From Broke to Success. Justin Gill from Abode New Homes

From Broke to Success. Justin Gill from Abode New Homes (scroll down for video and podcast)

As part of our commitment to providing valuable resources to business professionals, I interviewed Justin Gill from Abode New Homes.

In the year 2000, Justin and his wife Karinda were on the brink of bankruptcy. This sent Justin into a deep depression, and he was bed ridden, unable to function properly for several weeks.

Justin and Karinda managed to claw their way back, paying all of their creditors and committing themselves to dramatically improving their business acumen, vowing to never allow themselves to be in that situation again.

I originally interviewed Justin in a Facebook Live interview, streamed in the SEMBA Business Facebook group.

Below is the transcript, a clip of the video and the podcast. Unfortunately, the original video was so pixelated that we are using a still photo instead.

 

Olivia:

Now, I hear that you back in 1996 you and your wife, Karinda, just had $1,000 to your name and were living in a caravan. Would you like to basically explain your background, how things were then and how you’ve come to be where you are now. That’s a lot to put in there but if you can give us a bit of an explanation.

Justin:

I’ll make it as short as I can. I’m a carpenter joiner by trade. I was lucky enough to do my apprenticeship with a builder called Owen Connie Builders back in Victoria. We grew up in a town of 300 people. Always had an ambition when I finished my apprenticeship was to travel round Australia and I had a couple of friends that had moved up here, up to Darwin so I come up for a few months and enjoyed it then moved back but part of that, my future wife at the time had a son, my stepson Jacob and unfortunately when we decided that we wanted to move up here we had the challenge of his father hit us up with court papers to stop us from leaving the state.

Justin:

That was our first bit of a challenge that we had. What money we had saved up went into to going through the court process and finding luckily enough that we were able to have that judgment for us so we could actually move up. We basically come up with nothing. We saved up to buy the caravan and what we had left was only $1,000 for us to travel up. That was back in ’96. We come up, we lived in the caravan for 12 months and was fantastic, some of the greatest times, lived in a caravan park believe it or not. We had to expand and get out of that as we needed a bit more room and from there we moved on and … I got involved with some carpentry, other carpenters up here, we established out business and had a contract and team of 12 guys. We did some renovation work and we started building a new home as well once we got on it.

When the GST came in there was a big influx of work leading up to the GST because everything was going to cost 10% more. So we had a large amount of work then all of a sudden from July onwards after the GST came in in 2000 it just dropped off to nothing. As I mentioned, I’d fallen into business, I was a tradesman by trade, but had no business sense at all.  So we had one account which we ran the house account and the personal account, everything was all, and work was all run out one account.  And not having much of an understanding of business that caught us into a cash flow position. It was a difficult time, it was a terrible time. As I mentioned, I went into a depression so basically in two to three weeks couldn’t get out of back. I was lucky enough to have a really strong wife which I got us through that. We went broke, we didn’t go bankrupt, we were lucky, we were right on the edge but we were able to renegotiate with everybody and get everyone paid out.

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Justin:

It took some time to get through there but we eventually got everyone paid out. It was a learning lesson that at the time was terrible but I look back on it now and think it was the best thing that ever happened for us getting into business and understanding business because you never want to go back there again so you do everything you can to better yourself, position yourself so that whole situation doesn’t happen. That’s a very quick run down of that. From there we were, a couple of years afterwards we got back on our feet, we were invited to set up a franchise, a building company franchise here in Darwin, we got that up and going and we set up a strategy where …

Olivia:

Can I just jump in to clarify? There was an established franchise that you were invited to take on one branch of,  was it?  To set up one of?

Justin:

Yes, there was a franchise out of Brisbane and they wanted to set up in Darwin so we were invited to set the branch up as a franchisee, take on the franchise from them. That gave us a real confidence boost even though the model itself didn’t work for us because it was very restrictive because of our location. However, it gave us a confidence boost and we really had a good go at it but what we learnt in between those times, we did a huge amount of reading on professional development, personal development, investments, that type of thing so we set up a strategy where one in every six homes we built we built one for ourself as an investment property and from there we got a good flow on happening and we just invested back in the business and back in the investments as well. That was sort of where it got us to where we are now.

