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The "Level Up" with Duayne Pearce Podcast
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.
The "Level Up" with Duayne Pearce Podcast
Big turnover doesn't mean BIG PROFITS, get back to basics and make more MONEY.
#128 This episode features the inspiring story of Matt Sim from MS Constructions, who reveals how he transformed his business by prioritising wellness and profitability over high turnover. By reducing his team size and focusing on a positive culture, he created a thriving work environment that fosters happiness and productivity while maintaining profitability.
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D Pearce Constructions
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you've reduced your turnover by three and a half odd million dollars. Yeah, you've halved your team and we've made profit. G'day guys, welcome back to another episode of level up. We are back in a absolutely bawling shed this afternoon here in brisbane, cracking episode coming your way today. So, uh, we've actually got matt from ms constructions. How are you mate? Yeah, good Thanks, duane. Good to be up here in the heat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So Matt's another Elevate member. What's it been mate? 18 months maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, time flies. Yeah, I reckon 18 months it's been. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, and yeah, I've been super keen to get get matt on and he's got a pretty remarkable story um to to talk about. But we also got a lot of common interest. Now me and the girls are getting into horses matt's bloody breeds horses like we got a lot to talk about this afternoon, mate yeah, looking forward to.
Speaker 2:It's been great straight on the kangaroo and up here, and I'm yeah been jumping out of my seat ever since, so can't wait to get into it yeah so before I get into it with matt, so I put the challenge out there all the time.
Speaker 1:So anyone that's listening and wants to come on the podcast, either share their story or come on the podcast and I'm happy to do some sort of mentoring, training and talk about ways they can improve their business or whatever. So many people reach out, I send them the details and I think we've had only two or three follow through, but Matt's literally been down in whereaboutsabouts you located we're on the vickney south border, down a little town called cobram, sort of halfway between aubrey wodonga and nuchuka.
Speaker 1:So a little spot out there, yeah, so you're an hour and a half away from aubrey wodonga. Yeah, you've gone to work this morning, smashed out a few hours driven to aubrey wodonga, jumped on a plane like literally a couple hours ago. Yeah, flown up to brisbane, jumped in an Uber, got up here and sitting in the podcast chair and we're going to go out and have breakfast and have a chat tomorrow morning. And then you're straight on a plane tomorrow morning and flying home. So talk about commitment. Yep, yep, no, you got to do what you got to do. Before we go back and talk about how you got into it, like your growth in the last 18 months has been pretty insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been awesome and I don't know. Everyone gets into the building industry. It gets busy and you know you think of all the shiny things as the best things that ever happened. But now we take back and have a bit of a look at where we've come from and our growth's more so from downscaling and changing the way our business operates, more so than some people think growth, you know going and building 20 homes a year or getting your business up to you know, a big team of chippies. Our growth's been the opposite to get the office right, so our foundations are right, and really bring everything back to where it's enjoyable and then now start building on, you know, better homes and the way we do things and get back enjoying it again yeah, because I bang on a lot about like.
Speaker 1:Turnover means nothing, like if you know, it doesn't matter if you got 1 million, 10 million, $10 million, $100 million, whatever. If you're not making money, it's pointless. Do you mind if I share?
Speaker 2:some numbers. Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1:And correct me if I'm wrong, but you, since joining Live, life Build and understanding your numbers and stuff, you've dropped your turnover by what? $4 million or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we ran consistently around that $10 million, $11 million mark and obviously just spinning tires and thinking, yeah, this is awesome, we're picking up beautiful big homes, we're doing nice commercial work, we think we're kicking goals but then joining Live, life, build, actually catching up and learning more numbers. We have brought it back. Well, last financial year was pretty recent, it was around that $7.5 million, but also we halved the team. We had 17 chippies. We've 17 chippies, we've gone back to seven chippies and we're doing the same work as when we started cutting back. We got back to about 10 carpenters, back to seven, but we're doing the same work as 10.
Speaker 2:But just the culture's back, the energy's back, the efficiency's back, the offices. You know everyone loves coming to work, everyone loves having a chat and my biggest goal and I guess where my success looks at now is if I can have people come to work, enjoy what they do, but also get time to have a holiday and book things in with their family. And I want we've designed our office now if someone's away, they don't get a phone call. It shouldn't have to wait till that person can get back on monday and they'll answer your question. And that's my biggest reward now to get a really nice team with us. Everyone's enjoyable about what they do and I want to work with my staff to where they want to go and what they want to do. So we've got a few aspirations in the pipeline for building the staff up and letting them do what they need to do.
Speaker 2:But it's just awesome. Like me, my man's been with me nearly seven years now and he come to me from a chippy and wanted to be a supervisor and oh, just the last. The growth in him over the last two years. You got to tell him to knock off so little things like he. I make him pick his daughter up and his daughter's up from school a couple days a week and he knocks off early and just those sort of things. My growth now it's just. It's not all about working 12 hours a day, seven days a week and it wasn't worth it.
Speaker 1:So, that's, you can't do any of it without a team. But now you, um, so you, you've reduced your turnover by three and a half odd million dollars. Yeah, you've halved your team and we've made profit.
Speaker 2:But and you've made a quite substantial profit yep, um, but not only that, you, you've had pretty substantial holidays this year yeah, well, well, this was the first time in definitely I think it was seven years since the wife come away with us because we got the horses and everything. We actually went away on a holiday, flew up to Airlie Beach and went out fishing and did all the things we wanted to do with our kids and I didn't get one phone call for the whole week and that was my win To have a team that could run the business. Obviously set ages up in the background before you go, but it was just awesome to switch off for a week and come back fresh and it actually felt a bit weird getting around without the phone attached to my ear and that was just yeah, that that's. You can't put money on that like that was awesome.
Speaker 2:And this year we're trying to plan maybe three weeks to go up through the outback and even well, it's a hard thing but we're working on it. Um, our school a lot of kids go to the same school and they got a three-week middle of the year break and of course, everyone wants time off with their kids. So we're nearly thinking about shutting the business down for a week so everyone can have the time off. So you know it's in the pipeline. These are the little things that we're looking at to you know. Keep the staff happy and make it enjoyable. Yeah, that's freaking awesome.
Speaker 1:But, like I bang on a lot about how, um, like it's easy to go out and get, like everyone's looking for a business manual, whether what doesn't matter what type of trader or builder you are, but everyone wants this, this business manual that's going to give you all the secrets to run a great business, know your numbers, make money yep, um, but can you tell us a little bit, because I I think that's helpful and you definitely need it, but none of that will work if your mindset's not correct yeah, well, I'm not your typical gym person or anything like that, and I found getting the mindset right and having a morning routine is huge for me.
Speaker 2:Like I get up, alarm goes off at three o'clock. I go to that gym and I hate going to the gym. But now I've learned that if I hate it I'm going to do it more.
Speaker 2:So I'm not a weights person but if I go for it, yeah, if I go for like a run on the treadmill and I'm going to do five minutes of a run, if I'm thinking the whole five minutes that I don't want to do it, I'll do another minute and then you know, one day you have a good day where you're not feeling it, so you just stop at five minutes. So that's my mental game that I've never learned about. That I've been doing in the last six months and it's changed the way I come to work of the morning. You know I'll get in. I want to be in the office before anyone comes and annoys me and just changing those key little things are just, and I want to be home at four o'clock every day Routine's huge, isn't it Massive?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's huge, and just being able to switch the phone off and just trades get used to you not being there. I'm gone at four o'clock, especially now we've got daylight savings in Victoria so you can get out with the kids, they can ride their horses or we can go for a ski out the river as it warms up and have a life after work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all important stuff. Like mate, we've got so much to talk about I don't know where to keep going back and pulling you up or what to go on to next. But like routine's massive Like in so many people like I just think people make excuses Like it's simple as that I could make an excuse every morning when that alarm goes off.
Speaker 2:But if I don't get up and just get straight up, get all me clothes out the night before, smoker packed everything ready to go, like the other morning I got to the gym and I forgot me towel and I've got to have that two minute cold shower, like that's part of me ritual. Oh well, I'm still having a cold chair, I'll just work it out. Get dry later. If someone sees me doing a nudie run down the street to get dry, well, that's their bad luck. But just those little mindset challenges, you know, you're sort of I've never, ever been like that and I just found that's helped me so much. So what, what made that? What was that change? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think it's just, you know, listen to obviously yourself, and like getting addicted to listening to podcasts and you know, every little podcast might go for an hour. Sometimes I've just got to go for a drive because we don't go very far. Um, and you just get that one little thing you try and implement and I just don't know. I think I'm a bit addicted to it now and just seeing the change in the day, like how I attack the day and um, you know, and just the change that we've had as the business as well. Like I can be more attentive in the mornings and really make myself accountable to you know, if the staff needs something from me, I can book it in my diary and be there. So yeah, there's been a lot of change with that.
Speaker 1:It's a flow-on effect too, isn't it Like if people see that you're taking 100% ownership and you're not making excuses, like it flows through the whole team, or just something as simple as like a calendar.
Speaker 2:Everyone in my office team now runs a calendar and they can see everyone's calendar and if they want me to do an inspection or go do something, they'll look at my calendar. The site supervisor will look at, you know, if he wants to do a walkthrough with a client, well, what meetings have I got on for the week and when is he going to plan that in? And it's funny, now, after 12 months, it's just they'll put in the calendar. I've got to make sure I check the calendar because sometimes I might miss it because I haven't.
Speaker 1:I've no overlapping of communication and yeah, yeah, it's great. And that um, yeah, commitment's huge. The um like yeah, I I feel I feel bad when I'm I'm being a bit hard on people, like because everyone's like, oh, I've got young kids or I've just had a baby, or I've I'm not gonna like sleep at the moment, or like there's yep, there's an excuse for everything. If you let there be.
Speaker 2:Well, you start getting annoyed too. Like you get it, like it's like we're very strict on, say, our scheduling and you get a tradesman make up this excuse of why he didn't turn up and it's just like we're running all these jobs, we're doing all this, we're not making excuses. And it's funny, once you start learning how not to make an excuse, you do get frustrated when people have got excuses and you're like I just want to help them now, like not be rude to them, just say, hey, why don't you try this or why don't you do this? And I'm no mentor by any stretch of the imagination, but you just see how it's improved yourself and just the family life too, not just business, but yeah, you just now they're starting to rub off on a few little things, like my daughter hates being late. I'm always if you're not there 10 minutes early, you're late. Yeah, and that you know it starts to flow on, yeah the?
