How being brave turned Guy and Jodie Milton’s trade business around

Andy 
Hell yeah.

Ange
Hey guys, before we get into today’s show, we have some really exciting news to share. Lifestyle Tradie has won the Australian Small Business Champion Awards for the second year in a row.

Andy 
Number one in Australia, baby. Woohoo. We are super thrilled to have won this award and guess what, Ange, we must be doing something right.

Ange
Yes, we definitely are.

Andy 
Guys, if you are here listening to us and you are waiting for a sign to get stuck in and elevate your business, well guess what? This is it.

Ange
Yeah, exactly right. Why not come and see what we’re all about at Lifestyle Tradie Live in a capital city near you. Tickets are free and they’re going fast.

Andy 
We’ve been lucky enough to work with Tradies for the past 14 years, and we love what we do. Don’t put off your success any longer. Go to lifestyletradie.com.au/events. We can’t wait to see you there. Hello team and thank you for tuning in for today’s episode of The Tradie Show. We know you love meeting our Lifestyle Tradie members and hearing a little bit about their stories. The very special guests we have on the show this week have gone through the transition of working in the business to working on the business in the last 18 months.

Ange
Well, I’d say most trade business owners want to work on the business at some point. And it’s often the plan from the very beginning, but the actual transition can feel like a bit of a mountain when you’re in the thick of the day-to-day operation. Our guests described feeling like they were losing control during this process.

Andy 
I think many of our listeners will be able to relate to that feeling. It can be completely overwhelming, made harder when you have your partners in the business as well. So how did they go from struggling to superstars on the Queensland Sunshine Coast? Well, they’re here to tell you all about being brave to make changes, meet our guests, Guy and Jodie Milton, owners of Ultimate Shower Screens. How you going guys?

Guy
We’re fantastic, mate. How are you guys?

Andy 
Ah, we’re great. And it’s so good to have you here with us today. It’s gonna be an incredible episode. I know everyone’s gonna be hanging on to every word.

Ange
Yeah. I’m super keen to hear your story and share it with our listeners.

Andy 
Okay. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna start and take it away with the very first question. And the first question is for Guy. So if you don’t mind, we’ll start with you, mate. But tell us about your pathway from manufacturing to the owner of Ultimate Shower Screens. You know, based on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Guy
Yeah, we’re right from the start, um, I’ve always worked for larger companies, um, who promised the world and delivered nothing. Give us a number to those guys and, um, starting to get a bit, just customers coming through and a lot of phone calls, which are simple to me. So, um, yeah, so from day to day we’re actually heading on a trip, family holiday back, and I said Jodie and the customer. I think we can do this better. But I think there’s a better way. It’s a simple process and, um, he sat around and said thinking, oh, finally, I’ve been waiting for years for you to say. So that’s,

Andy 
Get off your ass.

Guy
We got that fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy 
Yeah. Oh, that’s great mate. So you decided with a little gentle poke from Jodie, like this was the time to really step up and, and give it a real good crack. Um, how did you feel about that?

Guy
Oh, I thought I was ready at the time right then. Um, I had no idea how I was gonna do it, but, um,

Jodie
We turned 40.

Guy
Yeah, I turned 40. I was feeling excited about it. Like I always add a long term goal up branching out like that. It’s just, I don’t know what it took to get there, but something obviously triggered on the trip.

Ange
I think sometimes naivety is a good thing, right?

Guy
Yeah.

Ange
What we don’t know sometimes gives us this brave little nudge to actually have a crack.

Guy
Yeah, that’s right. I just wanted to have a crack. Well, we knew we were gonna always have to do it at some stage, so, yeah.

Andy 
Yeah. It’s funny you say that, Ange and I reckon there’s a few businesses out there now that have said, if I knew how hard it was to run a business, I would never have started a business, but years down the track, it’s always the right move. But you know, we all have those ups and downs.

Ange
You gotta learn along the way.

Andy 
Yeah.

Ange
So Jodie, that said we’d love you to share actually a little bit more about your role in Ultimate Shower Screens and how you came to work together? Was this always your plan?

