and like it just works, like I would not consider doing it any other way now. Like just even like my team talk about it now, how smooth our jobs run. Like a lot smoother. We still have problems everybody does but like there's no delays on site now because you're waiting. You've had to go back to the clients, back to the designer, to get plans changed or sort a problem out. Like the issues on site are more around bloody shit turning up on time or the schedule raining and yeah, those types of things.
Speaker 3:Or people being sick and stuff yeah but like to me, it's just an absolute no-brainer. And I it's like butting your head against a wall, like trying to tell the rest of the industry to to catch up it is.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I I don't know if I've got less patient with it, but I get pretty like you choose to do it yourself, like we've had a couple of people reach out to us and ask how we do it and you're telling them and they're constantly fighting you for it, like arguing with you for it. You called me to ask me how we do it. Don't argue how I'm doing it. And a lot of the time I think what is hard for people who haven't done it and I can remember when, before we started doing it it's daunting to feel like you've got to get that whole process together. But when you can do the pack process, it's done, that's done. You've just got to learn how to do it and get confident in what you're doing. And I think a big part of it too, with a lot of the builders not wanting to be involved, is they don't know what they're doing to a high enough level. I shouldn't say that they don't know doing to a high enough level.
Speaker 3:I shouldn't say that they don't know they don't collect the data, it's true, but they don't know the data, they don't know the costs, they're not confident in what they're saying and they're working it out as they go by themselves.
Speaker 1:But you've got to start somewhere. We were all like that, yeah, yeah, we were all like that. But I think once you flick that switch where you're going to learn and you're going to learn to understand how that stuff is why, why we do things a certain way, why clients value us doing things a certain way, that's when it just becomes like it's so obvious that why would you not do it that way, like it's just you wouldn't. It's just not even. I can't even.
Speaker 1:I've never even kind of remember the last time I thought about pricing something out of this structure and I was saying to ashton before we had a bit of a start to the year where we had a couple of jobs fall over. It would have been very easy to go away from this process because it is a lengthy process and I could have probably converted jobs quicker or would have had all the same problems I used to have before. That's one thing that I'm proud about sticking to my guns and going through that. There's a lot of times where I've had to hurry up. This is hard, and but once we get through to them and they come to reality, then they're just so much easier and it's such a more enjoyable experience.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many times we said last year if it smells like shit, it's probably shit. I don't know how many clients you'd come and straight away they're haggling you down. I had one guy sign a fee proposal and then I went out on site, talked to him about everything yeah, great, let's go back to your office. And he came into my office and he sat down in front of the whole team and was like the price is too high. I was like, well, why'd you sign the fee price? And he sat there and I was like man, I felt like we were in Thailand or something. And he just like would not leave until I scribbled out you know, we'll do one amendment instead of.
Speaker 2:You reduced your scope Reducing the scope reducing the communication to the builders on the plans that made it clear that if you need to add that scope on, it's going to be extra.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:So I'm like well, I'm not going to take money off the fee without taking away some service. So what do you want to do away with? And his oh, mr God, I'd love to talk about him. And in the moment they left, moment they left, the manager at the time turned around and said if it smells like shit, it's probably shit. And holy shit, big q cat process. It dragged on. It was the worst client ever and that was just coming down to. If you just had have said no and you weren't thinking about, oh that that nine grand, that's such a powerful thing to be able to say no.
Speaker 2:Exactly you say no, and the universe will make that space for you and reward you with putting up boundaries and give you a good client.
Speaker 3:I absolutely love having these chats on this podcast because anyone that's doing well all says the same thing and yet you still get the phone calls from the people that every sentence you say, they give you an excuse.
Speaker 1:You make the choice.
Speaker 3:If what you're doing now isn't getting you where you want to be or isn't solving your problems fucking stop doing it.
Speaker 2:Something has to change, something's got to change, but like how do you sell it?
Speaker 3:Like Brett's spoken about how he sells it, like how, if someone comes to you like do you have other? Oh, yeah, well.
Speaker 2:I got one, got one another builder who's given me a client and he was a builder and I've just started because he gave me his cousin and his cousin was talking to me and I said, all right, we'll bring phil in once I do the first set of plan. He goes. No, no, he said talk to us. Right at the very end I said, oh, I love him like, uh, great guy, good builder, and I know he'll do a good job. But I'm like Phil, like you should really charge. Oh, I said, do it cost? Oh, no, no, it's time all that. I said we'll charge for it. Like I know, there's other bills I'm always talking about Brett from Saltash is doing it and they've turned around a couple weeks later and said, oh, he's gonna come out for free and do a preliminary quote for us.
Speaker 2:Luckily enough it's landed in the right ballpark. But the same builder referred another client. Same thing, like talk to me when you finish the design. This guy's got 700 definitely doing a raising building under on a small lot. Tbco property wants to do a rooftop pool, rooftop pool, how much does rooftop pool cost? And I was like it's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:I don't think you'll be able to do a raise building under, plus a rooftop bill for seven hundred thousand dollars. Can we just draw it and see where it lands? And I said you're probably going to want to like, if you want an actual answer, pay phil, pay him and he will do a quote and but, and if he says no, insist because it's really worth it. Otherwise, again, I really enjoy him and would love to keep this communication going. But find a builder who potentially would.