Speaker 1:um, I don't know what's going on outside We've got birds or something on the roof of the shed but anyway, I think it's really important to keep that same routine. For me, that's been a massive game changer because I think I used to always be the person that would always be leaning towards the easier way. I remember, even growing up, when I got into racing, mountain bikes and things and I had asthma growing up and I got to the state titles and things. Looking back now I use the asthma as excuse, like I remember, uh, being on this it was a queensland trials for a cross-country event because I always had this dream to go to the 2000 olympics on the with the mountain bikes. Yeah and uh, yeah, I'm pedaling up this hill and I just started puffing and it's almost like I've talked myself into having asthma, having asthma so that I didn't have to finish the race or something. Yep, um and yeah, whereas now I just there's no excuses no, and that's the best way to be.
Speaker 2:You know it's awesome. And then you just have that no excuse attitude. It just helps everything like, no matter what it is, like it could be, I can't bother taking the bins out tonight. No, I've, I've got to do it. Tonight's got to go out Like it just starts rippling effect into everything you do. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:People are telling me I'm mad mate, Like even just yesterday, like I'm pretty fucking tired sitting here today, as you can probably tell from my eyes. But like I had to go out to the farm yesterday, like our farm's on a good day, four hours 45, uh drive. Battle in the bruce. Hey, battle in the bruce it's the opposite way.
Speaker 1:So the traffic's generally pretty good. Yep. Um, and I had to go and meet a few people up there. We've just submitted our da and we're trying to get some approvals and things. So, um, I committed like I wanted to go up there. I got a heap of shit on so I I had to leave home at four o'clock yesterday morning to make sure that I could make the first guy that wanted to meet me out there. And I've committed to training every day now until I do this next challenge. So I was like, well, fuck, I've got to be up at 3 o'clock then.
Speaker 1:If I don't get up at 3 o'clock, I can't do my half-hour workout. That's just how it is, isn't it Like I'm feeling it because I'm fucked today, but I'll have to pick it up tonight and get to bed a bit earlier. But when you take 100% ownership for things and you commit to making no excuses, everything just gets easier.
Speaker 2:Well, it's even simple things like on the job you used to make an excuse for, say, a tradesman doing a good job. If you take ownership and say, well, that's my fault, he didn't do the good job because I didn't check it, or whatever the scenario is, it helps there as well. Like it's just huge and yeah, well, that's unfortunate. Well, I've got to get up at three because it's not making any more hours in the day and you know my afternoons are precious for me with the kids and what we do on the farm and at home. And I'm like, well, I used to go to work at four and I wanted that four to six. Well, I've just got to go an hour earlier because I've got to fit this gym in somewhere, and so how are you going with?
Speaker 1:the. So you're, you're, you're up at three every morning, off off to the gym and then at the office smashing out your two hours. Yep, like what would you call that? Two hours personal development? Or just I just call me a power.
Speaker 2:I get in there, I sit down, I normally look at what I've got to get done for the day. I've normally got notes that I follow pretty heavily still paper ones but I find that these way to remember I do a bit of journaling, a bit of you know, just trying to get that into my day. It's something I never done. So I'm really just working my way through that over the last probably six or eight weeks. So just writing a few more just what I'm thinking at the time down where I want to be, what I want to get achieved in the next sort of five or six years, and then that, yeah, I just call it me a couple of hours of power. Like no one rings me.
Speaker 2:My brother's a landscaper, it I've got these two hours. If I get that done, I'll give him a call a bit early, but then my main man always comes in at six and he's always five to six every day you hear the roller door go up. So it's it's very critical. It gives you I can get you know during the day probably what would take me. Four hours I can get done in that too. So it's yeah, yeah, I try not to miss it.
Speaker 1:But you like you're committed but, like you said, you don't want to change that afternoon. You want time with the kids and whatever.
Speaker 2:Whereas for the previous years it's always been like work comes first, so you have to just do it and I'll roll in the door at six. It's like no, I want to be home at four and I don't want to answer my phone after four. Yeah, yeah, that takes a lot of commitment, yeah, and mindset, like I'm very I hate not when people ring you, obliged to answer the call. I really want to help them and, like you're saying, taking ownership and being like you see, these trades and it's unorganized, like the bricky ringing you of an afternoon when he could have rang you all day to ask you for something, or you know, just your general stereotype tradesmen that are getting to the end of the day having a beer and thinking, oh, I'll ring matt and see if he's ready for that job.
Speaker 2:So we've gone with our scheduling and we're like a nazi camp now with our schedule and we want to make sure that we're following that schedule and we're choosing trades now based off who will follow that schedule and we've got a concrete in there doing our surrounds and we've got to watch him, because if we don't make sure that schedule's right for those surrounds or say, the bricklayer's running a week behind or the stormwater didn't get put in, he'll turn up.
Speaker 2:So our goal for the next 12 months is that we shouldn't have to speak to him on that schedule. We send that out, yeah, everyone reads it, they come back and they just follow it, yeah, and then we'll pick the trays based on that. We've just made a huge change with our concreter, used the same concreter for the last 12 years and we've had to make a big call and go the opposite direction because it was just mucking our schedules around like two or three week delay on when we want to put that slab in the ground. Then it affects the whole job. So, yeah, that's probably our goal for the next 12 months really focus on no excuses with our job scheduling and our and our quality of our jobs too and that's the sort of commitment you need.
Speaker 1:hey, like we've, we've made a call, um. Look well, today we're sitting here recording this. Today it's the 28th of november, um, and so we're about to take on um, another person in management and another four on-site staff. So it's a pretty, and even that we're still going to struggle to keep up with the work we have for next year. Yeah, but like next Friday, we're doing a full leadership session with myself, camille and the supervisor and this new staff member, yeah, and then after that we're moving on to the lead carpenters. We're really going to knuckle down on everybody's role descriptions and have a very clear understanding of exactly who does what in the business, who does what on sites, yep, but I've basically warned everybody. So we're going to have a bit of a function in the first couple of months of next year with all of the trades that are living up to our expectations. So if any of my trades are listening to this and you haven't been invited to that event, it's probably because you're.
Speaker 2:Step up. Yeah, you need to step up. Level up a bit, would you?
Speaker 1:yeah, level up, yeah but, like I'm, one thing that's really ticked me off the last few months is I can't stand that people are only thinking about what they have to do the day they show up to do it. Yeah, and it's frustrating like we work months ahead, like we might be working six, eight, 12 months ahead in the office. We're setting up Google drives. We're sending all these guys documents, we're locking them in, we're sending them job schedules.
Speaker 2:It's huge, the office. Now you get people saying to me what are you all doing there? Why do you have so many in the office? But, for instance, we just did a little tiny renovation. It took us four weeks to do the job and I use that now as an example to trades. Well, this is what it takes. The office works huge. If the office works not right, the job's not right. There's, you know, selections aren't done. People aren't. Like we're real fussy on that too, like everything's got to be signed up before we start within reason.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you might have something that yeah whatever reason with the client, but I think whenever you're building custom stuff there, there's always that something.
Speaker 2:And they're the little things that just make the job run to time, make it all run to schedule, make their owner accountable too. It's setting that expectation.
Speaker 1:I suppose, but we're just finding there's too much wasted time. The trades that aren't taking the time to review their drawings and get their head around the job before they show up. They're the ones that are wasting hours of supervision time the day they're on site and then something comes up because they haven't bothered to look at it. So then the supervisor or myself or someone in the team is running around trying to get something for them because all of a sudden they figured out they needed it.
Speaker 2:So all those inefficiencies are costing homeowners and it's adding to your supervising time, and we had this discussion the other day. We're sort of working out like trying to we should be allowing for our supervising time. So we're trying to work that out and then we're doing the same sort of thing. Well, that trade we shouldn't use because he's taking up too much time. When we get there, so say we get to roughing stage, we'll try and have a day when time frame, so then my supervisor's there for that period of time and then he's gone and he can go do something else for the day, whereas before you'd meet the go for the walkthrough electrician. The next day go with the plumber. The next day you might have the homeowner at the end, just in case I wanted to change it before the plaster went on.
Speaker 1:and you're right, it's three or four days, then that could be one morning, yeah yeah, but the trades, just that, I think they've they've grown to expect it like I think so many builders just hold their hand, let them show up to site, and the ones that piss me off the most are the ones that have a bit bigger team, and so you meet them on site, you go through with the boss or the supervisor or the leading hand or whoever it may be, and you think everything's sorted. And then a day or two later he's not on site but one of his workers is, and his worker are asking you, supervisor, the same questions that you just told them two days ago.
Speaker 2:Or you go have a look at it and it's not right and you go. Well, I've been through this, I've explained it. They've quoted the job. They've looked at the job. Zach's same problem is there now. Yeah, and it's by us, I think. The same thing getting the and on. You're gonna so with our electricians. We're very lucky. We've got a good crew of them, but same thing they got bigger. I think they got 60 odd staff now and they do, yeah, a lot of different stuff as well, but they've got a leading hand and he runs that job. So he'll do the walkthrough with the client. He'll manage his apprentices, he'll manage the qualified electrician on site. But we built that over years of talking to him to say, well, we're sick of this. Every time we get a good electrician build up, you put him up into another role and we start we're training your apprentices up and, yeah, they will work with you once you start explaining to them what.
Speaker 1:And if they don't, well, unfortunately, you got to find another one, yeah, and I think that you've got to make that call every now and then because you can't, um, at the end of the day, like there's a like I don't know, probably piss some people, some tradies, off by saying this but, like most tradies, don't advertise. No, not once you get the work with the builder. Like we're the ones doing all the marketing, doing all the sales, meeting the client, spending 6, 12, 18 months, two years for all that preliminary stage, yeah, and like literally sending you plans and saying, hey, work on a silver platter.
Speaker 2:They don't. Sometimes they don't even know they have to talk to the client. They've just got to turn up and do the job and go home. They don't have to speak to anyone, don't have to organize anything. Yeah, half the time we might even supply the material. All they've got to do is just rock up with their tools yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they and they still want their handheld to walk through the job, show them everything that needs to be done, like yeah, so, um, yeah, probably piss some traders off for saying that, but it's reality. So, yeah, I think if we're, if we're going to improve this industry, then it's not just about builders stepping up and designers and architects Like it's, it's every trade.