Jodie
No way. So, um, mom and dad, like they were in business together and now they’re not together. So my main aim was not to get involved. And yeah, I always had my own job that I was always working at and Guy was starting up. Well, when he started Ultimate Showers Screen, I’m like, no, it’s your business. It’s your business. And then, I don’t know, it was just, I was very drawn to it and it was, you know, we’re at a stage where, you know, cuz we started from scratch, so there was a lot of creating to be done. Then I’d worked in offices, so I knew what sort of hat, well, I didn’t know exactly, but I had an idea of what we had to work on then. He’s just sitting there and I’ll be like, oh, let me do it. Let me do it. And then just went, oh, I’ve gotta get in and get this stuff sorted and, you know, get involved. I just couldn’t resist.

Ange
So what was your previous career before coming in?

Jodie
Um, I was a conveying clerk, so I worked in a law office and, um, so I did all the buying and selling the properties and then I sort of, after I had the kids, Oh, I went to, I couldn’t find any part-time work, so I ended up working for some builders part-time in their office. And yeah, just doing all the admin for all the builders and that’s when guys started our Ultimate Shower Screens. And then, I just sort of made our own sort of version of what we wanted in Ultimate Shower Screens. That’s why you guys sort of came on the scene cuz I needed helpers to, I wanted to do it properly. I I was floundering and sort of needed some guidance on what to do exactly.

Ange
Do you know, what I find is hilarious if you were super keen for him to start his own business. You were poking and prodding him, but you had actually no intentions of actually joining him that no way just woke me up.

Andy 
Get out there and work your ass off, mate. I’m sipping peanut coladas around the pool baby. You know? So when did Ultimate Shower Screens start? So how many years have you been in business?

Guy
Uh, 2015 we started, yeah, January, 2015.

Andy 
So it’s fairly new. It’s a fairly new business, right? So you guys have been members with Lifestyle Tradie now, um, for five and a half years. So what I was trying to get, I know Jodie mentioned that you came to us and, and, um, you wanted to look in, but that means really you’d been in business for around three years, three to four years or so before you joined. So what was the main reason? Why did you come to us for help?

Guy
Uh, we always had that vision of traveling as well. Um, yeah. As well as the lifestyle, like, um, we had no idea how to get there. So, um, I think it was ultimately Jodie’s, um, super organizational skill sort of led us in the path to get it to where it is and it’s like, um, it definitely was, we needed help to control the chaos.

Andy 
And was the business a bit out of control before you came and joined us, or how was the business sort of looking at that stage?

Guy
In the early days, it was actually me and my father-in-law, um, he was manufacturing in the shed for me. And um, I had one part-time installation guy as well as myself. So, um, as it grew rapidly, cuz we sort of knew what customers wanted, it wasn’t chaos, but we definitely knew we were always gonna set first structure. We wanted to do a property from the start. So, um, Yeah, it definitely wasn’t a big lump of chaos, but we knew we needed help.

Ange
So, for the benefits of the listeners, what do Ultimate Shower Screens look like now with the team?

Jodie
It’s fully, uh, we’ve got everything reported now. We report on all our factory manufacturing, all our quoting, all our sales. So I love Andrew’s 7 dials, um, all that sort of material cuz I just look over that and I just get excited about doing all the seven dials and reporting on all the different things that are coming through and I was always doing a lot of the invoicing and the quoting originally in the early days, and then as staff came involved, I was sort of getting pushed out in of the office and it was like, let’s go. I had no idea what was going on, but when you sort of have the reporting side of things implemented, you can sit back and you can relax and see everyone work and know what’s going and what’s not going, and being able to pinpoint straight away, oh, the quoting slowed down. Why is that? And then, you know, why is the manufacturing slowing down and yeah. So, um, it was exciting to just go and work on all of that.

Andy 
So both of you guys are now not working in the business as such. You are working on the business, which is super, super exciting. It’s giving you that little bit of downtime, but just fill us in on how big is your team to give our listeners a bit of understanding about the scale of where you are as a business now.

Guy
Yeah, with, um, 20 staff all up. Um, that’s a mix from manufacturing to installers and to office staff as well. But we break those into teams. So like there’s an office team and manufacturing team and insulation team. And each one of those sectors have their own managers, which, um, yeah, which is really good that we can rely on them to leave those, each section. So,

Andy 
And you’ve broken your property where, where you house Ultimate Shower Screens, you do everything on site, is that right?

Guy
Yeah, everything’s manufactured on site here. Yeah.

