Interview with Andreas Becker - “The Builders Coach”

I'm Graham McGregor, and it's my great pleasure today to be talking with specialist business coach Andreas Becker. 

Welcome, Andreas. 
Andreas: Thank you, Graham. I'm pleased to be here with you. 


Graham: Before we start, Andreas, can you give our audience a quick overview of your business background? 


Andreas: Yes. Thank you, Graham. I am a business coach, and I help builders to do better in their business.

 Prior to that, actually, I'm an engineer by trade, so I know nothing about how to build houses or that type of thing. I do, obviously, handyman stuff that's. That doesn't really count, but that actually works in my favor because I don't get stuck in the nitty gritty of things. 

I've been a business owner myself and learned the hard lessons, learned how tough it can be. 

And actually how I became a business coach is I used a business coach in one of my businesses that I was really struggling with. 

And this guy helped me so much in predominantly in thinking differently. And I had a mega turnaround in myself. 


And then obviously that reflected in the business as well, that I could exit that business.


And when I now had some time and some money, I thought, what am I going to do? 


And I thought, this how this guy helped me. I’d like to help other business owners in the same way. 


And I became a business coach using his principles and teachings and whatever. And I've been doing that for 23 years now and have specialized in the building trade in the last. Probably last 10 years. That gives you a little bit of a snapshot. 


Graham: Fantastic. And what made you decide to specialize in business coaching for builders? 

Andreas: Yes, look, amongst all the clients that I had, I also had some builders, and I found that many of them are good builders doing good work, producing good products, but they were not so good in business. 


That's not their thing. That's why they, you know, they leave school early, they go into a trade, they learn how to build houses, and then all of a sudden, they become a business owner. 


Right. They choose to become a business owner, and then they are struggling with that. And I felt that I could make a big impact with relatively small amounts of work, could create a really good impact. 


And I really love that. I like the people as well. You know, they're hardworking, good folks. Just a niche that I sort of fell into and developed in time and became really good at. 


Graham: What are some common mistakes you see these builders make that makes their business not as good as it could be?


Andreas: Well, they are a builder. Many builders start off being hands on, you know, hitting in nails and that kind of thing. And they become good at that. And they think they, the more they do of that, the better their business will become. 


But that is not the key.. So they just need to think as a business person, not as a builder. Right. 


They just happen to be owning a building business. 


Graham: Okay, so what are some of the key results that you help business builders get by using your services? Like what are the outcomes they're looking for? 


Andreas: Look, they are vast from typically in the beginning, one of the most common ones is creating a good income. 


You know, working hard and making good money is essential. 


If you haven't got the moneythere's no point in working on systems and team building and all that kind of stuff. 


The business needs to make good money. That's the essential thing. I've seen many good businesses fail. They had good things in place, but they were just not making money. 


So that's the first area, really focus on an income. 


And then the second part is freedom for the business owner to choose what they want to do. 


They can still do the stuff that they love, which is building and working on their building business, but also have time for themselves, you know, to take their family on a holiday and have some freedom. 


You know, I like my clients to have at least three holidays a year, for example. 


Graham: Right. So you want your builders to basically have a really good income. So a good income for a builder is like, it's at least six figures. I'm presuming, is it $100,000, $200,000 somewhere? 


Andreas: No, no, look, that's the turnover. They often have huge turnover. 


The profit is what matters, what stays behind. 


Typically a builder wants to make a really good income of. 


This is what they get paid for the work that they do. Say between $100,000 and $200,000. 


But you could work for anyone else as well for that type of money. In addition to that, you want to have profit money left over to invest or use for some new ventures type of thing. 


You know, if a builder would in addition to that, make 200 grand to after they've been paid themselves 200 grand, 300, 4, 500, I would say that's a good outcome. 


Graham: Kind of what you help your builders achieve. And I remember interviewing some of your clients for you a few years ago and they said things like “my turnover's doubled and tripled, or my profits doubled and tripled. I'm working less hours now. I'm having three week, four week, five week holidays a year and life's a lot better than it was before they started using your services.


 So what are some of the key things you get your builder clients to do to start making really good money and start having freedom? 


What are some of the things you get them to do? 


Andreas: Well, that's interesting. 


One of the first things is talking of making money is to know your numbers. 


You know, you have to have a very simple way of looking at your numbers and understanding them. 


Most of the stuff that they get presented with, say from an accountant or if they look at their own Xero type of thing, it's too complicated. 


So we simplify that down, look at the stuff that really matters. 


And it varies a little bit. You know, it's not one thing that I can say, you just look at this one figure. 


