Episode 69 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back then myself, I was probably the last priority and family and home time. I was there, but I wasn’t really there. So now I train regularly, I eat well, and I spend a lot of time with Alicia and the girls at home.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hi everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den, good to have you back, Dan. How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Good to be back, Rob. Thank you. Yeah, very good to be back. In fact, today we’re back with another client feature session and today we are welcoming Andrew Debono from Debono Constructions. Welcome aboard Andrew.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hi guys. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Stoked to have you here, mate. Yeah, it’s really looking forward to unpacking your story today and yeah, looking forward to getting stuck into it.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Thanks mate. Looking forward to sharing it and reflecting back on where we were and where we’ve come and what we’ve done with our business.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, for sure. It’s been, I think coming up on five years, I think it is roughly. It was 2020, I know that. I dunno exactly when, but five years. So there’s so many chapters I think when I think your story through and big chapters too. So really looking forward today to walking you through those and seeing where we go. But big warm, welcome as usual. I think Andrew, let’s just start off with where we always do, which is just a bit of background in getting to know you. So I know you’re in Sydney, where did you grow up? Was it always in Sydney?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yep, so I’ve always been in Sydney. Dan grew up in Western Sydney. I’ve been here my whole life, so 34 years now.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
You’ve got brothers and sisters?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, I’m the youngest of three. Older brother, older sister. She’s the oldest mum and dad. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Nice. What do they do? Are they in the trade, in the business? What are they doing? At the moment,
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Me and my brother are chalk and cheese. My brother is in IT, computer programmer, and my sister, she’s a teacher, she’s in that field. She’s moved up in bits and pieces things now, but yeah, they both went to uni and had a career added on that way and finished year 12 and I left it in year 10, always knowing that I was going to be a builder since I was a kid following my dad around everywhere.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Your dad was a builder? That’s right.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He wasn’t a builder, but he was always very handy.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Oh, was he? I thought he was okay. What did he do?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Dad was a bit of a factory worker, did a bit of very handy, done a bit of all different things, and then the last bit of their working career one my dad had a book franchise business distribution.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Oh wow, okay. That would’ve been interesting. Are you a big reader as a result of any of that sort of stuff?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Not at all. We always have lots of books and things around the house, but I wasn’t a reader.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Okay. It sounds like your brother and sister, it sounds like you’re the cool one and they’re the nerdy ones. That’s what I’m getting out of this so far. Is that about right?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, we were the complete opposites.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I love that you knew you were going to be a builder from a young age. Obviously following your dad around that had a big influence on you growing up. It sounds like you knew your passion early, early on in life by the sounds sounds of it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, he did. My dad had a big impact on me on that. Him and my uncle, they’re both very heated. My uncle was a builder. I would always just be following them, whatever they could do. Dad always did everything himself. So for me coming into building as well, it was very strange going to people’s houses knowing that they’re getting a builder to come in and do things because it just wasn’t done in our household like that.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Right. Who did you do your apprenticeship with? Was it your uncle to begin with or?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
No, so when I was in year 10, the lady down the road used to be our hairdresser. She had a nephew that was a builder and then I told her that’s what I wanted to do and I used to do Saturdays and school holidays with him and then I was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship at the end of the year and started with him. So finished school on Friday and started on Monday at the end of year 10.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Very nice. Did you love it from the get go? Was it everything you hoped it’d be or was it like, well, hang on, did the dream doesn’t match the reality here?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That’s funny though. It was one of the hottest summers we had and I was literally the brickies labourer for the first two months carrying bricks, moving sand, and I thought this was the best thing ever. Mom says the story now, she always think I’d come home and be ready to quit, but I used to come home so happy that I was carrying bricks all day and try and beat the record that I moved the day before.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
That’s the passion coming straight through there. I really like that. We’re going to hear that so often in this story today, which is really cool. So Andrew, obviously you loved your apprenticeship, everything moving from school into that part of your journey, the passion was always there. How long were you with that builder for and when did you start getting ideas of starting up your own company?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Throughout my apprenticeship, I bounced around a little bit. The original guy I started for two years, he ended up leaving the construction industry. He was a great builder, but his father-in-law had a different business and he went down that path. So I moved around a little bit and then when I finished my time I contracted back to a bit of a commercial builder and then I started. So I pretty much went out on my own straightaway and then I started doing a bit of real estate maintenance and the little odd job that came along the way and kind of just built up from there, just doing bits and pieces in between and bit of contract work to a couple of commercial guys.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Nice. Roughly what year did you start to Debono constructions?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So that would’ve been 20, sorry, 2015 I think.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
