Why Australian Builders Are Drowning in Debt & What to Do About It

Life is hard. Are you making it harder than it needs to be?

In this solo episode, Duayne gets real about one of the biggest problems facing Australians today and it's not the economy. We're living beyond our means, chasing things we don't need, trying to impress people we don't even know, and wondering why we're anxious, burnt out, and broke.

There's no cost of living crisis. There's a spending crisis.

Duayne breaks down why so many tradies and builders are caught in the trap of keeping up with the Joneses. Doom scrolling Instagram, comparing themselves to other businesses that look like they're killing it but are drowning in bad debt behind the scenes.

The message is simple. Life will always be hard. It's up to you to choose your hard.

💡 In this episode you'll hear about:

    Why material possessions are making your life harder, not better
    The truth about debt and the difference between good and bad
    Why social media is lying to you about success
    How to stop living for others and start building a life you actually want

This podcast exists to help everyone in the construction industry thrive and not just survive. If you're a builder, tradie, or anyone in construction who wants to level up their life and business, this one's for you.

#australianbuilder  #buildingindustry  #tradie  #AustralianTrades #constructionbusiness  #buildsmarter #costofliving  #australia  #smallbusiness  #entrepreneur  #buildinglife

Transcript

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Opening And Solo Format

SPEAKER_00 0:05

G'day guys, welcome back to another cracking episode of the Level Up Podcast. We are back in the studio this afternoon for another solo podcast. So really appreciate everybody's feedback on these solo ones. Um, yeah, I'm pleased in my opinion, and uh my theories are making a difference to people. So um, look, today's podcast is it's basically about everything is hard, and it's really it's up to us to choose our hard and what we consider hard and and um what we lean into. I I get it, the way the world operates these days, it's all fast-paced. Um there's no such like it's it's very unusual now to have a family that the the mum or the dad works and one of the parents stays home and looks after the house, looked after the kids, and it's very rare these days for families to have family meals and spend time together overnight time. Like everyone is busy. Um, mum and dads are busy because we're all living beyond our means, and they have to work two jobs to be able to keep up with the Joneses and pay for our houses and our all of our new cars that we want to have, and then all the shit that we put in our houses. And then the kids are flat out because schools these days are giving kids so much homework and there's so much um after-school activities that just families aren't getting time to spend good quality time together anymore, friends and family aren't getting to hang out as much anymore. And reality is that just everyone is too busy doing shit that um for what reason, and I believe that is what's making our lives

Choose Your Hard

SPEAKER_00 1:43

so hard because we're all putting ourselves under enormous pressure to have things that we don't really need to have. Like material possessions don't necessarily improve our lives, they don't um they don't really mean anything, like they and yet we we put ourselves under so much pressure to whether it's earn more money or work our way up work in our careers or whatever it may be, but through no fault of our own, we are making our lives very difficult, and that difficulty is becoming very hard for a lot of people, and a lot of people are struggling to keep up, and so then that pressure is leading to a lot more anxiety these days, a lot more depression. Um, people aren't happy in their roles at their jobs, they're not happy with the houses they live in, they're not happy with the the cars they drive, but everybody is just wanting to be constantly getting something. Um, and you've only got to go, like I I avoid them like the play, but like you've only got to drive past a shopping centre any day of the week these days, um, and they're just absolutely packed with people probably spending money that they don't they can't really afford to be spending, and I personally believe that the that whole way that the world works these days is it's it's very broken and it's not healthy and it's not um it's not adding to our lives. I I prefer I much prefer the way that I was lucky enough to grow up where like you had to like I remember growing up as a kid, like

Busy Culture And Family Drift

SPEAKER_00 3:18

the weekends come and on the odd occasion that my dad wasn't working, um Saturday mornings were like my I'd be out in the yard with my dad helping smash the mowing out, we'd go for a swim in the pool, have a shower, and then we'd go to the grocery shop and we'd all go around as a family and do the do the weekly grocery shop, and you had to you had to have that done um by either 12 or some shops would open till two o'clock. And if you didn't get that done, like you missed out because Sundays everything was shut. It was very, very rare. Like you might find a 7-Eleven or a little convenience store that was open on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon, but you had to be a lot more structured around your week and your life, and you had to be a lot more organized because you couldn't just race to the shops at all hours of the night and 24-7 because they just weren't open. So I'm very grateful for the time period that I got to grow up and experience, and um like I think that's part of the reason why Camille and I now really enjoy um getting out in the in the country, and it's why we bought our quite a lot of our properties in the country and our farms are in the country because we love that environment. We love that um and like to give you a perfect example,

