Why Australian Builders Are Always Busy But Never Actually Getting Ahead

Busy is not a badge of honour.

And if you're constantly telling people how busy you are but still feel like you're not getting ahead — this episode is for you.

In this solo episode I break down the difference between intent and intention and why it's one of the most important mindset shifts any builder or tradie can make in 2026.

Intent isn't about working harder. It's about showing up with a plan, executing with purpose and making sure every single hour of your day is actually moving you forward.

This is how I built Queensland's largest subcontract carpentry business at 23. And it's still how I operate every single day across every business, every project and every part of my life.

If you're tired of feeling busy but never feeling like you're actually getting anywhere, hit play.

What I cover:
👉 Why busy is the wrong goal and what to chase instead
👉 The difference between intent and intention and why it matters
👉 How I used drive time to plan and run Queensland's largest carpentry business at 23
👉 Why clarity is the foundation of having real intent
👉 How intent flows through to your team and your job site
👉 Why structure is the fastest way to stop feeling overwhelmed
👉 How to flick the switch and start getting more done every single day

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

G'day everyone, welcome back to another episode of Level Up. The whole intent for 2026 is to just up the level again, keep getting more serious, keep getting more professional, and continue to allow this podcast to be Australia's number one construction podcast. So today's podcast is a solo one. We've been getting a lot of good feedback about the solo podcasts that I do. So we're going to smash out a few of these over the next few weeks. But um today's podcast is all about intent. And there is quite a big difference between intent and intention. Intention means that you are you aim to do something or you plan to do something, whereas intent means that you're showing up to get it done. You're going to smash it out, you're going to conquer it, you've got intent, you've thought about it, you've got plans, you've got actions, and you're going to execute on them. So this is something I'm really, really big on. I show up to everything that I do with intent. And it's just, it blows my mind. It really frustrates me when I'm on my own job sites or when I'm on other people's job sites, or to be honest, even when I'm like out with my family, like you're at a restaurant or something, and you look at the way the employees are walking around, or even sometimes the managers and things, and I believe you can tell a lot by the way that somebody moves. And if someone has intent, um, they're going to be moving quickly, they're

Why Intent Beats Intention

SPEAKER_00 1:28

not wasting time, they're not mucking around, they've got intent to get things done and to do them well. Um, so I think it's something that I look for when I'm having a meeting with a new employee, or um, I even like when I'm out and about or I'm at a function or something, like these are the silly little things that I observe in people, and I I will make decisions on I guess how much time and effort I put into people by um how much intent I think they have because I don't want to really be wasting my time with people that aren't energetic, that don't have purpose, that aren't passionate about what they're doing uh in their life, in their business. I want to be I want to associate and I want to spend all my time because my time is very valuable to me and my family. So I want to make sure that all the time that I'm spending is with people that have intent. Um and it blows my mind. I I talk to people about this all the time, and it's one of the reasons why I managed to get so much done. And so one of my goals for 2026 is to get rid of the word busy from my vocabulary. Um, there is no such thing as busy. In in my life, it's about being productive, and I can tell you what, we're sitting here on the I think off the top of my head, it's about the 22nd of January 2026, and what I have been able to achieve in the last month is pretty remarkable. Um, Camille, my wife and I have had a fair bit going on, we've had some big plans, we've had uh properties going under contract for sale, we've purchased new properties, we've had one of the biggest deals we've ever done happen. Um we've come back, we've set everything up for the year across all of our businesses. We've we've had massive targets to reach every day on a daily basis, and we're just smashing it out. We've got everything scheduled in, we've got plans, we've got intent, and we're getting stuff done. And um, this has been remarkable to see in my business Live Life Build. So, um, for those of you that aren't aware, um, I have another business Live Life Build, which is a coaching and mentoring business for builders. We help builders have better businesses, better projects, and better lives. We take them to the next level, um, and all of our members are having incredible achievements. So, um, late last year, my business partner of that business uh decided to leave, and so we have been able to spend the last month uh refocusing, uh just