Andy 
Yeah. That’s great. So obviously you’ve implemented a lot about data and understanding your numbers, and anyone that’s been listening to our podcast, or you hear me say know your numbers, and, and it’s interesting, everyone knows they need to know their numbers, but they don’t understand how important every little piece of data that you can see makes you decide on where you are going as a business. And most people, even though they go, yep, I can look at my zero or may see numbers. I think I know my data, but they don’t break it down to any length. Like obviously Ange and the team develop those 7 dials around those small little tweaks. And you guys were saying that’s been huge for you.

Jodie
Definitely. I love it because when I first watched it, it was a bit overwhelming again. Yeah. Cause we’re shower screens, you guys are plumbers and stuff, so we’re like, oh, it doesn’t really apply to us. But I just sort of looked at it, went, all right, well I wanna start with something. So we just started reporting on sales and then, you know, we sort of, and then it just sort of, it grew and grew and grew. So where it’s, you know, reporting on every sort of department of the business now and can see everything at glance, which is just awesome.

Andy 
And it’s interesting what you said there and I wanna make a note of that cuz we do get people to go, but you are plumbers and you do things differently and how are you gonna help me? And like we’ve helped thousands of trade business owners all around Australia and New Zealand, and probably a good 30% of them aren’t plumbers and electricians doing the maintenance games. So for you guys, obviously, you know, but our training isn’t just specified just for the maintenance game, is it? It’s for all businesses.

Jodie
Oh, definitely. So it just gives you something to work on, you know, you can see how you guys do it. So we just use a, uh, material as a base, something to work on, and then we gradually build on it to what applies to our business. But it’s still giving us that foundation of something to start on. That’s, uh, really good.

Ange
What I love is the fact that you’ve developed your form of a dashboard, that it’s become quite advanced. So just to give the listeners a bit of an understanding, can you share even just a couple of the metrics that you’re measuring and why they’re important to your business?

Jodie
Yeah, sure. So, um, we report on what each salesperson does. Um, including Guy. Guy has got a little column for him too, but, um, if he does the odd thing and he’s gonna be included. Uh, we also, um, report on how many site visits they do for the week and what their average margin is on the jobs that they go to for that week. We’ve got a report on how many jobs we’ve got in manufacturing, uh, how many POS we’ve got in the system, so how much work’s coming up.

Guy
Um, the manufacturing, how much is coming up in the weeks in advance so we know what sort of labor to get forward forecasting for those reports is amazing.

Andy 
So great.

Ange
So what do you think are actually the benefits of understanding this data? Because it’s quick, right? Like you can see this sort glance.

Jodie
Yeah, plus it’s instant. Like you’re not sitting there and I think it just gives you peace of mind as well. Cuz sometimes you can sit there going, oh, we’re so busy. But then you look at the breakdown and go, oh, not really. If you spread it out over those three days, we don’t have 50 shower screens. We’ve only got, you know, 20 on that day. That’s okay. Like, so yeah, it gives you peace of mind and you’re not stressing about things that you might, you know, might not really need to stress about at the end of the day.

Andy 
So, I just want you to have your managers and the managers that are running each department, so they’ve got KPIs and data that they’re looking at all the time. So if the data’s not showing maybe what you want, do you go to those managers and say, Hey, have a chat with your team? How does that work?

Jodie
They come to me like, it’s so funny cuz they’re like, when I’m, don’t send it out or something’s holding up, they’re like, where’s the report? Where’s the report? And then so yeah, they’re the ones coming to me going, oh, You know, it has dropped a week this week, but Joe, don’t worry next week’s got this. This is coming up. That’s coming up. So yeah, I can sort of sit back and they sort of come to me, which is good. And

Andy 
That’s incredible.

Jodie
They understand it all as well, so it’s good.

Andy 
Yeah. Yeah. And the other question is, Jodie, you are watching the data, um, on Guy and what he’s up to. Guy, what data, what data are you watching on Jodie? Like does the admin team have data against them as well, or has Jodie created it so she can do what she wants?

Guy
Jodie doesn’t have a column as such. No column.

Jodie
No column.

Andy 
Interesting.

Guy
It’s a good joke. Um, in the office when the reports come out and you can see what sales guy or what admins put through what dollars and um, who’s dipped down for the week is a bit of a running joke. You always have a bit of banter in the office over that. But everyone reads ’em. It’s um, it’s amazing. Like Jodie said, how they all act on those reports themselves, so it’s amazing to do that.