Growing Up With Slower Weekends

SPEAKER_00 4:32

like uh one of our properties down south, we uh went and inspected recently, and it's in a well, a reasonably sized country town, but um I had some stuff I needed to do for work, and because we had another deal going on, and I had to get some paperwork, like it was it was last minute, we're literally driving down to visit this property, and I had a phone call that because of this deal we're doing, um, they needed an additional form signed, and I said, Oh, look, I can't, and they're like, Well, this it's really important, like that this property is not going to settle next week if you don't get this form back to us. And I said, Well, I can't, I'm I'm driving down to such and such. And they're like, Oh, well, there's a branch in that town, like, um, just go in there, we'll email it through. Um, and anyway, long story short, we're like, Oh, yeah, no worries, we'll we'll do that. We got to the town and it was like bloody quarter past 12, and it was shut on a Friday, and we're like, what the hell's going on? And then uh like these locals saw us standing out of the front of this branch, scratching our head, and they're like, Oh, you guys must be from the city, the bank's shut at lunchtime around here. Anyway, I think it's a funny story, but that's that's the sort of lifestyle that I love. I don't um I'm not too fast on this just hectic, crazy, being flat out busy all the time. I don't believe it's good for any of us. And at the end of the day, you've got to choose your hard, and a lot of us are choosing the wrong hard. A lot of us are are making decisions based on just not what we believe in. We're not living it, we're not running our own race, we're not living our own lives, and we're a lot of people, I I see it on a daily basis, are putting themselves under enormous pressure. And this is this is really common in the building industry. And I I know how this works because I got caught up with it for such a long time as well. Like, it's easy to do scroll on social media, and if you're a carpenter, see another carpentry business killing it, if you're a plumber, like make the assumption that that there's other plumbers killing it, or like if you're a builder, like seeing other builders on Instagram that look like they're doing all this flash job and lots of jobs and got big teams and they're killing it. But you don't know the reality, you don't know the behind the scenes, you don't know that everything that they put on social media is all debt, they don't own anything, they're they're in debt to their eyeballs, and that every day is a struggle for them. And this is really important to to call out, I believe, because no one ever knows what's going on behind the scenes. And look, these days debt is incredibly easy to get. And don't get me wrong, there's good debt and bad debt, and look, I'll put my hand up. Like, we're in a lot of debt, but it's mainly good debt. Like, we we invest in property, we do developments, we we um we have shares and all like there's lots of things that we invest in and that we have debt on, but that debt is making us money, it's not bad

City Pace Versus Country Time

SPEAKER_00 7:30

debt. So choose your when again, it tells it comes back to choose your hard. Like, do you want to be under constant pressure every day? Do you want to have anxiety? Do you want to get impression because you you're not achieving things that you want to have, or your life's so hard because you're working your ass off, and every cent that you're earning is going towards paying shit off that you don't really need. And seriously, this is something that it needs to be discussed more because um there's a couple of little guys that I follow on social media that that talk about this all the time and bring it up, and I agree a hundred percent. All right, guys, I want to introduce you to a really exciting new product that I believe is going to play a massive role in Australia building healthier homes. As you all know, I am extremely passionate about healthy homes, and I'm doing a lot of research and putting a lot of time and effort into making sure my construction business is leading the way when it comes to building healthy homes here in Australia. We've teamed up with the guys from Highwood Timber. Highwood Timber are pioneering condensation management with their high flow ventilated LVL baton system. High flow battons give builders a stronger, straighter, and smarter way to create a ventilated cavity behind cladding and underneath roofs without compromising on structural performance. While tackling condensation to improve building health and ease of insulation, highwood battons are built to perform. When it comes to dealing with condensation and ventilation, high flow battons will help you create continuous ventilated cavities behind all your cladding and underneath your roof sheeting. They reduce condensation risk and support healthier,

Social Media Pressure And Debt

SPEAKER_00 9:10

longer lasting buildings. Highwood timber batttons are also in alignment with the proposed NCC condensation management requirements as well as passive house ventilation requirements. Being an engineered LVL product, they are stronger, straighter, and more dimensionally stable than

Sponsor Highwood Timber Battens

SPEAKER_00 9:27

a solid material such as pine. This helps resist warping, twisting, and shrinkage, ensuring more consistent installs less prone to splitting than solid timber. Howwood timber battens are precisely manufactured, meaning that your installation will be faster and easier than other products on the market. The part that I like the most about these batons are they are H3 treated for long-term protection against decay and turmoiles. They use a waterborne H3 treatment which reduces reactivity with membranes and adhesives when compared to LOSP. These are the exact battens that you want to be using on your homes and your builds if you are considering building healthier homes or passive homes. Check them out. Highwood Timber Products. There isn't a cost of living crisis. There's a there's a like a spending crisis. Um like reality is things inflation prices go up across the board. Fuel, food, housing, construction, like you name it, it goes up. That's just that's how the world operates, and it's it has to operate that to fund growth, or we would just we wouldn't have new housing estates, we wouldn't have new cities, we wouldn't have new shops, we wouldn't have these things just to continue the growth of of humans. But you make it harder on yourself by living beyond your means. And there's no like it takes a very strong person and a very a person that's very comfortable in their own shoes to realise that you don't need things to impress people. If you're not good enough the way you are and with what you have for other people, then you don't you shouldn't be associating around those people. These days with Instagram, it is so so easy to get sucked into this lifestyle where you're just constantly trying to impress. And reality is the people that you're trying to impress most of the time have never met you, they don't even know you, and they don't really mean anything to you. So, why

