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
That's a Wrap - Level Up Podcast Highlights 2024
ep. #120 Duayne brings you the best bits of 2024 in this year ending wrap up. Thanks for all your support with plenty more to come in 2025.
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G'day guys. Welcome back to another episode of Level Up. Something a bit different today, bit of a wrap-up for 2024. It's been an absolutely cracking year this year. We have smashed it out. We've had so many incredible guests and, look, it is unbelievable. We appreciate your support on making this Australia's number one construction podcast. So sit back and relax. So we've pulled out the best bits, uh, and look, the reason we have done this is because we want you to sit back over your break and go back and get the juicy bits and look if you get a bit out of it, go and find the full podcast and listen to it, because these guests have made a massive difference to a lot of people's lives by sharing their stories. So, uh, let us know what you think.
Speaker 2:So I came in here today to get deep, you know, like sitting. You know we switched to bourbon sitting at the back of the pub where we're talking about our emotions, and I didn't think we'd get anywhere near that. You know, because you are just such a humble person that just wants everyone else to succeed you know, mate, that was fucked.
Speaker 1:I need to talk about this because there are so many people that reach out to me now in that situation and they don't push through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And it is hard. But reality is, life is hard and you've got to push through. So, like, at that point, like, mate, I couldn't even. Like, like I couldn't, we could not even afford to. Like, we had this monthly bills and I couldn't, but we couldn't pay them and I, I couldn't. I couldn't sell shit like I had, I was running out of shit to sell and the shit that I had to sell wouldn't have covered what we had to pay anyway. So I bit my tongue, mate, I started I actually started reaching out to some of my dad's mates older mates that I knew had money yep, telling them the situation, trying to trying to um see what we could do. Uh, one guy lent us some money, which was um awesome, we obviously paid it all back. Uh, a member of camille's family actually ended up lending us a large sum of money. Yep, and that was, that was my turning point, mate.
Speaker 2:So that was so this is where we get to next. So your pivot point when did you like? It's easy, at that point there, right, most people would just throw in the towel, I'm a victim, and you'd be sitting there and be a different narrative saying this is what happened to me. Fuck the world, you know, like it's, it's, it's every. It's not my fault everywhere. But you didn't take that path. You turned and one of the questions here is um, when did you start like success media? When did you start? And what did you start looking for? Like, how did it pull you out of that situation? Like with any books, and which, what age did you start?
Speaker 4:looking for like how did it pull you out of that?
Speaker 2:situation like with any books. And which? How? What age did you start looking?
Speaker 1:into that kind of not then stuff. So the turning point, mate, was like for me it was like I can't even describe it like to be to have to make phone calls to people to to borrow money when you're a grown man, you got a young family and, on face value for the last, for the previous six, eight years, you've been fucking killing it Like yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:I can see it in your eyes, mate, Like it's, it's, it's fucked.
Speaker 1:It's completely fucked and, um, I was like we couldn't afford it and I think this is a this is a really important point, because I get so many people reach out to me, um, that want to join our live, life, build community and tell me they can't afford it. Yeah, I, I could not afford it at all, but I still remember sitting. We had an office under our house, old house. We're living in um, my myself, my wife, uh, the admin lady that we had at the time and like we're gonna have to get coaching, gonna have to get help, like I, we don't have the answers, so we need someone to help us yeah and that was the start of a journey that went for three years, so basically over three.
Speaker 1:The next three years from 2012 to 2015. So we're only talking nine years ago. Like this isn't a long time ago, mate. I reached out to coaches, mentors that I knew in the industry, and by this time I wasn't on social media, but I was getting shown on Facebook. There were some people on there teaching.
Speaker 2:In the background. Here your business is. You're still just trying to claw all through.
Speaker 1:Oh, mate I'm every day is clawing, but every day was fucked, mate I. I did not want to get out of bed, and then I'd push myself out of bed, I'd go to site, I'd set up the guys, make sure everything looked and sounded rosy, and then I'd fucking go and hide in a car park somewhere or drive out in the country and drive around for fucking six hours and then, because the phone could still ring, I could still give people answers. No one knew where I was or what I was doing that, or I was fucking sitting in a side of a cliff somewhere thinking about fucking driving off of it. Yeah, like so.
Speaker 2:So at this point you're at rock bottom and you choose to to fight the battle and go against it.