Speaker 2:He called me up a few weeks later and said yeah, talk to phil. Uh, we're not going to do the rooftop pool because it costs three hundred thousand dollars alone. And I was like unreal. If I didn't sit there and insist that you do it and go back to the builder and push for it, you probably would have gotten the same talking at the end. And I'll tell you what it costs once we've got engineering, because who knows how much we've thought anyway. So straight away, before I've even done the site measure or anything like that, that's out of the question. And I'm not having to design stairs that take us up and a pump system, and so straight away, the design is a lot more streamlined.
Speaker 2:It's a little more focused, you're ringing that builder and going hey, mate like you talk to him? Yeah, yeah so and we talk all the time and just that mention of uh, I can't believe the and that well, I'm so glad that we're not doing that. Inevitably, I'd probably get a redesign fee because I get to draw it and blah, blah, blah. So it's no skin off.
Speaker 3:But are you saying to him hey, mate, you need to discharge a fee, Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so the conversation with him is developing and I think he is leaning into it, but there's still one builder and he only does north side jobs and he's only like word of mouth. He doesn't have instagram or website. He's the most old school guy ever and I brought him into the office last year and sat him down and I tried to bring on this whole paid thing. Blah, blah, blah, because he was missing clients and he'd call me and go oh, I just you know, have you heard back from this person? Blah, blah, and and he just doesn't believe it. He just doesn't believe it because he's so old school. There's no people shouldn't be paying. I, no people shouldn't be paying. I'm like people shouldn't be paying you to serve them. Man Time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you've got to value your time yeah but I think he's just so like he's.
Speaker 2:So someone will come to me small extension decks and cardboard. He wins most of them, he's happy with it. But he'll call me up every two months and go you've got a gap in my pipeline. Blah, blah, blah. And I just think that if you had more processes and maybe you'd get those bigger raising building unders where you can spend six months on it and you're not churning over jobs in 30 days and always chasing more work.
Speaker 1:It is always going to be hard to educate the older guys that have been doing it for so long and so set in their ways. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it's called uncomfortable pain. At least they know it, like it's not them, it's not daunting and it's really. It is really hard and I I feel for the older guys the last sort of 10 years in this industry well, that's as long as I've been in it, but as running the business, but the software all the improvements that we've all come to.
Speaker 1:they weren't natural to us originally, but it's just common place now and and the the data that we can collect through using software is like that. These old guys are missing out on that and I feel like it's really daunting for them to even think about. I know a few builders, probably one that we know mutually, but they're going to get out of it because I feel like the industry's past them and they're not willing to change. Yeah, just to reap the rewards from it.
Speaker 3:And it's not just our industry. I, without giving too much away. So Brett and I are doing a charity rally and we've got this car and the car's been getting a bit of work done on it and a mate that I grew up with 30 years ago has done a little bit of electrical work on the car for me and I went to pick it up yesterday and I was like, matt, come on, hurry up. I've, uh, I've got to get to queensland transfer, I've got to get this thing registered.
Speaker 3:And he's like come in here and we go into his office and he pulls out a pad and goes scratch his head. He's like, oh, what have I done for you? And like new battery, oh, I did some lights for Spotty. I'm like are you serious, mate? Have you not got your hours or light materials? And he's like, oh, I forget what it was. He's like, look, I'll just make it 530 bucks. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, like this is how most people operate. And then they wonder why they're not making money. They haven't got the clients they want.
Speaker 3:They think they're doing everybody a and I said to him before he goes, he said whatever, it is 530. I was like are you sure, mate, like you've got to be making money? Yeah, no, it's all good, I'll look after you. And like in my mind mind like in the old day and the way that I was brought up, that would have always been awesome, but fan like great, you should look after me.
Speaker 3:Whereas now I'm like mate you have to make money, like don't, just don't look after me. Yeah, it's, it's my job to look after me.
Speaker 2:You need to look after you, yeah, and you need to charge what you need to charge would you say one day you said a rising tide floats all boats and it just yeah, like yeah, if everyone's thriving and going well and there's enough work and there's enough shit out there in australia, small enough population wise that that uh, yeah, you can ask for what you need first, and then a little bit about what you want and turning around and getting your 500 bucks you get end of the month and then you start feeling a bit resentful because you gave your mate that real cheap deal and he didn't give you a slab of beer and you're kind of thinking now like yeah, it's rubbish.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of the ones that operate like that are usually the ones wearing all the hats. Like you said before, they're not themselves in the foot. You know they could be spending a little bit on a admin lady to to run that stuff and keep track of times and expenses and all the stuff that they've put into that car and and then what their overheads, what it costs to run their business. That is what you charge and there is just no two ways about it. Like you go to another, there's other mechanics that I've been to that run a professional business and they chart, you think. Sometimes you think, oh gee, it's expensive but look, I can't do it. And now it becomes more evidence. Once you know how to run a business yourself, you see it all. You look at everything different. You look around in their shed and see all their the outlays and their overheads that they'd have, so all the gear, leases, whatever, and you can appreciate what things cost what they do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll talk about mechanic like then. So that's him, he's down, he's down one end of the complex and then go down the other end to pay the mechanics bill. That's done on the mechanical work and it's five pages, like every, every screw, washer, chalk and cheese, like it's completely listed out.
Speaker 2:I got my bonnet replaced once and that quoted me.