Jodie
Whereas before they were just relaxed and went, oh, well, you know, then that’s the only work we had and whereas now they’re like, they’re driven. They can, they’ve got a goal, they’ve got something to work towards and whereas before there was just nothing there. They just went and did their jobs and went home for the day.

Andy 
And it’s amazing how many employees out there that don’t have KPIs against them and you, you actually don’t know exactly what they’re doing. But let’s face it, most people think they’re busy. And, um, you know, you can talk to my mum who goes to Bingo once or twice a week. She’s the busiest woman alive, right? And I think that’s what happens with employees. They just assume they’re busy. But when you all of a sudden say, but how much sales have you made? What, what have you done? What is the percentage? Where are you at? And you actually hold them with KPIs, it’s absolutely so important for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a shower screen company or if you’re a plumbing maintenance company, or electrical or builders or whatever it is, you’ve gotta have KPIs against your staff. And as you said Guy, at the end of the week, you sit down and you go through them and it elevates the whole mood of the, Ooh, I beat you. Yeah, baby. And it’s causing that bit of a game. And everyone loves playing that game.

Jodie
And I’m like the banter that they give to Guy as well, cuz you know, they see that Guy is big person, you know, the big boss and he stuffs up occasionally so they like to, you know, give him a bit of a banter about that, which is fun and, and they’ll be, okay, cool. Move on. And it’s good.

Ange
What I love is the fact that you’re actually sharing a lot of financial data, but doing it in a way that they don’t have complete transparency of say a profit and loss statement, but they see enough that they are actually driven to do better in their role. We often find a lot of trade business owners saying, oh my God, I would never show this data to my staff. And as you well know, we’re sitting here going, well, you’ve gotta work out what you can share with them because only then will they actually step up and take more responsibility for their role if they actually realized the impact they had inside your business because they love, absolutely love it. You guys have an incredible culture with your team and a team of 20, I’m sure that’s not that easy. How do you do that?

Jodie
Well, our last one was a bit of a fail. We, um, we went to a brewery and it was a bingo night, so I tried to organize the bingo night and no one, there’s the first one that everyone goes, nah, not going. But yeah, every other thing,

Andy 
We’re not going to the bingo.

Jodie
That was a bit of a failure. So, yeah. But, um, yeah, but no, we’ve done go-kart nights. We’ve done, um, like heaps of tamping bowling and just like, you know, fun little muck around stuff that’s lighthearted and just to get, cuz a lot of our team is, um, you know, in different directions all day. So it’s good to bring them all together at nighttime with a drink in hand and games and a bit of fun. So,

Ange
I like even your simple stuff like the bell inside the office, it’s like, celebrate the small things consistently and everyone can get involved.

Jodie
Yeah. Um, yeah, it just reminds them that, hey, we had a win. Cuz I’ve seen so many things come up and you don’t ring the bell. It doesn’t sort of,

Andy 
So what you’re saying is just so the listeners know, you’ve got a bell in your office that you ring every time you sell a shower screen, right?

Jodie
Uh, we used to do it like, it was more for when we first created the dashboard and, you know, um, we, they were hitting their target sales targets each week. So we’d start ringing the bell and hey, we have a bit of party and stuff and um, now if we get a big builder or something, you know, we’ll go and ring the bell or, you know, just to make it a bit of fun. And yeah.

Andy 
So now that you know all your data and you know what’s going on in your business, and, um, without going too deep into dollars and cents on that, how has it impacted on your profit, your net profit at the end?

Guy
I think it increases the margin per job because you can see well in advance of which direction you’re heading and you’re not wasting resources. And you’re not chasing your tail all the time. I think if I look in advance for me, for the manufacturing side as well, I can see the labor. And you’re not, you don’t have those wasted people, like you said, Andy, who think they’re busy all the time.

Andy 
Yeah, yeah.

Guy
Because if you’re not busy, they don’t need to be there. So, um, yeah. I think it’s increased the margin a lot just from knowing what you’ve got coming up.

