Episode 112 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Yep. I mean, the business was not in a good way at all. Like I said, we just turned over a lot of staff. We’d lost clients. Our pipeline was dry. We owed a lot of money. It was tough, but I just knew that because of what I had been through in that last 12 months that I just need to sort myself out. And it’s a hard thing to say, but if the business goes, the business goes, but I’ve got to rebuild myself for me and for my family.

Speaker 2 (00:00:36):

G’day everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den. Welcome back, Dan. Great to have you on board.

Speaker 3 (00:00:44):

Great to be back, Rob. Another exciting day. The three panels are showing up. We’ve got another special guest ready for a feature, so looking forward to today. Be a big one.

Speaker 2 (00:00:52):

Yeah, big warm. Welcome to Kade Bell-Chambers from KBC Plumbing. Welcome to you, Kade. Great to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:00:58):

Thanks, Rob. Hey, Dan. How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:01:01):

Going well, mate. Going very well. How are you feeling?

Speaker 1 (00:01:04):

Yeah, good, good. I’ve dodged this hot seat for quite a while now, but yeah, the time has come.

Speaker 3 (00:01:09):

It has been, mate. We’ve been waiting to sit you down and have a good chat about your journey. So looking forward to getting into it today. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. You’ve been around for, I think it’s about four years now in coaching. So I think you just ticked over the four years from when you very first started and to think about all the stuff that we’re going to be talking about today and all of that happening in that time. It’s pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (00:01:30):

Yeah, it’s been a pretty cool journey. I’ve been obviously reflecting on it a bit knowing this was coming up and yeah, it’s been a really good journey, mate. One I’m really proud of.

Speaker 3 (00:01:38):

Yeah. And Rob, this is a big one for you too, because you were the one that was coaching Kade at the time four years ago. So there’s plenty of reflection in there for you too.

Speaker 2 (00:01:46):

It is. It’s been an epic journey and so looking forward to getting stuck into today.

Speaker 3 (00:01:51):

All right. Well, how about we kick it off, Kade? Let’s get to know you a little bit and the listener lets know a little bit about you. So where’d you grow up? What was life like as a kid for you?

Speaker 1 (00:02:01):

Yeah, so I grew up in Aubrey. I grew up just normal childhood, mate. I had older brother, younger sister, plenty of sport.

Speaker 3 (00:02:13):

School? What were you like at school?

Speaker 1 (00:02:15):

Yeah, I enjoyed school. I did have a good time at school. Had a lot of fun. I think every report up to about year nine said Kade was a class clown. I had a great time at school. A lot of good friends, a lot of good memories.

Speaker 3 (00:02:29):

Awesome. I love it. And Aubrey, obviously on the border up in the country, what was sort of like the family setup? Were you rural? Were you a farming background? Was it a trade background in the house? What was sort of going on?

Speaker 1 (00:02:42):

No. So we lived in town. So mum and dad both worked, both hard workers. Dad was a shift worker. Mum, she had a few different jobs in accounts mainly working for different companies that worked at one of the local banks for a number of years. And then yeah, like I said, dad was predominantly a shift worker when we were growing up.

Speaker 3 (00:03:06):

Yeah. So you saw a lot of hard work. You’ve mentioned the word hard worker. It’s going to be a big theme for today. But being a hard worker from a very young age, what did that look like for you there?

Speaker 1 (00:03:16):

Well, yeah, like you said, I did definitely approach to my environment. Mum and dad were both hard workers. Dad been a shift worker as well. He was just on around the clock. I know out of the paper mill where he was, it was a shocking roster, to be honest with you. It’d be two night shifts, two 12 hour night shifts. They’d call it a day off, but that was basically going home at seven in the morning then to start work and follow up two day shifts after that, two 12 hour day shifts, seven o’clock the following day. So that day off that they called it, it was basically just go home and sleep and then come back and have another flowing of 24 hours over two days and then have three days off after that. But it was a rotating roster. So there was never any consistency in his world.

Speaker 3 (00:04:01):

Yeah. In terms of what you did, I know you played a lot of sport as a kid, so competitive sports was another big thing. How did that sort of go about and how did you sort of fit all this in? Were you on your own doing this sort of stuff? One of those kids that just ran around and sort of got yourself to stuff or was it sort of all inclusive?

Speaker 1 (00:04:19):

No, it was all inclusive. Mum was actually a big push for our sport. We did love it, but mum, if there was a sport pop up, she signed us up for it. So we’d be off. She’d always have us off, whether it be swimming three, four times a week, playing basketball, refereeing basketball, played rugby league, touch football. There was quite a lot that we’d get around and play.

Speaker 3 (00:04:44):

Was this all at once? Because I know you did the basketball ref, I’m going to come back to, but I don’t know. Were you doing all of this all at once or was it sort of different sports, different years?

Speaker 1 (00:04:53):

No, basically all at once. But the rugby league and the touch footy day were seasonal.

Speaker 3 (00:04:57):

Seasonal. Very nice. Tell us about this basketball refereeing. It was a huge part of you growing up and I think a lot of the work ethic and how you approached it, it sort of sets the scene for a lot of what we’re going to talk about today.

Speaker 1 (00:05:10):

Yeah. Well, the referee was just something to get into, to be honest. I love basketball. I mentioned I have an older brother. He started refereeing basketball when he was in year six, so I was in year four and basically I was just biding my time to get into it as well. You’d get a couple bucks a game. I think you got two or $3 a game to referee and you’d do eight games a week and you’d get 16 bucks for it and you live like a king. I know.

Speaker 3 (00:05:37):

Then spend it all at the kiosk.

Speaker 1 (00:05:39):

Yeah, that was it. That was exactly it. Yeah, but that’s where it started. But I mean, really they just come from a love of being out and about and being active. Yeah, we definitely weren’t kids that sat at home. I mean, I know times are very different now to what they were back then and you didn’t have as much opportunity with screen times and Netflix and none of that was about. So we definitely didn’t sit home playing Nintendo games and watching Tele. It was always out and about and being active. So the refereeing popped up. It was just great to be involved in. A lot of fun. Like I said, you got a couple of bucks along the way, but that was only just a bonus.

Speaker 3 (00:06:15):

And you started very young in that, like you said, I think you said you four around 10, 12, whatever it was. And you did that for a number of years, didn’t you?

Speaker 1 (00:06:22):

Yeah, I was year six when I started, so I was 11.

Speaker 3 (00:06:24):

Right. 11 when you started?

Speaker 1 (00:06:26):

Yeah, yeah. 11 when I started. And like I said, love of the game, so I was pretty passionate about it. And I had a really good mentor who was a coordinator at the time. So he taught us a lot about the game and how to be professional and stuff like that. So taking all that on board, it put us up for selection to referees, state league carnivals, country cups, that sort of thing. So yeah, I was 14 years old refereeing basically national level, for junior competition.

Speaker 3 (00:06:57):

Yeah, it’s pretty big.That’s a fair bit of responsibility. It’s a fair bit of accountability. It’s probably a lot of abuse at the sametimes, I’m sure.

Speaker 1 (00:07:05):

There’s plenty of abuse, Dan, trust me.

Speaker 3 (00:07:07):

You got thick skin. That’s where the thick skin came from.

Speaker 2 (00:07:10):

From the sidelines and the parents more often than not.

Speaker 1 (00:07:13):

Yeah. Well, there was a time, because my brother would do it as well. And so we were doing a state carnival and we ended up having to kick half the crowd out because one side of the floor they were just going to serve and we just said, “This game doesn’t continue till all you people go. ” So I think I was 15, he was 17, we’ve kicked out about a hundred adults and then we had to stay inside the ring mom and dad to say, “We need you to come in and get us because we’ve got an angry mob outside waiting for us, so come help.”

Speaker 2 (00:07:44):

That’s so good.