In 2008 we moved away from franchise model and expanded into Abode New Homes and that grew into a Abode Property Management and another five other companies as well that we have as a part of the group now that all consist in the growth where we are. That’s a very quick run down without going into too much detail.

Olivia:

The one in six, that’s a bit of a safety buffer for you and builds your wealth but it sounds like, as we have seen, life can throw you some curve balls.  So is that part of the strategy of making sure you’re safe from those type of things?

Justin:

It is yeah. We never wanted to be a position again where we were back in 2000. Also, not just that, with having staff on and suppliers, we always wanted to be in position, set ourselves up so should there be another downturn or a challenge we could always have assets there that we could then on-sell and make sure we paid everyone out. All going well we hope we never have to go there, but it’s a strategy early on that we took on board where, should something bad every happen again we are in a position where we can cover ourselves.  And as you mentioned, those curve balls.  We’ve got curve balls every week, every month. There’s always something coming at you that you’ve got to tackle and deal with in business but you just don’t know what’s around the corner.

Olivia:

No. Apparently one of those curve balls was, you got a phone call once about your office being on fire, you want to tell us a bit about what happened there?

Justin:

Yeah, it was, we had, it was about 3:00am in the morning and the phone rang and it’s always a strange time to get a phone call and it was the police and they’d rang up and said we don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but your office is on fire and we need you to come down to the premises. If you’ve ever had that sick stress feeling instantly, that’s what it was.  So it was probably in one sense the quickest trip we’ve ever gone to the office at 3:00AM but it was also the longest one as well. My wife was in the fetal position in front of the car because everything we had and worked for was all there, was all part of the office and the whole time we’re thinking, we’ve got 30 clients on site getting their homes constructed which, their livelihood is in our hands, what can we do?  What can we recover?

Lucky enough, we had to break through, it was all cornered off and the fire brigade were there and the police and they wouldn’t let us in, actually had to sneak around and break in. I found it unusual because the office lights were still on so I got down there and was lucky enough I realized it was actually the office next door, the shed next door that was on fire, not ours.  So that was, as much as it was a shock, it was also a relief as well. It gave us a real learning lesson, at that time we had everything, all our data, all information, everything to do with our business was all in that one location.  And that previous day, that afternoon before the fire, we’d actually had a new server put in which had all our backups on it and all our backups were sitting on top of that server, they weren’t taken home.

Olivia:

Murphy’s law. Nearly.

Justin:

Yeah, so that was once again another one of those learning lessons where you go okay, what do we need to do should something like this happen again, how do we tackle it?  So from there we actually investigated the Cloud services and Cloud backups and took everything off premises purely for security reasons because nowadays your data is the most important thing you can have.

Olivia:

How did you go about just surviving that time from being broke and just having to still had bills to pay, still had to buy your groceries and pay your electricity, how did you manage? What were you living on back then?

Justin:

Not much.  Not much at all. On Melbourne Cup day we didn’t even have $5 to put on the Melbourne cup and that was a reality, we had nothing there. We had money owed to us from a client which was just enough to get us through those positions plus we renegotiated with everyone to work paying things off over a 12 month period and by doing that was then able to get back on our feet and negotiate. The biggest thing was communication. I went into a hole and stopped communicating for about three to four, actually probably five weeks which made it worse in one sense because every phone call was just like someone chasing information. Once again as I said before, my wife was very strong in the situation and she then took over and went and negotiated and communicated and spoke to all those guys. The biggest thing was that communication, we had to go, we’re in trouble here, we can see a light that we can get out of, however it’s going to take time and that approach got us through without being taken to court by suppliers or contractors. We paid those debts back.