Andy 
Yeah. know exactly. And we all know there’s a lot of businesses out there right now that have been really complacent. You know, 2022, it’s gonna be a big difference in 2023, right? You need to know your numbers, you need to know what’s going on. And a lot of people have a lot of money going into this big bucket, but they don’t see any of the leakage, any of the dramas. And then at the end of day, they go, hang on, I don’t really have the money I thought I was gonna have, but you guys are right. And that’s what the data and understanding your business is. That’s a true business. When you understand data from the moment the phone call comes in right through your whole business. So congratulations guys. That’s absolutely huge.

Guy
It’s good to know. Like, it’s like there’s those little steps just that, that you guys teach us. Um, they all add up to like a big thing at the end of the day. It’s saying it’s amazing the little small chunks that you take out every day.

Ange
Absolutely.

Andy 
Yeah. That’s awesome.

Ange
So Guy and Jodie, 18 months ago, you guys made a decision to stop working in the business and work on it. When did you know it was the right time to make the switch and what made you do it?

Jodie
Oh, I just think cuz we just had lots of queries and it was getting a bit overwhelmed by all the staff all at once coming to us. So I think that’s when we got to the stage of, okay, this is where we need managers. So that’s when we brought in a factory manager. We brought in our sales installations manager so that we could get that pressure off us and sort of so that we could breathe a bit. And then sort of just, you know, pull ourselves out of it a bit so that we could have an overview of or what everything was going on and let the managers do their work so that we could work on the business at the end of the day.

Ange
I love the structure of changing what we would call like this organizational chart, I suppose, so that you are not stuck in that day-to-day and put other people in that role that are now held accountable. I think that’s really important and through these growth phases of business. You know, we talk about startups, scale up, sell up. You guys have clearly, you know, you’re the other end of the spectrum versus these startups, you know, trade business owners that we may speak to for instance. And when you do get to having that many people, the reality check is even though you’re a fabulous technician, Not just on the tools, but you too, Jodie in the office, like we can be exceptional at what you do, but the realization is you’re a business owner and you’ve really gotta take responsibility of that. So I love the fact that you’ve been able to make this transition and now put people in place and the right dashboards, for instance, in place for consistency so that everyone now has eyeballs on the business. It’s amazing.

Guy
Yes, that’s right. Yeah.

Ange
You’ve done incredibly well.

Jodie
Make us to here guys.

Guy
Thank you.

Ange
So knowing thousands of trade business owners are listening in right now, what would you say are three of the most important lessons that struggling trade business owners could learn from your experience?

Jodie
Um, I think definitely get a good job management system and, um, spend the time on building that out first before things get really big. If you’ve got a good base of, um, with all your workflows on how things happen, when things do get busier, it just makes life a lot easier down the track.

Andy 
So get the structures of your business, the technology right. Make sure, we say the foundations of your business right before growth, right?

Ange
Yeah. Let’s not scale chaos. Right?

Jodie
And then yeah, probably another one is it’s, I always bang well about it and it’s a simple thing. It just follows up your quotes, like so many people I know just send out quotes and I follow up. And for us, that’s just easy money. Like the, your work’s already done, then it’s just like a text message or a phone call and Yep, you’ve got it, at the time they’re waiting for you to, to chase ’em up.

Andy 
So crazy, Like, you’re right, like so many people spend all the time and effort to do a quote and then they don’t chase it up or they have this thing in their head, oh, that customer’s never gonna go ahead. And so they don’t chase it up and it’s like, Why even bother about quoting and then they go, but we don’t wanna put pressure on anyone. It’s like, no.

Ange
They say they’ll call me when they’re ready. They’ll call me when they’re ready.

Andy 
And no, you’ve gotta call them and, and put, you know, you’ve spent Precious’s time at their place, you know, get a yes or a no. If they don’t wanna go ahead, that’s fine, but get an answer. It’s your God-given right to be a bit of a pest and, and make sure you can get it across the line.

Guy
Yeah, definitely. Yep.

Jodie
And then, uh, just the last one was, and I think we’ve touched on it a fair bit today, is the 7 dials. Like just starting something, like even when you watch all the material and reading all the different information, just, yeah. It does sound a bit overwhelming sometimes, but just start with whatever the materials you like looking at, at Lifestyle Tradie just start with what you can and then build on it from there. And then all of a sudden you’ve got a massive dashboard with all the different things you need to report on. So yeah, we just start, a lot of the material is there for you. You just gotta start on doing something that you can.