Speaker 3 (00:07:45):

Wow, that’s huge. One of the questions, and I love talking about this, because a lot of the guys and clients we’ve got, their work ethic is there and their first sort of job. So refereeing was your first. You then took on, from what you’ve told me, you had a number of jobs growing up.

Speaker 1 (00:08:00):

Yeah, I kept busy. I didn’t have a high quantity of turnover of jobs. I just got them and stuck to them. So like I said, the refereeing, it was there. It was just a love for the sport. So if we weren’t reffing, we’re playing. So only play a couple or once a week I could only play at that stage. So we just spent the rest of the time down at the stadium playing. But then yeah, when I was 15, then got my first job as most people do at the fast food place. So KFC for us in which that then carried over until when I got my apprenticeship when I was 16, then I just kept all three jobs going. Like I said, there wasn’t much else to do, so you may as well just work.

Speaker 3 (00:08:40):

So how did that lead you to feel growing up? The early days, that work ethic something you’re genuinely proud of. It’s something that is a huge part of your makeup. How did it help you in those early days as you led your life being a kid? I mean, you’re talking about being 16, three jobs, you’ve got the experience of being national level, these sort of things that you’ve come up against. How did you view it in your early days? Did you have any idea what was going on or were you just sort of going through it as like, this is just what I do?

Speaker 1 (00:09:07):

No, it was just what I do. Yeah, it was as simple as that.

(00:09:11):

Like I said, mom and dad were really hard workers. Watching dad work, his shift work and stuff like that as well, I would see that he would have that mentality if that’s just what we do. For example, another thing we did was water skiing. And I remember there was one time in particular, like we’d been out water skiing all day. Dad was rostered on to do his first night shift. He actually slipped over loading the boat up and we didn’t realise at the time he broke his back when he slipped because he fell on the drawbar of the boat. So it was obviously in a lot of pain, but he still went to work and did a 12 hour shift that night. That was just the environment we’re in. If you had to work, you worked.

Speaker 3 (00:09:45):

Yeah, that’s pretty full on. The other thing in terms of your apprenticeship, you’ve sort of got into apprenticeship. How did you find that? Was it something that you loved? Was it something that you picked up? Obviously the passion for refereeing and work was there, but was the passion for plumbing there at the time?

Speaker 1 (00:10:00):

If I’m honest, no, not the first couple of years. I definitely felt like a fish out of water and I’m not too sure why that is because I had always been so active and stuff like that and with the referee, but like all of a sudden I was a boy with men and I definitely felt like that. So I definitely, with the plumbing, I was slow to hit my straps.

Speaker 3 (00:10:23):

Right. What was the place where you did your apprenticeship, what was it like as a work environment for you that you can remember?

Speaker 1 (00:10:30):

Hard. Yeah, they were old school, so it was hard. I had two different employers early days and that both of them were hard. And then I got a good opportunity with a guy called Paul when I went third year and then that’s when I hit my strokes and he basically said, he goes, he just empowered me and encouraged me to get out there and have a crack. And if you made a mistake, don’t worry about it. Just learn from it and move on.

Speaker 2 (00:10:55):

Do you think if you hadn’t have found Paul, you may have taken a different path because having a great employer, especially in your most vulnerable years is super important. Do you think it could have been a different path for you if you hadn’t have found Paul?

Speaker 1 (00:11:09):

Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve continued with Plumber.

Speaker 3 (00:11:14):

And that’s the next thing that comes into your makeup at that point. I don’t know if it was there beforehand, but the idea of loyalty, because you were loyal to Paul at that time and you remained pretty loyal and stuck with him the rest of the way through.

Speaker 1 (00:11:26):

Yeah, I did. And for that reason, he gave me an opportunity and I was grateful for that opportunity so I did stick through. I hit my straps. I was running projects from a young age, 19, 20 and Paul wasn’t a great operator with his business and didn’t run well. Anyway, he did end up going broke when I was 24, but right through I knew I was getting plenty of job opportunities of other people, opportunity to earn a lot more money than I was earning, but I stayed with Paul.

Speaker 3 (00:12:04):

Nice. So let’s paint the scene. You’ve got to this point, you’re around, you’re sort of 17, 18, you’re doing your apprenticeship. We’ve got this characteristic of a cade that’s huge work ethic, doesn’t stop, loves competitiveness, loves being in the thick of the action and the cut and thrust of it all, very loyal. These are really potent traits if I can say that. Now these are great and they serve you very well until they don’t, which we’ll get to later on. But did you have any inkling back then? Did you notice that that same drive that made you so successful and moving and dynamic was the same thing that could work against you? Was there any sense of it showing up at that time of being like, “I’m going too hard, too early on things,” or was it just all systems go?

Speaker 1 (00:12:48):

No, it was pretty well all systems go. I did notice that I went harder than most people around me and I don’t say that with an ego or anything like that, because it was in all aspects of life, personally and professionally. So it’s not that I was naive to the fact that I did sort of push the limits a lot more than other people, but like I said, that’s just how it was at that time.

Speaker 3 (00:13:15):

And were you full of … People do this and we see this a lot, Rob, guys that get energised by the work and the life they’re building and what they’re doing. We see guys that burn out and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I think the interesting thing is where do guys land on that side of the equation, but it’s something you’ve got to pay attention to because at some point you’re going to find out what camp you go to.

Speaker 2 (00:13:35):

Yeah, definitely. It’s sometimes, especially at a young age when things start getting a bit of a roll on, it becomes a bit of a game. It becomes a bit of an addiction to keep cracking on in terms of success and fulfilment in the work that you do and the achievements you’re getting. So it’s not uncommon when we see it with guys who have that good leadership, demonstrating good leadership as a young person is often a telltale sign that they’re going to be a great leader in business, whether it’s in the sporting world, a school captain, a sports captain, a referee or whatever it is, they’re very much telltale signs that you’ve got that natural capability to be able to do what it takes in business. And obviously at this stage, Kade, business wasn’t barely even blipping on your radar, but there’s no doubt that you were getting a bit of steam behind you in terms of the fulfilment and the success you were achieving at the time.

Speaker 1 (00:14:33):

Yeah, 100%. And it was funny, Robert, just like I said, it just felt like it was all meant to be because it almost happened easy. We just got on a roll and we just kept it going and that’s all it was. So I definitely didn’t put any thought into it. Didn’t overthink it didn’t plan it. It was just what was happening today and I just ran with it.

Speaker 3 (00:14:51):

And no real tax on you for that. Like you weren’t burning out, you didn’t feel like this is all too hard. It was just, this is great. Let’s keep going.

Speaker 1 (00:14:58):

Basically, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:15:00):

Nice. As we go forward then, and we’re sort of going through this in a bit of a chronological order, but we’ll move into the various themes and topics as we paint this picture. 19, there was a prety big life event for you. Your dad had his accident. Can you take us back to that moment and just sort of explain as deeply as you want to, but what happened, what course of events sort of set in motion for there? Because a pretty big pivot point. Up till now it’s all build, build, build, build, build. Things are going forward, as you said, then all of a sudden this thing happens.

Speaker 1 (00:15:32):

Yeah. So when I was 19, dad had a motorbike accident. He was up on a road bike up going into Bogon Village. Anyway, he basically was coming around a bend and he was on the white line. A bike was coming the other direction and Nick was on the white line. So dad had to stand up and he went over a 30 foot embankment. So I still remember it obviously clear as day. It was a Sunday and I got the phone call off a family friend just saying dad had had an accident and didn’t really think too much of it. I just thought he’s got a broken leg or something like that. I got a Ude at the time. I’ll go up to Bogon, pick him up and bring him home. But yeah, it quickly turned out that it was a lot more sinister, but it was funny, it still didn’t register how sinister it was until we ended up down in Melbourne.