- Okay, cool. No worries. So we met you probably another five years on from that, which we’ll get to in a moment. Before we do though where we’re at at the moment, what’s family like now, let’s just fast forward to now, get that sorted and squared away and let’s jump into the rest of this journey.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So now I’m married and we’ve got two beautiful daughters, one’s two and one’s four months old. So we’re both settled into a family home and life’s got really good.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, absolutely. I must say you’re looking very good and very refreshed for someone with basically a newborn in the house, mate. She must be sleeping well?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
She sleeps good and Alicia’s a trooper of eight. She really, really helps out on the family front and has it all under control, so it’s good.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I love it. Good answer. You can play that bit of the episode to her.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
She’ll appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It’s been amazing watching you go through your journey from a family point of view that we’ve known you over the last couple of years become a dad and two beautiful good little kids and yeah, you and Alicia make an amazing team, don’t you?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, it’s been great mate. Five years ago I couldn’t imagine having this Now with the way the business has changed and where we’ve come to, to be able to have our own little family and spending some quality time with them, it’s been really, really good.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, love it. How did you go transitioning from one to two? I know personally I found that the hardest to going from one to two, how have you gone having three girls in the house now?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, family full of girls. We were quite lucky. The second one’s been a much better sleeper than the first. It’s fallen into routine a little bit better. I dunno if she’s a better baby or we’re just more relaxed the second time around. So it’s all kind of flowing through nicely.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Isn’t it amazing you stress about all the small things on your first one?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh definitely. We come home this time and the bassinet was downstairs and we were upstairs doing things and we thought, oh, we got a new baby downstairs the first time. I think we sat there and watched it for two hours.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, absolutely. It’s great mate. It’s such a beautiful, beautiful time when you’ve got a new little baby in the house. It’s such an amazing time. So yeah, we’re stoked for you.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, that’s a great big system. It’s really nice. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (07:25):
It’s so good. We’ll come back to some of that a little bit later on. I love it. All right, so where are we up to? Let’s go into when we first met you, I want to fast forward to that point in time. Just talk a little bit about 2020 ish around that five year mark, who your customers were, what sort of work you were taking on at the time. This is a big sort of starting point or probably the ideal starting point for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
So at that point in our stage of business, we kind of went down, we were doing a bit of commercial work and then a lot of shop fit outs. So we were contracting to some shop fitting companies, running their onsite trades project, managing it forum and completing some of the carpentry components of the Fitouts. So it was big days and nights because a lot of stuff had to be done out of hours. So we do some of our other jobs throughout the day and then go to the shops at night and run a fit out crew through the night times. There was a lot of double ups between day and nights and limited sleep and reduce the hours at home.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
What would you say your role was within all of that? Were you wearing all of those hats? Were you lead PM leading hand on the tools? Almost running 24/7.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I was delivery driver for materials, setting up trades, running our guys, trying to wear a nail bag, doing the pays, doing the admin, double paying supplies because I couldn’t keep up with everything. So we’re all over the shop.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, for sure. How did you go with team at that time? How many were you running as part of your cruise?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
At that point in time? I think we probably had about six carpenters and myself. We had a little bit of bookkeeping help that we were just starting to introduce because I was realising it was a bigger beast than who I was, but it was me managing everyone really. And we just had a couple of carpenters and an apprenti.ce or two
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And in that stage of that style of business, you’re pretty much a labour only business, aren’t you? You’re just pretty much subbing out labour and generally the jobs don’t have materials or anything backed in and it’s a very highly stressful, time sensitive time pressure type of business model, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
It was a lot of labour hire. So in the afternoons I’d be calling carpenters, I think I had an index of carpenters on my phone scrolling through saying, is E available tomorrow? Are you available tomorrow? Are you available tomorrow? And it’d cause a lot of pressure the next day because I’d have a third hand carpenter who I hadn’t worked with before to get guys on the ground, which was, and it would just resolve phone calls, poor work, trying to chase it back around again.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And it’s really hard running a business at that stage when you’re so time sensitive to do stuff after hours, you’re trying to scramble to be able to get jobs done, plus you’re running lay by high here, it’s really hard to schedule and organised guys when you’ve still got the nail bag on, you’re really at that ugly point in business, aren’t you?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, there was no pipeline ahead of us, it was just reactive day-to-day, week to week when people call filling in guys to go to different places. It was really hard. It was really stressful to be honest and I don’t know how managed to keep on top of it all.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So Andrew, around this time we start to think about getting into coaching. Just talk us through that point in time where you make that decision. Was there a challenge specifically that you were brushing up against? Was there a plan in mind that you just needed some help to execute on? What brought you to coaching in the first place?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
