Episode 13 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
You can be the best tradesman and do the best work, but if you don’t know how to run a business, then you’re not going to actually be able to make money out of doing that because there’s only so much money you can make out of being a good tradesman.
Speaker 2 (00:00:16):
Hi everyone. Rob Kropp here from The Trade Den Podcast. Welcome back to another episode. Really good to be back in your ears today. Welcome back, Dan. How’s things in your world?
Speaker 3 (00:00:27):
Thanks, Rob. Yeah, hi everyone. Great things going really well at the moment. Plenty happening outside. I’m in full basketball mode. We talked about that the other week, but full basketball mode at the moment. Had a proud dad moment with my son making a debut in NBL one, so it was very exciting for the family to see that happen. So yeah, really cool, but super excited for today’s episode and another case study.
Speaker 2 (00:00:50):
Yeah, we can’t wait. We’ve got Nathan Wilson from Rescue U Plumbing in to join us today. We’ve had some great feedback over the last couple, over the last little while. Ahmad Radi, Anthony Rentzis, we’ve got Nathan today. We’ve had some really great feedback from you being, listening, hearing their stories, being inspired, motivated, hearing all the good things, all the challenges that they’ve been through. And so we’re going to make this a regular feature here on the Trade Den podcast. Can’t wait to get stuck in today. We have got an absolute ripper a story for you today and we can’t wait to get stuck into it. So welcome to you Nathan. Mate, welcome to the Dan. How’s things?
Speaker 1 (00:01:32):
Hey, good, good. Can’t complain about anything. Good to be here and be able to share my story with everyone.
Speaker 3 (00:01:40):
No pressure mate. He’s built you up and sort of said all these stories are so wonderful.
Speaker 1 (00:01:45):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:01:48):
Which is good. Should we jump in? Rob? I, we’ll kick it off and get Nathan rolling with the usual, what’s his name and what business he’s in.
Speaker 2 (00:01:55):
Yeah, let’s do the roll call. Let’s get stuck in.
Speaker 1 (00:01:58):
Okay. I’m Nathan Wilson and I’m the owner of Rescue U Plumbing. We’ve been in business for around 15 years.
Speaker 3 (00:02:06):
How many people have you got on the team at the moment, Nathan?
Speaker 1 (00:02:09):
So we’re currently employed 28 people. There’s 20 in the ground crew and 8 in the office crew.
Speaker 3 (00:02:15):
All right, terrific. And how long have you been coaching with Pravar Group now?
Speaker 1 (00:02:18):
I think I’m part of the furniture with pava. I’ve been with Pravar since 2017, so I’ve been there for a while, but I just call it long steady growth.
Speaker 2 (00:02:29):
Seven years. What a great milestone. And mate, we’ve loved every part of your journey and we’ve seen all the highs, all the lows, we’ve seen it all, and it’s been a real privilege to be able to work alongside you over all these years. So yeah, we can’t wait to get stuck in today, but seven years, what a ride. It’s been home.
Speaker 1 (00:02:47):
It’s been really good. I’ve loved every moment of it. I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t get in there in 2017. So definitely been a good rollercoaster to be on.
Speaker 3 (00:02:57):
Yeah, and don’t believe what Rob says. You’re not a slow learner mate. You’re just very thorough.
Speaker 1 (00:03:03):
My OCD that’s holding me up.
Speaker 3 (00:03:06):
All right. So we’ve established a couple of things there. Just last one we do as part of our roll call, how many hours on average do you work per week?
Speaker 1 (00:03:14):
On average, I’m doing around 30 hours a week.
Speaker 3 (00:03:17):
Fantastic. Great. That’d be good for people to anchor on as we get through this conversation and hear this journey. So mate, let’s kick off. Let’s talk sort of build up and take it back before 2017 if we can all remember back that long. Some guys, it’s easy, it’s not too long ago when we interview them, seven years might be a stretch, but if we met you before you got into coaching, what would be fine? What was life like for you before?
Speaker 1 (00:03:42):
It was a bit of a hamster wheel, definitely a lot of challenges coming my way. So there was a lot of financial challenges, a lot of stress emotions. So highs and lows definitely felt like I was about to break. If not physically, it’d be emotionally and mentally. It was definitely on a rollercoaster to the bottom.
Speaker 3 (00:04:05):
What were some of the biggest challenges in that time that you can remember in terms of what you were trying to achieve?
Speaker 1 (00:04:12):
I think the biggest thing was is running a business and not knowing how to deal with people and not understanding actual business like a methodology around running a business. It was more just I was a tradesman doing my best. That’s probably the best way to explain it.
Speaker 3 (00:04:29):
As you listen to this, remember Nathan is in reactionary maintenance, so a lot of this is dealing with urgency. Can you remember how that urgency was building up and playing on your mind as you’re trying to become that sort of person that was able to respond to things in the real time? Were there challenges of that that were really struggling?
Speaker 1 (00:04:49):
Yeah, look, I think the best way to explain it was is I was literally giving attention to the squeakiest wheel, definitely trying to do my best as a businessman and a father and husband to my wife. But I pretty much, I just felt like I was being suffocated is probably the easiest way to explain it. I was definitely just, everything was building up on my shoulders and just life was tough. I felt really drained and all I wanted to do was just be left alone. I was a cranky bastard at best. I was pretty well known for that. Had no time for anyone besides going to work. I’d go out for dinner with Ricky to try and spend time with Ricky away from business and that my phone would ring and I’d be up, gone in my work vehicle going doing after hours callouts and stuff like that and had left her either at dinner or she was in a taxi on her way home on her own. Not very often she would come to work with me and it’d just be off you go, you got to go and do what you got to do.
Speaker 3 (00:05:58):
For sure. And this is sort of eight years in, if you’ve been with us for seven and you’ve been going for 15, this is sort of eight years of doing this, so that must’ve been taking a huge toll.
Speaker 1 (00:06:09):
Yeah, mate, I was definitely, definitely a broken person when I started coaching very, very dark days before I started the coaching journey. So yeah, it was more just you sort of don’t really know what you don’t dunno.
Speaker 3 (00:06:24):
Yeah, definitely. And everyone has that threshold moment then obviously all these events would’ve happened many times over and it’s sort of a slow build, but eventually we reached that threshold and there’s a time when you sort of realise you can’t take anymore and that things have to change. Can you remember that threshold moment for you?