(00:16:21):

So yeah, he ended up … So he got airlifted out of Mount Vogon and then taken down to the Alfred. Even then it still didn’t … I knew all that was happening. I’d been told that he wasn’t conscious, but it still didn’t register the severity of the accident. And just to paint the picture, my whole family, we just packed an overnight bag and I didn’t even pack a toothbrush. I wasn’t thinking straight, obviously, but just an overnight bag, thought we’re going down there one night, maybe two nights and we’re bringing him home. But yeah, he ended up being in a coma for eight weeks. He was in hospital for 10 months in rehab, ended up in acquired brain injury. So I had to learn to talk, walk, feed himself all of it all over again. So that was huge. It was really hard for a 19 year old to see that because my dad, I very much walked in his footsteps.

(00:17:19):

He was a very well-liked guy. He was a good guy. He had a really good work ethic. Yeah. So why wouldn’t you follow in someone’s footsteps who was like that? So to see him go through that, it was really, really hard.

Speaker 3 (00:17:33):

When things like that happen, there can be that sense of, I’m going to crack on and things will be okay. And you sort of deny yourself that moment of what’s actually happening and you press on. And again, with work ethic, loyalty, the grit that you’ve got, it’ll be just, we’ll see this through, or were you starting to see this picture change and did that change you as what was going on or it wasn’t until later on that you sort of hit that point where it was like, these traits are now, I’ve got to double down on them, for instance.

Speaker 1 (00:17:59):

No, I still continued on with the traits. I didn’t realise how much it had affected me, to be honest, and I didn’t find that out till later in life.

Speaker 3 (00:18:12):

So you kept working through all of this, didn’t you? You were still working, you were still doing your job, you didn’t stay in Melbourne for thetime?

Speaker 1 (00:18:20):

No I was down there for a week. So like I said, it was a Sunday I got the phone call right up until the Sunday, 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM. I can’t remember exactly what time. It was a very normal life and then all of a sudden we’re all in Melbourne, the whole family. Dad’s, like I said, Dad, he’s in ICU, he’s on the ventilator and then I come home to go back to work after a week. I was the only one that came home, my brother, sister, mom, they all stayed in Melbourne. My brother came home a week later, but my mom didn’t come home for six months, it was just completely flipped on its head. And once again, I brought up in that time of, you have a teaspoon of cement basically. Support was offered, but just internally it was like, I know, we’ll just get on with this.

(00:19:22):

It’ll be okay. It’s not that I didn’t care. I was naturally devastated, but I still felt the role of a man was to roll up the sleeves and get on with the job. You had to ignore what you felt and you had to get on with the job.

Speaker 3 (00:19:36):

Did you feel at that time it was like, I’m made for this in a sense? Or were you saying the pressure’s now starting to build? Where did you land on that sort of let’s keep going or was it the pressure’s building and I’m starting to feel it?

Speaker 1 (00:19:48):

I was lost. There’s no two ways about it. I didn’t have any thoughts like that whatsoever. It was just, I’d have feelings and they’d be uncomfortable, so I’d just press on.

Speaker 3 (00:20:02):

How did you go with that as it goes on? I mean, people tend to either numb it or escape it. It starts to get to a point you sort of either walk through in a daze and you walk into a pole or you actually actively go, “I need to just stop. I need to try. I can’t get off this ride, but I’m going to change my state to do it. ” And you walk into that sort of almost dependency blindly of something’s going to help me get through this.

Speaker 1 (00:20:26):

Yeah. I look back now and there was definitely a case of numbing it. Like I said, for all the great qualities and great traits that dad had, he was also a big partier as well and a big drinker. So being around alcohol was nothing unusual to me. And so it was what I was doing at 15, 16, all the good things with work-wise. We were already starting to play around getting on the grog. So when the accident happened, I started hitting the grog pretty hard because all of a sudden I was-

Speaker 3 (00:20:59):

And you’re alone. Like you said, you’re the only one home for a fair while.

Speaker 1 (00:21:03):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that’s what I turned to. I was trying to be as normal as I possibly could in an unnormal situation.

Speaker 3 (00:21:14):

And you’re 19 at the time.

Speaker 1 (00:21:16):

Yeah. And I’m 19 at the time.

Speaker 2 (00:21:19):

And step up and be the man of the house. It’s a huge thing at that age, isn’t it?

Speaker 1 (00:21:24):

Yeah. But the thing with that, Rob, was no one put that on me. No.That was just something I put on myself. No one said that you’ve got to push your feelings down or go out and get on the turbs because you’re feeling uncomfortable. That was all the stuff that I did to myself because I didn’t know how to deal with what was happening in my world at the time.

Speaker 3 (00:21:48):

Do you then go in, and you said this before, you said the business you were working with at the time, Paul and his business wasn’t tracking great. He wasn’t a good operator. You’re obviously dealing with a pretty stressful work environment. I’d imagine looking back on it, it wouldn’t have been great. How was the business tracking and then where do we go from there? Did you stay with Paul all the way through this? Is this when this KBC starts soon after that or way after that?

Speaker 1 (00:22:13):

Yeah, so I was 19 when they had his accident. So Paul was great. Once again, he was a really, really nice guy. So he supported me through it as I needed to. If I was going down to Melbourne, I’d get the Friday off to go down and get down there at a good time, spend a bit more time down there with mom and dad. So the pressures of how he run his business didn’t affect me. Once again, I was young, so I was naive to it. And you’d heard that the jungle drums rumbling for a long time about him possibly going, “Broke, you’ve been hearing it for that long. It’s just a normal sound.” So I just kicked on with life and I just tuned out to it.

Speaker 3 (00:22:51):

Yeah. Okay. So how do we progress from here? Obviously your dad is in hospital. Did he come home in the end? He made it all the way home, didn’t he?

Speaker 1 (00:23:01):

He made it all the way home. He’s home. He’s still at home now with mum, annoying the shit out of her. But I mean, he never was able to work again or anything like that. So mom and dad’s life changed dramatically from that day on. But for me, like I said, dad came home after 11 months, mum come home after about six months and she would go backwards and forwards then. But then I just kicked on with trying to be a young man, 20 years old, still trying to work hard, still partying hard, bit naive to … Oh, not a bit. I was still very naive to how I was actually feeling and what had happened at home, but I just kept on pushing it down.

Speaker 3 (00:23:49):

Like I said to you when we were talking about this the other day, it was like you’re still a kid doing this. I mean, you look at it now as you’re older and you’re 40 or whatever it is and you go, geez, a 19 year old, 20 year old dealing with this is, it’s heavy situation. It’s something that not many 19, 20 year olds would even get through, let alone work their way through and to do it all on your own and try and figure it out on the fly. It’s a big hat’s off to you at that stage, mate. It’s amazing that you were able to get through it as well as you did in the circumstances.

Speaker 1 (00:24:23):

Thanks, mate. It was definitely tough. It was tough on the whole family.

Speaker 3 (00:24:26):

Yes, 100%. All right. So as we progress this story and a lot of it’s yourself alone, the family, different spots, but all hanging together at some point we’ve got to, I think, bring in the amazing Laura, who I think you meet around about this time and maybe just explain Laura and who she is for starters and then a bit about the family.

Speaker 1 (00:24:48):

Yeah. So Laura, my wife, well, wife now, she wasn’t when I first met her, obviously. We met when I was 21 and anyone wants to know, I often call Laura Loz. So if I do say Laz, just clearing that up, that’s who that is. Yeah. So I met Loz when we were 21 when I was 21, Laura was 19, but it was just a backyard party basically and just connected there and sort of hunted her them. She played a litle bit hard to get, but anyway, she ended up resisting things kicked along there pretty quickly. That was good. Laura and I, we’ve got two boys age nine and 11. Life’s very busy, following them around with their sport and stuff like that. So it’s very reminiscent to what it was like when I was growing up. But yeah, life’s good. Life’s good with Laura and the two boys.