Speaker 3:It was 30 to walk the bonnet, from where the that took off the car to the spray booth and I was like all right, I guess you, but that's it the building industry really needs to, um, take notice of all those, yeah, um, the way people operate, because, at the end of the day, reality is and I'm not sure if you two are the same, but people if you can, and this is why I bang on so much with scopes of work, like for me, I I see value in that. In the scope of works, if you tell me you're going to build a carport for $30,000 and it's just build carport, build hip end carport or whatever, and then there's another quote for $50 for a carport, but it's like excavation of footings, rare, fortunate footings, poor concrete, concrete, pump labour and materials to install stirrups, labour material to put the posts up, labour materials for a supply of prefabricated trusses. If you list every single little thing out, I see the value in the $50. We had a great example of this down dollars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a great example of this. Early early days. We had a job over at thornside. They'd had a previous builder come in and and it's a two-page quote, and it was a builder from the base so, funnily enough, he's no longer in business, even bankrupt. But, um, this price was I think it was 150 000, this little extension, and there his price was, ours was 280 000 and it and I think it was like 15 or 16 pages and I sat there and went through it with them and you could see that it was more than what they thought it was going to cost. And then at the end they come out and said, oh, we've had this built, and this is his quote here, and this is two pages. And, without saying another word, she just ripped it in half and she said we need to get it back to 250 and we're good to go. Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 1:And the beauty of detail, and it takes us a lot longer to prepare these proposals, but you can go through and pull things out really easily. They're literally a click of a button for me to go through and change, yeah, these things, whereas if it's a ballpark, if it's a big, um, what do you say? All inclusive price with just a big number at the end? It's really hard to do that. It's just so. You spend a lot of time in the at that first round of costings. That's probably I don't know, you guys probably where I spend. So the first proper round of costings is where I spend my most time. That's where I build the whole thing out and it's detailed, but that saves me time in the second round. In my end, the second round of costings is always slow for getting revised prices back from trades and supplies, because we happen to ask them to alter stuff.
Speaker 1:It's hard enough Like they're not charging for their time and they've given us one detailed proposal asking them to change it and get it back. That's always a bit of a battle, but it makes my part of it a lot easier to change.
Speaker 2:It's so easy.
Speaker 1:In these times where we went thinking, oh look, we need to sign another job in the next six months, I'll be and I'm spent still spending all the same time doing this proposal. Of course I am because I know if I don't it's going to bite me in the ass in the end. But that second third round of changes it. It increases the chance of us getting that job over the line so yeah, just that detail.
Speaker 3:And again it makes the whole job flow. Like I had a weekly site meeting this morning with one of my clients and she had a question about the robe fit outs and like, without making assumptions or anything, I just said, hang on a minute, I'll bring it up and like, straight away on my ipad, opened up quotas, went to all the internal fit out, went to robe fit outs and I could tell her, like we've allowed 16 mil white melamine civic fit out, one top shelf, a 607 wide stack of shelves, double hanging, like it was. It was all there and so there was no assumptions, there was no. I'll go back to the office, like because I've put all that scope of work me and camille have put all that scope of works in when we're doing the clothes that detail allows them to go all right, that that robe's worth that much and that's what's in it.
Speaker 1:Or maybe we do just pull that out and we put just a top row hanging. For now it's a spare bedroom and there's, there's.
Speaker 3:It makes it really easy to pull scope out of a job, whereas it yeah, if the detail is not there, that's just a nightmare but it also makes it very easy for the client to see value and and guys like yourself to put that on paper like I'm not sure where you guys are at like with um.
Speaker 3:Once we get to a point especially with with Aaron from Green Coast Designs once we get to a point where the client's happy, we provide our third round of costings. We send him our proposal and he reads through our proposal and basically ticks off to make sure that our scope matches his drawings and vice versa. And that's just so much value in that because that way and again, that's another thing that allows our jobs to flow so smoothly, because him and I have such a close relationship like it's very unusual for my team to like my. So the two documents on site that our team reference all the time are our proposal and the plans, and our team are always told the proposal takes precedence over the drawings. If there's anything that's slightly different, you got you ring me and ask me, um, and it just makes life so much easier.
Speaker 1:I think it has to be that the scope of works is, so I do it. I don't have the full proposal. I have the whole scope of works in ours. Um, it's just, it's all the details, without the dollars. Really, that's what it is yeah, it's the same. Yeah, I feel like our guys need to know that the provisional sums, they are all actually listed with it, but that's neither here nor there. There's details you get in a scope of works that aren't shown on a plan.
Speaker 1:They're simply easy. You don't detail and I do prefer building designer plans over architectural plans. But yeah, there's detail, like there's trims and doors, and there's things that we detail and we've costed in great detail on our specifications that aren't on plans and that's it.
Speaker 2:A lot of people ask me how far do you go with the plans? I'll say, well, I'll go as far as you want, how much you can afford, how much time I'll spend drawing the details. But I also don't like going into that detail necessarily, because unless they're paying for, I'm not going to sit down and work out how many square meters of cornice we have and if that cornice fits in with their budget, I'll sort of just draw it if it looks right. Then they get the visualizations. Okay, this is how he wants to look and feel. And then I will be relying on the builder to either go to an interior designer or the builder, sit down with them and go you can afford this one, this one, this one or this one. Which one do you want? And then picking it all out. So then you got the specifications and the drawings. But, um, a really interesting case, my uh client at the moment I'm going through their finished house.