Olivia:

That’s an incredible achievement. If that’s all you did that would have been pretty impressive but to have gone from there to even succeeding to where you are now, that’s really something. How did you go about, can you tell me a bit more about how you went about educating yourself, you said you got books, you read up, did you get any coaching, how did you go from not really having that business sense to being where you are now?

Justin:

Look, definitely education, a lot of reading. Because we’d gone through that position and we never want to go back there again it was a case of okay, what do we need to do to educate ourselves and learn so we don’t go back there. We did a lot of reading, we changed our mindset, we took a lot of business books and took the learnings out of those from others and applied them to ourselves. I’d always had an interest in investment properties and being in the building industry as well that interest was there. I’d had an investment property previously that I’d bought when I was young, my father had investment properties as well so I had that taste for it and we recognized then that by being able to leverage off our building background that we could actually gain more equity and then progress onto the next one and the next one.

We did a lot of investment property learning books, we went to a lot of seminars, seminars locally, interstate and even overseas.  And the more we learnt, the more we applied, the more traction we got with moving on and by doing that, as I said, having a building company we looked at okay, most people when they build a new investment property they’re paying a builder a profit margin on top of that as well.  We went well, we are a building company so the profit margins can actually be applied back into our areas and leverage off the business to do that. That accelerated the whole process as well.

Olivia:

Sounds like it would have been a missed opportunity if you didn’t. If other people are doing that to make money, to build and resell you should make the most of that yourself and the fact that you’ve got that one in six gives you that consistent approach.

Justin:

Totally. For us it worked really well in a market that was rising so we hit it really hard, both myself and Karinda sat down and we put the strategy together.  What have we got to lose?  We’re young enough to, we’re learning so let’s hit up really hard. We were really aggressive with it and fortunately enough that aggression did pay off and put us in a secure position.  But education.  It doesn’t matter what you do, educate and educate and educate.  Learn is the biggest thing that we can do. I went overseas last year to America to learn more about public speaking and about presentations all relative to do with our business, so we do a lot of presentations now, which five months ago wouldn’t have.  That’s bought in income or more income than what we would have previously and more sales so it’s always just learning and trying to better yourself.

Olivia:

Actually another theme I’m getting here you’re saying a lot we, we, we.  You obviously, you and Karinda are a real team by the sounds of it. As you’ve done all this learning and this reading have you gone and chatted together about, “How do we implement these things that we’ve learnt?  What’s the best strategy?” You sound like you really work together as a team, can you tell me a bit about that?

Justin:

Totally, I’ll be honest, Karinda is the brains behind the business.  Her business mind is very, she has a very strong business mind.  I have a very strong trade background so between us, I look after the construction and a bit of a marketing, she looks after the business and the marketing. We have a bit of a gel in the middle in a few areas and we bounce off each other a lot so there’ll be often days where we get home, we’ve been in the office all day and we get home and go how was your day because we haven’t really spoken to each other, she’s doing her thing, I’m doing mine but it works well. It is a we, it’s a team effort and we do bounce off each other across different sections. We’ve both got our strengths and weaknesses and I’m very lucky to have her, one as a wife but also a business partner as well.

Olivia:

Okay, maybe I’ll have to chat to her as well sometime.

Justin:

You’d be very impressed. She just recently won the Northern Territory 2017 Telstra Business Woman of the Year last year and entrepreneur of the year.

Olivia:

Yeah, congratulations.

Justin:

She’s working, sorry.

Olivia:

Yes, congratulation to Karinda on that. Also, you guys have won every year for the last nine years, is it?  You’ve won Darwin’s top building award. Can you tell us what that is all about? You’ve won an HIA award, you do very well in the awards area.

Justin:

Yeah, so the Housing Industry Association has building awards each year and since its inception of the professional builder we’ve won that every year. We won the small professional builder for the eight years, we then took medium professional builder last year and we’re lucky enough to take it the Australian professional small builder last year through the HIA so we took the national one, won the national award last year as well and for us it was always a goal but when the awards first came on and we won the first one we were ecstatic about it but we also always went well, wouldn’t it be great to win the national one so in the back of our mind with the business it’s always been about what do you need to do to the business to make it better to win on a national level and focusing on things nationally. That’s gone also, we’re about to launch our Abode New Homes franchise into the Northern Queensland and right across Australia.