Ange
Hence a reason why we do six week cycles, so that it’s important that you literally just focus on one project at a time and just less constant progress. It’s not perfection, it’s just constant progress will make improvements and these little things on top of little things turn into huge things
.
Guy
Yeah.

Andy 
And a lot of people look at something like Lifestyle Tradie and go, oh my God, I’ve gotta do this extra work. But you know what? If you wanna be good at anything, you’ve gotta learn from someone that’s been there and done that. And you’ve gotta take those lessons and I know some of the things we talked about today are quite high level stuff, cuz you guys are a, you know, high level business, but there’s so many small little things that you guys did when you were a three man show and growing that you did first before you got to this. So let’s just get your business model right, get the structure right, make sure everyone’s in its place, and then look at scale. Isn’t that right?

Guy
Yeah, definitely. The small things amazes you. Like you, they add up, like you said Ange um, before you know it, you’re doing things because you’ve done the small steps that don’t even impact you, but you’ve done it the right way because of those small steps at the start.

Ange
What I love is you guys being at our live events with all of our members, like 200 members also, and you sit at those mastermind tables and people ask questions and respectfully, you almost roll your eyes to go, wow, they’re asking a really simple question. But to take that step back to go, I was there once and I’ve got so much to give. You two have so much to share. And I love the fact that you are really open about sharing your story, sharing your wins, and your lessons along the way, because that’s how we all as trade business owners get better in our own business, is learning from others who have walked the path before us. So thank you for being so open about sharing what’s going on inside your business. We really appreciate it.

Guy
Yeah, thanks. I think those masterminds, they’re, um, so informative. Every bit of information you get from those. Whether you think you don’t need to know it or not, you always will end up knowing something. So, yeah.

Andy 
Yeah, that’s great. And you guys are superstars and, and help out a lot within our community. So, a big thank you for that. So we like to play a little bit of a game here at The Tradie Show and I’m gonna rattle off three quick fire questions. Um, you have between, yeah, 10 and 30 seconds to answer each one of them. I’m gonna start with you Guy. Are you ready mate?

Guy
Yeah, mate.

Andy 
Okay. So if you didn’t start Ultimate Shower Screens, where do you think you would’ve ended up?

Guy
Um, I was always gonna be in that glazing industry, in the trade business somehow, but outside of the trade industry, I think I would’ve become a meteorologist, I think.

Andy 
Wow. There you go. Something I didn’t know. Let me ask you, because you know, a lot of people start businesses, twenties to thirties, or 30. Look, you are in your forties, so I’m not saying it’s late. You can start a business in your fifties and above, but, Jodie laughing, but you know what took you so long to go? Okay. I’m ready now. And why weren’t you ready earlier?

Guy
Um, there’s a lot of steps that I needed to get in my head to know that I was ready. No one likes to fail. And I think, um, I think there was definitely different paths from the few businesses I was in prior that I needed to get clear in my head that I was ready to go to that next step and then, yeah, complete what I needed to there, and then go to the next step again from there. So I think it took a long time and maybe I was ready sooner, but I think I was definitely ready when we did it. I was probably two years behind the ball, I’d say. So,

Andy 
Yeah. Yeah. And Jodie,

Ange
But Jodi’s nodding from there easily.

Jodie
I was ready.

Andy 
So guys, this is for both of you. What has been the biggest mistake you’ve made in business?

Guy
Um, hanging on to the wrong people for too long. I think that it’s a, it’s a, it’s a big one. You always look back in hindsight and go, why?

Jodie
And you try like, it’s so hard to find and then when you get them and then it’s like, it’s okay, we’ll try and make him better or, you know, we’ll just help him along the track, give him extra training in this next training and that. And then it’s just like he’s not not interested. Just let him go.

Andy 
Yeah. Because most people hang on for way too long. They hang on to staff members for way too long. Yeah. But I tell you what, KPIs put them in their place. They go, oh, I’m underperforming. So they either pick an eye out, pick up, and some of them actually get out themselves till they realize they’re just not cut out for it. Right?

Guy
Yeah, that’s right. Um, Yeah, you go make ’em accountable. And then like I said, they will either realize that they’re not a fit or we make them realize they’re not a fit. So yeah.

Ange
I would imagine that your team of 20 would culturally almost push someone out if they didn’t fit.