Speaker 2:We did a big renovation, ensuite laundry and robe. I did all the interior specification elevations. We selected all of the finishes and fixtures and they've purchased every single one like they've got no time on their hands. They fully trusted it and went with it. Halfway through they decided they want to change the walk-in robe design. So the builder came out and she goes I want shoe cupboards here. I want to look like this picture. And then that was it. And then it came in the next day and it was nothing like it, because she spoke to the builder. The builder spoke to the lead cabinet maker. The lead cabinet maker spoke to someone trying his whispers.
Speaker 2:Some guy got a second picture picture of Pinterest and built it and came out. That's not right. This is the one that I want. Oh, no, worries, cool, take a photo of that, take a photo of this. We'll get it to mention. Third time back four times. The fourth time it came back out close, uh, and she was like that's fine, we'll leave it at that. And she goes. We should have come back and got it drawn straight away, because that's the communication that everyone passes on, it's not words. And was it 16 mil or was it 20 mil or was it 30?
Speaker 1:The key to a smooth job is having documentation to refer back to Because people will understand things. You can go through a scope of works with someone until you're blue in the face. There'll be something in there they pictured different to what it is, or they said yes.
Speaker 2:When you said you understand.
Speaker 1:And you just simply can't avoid it. There's too many variables in custom building. There's so many trims. We're just putting together a whole pack of all the different trim designs from fin lacents. We're going to have Because we do Queenslanders and there's often three or four different styles of arched rope skirts in one house. People don't. We reference on the piece of paper, on our scope, what it is, but it doesn't. No one's going to check in every detail. So there is always going to be that you need something solid to refer back to, otherwise something needs to draw the line in the sand.
Speaker 3:Well, you need a for every like. It becomes your starting point, like if that client comes back to you and goes we prefer this skirting. It's quite easy to go. Well, this is the one we've had included. This is the cost of the next one.
Speaker 1:This is what the difference is yeah, do you value spending that much to get that?
Speaker 3:yeah, no, yeah. How easy is that?
Speaker 1:yeah it just makes things a lot easier, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:yeah, but just we didn't get back to it before so how are you? How do you sell this process to your clients? So if a client comes to you and says, hey, I want to do a renovation, are you saying look, the best way forward is to find a builder and we work together as a team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they came to me with no builder, that's the first question have you got a builder? I'll do some property searches, look at their property You're going to need all these things and what your budget has have you got a builder? If they don't have a builder, the first thing I say is I strongly recommend and I'll give them the recommendations. It's up to them if they want to do it or not, but I say, if you're not going to have them out on the meeting or the site measure, I will cc them off to at preliminary plans. We need to be doing this and I basically just say that it's part of my process is that I don't go and do working drawings or anything else beyond anything until a builder's looked at it and said that it's on the right track and essentially I don't feel like I have to sell it that hard. Everyone sort of just nods and listens and and they're pretty happy that I'll be able to connect them with the builder and have that conversation.
Speaker 3:A lot of them don't think that they question you about, because Aaron, look well, not Aaronason, like a few other people we work with, like they'll quite often say oh, dwayne, the client's question, well, they need to pay for this, and um, and like he'll. So then I say to him well, jason, you've done it before, like you you know the value in it.
Speaker 2:Well, the only one person that's really pushed back on it was, um, someone I gave him three builders and all three of them said they'll do the pack process or not specifically the pack process, but the preliminary process. And he was like, like I get it when you explain it to me it makes sense. But there's three of them, which one do I go with? And I was stumped like I guess you've really just got to like have to build a relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, talk to them learn about, uh, how they respond to things you say. Are they guiding you by what they want and what's going to be easiest and fastest for them, or are they listening to you and talking about how you can? Like, I love talking to clients with Brett because it's not a no, we can't do that. Next it's how do we go about it and we'll spend so much time. We even had a meeting.
Speaker 2:We're not even at working drawings yet and I've met the cabinet maker on the job and we're doing the renders now and the drawings and the client is awesome. We're messaging on instagram, texting, and now we're going to get through the prelim stage. They're going to have internal elevations, visualizations, confidence like the design has already drastically changed three times now. Stairs have moved and to bring it down, and then we're going to hit working drawings and it's going to be the final detail. Nothing's going to be changing because we're all confident where we stand with town planning, where we stand more or less with fees, and then, yeah, it'll just become another case study, for when I'm talking to the next person, I say where's the value? I can say 10 jobs that I've done in the last 12 months all led to this outcome and the jobs went ahead yeah, I think the biggest sell is the jobs went ahead.
Speaker 1:The jobs went ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we knew from the start where we could spend with money and I don't have a bad experience to tell and so it's up to them really. So we'll be talking to builders and a lot of them are. We're in that phase right now. A lot of my work at the moment is coming from builders a small handful and yeah, it doesn't feel like a hard sell whether they're doing it or not, but I am still at the prelims. We're stopping and we're talking to the builders. And yeah, like I was telling Brett before my pre-designed fee that I'll come out and do your site measure. Sometimes it's free, but if I've got to drive 40 minutes to get there, I told this one guy $500 and he came back and said 300. I was like it's not a bartering service, but never free, never free.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. No one in our industry should have to win work for being the by being the cheapest price yeah like it, just it just should not it should ring alarm bells for the buyer, like for the clientage.
