#45 The Builder’s Mindset: Why Jackson Digney Focuses on Healthy, Efficient Homes Part 1

- Good day, everyone. And welcome to the Build In Type Podcast. We're continuing live on our day in Adelaide today. I've got Dean, my co-host is Flownover. Still got Mick on the production and the background over there from U2U Productions. Next guest we've got in today, we've got Jackson Digny from Injuro Builders and Climbersure. I've had the pleasure of knowing Jackson for a little while now just on my venture over locally here. Jackson's got a bit of an interesting story compared to most, super passionate about. His own personal and business development as well as giving back to the industry with his ventures through Climbersure. I won't dive too much into it there 'cause I know Jackson's gonna be the best person to really unpack that. But Jackson, welcome to the Build In Type Podcast. - Thanks for having me. - Yeah, it's good to be here. - Awesome to have you in mate. I think when we're talking to another Adelaide day, Jess has been on TWAS. - TWAS? - I think you wanted to bump her at the way and get in, get in mate. So I am pumped to have you in here mate 'cause I feel like I've been sort of through social media watching your journey for quite a while. And yeah, traveling in different states but doing similar things mate. So awesome to get you in. You got a lot to chat about. I'd sort of loved to know a bit more about like how you actually got started building and so forth back in the day. - Yep. So when I left school, I wanted to be a property developer. But at the time I was really heavily focused on sailing for a living. And I actually got offered a uni spot to do construction management. But that was an hours drive away. And instead I went and studied accountancy 'cause I was also interested in that. And fast forward a few years and I met my now wife who was studying chiropractic in Perth and she finished her degree at the same time as I sold a manufacturing business that I owned. And so I was kind of out of loose end. At the same time as her mother had organized a job for her in Adelaide. And I was like, oh cool. And it was sold to me as two years contract. We go and do this. And I was like, oh, I have a great adventure. Like I'll go and do something for two years and hang around and then we'll come back to Perth and I'll pick up where I left off. And that was 17 years ago. (laughing) Four kids and all of that sort of stuff. - Wait, so you're originally from Perth? - Yeah, I grew up on the beach in Perth. - There you go. - So when I moved over here because of all of the various things that I did traveling and work wise, I kind of came here with a whole bunch of trade skills across a lot of different trades. So like working with conversants, boat booting, which covers carpentry and composites and working with aluminium and welding and all that sort of stuff. And I thought it's a good opportunity to do something different. So I was like, I might get into booting. And that was helped along a bit by my father-in-law, is a builder. And he's retired now that he is like a hands-on builder who does everything. And of course, he was somewhat interested in like what are you gonna do with yourself here? And he said, do you wanna come and work for me for a bit while we work it out? 'Cause my response was, I'm not really sure. I might buy a business, so I don't know. And I started working for him as a carpenter. Obviously not a trade qualified carpenter, but, you know. I then got, I was like, oh, this is actually quite a good fun. So I went off and did my surf for and then did diploma and got to a point where I kind of had enough of doing that. And I went and worked as a project manager for a commercial builder, which was really good because it exposed me to systems and processes and actually seeing them like working in the real world, which I didn't do that well with my manufacturing business. I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it. And so I then, while I was working for that builder, I met a carpenter who'd kind of morphed into a building company and he was doing all the cost plus work. And he was not so good with managing money. And was in a bit of strife. And so I don't know how Carly, my wife, actually agreed to it, but I quit the pretty sound job that I wasn't totally happy in because pretty much all the way through from leaving school to moving over here at RunMode businesses. And so while it was a good, secure job, it wasn't fulfilled and there was a ceiling to where you could go. So I went and worked for this builder and got on top of his books, got on top of paying his super and paying the ATO and just put, and all I did was put a bunch of basic systems in. They got invoicing on track and made the clients sign proper contracts. And fast forward about nine or 10 months, I'd got the business back on good standing, money in the bank, growing really well. And he started just roofing money out and spending. And I was like, that was an hour agreement. And we agreed to part ways before things go really ugly because essentially there was a lack of integrity shown like anyone that knows me knows that the quickest way to get under my skin is to suggest that