– Welcome, everybody to today’s Building My Legacy Podcast. I have with me Sky Stephens. She is a very fascinating woman, because she comes to us from Queensland, Australia. And she’s a co-funder of the Association of Professional Builders. And she built that to help builders systematize their building company. And she wanted them to be able to gain more leads, she wanted them to increase their margins and to be able to really scale their businesses. And I think for many builders that I know, building it’s so hands-on and customer oriented, that having that opportunity to really build the business is a challenge. But I think that’s true of a lot of businesses. So, Sky, with that, I’m gonna just turn this over to you and let you start with what got you into this and what the challenges are that you see.

– Totally. Well, look, firstly, thank you for having me on, Lois. Really appreciate it. And thank you for that introduction. So the story, it goes back longer than when we started the Association of Professional Builders. So Association of Professional Builders, we’ve been building this for about five years now. And when I say we, Russ Stephens and I actually co-founded it. So Russ Stephens is actually my father. And we started APB five years ago, but before that, we were already working together for a previous four or five years. And so, this story starts all the way in 2011. And essentially, Russ Stephens, he had an online business selling safety documentation. So you know the workplace health and safety documents you’ve gotta have on a construction site, keeping it all safe. So he had an online store and he was just selling fully completed documents so that builders could jump online and grab what they needed to get, so a safe working procedure for this construction site. And most of it was filled in, you can tweak it to how you do things on site and obviously fill in the blanks, make it, compliance, sign it, et cetera. And he was running that store for a while and it was going really well. But it wasn’t enjoyable for him, because safety documentation isn’t anything, something some people wanted to purchase. It’s like they have to purchase it. So it wasn’t the most fulfilling, joyous type of business. But the market was builders, so that’s who he was servicing. And after a while, after each sale, he would just start talking to the builders and just talking about what they’re doing and the topic always got onto marketing with the builders and the building companies. Their marketing, their sales process, and they would in turn, or Russ would then be giving I suppose, stories and solutions based on how he was growing the safety business. And it was about that at the time I actually had just gone to university and I was studying marketing, studying business. And it got to the point where I wasn’t actually learning anything there, ’cause it was a bit out of date. Because it’s when the internet was really taking off and it was all Facebook, and YouTube and everything. And it wasn’t really kept up to date in my university course. So I ended up leaving that. Russ and I had a conversation and we just decided to do it. We actually set up a marketing agency for builders. So we could actually do Facebook ads and work on all these other online platforms. So, we created a marketing agency and it went really well. We grew it year, on year, on year. But the thing is, we could take on builders as clients, whether they were in Australia, or New Zealand, or the U.S., wherever, ’cause we knew our strategies worked and we could generate leads and tons of leads for our clients. But after a while, it was super interesting, because how is it you can generate all the leads in the world for builders? And one building company is killing it, they’re selling, they’re growing, they’re doing amazing. And why is it the other building company says, “The leads are rubbish, this is not good.”

– Interest.

– Why would that happen? So they were like, “Okay, let’s actually look at it.” So we started looking at the leads. We actually offered to do a lot of the sales conversations as well. So we could talk to the leads and work out where is this going wrong? And when we did the phone calls, they were fine. We could actually progress those leads from a sales conversation into a meeting and keep them going and that build a sales process. So we sort of came to the understanding that the leads weren’t rubbish. The problem was actually the sales process. The building company that was killing it and was selling the leads that were coming through, had a really robust sales process. They were calling leads back instantly and they were funneling them into the rest of the sales process and guiding them through, whereas the builders that weren’t having too much success, weren’t as quick to contact them, they didn’t have a qualifying process in place. They just didn’t really have any sort of system to use. And so it was at that point, we were like, “Okay, this is really important.” You can’t have a marketing agency and then just sort of go by when the leads come through, so we knew we had to do something. And that’s when we started essentially a sales training version of our marketing agency. So we created basically a sales training company. So just one little element of coaching. And that took off, that exploded. The market truly did want that, which was really interesting. But we sort of realized we came up against another problem. Again, you can generate all these leads in the world and then you can give them a system for selling, but why is it other things in the building company was still falling over, whether it was their profitability, so their margins, something to do in operations, their staff, their employees. Something else would go wrong and that’s where we were like, “Okay, we need to take a really big picture view “and it just needs entire systems coaching.” So sales, marketing, business operations, financials and then even self and personal development as well, so they could really go into this leadership position in the company. And that’s how APB started. So it was a bit of a journey and in 2015, that’s when we actually launched the Association of Professional Builders with the mission to improve the residential construction industry for both builders and consumers. ‘Cause, Lois, I’m sure you know this, this industry, well, residential construction, it’s got a pretty bad reputation, right?