Speaker 1:I couldn't give up on my family yeah, like camille and and um starting a young family, like there was no way in the world I was gonna fail on that.
Speaker 2:Well, you made the right choice because I'll tell you now through this podcast, I reckon you're gonna save a few lives because it does get that low the industry and that's what people you know like it gets it gets low, it's I can't stress that point enough.
Speaker 1:Like everyone that rings me and says they need help and they want to do stuff and and thinks they can't afford it, you have to afford it. You've got to put your money into. Like, if you don't know the answers, you have to talk, deal with people that do all that have been through it like. This is the only way yeah.
Speaker 6:So then it all happened like we had to do a bit of background work, you know, because it was like then I was new to it all, I hadn't't registered an ABN, I hadn't done any of that. But then because I was working for JJ Richards once I'd done a bit of background check, it was a conflict of interest. So then I had to resign from my job before I could take any moves. So then we pretty much got everything ready to rock and roll. You know, finance sort of found a truck, half ordered bins, and then we resigned from jj, I resigned from jjs, and then it was just go busters, yeah. So then we found a truck we went out to uh, it was out at king roy went and picked it up and then it was old, it was 50 grand off. An ex skip company had to get it all fixed up, repainted. Bought some old skips, got them re-sprayed, all the holes fixed and then.
Speaker 6:So you do some of this stuff yourself no, we had to outsource it all because there was just. It came to the time, you know. So I just spoke to a lot of people I know and my sister works at superior pack where they build garbage trucks. Yeah, so they were, because they were willing to help me out, fix a few things, paint the truck up, paint the bins. Yeah, so that was a massive help. And then, yeah, just created a little website from a coffee guy I met when I used to pick the bins up there. Um went back and seen him and said, pete, it's time to make that website mate, and he was more than happy, created the website. And then, yeah, just spoke to a lot of my friends and family and the the work just started coming in.
Speaker 6:That one phone call came from acm constructions. It was the first call, standing at home, me and my partner, the phone rung and I said, what do I do? She goes answer it. I said, oh hello, trent from brains bins. And it was the first, first ever skip, first phone call. I'll never forget it, you know. And I just, yeah, it's just from then. It's just one thing's led to another that is so fucking awesome, mate.
Speaker 1:So what like? What's the story now? Like two years in how many bins you got two years in.
Speaker 6:We've just hit 85 skips shit and about six months ago we just purchased a new truck mate, fuck, I want to come over and give you a hug that's freaking awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cheers mate so um, do you get a lot of work through your socials, or like, is it word of mouth?
Speaker 6:A lot of my work is purely all our work is through word of mouth and Instagram. Yeah, we don't have, we don't pay any advertising, nothing. All we got was that website made up at the start and that's no. Google leads nothing, just purely word of mouth and Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's a. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that Like you've. And look, the reason I want to dive into it is because I, like I said before, I know there will be people out there that listen to this podcast, that it's running through their brain Like I want to start my own business, like how do I do it? Like, and so you've talked about how you've changed your mindset and those limiting beliefs and things. But like they don't just stop. Like I'm sure there's been a lot of points through purchasing your truck and like and even making I'm sure when you're buying that new truck, you're saying, oh fuck, this is gonna be a lot of finance, I've never had this much debt.
Speaker 6:Like those thoughts never stop, do they, no, no, they never do, and that's where you got to implement stuff. Like you know, one little thing I try to do most mornings is me affirmations, just three affirmations every morning. Just get my head clear, ready to rock and roll as soon as I jump in the truck, just boom. That's what I do every morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:So for people that don't know what that is, what, what are you doing? So affirmations it's something you tell yourself like I will be good today, I am great, I love work, and you say that over and over again, say five or ten times, and it just implements what you're feeling that morning mate, I, I love it.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love it because this, like people look at, like listen to this podcast and they follow my all my shit on socials and they think that it's different for me, like because of where I've gotten to.
Speaker 1:But, just like you said, like I, I still have to do that every day yeah like I tell people, like I fight my demons every single day and I think, well, I know I don't. It doesn't matter if you're working for someone else or you're, you've worked your way up to a billionaire, like it's how you choose to deal with those demons that makes the difference.