I've done something without integrity. And so then I said to Carly, might as well start a building company. And as usual, there's always plenty of people around going, oh, it's a bad time in the market, it's really flat and blah, blah. And I just said, well, nah, that's what we're going to do. And I had always had a really strong interest in sustainability. And that's come from my old man as much as any other sort of influence. And that obviously morphed into energy efficiency, which is then morphed into passive-house. And yeah, here we are. For over 130 years, Bullens has been the Builder's choice, providing a service to promote timber, hardware and innovative building products. And now we're helping you further with this wonderful partnership. We're proud to announce Bullens is our new premier sponsor, bringing more of the insights that you love. Build insight together with Bullens. Real people, real insights. It all goes hand in hand a little bit. So how far back are we talking, Jackson, when was that turning point on? When you decided that you were having to go and your own building company? How long ago were we talking? 20 end of 2015. So yeah, the end of this year is 10, 10 years. Congratulations, mate. Congrats. You still have your hair, which one most? Yeah, and not much has gone grey. And four kids, mate. Yeah. What are four kids in a building company? We've got a lot of them. They're all the end-gray. There we go. No, that's amazing, mate. Like obviously, it sounds like you saw all of the wrong, not what to do things and got the basis of business. And I know for myself, mate, I'll probably sit here and like, I don't think I could work for someone I love. The supposed challenging myself and, you know, getting a reward out of the hard things and seeing the winds and the bumps along the way. But it's not for everyone. Like working for yourself can be incredibly lonely. And it can be really stressful, unless you get on top of managing yourself and managing your time. And yeah, I've just started listening to a book about micro stresses, which is very eye-opening. Yeah. Can we dig into it just to touch back over that, mate? You just said your dad was an inspiration with sustainability. So obviously growing up on the beach. So where does that stem from? Is that more from like, you know, being immersed in the environment? And so forth, or is it a bit deeper than that? It's lots of different things, but it's definitely deeper. So before I was born, Dad was pretty convinced that the world was going to hell in the hand basket. And he'd actually bought land in Albany, which is like South West WA, and was really heading down a path of like complete self-sufficiency and kind of bugging out on society. Then he met my mom. Then he started having kids. And that resulted in Dad not letting go of that. but deciding that he needed to make sure he gave us a good life, which then resulted in, well, if we're going to do that, at least want to live near the beach, which is why I grew up near the beach. And he was at one point, the managing director of Mito-Ten Australia, back in the '80s. So for Mito-Ten, that's ancient history. And he was pushing really hard for all of the things that have come to pass now. Bulk-Bang, having the stores really running the same stock lines, and having a lot of agreement nationally on what was getting bought and sold through the stores. And back then, and that was all because he saw what was coming with bunnings. And back then, he didn't get much buying, and then he had me, and he was like, "I bugger this, I'm not going to bash my head against the wall for this." And it all started with him owning a couple hardwares stores. So then, as we grew up, we were just always exposed to the importance of thinking about what your footprint is on the planet. And also how you can really, how one person can make a big difference if you choose to. And I suppose that the road that that also coincided with was, my old man really teaching me about the importance of setting yourself up, making sure that you have a good financial standing, and that you do the one basic thing, you're just spending less than you earn. And then that kind of all just simmied away while I grew up. And then my mom passed away just after we got married. She'd had cancer for a long time. And she kind of, I really think, really held on until we got married, because she passed away a month later. And dad was really lost for a while. And then he'd been looking into earthships. And then he kind of got himself sorted out. And about a year down the track he went to his first earthship build. And now all he does is travel around the world going and doing earthship builds. And so it's funny because he's right at the sustainable end, whether it's really like picking up rubbish and mixing it with cement and putting it together and calling it a house. And then I'm at like the latest technology, energy efficiency end of the scale. And the funny thing is that both things work. They just achieved a different way. One is really scalable, my way. His way is not, it's not scalable and they're a mount of time that I've spent talking through with him about like, yeah, but to do it, my way is very material and