Speaker 3 (00:25:43):

Awesome. I love it. All right. So now Laura is on the scene. And I’d love to say that she straightened you up and sort of got everything sorted, but you kept doing Kade things and you decided you’re going to now start KBC obviously, right? Let’s talk a bit about the business and KBC. When did you make that decision? How did you make that decision and what did it look like when you very first started the business? Was it a planned thing or was it just, I’m going to grab what I need and let’s see how this goes?

Speaker 1 (00:26:12):

No, not planned at all. As mentioned, the jungle drums have been rumbling with Paul and his business and we just sort of kicked on with life, Laura and I. We had our first house at the time. So we’re doing what you do when you’re young, renovating and stuff like that. So as mentioned earlier, I was 24, we just put a new kitchen in, spent all the savings on the new kitchen and finishing everything up. And then we did get the sit down with Paul to say the administrators are coming in and he was getting wrapped up and he basically we had two weeks work left and then that was it. We’re on our own.

(00:26:46):

So I just thought, what else do you do as a 24-year-old with no money in the bank start your own business? And I just naturally … Yeah, exactly. I was already doing lots of cash jobs on the side. Most nights I was out doing cashies and weekends and stuff like that. So it just very much felt like a natural progression for me just to finish that and start my own thing. Definitely wasn’t smooth sailing. Like I said, we didn’t have anything in the bank, no plan for it, no backing for it. I actually had to borrow one of my mates utes to go out and do some jobs because at the time I just had a Commodore so I couldn’t roof rack and ladder and pipe on top of that. So I had to sell my car to buy … Yeah, I could have. I had to sell my car to buy a Ute and a toolbox, but in the interim while that was happening, I borrowed me mate Matt’s car and got into it.

Speaker 3 (00:27:36):

Nice. Were you excited by that? Was it like a sense of the new adventure or was it just out of a pure necessity and it’s like, I’ve got to make shit happen here?

Speaker 1 (00:27:45):

No, it was nice. It was nice. It was definitely that feeling of freedom a bit like when you first get your P plates and all of a sudden you go driving the car wherever you want. It felt like that. Again, I could go do whatever I wanted through the days and yeah, I definitely enjoyed it. I love to say that I was laser focused on work at the time but I wasn’t. So I’d do enough jobs to get some money in the bank and then I’d go and basically blow the money in the bank because I was just young and naive and had no understanding of what it took to run a business.

Speaker 3 (00:28:16):

Was your identity then Kade as a tradie or were you like you’re getting into business, you are by default a businessman, but were you still Kade the tradie or were you starting to think like I’m a businessman and a business owner?

Speaker 1 (00:28:28):

No, I was Kade the trade you threw and through. Yeah, 100%. I just felt because I was a good plumber that I could run a business.

Speaker 3 (00:28:38):

So the business kicks off, you are successful, like you do a good job, you’ve got the business sort of gets its own two feet, you start to walk through all of this sort of stuff, but a pattern starts to emerge. Like you just said, you’d work hard because you always have. There’s no other way that you know, but then you’d get to that point and you’d blow it up and there’s this cycle of you going boom, bust in terms of your not so much dedication to it, but just the way you operated. It was just how you were. Just talk us through a little bit what that cycle looked like for you.

Speaker 1 (00:29:10):

Yeah, I had always had a cycle where things would go well and like I describe it, it’s like you put all the effort into, if you had a carousel, you put all the energy and the effort into getting the carousel spinning and when you get it to the point where you should just be able to give it a couple little maintenance taps to keep it going, I’d get a crowbar and I’d jam it through the axle and bring it to a screech and hole. Never deliberately it was just always something that would happen and I could never work out why.

Speaker 3 (00:29:38):

Did you wrestle with it when it happened and try and figure out why? Or was it just, I’ll just get back on the horse and let’s go again?

Speaker 1 (00:29:44):

No, just get back on the horse and go again. Like I said, I always had a really good work ethic and I was always able to make money. So when I’d tear it down, I’d always go, “Oh, well, we’ll just get back on and go and make it again.” Yeah, I very much lived in today. There was never any planning for the future.

Speaker 3 (00:30:02):

Right. And was the tear down or throwing the crowbar in it, was it a business decision thing that you’d sort of look back on and go, “Well, that was a stupid decision, but I did it, ” and take the ownership that way? Or was it a personal crowbar you’d chuck in there and it was just like, “I’ll just do what I do”?

Speaker 1 (00:30:19):

No, it was always a personal crowbar. It’d just be related to partying and stuff like that. I’d work really, really hard through the week and then come weekends, I’d just go and party the house down and tear it all down basically. But it could go on cycles then naturally as it does, you party hard on weekends. Monday, Tuesday are a bit rough. Thursday you start feeling good again and you start the cycle again.

Speaker 3 (00:30:46):

Did it coincide with starting the business or was it already in play that sort of pattern already happening when you started KBC?

Speaker 1 (00:30:54):

No, the pattern was well and truly in play. Like I said, with going right back to dad’s accident, I definitely used alcohol. I see it now as a numbing agent. I was trying to run and hide from the reality that I was in and rather than deal with anything that I was going through, I’d go and party as like to say. But I now know it was always because I was uncomfortable with what I was feeling and that was my escape.

Speaker 3 (00:31:25):

Right. And that was you cutting yourself off from obviously the pressures of work and whatever else you were dealing with personally through your dad’s accent and all that sort of stuff. What happened as you go through this? Did the cycle get longer? Did it get harder to get back on the horse? Did you just kep belting yourself in terms of Wednesday I’d come and it’s like I’m playing catch up every Wednesday or did it get deeper and work? Did it extend longer and you started to not be able to pick up the pieces after a weekend?

Speaker 1 (00:31:55):

No. It would definitely go in cycles. I’d go months where I’d keep the carousel because if we keep going with that, keep the carousel spinning and everything would be on track and going well. But then just events would pop up. And like I said, I’d always justify, because this is just what young people do or I’ve worked really, really hard so I deserve to do this. But it definitely, like I said, the work, I always pushed and pushed and pushed. And I did the same with the party inside of things as well, always pushed and pushed and pushed to the point you’d have to bounce between different groups. So you just had people to keep up with you.

Speaker 3 (00:32:35):

And everyone’s got different carousels, let’s call them, in your terms, right? There’s a carousel of business which you’ve got spinning and you think, “Yep, that’s cool.” And you jam the crowbar and that. You’ve also got their personal carousel. So as this sort of goes and develops, what’s happening on the … There’s the Kade carousel yourself and then there’s obviously the relationship, the family side.

Speaker 1 (00:32:57):

Well, look, in my 20s, I hadn’t started my family yet. We didn’t have Sonny, my oldest until I was 30.

Speaker 3 (00:33:03):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (00:33:04):

So in my 20s, I was just naive to it. I just lived in today.

Speaker 3 (00:33:06):

Yeah, so that didn’t even pay attention to that.

Speaker 1 (00:33:08):

Didn’t even pay attention. There was no rhyme or reason to it. This is just what we were doing. We worked hard. We played hard.

Speaker 3 (00:33:15):

What was happening in the business at that time? And in particular, I’m interested in, was it the momentum of the business and your leadership? What was sort of the scene in the business in those days from a leadership and just a general business performance perspective?

Speaker 1 (00:33:31):

There was no real leadership yet, Dan, because I held off on the employing a lot longer than most people do. I didn’t put on an apprentice till I was 28. So I sort of went around subcontracting and onboarding some real estates and stuff like that, clients through my mid 20s. I didn’t really get my first big break till I was about 28 and we picked up the housing commission contract. At that time, the company that was doing it, they had three crews getting around doing the work anyway. I’ve managed to bluff my way in and tell them that I could handle it by myself and not a problem. So my days as I was getting into my later years in the 20s, my days were getting massive because at the same time I had that opportunity to do that. I was getting opportunity with builders for new homes.