Speaker 2:And it comes back to like obviously the builders got the brand. There's nothing worse than saying, oh, that didn't work at real good job. That build is no good. It's normally the tradesman of whatever you know plumber, whatever it is has made the mistake, not the builder. That builder's going to be the best builder in the area and you're going to get more work that you don't have to worry about chasing. Yeah, it's pretty simple, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Oh, mate, it is. It's like, let's face it, any trade that does a decent job, like builders, just keep feeding the work 100%. There's no cost to them at all, apart from a bit of quieting time, exactly. But like you've come a long way, let's go back a little bit. Like so you got a pretty interesting story. Um, can you tell us a little bit about, like, how, what, what was going to happen for you to get your apprenticeship? Because I think this is yeah so geez, I am going.
Speaker 2:Great, it was a while ago but, um, yeah, I remember like my old man has electrical business in town that mum was a midwife so we spent, yeah, a lot of grounded time. Oh, we had grandparents had dairy farms. They were always out and about doing something. I really loved just building things. Mum and dad used to buy and sell, like build and sell, and had a bit of land and I just don't know I didn't want to crawl in roofs and put ceiling fans in and things like that. I thought I want to be a carpenter and, um, dad had always said to me that he wished he was a carpenter. He had a chance to be a carpenter or electrician. He went the electrician way. I don't know whether that was some, but I went that way and you know, I did work experience and I actually traveled 45 minutes away by bus to do it. They didn't have pre-apprenticeships back then, but it was a supposed to take time off your apprenticeship. So I took the v-line bus to shepherdon and your, your, your story.
Speaker 1:Sorry to cut you off, but is commitment like for any young people out there that are whinging and bitching that they can't get a job? Yeah, listen to what matt's about to say, because it's it's what you need to do yeah, well it's.
Speaker 2:Um, I was. I wanted to be a carpenter and there wasn't many jobs. I thought I'll go do the learn what I can go to what they call a pre-apprenticeship now. So I'd go every wednesday on a v-line bus down to shep school and start to nine, but you had to get the six o four o'clock to get the bus home because my parents couldn't come and get me. So you do that. That was fine. And then I did work experience with every builder around town. I wanted to, you know, just to see what everyone did. And this one builder I got on phone for work.
Speaker 2:No, no, didn't, didn't have an arcs. I was like I want to be there and then one builder he was did a lot more new homes and I thought that's where other builders, you know, push a barrel, do something like that, like now you can use the drop so you're capable. You'll be right. And they used to bring me when they had a frame and I'd go there and just cut the frame up for them. Yeah, and I just thought it was the best, put my work boots on and take me smoko for the day and dad would drop you off and you just worked for the day 15, 16 yeah would have been, might have been 14 even when I first started doing it and and they were a really good bunch of blokes to get along with.
Speaker 2:They were probably the only crew around town that had three or four guys, whereas a lot were just old-fashioned, just the builder and maybe an uncle or someone working with them. And I thought no, that's what I want to do. So I did, got to the end of year 11 and thought no, I've had enough of school, I'm not a school kid, no-transcript. Well, there was a reason they didn't want them. So I was talking to my cousin who's a plaster and he was in up in cairns working at the time. He's like I'll get you a carpentry apprenticeship up here. So I just finished doing up me old couple of years and put the dirt bike on the back and the swag and I was like well, after Christmas I'm, I'm have to go. So we got around the small town. The builder said to me uh, rang my dad, cause back then there wasn't mobiles everywhere rang him and said I think your son needs an apprenticeship. We'll give him one, but we don't have any really to do, but we'll put him on.
Speaker 2:So I was cleaning gutters I don't remember how many times. Yeah, digging trenches by hand, whatever it was, and it was such a. I look back now. It wasn't at the time, but you look back now and you learnt so much. You learn how to hang plaster. You learn how to. We used to dig our slabs by hand with a shovel. You'd spend a week on the shovel digging slabs by hand and a jackhammer, but it taught you a lot about how to do the sandpads correctly. Did you have? How old are you, mate? I'm 36.
Speaker 1:No 35.
Speaker 2:35.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're nine years younger than me, did you have?
Speaker 2:concrete pumps. No, we used a kibble with a crane and they'd put their concrete in it and then lift it up with a crane, and then we'd dump it or we'd just push the wheelbarrow.
Speaker 1:Mate, my whole apprenticeship, we never had a concrete pump, yeah, just a wheelbarrow. Yeah, we wheelbarrowed all of our slaves and that was the thing. That was your job. We'd turn up in the morning and the like I um. So I was the same we.
Speaker 1:I used to do all the landscaping shit around my boss's house and he'd knock off most fridays bloody early and do whatever he did, and I'd have to mow his lawn, trim his head, just do everything. Oh yeah, we'd turn up to the sites in the morning with 12 planks on the truck and we'd lay planks out across the mesh. Yeah, yeah, and there'd be like some. I remember one day there was probably 10 or 12 of us on wheelbarrows. Yeah, there was no such thing as a concrete and that's what we did.
Speaker 2:Like if the kibble was later on, early on it was a wheelbarrow and that was your job. You never argued, that was just your job as the apprentice. Or when you got a bit more up the food chain you might have hung on the vibrator for the poor or something like you sort of. That's what you did, and now I don't find now it's very hard like a tip run or something, but I've got tip trailers now. Back then you'd spend an hour at the tip in four degree heat shoveling out of the trailer like it's.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's come a come a long way for the wrong reasons, I think. Now, like it's, I look back, fortunate enough to look back on my apprenticeship and I was very lucky to have a what I call an old-fashioned apprenticeship like.
Speaker 1:But it taught you. It taught you respect and and hard work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just wanted to be there, like I'd turn up every day. I'd be well, dad, driven into us. You got to be early. Yeah, if you're 10 10 minutes, if you got to be there 10 10 minutes before you need to be there or you're late. And that's just what we did. You turned up and little things. Like you try to learn what the carpenter was going to do, like you might be framing all week so you know he needs to drop saw out or some nail guns, so you try and think ahead a little bit to have it ready. So when the carpenter finishes talking to the boss, the head carpenter, you'd be ready to get into the day, whereas you know, sometimes these days it's sort of just wait around and see what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone's standing there waiting to be told what do I need to do like it drives me freaking insane, yeah and you hear people saying oh it's, it's hard to get an apprenticeship, it's hard to do this.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, it's maybe builders just getting harder because they they know what they went through and they're sort of expecting the same thing, but it's I don't look.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's? Do you think that's hard? I don't think me wanting that is me being hard no, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think I don't know. I just find you got to start at the bottom, like I worked at iga packing shelves. I wasn't, you know, the manager of the store. You got to work your way through to work out how it's done. I think that's made us the builder, that company that we are today, because you've you've done the hard yards, you've seen how it's done and you know a bit of knowledge behind the other trades as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like just um, like just I, I I try and tell all of my younger guys that we put through, like, if you, if you just put in the effort, yeah, you will make good money yeah because everyone that's coming through and look. This is no offense to younger people, but I think this is just reality.
Speaker 2:Like everyone's just gotten lazier and lazier well, covid we call it the covid down our way that at any qualified carpenter who got qualified at their fourth year or sometimes done a school base might be third year they're out getting really good money subbing around. I've been in the industry 17 years and I'm still learning every day and excited to learn every day. I no offense to them, but as as unlicensed tradesmen, you're going out there you're doing decks per goals, which is fine, but then you're stepping up into bathroom rentals and all of a sudden you're getting really good money doing these things that maybe you should have taken a few more years to work with a builder, to sort of work you out with the builder, to learn different ways of doing it. And it's also makes me accountable too to go. Well, I need to really train my apprentices so when they do leave they do know what they need to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it'd be nice to have one that got to his fourth year and hung around for a little bit longer so you could get that.
Speaker 2:You know bit of bit of camaraderie with them and I've got one, two that just got qualified recently and I've got one, two that just got qualified recently and I've just said to them you could tell me after Christmas where you want to be in three or four years and we'll work on that for next year. Lucky, they're both hanging around, which is great, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching them grow and seeing what they want to do, rather than just turn up every day with a nail bag. Well, do you want to end up being a supervisor? Would you like to learn how to? And we get a lot of feedback from our sort of apprentices. We do do a bit of concrete and we do do a little bit of tiling, a little bit of hanging plaster, depending on the job, and it's the variety that we're finding our apprentices are really liking rather than just. You know, there's watering the trade down that much where you just stick framing or you're just doing fixes, or Well it's the only way to learn, isn't it?
Speaker 1:And I believe when you do a little bit of everything, and you do a little bit of everything, you do learn to think ahead and you do learn what the other trades need. Like if you're just smashing frames up every day, you might not understand why studs have to be in a certain position, or like with rebates in slabs and floor systems and things Like. If you don't understand the waterproofing and the falls in a wet area and how the toller needs to do the bedding, you're not understanding what you're trying to set up for 100 all you're thinking about is what you've got to do yeah, and then you lead it to the ones that have left in that fourth year.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't understand how all that works, but they know they can do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they just go and do it and it's yes, it's scary oh, it's really scary and the thing is with people that are with a lot of people in our industry. They don't know what they don't know no so they're going in and they're smashing out work, not knowing that what they're doing is stuffing up the next trade that comes through or or is causing an issue two, three, five years down the track and it's even the same as us.
Speaker 2:Like we've been going for 12 years now and you're still wanting to be better. Every day You're looking at older jobs that might have had a little issue or a problem going well. We don't want that to happen again. How are we going to fix it now? Like you're forever adapting and changing? I suppose yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I was just at a meeting this morning. So we've got a job that's about four and a half years old and, um, and the timber windows that were specified on the job, like we it wasn't our usual supplier and the timber windows are failing, like all the mullions are all rotten and falling apart and there's a beating around windows, and like this window company is trying to put it back on us. And like, we've gone back through all our paperwork and we're like mate, we ordered pre-primed, so don't tell us they weren't painted because you sent them out to site painted, yeah, and that they sat on site for too long before they were painted. We went back through our schedules. We know the delivery date. We know we've got the invoice for the painter for the outside paint work. Yeah, so we can work out from those two dates that they're only on site for about six weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we yep, um, so we've by far exceeded what we needed to do. Yeah, but, and this window company is pushing back, they don't want to know about it. But, um, so we've engaged an independent, um, glazing and window expert to come to the site and do his own report. Yep, and made in this industry, like you just said, like every day you're learning, but that's my pet hate with these.