Speaker 1:Like I call them demons, you can call them whatever you like, but yeah, I, I regularly have to tell myself like you are good enough to be doing this. Yeah, you, you do have the right to do this. You are, you do have enough experience to be telling people this like it's um, it's powerful stuff yeah, and you just got to have the positive mindset to be, able to be able to move forward. Yeah, and shit happens, doesn't it? Oh yeah, mate.
Speaker 6:There's always shit happening and you cock up and you fuck up, you hit something and you go backwards and you think you know I've done that for free or whatever. But as long as you learn from your failures, that's all you can ask for. You just learn and think back and go. That's where I stuffed up.
Speaker 5:This is where I'll go moving forward. When you've got people around you pushing forward and going for it, you, it rubs off on you as humans, like we only operate in love or fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that's, that's the only two ways, so it doesn't matter what what else you think in reality, you're either operating from fear or you're operating from love. Yeah, and it's the fear that tends to hold 99 of people back. Yeah, because they let that fear control their decisions. So you, is that something you battle with or have you overcome, or like?
Speaker 5:yeah, yeah, every day, every day, like I feel like I could be way more forward than what I am if I wasn't like, if I wasn't scared to move forward. Um what?
Speaker 1:do you? What do you think? Where do you think the the fear comes from? Like, is it? I know for a lot of people it's security, like a lot of people want the security of a, of a paycheck or having money in the bank and they're scared if they risk that it. They'll go back to where, how they grew up or how their parents were or any of those types of things like is it? Is it the fear of losing the money?
Speaker 5:um, a little bit. Um, look, to be honest, my family is like they're all against debt, like completely against debt. My brother and my mom, my dad, those like and um, they subconsciously they knock me down a little bit because they say you know, your whole company should be paying you by now. They should be. You know you should be doing well out of it. You're putting all this work, you're putting all this money and um, you're putting all this work, you're putting all this money and yeah, some of them said sell it. Some of them, you know, and I just I feel disrespected when they say that Because, like, I'm hearing you man.
Speaker 3:It makes me feel like shit it honestly makes me feel like shit.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and because, just because it's something they don't believe in. You know that's something I believe in. I know it's going to work. I know what it's doing now per month. Um, it wouldn't be doing that if I didn't keep that. Because they say, why are you reinvesting all the money? Why I say, well, it wouldn't be at this stage now if I didn't reinvest it a year ago, two years ago. It wouldn't be doing what it's doing now. And then what's it going to be doing in two years time? Do you know what I mean? If I stop reinvesting it now, I'm only going to be doing what I'm doing now, potentially So-.
Speaker 1:What you're talking about now like I want to get up and give you a hug, mate. Like what you're doing now is what holds most people back. Yeah, it's fear of like Because I struggle with this a lot as well, I talk about it quite openly. Like you, we're all bought up. Like I'm so passionate about this. I know I bang on a bit all the time, but fuck it, I'll say it again but like I truly believe that 90, 95, even 99% of people on this planet are not living their life.
Speaker 3:Not at all Because of what you just said yeah, living their life?
Speaker 1:Not at all Because of what you just said. Yeah, because of the way we're brought up, the beliefs, religions, everything that gets discussed in our families growing up. And then when you do get to an age where you can go and work and run your own race and do your own thing, you do. You feel like you've got that constant battle of everyone's you feel like the black sheep.
Speaker 5:Why, if you step out the range, what they believe in? And it's what they believe in and my mum admitted it without even like knowing it, she said to me she said oh, I'm just scared because I haven't done that before. Yeah, and that's exactly why.
Speaker 1:And it's good. Like it's good that family and friends worry about you yeah, but so many people let comments and outside influences from family, friends, even social media and shit, determine the outcome of their life.
Speaker 5:Yeah, definitely, and this is no offense at all to anybody. But, like, if you take advice from certain people, like you look at their life and you evaluate that and you go alright, are they where I want to be, so am I gonna take that?
Speaker 1:you're in control of this podcast, mate, you were dropping bombs. I'm really keen to dive into your story because, um, like you do some cracking jobs and like you're a very quiet guy from what I can tell, and you you keep to yourself a little bit and you, like you're doing incredible work. So where's it, where's it all come from?