Speaker 1 (00:06:41):
I definitely can mate. My wife came into the office on a Saturday morning and she obviously felt like this for a while. She said, told me that she’d felt like a single parent and she may as well go it alone. If that’s how life’s going to be, then I’m going to do it myself. You are just basically causing problems along the way. So yeah, I remember that Saturday I was in the office doing invoicing or quoting or whatever. I was trying to get out the door just trying to use my timers of efficiently. And Ricky turned up with our three children, Cooper and Hendricks introduced me to them saying that they don’t really know who you are. So yeah, it was all true. It was just that moment where she had to just come and put it on the table and that was the turning point for me. Hit me a bit of a road train.
(00:07:33):
Yeah, she made the message that Ricky gave me after the introduction was that something had to change and if it didn’t change then they’re all out. And I remember sinking in my chair and going to scroll on Facebook on my phone, and obviously the AI was working back then in 2017 because Rob Kropp popped up and I read through the message and I was like, this is a sign and this is the bloke, this is my guy. So he left my details for a call and sure enough Rob called me back and it was almost like he knew who I was and we’d never spoken before.
Speaker 2 (00:08:15):
How did that make you feel, mate, when you got that message? And obviously this had been building for a fair amount of time, how did you feel when upon reflecting back on that moment in 2017?
Speaker 1 (00:08:27):
Yeah, look, I think when you are in the depths of where I was and in the dark places I was at that point trying to just work. I just didn’t know my way to work out of it. But the thing was is it was like, I’m doing all this for you, I’m doing this for the family and I’m taking all the heat and I get up at five o’clock and don’t come home from 10 and then sit on my computer till early hours of the morning just trying to get money so we can live.
Speaker 2 (00:08:56):
And it’s not like you weren’t, you were absolutely busting your ass and we hear this all the time that it’s not like you weren’t, you were just doing the very best you could with what you knew at the time. So yeah, we get it mate. And it’s not an uncommon situation. We see this day in day out where a lot of trades business owners are doing it for the family and wanting to provide for their family, but they just find themselves in the situation they’re in. So it’s definitely not uncommon.
Speaker 1 (00:09:25):
I think it’s the old sayings that the more you do, the harder you work, the more you’re going to get, which is actually through coaching. I’ve learned that that’s actually the opposite of where you need to go.
Speaker 3 (00:09:36):
And in terms of that moment when you reached out for Rob and sort of put your hand up and asked for help, you’ve always seemed like a pretty surefooted guy. You sort of pretty directed in terms of where you want to go and knowing what you wanted to do, I think it’d be beneficial just to talk through for the person listening that how did it feel to put your hand up that first time being in that place? What were sort of the feelings and emotions you had in that moment of asking for help?
Speaker 1 (00:10:01):
Look, I knew if something, I had to do something, I didn’t really know if business coaching was my fix, but I knew that at least if I tried it, that was the next step because I had lots of work and I had lots of stuff going on from a business point of view, but I just had no, I guess there was probably that point where I realised that I needed help from a business point of view, that was what I was missing in the whole thing. But yeah, I probably also didn’t know in myself, I didn’t feel like I had enough financial viability to grow my business to get people to help me.
Speaker 3 (00:10:44):
So you’d reached that point where you just didn’t know, like you said before, you didn’t know what you didn’t know. And it sounds like second you knew that if you kept doing the same things, you could see where that was going to go. So it was sort of that point where you absolutely had to make a change.
Speaker 1 (00:10:57):
Yeah, definitely. I just got, obviously Ricky was the sounding board to bring that out, the thought process, but then when you start thinking about it, it’s like, well, I can’t keep doing more because I’m actually just only getting four to six hours sleep a day. And there were times where I’d wake up, I’d wake up at two, three o’clock in the morning with my laptop on my face in bed or it just wasn’t healthy.
Speaker 3 (00:11:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that sets the scene for what is going to be the rest of this journey in our conversation today as a starting point for coaching and sort of getting into this next phase if you like. What was the business actually looking like at that time? I know you didn’t know the numbers then, but I’m sure you’d be able to rattle those off for us now. What was the business doing? What was the team looking like and what was the sort of type of work you were working on back then?
Speaker 1 (00:11:53):
Working? Yeah, so we’re doing $2.2 million in turnover around $605k in net profit. After all of our expenses had four or five team members in the field. I had no admin support. My mum and Ricky were helping out where they could, but they weren’t there for the job. They were on a very, very part-time work. We were doing everything and anything that came across anyone that rang me, yep, no problem, we can do that. So we were doing anything from construction to maintenance. So yeah, just running at all markets really.
Speaker 3 (00:12:35):
Okay. Yeah, sounding from that, if I’ve got my sums right, that’s a pretty high turnover for not a lot of mp. So I think it’s around if we did our maths right, about 2%, but that would obviously be leading to not only the stress that you’re feeling at home, but just what’s the point, that overarching question of where’s this all going to end and what’s the point of continuing?
Speaker 1 (00:12:56):
Yeah, it was very hard. Just working hard and getting nowhere was pretty much the outcome and the more I did, the more money I got, but the more bills I got.
Speaker 3 (00:13:08):
Yeah, I think you touched on it before, what sort of hours were you working and what would you, I mean it’s the hamster wheel, right? So I think we all know what the answer’s going to be, but what sort of hours were you working and what did your role look like back in those days?
Speaker 1 (00:13:20):
I was doing around 80 to 90 hours some weeks north of 90 hours. And basically I was wearing all the hats, so I was still working on the tools, scheduling all the work, estimating the jobs, ordering the materials, payroll. If there was a hat, I was picking it up and wearing it at some point.
Speaker 3 (00:13:40):
Yeah, absolutely. The overarching feeling at the time. We’re going to move on for this mate, I promise we’re not going to leave you in this dark spot for too much longer, but what was the feelings about business life and your future, just summing it up as you sort of got started in coaching?
Speaker 1 (00:13:56):
From where I was prior, I was basically just like, I felt like everything I did didn’t matter where I turned. I was just suffocating. If I gave my time to my family, I’d miss out on work and if I missed out on work, we were missing out on money. So I was just, if I didn’t keep my eyes on work, then financially we were just going to sync. Obviously the numbers are tight.