(00:34:21):

So my days were beginning to look like starting at 6:00 in the morning, doing paperwork till 8 in the morning to going out and working in the housing commission till five or six at night, then going to go and do a hot and cold rough until 10 or 11 o’clock at night on the lights. And that was just on repeat. And then once again, that’s how things would go through the week. So then the weekends would come around and all of a sudden the internal dialogue was, “I’ve earned this. ” So once again, I’d go and play up and then blow everything up. Everything I’d made, I’d go and blow. So the leadership thing wasn’t there because it was just me. The leadership didn’t kick in until I put on my first apprentice, which was Corey, he’s still with me today. So I was 28 and then Laura and I were getting married when I just turned 30, or sorry, just before I turned 30, I was 29.

(00:35:14):

So I knew that I needed a plumber to run things while we’ve got married because Laura was adamant, we are having a honeymoon because by this stage I was working 13 days a fortnight doing huge days. She’s like, “We are having a honeymoon, so you need to sort something out. ” And I’m like, “Laura, she wanted a Friday wedding and we did have a Friday wedding, but I was dead against a Friday wedding because I’m like, that means I’ve got to take the day off work and I can’t do that. ” So that’s the position that I’d got myself in with the work and how much I’d drummed up. But just the amount of weight that I’d gone and put on my shoulders before I was ready for it basically. So we did end up getting on a tradesman before we got married, which was great.

(00:35:57):

He started about two weeks before the wedding.

Speaker 3 (00:36:00):

Didn’t get the invite to the wedding, I take it. You’re not coming because I need you at work.

Speaker 1 (00:36:05):

He definitely didn’t get an invite to the wedding. All the pressures of business and even the relationship that started to come onto me when I was 30. And like I said, we got all in the one calendar year, we employed our first full-time plumber. I got married. I turned 30 and we had Sonny my eldest and it was just like, what the hell is going on? Like I said, for the last 10 years, I’d just been living day to day and all of a sudden in one year I’ve just been thrown all this responsibility and I meant to be able to handle it. And I didn’t handle it very well at all because I just wasn’t ready for it. I’d never thought about planning or tomorrow. I was always just about today.

Speaker 3 (00:37:00):

So what happened then?

Speaker 1 (00:37:04):

Well, I just kicked on with it, to be honest with you. I just kept saying, “Well, this is just normal, so I just push on with it, ” which was very much a mindset. So we kept employing because the workload kept coming and opportunities kept coming, so I kept employing, but I just kept on keeping on with it. But once again, I wasn’t coping with it. I’d stopped all my sport and stuff like that. I didn’t have time for any of that. If I’m honest, I didn’t have time for my family. I didn’t make time for my family. Laura basically had to look after Sonny from day dot by herself because I just stayed at work, but then my outlet just became drinking, just going out on weekends and partying. And that same old internal dialogue would keep coming around that, you’ve earned this, you’ve worked really hard, look at all the good work you’ve done, you have the right to go and do this, which I now know is the wrong dialogue, but at that time sitting in it, that’s just the dialogue that was on repeat.

Speaker 3 (00:38:09):

You mentioned there as you were talking, you didn’t have time for things. We do this a lot in Pravar. We never let people say, “I didn’t have time.” It was about the priorities that you had. And I think it’s a big example of what you were prioritising at the time, which was literally just work, just partying. And Rob, the just work side, the ability to say, “I’ve earned this as something to pay back for myself,” is something we see in a lot of guys that come to us early days where there is that one dimension to them. So I think it’s a symptom of that as well.

Speaker 2 (00:38:39):

It is. And a lot of it comes from that mindset that when you are trying to get a business out of the ground, the more you work, the more you get paid. That’s just how it works. When you are running, like in the early stages, we call it the Wild West, that’s the ugly stage when you and a one-man band and an apprentice kind of thing and then you start employing your first couple of people, you’re still running a tool belt business. And that’s where you were at this stage, Kade, you’re on the tools and you’re in that zone where the mindset is the longer and harder I work, the more money I make. And especially when you’re 30, it’s naturally you blow steam off on weekends because that’s with what 30 year olds do. But it’s also that typical mindset, Dan, where it’s kind of, that’s how most tradesmen get up and out of the ground with that mindset until it no longer serves them.

(00:39:27):

But it’s only natural in the early stages of business that’s these are the patterns we see all the time is that’s because it’s the mindset we see all the time and it’s not until you consciously choose to make that mindset where it’s like, hang on a second, I can’t keep working longer and harder or something breaks, then that’s when something changes. So it’s a common thing, isn’t it, Dan?

Speaker 3 (00:39:46):

It really is. And I think this is why this is important as we talk this through because Kade, this is where it served you to now and now it’s not. This is the other side of that coin of where work ethic starts to work against you. And I think as you push towards your 30s, early 30s family and everything like that, things don’t get better. Did you have a realisation that I can’t muscle my way through this? Or was there moments where someone tapped you on the shoulder and sort of had to say, “Mate, there’s got to be a change here. And was someone else that stepped in to help you have that realisation that this is not sustainable?”

Speaker 1 (00:40:19):

Yeah. So I had a bookkeeper at the time and I can’t remember exactly whether we’d had Finn yet, my second child, but I remember we were hovering around that million dollars a year and I had moved out of home with the business. We did have a warehouse and I’d taken the office out of home as well. But I mean, I was admin and Iowa’s accounts, I was everything as most people are when they’re trying to hover around that million dollars or break through that million dollars. So my bookkeeper, she said to me that she believes I might need some help and there’s a guy that she knows that might be able to help me break through and that was a business coach, a different business coach than Pravar. Anyway, so I did meet with Phil and I was really in the hurt locker. I was doing huge days.

(00:41:15):

I was copping it at home because I was never at home.

(00:41:21):

I wouldn’t say I was copying it at work, but I was feeling it at work because I couldn’t do enough. There just wasn’t enough time in the day, the time thing again, Dan, but there wasn’t enough time for me to be able to get through everything that I needed to get to and I knew that I was drowning. And then you’re drinking midweek while you’re in the office of a night trying to get things done and everything’s just hard and felt gross, but all I knew was to keep on pushing, so I just kept on pushing. So when I met Phil, I just lapped up every word that he told me basically because I knew that I needed help. So straight away we got an admin in, which was a big help, but not long after we got that admin, we had the opportunity to buy another plumbing business out.

(00:42:09):

So we ended up going for that. And what that did, that doubled the size of my business. So I had no structure. I was just setting up a new admin and then I went and took on another company which had huge potential to grow. That company I took on its turnover was about 350,000 a year, but we blew that turnover up in 12 months of those new clients to over a million dollars. So I’ve gone from a million bucks to over $2 million a year still with no structure in place, no understanding of leadership or anything like that. And I know that we did have Finn at this time because Laura had Finn and I took one day off work and then I was like, “I’ll see you later. I’ve got to go. ” Left at home with a two year old and a newborn and it was just basically just getting thrown straight back into the fire.

(00:42:57):

Yeah, it was tough.

Speaker 3 (00:42:58):

As this is happening, I can hear it as you tell this story, Kade, that you can sense that it’s not all the same momentum that you’ve got. There’s now a weight to this and what you’re going through. How did you feel about yourself at this time? Did you get a sense of, you just said I didn’t have enough time, but do you feel like I’m not capable of doing this yet? Or was it you were still hopeful that you’d find a way through it that something would give and you could just carry on the way you always had?