– It can.

– Unfortunately, it really doesn’t have the best reputation. And that’s for a multitude of reasons. And a big one is that builders, they’re not bad people, they’re really not. There are some cowboys in the industry, they don’t typically come for coaching, so we’re not helping them. But there are a lot of incredible builders, incredible at what they do building wise, but they’ve never had a lot of business knowledge, or training or coaching in that area. So if we can help as many builders as possible just improve the systems in their building company and deliver a better experience to their clients, that then improves the consumer’s experience with builders and the whole industry starts leveling up. So that’s the big picture of why we set out to build the Association of Professional Builders. So a bit of a long answer there, Lois, but that’s the background.

– That’s fascinating. And I am also curious, the association is in the UK, it’s in Canada, it’s in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand. And so my first question as I listened to that was, are they all the same in terms of how they approach the market? And are there differences in how each of those countries work relative to construction in residential construction or building?

– 100%. At the end of the day, it would be very naive to say, “No, it’s exactly the same.” So obviously, construction is different. You can see the homes are different in all of those countries. So there are massive differences between all those locations. But I tell you what doesn’t change, it’s the strategy of attracting leads and then converting them into a sale, a building contract and then keeping them up to date in the background. So we don’t do any coaching on construction, because there are definitely a lot of location-specific training courses that can take them through that. I mean, you and I were just talking before about how different it is to do anything in Minnesota. Any builders building a new home there compared to even somewhere like Australia, there are different styles of home to begin with, but you got different weather elements that you need to take into consideration when building anything. So what we teach and what we coach isn’t anything to do with the actual construction, it’s to do with the business side. And I tell you what, that does not change. Because we’ve been able to roll out our systems in building companies in Australia, then in New Zealand, then in the States, then in Canada and of course, the UK as well. The system is the same. So the overall strategy of moving them through a sales process and what step to do next. A couple of the tactics that may change ever so slightly, but the biggest change is actually just the messaging per building company. And that’s just sort of where you can insert the blanks. The overarching strategy is very, very much the same and it’s proven to work because we were able to prove it with our clients in each one of those countries.

– So the APB association that you’ve created, you are growing it. How much can you grow this from Australia and have the reach? ‘Cause I’m listening to you and I’ve had several people on my podcast that are in various parts of building, commercial building, residential building at different parts of the process. And it’s interesting, all of them deal with leads as an issue, right? Which is what you’ve talked about. But I’m listening to you and I’m going, how pervasive is this and how wide can that reach be, because I think there isn’t a business that doesn’t need systems. Most of us that don’t have them, don’t have them because we don’t have the time to create them. We’re too busy during the day to day, right? But then there’s also that embarrassment of, “But I’ve been in business for 15 years, “why don’t I have systems?” Right? So how do you deal with that mindset? That psychology? You have to be ready to have help.

– 100%. A big quote, I suppose you could call it, that we’ve got for our team, we definitely took it from the U.S. life guards, “We can only save the ones that swim towards us.” We cannot tell people or shame people into joining APB. So obviously, our builders would join us as a member then they get access to 41 ready-made systems that they can just deploy in their building company from sales, marketing, handovers, anything. But the thing is, if someone is not ready, they believe they’ve got it all, they’ve got all the answers, or they think they’re fine, they don’t want help, there is no sense in us trying to convince them that they do. That is absolutely fine. If you wanna keep going, absolutely no problem. Here’s some free videos, all the best for the rest of the year. Because we actually at APB invest so much in marketing and advertising. So we are posting daily on four or five different social media channels. We are spending so much on advertising across Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube. So when people sort of come into our orbit, they’ll get followed around with different ads, obviously, there’s a lot of email marketing going on. And all it is is content. It’s basically making them problem-aware. ‘Cause not too many people, contrary to what you’d think, I think a lot of people in this space, business owners and entrepreneurs seek out help and coaching. Not too many building company owners are. So that’s they’re not seeking out a coach or tryna have help with their building company. So a lot of our marketing is making them problem-aware. So they sort of know the issues in the building company, but then just sort of also showing, “Hey, there is a solution. “And did you know about this?” And that’s basically how we can get people interested in a solution and then we’ll have a conversation with them. Because we’re not gonna convince anyone or you’re not gonna get anywhere by telling people they’re doing it wrong at the moment. If you’re open to change, here’s a proven way that you can do this.