The last five years everything we’ve done in the business has always been about can we duplicate this on a national level?  Can we put this in our franchise model?  And by changing that thought process to be thinking that way, it’s actually improved our business far more than what it would be if we’re looking on a local level. So, yeah, we’ve been pretty lucky.

Olivia:

Actually what you also said about how you work with Karinda reminded me of something I’ve heard before that another business person said is if you’re in a partnership with someone it’s ideal if you have different strengths, that they’re not the same as you so it actually sounds like you have that situation happening, you work very well together, you compliment each other.

Justin:

We do, we do and that point you made would have been my wife or another staff member, finding other members with other strengths in their department is a really big benefit, we often choose people that we can relate to when we’re employing but it’s not always the best, you really want to find people that have strengths outside of yours to compliment that in the business without a doubt.

Olivia:

Okay, interesting. On that, talking about staff, do you have any thoughts on how to handle staff, how to get the best out of them? Do you have any particular approach you take in that area?

Justin:

Look, staffing is, I’d say it’s not a very, very strong point of mine however we’re continually learning. When I say that is I don’t look at myself as being a good manager however Karinda’s a great manager and a great communicator with the staff. Once again, good points and bad points but communication’s the biggest key. We have a weekly meeting for the team and we also meet with each department of the business weekly so every Tuesday we have a lunch together in the conference room, every staff member gives a quick 30 second or minute update on what they’re doing in their area and what gaps they see the company’s got and what they can actually bring forward to make better. Having that communication with the whole group and then we also have every fortnight a one on one for half an hour with each staff member which is almost like a mini review but it’s just a very quick one on one.

By doing that actually with the communication actually opens up any gaps. I’m not sure whether you’ve had it before but when you’re employing people and you’re busy sometimes you can only catch up for every six months, small things stew on employee and small things stew on the employer and you have that regroup and everyone lets off the steam and everybody walks out and feels better or it falls apart and someone leaves. We found by doing the fortnightly quick catch ups it’s kept that communication on such a better level and that stewing and frustration is kept to a very minimum because it’s not left over time. That’s probably one of the things that we’ve found works really well but as I say I don’t look at myself as being a great manager.

Olivia:

If you surround yourself with the right people or in your case also marry the right person…but in the businesses you surround yourself with the people that have the skills and the strengths to compliment yours, not to be the same as yours.

Justin:

Totally, yeah absolutely. We’ve got some great staff which cover off different areas which they’re really good at their area which I’m not and Karinda’s not but they are so yeah, it’s a compliment.

Olivia:

That is the biggest thing you would say that you have learnt over all these years with business?

Justin:

In business? Networking is one of them, get out there and meet as many people as you can in business and realize that business is lonely and it’s great when you talk to other business owners and bounce off them, you find you’ve got the same challenges a lot of the time. I find networking is really great because one, it creates more business, you get to know more in the same level as you are. I think as an entrepreneur and business person we do think on a different level and your heart and soul’s in it, it’s all about survival. I look at our business, everything we do is about survival where sometimes people that are on wages they can knock off at five and they don’t have to think any further. That’s not all but sometimes. I try network as much as I can in industry groups and communicate with them as much as I can as well. Continually always learning, always looking for the new, I won’t say shiny object but the new technology, the new way of doing things with business and really looking at that and taking it on.

We are very technology focused and always looking at the new way of doing stuff where we can to make the job easier and make our business better.

Olivia:

So you keep up and in fact stay ahead of the game that way.

Justin:

Yeah, I believe we do, absolutely.

Olivia:

Networking for you gives you both leads, you actually get business from it as well as just being able to have someone on your level to be able to not be alone in the problems that you face and that you’ll be able to have people that understand and that you discuss your issues with so you get both things out of it.