To be honest, I hadn’t heard of coaching before. I seen Rob’s ad pop up on my Facebook, but I knew something had to change the position I was in, the hours I was doing it was either going to give, I was either going to walk away from it or I had to get some help to try and get us back on track and the business was going direction that I lost the passion for the work as well. So I knew I needed some help. Rob’s dad really resonated with me and what we could achieve and I jumped on a call with him. He just knew who we were and what we were doing and what we needed to do to get us in the right direction. So it was a big breath of fresh air. I didn’t know coaching was out there and what it could do for you.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, I think at the time when you did, looking back through this in prep, there was some sort of struggles around how do you delegate, what sort of structure should I be running, the sort of the mechanics of business, but I think Rob and please jump in. I think what Andrew’s talking about what you sensed was someone who had gone away from what they loved doing and you sort of saw the writing on the wall of what was then going to come forward.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, you said there you’d lost the passion and talk us through that mate because it’s obviously the hours you’re doing, the pressure you’re under. How was that contributing to you starting to resent your business or lose passion for what you’d built do you think?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
The hours were just nonstop days and nights. I wasn’t spending time with Alicia, I was never really present when I was there and I was dragged down a path of the work that I didn’t want to do. I used to think back to when I wasn’t apprentice carrying those bricks on a residential building site and how much I liked being there and delivering people’s homes to now in the commercial shop for out space, which yeah, at the end of the job you look back and it’s rewarding, but the journey just wasn’t there for me, just really didn’t like it anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I think it was pretty early on as you started to uncover this and unpack it in the leverage journey, you sort of went on what we’d call the know your market adventure. It was a really time to go back and find out if there was passion, where was it going to be and what you wanted to do. What do you remember about those sort of early weeks and months in coaching?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So doing the know your market exercise and looking back at that, everything I thought about or reflected back on had nothing to do with the market that we were in. It was completely opposite. It was completely different and I never really knew about these different changes and things like that till coaching brought that to light that there is different sectors in building industry and the way you go and you don’t want to become a master of everything, stick to what your passion is and what you like doing and we just weren’t there and it was great and it got us established in the business and push taught me a lot of things, but just then I kind of fell out in love with it.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
So where did you ultimately land in terms of where you wanted to go? There was a very specific sort of type of work you wanted to move out of. Where did you want to move into?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I always knew I wanted to come back to the residential extensions renovations and some new builds as well. New builds was always on the horizon and I thought about that. We’re starting to hit that market now, but it was always in the residential sector alterations.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
For sure. And what were you surprised about when you thought about that? That’s a massive step. It’s not just what you want and I often talk to a lot of clients about in business you don’t necessarily get to deal in what you want. There’s so much more that has to go into it. There’s an amount of work that has to be done. What surprised you about getting more specific about this as it revealed itself? Were you scared, were you excited? Was it a mixture of all of that and some more?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I was definitely scared. I knew we had to, from what I learned from coaching that we had to change, we’d have to let go of the shop fitting and that was 80% of our income at that point in time, so to cut that out of our business was really scary. I knew it wasn’t where we wanted to be, but to let that go was pretty hard. But we did, we bit the board and I trusted the process of the coaching and I started saying no to those jobs and guys would be calling me up saying, oh, I’ve got this shop coming up, when can you start it? We need you on this date. And it was really hard to say no to them at the start and they were shocked because I never said no to anything. It didn’t matter what I had on, I’d still say yes, I was the yes man and I’d be split myself in two places at once, but that was the first, the biggest thing and it was a relief at the end knowing that we weren’t going to be going to do those jobs of an evening and on the weekends as hard as it was, it was actually really relieving to know that this is not where we want to be and we’re heading down a path that in aligns with my values and what I want to do.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
It’s a real decision point, isn’t it Rob?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It is. How do you think being a yes man led you to that point, but then we’ll get to what the power of saying no, but talk us through being a yes man. How do you think that contributed to the situation you found yourself in with long hours stressful situation? How did saying yes to everything contribute to that do you think?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I just would split myself into speed in so many places at once and the fear of letting somebody down by saying no was just, it was so scary to me and then to myself, it was detrimental because I couldn’t be in too many places and I was letting people down in the other way by saying yes, and they’re not delivering on some things or having to get contractors in that we didn’t know to help fill holes and voids and it was causing extra stress on the other end because we didn’t know what was going on out there. We weren’t across it. We didn’t have any leadership, we didn’t have people that were monitoring the works that were happening and the things we were doing.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