Speaker 8:I think, business-wise, I've watched my old man for my whole life. Is he in the industry? No, he's not in the industry, which is crazy. He's just a sole trader and I just watched him grow his business and it was like running a business, I think, is there's just so many things that you can do for your own life. You've got to take it seriously and go into it. But I think building for me. I wasn't called to building. I wasn't like I'm going to be a builder.
Speaker 8:At age eight I left school, ended up like could have gone to university, but, yeah, deferred, worked for my dad who's an auto electrician for like a year and he kind of said, mate, what are you doing? You got to do an apprenticeship or go to uni. And at that point I was like I'd spent so much time in school learning stuff that I didn't think I needed in life and I was like I think I'm gonna do a trade, did work for my dad for probably a year and a half and then I really just didn't. I just went this isn't for me. He wanted it's big pressure to take over the business and I was like, nah, I just I wasn't. I could do the work easily remembered everything he taught me. Yeah, but I just I knew I was good, I was good with my hands, so I did a trial in carpentry and then I went, yeah, this is this is what I wanted to do. And building houses seemed more up my alley. And then um got an apprenticeship which kind of kind of also went badly as well.
Speaker 8:At the start um was that, uh, locally in brisbane, so back then group like all trades had just kicked off. Oh, yeah. So I went into all trades and got in with like a big project home builder. It was a crew, they had like multiple apprentices and everything was just screaming and yelling and get this done. They didn't care. And then I did that for about eight months and watched just apprentices coming and going every week, going this is this, the industry like this is wild. And then there was a local builder back at Elchester and I started telling him about my experiences and he was like we might have a guy leaving in a couple of months if he does jump on board and see if he can get out of that mess. Yeah, so, yeah, I just went, oh, I'm gonna take this. So got on with mike and he, um, yeah, he taught me everything we needed.
Speaker 1:Um sorry, it's a little emotional here, um going back to the past, but yeah, mike I think that's awesome, mate, because I like, I'm like you, like I am so grateful for what my bosses like. At the time I didn't appreciate as much as I think I should have but when I think back now like I'm so grateful for the skills that they've given me, especially. I'm not sure if you listen to a recent podcast we did with Craig Stewart and we talked about a lot of the yeah, so that was a big one.
Speaker 8:Like for me, mike. Like when you're an apprentice, you're like, wow, this guy's just grinding my gears. Yeah. After my apprenticeship I was like I owe this guy so much. Yeah, yeah, and the way his career ended was quite bad as well for him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did he um like have you ever reached out to him and told him that you're?
Speaker 8:probably not because, like I'm I'm a man bad communicator, but, um, yeah, like I owe him and another boss of ours, richard, like the world really. Um, mike taught me everything, taught you how to like. He taught you how to like think for other people early on, which, when you're at a third year apprentice and he would he would make himself the apprentice and like, make you be the boss, which was like it was pretty hard, yeah. And when you're a third year, you're like, oh, this is so much stress. But when, when you go out to be a carpenter, like I think a lot of guys these days aren't learning that to think for other people all day, they just want, all right, is that my role for the day? Should I, should I do this, should I do that? But a good chippy, like, if you're working the team you should be thinking about, all right, am I keeping x, y and z? Are they busy in the corner over there?
Speaker 7:yeah, so there was a. There was a system and a process, yeah, which made efficiency. Um, someone had a cutting list which actually, come to my head, was a story stick well, that's what we used to call it storybooks.
Speaker 1:And the storybook would be a piece of timber and off, cut us a feet sheet, a piece of cardboard like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7:So we did a our shop jobs were doing last year. There was quite a few steps across the front, different height shop fronts, but it was all clattered. Um, we had to start at the bottom but we had to start on the highest part of the shop front and obviously go all the way up and end up the bottom at the lowest point. But we had to make sure that the cladding carried all the way through. Yeah, so I made a story stick, yeah, and my boys were like, what are you doing?
Speaker 7:And I literally got a length of timber and, um, made it long enough, started at the bottom, marked out all my boards. Yeah, put it on the wall, marked it out. Then I lasered a line through, went down further, put my story stick back onto the laser line so that I could see, you know whether it dropped down enough and whether and where it all landed, because I didn't want the joins in my cladding to be like right on, you know, the top of the window or it might work, this window or not, that window, shop front and all these sort of things. So I made this story stick before we even started putting any boards on the wall, had it all marked out and then we transferred those marks onto the stops and then we pulled lines through.