Stop Saying Busy Start Producing

SPEAKER_00 3:47

reflecting on the business, where it's at, where we want to go in the future, and setting a lot of strategies and business around what we want to deliver in 2026 and beyond. And it's been unbelievable to see the change in the team and how much intent they have to get things done. So we're we're a lot more structured now, we've got a lot more plans in place, we're refining things, we're rebranding, and it's just been unbelievable to see how much work is getting done each day and each week now that we have so much clarity. And clarity is a big part of having intent. If you don't, if you procrastinate a lot or you you fluff around, you're not really sure, you're not clear on uh what you want to achieve, the outcomes you want, um, you don't have plans on how you're gonna get there or how you're gonna accomplish things, it can be very hard to show up with intent on everything that you do. And to talk to go back to when I was on the tools as a good example, so I I believe my first boss when I was an apprentice really instilled intent in me because he was always on my back about having a plan and making sure you had you set expectations for what got done on site each day, and that really flowed through to when I started contracting for myself, and I truly believe that it's one of the reasons that why for a period when I was doing it, I grew to Queensland's largest subcontract carpentry business, and that was because all the builders that were hiring me to do subcontract carpentry work, they saw that I had intent, and I only had to do one job for them, and they saw how well organized I was, they saw how I executed projects, they saw how well I ran my teams, and they wanted me to do the work, and so I was able to build a lot of value around that business by having intent and making sure that I followed through and I got things done. And so, what I would do, like I I got to a point like um like that carpentry business, like I grew up um Queensland's largest subcontinent track carpentry business when I was 23, 24 years old, and um ran that right through to sort of my late 20s until I um had enough work to stop the contracting and and just do build our own projects and and work

Learning Intent On The Tools

SPEAKER_00 6:08

for clients. So what I did to make that business so successful, and I still do it on a daily basis now, it's just on different things, but um back then I was single, I was um and I a lot of our work uh because we were doing work for a lot of bigger developers that were doing uh big blocks of townhouses, lots of big childcare centres, it was the work was spread out over a large area from sort of um well, it was all over southeast Queensland, um, realistically, so there was jobs that I like were two, two and a half hours away from where I was living. And I wasn't traveling, like a lot of the time we would stay away. Um, my crew was quite young, so yeah, we'd we'd high heap of rooms out in a pub or whatever, and we'd stay away for that period. But I've always had a lot of time in my truck driving to and from sites. Um, there was quite a lot of periods where I would take the team away to do work, but I would have to also keep an eye on other projects that we had going on. So I would go away, I might spend one night there, I'd set the team up, um, do a list on the whiteboard or a sheet of ply back those days, um, and I would set the team up, and then I would leave and I would go and drive around a couple other sites and check on my other teams, or I might go and spend a night there and a night there, and I'd come back. So there's always been lots of driving in my businesses, and I've always used that time very productively, and how I would use that time in, I would visualize in my head, like especially on the mornings on the way to work and home from work. So, in the mornings, I would visualize exactly what was going to happen on those sites each day, what we had to do, where the materials were, uh, the fixings we needed. And when I got to site, I was able to give the team instructions on where to set the sawbench up, where to set all the tools up, where to set scaffolding up, so that the day ran incredibly efficiently. Um, and I did that constantly. And then on the way home each day, I would do the same thing. I would be reviewing all right, oh well, where do we get to today? What do I want to get done tomorrow? And I would have the plan figured out in my head before I even got home that afternoon, and then the next day, same thing on the way to work, I'd just be reviewing that plan. And nine times out of ten, we always got what I wanted to get done, or a lot of the time we got more done because we had a game plan, I set expectations with the team, but most of all, I had intent, and I believe intent is something that it flows through to your team. If you're on site and you're you've got your nail bag on, and you're like, it doesn't mean you're running, but when you're walking around with intent and you're organized, you've got structure, you understand the project, you know what's going on, you know where everything is. You can you can uh give your team instructions about the lengths of timber over there and what needs to be cut out of what certain pieces, and um, everybody's very clear on what's going on. That's intent. Like it's it's intent really is about having structure, and so that's flowed through and it continues to work in my life today. So I do the exact same thing. These days I've always got a pen and paper, like journals. I've I've talked about this a lot on the podcast before. I have a journal in the truck, I have journals on my work desk, I have a journal with me now, I've got a journal uh beside my bed, um, and I have plans for everything. So I will I will visualize and I will focus and I will come up with plans in my head of what I need to do. And um, like at the moment, um my wife Camille has just purchased an another um a business which I'm really excited about, and I'm yeah, there's there's gonna be a bit of work in it for me. It involves another farm and all types of things, so I'm now in my head visualizing like what I have to do each day, what Camille needs a hand with and how I'm going to get all that done. And so many people constantly say to me, You're you're busy, I don't know how you get it done. Like, even over the Christmas break, I got so many messages from people reaching out to me to see if they could organise a phone call with me, or they would be really surprised when I text message them back. Because so many people would come back and go, Oh, Dwayne, I don't know how you do everything, you're so busy. I wasn't expecting a reply. I'm not busy, I'm just very productive, and I spend my time very wisely and I focus on what I need to get focused on. So when you have structure and when you have intent, you you become productive. You're not just this busy person anymore that's just running around. And I see this so much with builders and tradies in the construction industry where there's no game plan for the day, like the uh I don't know, let's talk about plumbers and sparkies, aircraft. Like you turn, they turn up to your site to do a rough in, and there's no team meeting or um pre-start meeting in the morning with whoever they've got on site. There's no like everyone's just sort of walking around doing their own thing. And I actually see this with my own carpentry team quite often, is there's no intent. Like people aren't turning up in the morning, all right. Yep, sweet. Um, let's get this done. We've got these notes on the whiteboard. Um, let's hit this side of the house today, or let's get these cavity batteries done. Um, all right, well, you jump on the saw, I'll jump on the on the scaffold, I'll get all the measurements, and then hey, um young fella, you can get up with me and you can help me install them. There's no I never I very rarely see that type of intent, and it's something that I am constantly working on helping the people around me to get in the habit of so that they have intent so that their days become easier. Because when you have intent and you're thinking about what you have to achieve for the day, the day will just flow. It will go so much quicker, you'll feel like you've achieved accomplished a lot, you'll feel like it hasn't been a waste of time. Um, and I guess to talk about builders, so many builders that reach out to me don't have any intent.