Justin:

You do and find talking to other businesses that they’re in the same, a lot of them are in the same boat where it is, it’s always hard to benchmark yourself or benchmark your business against other businesses in your industry and I am always questioning are we doing okay, are we above or are we below and what can we do better. Our industry’s really funny, it’s a real, there’s a lot of help between builders in our industry, I find it’s a very, excuse my language, a very bitchy industry and very close call, there’s not a lot of assistance or communication goes on between others. I find that to be quite a lonely area being such.

Olivia:

Tell me about what’s happening now, you’re starting a franchise model for your business.  Is that commenced now?  If people are interested they can look at becoming a franchisee of Abode New Homes?

Justin:

Yes, we’re very close to launching into Cannes shortly. We’ve actually been working on this model for four to five years and we’re hoping to have released it two years ago and in hindsight it didn’t happen and it was good it didn’t happen because we weren’t ready but now with everything’s that’s gone on and we’re fully systemized, everything’s in place to duplicate our life learnings of business into help others. We’ve got to a point in our business where we are successful with it, we’ve learned a hell of a lot along the way, we’ve made a huge amount of mistakes and always continually making mistakes but it’s, as I said before about our issue being lonely it’s really good to be able to give back and talk to others and I talk to a lot of guys that aren’t competing with us in renovations and contractors and hear their pain points and it’s like I’ve been there, I know exactly what you’re saying, we covered off by this and we did this and we did that to get over it.

Justin:

To see them implement that and then come back later, oh thanks for the help, it worked really well, I’ve now sorted this out. That’s for us is a real buzz and we now want to give back to other builders in our industry and part of that’s a franchise model to go right across Australia. We’re really excited about it, looking forward to it and it’s been long planning and coming very shortly.

Olivia:

I heard that you focus on making sure that you stay in the right mindset, do you want to tell me a bit about how you find that important and what you do to make sure that you stay in the right mindset to do well?

Justin:

Yeah, mindset’s fluffy I guess you could say, I talked about being in the right mindset, it’s so important. I’ve been through the phases where I’ve had depression, I’ve been under massive stress. I’ve had highs.  I’ve had lows and I’ve found to be able to keep moving forward it is really feeding your mind with positivity and looking at the good at everything rather than looking at the bad. I’ve gone through some really negative periods in the past where everything I look at it is negative and yeah, that person’s not doing a good job and rather than tap them on the back for saying well done for the good job they did I’d be the opposite way. I work really hard now on being positive and feeding positivity, looking at how you can improve what you do and by doing that, keeping your mindset positive and moving forward with that it’s actually assisted us in growth.

I know when we’ve gone through stages of not doing it I’ve seen the business plateau but then when you come in with the right mindset and you’re encouraging your team and you’re really building the team where you can everyone benefits from it. You can have one person in the team coming in in a shitty mood and everyone feels it and as a boss and a manager and an owner I come in like that it’s worse by three times, if the boss is cranky that really drags the team down so it’s really important to be positive and uplifting. Every morning on the way to work I’ve got something positive going on whether it be a podcast or a video or something like that just to give me a positive start to the day and I find by doing that everything flows into a better a day and productivity is better in the team but you still work at it.

Olivia:

So that’s your ritual, to play something in the car on the way to work. What do you recommend, what do you like listening to?

Justin:

I’ll just do a Google search, positive affirmation or positive videos, there’s millions of them out there and I just continually, I follow a few different people, business people that are very, they put out a lot of positive content and just be listening to that can give you that spark for the day and give you good ideas as well to implement but that’s my morning ritual on the way to work, I’ve just got something going, I don’t listen to radio, we don’t watch news, we sort of shut all that because I find any news once you analyze it it’s really all negative, there’s not a lot of good so I’d rather fill my world with positivity than watch the negative side.

Olivia:

For sure. What’s your view on work life balance? What does that mean, is there such a thing?