Speaker 1:So for anyone that's listening that doesn't know what a story rod or a story stick is, again, my boss had three of them in the truck. One had all bricks marked out because we did a lot of cavity brick homes, so it would have seal bricks. It had seal bricks marked out on it. It had your normal bricks marked out on it. Then he had another one for weatherboard, so it would have just all the joints. So basically, a story stick or a story rod is just all your standard markings. But I'm loving this actually. I don't know if you're getting anything out of this, but it's bringing up lots of old memories for me and it's definitely reminding me of shit I need to teach my team. But it was just taught to you, wasn't? It was the first thing you did like when you got to a point. So I guess, with the brick work. So we did cavity brick. So while I'm cutting the timber, the, the boss is starting to mark the wall plates out.
Speaker 1:He's using his story rod to figure to make the windows work full bricks like brick work because, mate, if we, if we didn't set out brick work and the brick, he had to cut bricks on every single corner and against every single window. Fuck me, like did we get in the shit? Yep, so everything had to be set out to work. Brickwork Like. How many people would know how to?
Speaker 7:work out brickwork these days? Well, they don't, and that's one of the things I was talking to my boys when we'd had the whiteboard out, and I was talking about the brick base. I then talked about marking out your windows. So we'd often do what they call a loose stud. Yeah, so when you make your frames up, you put your starting, just tack it in. Yeah, so that you could pull it out and potentially push the window one way or the other. Yeah, because you've got the base already in there, you would mark out the windows because the bricky could cut half bricks with his bolster, because we weren't running brick saws like they do today yeah, half bricks were fine.
Speaker 7:Yeah, you get your half bricks, but yeah, they want to be running little quarters and things like that, so you'd make things move and adjust them around. So it comes back to what we're talking before. First of all, the system and the process, but also the why. Yeah, the story stick.
Speaker 1:So, as you were being taught, you're being taught why you do that where today you're not being taught that people out there listening, mainly traders and builders and stuff like what, um, because I want them all to reach out to you. I want them all to have someone as an ice bath. So what's? What benefits are you going to get out of it?
Speaker 9:um. So, obviously, with um, well like, because, because you're um heavily into ice bathing, I suppose the biggest thing is um reduces inflammation. Um, that's a massive thing. If you're on the tools all day, um, or on your feet all day, you need to recover um, one, uh, that's a big thing.
Speaker 9:The resilience, the breathing, um, just getting you in the right headspace to deal with, like you, if you, if you put yourself in an ice bath in the morning, um, you can take on the world that day, like you, you just have the resilience to know oh shit, I've put myself through this trauma. Yeah, I can, I can get through um, whatever it might be, um, and then obviously, um, increasing your brown brown fat. So what, what that does it like fat sounds bad, right, but you need good fat, like, which is your brown fat, to help um with things like metabolism. Um, and all of those different things Like it can help speed up your metabolism. There's a few other things that brown fat. I don't know the technical term of them, but essentially it helps fight illness and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 9:Yeah, it helps fight illness, keeps off the cold and flu as much as possible, but again, with tradies like it's hard to get like good, sustainable food in all the time, right, so, um, it just helps with metabolizing those, those bad, bad foods. And with the saunas, um, the the biggest thing is like it increases your um circulation, um, which then also impacts your heart. So a lot of tradies would have like heart conditions from like back in the day eating like meat pies and I know I've spoken about chocolate milks, cokes, sugar, like just to get them through, like taking in all of those calories.
Speaker 9:Um, soaring like three to four times a week Um, there's actual like science and data out there that's saying soaring three times a week for 20 minutes at a time can reduce your chance of dying from heart. Um, or like all cause heart mortality by 40%, which is insane. So, like, the chance of dying from a heart condition is reduced by 40% and that's a that's a big, big figure as well. So obviously helps with like muscle soreness and stuff like that as well. Helps with sleep. Sleep's a big thing. Obviously I suffer with shitty sleep, but, um, saunering before you go to bed can really help you get a really good, efficient night um sleep because it raises your core body temperature and then when you get into bed, your core temperature drops, so it's easier to get into a deep sleep faster. Yeah, there's a couple. Obviously, with saunas and ice bus can really help like improve your mood and mental health as well so when we talk about, emotions are contagious.