Speaker 1:It's really hard for me to fathom if you think back at it. Whenever and we've all have done it we've all taken something that was the cheapest option at the time, no matter what it is, and it'll bite you. It'll come back to bite you and regret it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't last give you problems yeah, yeah it's really hard done but it's just it's. We just got to keep educating them and the more we can educate them. And it's not hard for people you're saying um for um clients to. He wasn't sure what builder to choose. It's not hard these days to get online and find out what you need to know about get some reviews or just simply ask them for for referral.
Speaker 2:But so with that instance, uh, a week later it wrapped itself up because you only got one reply from the builders. So that's probably another thing as well. Is, if you're doing this process, a big part of it is service. My best mate is really trying to help me out with this business and he has just recently gone through buying his own house and his broker. He was saying A plus service. Every email she responded back to Communication, communication. Everything was just like every phone call was followed up with an email. We had paper trails and he said we didn't even think about it. She just did it and we trusted her and it was awesome. So he goes, if we're going to do this, like it's got to be the best customer service ever replying to emails, answering phone calls, blah, blah. Telling brett messaging a guy last night at eight o'clock at night and then he calls me and I'm like there's the line, I'll text you while I'm watching a show, but I'm not going to call we.
Speaker 1:I think anyone that's not doing a preliminary process is absolutely crazy. You think you're?
Speaker 2:saving money and you're not.
Speaker 3:It adds value to every single part of your business and your life and builds relationships. But I want to talk a little bit about you guys. Like you guys are having, like you visit site now, don't you like? Yeah because I think that's another huge part of our industry that needs improvement. It's all good to sit in an office and put lines on paper but. If you don't understand what struggles and stuff that's going on on site We've done a really good day when you were still at Cyber.
Speaker 1:I think how many of you has come out from the office to Kalani over that day?
Speaker 2:Oh, all of us.
Speaker 3:So I'd prepare and it was at.
Speaker 1:We were doing lockups so most of the inside was framed and everything was starting to get clad and things like that. And I had all these things that I as I was going through, as we were going through building the house. There was just things that were designed on there that I could tell that hadn't been thought about in design and more around the way that we were building things. For instance, we had floating shelves, we had 250 mil rafters that come out over the kitchen area and then they went out through to the soffit. The fact that they're 250mm and we've only got 180mm fascia, we've had to cut all our tails up to 90mm so they can conceal in the fascia and we can get a soffit in. Things like that they would never know about. So it's information like that and just that detail of how a house gets built.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we must have been number three. All your ceiling around the windows and all the extra bits that you do to make a house better, yes, the round window at the front.
Speaker 1:I explained what it takes to install a round window correctly and make sure it doesn't leak, and they're all blown away by that. But yeah, working with it for three hours and it was just. I think we as builders need to get our designs on site, because how do we expect them to know this stuff? They've got to come out, we've got to educate them and it becomes a two-way street. I'd love to learn more about the systems that they use, although it'd probably go straight over my head. A lot of the softwares but you talk about. Learning more about how they work just improves you as a builder and how you understand their step of their process.
Speaker 2:In that step, yeah, well, and that's the thing like, um, I know one builder, um, uh, nest bespoke homes, ryan thomas or whatever his name is. He used to be a draftsman, so he uses archicad and he gets the plans and then he gets the engineering, he goes through models, all of the steel and and make sure that it's all right. And I've got clients that come and sit beside me and we'll go through that plan and I'll live update things on the spot. Um, that'd be awesome thing. Like, do you come in and I know you've talked about in the past but coming in and sitting down and and drawing out the falls to your waist and making sure that we're not going to be sitting above you know the threshold, rebates and stuff. Yeah, jared, jared from.
Speaker 3:Green Coast. Like I definitely got to take my hat off to him. Like he knowing, like well, I guess it's two things Like he has full trust in not just me but my team now and knows that he can recommend any client because he knows we're going to deliver. But um, like it with all the new um standards and that like he is now the amount of time we have spent on the phone talking about yeah, bathrooms and layouts and so he's 100 on board now with yeah, um talking clients and like we and I hate them anyway, like I've always hated showers with no doors on, like if we go back and put doors on showers, that actually changes the whole layout of our bathroom like just the other day, if you have over, like if you tell the clients you have to choose items that have built-in overflows, you can change these things.
Speaker 3:Like yeah so yeah like just getting on the same page is massive.
Speaker 1:That um oh, sorry to cut you off, but that exercise the other night, up at life-size plans, that was unbelievable. That's something we're going to do.
Speaker 2:It was so more of yeah, and, like you mentioned, you'd put in your, your pack process. I was like, oh man, I could even put that in my fees. Like, yeah, extra 600 bucks and we'll go to life size and you can. Like it was to be able to kneel down and feel how much clearance you've got, measure it out. He's got all the props that you can move around. And uh, yeah, just looking at the shower, we want the two shower heads and it was like just add the door back on and suddenly we're on to the next room and it was just it was like, oh, but the cleaning, we did spend a lot.