Justin:

Yes and no. I tried to, but I’ve got a long way to go. It’s one of those things, I tend to try and be home at 5.00pm, 5.30-6.00pm,  where I can to spend time with the kids, it doesn’t always happen when you’re running a business, there’s priorities of what you must do and mustn’t do. I do try and balance that.  We do tend to go away on a lot of holidays where we can for three or four days or a week here and there, three or four weeks if we need to. I’m lucky that our business is systemized that I can go away and just monitor what’s happening from out of the office because we’re very mobilized. For instance we were in New Zealand a couple of years ago, went away for five weeks and we were traveling from the south arms in north Ireland in a camper van and I was working away while Karinda was driving and that’s an example of when I just monitored what was going on and what’s happening and being able to keep things ticking.

By being able to do that I do get a bit more of a break and get to spend more time with the kids. Once again, it’s a battle you’ve just got to, you’ve got to make the time and if you don’t sometimes business can take over. It’s probably worse for me because I love my business, love what we do, well our business and so I can get, I won’t say trapped, but I tend to spend more time here than I should because I enjoy it.

Olivia:

I did hear someone say one that maybe instead of saying work life balance we could say work life harmony, because sometimes if you’re really enjoying your business it’s not necessarily all bad to spend a fair bit of time there.  As long as you still get your family time as well I guess somehow. That’s the challenge.

Justin:

I’m a slave to the business because I choose to be, because I enjoy it and I’m a slave because the time whereabout a normal daily hours I suppose which is productivity and I really look forward to getting in super early and spending time working on the business and finding ways to improve it and the same after hours, before and after is where I really work on the business more than during the day, during the day is running it. That’s the exciting part of me is that working on it.

Olivia:

Before we wrap up is there anything that you’d like to share with our SEMBA viewers and listeners?

Justin:

Look, we’ve covered a lot today but probably the thing I’d, we’ve probably already repeated it once before but it is just continually educating yourself and looking at better ways, more and better ways of doing business and networking. I find for me and I don’t know whether it’s my personality or not, but networking is really, really valuable, both in a business sense but also as a personal side and being able to relate to others in business. That’s the two things and never give up. We set high visions and high goals and some of them are extraordinary. Ten years ago if you said we’d run a franchise I would have gone that’s a dream now we’re literally four weeks away from launching and it’s because we set some really high goals there, let’s go right across Australia, wouldn’t it be great. Having that in the vision and working towards it it’s created it so yeah, set the goals and never give up and just keep communicating, networking out there.

Olivia:

I think you and Karinda should be very proud of yourselves.  You’ve come back from some big setbacks and like I said earlier, just being able to pay back your creditors back in 2000 I think you said it was, that in itself is a huge deal.  But you’ve gone from there to where you are now, that’s, and the fact that you both work so well together and compliment each other and that you’re now at the stage where you can help others, that’s massive so I think you should be very proud.

Justin:

Thank you.

Olivia:

Thank you for joining me today. If people want to find out more about what you have to offer or if there’s any builders watching or listening that are interested in the franchise option, how can they reach you?

Justin:

On our website at www.newabode.com.au there’s as tab on there for franchise if anyone is interested or even mentoring as well where part of the franchising is we’re setting up an online mentorship for trade businesses which will become part of a training thing as well so because of my background of being a tradie and gone through all those steps in the contract doing what we’re doing now and dealing with tradies every day our business is built on the back of tradesmen on the site so we manage internally but our trades run everything on site. We’re dealing with trades every day and feeling their hardship as well so yeah, there’s a tab there for franchising or even inquiry on that and by all means if there’s an interest there we’re more than happy to help you out. It’s newabode.com.au

Olivia:

Okay, I guess we’ll leave it there. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you very much Justin.

Justin:

Thank you, thanks for the opportunity and it’s great to meet you and hope it’s been of some value to you.

Olivia:

Thanks, see you later.

Justin:

Thanks, see you later, thank you.

Olivia:

Bye.

Justin:

Bye.

 

 

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