Speaker 4:There was some research done in the? U Stony Brook University in New York State and this research was funded by the Defence Force. And why it was funded by the Defence Force will become apparent as the story or as this example goes on. So they took a group of people at this university and they put these people through two levels of stress. The first level of stress was physical stress. They got them and they put these people through two levels of stress. The first level of stress was physical stress. They got them and they put them on a treadmill and they got them to walk and run on this treadmill and what they did is they had sweat pads under these people's arms and they collected the sweat that these people emanated as they were doing this exercise. They got those sweat pads and they put them aside. They then got the same group of people and they put this group of people through a psychological stressor and they actually made them jump out of an aeroplane with a parachute on and again, they put the sweat pads under their arms as they were jumping out of the aeroplane and they put them aside. They then got a second group of people and put this group of people through an FRMI machine which measures brainwaves in real time, and so, one at a time, they put this second group of people in this machine and what they did is they wafted through as these people were in the machine. They wafted through the scent of the sweat. First of all they did the sweat that was as a result of the physical exertion on the treadmill, and the brainwaves of the people remained the same, they didn't change. Then they wafted through the smell from the sweat pads where there was psychological stress, ie jumpingaves of the people in the machine.
Speaker 4:In the FRMI machine replicated the fear response, which actually says to us that as humans, we can smell fear in others. We can emotionally feel how other people, what they're feeling, what they're going through, so we can smell it. That's been shown. Of course, horses can smell it. When they say horses can smell fear, they absolutely can. There's no doubt about that and there's been further research done in the in europe in that particular area which shows that. So sometimes when you're in a situation as a leader or just as a human and you have a gut feel about something, that gut feel is coming from all these senses, for example the smell and the pheromones that you're picking up that you're not even aware of. So one of the things I'm guess that I've learned through time is trust your gut, because your gut is picking up all these things that, intellectually, you're not aware of.
Speaker 1:And you know. So is that? Is that seriously linked, like that's something we talk about now doing, when, like figuring out if you can work with a client or not, if your guts is telling you, hey, this client's, there's alarm bells here like let's not do this job, yeah so so what your, your gut, is doing?
Speaker 4:your gut is picking up all the um, all the cues that you're not aware of. But all these cues that you've picked up in evolution as a human to where you are today has meant that you've survived as a species or we've survived as a species. So we're highly attuned, but we try to rationalize everything in our brains now. So, again, one of the factors that we consider is something called the ideomotor response, which is whenever someone has a thought in their brain, it comes out through their body somewhere. It might be a subtle shift of their eyes, it might be moving of their fingers, it could be twitching of the toes, it could be the blinking rate, nodding of the head, something, a slight squint of the eyes, something that you may not be aware of, that you're giving out these cues. But every time you have a thought, your body is sending out a message.
Speaker 4:Now, horses are very clued into picking up this in humans because, of course, horses are a prey animal, ie other animals eat them, and they're always watching us to make sure they're not going to be eaten by us. So horses are very attuned to all the subtle cues that you're giving off. But as a human. If you're with another person, they're giving off all these cues that you may not be aware you're picking up and that too might add to your gut feeling, either positively or negatively. You know there could be a slight hesitation in a response from a person or them looking away, which is often a sign of dishonesty when you're communicating with them. You may not pick that up, but you get that sense in your gut that something is wrong and it's your visual and your senses that are picking up all of these cues and giving you that in your gut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you definitely need to go with your gut feeling.
Speaker 10:If every builder holds their right hand up and looks into the palm of their hand and their fingers make a cup, they've got five fingers. Typically, unless they're carpenters, then they've got four or half a thumb. Each of those fingers are a core element of your business. So this is called pivot point management. You, Dwayne Pierce, can walk away from your sites because you've almost reached nirvana that if something goes wrong on that building site, they're going to take a photo or do a live chat with you. That didn't happen five years ago. So I mastered technology. But each of your fingers becomes an element of running your construction company and you need to know what those elements are, what they look like done at best practice, and then who's going to do them. And then you ideally want to employ people who want to do it better than you, who will dig in harder than you will and really put their shoulders to the wheel and want to do it better than you do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the recipe for success.
Speaker 1:Until you build that team, you can't earn a fortune building your own houses, even if you think you are well, you touched on it before when you that magical place where you're attracting the right type of clients is also attracting the right type of team members.