This is such a really important, this is a huge part of Andrew’s journey, but a huge part in so many trades, businesses, journeys because there’s a point in time that there’s a principle that we teach in coaching a lot is that what got you here isn’t necessarily going to get you to where you want to go and especially this conversation around really understanding your market and the identity of the business is that so many trades businesses get out of the ground and they say yes to everything, how you fill pipeline and win work and do everything, but you’re a jack of all trades, master of none and you’re trying to be all things to all people. And yes, there’s a market out there that you can serve, but what you do is you spread yourself thin and this is a big part of a journey we go on in coaching and Dan, it’s huge where we get clients to unpack it, narrow down who are they, why do they exist, and really unpack that part of their journey because it’s so important to get right before they really scale, isn’t it?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah. I think when we deal with clients, it’s rare that they’re not hard workers. It’s rare that they don’t have a fundamental level of intelligence. It’s not that they can’t do whatever they want to do, how do I do that and who do I have to become? We talk about and understanding what the road ahead looks like and then being willing to pay the price. And I think what happens in a lot of cases, there’s so many guys like Andrew that have that vision. The blueprint doesn’t match the reality and I think that that can happen a lot and guys get into this situation that Andrew’s in right now as we’re talking about it, but then they just turn the tap off and just go, well I’m in so much pain now you’ve given me the answer is to do this. Let’s change the industry, let’s change our client base, the services we offer, and then they just sort of let everything drop away. And I think it’s a testament, Andrew, to you that you were able to sort of hold both realities for a period of time as you transitioned rather than just cut ties completely. You started saying no, you didn’t just outright go, well that’s it, we’re going to open the doors tomorrow as someone different.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, that’s right. So we still did a bit. We said no to the shop video, we still did a bit of the commercial carpentry. They helped keep our guys busy, align a bit more with what we were like to do and we set up a plan of how we were going to get into the market of the extensions renovations. But we slowly transitioned down that path and we followed the process and the plan.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
How did you find that? Are you naturally the most patient person in the world or were you rubbing up against being impatient? Can this hurry up? I hate this stuff that I’m doing now, I just want to be finished with this and moved on.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I am impatient, but it’s the comfort zone of having it there is what kind of stopped me to not just run away from it and be like that. So as we slowly transitioned across from, we won our first decent sized renovation, which was an alteration edition of Paul and being back in that market dealing with the client, the homeowner, and on the commercial side, everyone’s in your head about it because they don’t like the emotions of dealing on that side and they’re making it like it’s evil and you don’t want to be there. But that’s where I enjoyed and wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Did you know the second you started that job that you were back home in that sense of this is where that Andrew lives, this is where he needs to be?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
A hundred percent. I was up early, didn’t have to set my alarm on site before everybody else, 6:30 before the sun was up. I was just made getting up so much easier. I loved it.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
That’s so good. Now let’s not just run away into how good this was and the angel singing, we’ll queue up all the sound effects of how good all this is, but at the same time, let’s appreciate the job that was ahead of you to do this, right? Talk about the challenge first. Let’s start with team first. Obviously you have to change the team. You can’t run into residential with the same guys that you were doing shop fitting or carpentry with.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, that’s right. I was still wearing all the hats, doing all the bits and pieces, but it was just in the market that we wanted to be in. Let’s change. Some of our guys had come from this originally with me, so they were good. Some of the guys we had to let go and bring in new more detailed carpenters and guys that could near their way around a residential site or the commercial site.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
It’s a big one. Rob, I think that people don’t appreciate is just this change doesn’t just happen because you slap a different sticker on the side of the car or whatever it is. You’ve got to fundamentally shift the way the business is geared up and tooled up before you can even think to embark on this sort of a strategy.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Correct. And what I really admire about Andrew is that he was methodical and strategic and transitioned through this phase because a lot of business owners don’t understand is that everything hinges off the identity of the business. A project plumber is different to a maintenance plumber even though they’re a plumber or a commercial carpenter is different to a domestic carpenter. Yes, carpentry skills are relevant but it’s a different game, isn’t it Andrew? They’ve got different skill sets, different eye for details. The carpentry fundamentals are there, but they’re a different person to some degree arn’t they?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