Speaker 1 (00:43:23):

No, the determination still just kept carrying me through. I loved that episode you guys did about the dumb grit because I was a sucker for it. I had Laura was telling me to stop and to slow down. I had my parents tell me to stop and slow down. My brother who runs a successful business tell me to stop and slow down, but I was just so determined to do well. And my mindset was, I’ve worked so hard, I’m not going to fall over when I’m about to break through. And because I really felt like I was about to break through. Every next employee that I got was the one that was going to make my job easier, but every time I put that guy on, it was another brick in the sack that I was carrying. So it actually made it harder. Yeah, it was tough.

(00:44:06):

It was tough. And then as usual, when things got tough, like I said, I just tried to tune out and numb the pain myself.

Speaker 3 (00:44:12):

Where were you at with numbers at this stage? Because in business, the numbers would have told a bit of a story. The knowledge of that, that what we’d be looking at is the overheads that you’re adding to the business, the return you need in terms of margin to clear those overheads. Where was your numbers experience at this time?

Speaker 1 (00:44:31):

So we were making money. It’s not like we … Yeah, we weren’t losing money. I mean, like I said, we bought that other business. We went to 2.1 million the following year we were on track to do 2.7 and I actually went through and punched the numbers and I think we were looking at about making 500 NP. So we were looking at going well, but I realised I had about 300 grand to invoice before the end of financial year. And I thought, hang on, if I get 2.7, that’s going to put me at 500 NP. I’m going to get taxed over 100K. I’ve busted my balls for 12 months. I’m not giving the fucking tax office 100K. And so I just stopped invoicing, which poured my net profit down, which lowered my tax in my mind, but it was at that time we’d moved into a bigger workshop.

(00:45:21):

I had a team of 12 now. I had put on an operations manager. I promoted one of the guys to operations manager. I had no idea how to lead him or to set him up into his job at all. I actually feel really sorry for Mitch who I promoted to that operations manager because I put so much pressure on him unwillingly because I basically handed my problems over to him.

Speaker 3 (00:45:43):

I was going to say it’s probably your, you just gave him your life and said, “Here you go deal.”

(00:45:48):

Yeah, I did. I did and I can see that now, but I didn’t know how to set up an operations manager. My coach at the time told me, “Oh, maybe you need an operations manager.” So I just thought cool. So I put on this operations manager and I didn’t know what to do with an operations manager. I had to Google, what does an operations manager do? So there wasn’t any assistance with that. So naturally he was only in that position for a short time and I generated enough work with him in that seat to go and put on another three guys and we put on another three guys and all of a sudden he went, “I can’t do this. I want my old job back.” And so I took that on plus trying to do the sales and the estimating and everything like that again.

(00:46:33):

And I was just running around in circles and I was oblivious to the fact until it was too late the amount of in- house fighting. We’d always had a pretty good team culture like the guys had got along with. I was a small crew and I was involved so it was easy to keep everyone on board and stuck together, but it had become really, really toxic and things were falling apart at a rapid rate. And when I could see things were falling apart, I started falling apart because I was helpless and there was nothing I could do about it. I could see everything that I’d just spent the last 10 or so years building just falling apart in front of me and the people who were in my core group were starting to leave and it did, it broke me.

Speaker 2 (00:47:18):

This is the dark side of growth that most people aren’t willing to talk about because in the marketplace it’s double, triple your business, go from a million to two to three million dollars and it’ll all be fine and rosy. But this Kade is the dark side of growth that people talk about. And especially at Pravar, we talk about that slow and steady and sustainable growth is the best form of growth that you can have. But it’s just proof Kade that you went from one to two to almost three so quickly the leadership wasn’t there. The management capability, the structure, the financial management, the ability to manage the team and build the right culture. This is the dark side of growth. Everyone wants the growth, but no one’s willing to talk about the dark side of it, of what it costs you when you almost grow too fast, isn’t it?

Speaker 1 (00:48:10):

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And like I said, because I did feel so alone and like I said, I felt broken at the time, my habits were nonexistent, like I was drinking heavily to get me through this period because I just wanted it all to stop.

Speaker 3 (00:48:27):

As you’re talking then, Kade, and you’re sort of seeing things start to fall apart, as you said, and including yourself, are you starting to now, and I know you’re still partying through this time, this is all going on. It used to be the thing that sort of made you forget to numb, to cope, whatever it was. Is this now becoming a … Is there any sense of … Are you feeling like you’re failing at this point? Are you just pressing on and it’s just not working for you? I want to understand the mindset that leads into where this ultimately goes when you figure out, “Hey, I am literally broken in your words. This is not working and this is it.”

Speaker 1 (00:49:03):

Yeah, no, I was definitely drowning and because the last few years, all I had done was worked. I could sort of pulled away from my mates and stuff like that as well. So I didn’t have any real outlet friendship. Now I could have picked up the phone and called any one of them, they would have answered, but I didn’t and I don’t know, I felt I couldn’t. So naturally, like I said, I was work early, home late every day and like I said, and then it started the really bad habits of drinking by myself and locking everyone out away from me. I didn’t realise it, but I’d fallen into a really deep state of depression.

Speaker 3 (00:49:44):

How deep did it get and what ultimately, what did you get to? I mean, obviously the business is doing its thing, there’s stuff going on all over the place. Where did this sort of go for you in your mind as you think about it now? What sort of happens next?

Speaker 1 (00:50:01):

Yeah. Well, look, as usual when the train’s running, it’s going to come to a sudden stop and it didn’t, and I still remember mine coming in a form of a mental breakdown. Like I said, my team was deserting me. I was losing guys up left, right and centre and I wasn’t keeping up. I pretty well pushed everyone away from anyone who tried to help. I’d locked them away from me. But I remember there was one day I was meant to be going … So Sonny was at the age now where he’s doing Auskick. Laura was going to go down to Auskick and I was going to go and I just didn’t feel up to it. I was just cooked and I just said, “Look, I can’t go anyway.” I was laying on the couch and then Laura left Finn at home with me and I was laying on the couch and I gave myself a bit of a spray and I said, “Get up off the fucking couch with you and go and watch your kid play Auskick.” So I jumped, so I put Finn in the back and went to drive Auskick and I didn’t even make it out of my estate. I went to turn estate and I wasn’t looking at where I was going and I ran into a street sign and the impact was small, but it just hit the right spot of the car and it just the damage looked huge. It ripped all the quarter panel off and stuff like that. And then that was it. That just tipped me over the edge. I was broken then. I drove home. I was obviously a mess. I fell out of the car. I remember calling Laura and I was just, yeah, it wasn’t pretty.

Speaker 3 (00:51:28):

And I think that’s what happens. I mean, you got to think, you’ve been running a freight train of a life you’ve been not flooring, but the freight train’s going and you’ve effectively stopped a freight train by driving it into a brick wall, which is sort of what happens. And then it’s not a straight pick it up anymore. This is now, you can’t just go to work the next week and go, “Yep, I’ll just pick this up and pretend that it’s all still going and this is all okay.” This now changes again, I think your trajectory changes from this point forward.

Speaker 1 (00:52:00):

Yeah, it did. And I’d like to say that was a point where it got easier, but it didn’t because that’s when I’d admitted that I was helpless and I was lost and I was broken. And once again, keeping in mind we mentioned at the start of the call, all these things that I’ve always done from a young age, like referee and basketball, a national level, captains of all the sporting teams, school captain, like the sporting teams and stuff like that, running jobs at a young age. I’d gone from all that to someone who couldn’t get out of bed. I went to go to the supermarket one time and it took me four times to be able to get out of the car to go in there. I couldn’t face the world anymore. Yeah, I was broken.

Speaker 3 (00:52:42):

So Kade, you’ve talked a lot about, and very honestly, and we want to thank you for that. I mean, I know it’s something that you don’t shy away from, but at the same time, you can sense how it’s a deep thing that you talk to and go to when you go there. So thank you for doing that. I want to turn that corner though and say, well, after the, let’s call it the destruction, if you like, after the cogs have been absolutely smashed as you’ve thrown sticks in and along the way, there is a recovery. There is a chapter that says, “Hey, we move forward from here.” And it starts with you getting into AA and it’s not like it’s a smooth AA. I was there day one and all the way through it was the best thing ever. You grappled with that, you worked with it, you changed coaches.