Speaker 2:Call it a tradesman or a supplier, shit happens and they don't back you. Like we had a job the other day that was probably similar, four or five years old, it was aluminium cladding and it was like a nice gum grey colour and it all went purple. Client was fantastic. Rami said well, that shouldn't do that. Like, that's the idea. He didn't want timber, he didn't want for 12 months against this aluminium company and we finally just did the job last week and replaced 40 grams worth of aluminium cladding that the company come to the party with and was awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that took 12 months of fighting with them just to get them. They couldn't even get a rep up to have a look. Yeah, and I've heard a lot of stories like that around where, like a one locally had a cement sheet cladding product and couldn't couldn't get the rep out to look at it. But then the next job he had seventy thousand dollars worth of cladding going on it. They come up and fix the job. So I'm like that's where the industry needs a lot more support to builders, because even if it's a tradesman that's done the wrong thing and he's gone and you're left to fight yourself to fix the problem, because that trades is no longer around like it's. That's.
Speaker 1:I hate that part of the industry. Yeah, but like this guy this morning was incredible, like I'm really looking forward to him sending his report through. But yeah, like he like I've been a builder for whatever it is uh, 18 years, 17 years, now something but like he was explaining me why the size of the tim, the millions on the sides of timber windows are a certain size, why the, why the bottom um sections are certain size, like all these just little things that I don't know, no, but we know coming.
Speaker 2:I don't even know. They're probably just. That's the mold they've got.
Speaker 1:That's the way they build them, yeah, and just the way the beating's meant to be installed and like types of silicon to use and like how different wind ratings affect the glazing, like just all these little things that like, because, like, as a builder, you you get the plans, you send them out to a window manufacturer. Yeah, you send them the energy efficiency report, all the engineering, the wind rating, all those types of things and like, honestly, you just cross your fingers and hope that the company's going to send you back what is fit for purpose. You just presume.
Speaker 2:I suppose that's their job. They should do it. And look, we're being caught out with tradesmen and that way you send it to them. They've got to do their job. You're hoping they'll help you. And this is where I found a big difference, especially the last sort of three or four years, compared to when I first started. I had old school trades. I'd turn up on site as a chippy with my nail bag on, do the frame, get it all ready, go do the lockup. The trades would just come in, talk to the client, do their job and go home. You didn't. Whereas now you've got to supervise everything, everything Down to making sure that, like, say, the air con blokes tied all these air con ducts up correctly with the right size tape, Like all these little things that you shouldn't have to check. It's very hard. I find it hard as a builder now, because there is that many little loopholes where the builders can be at fault. Yeah, and we're not doctors. We didn't go do a six or seven and we can't.
Speaker 1:Google it all. But there's so much to know, isn't there? And then people whinge about the margin and stuff they think we're making. And yet, like I know from when I was a subbie, when you're a subbie your dollar value of work is quite small or smaller than the builder's dollar value.
Speaker 2:Your profit margin is a lot more on that dollar value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's right.
Speaker 1:So it's not uncommon for all your independent trades like to be making 20, 30, 40, 50 percent markup so like, yeah, I could make that off a house, it'd be all right. But yeah, I do think that the whole industry does need to level up its game, like it's um, it shouldn't be left up to the builder to have to understand and know everything, like I think we're pretty lucky, like, I'd say, 80% of our trades. They do put in a lot of effort and they do. I love it when they come to us and go, hey, we've just learned this, we've got to keep up to date with the new codes.
Speaker 1:One of our trades he's actually been ringing me a lot lately and saying, oh, look on all your new jobs, it's my tile. You need to start setting up or putting all fall in in your sub floors so that we don't have to do two layers of waterproofing. So, yeah, well, it's good to have trades that are working with us to make sure that we can deliver quality products 100%. Yeah, so I'm just want to fucking get in, smash out their little part of the work and really don't care about what else is going on.
Speaker 2:We always had the saying that you only know good tradesmen when there's a mistake. That's what we used to always run by because they'd be awesome when they're getting paid and the jobs are sailing. And as soon as you pull them up on that one thing and you cop the earful down the phone or whatever it is, it's like a righto. You know that tradesman wasn't. You know that's. That's what we're looking for now in our trades. Like you should be able to get on the phone.
Speaker 2:Like I had a painter once where I'd get another painter to come in and repaint the house when he was gone. Just, you know, when you're young and in the industry, you're trying to do the right thing by running a little town and yeah, that was the worst thing we could have done. It gave us the bad reputation for not a very good paint job. And then you know we've learned now how it's'll come back and fix it and there's no bill attached with it. They'll back themselves on their work and go oh, we should have picked that up, but that's how it should be, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Like I don't know? I'm positive you do the same thing, but like mate, I wear so many costs on a job because I won't hand over a home until it's up to my standard we've got that same rule we won't hand it over.
Speaker 2:Now, especially in the last 12 months, we've made a real strict rule that we're not handing over till we know evidence, whereas we used to say we're just waiting on. You know, whatever it was to be done, they'll do it next week and the owner wants to get in because they're paying rent or whatever pressure they're putting on you now like no, there's a done rule. Traveling our office um, he wants to sort of get it to a 21 day rule. Where the house is finished, we go through and then there's time for the owner to look do whatever they want, go through it and then we hand over, like just trying to make it good for both parties, because not that we don't want to go back, but sometimes you might have a change in weather or whatever the problem be and you'll pick, like we had one the other day.
Speaker 2:We, which we just hand over yesterday all finished, nothing wrong, just waiting for the septic be signed off by the local shire, and the owner went around one night and the mix sink mixer on the basin was leaking, like they'd been installed for three weeks. Like no one's fault, it's just a faulty product and like all right, no worries, we better get another one and get them out and sort that out. There's all these little things that can happen like it's yeah, it's building, yeah, it's the joys of it isn't it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you think about how many products trades, people, deliveries like it's a moving item, like I often say, like I used to, I've done up a few cars and like some of that and all that sort of stuff and I try to explain. The paintwork on a house it's not like painting a car. You don't have it in a controlled environment where you can put a bake it or you can have it airtight. But we're working with what surfaces. We've got, um, like the quality of product, like cement sheet and stuff's not like how it used to be. It's got ripples and dimples and stuff in it. Now the products aren't keeping up with the level of quality I think we're all trying to get to now and that's a really hard one. You've got inferior products that you're trying to work with.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really important point too. Just across the board, with all trades, every day is different. The elements change, the team environment changes. There's so much to contend with.
Speaker 2:Well, it's something a little like concrete slabs changes. There's so much to contend with. Well, it's something a little like concrete slabs. Like I've been really working hard in the last 12 months on how we should be pouring our concrete. What's the environment like? What's the day like when we're pouring? Is it a frost, is it? And just that work we've done now has got our slabs to where they were, whereas before we just trusted concrete. Are they going to put a bit of water? No, they're going to do this and you know it's.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It seems the industry's been watered down a lot with the knowledge and the you know they can especially a slab, poor slab and drive away. The problem might happen to it for 12 or two years later. Yeah, they're well and truly gone. So I don't know. That's where I find the industry a lot challenging now, like you've really got to know and look, go down a few rabbit holes all the time, looking at different things and whether it's yeah, hey, how they painted you what sort of no more gaps he uses on his skirting boards and stuff to make what. Now they spray everything. It's different to how they used to back roll everything and you know different, like we still want the painter to say back, roll the walls. You know a lot of people just go in and spray in the whole house and say tip off your doors.
Speaker 2:And stuff like painting the top and bottoms of the doors for starters, like all these little things that we took for granted as well, you would have been the same what we got an old school apprenticeship, I suppose where things were just people just did their job properly and my trades quote the house, like I don't give them a po for a price.
Speaker 2:So I'm like quote for what you need to do and do it properly, quote to do it properly, and then that's the bill. And if we lose the job, well, joe, blow down the road can have it, because he obviously doesn't allow for something. So but that comes back to, I think, mindset, like you're saying before, like we lost a, a really substantial project that we quoted, done our pre-construction process, got paid for that, but we were happy we lost it because we quoted it, we knew our numbers, we'd built houses for the other family and then we thought, well, you know, that's our best price we put forward. If another builder wants to travel an hour from town to come and do that job for that client, well, they've missed something. But two years ago I would have been upset about that, whereas your mindset changes once you can shift that and your team like well, next project yeah, yeah, I think like again, that's another really important part of the industry and for trades and builders to be aware of.
Speaker 2:Like you don't have to compete on price, no, and it is hard for us, like we, that's the biggest mindset thing we've got. Like we, you know, got a few two million bands around. We've. Look we. A lot of people say, why do you have so big overheads? I said, well, I can't do what I want to do with the quality of my work and how I want to look after my customers without the team that I've built. Now it hasn't just happened overnight, it's been 12 years of going up and then coming back down and the team we've got. Now it costs what it costs, unfortunately, but in the last 12 months, the projects we've handed over, the satisfaction, it's like the old days again. Go have a coffee with any one of our clients the last 12 months and that's unfortunately the team we need to do that job.
Speaker 1:It's hard, isn't it? Because people don't understand, like people think, that a builder is someone with a nail bag on that is on site and just managing the trades. Yep, it's hard. I think it's people hard for people to get their head around, and not only just clients, but even designers, architects and tradies you get that comment a lot.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're not on the tools anymore. I said if I had my choice I'd be on the tools every day of the week, but I can't like. And I had a builder tell me once unfortunately he passed away and he was great. He taught me a lot. He said you won't make any money if you're not on the tools and that's going back 10 years ago. I'll never forget the conversation with him. But the industry's changed so much that if we weren't on the tools doing the paperwork, the problems that we'd have with those jobs would be astronomical.