Speaker 3 (00:14:17):
Yeah, for sure. And were you all in coaching to start with or was there still some sort of resistance or pride or some sort of sense of I’ll wait? Or did you just jump in both feet and say, Hey, this change is coming and I’m all in.
Speaker 1 (00:14:31):
Mate, I don’t think I jumped in. I think the vacuum sucked me and I was all in from the start, from the get go.
Speaker 3 (00:14:38):
So mate, let’s talk strategic a little bit. Let’s get a little bit deeper into what you actually did and start to turn this corner. What were some of those early levers or results you pulled into release some of these initial constraints that you’ve outlined?
Speaker 1 (00:14:49):
Yeah, so probably one of the first ones that I jumped into was around my health. So health, nutrition, and sleep. So I quickly being around the community in coaching that I was a part of, I quickly realise that health was paramount. So if you can’t look after yourself, then you’re not going to be able to look after multiple people that are working for you. So that was probably one of the biggest things. So I jumped in and I’d never been to a gym, but the only time I’d walked into one was when I was fixing something in one of ’em and then my nutrition, that was probably key, nutrition was the thing that was leading me down because I was just living on fast food or either living on fast food or just not eating at all.
Speaker 3 (00:15:34):
Right. And then obviously sleep was non-existent given the hours you’re putting in and all the stresses that were going on.
Speaker 1 (00:15:41):
And then obviously after I got all that sort of together and my wife Ricky, she was a pivotal point in that part of it, she jumped on with me as well. So we were doing it together. So it’s a bit of a saying in coaching is about on the bus. So we were both on the bus, which was made life a lot easier to actually attain what we were trying to achieve there, which then led to a reconnection with Ricky and the kids and getting more time back.
Speaker 2 (00:16:12):
How do you think in that time, Nathan, what did that show Ricky, do you think by you really stepping up and putting your hand up and going, I’m going to make change. What message do you think that did send back to the family at the time?
Speaker 1 (00:16:27):
It was definitely that I was willing to do what I needed to do to get back to where we wanted to be or be the family we wanted to be and have the time we wanted to have. So I guess when I found that Facebook advert from Rob Kropp back in the day and I took it to her and I was like, I’m going to do this. And she goes, you got to do it, you got to do it, but you’ve got to change something.
Speaker 3 (00:16:51):
So she was looking for that commitment of you to say you acknowledge that you’re on her side of the fence and this change that we’re making now is absolutely something we’re going to do for us. And that commitment to that first, which has came through the changing of your habits, the focus on reconnection, obviously all of that was the first domino if you like, that kept this journey going.
Speaker 2 (00:17:12):
How did you go about that? And Nathan, at the time when you’re working 80 to 90 hours a week, a lot of excuses we get is I don’t have time. How did you go being to be able to prioritise that when you were already working crazy hours?
Speaker 1 (00:17:26):
The biggest thing that I learned straight away in coaching was around time management. So I thought that I was managing my time really, really well and I actually wasn’t. So by obviously the language we’re using coaching is rock, sand and pebbles and whatnot. So I basically identified what my rocks were to get through each day and what the pebbles were and what could get kicked along and all that sort of stuff. So then by actually allocating my time, I was able to go to the gym, but I was at the gym at 5:00 AM I wasn’t going at nine o’clock, I was 5:00 AM and then some days I’d go back at 5:00 PM I found the gym to be a really, really good outlet for stress. It was time where I put my phone away and just worked on myself for whether it was an hour a day or two hours a day. And then part of that process of being at the gym was eating the right food. So then going back to what we’ve already spoken about, you don’t know what you don’t know unless you try and change and do things to do it and want the change, you’re not going to get the outcome.
Speaker 2 (00:18:36):
Isn’t it interesting here that, and I know we’re going to get into the business section in a minute around what you did at an early side of things, but it comes back to that famous saying that for things to change first I must change. And we see this a lot in coaching that a lot of people come into coaching thinking, what’s my next hack? What’s my next strategy? What do I got to do there to be able to fix this? But you’re living proof, Nathan, that in order for your situation to change, you personally had to make the change. And it sounds counterintuitive, you’re working crazy hours, working long hours, got cashflow problems. Most people think that’s first what I’ve got to go and fix. But mate, your living proof that the first person and the first thing that had to change was you, wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (00:19:20):
Yeah. I guess the other thing as well is I was using excuses and lies and just wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t taking accountability from actions and my problems. And once you start doing that, it’s a hard thing to do to start taking accountability when you haven’t done it for so long. But when you actually do start doing it, then you see the flip side of taking responsibility, then that’s much more valuable to take responsibility than not.
Speaker 3 (00:19:48):
Let’s talk a bit more about the business strategy then. So we’ve gone into the personal side, you’ve changed the relationship to time, which is always a big starting point for people. You’ve put a priority and a focus on family and your own health. What was happening in the business then? What did you use or how did you change your approach to the way you were doing business?
Speaker 1 (00:20:07):
So I had admin support come into the business. So Tina actually started with our business just prior to me in coaching. So I already sort of worked out that I just couldn’t do everything, but obviously I was paying money that I didn’t know if I could afford it or not. So got Tina in admin support and she was working four days a week. And then after I had Tina come in and started my journey in coaching about eight months later, had a conversation with my coach around we need to get someone in to manage the team and start stepping up into a bit of an operations role. And I was like, mate, we’re barely making $65k a year. How are we going to afford to pay this guy? And then we basically through conversation and what not, we worked out that I could step up. One of the boys in the field had a really, really good candidate.
(00:21:05):
He was actually, so it’s Matthew, he was my first apprentice that I had. So he’d been through the ringer with me. And yeah, I brought him into the office in a bit of a transitioned thing where he sort of started one day a week and that was for him to obviously see whether he liked it and whether or not he fitted into the mould and whether he was able to get into that. He’s a bit like myself, not very tech savvy and he’s learned a heap in seven years on what you got to do and how to talk to people and all that sort of stuff. So he’s learned a lot from my journey along the way. But yeah, he was my golden nugget in the business that we stepped up and got into that role.
Speaker 3 (00:21:50):
Brilliant. And Tina and Matt are still with you today?
Speaker 1 (00:21:53):
Absolutely. So Matty’s been with our business for 15 years and Tina actually just went with the business for I think it was 8 years last week.