– Right. I think people are desperate for proven ways. They are also pragmatic that they can implement. So are you also there, Sky to assist people to answer questions to? Is it an online course? Is that a Keystone type of product? How does your product really work for people?

– So we have two key levels. So when it’s standard level, our builders join us as a member and it’s an on-demand coaching portal. Think of it like Netflix for builders, right? So they can basically browse through over 41 different systems. So that could be a handover checklist, it could be a monthly financials checklist, how to read a profit and loss statement, for example. Then it could be sales or marketing. So they get to browse through these ready-made systems and it’s on demand. So whichever stage your building company is at, you would pick the most appropriate system to go through. And you get downloadable templates, checklists cheat sheets, and you get to watch the video training. And they’re all incredibly short, so you can just go and deploy them into your building company. Let’s actually put it to work and get this rolled out inside your building company. So that’s it, at its most basic form. That’s our membership. But for any builders who are serious about transforming their building company and actually wanna fast track their results, we offer the ability to go into a one-on-one mentoring, we call it advanced mentoring. We have a team of coaches and they’ll get assigned to dedicated executive business coach, who they’ll meet with strategically once a month to review some numbers, some KPIs, ask more questions, get a little bit more direction so they get that accountability. And we all know, accountability is what really propels you forward, right?

– Yeah, absolutely. I think that is true of everything. If you don’t have specific things that you’re measuring and looking at, whether it’s on a monthly basis weekly basis, sometimes daily basis, odds of hitting those targets are quite remote. You talk about tips for doubling your growth. What can you share of those tips with us please?

– So I think it comes down to, look, there’s a lot, right? There’s so many different things that you can do. But a few things that I think are gonna be the most important are gonna be your strategy for acquiring new leads. We know that’s so important, knowing how to market, knowing how to sell. But then on the flip side, you cannot grow anything that has no systems in place. So I think systemization is another big thing. So we’ll come back to that one in a second. But we talk about generating leads and actually being able to sell them. On any business podcast or YouTube show at the moment or any training, it’s all about content. So I’m gonna say the same thing that a lot of people are talking about. But I think that’s a big game changer for a lot of people. Stop just tryna get people to buy your product constantly. Just start putting out content. So that’s video content, that’s email marketing, it’s social media posts. Stop being so promotional and just start delivering tips and advice and build up that goodwill with your audience. I suppose another sort of layer to that is knowing your audience through and through. You need to really niche, pick your audience and I actually ask what are their pain points? What are they worried about? What questions do they have? And when you produce that content, make sure you’re answering those questions for them, you’re speaking to that ideal customer. Because a confused mind will never buy and we’re gonna be laser focused at who we’re actually targeting, so that they know that you’re the product or company or service for them. So I think content is really overlooked. It’s getting much, much bigger, but if you truly want to grow your building company or any kind of business, you gotta invest in content regular as well. Sporadic just doesn’t cut it. Especially with a lot of algorithms lately, we’ve gotta be able to have some sort of a system in place to roll it out consistently. And that sort of then takes me to the systems side. We need to be able to build robust systems. A process that we teach our builders is something called D- A- D, DAD and it’s delete, automate, delegate. And it’s as you’re growing any company, there is no sense in just adding-

– Great way of looking at it. Yeah, go ahead.