Speaker 1:But it's not only that. There's been a few conversations in the Live Life Build community about this at the moment and it's important for builders and tradies to understand this. For you to be able to build your site, team up and have a certain, you need a certain amount of work to cover your overheads, yep, and so to keep that certain amount of work to cover your overheads, yeah, and so to keep that certain amount of work, you have to have a big pipeline of work 100 and so somebody's got to be managing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I only just had a. We had a big team meeting with my site team last week and I was explaining to them like with the size team we have now, we need a certain volume of work on, yeah, and to get that volume of work and keep that consistent, I need to have um 16 to 20 projects in pre-construction yep, all the time.
Speaker 2:Yep, so huge and that's a lot of work of pre-construction like that, with, you know, quote and repricing, chasing up. You might be going to drive and catch up with the client, the architect, or you might be going to see a supplier.
Speaker 1:Might be a new product and that's a lot of work similar with your side. You're probably more but um like you, and so that that's a. That's a full-time gig just on its own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well that's even like my role now. Like I've trained jacko, he's my main man up. I call him the construction manager now. He was the site supervisor. He's coming to the office now because we've found this big lull between when the job's quoted comes through. It's still got to get ready for construction, there's still ordering of windows and all that pre-ordering, so the job runs smoothly.
Speaker 1:I feel like some of the trades have no like these trucks just show up to site and they have no idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we're doing all those PVC windows now, some of them could be 12-week turnaround on order. So sometimes you're ordering the day you sign the body contract and then 12 weeks time you're starting the job. You're trying to chase a permit because you know even just putting a permit in can be hard. You might be chasing a surveyor, or you might be chasing the council, or you know, there's so many things that no job ever is the same. There's always a surprise around the corner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just we got a little. We went on another tangent there, but what? Um, so you were going to possibly take off and move to cans. I'm surprised you could put your dirt bike in the back of the datsun, to be honest yeah me seven daddo 720 I had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we built a tray for it and, um, I couldn't hardly fit behind the steering wheel.
Speaker 1:That was half the battle um, but yeah, and then like a builder said hey, you can't leave town, we're gonna, we'll put you on whatever. So you did all the work and stuff for him.
Speaker 2:But yeah, um, then you obviously finished your apprenticeship yeah, finished it and then I wanted to make sure I spent some time with him again. But then I just wanted to learn what other builders were doing. There was a few other builders around town. There was an old fella we called crazy colt. He was old school carpenter.
Speaker 2:Like I learned to build windows by like windows by hand, on site stairs, all that old-fashioned carpentry, everything was done batting roofs, all the old-fashioned stuff that I didn't get taught in the other apprenticeship and it was awesome, like it was just. And then I built a good relationship with him so I'd sub you back to him. And then another builder moved back from darwin need hands. I'd sub you with him and I for a couple years just floated around and then studied night school. That was every single wednesday and every second friday, saturday for night school, for me license, which was an hour and a half away, but then and you had a young family at this point yeah, I built me first house at 19 and then built me a first house at 19, had first kid at 19, so, plus doing all this other stuff on the side.
Speaker 1:So anyone that's fucking making excuses.
Speaker 2:You don't have any time like seriously you got to make time and then, like, even when I was doing my apprenticeship, I was still working at iga three nights a week because I wanted to build a house. I mean back then, think so, you were working all day on the tools and then I'd finish at 4 o'clock and my boss was really good at that. Sometimes I'd be a bit late to work at IJ and then you'd work till 8 o'clock three nights a week and then some weekends you'd go work on the farm and milk because there was more money that you could earn. All I wanted to do was build a house. That was my goal and where it's gone. But my first house was 16 squares that's what I could afford at the time, cost me 160 grand back then, like it was well, it's still there today. Um, and it's um, yeah, just the way things have changed now. Like I look at, say, being a well, newly qualified and doing that, versus now, newly qualified wants a four-bedroom house, they want the pool, they want the shed and the other house is too dear. Million dollars of dirt, yeah, and a nice car and everything like that. Like, had nothing wrong with the hylux, but I didn't have the flashes hylux, but it got me by. Look, I sold me dirt bike to buy me work trailer because I was like, well, I need a work trailer so I can do some cashies, because I can't fit everything on the back of the ute anymore. So I don't know, I think it's just where people sit in life and where they want to be. And you know, I now I think that was stupid. But I had some nice cars and we had some good things and we did some great stuff. But I'm like I've wasted a lot of money on four-wheel drives over the years.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so yeah did all that and um that progressed on to being a builder then in the small town and then a bloke that taught me where I did my apprenticeship. Um, come on board with me and he was like my main builder. So I had him. And then, crazy cole, we had had a worker and he'd go work on the farm for a bit and then we'd get his worker for a bit. Then his worker wouldn't go back. So then I end up having to employ him and then I had to go do all cole's work as well, because I felt bad because I've just taken his worker off him. Um, so it's funny how things work out. And that's jacko. He's my main man now today. Yeah so, and the other fella that was with me helped him get his license. He's out on his own now in town as well.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's been a revolving door, but I did get a very spoiled. I suppose I had a lot of good carpenters come through from the older generation, so that was a huge adjustment, especially in the last sort of six years where you lose those sort of guys because they move on and the caliber of the next one's coming up. Not that they're not good and not good fellas, they just weren't taught how we were taught. So then you had to start learning. How do I teach them what I want them, how I want them to act?
Speaker 1:every huge, every uh, every year.
Speaker 2:There's just a few little secrets getting lost in there, oh huge and that's where I like I really, you know, can pick and choose where you want to be in your business. I really want to come back to where I can train these apprentices. So nothing better than teaching someone how to hang a door and they hang that door and just to look on their face, or that's what I enjoy about the industry and that's where I'm trying to build my team up, because I'd love to be back there teaching this new generation, not being a trade school teacher, but just teaching my guys coming through so they can love the industry, like how we got taught to love the industry with timbers and all that's getting lost now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it's just really there's a plan, build it, let's go the next one yeah, well, look, I'm definitely no expert at it, but like I remember during my apprenticeship, like my boss, like the timber would turn upside and we, we did a few hardwood frames, which was just absolutely flogged yeah, I was lucky, I missed that. And then um, and then cypress, like we have. I don't know, do you have cypress down your way?
Speaker 2:no, no we had a lot, a lot of oregon for like back in the day, but no, no, not much cypress I Mate, it was just heavy as anything.
Speaker 1:So the timbers would turn up to site and I did part of my apprenticeship with my boss and his brother and the timber would turn up to site and he'd go oh, that's that timber, that's that timber I know a few timbers now when they turn up to site but you see the apprentices now and a lot of them can't even you tell them over and over and over again and like they can't even tell you the difference between a treated piece of framing, a bit of pre-prime timber, a bit of finger jointed pine, like just real basic stuff.
Speaker 2:There's nothing better. Like we're doing a reno at the minute and they're cutting the floor up and the apprentices were cutting. I was like, oh, there's nothing better that smell of murray pine being cut. How'd you know it was that? You didn't even look at it. I said I don't know what the smell is. It's just from years of working with those sort of beautiful timbers which are all gone now. Like we used to do the fix-outs with KD hardwood, now everything's prime pine and you know your miters can be filled up if they have to be, whereas back then you didn't get a second chance. It had to be a tight cut.
Speaker 1:Like there's things like I don't know about you in your way, but like some of the pre-primers, bloody, two, three mil thick and it chips, and then your painter's got to try and we find on it window reveals a lot like it'll chip off.
Speaker 2:It'll be that thick or chip, and then you got to try and patch up, especially on the external corner, and it's just.
Speaker 1:And then, if you, for any reason you got to rip a reveal down, like if you're, and I say, wet area, where you got six mil bill or whatever and you and your cladding's still on the outside. So you've got to rip the reveal down a little bit, trying to get that pencil round, edge on that pre-prime shit.
Speaker 2:Well, even something simple, like we used to arras all our architraves before we put them on. That's not done anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah you can on the pre-prime no because now they're spraying everything.
Speaker 2:They don't want the arras edge because it doesn't. So there's all these in their trailer anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we're still pushing for that. I actually did some work on the tools only a few months ago and for the life of me I couldn't find me a little hand plane that used to be in my nail bag. Yeah yeah. I went to the local tool shops. I went to three shops, couldn't even find one. No, no.
Speaker 2:That was a standard nail bag requirement. Yeah, just a nice little one. They've all got squares in their pocket. But yeah, no, it's even like the 3mm quirks around doors and windows when you put your arcs on just these little things that you're just trying to drive into them. I don't know, just such a mentality.
Speaker 1:Do you make your team go around and mark all their quirks? Yep.
Speaker 2:You just have a little gauge block.
Speaker 1:You mark all your.
Speaker 2:I just made them all one out of a bit of timber and I just got the 3mm quirk. Give more one. Yeah, normally now they're making their own because they keep losing them. But yeah, just the little things where you can try to try and teach them those little things and just make sure you got your nice quirk around your door before it meets your jam, and just those little things, like even backing a door off, little, just all these little things that are just getting lost.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I don't know it's a big amount of carboners that don't know what. Backing a door off is no idea.
Speaker 2:It's crazy yep, so it's just um, it's going to be interesting the next 10 years going to be a wild ride.
Speaker 1:I think it's funny about because, like a lot of people we've had on the podcast lately, builders and tradies, like everyone's talking about teaching the young generation, like the next lot of people coming through, and I think it's incredibly valuable. But it is a hard task because there's a lot of us tradies out there that want to teach the young people the right skills, but it's it seems to be very hard to find the out there that want to teach the young people the right skills, but it's it seems to be very hard to find the young people that want to learn them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, like we're very sported and we've got a lot of farm kids and we find them fantastic because they've worked on the farm with their mum or dad or they've just learnt that. I suppose call it common sense just working around machinery or knowing what a spanner is or what a shifter is, or just general knowledge of tools. Yeah, skyhawks, yeah, left-handed hammers, all that sort of stuff. So yeah, and it is.
Speaker 2:It is tricky like um, I've actually got my young fella wants to do a school-based apprenticeship and, like my wife said, I feel sorry for you because you're going to be worked pretty hard like you want them. You see a lot of father sons come through and I want him to be worked hard because I want him to know, to want to do the job, like not in a cruel way, but like I'll send him with the boys and I don't want, I want him to be on the shovel, I don't want him to be precious or anything like that and I I don't know whether people coming through, whether it's how they're brought up, whether they've been, I know, band-aided and you know may or they can get away with that.