Speaker 3 (00:22:01):
Wow, fantastic. Absolutely great to have that journey and that continuity with these people that really what we’re talking about is leveraging time and getting some structure in place to support you. The outcome of that, and I’m guessing you’ve probably got some, the other thing we see is bookkeeping sort of help. So starting to get that in place as well is probably part of that journey. But what did all of that allow you to do once you had Tina and Matt and tell us, did you do anything in the bookkeeping front?
Speaker 1 (00:22:29):
I was doing what I thought I could. I definitely wasn’t a good bookkeeper, but I was doing my best and then paying obviously big fees for my accountant to tidy it all up at the end of financial year when we sat back after 12 months of work and worked out whether or not we had a good result or not, we weren’t as keen on our numbers back then as what we are now.
Speaker 3 (00:22:49):
For sure, for sure. So you find yourself for the first time, Nathan, obviously getting some support in place. You’ve got structure with admin now you’ve got an ops manager in place, you’ve got some support on the bookkeeping front, there’s probably more time you’ve leveraged time as we call it. Where did you land in terms of were you off the tools? What did you find out once you got that support in place?
Speaker 1 (00:23:12):
Yeah, I definitely was off the tools. I still had my trady hat on a little bit. I changed out of a service vehicle into a ute, had to have my tools still on me, couldn’t let go immediately, but I wasn’t using ’em as much, but I definitely hand on heart. I was squandering a bit of my time. I felt like I’d been in the press for so long that I just deserved a bit of a reprieve. So yeah, I definitely realised and recognised that I had the time back, but it was more about reconnecting with my family and getting my health and everything in order and a bit of balance across the board instead of the confusion and state of disarray that I’ve been in for the previous seven years.
Speaker 3 (00:23:54):
So starting to get that rhythm into your life that you hadn’t had previously. I mean dealing, as we said at the start, that operating on urgency mode all the time and what the squeakiest wheel is leads you to sort of either do nothing or just run around like a maniac. So getting that sort of control and having that in place is really important. And that Rob probably leads us to how this all culminated to Nathan.
Speaker 2 (00:24:16):
At that time, I remember Nathan, you won the Bevan award, remember that in and a well-deserved winner at that time. And for those of you who don’t know our awards that we’ve got in the mastermind, we’ve got five awards and one of them is the Bevan Award actually named after Michael Bevan. And Michael Bevan was renowned for playing a strategic game, hitting a lot of ones and twos. And our Bevan system that we’ve got here in Pravar is all about, not about what you do monthly or irregularly, it’s about what you do daily and weekly. And mate, you were a well-deserved award winner at that time. I remember at Hamilton Island and the day after you won that award there, you and Ricky were walking down the beach hand in hand celebrating the award and everything. And I still remember that moment going, man, that guy was on the brink of losing it all, but now he’s got complete balance and order back in your world. It was a really, really special moment and for you to be able to get balance and order across your health start to get your finances under control, better structure in your business and just reconnecting your family was a really special moment for you, wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (00:25:29):
Yeah, absolutely. It was also that moment when I got that award was that was a grounding anchor point for me as well. I didn’t actually realise that I was actually doing all that work and recognising that that’s what I was doing on a daily basis to get the outcomes. So that was a really important moment in my journey, not only in business but in coaching to actually get the recognition and anchor that point in my life.
Speaker 2 (00:25:57):
And for you, it was all about consistency. It was all about having the right habits, they were the key ingredients for you weren’t they?
Speaker 1 (00:26:05):
Absolutely. Habits are things that you do without thinking about. It happens once you’ve set your mind to do it. It’s just getting it done.
Speaker 3 (00:26:15):
So this phase, as we come to the end of this first phase or chapter, if you’re like, you’re now out, I’d class that as being out of pain. So you’ve got out of that pain, the painful place that you’re in, you’ve now got to that point where it’s sort of not the same sensitivity to that. It might’ve been. We move into chapter two though, and there is another chapter to this whole thing where you start to now play a bigger game. So in terms of taking where you’ve got yourself to and not being okay with that, and if you’re listening, I want you to think about that because a lot of people would settle at this point and say, well, at least I’m out of pain, I’m no longer hurting. That’s good enough. But this is what the coaching journey and what we’re trying to get across today with Nathan’s story is, is that you need to step up.
(00:27:00):
You need to play a bigger game now that’s the call. That’s what takes you to that not only takes you to the next level, but it keeps you at going back into pain and backsliding as we call it. So Nathan, when we talk about you playing a bigger game, can you remember once you’d sort of gathered yourself, you’ve got the Bevan award, these habits are betted in, what did you turn your attention to next? You’re off the tools obviously, so what was the next sort of role for you in the business and where did you go from there?
Speaker 1 (00:27:24):
Identifying our market was definitely a big next lever. So we did a lot of work on working out who through our numbers and financially we worked out who were our better clients to work for, who are hard to work for and all that sort of stuff. So then we started identifying a market to work in instead of working in every market, we sort of narrowed that funnel down, which ultimately led to a bit of a downturn in revenue overall, but it was a better downturn. So it was turning the dial down a little bit and doing that really, really well. And then getting the recognition for it in that space and then me going really, really hard on the business development in that space to build out the new revenue streams.
Speaker 3 (00:28:11):
So did your role change from, it sounds like you changed from being operationally focused or all hat focused, if you like, into more of a sales focus?
Speaker 1 (00:28:22):
Yeah, it was definitely a lot more of my time was going into sales and about generating leads and locking things in and more sort of relations with our clients. Still fairly heavily involved in operations. I had Matt probably at that point, that was where Matt sort of came into a full-time role in the office, but I was still Matt and I was still learning and I was teaching him and he was finding that stuff off me so then he could do his role and do it better. But yeah, definitely was pushing on the sales.
Speaker 3 (00:28:55):
Yeah, for sure. So if that’s your primary then operations and still operating that way, did you leverage the structure that you had in place? Obviously held, you’ve still got these people with you today, which is fantastic, but what was the next sort of structural move you made at that point? Obviously you were still getting sucked into operations and even albeit training, which you’ve got to do with new people, but what was your next move to free you up even more to become more sales led?
Speaker 1 (00:29:22):
Obviously we had to grow the business, so grow the business more by getting more revenue and more clientele through the door. So growing the businesses and then enabled us to get other people in the office to do estimation and all that sort of stuff. So obviously we’re doing more now than what we were doing when we started coaching, but we’ve got more people around us to do more and do it better.