– Yeah. As you grow the company, there’s no point in going straight to the end. Everyone knows, delete, automate, delegate. I think a lot of people primarily focus on automate or delegate, but you gotta put it in the right order. As you grow a company, stop delegating a lot of stuff. Do zero-based thinking. Is it even relevant anymore? Or can I just delete this? And if the answer is, “We’ll, actually no, I can’t” If that is pretty important, go to the next layer. Can I automate this? Because if you can get a system in place to do this automatically, you do not need to pay a person to do it. You can pay people to do more complex things. So can it be deleted? No, it has to be done. The next question. Can it be automated? If yes, brilliant. But if no, okay, well, can this be delegated? And I think anyone that’s trying to grow a company, you can’t do anything or everything yourself. You have to be able to be thinking like, “Okay, what systems can I put in place “so I can either delete, automate or delegate this?” And really, by the time you get to the final D of DAD, and you’re delegating, this is where your systems are so important. Because you need to be able to build those robust systems, procedures, manuals and you get people in to run the systems. ‘Cause you know, Lois, this whole podcast, it was all about building my legacy. So that means we’re not gonna be here forever. So if we can put in place some systems, we need other people to be able to run with those systems, tweak them and improve them. But that’s what can live on a lot longer than us. This is how companies go for years, years after the founder is gone.

– I love hearing you talk about systems, because I think it’s the one thing that we’ve missed, we’ve lost in our teaching in our graduate schools, in our undergraduate business schools as well. I have taught in MBA programs and doctorate programs that one of the things you realize is just what you said earlier. Sometimes there’s a gap, a big gap between what is being delivered in education and what’s really needed out in the field, right? And in part of that is systems, because there’s nothing sexy about systems. It’s just plain routine. It’s a system because it’s routine that’s done repetitively at works and you can rely on it. But it doesn’t have that excitement of, “I did something different, I did something new today.” It’s methodical. And it’s a different kind of skillset, but we have lost that in many, many places, in terms of our education. So I really love hearing you talk about that.

– It’s interesting, I think it depends on your personality If you think systems are interesting. If you’re a very analytical like accuracy, that they are so exciting to so many people. But not all of them. When we talk about building systems as well, there are so many other levels to a good system. You’ve got your repetitive, same thing, every single day type system, where it truly is technician work, ’cause it’s the same thing day in, day out. But then think of it like this, the sales process is a system as well. That is a system inside a building company or any other company. And it’s basically, “Hey, here’s the funnel. “People are entering “up here, then they’re gonna interact with that. “Then I know that I need to get them on, book “a phone call and I’m gonna have a phone call “with them and I’m gonna qualify them by getting “the right answers to these seven questions.” That is a system, but any great sales person, they have flair to them. So they follow the system, but it’s not necessarily the same thing every time, because they’re interacting, they’re building rapport and that’s what breaks it up for those people. But it’s still a systemized company, you’re getting a good person to run the system. And I think that’s such a misconception. A lot of people don’t wanna put too many systems in a company, ’cause they think it’s just gonna be a bit robotic. But it’s honestly the opposite, because you can’t even think about growing it, ’cause you have no way of understanding what are your key metrics? What are your conversion rates? And if you add more leads at the top, what’s gonna spit out the other side, it’s just immeasurable

– I love that perspective, because it’s having those measurable things, without feeling like you’ve become a robot. I mean, I think that’s what people fear. I’ve become an independent builder, I’ve become an entrepreneur, I’ve become, because I like that independence. Lack of I was going to say structure, but I think they like structure, I think we all like structure to some extent. But there’s that sense of being able to break free and loose that they’re afraid of losing.

– Yeah, totally. But I mean it’s routine gives you freedom, right?

– Yes.

– Budgets in business give you freedom, ’cause you know you can spend that much on ads that month. You need it in order to be totally free. Otherwise, you are literally gonna be chained to the company forever. If you have no systems in place, how on earth can you go away on holiday? How on earth can you ever employ people to do what you’re doing and grow? You’re required to do it all, ’cause only you know how to do it.

– Sky, you also talk about margins and being able to help grow people’s margins. I am very much into margins, ’cause I started with numbers and I love research, I love finance. But I think we all get somewhat stuck. In terms of what are our margins? How do we do margins? So that we have a sense of protection, a sense of progress, so that we know that we’re moving ahead. So as you work with people, how do you help them really grow their margins, so they have that financial security as they move?