Speaker 1:We spent a lot of time in that bathroom configuring different things and we ended up very back similar to very well actually designed the first time, but with a door, yeah, and a new wall, yeah. So that just um, that sort of stuff's really valuable, I think. Any any way we can get a client builder and design in the room at the same time. That's when stuff happens really quickly. We get things resolved much quicker instead of email chains. But just being able to have that understand how each other works and provide that in a collaborative package for a client, it must be a dream come true. It's true when you hear a lot of clients that have bad experiences. Yeah, for the ones that have gone through it, um, lisa, off the top of my head, from kalani, she just loved, she loved the whole thing and they're in a house now that they love yeah, and that was a like my first meeting with lisa and scott.
Speaker 2:She you could see that she was closed off. She'd been through this process five times and hated every single plan and and and. When I was there, honestly, my whole thing. All I could think about listening but was she's gonna get the proposal and go? I don't want to pay anything until I see a plan because I've been burned five times. But towards the end you could see her body language went from to pretty much like this and she goes.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've got the right team now with brett and and then, like your energy with them felt like you guys were family friends for for years and it came very quickly that this was like the second or third time she'd met you. She felt very warm. She was like I trust brett, so I trust you. First set of plans was just like landed it, nailed it, let's go stretch the, worked out how much that would cost, bring it back. And then business was suddenly going well so we could afford. But the whole process every step of the way I didn't feel like we were holding our breath to see what it would be at the end or anything like that Very quickly.
Speaker 1:It was a nice process to go through that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that job alone is the job that I take to every other conversation alone is the the job that I take every other conversation. And yeah, it's the, the living example of bringing builders on at the start and beautiful process, like little things that happen along the way, like you just said, with the, the rafters and the, I know waterproofing, with the weedy, using different products, and and again, like having that communication with the builder, I learned about weedy and another way to do. Um, uh, you know waterproofing and then you apply that to the next job and then you get loan even more. Now where, if you're doing outside, they're custom sizes, you're cutting and you're wasting money and so, and you just don't have that, if you're yourself in a closed office and you draw for the client and you back away, and if you get out there and you go out on site while construction's happening and you're picking up all these things, every job gets a little bit better.
Speaker 2:And then, and then you realize that you're standing above everyone else who's not doing all of this, and people are trying to compare you prices and it's like, well, um, can I have a look at their fee proposal? And their fee proposal is a big number with all your concept, prelims, working drawings. Mine will be broken down. You've got a meeting, a site meeting, at preliminary stage. If you're not happy with that fee, then cross out that site meeting and I'll take three hours off my yeah it's just giving clarity and giving people the options, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, and as long as you're adding it back on.
Speaker 3:That's the most important part, because a lot of people that cross it out try and do it for free later yeah yeah oh, yeah, exactly, and it's clear expectations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you don't want the renders now, we we'll cross it out. It'll be cheaper, but we'll add it back on later. But it won't be for free. It'll be back at that price, is it just like? Once I get to know you, then we'll add things back on.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I think it's a bit of a warming thing like testing the waters a little bit Should be dearer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ultimately, the full package should be a price. If they cross things out.
Speaker 1:Those things should be 20, 30 percent dearer because it allows you to do a better job, a more complete job and design in the first place with that full package as you recommend, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:so that's yeah, that's a good thing. A lot of that stuff that you're doing that. I'm assuming that would be easier to do during the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's more work if you're going back and adding it on. Yeah, and that's. I tell people like you're lucky to work with myself and other people who use lumion and visualization softwares because it's designed, you can do it live. So while I'm drafting and modeling, I've got lumion up where I can see the sun and it's live and I can put a big tree there and like you're getting shaded here, so let's move the window across, etc. Etc. If people think like, oh, your price is too high, well, you're comparing me to someone who's not using this software and you get these images regardless because I've made them to do product, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's a different product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your software is huge. Aaron's only really brought me up to do this recently and I was like fuck, I thought we had to spend a lot of money.
Speaker 2:It's incredible. No, I know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, it's like five grand for I was that guy that was like oh man, you just got a few pencils and some rulers.
Speaker 2:You're sitting the desk like yeah, the graphics card alone costs five thousand dollars. It's, yeah, I love it, but it's um.
Speaker 1:This is, this is understanding you what it costs to run your business, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, this is where you actually understand what, and until you understand what is what it costs to run your business, you won't ever truly value your own time. Yeah yeah it's something we talk about a lot. How I get. I sometimes get frustrated with things, with people that aren't doing things to a level I am because of how much I've started to value my time yeah yeah, but I've got to understand that they're not at that level yet or not valuing their time the same and just to be.
Speaker 1:I have some understanding there. But yeah, once you understand the confidence that comes and that the persona you put out when you are confidently and confident and you understand what you're worth, that nearly sells your product for you the way it comes funny about.
Speaker 3:Like sorry to cut you off, but like if you were going and buying a new vehicle, that's the person you'd be buying it from. Like the guy that's confident, that knows his stuff, that's rattling it all off, telling you everything about the car, like that's someone you're going to buy a car off. Yeah, and so to me, like you, you have to like, I have to be that person yeah, we're not natural sales people, are we?
Speaker 1:but at the end, that's what happens when you're confident like I has.
Speaker 2:Alex, bless him. Uh, one of the designers I used to work with. He always used to come to me. He goes oh man, I'll never be like you. You make so many jokes on site. You're so personal, blah, blah. I look at Alex and he's a very handsome.