Speaker 3 (00:29:48):
So your role then changed from operating the business yourself to having a business that operates under management. So at this point, were you changing your management style? What were you sort of learning about management and maybe how was the business growing in terms of the amount of people that you were able to bring on through this time?
Speaker 1 (00:30:06):
Yeah, I definitely was at that point, I was moving from being old cranky bastard that I used to be into more of an approachable leader. Definitely realised through different avenues. The main avenue was through coaching and just being understanding of how to communicate with people differently and to get, there’s different ways you can communicate to get different outcomes. And then basically just moving into that selling GM role so then I can push more revenue through the business. And we’ve got Seth, one of our other tradesmen, he came off the tools into the office in a bit of a transitional manner, mainly through, he came in through the middle of COVID, so we brought him in to keep the estimation happening, but he was a bit part-time and then moved into more of a full-time role and he’s now just transitioned into an assistant operations manager role and we’ve brought another one of our tech officer out of the field up into the office. And so it’s Daniel and he’s a full-time estimator in the office now.
Speaker 3 (00:31:23):
Brilliant. And for the listener, this is not just people falling into roles internally, I want to stress that this is all very much strategic decisions that Nathan’s making along the way. They’re very well timed out and they’re always backed against. The way we coach at Pravar is they’re always backed or being informed by numbers. So Nathan, I know you didn’t skip the numbers part in this journey, so what were you doing with numbers and how important was you and how much work were you putting into learning your numbers at this time?
Speaker 1 (00:31:53):
It was definitely a massive rock, massive rock for my week to understand financial reports, how to interpret ’em. I still through coaching, I was on a coaching call the other day and I learned something. It’s just an evolution of understanding the financial side of it, especially when you haven’t done specific accounting training. And once you know these numbers and what they’re doing and why they’re moving, then that sort of enables you to understand and make more strategic decisions around how you’re going to do something rather than I’m just going to go and spend $250k building a new truck, maybe I’ll buy a high ace van and deck it out instead of doing that big fit out.
Speaker 3 (00:32:38):
So way more informed decision making I think is great. So if we look at this and let’s just underscore where we’re at here. So this playing a bigger game for you was becoming sales led, it was developing your structure for the business to operate under management. You got to know your numbers to make these decisions at the right time. Everyone knows what the right decision is instinctively in business, but the problem is they make them at the wrong time and a lot of times that’s because they haven’t got the information available, the understanding of their numbers. Rob, I’ll bring you in. Let’s go back to our Pravar world. What did this all culminate in for Nathan?
Speaker 2 (00:33:14):
Yeah, what I really liked about Nathan’s journey, and we have to remember that this is over a period of time. Nathan’s been a client for seven years. So what I love about Nathan’s journey is he’s living proof that slower and sustainable growth is the best growth that you can ever have. And we’ll talk more a bit about that later, but this is over a period of time. He just didn’t hire all these people, bring them all at once at the expense of his bottom line. It was over a period of time where we strategically were sales led, brought the work in the door, matched our revenue with their resourcing. At this point, at the moment, I think you’ve got 20 odd people on the ground, Nathan, and so over this period of time you were just driving the revenue, being sales led, continually restructuring your operations team to be able to build out operations manager, estimator admin, additional admin support. So it was a really strategic growth, which I loved, which led us to the Rainmaker Award. Your second award, the trophy cabinet at this point is starting to fill up, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (00:34:23):
Mate? More the better.
Speaker 2 (00:34:25):
And the Rainmaker Award, what did that mean to you? And the rainmaker is for that client who went out there and just achieved excellence in that year and just achieved really, really strategic growth. So what did that mean to you, mate, to be able to get the Rainmaker Award?
Speaker 1 (00:34:42):
Again, I’m a pretty humble person. I don’t run around blowing off and waving my flag too much. But again, it was one of those moments where it was recognition for just putting your head down, your ass up and just getting what had to get done, done. That was basically it. And again, that sort of anchored that thing for me off the back of it. I know that when I attend the award weekends that we have, I go in there with no premonitions, I have no expectation and pretty much every time I’ve won an award, I’ve had no expectation that I’m winning it. And you can attest to that because every time you doing it, I’m sitting there just going, this bloke’s talking about me. So yeah, it’s just one of those things where it’s recognition that you’re not going to get outside of coaching for what you’re doing, but it’s also that moment where you actually sit back and you go, oh, I’ve just received something because I’ve done something really well.
Speaker 2 (00:35:44):
And what I like about that time, and the reason why you did get the Rainmaker Award is I know you said you did squander your time for a moment, but once you did have that breather, gee, you were a relentless on your sales focus. You made every minute count just to really drive that top line and the bottom line in the business, didn’t you?
Speaker 1 (00:36:04):
Absolutely. There was also that once I had that reprieve and had a bit of a breathe, it was like that, okay, now I’ve got time, what am I going to do with it? And then I got really, really granular with my calendar. I think I was giving myself 20 minutes to eat my lunch. I was relentless with time and that was something that I worked really hard to do and I made sure I scheduled. I was very, very big on scheduling myself. So then I knew that I had an hour to do this or 40 minutes to do that. I even had times where I was scheduling time to research people to talk to. And then when I got to my time where I was doing my BD calls, I already had all that in front of me. So I wasn’t wasting that time to do that.
Speaker 3 (00:36:54):
Yeah, really important lesson there again, and this is that theme that your habits, your rituals, the things that you were doing regularly didn’t change. That was the underlying thing that made all of this possible and you didn’t let that go or get sucked into, I’m just going to do more of something else. So I think that’s really important. The other thing I want to touch on, you sort of alluded to it, but I’m interested to hear your answer. What’s the importance or what’s the benefit, do you think of having these milestone moments win the award or not? But you’re now learning to celebrate wins and focus on the positive stuff that’s going on. Can you talk to what that means to you? It sounds like it’s an important thing.
Speaker 1 (00:37:35):
Yeah, it’s actually very, very important to make sure you do celebrate those wins. Otherwise you’re just running along with your head down, not really looking up too much. I can actually realising, I can vouch that I’ve gotten a lot better at doing that actually just stopping and looking up into the distance a bit more instead of just getting really, really focused on one thing and then looking up and just going, oh shit, that fell over there and going and fixing that again. So yeah, been a bit more aware of what’s going on around me, but then celebrating when something really good happens, you celebrate it. If something really bad does happen, then you’re like, okay, what am I going to do to fix that? So it’s sort of like a counterintuitive sort of thing. You celebrate the good things and then fixing the bad things.