They are. They’ve got now to talk to a client as well, you’re in somebody’s house now, you’re not talking to a project manager or a site foreman that wants to dispute deliver your job. You’re dealing in around people’s families, their pets, things like that. Not leaving side gates open is massive. Someone on a commercial site wouldn’t even think twice about it. So yeah, it’s definitely a different type of person as well with their attitude and the way they can communicate on a residential site compared to those commercial sites.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And that’s why this transition takes so long because when you get really clear on the position in the market that you do want to take, then that means you’ve got to transition. You’ve got to start winning that work and filling your pipeline there. You’ve got to transition into that work. You’ve got to transition your team. You’ve got to sometimes transition the job management system that you’ve got, your systems and processes that you’ve got to transition over a period of time. And that’s why you’ve heard this word transition on today’s episodes so many times is the biggest mistake so many people make is that they lock onto the direction they want to go, they chop off everything that they’ve done and then they wonder why there’s so much pain because they’ve got no work to jump into. So if you’re in that position where you’re trying to shift markets at the moment, don’t make that mistake of just chopping and run. You’ve got to transition over a period of time, otherwise you’re in for a one hell of a journey. You can cause more problems than it’s actually worth.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Definitely. Andrew, you spoke about this and you said that you were still wearing all the hats though that this challenge was still there for you in that sense. I know one of the biggest levers you pulled at the time was starting to look into bringing in your project manager role, someone to actually take a hat off you as opposed to add to your workload, be it ground crew or whoever it was that you were managing. How big a recruitment at the time was the idea of bringing someone in at that level?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
It was mind blowing to me that we could bring somebody into our business and afford them that they weren’t chargeable, that they were at a higher level getting paid more than me in the background, pulling the levers in the business. I just didn’t know how that would work. And yeah, Pravar showed me the roadmap and the things we needed to look for and the attributes, but without knowing what you don’t know, I couldn’t see how this would happen.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
And did you have someone lined up at the time to do this or was it a long recruitment process?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
No, we didn’t. So we went through a recruitment process. I went through a recruiter, I think we were coming up just to our end of our time with them and they brought a candidate forward. Christie, who’s our current project manager and has been with us coming up to three years and she’s a gun. She come over with a couple of years of construction industry experience and she taught us a whole lot of processes, set up all our job folders and bought a wealth of knowledge. And I remember we hadn’t even set up our office probably and we were working off the kitchen table for the first week because I was meant to convert the garage and hadn’t done that yet. And the wealth of knowledge she bought was, I was embarrassed to be sitting at my table with her, but we got there.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
That’s excellent. And tell us about in that moment, right, and we talk about this a lot, if you always hire people that you feel more capable than it’s always a suboptimal outcome. I don’t care where it is, it always just doesn’t end up the way it needs to be. You’ve hired someone that is optimal that you’re getting real benefit from. That brings up the challenge of you as a manager. How would you describe your management style maybe before this time and then sort of leading into now you’ve got a pm, your business is starting to mature in the space, you want it to talk about the contrast in your management style over the time?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, it really taught me to learn that you don’t have to be the person that does everything. You can let people have to grow on their own and do things and bring other ways for things to be done. I was trying to do stuff and the stuff Christie was showing me was next level compared to what I knew or how I was doing things. She really showed us that the management is also just stepping up and letting other people do their role and teaching you a thing or two. So bringing her in was a great mind shift too. For me.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
What I love is you’ve brought a female into a project manager into a male dominated space as well. I love that. And mate, how good is it to be able to bring that into the workplace to be able to drive some of these projects forward? It was also a breath of fresh air for you, wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, it was unreal. Christie’s so organised, so methodical and detailed. I could not get the same level out of our guys that we get out of her. It’s pretty special.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
As a big mindset, mindset shift I think at the time. I think we had a conversation about this, I can remember some of the conversations with you. I won’t go into some of the fun ones we had while you were still wearing all the hats, but there was a few. But that mindset to recruiting, I think you said at the time at one point and it was probably ground crew, not necessarily the PM hire, but the idea of no good guys are out there, where do I find these guys? And it was almost a foregone conclusion. You weren’t going to find them looking back with that mindset, but how did you shift that? How did you make that shift? Having gone through the process of almost turning over the team to get to where you are.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Just jumping in and doing it. It’s not till you put the ad up and you find you see the quality of people that do apply for jobs and look, not everybody wants the stress of running and doing their own thing just because I had that mindset, not everybody else does. Some people want to turn up work for a good company, have a good employer and some good structure around them and not all bosses treat their employees well. I found out along the way too. So guys are looking for changes moving along somewhere where they can grow and they can extend in their career, not necessarily their own business though.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
How did your team take this as you are shifting and growing through this and there’s obviously a lot of growth happening for you as you do this. How did the team take that? Did they come along for the ride willingly as this happened? Were there poor performers that dropped off? What was your experience?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, some guys come along willingly for the ride and they’ve enjoyed it. Some guys and they’ve dropped off, but you can tell the difference between the good ones that have stayed and the ones that haven’t and have left. So Jenson, my leading foreman, he’s been with me since the start, since we were doing the shop fit outs back in the day and he’s still here and he is going strong and he’s doing really well.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Awesome. It’s amazing how that happens. The good ones stick around as you grow, the ones that growth grow with you and the ones that don’t tend to sort themselves out.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Some people are resistant to change, aren’t they? And when change is on the horizon, they get scared and they self elect off, which sounds like is what happened in your world.