Speaker 2:I mean that whole school system I don't get me started is wrong. That's wrong. I mean. I remember we used to get belted every now and then with a seal, paper roll and stuff. You did something wrong. You couldn't do it these days, but that's just how it was, and you didn't make the mistake again.
Speaker 1:I don't agree with that. I got the same and made it it, definitely with my depression, anxiety and stuff. Like it made me not want to go to work. But there's got to be like I don't know, look for any young people out there listening. If you want to send comments, reach out or whatever and give us some ideas. But like for me, it's a no-brainer.
Speaker 1:Like if you're a young person out there that's coming into the industry, it doesn't matter what trade it is. Like you just head down, bum up, you get there in the morning. Like you said before, you should know what you have to do. Like if you've been working on a, I'm just pulling shit out of the thin air now. But like if you're a tiler and you're working with a tiler on the day before or you've just done the waterproofing, you should know that when you turn up or you've got the trailer locked on, you're going to be doing the bedding. Like, get the buckets out, get so that when your boss finishes talking to the builder or whatever it's good to go, or if you're yeah, we've started to tick the box sheets, like especially framing's an easy one because you can do from go to.
Speaker 2:Oh hey, do this, we've done programs. So like I've one of my apprentices just qualified, did his first frame there a few weeks back, the building inspector come, made him walk through the building inspector, not one problem. He went through that, ticked the box and followed and did a fantastic job. But it's just sometimes about me, as a builder too, educating myself on how I can now that next generation. How can I help them? And these ticked the box sheets. They don't have to worry, they can just worry about what they're doing now, if the installations behind the wall junction, before we're putting the paper on just these little things. And it's been more again back to the office, more procedures and stuff in the office so that on-site crew can learn and then that first-year apprentice can look at the list and go. I can go do those L brackets next because we haven't done that yet or whatever it is, I don't know. I've found that has helped us a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's huge Having that system or checklist just to work them through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we even started doing transportables as well, because we found like with our plumbers and electricians they were saying the same thing with their apprentices. So we built a couple just as trial, just to let my apprentices go and do a stick frame with the list and work out window head heights. And it doesn't matter if they muck it up, it's out on the farm, it's. You know it'll be right when we finish it. No-transcript. Electricians went out there with their apprentices and let them rough in the house and we've done a couple of them now and that's where people go wrong, is not?
Speaker 1:people like? They're so tight on the pricing of the job that they're scared for anyone to make a mistake, so they baby their apprentices and they don't, because the reality is you only learn from making mistakes.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm capable for it. Like, you'll get a team of chippies and you know, say, someone hangs doors really well, someone does frames really well, and you get in the mindset of we're running low on those hours, especially in a job. I will send that bike to the fixer, he'll do it in half the time and I can take full accountability for that now that I do and I go well, no, they're gonna have to do that day, but that fix that probably two days longer, but then the next one they might be one day longer and then the next one they might be on time, because they've got to learn and the next one.
Speaker 2:They'll be a day I'll take full responsibility a lot of the time now, with no excuses to go. If that apprentice has got to his fourth year, he doesn't know what haven't I taught him why? What can I do better for the next one, so that they can come along and enjoy it?
Speaker 1:because I see my trades all the time and I've got to keep reminding them like that you've got to. If they make mistakes, it's on me, I'll take the hit, I'll take the loss, but they, unless they make mistakes, they're not going to learn. No, you're just going to throw them in the deep end yep, I reckon.
Speaker 2:And they love it, they'll, and then they. Especially if that apprentice is upset because he's made that mistake, then he remembers next time that. And by going in the deep end they remember. I was the same Like give me a book, I wouldn't read it. But if I watch a video or get shown how to do it there, I'll go do it. But then by having to do it yourself, you remember. If someone keeps showing you each time, you just don't remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my biggest learnings, mate, was my boss went away on and so my second part of my apprenticeship it was I worked side by side with the boss. He had some other carpenter gangs that did stuff, but we did a lot of stuff together so I got to do a lot of stuff that people didn't get to do. I went to some meetings and stuff and helped, did a lot of setting out and that. But he went on a holiday for a week and left me to do a fit out and like with my previous boss. I was a gun at all the skirtings afters, cupboard shelving and stuff, but I'd never hung a door. Yep and um. He showed me one door before he left. He like spent 20 minutes with me and he's gone on this holiday and I was freaking out like the monday, tuesday, like I reckon I spent a day and a half like just trying to get like these two doors right and I was freaking out. I was like he's going to come back, he's going to fucking go off his nut because I just haven't done anything and I just kept at it. I didn't have a smoker, I didn't have lunch, I just kept going and going and going and I'd figured it out and I got it right and then I just smashed I don't know what. There was nine, 10, 11 doors in this house and I got the fit out done.
Speaker 1:By the time he came back he was stoked. I fucked a few up. He went around the job with me and he showed me. But because I had done it and then he walked through the job with me and he pointed out what I'd fucked up, I learnt because I knew what I'd done and it was very. You might have known you've done it and thought I'll see how it goes, but it was. It was really easy for him to say oh, dwayne, like you need to, you should be putting square lines on your jams when you hang your doors, like all your jams need to be like. Yeah, and it's a pet hate of mine now, like I can't stand when you walk through a house and the bottom of the door jams like there might be a tile or something on the floor, yeah, and the jams are twisted like it drives me nuts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm the same. When you get two skirting boards and you see in some houses they don't line up when they hit the architrave, it's like it's not hard, like we put the little clout behind it. We do and you tap it back and just those little tricks, like I.
Speaker 2:I was bad, like, especially with covid coming and going, you're trying to put the jobs in and I wasn't on site all the time and I started to learn those little things to teach the apprentices and yeah, it's amazing, like if you get a good, if you get the right apprentice and a good crew, it's it's just so exciting to show them those little tips and tricks that you take for granted, that you know, yeah, yeah yep, so um mate, obviously, then you've come through, you've you've jumped into business, like so you've been building.
Speaker 1:Now for what? 12? Years, 12 years, I reckon yeah yep, look what's some of the challenge, like what's the biggest challenges you've had in that time?
Speaker 2:definitely managing trades and they're, I guess, being younger, being a younger builder as well with the older trades and clients managing clients like um, since learning to choose your clients. But I guess that comes from experience too, and and this is where I like having a team, because the all our team deal with that client when they come through and, um, you know, you sort of get to see what the clients do, how they've come through over the last couple of years, why that job didn't work, and same thing again, taking accountability for what we can do right and how we can fix it. We've had some jobs and you know, I don't know a builder yet that hasn't had a mistake or something happen that can't be fixed. But you know, depending on the client, it could be a different resolve. So, you know, with bringing through our pre-construction process, if that client can't choose the toll they want, they carry on.
Speaker 2:We start to see these few alarm bells earlier, earlier on, and we can make the call not to do that job. Um, and then you know we can choose whether they're they've got to make sure we're the right fit for them and they're the right fit for us, and that's probably been one of the biggest things I've. We've seen change in the industry that you can actually choose yeah, and it is hard in a small town because there's not always that much work out there, but yeah it's better than how many people in your town.
Speaker 2:What have we got? Seven chippies. And then I've got an estimator In your town.
Speaker 1:How many people in?
Speaker 2:your town. What have we got? 7,000 or something. Oh shit, yeah, that is small. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:We would be lucky to go half an hour either way, that's another really important lesson for people that listen, because I get so many trades and builders say to me oh, I can't do well, in my town I've only got $10,000 or $20,000. You've got 7,000 people in your town.
Speaker 2:You've turned over $8 million a year. You've just got to adapt. I won't say no to anything for the right client. It is hard. We would love to build custom new homes and do our commercial jobs, but there is such a satisfaction to, in a renovation, to go to someone's house where they've lived in it for a while. They might only want to add a bedroom and a bathroom on the back of the house, but they just love it. When you finish it, that's just a new, new room for them. And yeah, unfortunately because I love my job that's we're doing a lot more renovations but we'll do anything from a bathroom reno right through, because I like what you said, but it's all about the client.
Speaker 2:It's all about the client. I don't care. I'll go build a shed for someone if they want me to Like. It's all about that client relationship now, and that's really been a focus over the last 12 months.
Speaker 1:We're exactly the same. Well, the job has to be. Well now, and I think you're going in the same direction. Like for us, now the job has to be good quality materials, healthy building.
Speaker 2:We turned one down the other day which I never would normally, because they just weren't listening. Like we have to hit the seven-star energy rate in Victoria and this one wouldn't quite hit it, and like we're not worried. I'm like you should be worried, like you should want to build this as energy efficient as you can. And you know we use all the proclimate wraps and we've gone down that rabbit warren and I don't even think it costs any more money. It's just about you know how can we build that home better and that's our standard now we will do that. We've got our first one coming up where we're going to wrap the roof. No one else is wrapping roofs, but I feel it's going to be better for our home and it's going to make that home last, because I don't want someone ringing me in four years' time with a problem that I could have solved now. We got a blower door test done the other day on one, the first one. We'd done two airtight and we were down to five air changes a minute.
Speaker 1:An hour, an hour, sorry, yeah, so we're right on that limit of, especially in our climate.
Speaker 2:So then we're looking at HRVs and it is very much on that limit of how far is too far, especially talking passive house and all those which I am not an expert on at all. But it's more for us to. The more we're educating ourselves, the more we want to build that home better. And you know, unfortunately this is the hard thing with the industry if we go locking that up to airtight, well then we're doing worse things than what we could be doing.
Speaker 1:So well, we're um in the new year. I've been trying to organize for the last few months and we've been too busy, but, um, in the new year I've actually got stewie shelton coming up. We're going to blow a door test four or five of our jobs we've done in the last 18 months Because I sit on the fence with Passive House. I think it's a good concept. I think for me it works really well in cold climates I'm more about.
Speaker 1:For me, my core values are I want to build healthy homes, but I want to create healthy environments for the people that live in them. Yeah, and for me, being locked in an airtight box that breathes for you is not healthy. Yeah, and I'm probably going to upset some people by saying this, but I think we've got a lot of sickness in this planet. We need to touch and feel and breathe. So, yeah, I'm not convinced on the whole passive house thing. Like for me, my values are building using sustainably sourced products, um, products that can be 100 recycled, that they're in use, and you're trying to use a lot more natural products, lots of timbers, stones, um, all those types of things. But it is really good feeling when you attract clients that are like-minded and, like you touched on before, like exactly the same, the client is more important to us than the job. So, as long as the job meets our values which is also integrity, honesty, communication, education is one of our values we'll do the job.