Speaker 3 (00:38:20):
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it makes it easier to examine the lessons when things don’t go well, what do we learn from that? But then also balancing that out with, well, what’s going well? There’s always two sides to it. And I think as part of your leadership and your management, being able to recognise it for yourself but then share it with your team as well has obviously been critically important.
Speaker 1 (00:38:40):
And I think the other thing, yes, I won the awards, but actually those two awards that I won early on in my coaching journey, they were moments in time where I stopped and thought and celebrated that moment at that point in time. So now instead of waiting for someone to give me the recognition, I actually go, that’s really good. Let’s go and celebrate that. So I brought those gaps a lot closer and recognise and give myself a bit of a pat on the back more regularly, or even my team a pat on the back more regularly or not that I give my family a pat on the back, but when we’re doing good things, we celebrate.
Speaker 3 (00:39:18):
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it goes from being a celebration of the achievement to a recognition of progress. It’s very close, but it’s very different. So I really love that. Let’s move on to, and again, yes, there is another level and we will sort of talk about the next level for you. And I know that now you’ve got this dialled in, we’ve talked structure habits. You can start to see, hopefully as you listen to this, you can sort of see the foundations are so rock solid at this point. Everything’s bettered in, there’s been a milestone reach, there’s an informed decision made next level for you. So how did things change when you got to this point and what would you describe as your next level taking us into the more recent journey for you?
Speaker 1 (00:40:02):
I spent a lot of time, I spent an actual real lot of time on leadership and culture in my business to make sure that we had the right people doing the right thing and things get done a certain way in our business and that’s how we get our outcomes. But if you don’t have the right culture and the right people in the business, then you’re not going to get the outcome you’re looking for because you expect it and not actually manage it.
Speaker 3 (00:40:32):
Yeah, culture is such a word that gets thrown around. Let’s just ground it for people, the person listening, what does culture mean to you?
Speaker 1 (00:40:41):
Culture is everything. So I’m a big believer of making sure that you, so I look after my people and then my people look after my clients and then I go get feedback from my clients. So I know my people are happy when my clients are giving me good feedback.
Speaker 3 (00:40:56):
Great. And how do you maintain that? You can wait and see it or you can actively work towards it, which is what you’re talking about. You actively chase this down, this culture that you wanted to build. How did you go about doing that?
Speaker 1 (00:41:13):
Starting off, obviously there’s no perfect recipe, but starting off I had to have a lot of hard conversations with people, hold ’em to account and people like us around here do things like this. That was sort of the vocabulary in the conversations and it actually changed how people listened and acted and all that sort of stuff. So then just set really, really high standards in the business and then that’s how we work and we work to those high standards. And if someone’s not working to those high standards, then the actual team, the ones that bring them into line, I still manage and lead the business, but my team now, because I’ve built the culture within the business, my team actually are the ones that are leading and holding people to account. So definitely it’s definitely not an easy task, but it’s one of those things that if you want to have balance in your business, you’ve got to have everyone singing off the same hymn sheet, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (00:42:17):
Yeah, for sure. I’ll get Rob to talk about that phase in a moment, but what do you think is the difference or how much work is involved just to get your take on this, the difference between leadership and management for you, how would you draw that line? Obviously been through both, you had to learn to become a good manager. Next level was about improving leadership and culture. So where do you sort of draw that line and how do you relate to that sort of thing that leadership and management are two different things?
Speaker 1 (00:42:45):
Yeah, so look, I obviously work for a lot of different businesses before I started my own. And I quickly realised when I started running my business that I didn’t want to be like those businesses and I didn’t want to manage people the way that I got managed back at early days of my trade. So I was very, very, very, I wouldn’t say strategic, probably careful about how I went about managing people, but obviously early days I didn’t understand how to communicate with people. And once I learned how to communicate with people, then I used that to my advantage.
(00:43:18):
But then you very much, obviously when I started my business, when I started my coaching, by me changing myself that was leading my business to show that I was changing and then they were either going to come with me and change with me and be a better version of themselves, the same as I’m being a better version of myself. So if the leader’s not leading from the top and being that person that’s pushing to be the best and pushing to have the best and everyone around them as well, then you’re not actually leading people. You are, instead of helping them along the way, you are pulling them along the way.
Speaker 2 (00:43:57):
Can you think of an example where you’ve done that in the business and really inspired someone else to make change through leadership?
Speaker 1 (00:44:05):
One of our journeyman plumbers, he was given an opportunity just this Christmas, gone on a big project out in Western Sydney. He actually got wind of this project before any of our team in the office, got wind of it, he is on the ground talking to the people and he actually came to me and said, I want to do this project. And I was like, he’s got the go forward, he’s got the ability, probably doesn’t have the overarching knowledge, but we can work on that. And we quoted the works, we won the job, and then he basically came to me and he’s like, I want to run this job. And I was like, perfect, let’s go. I was like, I’ll oversee you, but you are running the job. And he took that with two hands and he delivered the project on time in budget and yeah, couldn’t ask for any more, but that was through me.
(00:45:02):
He came to me and asked the old Nathan would’ve been nut, sorry, you can’t do that. I’ve got to do this because of financial reasons and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, he came to me opportunity given and he stepped up and then literally yesterday we had another one of these opportunities come across the table and I had the email first, so I went up to him there, but he reached out to me yesterday afternoon and he’s like, oh, there’s another one of those projects. And I’m like, alright, we’re quoting it, it’s yours. So yeah, that’s probably a good example of me showing leadership and wanting to help the guys around us to be better and do better. And if you don’t have the opportunity to learn, you’re not going to have that outcome.
Speaker 3 (00:45:48):
Yeah, I think that’s a huge part of leadership is creating the space for people to improve. If you can create that space for others to get better and uncover what they can do really well, then I think that’s a really strong case for a great leader, which is obviously what you are.