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, it has. And sometimes you hold onto these guys thinking that you’re not going to get anywhere without them and then you realise when they leave and you bring someone new in that, what was I thinking? There’s so much breath of fresh air through new life throughout the business then.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah, so the business now is maturing. We’re moving forward. We’re like I said, in the area you want to be and you’ve got good people around you. Christie’s on board your role at this time. How has your day-to-day role changed? And in particular, I want to know for someone who’s so passionate about being on the tools, this has been your world and the life you’ve loved for so long, how did you feel about that and were there any challenges in terms of fully being off the tools if you like, on the process?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, it was very hard to shift that mindset of being on the tools and this is who I am and this is my identity. I’ve done it since I was 15, got up every morning, put nail bagg on and done that. So now stepping back into the office, having some support and then helping Christie and moving into sales and things like that. It’s taken me a long while, but now I’ve developed a bit of a different passion now with architects and designers, holding relationships with them, looking at projects coming up, working through with them and it’s been a good change now.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah, it’s great. I love to hear that. It’s so good to hear someone that can shift and grow with it and accept that it’s going to take time, it’s going to suck. I’m not going to be great at it, but that’s all part of the game, the journey, if you look at it the right way, which is really, really cool.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
There’s things in between that I was doing a lot of the estimating for the past couple of years while we were trying to get established and I really didn’t like it but I had to get it done. And then last year I was lucky enough to bring one of the boys up into the office to help me do that as well. When I relinquished that hat. That was a real big relief for me too.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah I was going to get to that, the numbers side of things, learning numbers and that’s a whole another level of just fish out of water stuff. How did you go with that transition into the office with the numbers and that side of the business?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, it was hard sitting in the office, just reading plans all day, flipping back through and forward and communicating just with trades over the phone, not being around the guys on the side and that sort of culture and yeah, it was great in here with Christie in the office and bouncing stuff off her, but it was just a different feel for me.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Coaching at the time. How did you feel about coaching as you were doing all of this? Were you onboard a hundred percent with it?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I don’t think I’ve been onboard a hundred percent until maybe about 12 months ago.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
That’s a good answer. That’s the honest answer. Absolutely. Talk us through that. I went back through your call notes as I was preparing for this and I can see there’s a lot of Andrew not feeling like he’s getting anywhere. Andrew feeling like coaching, what is it worth? Why is he doing this? There was a lot of that sort of stuff at the time. This wasn’t, as I said before, this wasn’t all just a rocket ship to where you wanted to go, right?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It took me, I realised you get out what you put in, right? I wasn’t fully invested in coaching at the start. Oh I was, but it’s a long-term game and it probably comes back to what talking about before I probably wasn’t patient in seeing the results even though they were happening and their business was transitioning or going in the right direction. It probably hasn’t been until more recently that I’ve fully committed and I guess now I can see the bigger vision and what’s been happening in the roadmap. So it’s always a long journey at the start though, I guess.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah. And again, just to reiterate, this is like a five-year journey and in some senses I bet it feels like a blink of an eye, but in others it’s probably feels like a lifetime, right?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, most definitely. And I think back now in some of the stuff I learned at the start when I first started my coaching and how it felt like they weren’t applicable and things like that and now we’re coming back around and doing some of that stuff again and I can see how it fits in and what we’ve done and the little steps along the way.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
The reason why this has definitely taken time for Andrew in this space is we’ve got to remember that when you’re in the construction space, the gestation period from when you get a lead to landing a job, especially in the residential space, can sometimes be 6, 12, 18 months. It can be 12 or more months by the time you initially have the meeting to estimating the job, getting awarded and getting foot on site. And so when you’re going through this transition period, this is why patience are so important, you’ve got to acknowledge the transition along the way because when you’re in a maintenance business you can transition and bang, you can get a job the next day, but when you’re in a project business like you were moving to, it took time didn’t it? Like it was a really long period of time to allow this old business to wash out and this new business to start washing in, wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, most definitely. And it’s not getting disheartened at the start as well, realising that it’s a process and it’s different and it takes time and you’ve got to follow up and be persistent and then just getting established and getting referrals in that market or being more aligned with some designers and architects that are referring jobs onto you then and things like that. You’ve got to get a few under your belt to show who you are and what you can do as well.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
And let’s not forget during this time as well, you started making this transition at the start of 2020, right when COVID hit. So you were transitioning into a whole new market in the depth of COVID for 2020, 2021, 2022. That’s what I admire about your journey. You were making these ballsy decisions through one of the hardest transition periods, hardest periods that we all went through during that time. It took balls, but looking on the other side of it now, it was one hell of a ride, wasn’t it?