Spending Crisis Not Cost Of Living

SPEAKER_00 11:33

do you try so hard, or why do we try so hard to impress these people that don't mean anything to us? And so choosing your hard um it it makes a big difference. Like reality is life is hard, and it doesn't it's not just about money, it's not just about what we have, it's not just about um our careers and all those types of things. Like at the end of the day, life is hard. Um just family, friends, like you never know what's happening in other people's life, you never know if someone's got a sickness, you you um like something might go wrong, you might have issues at home, something might break, your your pet might get sick. Like that's life. And if you have pets and you have possessions and you have businesses, then there is always going to be things that are going well, I don't call them going wrong. Like my mindset is there is a solution for everything. And look, if my especially these days, like if my dog Walter was to get um sick, like I don't know, for those that follow you follow me and reached out over Christmas uh on one of my hikes where I let Walter run off and just do his own thing, he did his own thing and he didn't bloody come back. So um he uh normally just goes off, he'll he'll chase things around and I call him and he wanders back and we keep walking together and it's never a drama. But um I went to a new location and um he took off chasing a wallaby or something, I'm not sure what it was, I didn't see it, but it went down this really steep gully and he

Life Problems And Mindset

SPEAKER_00 13:10

obviously got disorientated. And anyway, long story short, lost him for five hours, ended up wandering into a house about five kilometres from where we were, and those people took him to the pound and we got a call. We I we actually put it out on social media, and um someone in the area, believe it or not, said, I've seen him and they've taken him to the vet. Anyway, we got him back. But what I'm getting at is if something was to happen to Walter, I would be incredibly upset, but it's life. I I can't fix it, I can't change it, and sooner or later, Walter is going to get to an age where he's not going to be with us anymore, and as hard as that will be, it's life and it happens, and that happens on a daily basis. Same with if you have things around your head, like there's always going to be something go wrong. You might have a pool filter that breaks, you you you might have a fence that falls down, like it's just life, like things don't last forever, and there's always maintenance to do on things. The reason it gets so hard for people these days is that nobody have has a buffer. Every person is living to the absolute or beyond their means and using every single cent that they earn. And so the reason that it becomes so hard, and the reason that little problems become really big problems is there's no bank account with money sitting in it. There's no, oh shit, the pull filter's broken. All right, well, yeah, we've got to get a new one, just get it done. The fill the pull filter breaks, and everyone's stressing out because they don't they haven't allowed that. There's there's no budget, they haven't got the funds in their bank. So everything becomes very hard and very stressful. So it is completely up to you to choose your hard. And if you want to, if you want to live beyond your means, if you want to keep up with the Joneses, if you want to impress people on social media that you don't really need to be impressing, then your life is always going to be very, very difficult and very hard, and you're gonna have a lot of depression and a lot of anxiety when you really don't need to. So, guys, please choose your hard because there's a lot of hardness in the world at the moment that is simply bought on. Uh, it's your own, it's your own fold, it's your own responsibility. Um, so have a serious think about this because I I dig again, I think this is a subject that needs to be discussed more, especially with our younger generation, that they only ever see debt.

Build A Buffer To Reduce Stress

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Like when I was a teenager, you you couldn't just go and get zero percent finance, you couldn't go and buy a new radio at the like these days, like everything like people can buy their bloody groceries and pay later. Like, it's just it's quite ridiculous how easy it is to get finance, to get into debt and to owe companies money. Um, and it's just it's not on, and it's not the way that we should live our lives. And it's again, it's stuff that we should be getting taught at school, but the world's got an agenda, and that agenda is that they they want us all to be in debt, a lot of debt for the wrong reasons, and to be in that debt for as long as possible because that's how the powers that be make their money. So, look, I've got a lot of theories and agendas on those types of things, but um outside of that, it's up to you to choose your hard. If your life's harder than you would like it to be, then have a think about why you're doing some of the things you're doing. Are you doing it for yourself or are you doing it to impress others? And I'd pretty much put money on that a lot of you are actually doing it to impress others. And I guarantee you, if you stopped living a life to impress other people and you actually did live a life that you truly want to live, and you didn't live beyond your means, your life would be a hell of a lot easier. So, guys, choose your hard. Life will always be hard. It's up to you how hard that is. Um, stop making it harder than it needs to be. Guys, go like, subscribe, share this podcast, and uh we'll continue to make this one of Australia's number one construction podcasts. Look, on these some a lot of these solo ones, some of the topics may not sound like they're about construction, but this podcast is all about sharing stories and sharing knowledge to help people in the construction industry. Because if you're anything like myself, the construction industry is full of people that want to be on site, they want to be out there smashing it out. And look, again, if you're anything like me, you don't like sitting in a classroom, and you we might think that you're not the smartest or the sharpest tool in the shed, and that's completely okay. It's up to us to put all this information out there and share our knowledge, share our experiences so we can all help each other out to live better lives. And that's a big part of my mission with creating a new building industry is I want that everybody in the industry to thrive, to be successful, to have things that they never dreamt they could have, but doing it in a sustainable and efficient way so that you're not putting yourself under additional stress, you're not getting anxiety, you're not getting depression for no reason. So, guys, look forward to seeing you on the next one. Stay tuned, we've got some exciting things coming up this year, and uh yeah, I really, really appreciate your support.