Speaker 2:I don't care if it's a pool, pavilion, a house, a shed, but it's all about that client experience and client relationship and we never thought about that in the last 12 years or last 10 years, never worried about it, and it wasn't till, yeah, joining live life building, starting to work on the business and look at how much and then start going back over the problems on the jobs and what caused those problems or things like that. Or and you start, it comes back to the client every step of the way, whether it's you know they have a fight with the tradesman on site or whatever it's been in the past. The last 12 months has just been awesome. Like you get a phone call from a client. They ring up telling you how much they loved it. Or you have a site meeting. They'll be talking about what happened on the footy on the weekend or whatever. You know it's a different persona. It's a different what I, what we do for we love doing it. So last thing you want to do is have an unhappy client. So so you?
Speaker 1:like, obviously you said that was a issue with the clients and stuff. Knowing what you know now, yeah, but I'm sure you've had all the things that most businesses have.
Speaker 2:Like you, you've had trouble with your numbers, your finances, oh yeah oh yeah, when you come back to finances like we had turnover, we're lucky. We had cash flow. We didn't know what cash flow. Well, now I look. Lucky, we had cash flow. We didn't know what cash flow. Well, now I look back at it uneducated, I didn't know what cash flow was. We just had it coming in because we had the jobs coming in.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until you get a few breaks in the traffic that you start going oh, I need to pay that bill, I need to get that stage come. Then it puts that pressure on of. You've got to get rob and peter to pay paul. So once you start learning all that, it helps a lot. But that's where we also built the office up, because with cash flow, you need the jobs coming in, but if you're not quoting the jobs, you can't get the job. So it's, it's a, it's a big circle in it, but it's everywhere I went back. It went back to well, right now I need to build an office that works to help. We'll fix the office first and we'll get that done first and then we'll work on site. And that's been a couple year progression and that's where it's got to now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what advice would you give mate for? For people out there I know maybe listen to this podcast and see and maybe questioning why they do what they do like I reckon you need a biggest thing is talk to people.
Speaker 2:Like I'd never talked to builders until now because you always the local builder, never liked you because you're a competition. But now I'll speak to people on instagram or reach out. I got a builder from tassie ring the other day just for a chat. Like just awesome. Like we got a little brekkie group going in shepherd and now with a few builders that are all similar and we don't have an agenda, we just go there to have a chat and it's amazing what comes out of the chat. So I'd say, yeah, bit of back to anyone. You go get some mentoring.
Speaker 2:There's a you know a few platforms out there, like elevate been great for us to be able to just learn. We're carpenters. At the end of the day, 90 of us we're not, we're not doctors, we're not lawyers, we don't know these things. And like the live events is what I've loved, because you have a beer or even having a lunch with someone. You just have a random chat and you go, oh well, I didn't think of that and oh, they've had that problem, we'll fix that because they've had that, so we don't have that problem. So just get out there and chat to builders is probably the biggest thing that's, and if you can get with the right builders, everyone's happy to have a chat all trades should be uh communicating across the board plumbers, sparkies, tires, like the whole one and the biggest thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know you put yourself in different circles, but I feel the circles we're in in the minute, with the builders we're talking to, everyone wants to get better, everyone wants to learn from each other and be better and I don't know, I've never had that in the last 11 years. It's only really been the last six months. Are you addicted to it? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's addicted. To listen to podcasts. I I think the main reason I go to the gym for the morning, even if I've run on the treadmill said listen to a podcast quickly, like just to get that one little thing out of it that you can add in. And you know I'm trying to get my staff into it. Some of them look at me a bit strange but yeah, just by them doing their calendar now.
Speaker 1:We'll work on it, we'll get there, yeah are you doing anything else besides the um exercise and the regular routines?
Speaker 2:no, that's, that's. That's mainly what I'm doing. Yeah, breath work. No, I've done a bit of breath work at a few events, but I haven't got into that yet. I'm trying to do the journaling. Yeah, um, yeah, I mean, it's hard. The last sort of two months is our busy period and it's hard enough to breathe sometimes, let alone fit something else in. So your breath, your breath works, just general breathing every day, exactly right. But you're having to run around the paddock trying to catch a horse, so I get caught.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good segue because I wanted to go into. Like your, you've um also got a pretty successful business on top of building, haven't you? Your wife operates yeah.
Speaker 2:So the wife's a vet nurse and loves animals and um, unfortunately, we're only builders, not millionaires, so we couldn't um go into the horse sports. We do a lot of camp drafting, cutting, and it got expensive. Had to buy the truck, we had to buy the caravan. I was like this is too expensive, we need a business for it. So, yeah, we breed um performance horses for the yeah, for the camp drafting industry, and it's been a great passion, like my wife loves, and it's good to good to see her enjoyment. And, yeah, the vets get a lot of money off us, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:It's expensive in that regard, but it's just great, even with my kids, like I, can get home from work and see the arena and dust kicking up everywhere and they're out there riding around and they're not sitting inside on technology.
Speaker 2:They're out there, you know, chasing each other around and you can be having a beer with someone and talking to them and everyone's on a level playing field. Yeah, no one. Yeah, there's some very wealthy business people or you know, but you're all there in the dust with a hat on and everyone's having a chat and everyone's there for the same reasons. And, oh, it's been great watching our kids grow up and and help with a bit of their anxiety and stuff too, going through that um school period from transition from high school to primary school to high school, and you know they're doing really well with their horse sports and learning. Being with these other kids that ride horses and they're not worried about what brand of shirt they got on and all that sort of stuff like it takes all that away and it's just um, you're out there with your animal having fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot to unpack, I think with that. I love how you um like you thought of it as a business, yep, and we're still working on it.
Speaker 2:I'd love to get my wife involved in Live Life Build and show her all these things, but because the building business is so busy it's taken a bit of a backward seat. But we had Linsim Border Collies and Linsim Jack Russells as well, so we used to breed a lot. Everything breeds at our joint. We finished breeding kids, so now we're breeding animals so, yeah, because you got four kids too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got four kids, yeah, so, um, they're, um, yeah, really enjoyable. Now they're at a good age, they can, um, especially my eldest, he's 15, so he's always helping around the farm and, like he messaged me when he got off the plane, they need another bale of hay. So he'll sort that out tonight with the tractor and it's just great being able to bring them up, like we had bobcats and excavators, and from an early age he was out there helping me dig a trench, or just being able to give him that other side of life and, I guess, give him a bit of responsibility. Let him sit on that excavator and I won't show him how to operate. He can work out what the lever's doing. He's in a big sand pit, so but now he's quite a good help.
Speaker 2:So I don't know been able to give our kids, you know, ride motorbikes around and give them hear a bit of quiet. You think what's happened and they've they've played around, done something wrong. The other day they had it to bogging out snow, to bogging out behind one of the motorbikes on the grass I love me grass and it. I was like I'll let him go, but yeah, one stack didn't hit the water tank and it's like, well, we'll learn not to do that next time. So I don't know, yeah, very sport to be out of town and trying to bring our kids up, you know, so they can do whatever they want to do. Like it's got my son coming up. He really wants to be a carpenter. So well, he went, did small engines because he loves motorbikes and thought that's better as a hobby. So yeah, just trying to I don't know no expert in it, but just trying to help them. And the other daughter wants to get into equine and things like that. So just trying to help them find their interest, I suppose the horses we've only like.
Speaker 1:As you know, we've talked about a bit recently. We um like we're only just getting into the horse early days. Um, currently they're both. My girls are sharing a horse, but that's very quickly looking like becoming more horses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one, then two, then 20.
Speaker 1:oh, mate, now we're bloody looking at other moving, other houses and all sorts of shit, but um yeah the horse is the cheap bit that's all the rest that goes with it, but it's oh, mate, I'm getting a lot out of as well. Like I can't get believe an incredible animal the horse is well I'm from like a motocross background.
Speaker 2:I've never, like family, have had horses on farms and stuff, but I've never been around them. And it's fantastic, like now we've got foals coming out that we had had to pull one out the other morning early in the morning and a bit of bonding experience. But now watching it come out and be alive and just say it's just awesome, like that's unreal, yeah, and the kids get a bit responsible. They've got to feed the dogs, they've got to feed the horses, they've got to look after them. Like there's a lot more than just that horse and just watching them bond too. Like my daughter had one that she couldn't crack a whip on and now she can crack a whip. She goes to stockman challenges and just the way they're bonded is together, like it's um, yeah, just not hop on and ride it. There's a. There's a lot of work behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:They're um, they're. They're very powerful and like emotional animal that they'd really make sense a lot, yeah what what's going on and how you feel and like yeah, and even just the calmness being around them.
Speaker 2:Like, um, like my son, he's very good at catching them. Now he's learned that. You know it's your persona, you can't you gotta. You know they're a big animal and, um, especially the young ones that we've got to handle, and it's it's. It teaches them to be a bit different how they react to a situation as well. It's in life, like you know, it can be a bit fiery sometimes in that cattle yard and you can sort of learn to adapt and be a bit mellow about it, because as soon as you're worked up, then they're worked up. And now I've brought that into my work, like if I get worked up, well, then that person that is there is going to be worked up. If I can be calm about it, they'll be calm. So yeah, it does it's true.
Speaker 1:You turn up the site dragging your feet around your whole team's going to be like enthusiastic, positive. There's always a solution like your team's going to, and that's the biggest thing with the mistake.
Speaker 2:I'll tell my boys to let me know they go. You won't yell at me. I'm like no, I'd rather work with you to find that issue. I'm not going to give you about across the year and say it wasn't right. Yeah, like yeah, yeah, there's a lot from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you um, you had a bit of a um I don't even know what to call it like celebrity experience, didn't you? Like you, for anyone that watches yellowstone? You, oh yeah, you imported buddy. Yeah, we've done it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've imported the metallic cat and and done that. Um, we've just had well, we've got a couple of foals. We've actually yeah, we embryo transplant a lot out of the states. We've just had a smooth talking styles foal just get born the other day. It's beautiful, I don't know who that is.