not so labor-intensive. Earthships very, very labor-intensive, not so material-intensive. And the hardest thing to go hold of is the labor. But it's good to kind of have that. For me, the thing that draws them both together is they both create pretty healthy buildings to live in. And the actual outcome in terms of longevity of building is about the same. Because when you build something out of all other materials, they're there forever. And when you build something really well, that is constantly drying out and doesn't go moldy and doesn't get wet, that'll last forever too. So I suppose that I just had the drive for sustainability from there and wanting to make sure that everything that I did tread really lightly on the earth and that I could say when I'm done, I can go, he'll look back and I go, I didn't do too much to contribute to the earth going backwards. That's so good mate. It doesn't sound like you've convinced you that to use some pro climber up here. No, no, no, because we did his airship in Eastergaster, which is like south of Perth in 2019. Then we did Mentor on the roof there because it was a really flat roof and I said, you know, massive problems with condensation and I was like, fine. So you've had a bit of experience with these earthships because I think it might have actually been back at the start of the year. We had another big recording day over here in Adelaide and we tried to get you on and I've got an automatic response from the remote. I couldn't remember how you were. I was in the States. Yeah, that's right. So I died, bless his cotton socks. He got into my eldest daughter who is 13 or she's 14 now, about going to an earthship build. That particular build, it was doing all of the process of an earthship or we were actually building an eschlepian, which is a Greek, it's an ancient Greek healing temple. So you, but it was all the same processes and it was, that was about more about dad was like, I want my grandkids to be involved in this and Jackson's not going to push it because he's too focused on his career. So he presented it to Ellie as, I'll fly you over there and because you're all going camping tents. So they're like, camped in tents in the tropics for a month and built this thing. And of course, and he, I'm sure he knew he's a sly old dog. He would have known I'm like, there is no way I'm letting my eldest daughter travel around the world with my father because he's out of control. So I was like, well, of course I've got to go. Yeah. And it was good too. I mean, anyone listening to this that has a teenage daughter will understand that this next bit, which is she'd had a pretty rough year with friends like Moist teenage girls seem to because every parent including the ones that she was having a rough time with her like, yeah, I can tell me rough time too. Like why don't they just get along. But it was good to go to an earthship building because the type of people that go to those things are, they're very earthly people. They're really client-hearted and they're very self-confident, self-reliant people. And to expose a girl at her age and the other thing is it's always female heavy. You go to an earthship building and it's like 70% women. Yeah. And so to have her go and meet and hang out for a month with all these really strong female figures meant a lot to to know that. Yeah. And of course I got I got sidelineed well welding window frames because they were making they wanted to do it all in steel. And she got she got a great kind of period of time with all these women and it's definitely, you know, it gave her a lot of self-confidence and and it also I think helped her to see a bigger picture outside of all of the things the petty squalbles of teenager. Dana, so I rocked up to site last week, got Scratch Benchthops, Painel over the windows. Let me guess, Loki. No good. No good. And now we're spending big bucks trying to fix it. Matt, good guys roll on a thick, peelable protective coating that saves your surfaces and your budget and your sanity, Loki. Seriously, check them out goodguys.com.au, protect your job from the start. Yeah, I'm going to go and set up all that too, mate. I think we've just gone through that with like my oldest daughter's just gone 12 but the friendship stuff, the technology these days as well, which it's like pretty ruthless, but so mate, like that's yeah, super super fast track. Yeah, that's that's that's a good one. So mate, yeah, you've gone through obviously got the back story there. So obviously very busy too with climate shore and we're all big advocates for pro climate and building science. It's where did the sustainability lead you down the rabbit hole as we say to building science and building better and climate shore? Yeah, so I when I started in Drew, I had a very different plan to the one that I have now in that I was going to exclusively work with architects and just build beautiful homes. And as you guys know now, I'm very big on design and build and and how that delivers a much more economical outcome for clients, which I can say with great confidence because I've experienced both. And the first architect that I worked with was really focused on sustainability. And they made me blow a door test the first house that we built with Enduro. Yep. So that's coming back. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. - So, I, and by the end of that blog, all tests, I was like, I'm bored, I was doortesting everything. That was Josh Molison, who kind of remember the name of his, him and Mark Clayton, I've got a company together, but he was working for Suho back then. And I just said, you're coming into every build because the stuff that I learned just from that blog or test made me go, ah, we need to be doing this every single build, which is why now you hear me say, we've, we've blog or tested every house with build. And then I got into some business coaching and as part of that, I went to an event in the Gold Coast and I got talking with this builder who said, let off with, you know, what do you do? Like, oh, I built sustainable energy efficient homes and we'd be bored or testing and we got this air change rate and that air change rate and he patiently listened to me. (laughing) And he was like, I think you better go and do the pass-by-house trade his course before he kills someone. (laughing) That's Brent Chatterdown. And Brent and Claire, they're from New Zealand and they're just the two loveliest people we ever meet. And I always admire Brent's patience as he must have stood there listening to me telling him how good I thought I was. And so that resulted in me going and doing the trade his course, which then quickly led to me doing the consultants. And from there on, I just have not looked back because once you know and understand what's going on there and then I went and became a Wolfie professional in amongst all that, you just, you can't unsee it. And every time we walked into it, like we went, there's a house for sale down the road from us and we just went there just to have a look at it. Right? And finally enough, as we pull up another builder that I know that we do consulting for through climate sure, he comes up from the other way. And the two of us, before we'd even got in the front door, we'd found like three major non-compliance as with the building code. So that just makes me go, we've got so far to go. Is this a new home? Yeah, it's pretty new. Like the owners had just finished it and but they've been living between two places and for whatever reason they decided they wanted to sell that one. But the thing that it's all of this stuff is open miles to is looking around at every building and going, oh, that's gonna be a problem. That's a problem. Oh, that's a, so, and it's, I just, I then of course got into proclamor and then I was proclamers biggest customer in South Australia and Thomas, who's the general manager of like New Zealand and Australia, he got in touch to say, do you wanna become a distributor? And so that's when climate sure was born 'cause we didn't wanna do it as part of injury because I didn't, I was worried about builders, other builders sort of buying from a builder. Yeah, feeling like they couldn't talk to me even though I knew that that wasn't just, that's not my thing. Which goes back to the integrity thing and also a lot of the other distributors are builders as well as you guys would know. Yes, yeah. But that's interesting 'cause it just go back a little bit in that topic that we're talking about. When you mentioned that you had a conversation with a builder in Brisbane, that's not where I thought the topic was going when you said that he obviously coming from New Zealand, their building style is a little bit different to ours as well that he was the one that suggested you should go to the Passive House course 'cause there's a few, not picking on Queensland builders but there's a few northern builders that I've had conversations with that they are pretty well dead against Passive House and building a new type because they, they're from New Zealand and it was in Brisbane. Which is where, when you first mentioned the Brisbane builder, that's not where I thought you were going. It was, you don't need to build that way. We need to have homes to breathe and so that was an interesting one. Yeah, well there's a lot of, like when you hear people say things like that, it's not important in our climate. It's physics. So it's important in all climates in different ways. It's like to get technical for a second, you wouldn't specify extra sun, which is the wall exterior weather resistant membrane in the tropics. You would specify a different membrane there that is less vapor open because there's more humidity up there. So that's an example of where you can still get the benefit out of using the membrane, you have to use the right one. And it's sometimes I'd simplify it down and I say look, no matter where you are in the world, if you drop an apple, it's gonna get bruised when it hits the ground. And the same thing applies to bootings. They all have the same physical efforts being put on them. No matter where you are in the world, heat's trying to get in or out and humidity's trying to get in or out. And understanding how it works in the different climates is the key thing for builders in those climates to understand. - Yeah, I think regardless of the climate you're in, we all have moisture in different ways. And water is the number