Structure That Makes Tradies Fly

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Um, every day is just simply getting up, they already feel overwhelmed, they're they're trying to keep up on top of emails and text messages and contracts and pricing work and then uh getting their team on site to do the work, or if they're on their own, they're trying to get the work done. And there's no structure around. So it is very hard to have intent when like really, if you're doing that, you're you're working towards burnout because you're just literally jumping from one task to the next. There's no structure around anything, and it's very hard to have intent if you're in that situation. But the flip side is it's very hard, very easy, sorry, to have good intent and start getting structure. Just it's just like flicking a switch, it's changing your mindset and thinking to yourself, all right, well, I've got to get this, this, this, and done done today. What's going to be the most efficient way? Um, and it could be as simple as just going through the motions of right, oh, if I do this over here, how's that going to affect that? How's that going to flow onto over there? And then in your head, working through, well, all right, that's not very efficient. What if I do this first and then I go onto that? Um, there's so many ways to improve so that you have good intent every day and you accomplish a lot. So, guys, look, I hope that gives you a little bit of an insight into how my brain works and how I operate. But seriously, it's it's not about being busy. Um, like I am so productive because I have a lot of intent, um, and that intent flows through whether it's my jobs, whether it's office work, or more importantly, whether it's my personal life where I'm working on exercise or going for a walk or going on a date night or taking my family out to dinner. Everything that I do has intent because I want to make sure that whether it's me doing something or me spending time with someone, I want to make sure that I'm adding value to myself, to my business, or to the people that I'm hanging around or I'm associating with. So, guys, have a think about that. Maybe get out of the dictionary, have a look up the difference between intent and intention. They're two very different things, and it's really important that you know the difference. Guys, look forward to seeing you on the next podcast. Please continue to go to my website, get on board with my merchandise, hats, stubby coolers, uh, boxer shorts, t-shirts, jumpers, you name it, we've got it in the level up factory. Uh, and we really want to see it on you guys this year because that is a big part of helping my mission to improve the industry. Look forward to seeing you on the next one.