Speaker 2 (00:46:01):
And I think we’re seeing that a lot in Nathan’s story where one of the big benefits of growth is the ability to be able to create employment opportunities and career progressions for people in your team. And we’ve seen a lot of that in Nathan’s story where he’s been able to step up Matt into an operations manager. He’s been able to step up Seth into estimation and then onto operations, being able to step up Daniel into that, be able to empower journeymen to be able to go and do that. I know you’ve helped encourage and facilitate change personally for other people. It’s a real thread to your story, Nathan, where you’ve definitely developed over your time in management. What I really like about you is your empowerment and really holding people accountable, but your leadership and the culture you develop at Rescue U Plumbing is second to none, and it’s been a huge part of your journey and your development, but it’s been a huge part of fundamentally the success the business has achieved over these years, hasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (00:47:02):
And I believe through the culture in the business, people want to be here. It’s not like they actually want to come to work. It’s not a, oh, I’ve got to go and do that again, or I’m doing that, I’ve got to pay my bills. It’s like they actually want to be a part of it.
Speaker 3 (00:47:15):
That’s great to get that sort of buy-in, sort of the ultimate measure where you’ve got people that get to come to work rather than have to come to work. I think that’s really important. As a last, I think there’s one more lever, I hope you touch on it. Can you remember what the other next level lever was that you pulled?
Speaker 1 (00:47:33):
Yeah, so we previously traded under Rescue U Plumbing Sydney, and that was very much the old Nathan. And it was also, I sort of realised through doing a lot of research that we were being geographically stamped by having that Sydney word on the end of our business name. So I went through a process, it was around somewhere around six to eight months, and I worked with external providers and whatnot to go through a rebrand of the business, and that was a complete overhaul of all of our collateral, our image in the market. And then after we went through that process, then I started on working under the social media avenues to promote the capability of our business. And we’re still doing that today, but the rebrand was a big change for me. That was like putting the old Nathan in the cabinet and this is the new way we’re going forward.
Speaker 2 (00:48:38):
That was a big part in that there because it was almost like a bit of an identity break wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (00:48:44):
Was massive, massive identity break because going through the process of the rebrand, it’s not just sitting there having conversations about what your business looks like. There’s much, much deeper conversations that have been had about that. So that was, the rebranding was about me, what the business had achieved and where we were going, and much, much deeper conversations to get there. And then the other thing about a rebrand is it’s not cheap.
Speaker 3 (00:49:10):
No, definitely not. Definitely not. And especially as you’re up and coming, one of the worst things you can do is sink a whole lot of stuff into a rebrand a few years into business phoning out that, Hey, in two years time we’ve got to do it all again. There’s way better things and way more effective strategies that you can learn and leave as you can pull, which hopefully as you’re listening to this, you’ve heard some of those today in terms of what you’ve learned. So this next level is all about leadership culture. You’ve talked about identity and branding yourself. What do you think was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself at that time?
Speaker 1 (00:49:42):
Biggest lesson and realisation for myself was, is that I’d made massive change in my whole world from being in a dark hurt locker doing everything that I had to do to just make a dollar. So now I’ve got a brand, I’ve got a brand in the market, I’ve got a business that’s a very well known business in the market, and that’s now, that’s our springboard to go to the next level.
Speaker 3 (00:50:15):
For the next chapter. I can’t wait to see what that was again. Rob, I’m going to hand over to you as our compare of the award ceremony today, this whole next level with Nathan doing this, and I think there’s a huge parties left out, but I’m going to let you explain the award that came with this part of Nathan’s journey, because I think that’s a big part of Nathan going to the next level as well.
Speaker 2 (00:50:34):
Yeah, I’d agree with that. Nathan’s been a big part of, he’s been a big role in the leadership group that we have in the lifestyle mastermind. We’ve got a leadership group that sits in there to be able to play support within that group. Accountability. You’ve already heard Nathan talk a lot about accountability. Not only does he demonstrate that in the business side of things, but he’s not afraid to be able to have hard conversations within the mastermind group. He holds people to account, he raises the bar and holds a very high standard of not what he only expects from himself, but expects from other people within the mastermind. And that’s why the Mastermind is so successful as a collective group because we’re all challenging each other to not only stepping up and playing a bigger game, but we are here as a community to be able to help each other out when the chips are down.
(00:51:32):
And so it’s a big part in that, and Nathan plays a huge role in terms of checking in with his mates, giving guys a call, seeing how they’re going, holding people to account when they’re not toeing the line and as he says, get on the bus or get out. And he’s not afraid to be able to do that because not only does he expect from the best from himself, but he expects the best from those people around him, which led to the community award. And that was a huge honour. I know for Nathan to win that in Fiji last year, to be able to get to that community award. And after about six years of coaching, Nathan, what did that community award mean to you in recognition for the leader that you’d become?
Speaker 1 (00:52:17):
Again, it’s not about receiving the award, it’s more about the realisation that you’re actually personally changing or you’re changing other people’s lives. That community award, for me that was, I’m actually not just changing myself, I’m changing the world for other people as well. So it’s like obviously the awards recognition for it, but you’re actually doing the right thing and you’re a good person and you’re helping people that need help.
Speaker 3 (00:52:42):
Yeah, I think what you’re describing there is moving towards contribution, and that’s something bigger than yourself, contributing to something bigger than yourself, and I think that’s definitely the role you’ve taken on over the time that I’ve known you in terms of our community at Pravar and obviously for your team and the people around you, which is huge. If we talk, let’s go into the, I think we’re almost there. I think we’re almost at the next one, which is sort of current state. I want to touch on current state and maybe a little bit about what the next chapter is for you. But let’s start with, and we do have an award for that. I’ll cut in here and say, we do talk about integrating all four of what we say are our primary legacies at Pravar, so health, wealth, business, and connections. So there is an award for that called the Excellence Award. I’ll cut to the chase and say that, Nathan, you haven’t won that yet, but fair chance you might. It’s only been going for a year, so you only missed out one opportunity to get it, but that’s okay. But let’s talk about what business and life looks like for now. So if you would sum up, we started with where you were, what does it look like for you now in terms of yourself, family with Ricky and the kids and the business itself?
Speaker 1 (00:53:51):
Yeah, life’s really good. Got a lot of balance across, obviously all my, the four primary legacies, like you were just saying, the businesses under management. So I’ve got all my management team running the business. Obviously business is a tricky thing because it’s a mobile thing that moves around. So it’s not just doing it on its own. I’m very, very still much involved in that on a daily basis. But yeah, spending a lot more time with my kids, got all my financial house in order. My health is, I’ve been the fittest I’ve ever been at the moment. I’ve just come off the back of a 12 week diet. So got my health and habits in order and now moving off into personal wealth as one of the four legacies.