Speaker 10:Yes, based on your personal development. If you're a rat bag, you're going to attract rat bags and rat bag clients. There's no doubt that the law of attraction works in construction as it does in fast food. You know, I'm serious At three o'clock in the morning you want a doner kebab. You go to the closest one and the nearest one. I used to say this to people when we were justifying PAC. I'll use your terminology If your child, if your daughter, breaks her arm at mixed martial arts jeez, I've changed that a bit over the years you take her to the nearest doctor yeah, the nearest doctor, yeah.
Speaker 10:Or the Launceston General Hospital, and spend eight hours in casually and the doctor says, oh, your daughter's arm's really badly broken. You need to see a specialist. What does your mind say? $800. $300. $300. Yeah, an unknown, ethereal expense. Right, if you've got a cheaper one, can I go to a cheaper surgeon? Is there a neurosurgeon that's cheaper for my child? No, you go for the best.
Speaker 10:Well, in the building industry, when the woman, the homemaker, sorry is dissatisfied with their current living arrangements too hot, too cold, too big, too small, small, and we can go through all them as another workshop the minute that homemaker says I've had enough and hits the internet. That's your moment of truth. We all read that book moment of truth. And then they've got to go through a known process and if you can take them through that process as quick as you can, as simple and painless, based on a professional relationship, you will be paid as a professional. Yeah, if you don't, you'll be paid as an amateur and you've either got a known process, that's, that's gold there, what you just freebie for the listeners, right, but if you go through life, never and of course we're not dealing with self-esteem today I used to say to builders man, you're a great builder.
Speaker 10:I used to give the awards to the builders on stage for hi and mba for nine years. Here's house of the year Well done Everybody, ladies and gentlemen, sponsored by Karoma. And if you go and speak to the builder, are you a good builder, are you a great builder? Oh, no, man, I'm just a chippy. I'm like, oh my God, you just won house of the year at a straw bale and you know, off grid, on an island, off the coast, in 50 knot winds, and you and you just say to me you're just a builder. So not only do we need to lift how we are perceived in the market. We need to lift ourselves.
Speaker 11:When I look at the building code and also manufacturers' recommendations, specifically the building code, I feel it's like a minimum. Why are we going to the minimum? Why would we? Well, it's not just volume builders.
Speaker 11:I'll deal with some volume builders and they're really good at what they do. Their processes are good, their builds are good, they back it up, they go back, they fix stuff, because no one's perfect. But when we're always aiming for a minimum or the line in the sand set by the building code and I'll use box gutters for an example why would you design to a minimum of the size of your gutter, which is carrying all this water, for a, you know, for a certain rainfall intensity, why wouldn't you go 20, 50 percent more to make sure that there's no chance, even if you get a really huge storm, that it's not going to come back inside and wreck the inside of the house? It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Well, it's common sense, isn't it Well?
Speaker 11:there's a bit of shortage of that. But to me I've always believed in trying to go over and above what the minimum is from a design aspect, that things work Okay. Now we all know from a designer's point of view and a builder's point of view that might be different too, yeah, but like box gutters are a classic example. The amount of failures is unacceptable. And even going to the minimum is unacceptable. Go over and above. Make sure it's big enough to run a broom in. It's flashed far further than it has to be. The joints are mickey mouse. You've designed it so there's plenty of room to get. Fall doesn't have to be the minimum, fall, just get a bit more fall in it. Get the rain heads oversized, your overflows oversized. You know what's the big deal. By doing it bigger than it has to be, or smarter, or you do the water print, put another coat on big deal. We don't do wet decks. You know outdoor decks, tiles so many failures we've seen. We'll refuse to do them.
Speaker 11:They have to be concrete now yeah, we've gone the same way oh, it's astronomical, even with the types of the windows, just all sorts of things, how you do certain decks, how you get your driveways to work, all these things around your home, and it's just everyone's aiming for a minimum. Yeah, it drives you mad.