(00:53:22):

All of this happens is the next chapter. For you, what was those early days of making those steps, getting into AA, finding your groove there and obviously when you start to talk to Rob and some of those first questions, what was changing for you as you did that?

Speaker 1 (00:53:36):

Acceptance was the first thing that changed in, accepting the position that I was in. It wasn’t until I accepted the position that I was in, could I actually do something about moving forward and making change because by accepting, I’d let go of everything. I let the baggage go and just said, “Right, now we’re going to press on forward and forge a new life.” So yeah, through AA, obviously I learned a lot about addictions, addressed things like the psychological triggers, so to speak, which would obviously make me pick up these bad habits. But then it was switching that as well to understand the importance of good habits and how they play a part because it was becoming an outlet because for me, like we’ve said, there was no outlet there. It was just on from the moment I was up to the moment, I was down with absolutely no downtime or zero concern for Kade’s wellbeing.

(00:54:31):

So getting some good habits in play, that was definitely something that played a part in helping me start to rebuild and start to feel good again.

Speaker 3 (00:54:40):

Did you then change coaches in that moment? It was around that time, you switched coaches, you come to Pravar. So AA’s first, you’re obviously in that programme and doing your thing there. You then start talking to Rob. And was this a conscious thing to pick up Kade the person and then KBC the business and start doing that? Or was it all part of the one push if you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:55:00):

No, it all happened at very similar time. I mean, the thing is with AA and stuff like that, it’s not like there’s a membership or there’s fees or anything like that. You just come and go and you buy and it’s opt in, opt out, which is great, but it was coinciding with the same times I’d got on board with Rob. I had spoken to Rob six months earlier, I think it was. We connected through the trade den and that was right at about that time I had my breakdown, Rob wanted to, he had a spot for me in leverage to jump straight into, but at that time everything was broken and I was broken and business was the furthest thing from my mind and I saw Pravar as a business coaching company. And to be honest, I didn’t care about my business anymore. I was a broken man, I needed to sort myself out and that was it. So I felt like it honestly would have been a waste of time, me being within the walls of Pravar at that stage. So I went away and did what I needed to do personally, like I said, and AA was a big part of it. And then I think it was March 2022 is when I jumped on board with Rob with Leverage.

Speaker 3 (00:56:12):

What do you remember about that, Rob? Can you remember the first sort of interactions?

Speaker 2 (00:56:18):

I do. One of the early parts of coaching, we talk about our principles at Pravar, which is face the facts, never settle and make shit happen. And the early parts of coaching is always facing the facts because whenever you’re making change, you’ve got to first accept the, you’ve got to face the facts in terms of where you’re at before you can make change to where you want to go. And I remember Kade, some of those very early conversations around the howling dog analogy, which is the dog sitting on the nail, whinging and bitching about this position they’re in but not doing anything about it. And I remember that clear as day, but those times were pretty deep, honest conversations around where you’re at and what you needed to fix. But it was transformational for you. That was a real turning point. You’d already started making change, but those early days in coaching were a huge turning point.

(00:57:10):

But what I admire about you back then is in that position is a lot of people pretend that they don’t have issues. They’re not very honest with their coaching because they’re trying to still work out is coaching right for me, but you jumped in 120% and that’s where the change came from is you didn’t dabble your toe, you just jumped all into coaching and that’s what drove the change, wasn’t it?

Speaker 1 (00:57:34):

Yeah, 100%. And I knew I needed to. I’d had a taste of coaching and I did believe in it because I started to understand the fact that running a business is different to being good at your trade. And by this stage, I didn’t mind saying, “I don’t understand how to run a business.” I didn’t know how to and I was actually okay with that. So once again, it’s part of acceptance. I knew I wanted to play a bigger game. I always felt like I was destined for more, but I just accepted the fact that I need a bit of help to get there and to do it. And yeah, definitely one of the best things I’ve done.

Speaker 3 (00:58:16):

What was your focus and how did you balance that in terms of saying, “Well, am I making progress on coaching or am I making progress on myself?” Did they go hand in hand or did you subscribe from the start that for the business to change, I have to change? What was sort of your journey through that sort of little part of the run?

Speaker 1 (00:58:36):

No, it was full personal development for me.

(00:58:40):

I mean, the business was not in a good way at all. Like I said, we just turned over a lot of staff, we’d lost clients, our pipeline was dry, we owed a lot of money. It was tough, but I just knew that because of what I had been through in that last 12 months that I just need to sort myself out. And it’s a hard thing to say, but if the business goes, the business goes, but I’ve got to rebuild myself for me and for my family because that’s not replaceable. So definitely it was a focus on me and I think, Rob, you’ll remember the start of our calls, it was always about tell me about your habits. How’s the gym? How’s the meditation? How’s the meetings? We never opened with business.

Speaker 2 (00:59:30):

Correct. We had to because at Pravar, we’re big believers that you’ve first got to get yourself right, but your business is always a reflection of you and you’ve got to get yourself right. It’s coaching with us as much a leadership, it’s more of a leadership journey than it is sometimes a business journey because the business is a reflection from you and I know Kade’d be able to have some very heavy conversations around that the fish was rotting from the head down and that that’s why the business was in that state. And so you’re part path was very much a you path and that’s why we spoke around our habits and our lead dominoes and what have you got to do to show up and be the best version of you so you can turn it into the best version of the business. So you’re right, coaching in those early days was very much around Kade the man and how do we get him right to be able to lead this business right?

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):

How did you go with that, Kade? I mean the thing you’re talking about as you guys are talking, just listening, the acceptance and getting into habits and following something that’s not directly related to what you signed up for, which was a business coaching. All of a sudden you’re in this programme and there’s this guy Rob talking to you about habits and personal stuff and all this. At some point a big part of what you’re doing is letting go of control and trusting a process. And for someone who’s a confessed workaholic who’s absolutely hellbent on smashing through whatever it needs to be done and I’ll control this thing all the way through, how hard was that for you? Were you just at a point now where you’d been torn down completely and it was like, I’m just going to rebuild with what’s happening now?

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):

Basically. Yeah, that’s pretty well it. I’d been torn down and accepted that my way wasn’t the right way. I never really realised how much of a control freak I was because when you hear people being a control freak, you almost think there’s a bit of a narcissist there where it has to be my way and they will force their way no matter what. And I was never ever like that. I was still always the same friendly cade, but I just made sure that I always put my best in to make sure that we got the outcome that I desired. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):

Yeah. It does. So you applied, and this is what I mean, when we started, it’s like the traits that made you who you were tipped over into hurting you, but then the traits that you had then started to come back again. But they came back in a much healthier way. And I think that’s the idea that you still took the traits, but the way you applied them was in a much healthier way. Habits started to replace addictions. There’s those sort of elements that the drive to follow your habits all the way through still came from the same work ethic. It was just a different vehicle you were using now to get the results.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):

And from a coaching point of view, I saw that because Kade had to make this work and to be honest, as you said, you were in a bad financial position, your team culture wasn’t there and we were in that rebuilding phase yet and he was working long hours. You were working crazy hours during that time, yet you were the most committed and consistent guy in that Leverage programme out of everyone. And that’s because you doubled down because you just went, “Okay, well, if I’m going to get through this, I’ve just got to focus on these things. I know they’re going to work.” You had blind faith that it was just going to happen and you were the most committed out of that whole group. And for someone who had financial problems and team problems and time problems, the excuse could have easily been, “Well, I don’t have time to work on that” But you just, that’s what I admired about you in your early phase of your coaching journey, Kade, is that you just did it no matter how you felt and what was going on in your world. And that’s why the transformation occurred because you just did what you had to get done to be able to move yourself out of that position at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):

Yeah, I very much just felt what I was doing was working so I didn’t dare stray. I really felt like it was my last stroller dice here to keep everything, to keep my business, my family, my home, everything. I just didn’t dare straight from what we were doing because I just felt like I was, even though it was only minute wins every day we were winning, we were progressing. So I just doubled down on it and kept doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):

How did you feel through that time? Were you feeling good? Were you feeling relief? What was the overwhelming, or were you just like, “Head down, ass up, let’s keep going like you always have.”