Jodie
Well, exactly, we did right. Definitely. And it’s all on paper. It’s on a spreadsheet, and there’s no one like spreading rumors or it’s, it doesn’t create, you know, tension. It’s all there on a piece of paper. So they can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

Guy
No one likes, like, no one likes to fail, but no one likes to fail in front of everyone.

Andy 
Exactly. It makes us pick up the socks.

Guy
Yeah.

Ange
We only have one life though, don’t we? So you gotta give it a stab.

Andy 
So the last question, what do you love most about being members of Lifestyle Tradie?

Guy
I’ll answer the first one. Are there, um, none of our friends in our friend group are trade business owners. Um, so we actually don’t have anyone to lean on to ask questions like we do a part of the Lifestyle Tradie in the, the knowledge that comes from the 200 plus members that we catch up with at the events. Um, it really enforces to us how important that is.

Jodie
Got some new friends out, which is really nice. It’s good. Yeah.

Ange
And beautiful people trade business owners. Let’s be honest, Guy, that was a really interesting sentence that you said, you don’t have other trade business owners in your community, people to talk to and when I reflect back on even our journey with Dr. Drip in the very early days, we have lots of friends that are trade business owners. And interestingly, you’d be at a barbecue and they’d be like, so how are things house business? And Andy just be like, yep, everything’s good. Andy would literally change the subject. We would actually have no conversations about business, even if we knew that there were things going wrong. They’re just this blank wall. And don’t open up all the reverse, when you get to a point that you knew what had to happen, you know, now move forward with Lifestyle Tradie with the changes that we’d done inside the business, we’d turn the business on its head. And I even reflect at that time frame that even having these conversations with these people, if they were quick to give advice, they were giving the wrong advice because they didn’t have a very solid, successful, profitable business. And you know, I think about even your parents who ask questions to them and they’re really quick to give advice also, right? But they don’t actually have ever operated a trade business successfully. So that’s a bit that I love about your comment that the community of Lifestyle Tradie is where you find this other family. People where you can truthfully let down your guard and be truthful around what’s going on inside your business. And they’re so open to helping, so open to being a support and giving you advice where perhaps you get so close to your problems inside the business that they just give you a different perspective. And that’s another reason why I love the fact that, you know, Lifestyle Tradie members do what they do and, and have connected with these completely different friendships and somewhere where they can really drop their guard and be honest.

Guy
Yeah, that’s right. There’s uh, no barriers, it’s good.

Andy 
And listen, we all ride the highs and lows and we’ve all been there and done that. And I think that’s a good thing as well, right? You know, and as you know, even with our members, there’s times where people are flying. There’s times where something’s gone wrong and they’re in a bad spot and then it’s pick ’em up and let’s go again. And you know, I don’t think anyone out there listening now that’s a business owner goes, business is easy. It’s not easy, it’s tough, but it’s really tough when you don’t have the right structure, the right systems and the right stuff in place like you guys have. So I just want to thank you guys today. Your story’s been absolutely amazing and um, we really appreciate you spending the time and talking to Ange and I in The Tradie Show.

Guy
Thanks guys. Feeling really good.

Jodie
No, thank you. We appreciate all your effort and all your training. It’s just so valuable and it gives you a lot of confidence when you’re running your own business. It’s amazing.

Guy
Yeah.

Ange
Fantastic. Loved having you here and I’m sure our listeners have gained so much from listening to your story, so Absolutely. Thanks again. Really appreciate it.

Guy
Thank you.

Jodie
Thank you.

Andy 
So the moral of the story is this, be open to learning from others because you can’t be a successful business owner alone.

Ange
Yes, exactly. And that at the beginning, Jodie was brave to admit she needed help and hence turned to us. And boy, haven’t they come a long way in five and a half years.

Andy 
Yeah, Guy and Jodie are just awesome humans doing great things, and if you’re listening to this, remember, be brave and be willing to ask for help from the right people.

Ange
Haha, that’s interesting because that’s the important part from the right people, not your parents or your best mate if they don’t actually own and operate a successful trade business.

Andy 
We’re here when you’re ready. You can contact us through our website, lifestyletradie.com.au. Well, that is a wrap. Until next week, my friends.

Ange
Thanks for listening.

Andy 
Subscribe to The Tradie Show, wherever you get your favorite podcast. Rate and write us a review or for more information about Lifestyle Tradie, head to lifestyletradie.com au.