– It’s a really, really good question. And at the end of the day, especially in building, margins take so long to come out in the wash, because the sales cycle and building from first inquiry to signing a building contract can be anywhere from eight months to a year or longer. So it takes so long to make that impact. A lot of other industries can be much, much quicker. But the biggest thing, without going into the obvious things, it’s efficiencies, it’s looking at your costs, making sure you’re marking up properly, knowing the difference between markup and margin. They’re pretty obvious and a lot of people talk about that. The next level or layer that you could even go to is actually transforming your business, your offering from a commodity into a professional service provider. Because commodities are all judged based on price. And that’s why margins suffer. Whereas if you’re no longer in that playing level, or playing field or whatever, if you’re no longer playing that game, you’re playing a whole different game and you are going after people that want you regardless of what your price is gonna be. That’s how margins truly increase. And the biggest thing is actually being able to manipulate supply and demand or demand and supply. And at the end of the day, without going into economics 101, we know how important demand and supply is. And unfortunately, what too many people do, is so say for example, we’ve got our demand and supply. What a lot of people end up doing, is they scale up their supply as the demand goes up. Now, the really risky thing about that is what happens when the demand plateaus, maybe even declines? You actually end up having an oversupply. So what do people do when they have an oversupply? They discount. So they start cutting their margins. And that’s a dangerous game, because that’s a race to the bottom. So what we have always taught our builders is to manufacture way more demand than you would ever need for your services and limit your supply. You say you’re only gonna build 20 homes a year, but you’ve got the demand that you can build 30 or only build 20 homes a year. Sell out those slots for that year and start booking for next year. ‘Cause that is how you can A, maintain your exceptional service. You’re not suddenly scrambling to put on more stuff and that’s how mistakes happen and you’re not delivering a great experience. But, when you’re so in demand, you’ve got a line out the door. What happens when there’s a line out the door? People want you more. They’re gonna sign up and they’re gonna pay the margins that will pay the bottom line, really the contract price that you’re setting, because you’ve got that proof you’re booked out. And that’s what we need to get people to. So I think that’s a key ingredient that a lot of people miss. They tend to focus on efficiencies and markups and pricing. But demand and supply, let’s not forget that formula.

– It is so important. It is so important and you’re right. Especially right now, I think coming out of COVID, what I am seeing in so many of the industries that people I’ve spoken with, is people are discounting. Fear sets in, they discount. The promise, once you start to discount, it’s very hard to put the price back up, isn’t that?

– Totally.

– And so, it becomes self-defeating in many ways.

– Yeah, it’s a dirty word, discounting. We never wanna get into that, ’cause you can’t come back from it. You can’t come back from it well, but when you do that, you’re cutting your margins you can’t afford to pay for the top people anymore. You can no longer afford to pay for your Facebook ads, your Instagram ads, YouTube, whatever. So it’s just a really, really dangerous game. You wanna ensure that you’re spending, investing a lot in your marketing, your advertising, your people, so that you are at that prestige level, you’re no longer a commodity that people judge based on price. You wanna sell on so many other things, you wanna sell on value.

– Sky, our time has gone very, very fast. And I want to just leave a little bit of time for you to talk about anything that we’ve missed, that is really important for you that you think our audience should know.

– I feel like we’ve covered a lot together, Lois. but probably the last thing is we talked about systems quite a bit. And we talked about building robust systems, putting systems procedures in place and letting people run the systems. Probably one thing worth mentioning, especially with our coaching clients, one thing that can come up is, “Well, I can’t really trust my people “to do it that way or follow that system.” And the last thing I’ll probably leave you guys with is if you can’t trust your people to run the systems, you have the wrong people. The systems aren’t the problem, it’s the people. Because if the systems are in place, they’re spitting out certain results and some people aren’t following them, they’ve got the wrong attitude. So you need the right people following your correct, right systems and that’s where the magic happens. So that’s probably the last little thing worth mentioning.

– Sky, thank you so much for all of your insight. I think that’s so applicable to many, many different things that we do, it’s not industry specific really. We all need good marketing, we all need good margins, we all need to look at systems. So thank you so much for sharing your insights. And for those of you who are listening to us today, thank you for listening to Building My Legacy Podcast. Thank you, Sky.

– Thank you for having me, Lois.