Speaker 3:You're dropping lots of names. This podcast mate he's going to have his work cut out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do I like he's very good at what he does Very good at what he does he had no reason to not feel confident in himself. Exactly.
Speaker 2:But he'll always feel uncomfortable because he's telling himself exactly that's what I said. You know, I said, man, you gotta on the way home. You've got to go home and just like talk to a client, like that job that you saw today. Redo that conversation over and over.
Speaker 2:Do your first few paragraphs confidence yeah, like how do you start talking to them about, like like, oh, hello, here you are in my house, or what do do we do now? Oh, I don't know, you called me here and like, have an opening to warm them up and you don't have to do it how I do it, you've got to do it how you do it.
Speaker 1:It comes with people being comfortable in themselves, not confident as such, I think You're being comfortable in who you are and it comes back to being confident in what you know. It's know. It's really hard to go to a situation where you're not, they don't feel like you're the expert, like I could go in and I could talk someone's ears off about building. I couldn't go and tell anyone about that car, I'd be just fumbling around, wouldn't know what I was on about and I wouldn't have the same comments at all. So it's really matter just understanding what you yeah, really, you just got to double down and learn, learn, you learn what your profession is and deep dive into to learn in the best deeply as you can, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if you two were trying to sell that car out the front to me and you're there going. It's three grand and it's got some fluffing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rally car, we'll take the stickers off. Yeah, take the stickers off of it.
Speaker 2:But if you're there and you're telling me all the things you've done to it and blah, blah, blah. I'll probably walk away because I'm getting versus, like I'm going to go cause I don't feel like I know enough about the car and I'm going to do my own research, or blah, blah, blah. But just coming down to, uh, like I've got one new inquiry. I'm seeing him on Saturday. Uh, I looked into his house. He's got a 1200 diameter sewer sorry, stormwater going through his property, with another 900 beside it and a sewer, and he's got overland flow. And I was like whoa, hang on, let's talk to a town planner to start with a hydraulic consultant next, and before I even talked to you, because I've never dealt with a 1,200-diameter stormwater pipe, but the confidence that must have given him just in you knowing what to do about those things Exactly yeah, that's massive.
Speaker 2:He followed me straight away, his wife followed me straight away and then just yesterday I've spoken to the hydraulic guy. He's pretty confident he's going to give us a flood report and be able to tell us what we need to do to get out of it. And I think that, working with you, we'll be able to do some clever post set out around the stormwater. But straight away, just doing that little bit of homework and telling them 150 grand on his budget.
Speaker 2:By the sounds of it, yeah yeah, and then you'd give them the fee proposal and they go, yeah, great, cool. Now that I've got all that information, I'll go to blah blah blah, who quoted me half the price, and that's why you don't do the quote for free, because people are getting value, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's just, that's all. It's all value, it's all education, and the more, the more value you add. It's the name of everything Like the more value my team had, the more they get paid. The more value I add to my clients, the more I get paid. Value is everything, and when you can give people value, Reassurance, I reckon is the big thing for them Value and reassurance.
Speaker 1:People don't want to feel Trust. Yeah, that's where the trust comes from. They don't want to feel unsure about what they're going to enter into. It's a scary thing going into building. It's sure about what they're going to end. It's a scary thing going into building. It's a massive investment.
Speaker 3:Look, this process we've talked about today like it's. It's completely flipping everything on its head that's ever been done, because most the way our industry has normally worked is I'll tell you the lowest price possible to get you in the door and sign you up, and then I'll you tell me what you want and we'll add it on yeah and then and then the cost goes up and up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they're in a place they're trapped in and people are really hard to deal with when they feel trapped. That's just put everyone under pressure and angst.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot. Look, hopefully listeners, podcasts can build some knowledge, I think, to make their own decisions. But you can definitely tell by this conversation we've had today it's a no-brainer. Like you have to work towards it. Like you said before, like don't get overwhelmed by it. Like you've got to start somewhere. Yeah, like just maybe steps, every new incline, every new inquiry from here on in, just add something new to your process, just keep improving, improving until you've got a process that is a no-brainer and it's the only way you do business, I think start by writing out.
Speaker 1:Your process is a big one.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time. I don't always have it written out, it was just in dot form, but I reviewed that before I went in and just gave me the confidence that it was fresh in my mind and that was the process I was going to follow. Gee, it's grown light years since then.
Speaker 2:And all that sort of developing as you go, yeah yeah, so right now our you know we search brisbane city council will double. Before you dig, we'll search real estatecom. Uh, you fill out the register, new inquiry, and that's all written out. Now my wife sit down and she's done that because we've got some more people coming doing casual hours with us and and it's so much time to tell this process over and over again and and then ask the question. So writing down all the little things as you go, um, is going to help you out in the the benefit as well. And you're always talking about knowing your numbers as well. I've always thought, um, how you do it without knowing your numbers is like trying to wake up in the middle of the night and walk to the bathroom with your eyes closed and take a piss without getting it anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like um. I think that what was just saying what I was saying I lost me thought train of thought, then sorry, um, but that comes back to giving your confidence like if you don't know your numbers, you can't be confident exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like when they turn around and you say oh, how much is it roughly going to be? And you're talking about, yeah, I think roughly around five thousand dollars. Oh well, can you go and do it for three? And then, if you know your numbers, you don't know. Like I've already given you my most competitive price. Uh, if you turn around, go, oh you know what. Yeah, because I want the job, hoping that it's going to come in with my, if you know, straight away it always ends bad, yeah, yeah and most so many.