Speaker 1:I've never really thought of it like that, but you're 100% right. I guess, for those people that may not know what traditional timber framing or log homes are, do you want to give us a little bit of a background of how you got into this and, I guess, a little bit more detail around what it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I specialise in log homes and traditional timber framing. So, log homes, what I do is what we call a full scribe log home, so not the like, uh, flats and chinked or, you know, filled with silicon style. Uh, it's not a machined finish where logs are run through a lathe to all uniform. It's working with a complete natural log, um, and big logs um, so the ones you'd see, like in canada and the states, um, you know all on your movies and tv yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of big um, like you'd see around what montana and yeah, um, um, yeah, canada and those sorts of places they like, they.
Speaker 1:They have companies over there that literally specialize in turning up with truck fulls of log and building log homes don't they?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's, and that's the one I so I did my time for new zealand log homes. So that was, you know, equivalent of doing like a trade as a carpenter. I spent four years, you know, learning the craft of just log homes. So, yeah, there's a lot of time learning the craft, the skill, and I was sort of lucky enough that in working there at the time the company owner, derek, had broken into a market of post and beam, which is a square timber sort of carpentry as well, the big square timber and joinery and over in Japan. So I was lucky enough to do not just the log homes but then experience the pre-cutting of post and beams and sending them to Japan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you've got a huge variety of skills, haven't you? Like you're specialized in selecting the timber, sizing the timber, milling the timber yeah, and I think like one of the. It just blows my mind, like the amount of work. Like when people hear me say that you've been on this one home for for five and a half years, like they're probably like what the hell? Like, yeah, but like I didn't realize exactly how much was involved until we come and had a look at that place the other day.
Speaker 1:Like when you talk about like it's not, like you just go to a pack, you pick up a length of straight timber and you, you, you come up with your truss layout on the ground and you just nail it together, like you're actually like you've got to size the logs, find the center line of the log and then all your measurements work from that center line, don't you? Because the log can be different shape on one side to the to the other, yeah, and then trying to get all that to line up, and then you don't use mechanical fixings, do you?
Speaker 1:no, no, no so everything's all timber peg fixings yeah yeah, like the Through the majority of it yeah, the work like seriously, for everyone that's listening like the work in it is insane, but like you can see it like straight away when you look at it, it's just incredible. Like you can literally like I don't know, it's something about timber, isn't it? When you walk into a timber home, like you just want to touch and feel it and and rub it, like it's just beautiful yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:I remember, you know, starting out in building my, my dad was a builder, so that's what got me interested, you know, right from as a kid, to be a builder, um, and he was also a mountaineer and an outdoorsman and hunter and spent a lot of time in that um. And when I left school there was at the time in like the early mid-80s there was apprenticeships were just rare as hen's teeth, so I couldn't. I tried and tried and tried, I just couldn't get an apprenticeship. The economy was, yeah, not going well. So I sort of had to retract and I took the other path.
Speaker 3:So, dad being really interested in the outdoors, I went and did a outdoor leadership course for a year down, so down in the lower part of the North Island, a little place called Masterton. So I went down there and we did this whole outdoor leadership. We're up in the mountains, in the rivers and in the bush and it was fantastic. But at that time I was 23 and my son was born, my first child child was born that year, and so by the end of it, I'm thinking the only work then in that field was to go and temp at outdoor pursuit centres and school camps and things, and I couldn't do that with a child.
Speaker 3:And just at the end of the course there was a sign at the TAFE there and it was a log home building school like six weeks log home building school at the TAFE there. And it was a log home building school, like six weeks log home building school. And then I saw that sign and bang. As soon as I saw the words log home building, I thought that's what I want to do, cause I'd worked in the bush, I'd been, you know, I was a country boy, I'd been on chainsaws and that you know for a good part of my life. And I saw that and thought something about crafting chainsaws, big timber, you know. I just thought, wow, I've got to do this so, guys, there you go.
Speaker 1:I hope you got a lot out of, uh, all those guests and those snippets that we've given you a taste of. 2024 has been an absolutely cracking year, but look, let's bring on 2025. Level up is going to be bringing you some unbelievable guests in 2025. Not only that, we have some incredible announcements to come your way. We're going to be holding some events, which is going to be off the charts. And, look, please continue to help us make this Australia's number one construction podcast. Share, like, subscribe all of those things. Have a fantastic holiday, enjoy your break and we'll see you again in 2025. Are you ready to build smarter?
Speaker 11:live better and enjoy life. Then head over to livelikebuildcom forward slash elevate to get started.
Speaker 1: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.