Speaker 1:But for anyone that watches yellow stain, what is it?
Speaker 2:triple six yeah yeah, um matt imported some yeah, semen across from that stallion and yeah, it's um. Did it work? Yeah, yeah, it's kicking goals. Yeah, I actually sold it to our cousin and he's taken on and trained it and yeah, we've done that side of it and some, yeah, it's definitely good interest, like I. Yeah, the wife loves it and just watching them grow up, and then that's a cheap exercise, ah no, no. What do you like? How does?
Speaker 1:that even work like. Does it have to be here within us? Like it's frozen, I guess it's frozen.
Speaker 2:It comes across it's frozen, but you um go to the breeding barn. So we've got um. We've actually got one near us. We did have one about two and a half hours away when he where my cousin lives as well, and they're fantastic at breeding. They're big into polo cross, so they deal with all that. For you. It's got to be the right timing of cycles and yeah, there's a whole lot in. I'm lucky my wife deals with all that. I just need to drive the truck and drop them off at the right time. So, yeah, there's there's a lot in and a lot of learning. And yeah, it's um. Look, we're still we're only eight years into that and we're still learning every day with how that goes. And yeah, it's um. You know we have breeding seasons that go backwards really quick and some that go really well, but it's a hobby. Yeah, it's, everyone's got to have a hobby.
Speaker 1:So it's a hobby that you've. You're running like a business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah yeah, just trying to, because it's, it is expensive. Like we got the truck where you go away on a weekend. Like you got fuel, you've got all those expenses and you know, like everyone thinks builders are millionaires, it's um, you've got to have more than just what you're doing to get by. But it also makes everyone accountable too, like and and, and. It gives us a reason to do what we do. Like on a weekend, you'll be going away doing something else. I'd be working every weekend if I didn't have that knock off on. Now, knock off on the odd friday and we go away and it's. It's created a different work-life balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's really I think it's really important. Like camille and I, everything we do is a business, like even the farm we've got at the moment, like everything is set up as a business. So even though it's a hobby and it's, it's our passion and it's our goal yep like it's.
Speaker 2:We've got aspirations. To move that on again.
Speaker 1:It's just um, we had a bit of a tough breeding season there.
Speaker 2:That cost a bit and it makes you wonder why you do it. But it's no different to building. You have good and bad jobs. You have good and bad things that happen seasons. So now we're building up again, like we've got three foals this year and we'll build on that for next year. And, yeah, again, like we do our building business, scale everything back. We went crazy and we had a lot happening with that breeding side of things, scaled it back as well, like we only got three foals this year but they're all quality. So, yeah, it's um and then what do you?
Speaker 1:do? You advertise them or you take them to shows.
Speaker 2:We normally go up to Tamworth for a big sale every year, but the last couple of years we've sold them out of the paddock just through knowing people and it's been really good that way. And now we're starting to see them come through and see how they perform and how they go on. And yeah, it's awesome seeing your brand out there getting around.
Speaker 2:Because you put a little brand on the side of the hip and now you can see that getting around everywhere, the hm everywhere. So that's, I'm pretty exciting. We'll have to talk horses. Are they quarter horses? Yeah, quarter horses, but we've got stock horses as well. So, um, the girls have just got into something new is the stock horse showing. I'm a bit more of a fast paced sort of person, so they've been doing a bit of that stock horse showing, but again it's all behind the scenes, like that's all breeding our brand and making our horses win, or making our horses be seen, because my girls love them and they treat them better than me half the time.
Speaker 1:They get treated. So I didn't. I'm still trying to sort of get my head around how it all works. Like we just went to the Warwick Radio it was on the other weekend biggest radio in Australia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good up there.
Speaker 1:Man, it's massive, but it's the first time we've ever hung around to the end on the sunday and just listen to like the awards and um trophies and things, and I couldn't believe it. Like the right, like people must, like breeders must pick riders and then put their horse under that rider and then the horse is just as important as the rider, 100%. So they're talking about the, the rider, but the horse is also getting the trophy and bandana and that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Like it is got like. We're by no means up the top of that chain, but we watch it. And you look at some of those good riders now and it's like sponsorship. That horse has to be good to be under that rider to win, because then it can breed on or its foals can sell for money and it's a huge, it's massive. Yeah, they do an awesome job. And some of those really good guys they travel Australia just doing that every day of the week and, geez, they're a good hand and you would have saw some of the best up there at Warwick. Like they're some of the best in Australia.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can't believe the prize money and I know it's nothing. My girls are just I don't know. They're probably a couple of months in. They're getting trained now.
Speaker 2:They want to do about it and I'm like holy shit yeah yeah, did you watch the redoubt? Are they camp draft while you're up there? Yeah, yeah, it was really. It's a really good one up there. Yeah, there's, and camp drafting has just got massive. It's huge now, let alone some of the rigs that are getting around to put all these things in. Oh man, I couldn't believe, so what a like similar to you.
Speaker 1:Like I was growing up I was all into summon at drag racing, like going to car shows and things and I don't know. Even back then, like, as well as watching the cars and the dry race and things, like I just used to like cruise around the pits and just checking things out and like so, while the girls were watching the horse and that up there, I thought, oh, I'm gonna go for a walk around the paddocks and have a look around.
Speaker 2:And, holy shit, I spent because I've got four kids. I spent a lot of time pushing a pram at drafts and I used to do the same thing. Go for a walk around, put one kid to sleep and have a look, and that's how we build our truck. Just by looking at those trucks and it's amazing. It's a building and cars. You look at these things you know well, that's nice.
Speaker 1:So that's a good setup and I thought there was money in drag racing events with b double trucks and stuff. And then walking around warwick and there's b double trucks. Well, so there was b double trucks set up for the horses, yeah, and. And then the same I don't know company or property or station, whatever it is, would then have another truck with all the hay bales and shit on it, and then they'd have a couple of I don't know Chevys or F-trucks or whatever. Yeah, it's unreal. I've seen one.
Speaker 2:We've got a big farm near us and they get to a lot of draftives and they've got a Jeep that comes out of the back and it's painted the same colour Like some of the stuff you see getting around, like it's. We're definitely not that We've got an old Mitsubishi glorified cattle truck with a caravan on the back, but yeah, it is awesome and it's just great to be out and involved with all those sort of people and it's just a different lifestyle. Really. It gets you away from the hustle and bust. I love it and I definitely think people.
Speaker 1:Since COVID, those sort of country events are just getting more and more popular. People are getting out of the city.
Speaker 2:It's ridiculous I do on the draft. Now there's waiting lists to get into a draft and stuff and I like the fact that I can be 60 and still doing it with my kids and hoping they come with me. Like that's what I'm hoping for.
Speaker 1:Like you see, a lot no-transcript girls out to their training now and, yeah, like not riding or not anything, I'm not really drinking at the moment, so just literally just sitting there bloody elbows on the rails and just watching yeah, we't half the time have time to drink because by the time you get home you're doing something and then you're having tea and going to bed.
Speaker 2:It works really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but, mate, we'll start to wrap it up Before we get out of here. Is there anything else you'd like to, I guess, put out to trades and builders? Any advice?
Speaker 2:No, I reckon the biggest thing is just mentoring, cultivating that out there, that once you start, and then you start meeting these new people and you get in that community of like-minded people, like it's huge I wish I would have done earlier. Like, unfortunately, you can't go back and see the money you wasted or the things you could have done better, but you can only go from now. Like we just look at I think we've been 18 months or something and the last 12 months has hit like it's awesome now. Like it's just looking at and we're always trying to get better. Like, like you have a little problem at work, like it could be, maybe the tank didn't get ordered for that job or whatever it is. Well, how do we fix it now? Like you're always problem solving to get better and yeah, that's what I reckon. Just go out and get addicted to it. It's great.
Speaker 2:Have you noticed some of your trades are getting help? No, no, no, I haven't noticed that, but I from trades with our scheduling, I've noticed that and they've noticed that. You know, especially coming into Christmas, which is always crazy, well, used to be crazy. So now we're like, well, it's not crazy. We're programmed in our jobs, we know what we're doing. We're putting two slabs down so we can start them next year. It's not crazy for us leading in, we got a handover yesterday and we stalled a whole different. They're compared to the rest of our trades or they're a big business. But aside from that, no, no, it's just getting get the job done and get home.
Speaker 1:They're not even thinking about yes tomorrow or then where they're going oh, we're seeing, we're really starting to see like a few of our trades now. Um, I had a really good conversation with my sparky yesterday. Like he's, he's reached out, he's getting some mentoring and coaching and he's, um, he was telling me how it's just really improved his, his, um, his efficiencies his cash flow.
Speaker 2:I've spoke to a few one man being sparkies back home and they are. I don't know if there's another similar to like, level up, like for live life, build like um for's, but it seems to be. They're starting to look at it, but your plumbers and your plasterers, are they doing it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, plasterers, he's really kicking goals. He's into the training stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll look at it that if we can have trades, go to work. Everyone wants to make money at the end of the day because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. You need to put food on the table, and then there's not that argument because they get to the end of the job and they've realized their boys are blowing the hours out. They don't have time to come back and fix a patch or it just helps everything. If everyone get on the same page and start learning the numbers and their figures and how to run their business better, then they're not as stressed out and how help us to make our job a lot easier to run it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's awesome, mate. Well, um, look, really appreciate you jumping on a plane and shooting up here this afternoon. It's been a really good chat. Look for everyone that's listening. I guess we've got something really big in the works for next year. We can't tell you too much about that at the moment, but Matt will be a part of that. And, yeah, hopefully, once we announce that, you can all come along and say g'day and we can really talk some cool stuff. But, mate, appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:No, thanks for having me, it's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Good to see the shed, but it's been bloody hot yeah it has. We'll go and get a drink, but yeah, look, guys, I really hope you're enjoying the podcast. Please like, share, subscribe, tell every other trader, every other builder you know about this podcast, because we want to continue to make this Australia's number one construction podcast.
Speaker 2:We'll see you on the next one. Are you ready to build smarter, live better and enjoy life?
Speaker 1:then head over to live like buildcom forward, slash, elevate to get started everything discussed during the level up podcast with mene 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.