Speaker 3:Like I say all the time, 89 of builders would not have a clue but, they would not know the job they've just finished and handed over last week. They would not know if they made nothing or 10 grand, or 100 grand and a lot of and same with tradies, like most plumbers and sparkies would not be able to sit here and say, oh, that last job I did, I made $7,000. It's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it comes back to what we said before.
Speaker 2:You can't blame them because you're not accountants or this and you don't know Excel and computer softwares and that sort of thing, but it's an investment and it's worth doing it. And when I was at Cyber, I was there for six years and they weren't collecting any of that data and I couldn't believe it until I got put in charge. And suddenly you hear about budgets and you hear about this and that and you're thinking like, oh God, and they're like all right, so how are we going to make budget this week? And I'm like I don't even know. So I'm like what? And so you start looking at what I need to be, looking at Like what is our average job value, what is our average conversion rate? And you start putting it down. And I was dumb, I did not know how to use excel at all, but I did some real basic shit and someone who did know excel saw it and was like oh, and turned it into this beautiful big excel sheet that I know where you can get some good excel spreadsheets.
Speaker 1:So oh yeah, you got plenty of great tools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah um, but yeah, look, it's hard.
Speaker 3:I was, um, I got sent a podcast this morning, um, and I was having a quick listen to it and it was pretty old school.
Speaker 3:But, um, one of the things I said in there like you, like people always talk about people being lucky in business and everything always going the right way, and I used to be that person.
Speaker 3:But and they were referring it to like everything else in life, like you, you have to have goals and you've got to put systems and processes in place like it's no. Like he was referring to aircrafts and um ships and things like like, if there's a cruise ship and it does the same cruise 10 000 times, 9999 times, that cruise ship is going to have a successful journey because, like they, they know it, knows how much fuel it needs and know what stops it's going to. Like everything is planned same with an aircraft but, like, during that ship's journey, like some journeys, the weather might be rougher than other journeys, they might have to detour a little bit and bring it back into smoother waters, whatever. Like that's their life and it's your business. You have to have something to aim for. You've got to be constantly just chipping away, putting one foot in front of the other and making improvements.
Speaker 1:Keep reassessing as you go, yeah.
Speaker 3:Like I said before, if what you're doing right now is not making you happy, if it's not getting where you want to be, if it's not attracting the right clients, if you haven't got enough money, if you're chasing your tail like you have to change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and and and otherwise you find yourself having the same whinge every single night and that's what led me to start my own business is, you come home and you whinge about the same shit and eventually your wife just goes. I heard it all for the last year year, and then you're like you know what, me too, and then you do something about it and it's well, it's different.
Speaker 1:I was only thinking the other day, one of the hardest uh jobs in the construction industry would be in a builder's wife or a business owner's wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even if they're in the business or not, they're still they're still hearing it and putting up with it because we go through the whole range of emotions. As a as a builder, it's good, because they know nothing about it and they can hear the same whinge and so, without knowing anything about what I do or how I do it, she's able to talk about what is a solution, and one of that is like the fee proposal, when you whinge about enough people trying to get an amendment for free and oh, finally, I wrote down that.
Speaker 1:Need more data.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah, and then the problems.
Speaker 2:I've never had a problem about a fee proposal anymore or invoicing for changes, because it's all quite clear what has been done and what hasn't been done.
Speaker 1:It is nice to have outside perspectives on stuff too, from outside the industry, with no knowledge of what's going on.
Speaker 2:That is often refreshing as well.
Speaker 3:Well, guys, thanks very much for coming in today. I think it's been an absolute cracker. We could continue on and talk about more personal stuff and that, but, like I said, said today's podcast is really about getting people to value their time. Um builders charging for their proposals doing a pack process, tradies charging for their site fees and call out fees and those types of things.
Speaker 2:But um, where can everyone find you mate? Uh, underscore the mid light. You'll get me on instagram and uh, just midlightcom that I use the, the website. But mid light, yeah, underscore mid light, not life house.
Speaker 1:Um and brett, yeah, saltash homes. Um instagram, facebook, um the website. Any of those um reach out to us and, uh, yeah, happy to help or, um, yeah, provide even more comment on this sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Um, something I'm pretty passionate about, so I'll talk about it all day yeah and look, I don't know if you guys mind, but, like people, go and see your websites, fill out your questions, check out your questionnaire and stuff like um. But yeah, look, hope you've uh, got some value out of today's podcast. So, as usual, make sure you like, comment, share all those types of things, subscribe, because that will help us continue to be australia's number one construction podcast. Look forward to seeing you on the next one. Cheers guys, are you ready to build smarter, live better and enjoy life? Then head over to live like build. Look forward to seeing you on the next one. Cheers guys, are you ready to build smarter, live better and enjoy life?
Speaker 2:Then head over to livelikebuildcom forward slash elevate to get started.
Speaker 3:Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with me, dwayne Pearce, is based solely on my own personal experiences and those experiences of my guests. The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. We recommend that you obtain your own professional advice in respect to the topics discussed during this podcast.