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):

Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):

Yep, to all of it?

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):

Yeah, no, just head down, ass up. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I was doing well because I didn’t want to then become complacent or then slip that if I was meant to be doing a gym day that day, I didn’t want to miss that gym day. If I was meant to be doing a meeting, I didn’t want to miss the meeting. If I was meant to be having a meeting with a team member that day, I didn’t want to miss that. So I didn’t allow anything to detract me from what I had to get done.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):

Kade, I love that you had the realisation of going from a one or the other, an all mindset that we talk about in coaching. It’s got to be this or that. And you actually went all the way through to get to, I think I could have and I can have the business and I can have my life back and I can do things. I can do more than one thing again. I’ve just got to do it a bit differently. Fast forward a litle bit and tell us how different that is for you now. What’s the business like? What’s leadership look like to you to start with? And then we’ll come back and maybe have a look at the personal side in a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):

Things are vastly different. We’ve grown our business now. We’ve got 16 employees. We’ve got two more that we’re looking at putting on in the next two weeks. We’ve split our business into three departments. We used to try and do anything and everything where we’ve become more focused on what we do do now. So with the departments, they’re all headed up by a department leader or a manager. So there’s structure in place where their guys are responsible for their roles and it gives them a bit of ownership and a bit of opportunity to feel good and feel empowered about what they do and about what they bring and they get a bit of job satisfaction. So basically it allows me now just to work closely with those guys and then just work on business development, going and trying to onboard new clients, reach out to our existing clients, see if they’re happy with the service we’ve been providing, if there’s anything going on in their world.

(01:06:04):

It’s great. And it’s given me the time to actually give back to my family. Like I mentioned, my boys are now 9 and 11 years old. So they’re at a real pivotal time in their youth and the way I view it, we have a window to be with our kids and to be a feature in their lives and I see that I’m right in the middle of that window to be a key feature in their life and I want to make the most of it. And so the fact that we have got the business set up now where I just do my 40 hours, 45 hours a week, it allows me to coach both their basketball teams, be involved with Sonny’s motorbikes, be on sporting committees. Yeah, it’s vastly different to what life was like five years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):

For sure. What about his husband?

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):

Yeah, it’s funny. I laugh because I asked Laura, I said, “If this question comes up, how would you see me answer this question?” Because like I say, I do. I schedule something and I do, and I don’t want it to feel like I scheduled time with my wife, but I schedule it because I want to make sure that I’m making her feel special too. And her answer was, she goes, “I feel you have time for me now.” Which hit pretty hard. It was nice because that’s what I want her to feel. I don’t want her to feel like she’s just there in the background. I want her to feel like she’s a part of my life and I want her in my life and I do.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):

Again, come back to what we started on, the priorities have changed. It’s not about time, it’s about priorities. And I think you’ve got those, I’ll say rebalanced. I’m not going to say right because right and wrong is way too vague, but I think you’ve got those rebalanced really well. There’s one more person I’m going to ask you about and how do you feel about them and it’s yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):

I feel proud of where I’ve come from. I’ve battled with my behaviours of the past and my misprioritisation with my time and what I thought was important and what wasn’t and how I dealt with emotions in the past. And there used to be a lot of resentment where now I can look back and say, “I’m proud for seeing it and making the change and becoming the person who I am now.”

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):

What do you think your parents would say?

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):

Yeah, I know they’re proud. Yeah, I know they’re proud. Mother’s being mothers, mum still checks on me. “You going allright? You’re not going too hard. You’ve taken time. No, once again, I’ve got more time for them as well. We’re, like I said, after dad’s accident, I wasn’t present at home either, even as a 20 year old. I know they’re proud and I hope they’re proud.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):

We’re certainly proud, mate, because the journey you’ve been on over the last four years is nothing short of incredible. And you won the Transformation Award over in Fiji two years ago and mate, that was a testament to the transformation that we saw across all of the four primary legacies. You went from being a on- dimensional, what we call a prava, a one-dimensional douche to a four-dimensional dude. And mate, you have completely transformed all areas of your life over the last number of years and it’s been nothing short of incredible to see you build the business that you’ve got, become the husband you are, the father you are, and the man that you are. It’s been an absolutely incredible journey and something that we are super proud of, mate. So thanks for putting your trust in us to be able to go on this journey with you and coach you through this.

(01:10:05):

But Dan, it’s something we’re super proud of, isn’t it?

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):

Yeah, it really is. I mean, we say it all the time. We’ve got a prety special job, but working with guys like Kade and seeing them grow and seeing them develop and the ripples that go from the sessions you do in a coaching call or in a group setting or whatever it is and seeing how that plays out in their world. And I mean their world, every part I think of your world, Kade, has not failed to be touched by the changes you’ve made, the person you’ve become. And we didn’t camp out on leadership, but at some point you’ll recognise that as a leader, you’re doing a great job. So yeah, we are super proud. We’re super grateful to be part of it and we look forward to doing more of it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):

No, thanks guys. And thanks guys. I do want to thank you. People often ask me, especially with the drinking because it’s such a big thing, especially in the trade space, do you miss it and stuff like that. And I tie the end of the days of my drinking days to the start of my Pravar journey and you guys have played a massive part in every aspect of my life has improved since that moment four years ago. There’s not one area in my life that hasn’t improved. So I mean gratitude of debt to you guys or debt of gratitude, sorry, how do we say that? But yeah, thank you guys. Yeah, it really has been life changing and yeah, it’s been a hell of a journey. I’ve really enjoyed it today.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):

It really has. Thanks for sharing it, mate. We do appreciate it and the honesty that you approached it with, it’s been great. And I know we could have spent another two hours talking about all the ins and outs of the journey, but no, we really do appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):

Thanks guys.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):

There’s been a lot that we’ve spoken around today and if there’s anything that may have come up for you listening throughout this episode that may have stirred some emotion in you and there’s something that you want to be able to talk to someone maybe from a professional side of things, don’t forget that there’s organisations like Beyond Blue, there’s organisations like TIACS, that this is a conversational starter that play a very big role. A lot of those organisations exist for that very reason to be able to help men who feel like they don’t know, they’re confused about where they’re at and they don’t know what to do next. So don’t forget that those organisations do exist and there’s nothing wrong with putting your hand up and saying, “I need help.” And that’s what I love about Kade’s story is he had the courage to put his hand up and said, “I need help through this process.” So for you mate, that’s a testament to who you are as a man.

(01:12:44):

So if you’re listening here today and you don’t know where to start, that those organisations exist. Even if you need to reach out to us personally and we can put you in the right direction to be able to give you that support. If you know that this is also giving you the inspiration to want to be able to make change across all your areas of life through some coaching, then jump across to strategysession.com.au, fill out the application form, book on a time that suits and let’s have a conversation about where you’re at, what you need help with, and see how we can help you with here at Pravar. Kade, thanks again so much for coming on today’s journey. Your story is super inspiring, mate, and yeah, we want to thank you again for being here today on The Trade Den. So thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):

Pleasure. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Dan.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):

That’s it from us here at The Trade Den for this episode. Den, I looking forward to coming back to you with another episode very shortly. Until then, take care.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):

See you soon.