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, most definitely. And at the start of that, we had no presence in that sort of market, so we got an Instagram page and we got some branding done and now it was on the back of us getting married and I realised if they went on Instagram, my wife didn’t want to know about them so I thought how are people going to see who we are? So then we’d done our own renovation and we marketed that on there and we pushed that out a little bit and started to develop a bit of a name and show ’em what we could do and what we could deliver.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, it’s tremendous. I love that. It’s so good to see where it’s gone to. Let’s put a bow around the business side of it then I’m going to go into your personal journey if that’s all right. But let’s talk about the business side. Where’s the business now? Where are you on that trajectory of where you wanted to go when you started out? Are you there now or is there still more to go?
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, so we are there now. We don’t do any contracting work to commercial builders or shop fitters. We just purely do our own work. We’ve got, it’s hard to believe an eight month pipeline ahead of us of extensions and renovations. And I think back five years ago, I didn’t have two weeks ahead of me. I only coming back from a Christmas break and I didn’t have the job locked in for the Monday till the Friday afternoon. So we’ve got a solid pipeline ahead of us, a built out team with structure and then I’m in a sales role, sales estimating role now.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Great. How many is in the team now? Ground crew, office crew.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
So 13 all up. We’ve got three in the office. We’ve got an admin PM and estimator and then we’ve got a foreman, three leading hands and a couple of carpenters.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I love it. Absolutely fantastic. So Andrew, I’m going to start this and again just you tell us what you think. The guy we see and we talk to today is completely different guy, at least on the outside looking in. You’ve changed. Absolutely. But I want to know, do you think you’ve changed and how so?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Most definitely. I think back to back then myself, I was probably the last priority and family and home time. I was there but I wasn’t really there. So now I train regularly, I eat well and I spend a lot of time with Alicia and the girls at home.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Has that been again, same thing, right? This is a transition, I think it took time for you to get to this point, right? Like the business we see, the person we see. What was that transition for you? Was there a moment that triggered at all? Was it a bounce off a low? Was it a plan that you had in place? How did you approach the personal growth? And if you’re listening, if we showed you before and afters of Andrew and the sort of guy he was the way he spoke, if we could capture some of those calls. Rob, maybe Rob just jump in before you answer Andrew, but what do you see in terms of the guy that’s changed?
Speaker 2 (35:33):
A hell of a lot more confident, a hell of a lot more outspoken, very much more comfortable in his skin. His leadership has shifted immensely. Communication has improved a hell of a lot. And just your presence, your general presence around you and then physically in career. Best form, like right now he’s in shape, but I would agree he’s looking sharp. I would agree that completely, completely, completely different guy from the inside and out.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Definitely. Andrew, going back to what I said was there, what sparked that side of this growth? Was it a price that you knew you had to pay? Was it a bounce off or was it rebounding off a low? Where did it all come from?