one thing that kills our buildings the fastest, whether it's inside or outside. So yeah, I mean, that's one standing strong point we have a conversation early with clients. We had a client right now late last year, we gave them the information about proclimate. She came back to me and she's like, wow, I just saw wraps wrap. Like, you know, and she read all the data on it and she's like, she was asked to leave the home. - She was absolutely pumped. - Yeah, she was absolutely pumped. This was like the level we're going to, you know, with our builds. And you know, I think that's the, from our side of things, that's the biggest thing is we want to build a structure that's durable in all ways. So it's a bit hard to put your head in the sand these days with the information that's out there. It's still happening, is it? - Yeah, and it's always frustrating when we compete against builders, like for owners that are really early stage in whatever their buying process is. Who maybe just think that you can just compare a builder on price or if you like the salesperson or any of those things without actually understanding how does that build a build and how does that, you know, what products are they using? And the thing is that homeowners, there's also a portion of homeowners need to do some level of research, but you also shouldn't expect a homeowner to be an expert in construction, which is why we always go down the path of like, if you don't trust us, don't build with us, go and build with someone else, because if you don't trust us now, it's unlikely you're ever going to, and that's just going to be painful, is it be as painful for you as it is for us? And there's certainly been times where, you know, it's resulted in us avoiding working with a bad client. And there's been other times where a nervous client has had that moment of, these guys aren't going to screw me over, they're really serious, because they're happy to walk away, because they'll only work with someone where the trust is mutual. Yeah. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Circus Studio are coming on board as a major sponsor and supporter of Build Insight. Circus Studio is Australia's leading interior design center. If you're an architect, building designer, interior designer, build up or just looking to build your dream home, you need to make a time and come in and check out the space here in Port Melbourne. This space holds every element you possibly need to design your dream home. (upbeat music) That's a powerful thing. Maybe if you didn't have the confidence people or sort of maybe think, "Oh, if I don't take this job on, my cash flow might take a hit." Or we might be short on projects for that period, but you have a look at what the worst outcomes can be and the stress that can come out of that. It's not just the build period where responsible for that home while after it's complete and handed over. So I think it's a pretty powerful thing to be able to do in building businesses to say no at times. It's scary. It's definitely scary. Or like I can say, is that every time that we've said no to someone, something better has always popped up for us. Not always immediately, but always in enough time that that call one of, if we let a job go. There goes, you know, and for us most of our builds are over a million dollars. So, that big chunks of cash flow disappearing off your forecast. There's always something else that comes along. And the thing that I try to catch is when that happens, because nowadays my team, especially the sales side, I've really empowered to say, like, if you've got a bad feeling about those people, just they go down the no-roage, which is, we have a whole set of pathways that we go down question-wise, that sort of help clients to decide that maybe we aren't the right builder for them. And I've really empowered our salespeople to be happy to do that and know that I'm not going to chul-mouth over it, because the number of times you ignore that little voice in your head, you then have to put up with that person for two or three years. And if they don't like you and trust you at the start, and I said, "The feeling ends up being mutual." And it's, I noticed that, like, as soon as you try to, as soon as you have a bad feeling about someone, you treat them differently, which can then result in them treating you differently, and it becomes a bad, a bad, really bad look, like this morning. We went for that plaque on the house, and the site manager was off to another site, and he said to me, "Oh," because I said, "How's the client going on that job?" Because we were putting the frames up. He said, "I'm so happy." He's like writing notes on the stud work, saying, "You know, thanks, and this looks great, and you've done a great job." Like, that's the type of client we really want to have. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely trusty gut. We had a horrible kind of build years ago that you always, always look, if something's not right, always look within to be like, "What could have I done different, "what could we have done different as a business?" But I did finish that and got out of it, and it was, I said to my brother, a business partner and my wife at the time, I was like, "Just if I ever have a thought down the track, just tell me, trust my gut." What's my gut telling me? And because generally, you kind of know how you feel, and what the vibe's going to be within. So, Jackson, go back to your building journey. Like, so you've 10 years ago, you've 10 years in. What was some goals and some things you've done along the way with building your team? And, you know, how's that? It's always a work in progress, isn't it? But what's some things, mate, that you could pass on to the up and coming? The, I mean, the number one thing is planning. So, planning and accountability. So, we, I personally put a lot of my time into planning. Every week. And that planning time is planned throughout the year. We also have for every role in our business, they have what's called a default diary. And that default diary is like, in these slots within the week, you'll do these things. And a big chunk of that is planning. Like the site managers, Monday's through to a lunch is planning. Now, a lot of people go, "No, no, no, no, Monday. I've got to be on site." And I'm like, "No, no. Spend the morning planning." The waste of time going to site on Monday. And, but at least until lunch time. And then the same thing occurs on Fridays. And the accountability part is we have really clear KPIs in the business for all of the roles. And they're visual to everyone. And they get brought up at the beginning of every meeting. So, obviously the meetings, like a construction meeting, we do with the construction KPIs and the individual KPIs of the site managers. Which also means that they can see if one of their workmates is slipping or doing really well. And same for all of the other teams. And all of that is on a pin with like, "I've had a plan for where the business would be now 10 years ago." And that has come from my old man. He's like, "He's like X military before he did the minor 10 things." So, he was like, "You know, if you're not planning, you're going to fail." And we've managed to run a bit ahead of my plan in some areas. And in other areas we're a bit behind. But without the clear plan, you then don't have anything to hold yourself accountable to. So, once I have a plan, I then can go, "Okay, the goal for this quarter is we're going to do X, Y and Z." And we're going to produce this content or we're going to improve these systems. We're going to get the business to a point where we can hire this person or we can have a rewrite of a few of the roles and just move the org chart around a bit. Whatever it is, that then becomes shared with everyone. Which also holds me accountable. Because nothing's easier than going, "I did all this planning." And I've got this list of things I'm going to achieve. And then you keep it to yourself. So, what I do is, as scary as it is sometimes, share the plan with the team. Which means that they hold me accountable to doing the things that I said I was going to do. Because it's a two-way straight. And I certainly meet the odd business owner where the accountability runs one way. And it's always a problem for them. And yeah, it's sometimes it's hard, but overall, yeah. So, between if you're planning and then finding ways to hold yourself and others accountable to the planning, you're always going to go forward really quickly. And the other one is having good mentoring. I've had a few different mentors over the years and or business coaches, depends how you want to describe it. The main one is you're paying for that time. And the ones that I've had that didn't hold me accountable and weren't willing to go, "Hey, you want a minute?" You said you were going to do this. What happened there? Those ones, they stood out really, really quickly to me. And then didn't last very long. So my last business coach, he's been with me for six years now. And yeah, he's an unpleasantly good person at holding me accountable. Which is why I still got the job. Because he gets just as much of me going, "Oh, just, sometimes you just wish you'd leave me alone." "Oh, you're paying me to." And I like you out, I know, and I appreciate it. I can do it when I'm not following you. Alright guys, that brings us to the end of part one of episode 45. If you want to find out more about building site head over to the website build. INSITEE.com.au. Over on the website you'll find links to previous podcast episodes, as well as links to our YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Catch you on the next one. We just need to say a massive thank you to our sponsors and supporters. Without them, build insight wouldn't be possible. So to Bowens, Circus Studio, One to Build, Goop Guys, Calorie Building and Backman Builders. Thank you very much, we look forward to seeing you again next week. Let's cue the disclaimer. I need to let you know that myself and the build insight team are in no way, shape or form qualified to give you personal or specific business advice. We strongly encourage you seek out the use of professionals for products, or when you are making personal or business decisions. Everything discussed during the build insight podcast is our own and the guest opinion and personal experience, and is of a general nature only. Catch you on the next one.