Speaker 3 (00:54:49):
Brilliant. And fill us in for the side of the business in terms of where’s turnover at now?
Speaker 1 (00:54:56):
Businesses turnovers around six and a half million.
Speaker 3 (00:54:59):
Fantastic. And team size.
Speaker 1 (00:55:01):
The team’s now at 32.
Speaker 3 (00:55:03):
Great. And that’s over seven years of steady growth. That’s not going from naught to 15 to 32 in two jumps. That’s been a very strategic way of doing that. So let’s take a big breath. It’s got to be a big breath. We’ve just covered seven years of your life and a lot of the story before that. So we’re almost, I’d say at decades length. But if you could go back and look over your coaching journey over the past seven years from where you are today, and you got to go back and meet yourself, that guy that was struggling, the guy that was under the press as you said before, what advice now coaching yourself almost, what would be some of the advice you’d give yourself there in terms of personal mindset or how would you advise yourself to make that change?
Speaker 1 (00:55:46):
You definitely got to be vulnerable and ask for help. If you don’t ask for help, you can’t expect the change. I know one of the things we use in coaching is notice the drift and make the shift. So if you’re drifting off course or you’re drifting away from where you need to be, you pick that up and you bring yourself back into the centre line. And through coaching, I’ve been able to do that and I do that much quicker now. So if I start falling off, I pull myself back on pretty quick. And it’s like that when you’re sitting on the plane before they’re about to take off and they go through the process with all the safety stuff and they say you need to put your own mask on before you can help the person beside you. And that’s probably the biggest bit of advice is to look after yourself. And then once you’ve got yourself sorted out, then you can start helping others.
Speaker 3 (00:56:35):
Getting those foundations in place. I love that. And there’s some of the big key principles we talk about often. What would you say to coaching, I mean we always do this because I think it’s important that the listener gets that sort of feeling of what coaching’s like, what it’s done for you, how much it’s meant to you. What would you like to say? We’ll give you sort of a minute or two just to talk about coaching and that journey just from that perspective of what you’ve experienced.
Speaker 1 (00:56:58):
I guess the best part about coaching is it teaches you things that you, I’ve said it earlier on in the pieces that you don’t know what you don’t know. You can be the best tradesman and do the best work, but if you don’t know how to run a business, then you’re not going to actually be able to make money out of doing that because there’s only so much money you can make out being a good tradesman. So yeah, it’s basically, I think the biggest part with Pravar was is that once I made the decision to jump in and then I experienced that first 12 weeks in leverage, Rob can attest, I was asking him before we went to the leverage weekend about how I sign up to get into the mastermind and he was doing this little pitch where he was trying to get everyone to come to the mastermind. And I’m like, just give me the piece of paper, mate. It’s one of those things that I just picked it and I picked up on it and wanted to be there and wanted to learn more. And I was like, this is what I need. And if you come into coaching and think you know it all and you’re not ready for help, then you’re probably not ready for coaching.
Speaker 2 (00:58:04):
What does the community mean to you, mate? What are the guys around you in coaching mean to you?
Speaker 1 (00:58:10):
The community? So community in the mastermind is a massive, massive part of my life. It’s like I’ve got my 60 best mates because they all know and they know my story, I know their story. And we’re all very, very vulnerable in that space. And you can ask anyone a question about anything at any time, and there’s no judgement . So no one will judge you for putting your hand up and asking a question that half the room might know the answer to or that could be a silly question or it could be a genuine question, but everyone’s genuinely got your back.
Speaker 3 (00:58:48):
Yeah, mate, I think it’s the way you are a big part of the big reason for that. I think as we round this out, I’m going to give Rob a chance. He’s known you through this whole journey, so it’d be remiss if I didn’t sort of ask him to make some statements. But mate, from my perspective, you’re an inspiration to that group. There’s so many guys that look up to you from all our programmes, not just your 60 mates. There’s probably double that, that really do consider your mate. And again, for all you’ve done for the group and everything like that, I can say thank you. But your journey, we talk about success leaving clues. Rob, I think if you’ve listened to this today, go back and listen again. I guarantee you there’s going to be things that Nathan’s revealed that you haven’t heard yet. So listen to this one over and over because the clues and the steps that he’s taken to make all this happen are pretty crystal clear. And he’s explained ’em so well.
Speaker 2 (00:59:35):
I’d agree with that. And if we think about Nathan’s journey over the last seven years, it’s like the perfect blueprint of what it takes to build a true genuine lifestyle business. Nathan’s in the general manager position business under management doing six and a half million with a very healthy net profit in a 30 hour week and 12 weeks holiday last year. It’s incredible. That’s a true definition of what a true lifestyle business looks like. And now he’s ready to step up and play an even bigger game. And I can’t wait to see what that looks like in his next chapter because there’s an even bigger game that Nathan wants to take. But mate, from all of us at Pravar, thanks so much for your contribution, your hard work, the epitome of a great client here at Pravar. And it’s been a real honour to be able to work alongside you mate and watch you grow not only your business, but you as a human being and a great husband, great father, and it’s been a real inspiration mate. So thanks for all your hard work and commitment over the last number of years and thanks for joining us today. It’s been an absolute ripper, we’ve covered so much ground. So thanks for the time.
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Thank you. I think I just wanted to just add to the back end of that is that I know in myself now that if I didn’t take that leap and get into coaching back in the day when it was put in front of me, I don’t know where I’d be.
Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Well, luckily that’s something you don’t have to consider mate, because you are where you are now and I can see it every time we see you. It’s so fantastic to see you so happy.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Great. Well that’s it for another episode. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this, absolutely amazing story from Nathan, from Rescue U Plumbing. If this resonated with you then and you are looking at making change in your business, then jump into the show notes and book in a call with myself and take that first step just like Nathan did. Let’s talk a bit about where you’re at, where you’re trying to go, and let’s get some clarity in your world and really lay a roadmap so that you can start achieving some amazing success in your life just like you’ve been out here today. But thanks very much for enjoying today. Make sure you hit the follow button, share it with one of your mates, and inspire them to be able to make some change as well. And looking forward to coming back to you next week with another great episode. Thanks team.