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I knew I had to get my health and back on track and it’s something I was big in when I was young. I played a lot of sport, did a lot of training and things like that. And in the last five, 10 years it’s just been about business. I haven’t done any of that. And then probably two years ago at the May Mastermind weekend in Adelaide, I was in a round table with Dane and he wanted to get his health back on track and I started training at the gym with him. Will be two years this May and I probably can count on it two hands how many mornings I’ve missing out, getting up and going training in the morning. So that was great. So thanks to that really got me back into training. And then off the back of that habit stacking, I’ve started eating well the last couple of months and that’s been another big mind shift and change physically for me too.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah, tremendous. What have you noticed around the people that you are around the most, your family and your team, how have they reacted to all of this and what do you say is the ripples of making those changes?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, I think the way they stay engaged, you’ve got to look after yourself before you can look after everything else and it’s definitely been a big reflection since I’ve done that. Family’s been great. We’ve got two beautiful girls now I’ve spend time with them. Business is going good, we’ve got some good structure, it’s given me a bit more clarity around that and the things I do with business and not thinking that I’ve got to be the first one in the last one out every day. I’ll train in the morning, I’ll drop the girls off at daycare and then I’ll come in and that’s my routine and I’ve got the confidence to do that now.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I love it. What are you working on now in terms of your goals? It sounds like you’ve done so much, but have you still got things that are unfinished business for you and either in a business or a personal sense?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, so business, we still want to build out our crew a little bit more on the leadership side and so I can step back a little bit more from operations with family, we’ve always dripped of having a little bit of land and living in a different suburbs. So that’s been on my vision for quite a while and we’re working on that in the background at the moment. It’s good to have a business that can help support that.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Excellent. I thought you were going to say you’re looking at another kid but that’s Rob’s next gig.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
You can bring Alicia on for that one. You’ve got to convince her not me.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Oh you’re going three.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I’d like to but see what the boss says.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Just slip the podcast in and just let her listen to it for a while and see how that goes. Very nice. A good deflection. Rob, I know you’re after probably four or five so.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Well I was only keen on two but Jacq’s like we’re having three and I’m like we’re having three, but I wouldn’t look back. I love Ben, he’s such a cool dude. So yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
It’s awesome. Very cool. Alright, what’s one of two big goals you’re looking forward to really nailing in the next two years? Andrew?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Probably the biggest one is on the personal, moving into the area where we want to live and have a little bit of land getting ready for the girls before they have to go to school. So we’re in the area that we want to be. And then I think on a business front, developing out the leadership team and really having a fully functional business that doesn’t need me full time.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Excellent. I love that. I’m sure Rob, you’d agree. I think the way that he’s approached every other challenge or every other project that he set his mind to, this will be the next thing that gets chalked up in Andrew’s world.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, I would agree. And I think you’re in such a good, the way you’re managing yourself at the moment and the way you’ve really stepped up, your leadership especially that we’ve seen over the last 12 months has been huge. You’ve really taken things to a whole nother level and so yeah, I can’t wait to see what the next two years brings, but it’s been anything like the last few years you’re destined to achieve it mate. No doubt.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Thanks guys. And it’s really goes to show that when you’ve got a plan and you start putting some actions towards it, you start executing and putting it all in. The results do come.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Before we round out today’s episode, you mentioned there around a couple of years ago, two years ago that you’re and a round table with Dane and you guys made the commitment to getting there and work on your health and wellbeing mate. Talk us through what, being around a community of like-minded businessmen at Pravar, what does it mean to you and what has it done for you in helping you get to where you are today?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, it’s been a massive lift. That’s something I wanted to work on for a while and so did day and I would never get up and go to the gym at 5:00 AM in the morning, but that’s what worked with him. So we committed to do that together because you don’t let someone down alone at 5:00 AM in the morning. They’ve been up since fourth to see you down there and it’s just helped me grow so much and leading into it and having guys there that you can go to with these type of things and questions and problems and lean in on, it’s pretty special.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Well Andrew, on that note, I think all that’s left. We’ve been turned your whole story inside and out over the last little bit. So I think all that’s left is to thank you for making the time to talk to us today for being so open and honest and also for just your approach to coaching for sticking with us in the early days when you were questioning whether it was working and why you were here. But then also for just the commitment and the contribution you made. The things like working with Dane, like being a really valuable member of the community, giving back as well as getting something out of it. So mate from us at Pravar big thank you and for coming in today another big thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Thanks a lot gentlemen. It’s been great. It’s been good to reflect back on our journey and where we’ve come from and where we’re going.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, thanks for today mate. We’re really grateful. If you’ve enjoyed Andrew’s story today and you know that you’ve got a bit of a journey to go on in your business and you know that there’s things you need to improve on the personal front end in the business front, like we’ve heard to today, jump across to strategysession.com.au. Jump on that link book in a time that suits you and look forward to talking to you about where you’re at, where you’re trying to go, and seeing how we can help you here at Pravar. Thanks again mate, for jumping into today. Until next week, look forward to coming back to you on another episode of The Trade Den. Until then, see you soon.