There are a number of things to look at and that's to be figured out with each client. 


But one thing that I do with everyone is actually create a special bank account which we call the wealth account. 


And we put a percentage of revenue that comes into the business into this wealth account. 


We typically start somewhere say 3%, and we want to ideally get about 10% of revenue into a special bank account, which is called the wealth account.


Let’s say the business turns over 100 grand per month, then we would put three grand into this wealth account. And we put that aside. 


That is what we want to have in addition to being paid, right? 


This is our money that we use to buy an asset at some point, maybe an investment property or build a spec house and being able to pay that without massive loans, that kind of thing. 


And that is amazing, really rewarding for people to all of a sudden see the rewards for working hard to accumulate, right? 


And if you do a million dollars in a year's time if you take out 10%, you would have a hundred grand there. That you can now invest. 


Right. And I have not met one builder that has actually done anything like that and you know, and have that money available to invest. 


Graham: And that's what you've helped a lot of your clients to be able to put aside. Not, first of all, get paid a good income, which is say $100,000 or more just for being paid for doing the work. But then they're accumulating money in their wealth account as well, which could be a minimum of 3% of their turnover. 


So on a million dollar turnover a year, which is pretty easy for a builder to do, obviously that's $30,000 they've got in the bank at the end of the year, which they can then use to grow and modify other assets as well. 


Andreas: You know, I had one of my clients, we've been doing this for say, six months. The guy had 70 grand there in his account. Very pleased. You know, he was so chuffed. He never had that kind of cash sitting there for him to invest. And then I met him again a week later and he was very angry and all upset. You know, I could see he was not happy. Not happy. 


And I asked him, what's going on? He said his wealth account is empty. I said, wow, what happened? And he said he had this unexpected tax account that the accountant somehow didn't deal with properly and he now had to tap into this wealth account and to pay his taxes off. And all his money went onto this instant payment that he had to make. 


Andreas: I told him how, you know, we reviewed that and said how lucky he was to have that money there because if he hadn't had that money, he'd be in serious trouble. 


He probably would have had to sell his house. And once he realized how lucky he actually was that he did what he did, he. And obviously we started this whole thing again and six months later he was back at that level, you know. 


Yeah, it's a, it's really important to have have cash in your business that you can potentially use as working capital, but you also want money set aside, which you can always tap into if you absolutely have to. 


And that in the beginning that often happens because they never knew their numbers properly. 


Graham: So that's a really good bit of advice to have to most people in business. Just take a percentage of your gross turnover, whatever that is it might start at 1% and put that aside every month into a wealth account and then that will grow and multiply. 


Andreas: Why else would you be in business if you can't do that? You might as well work for someone else. You know, you get holiday pay, you get a cell phone in the car and you know, sick leave paid. You might as well just work for someone else. 


If you don't do that, you know, you have to get some benefitsfrom being your own business owner. 


Graham: Exactly. So that's one of the first things you do in terms of changing their financial situation. 


What are some other things you get the builders to do to, you know, turn their business around, as it were? 


Andreas: Well, it is the difference between being the jack of all trades and being a specialist. 


That's my key thing. 


You know, once we get the basics sorted, then we focus on that. 


And, you know, the jack of all trades has only one thing that they can compete on and that's price. 


And in addition to that, because you do so many different things, firstly you're competing on price. It means you get a lower price than you could potentially get elsewhere. 


And then it is very difficult to become efficient because you're doing so many different things. 


Each time you have, there's a learning curve and you. If, and therefore it takes much longer than it would take someone that specializes in something. 

:
So that's where what I do is I take them from being the jack of all trades into a specialist, into a category where they can be seen as the expert and command a premium price. 


And people want to work with the expert. 


That's a thing that happens everywhere in the world. Everything is nowadays becoming specialized because the world is getting more and more complicated. 


And unless you specialize in something, you get overwhelmed, you will become inefficient, you make low profits, you're competing on price and it's a spiral downwards. 


So what people tend to do, they become specialists. 


And you can see that in the hospitality food nowadays you don't go to a place that offers hamburgers and gourmet meals and all that kind of stuff. 


You go to a place that just does hamburgers or just does ribs or whatever, you know, and those places are very efficient and very profitable. 


The ones that do everything, very difficult to market, very difficult to make good profit, very difficult to become efficient. 


I take them out of that. 


Graham: So in terms of that. So back to the builders for a moment. 


A builder obviously can do a lot of things like a builder build you a home. They could specialize in renovations, they could specialize in reclads of a home. There's a hundred areas they could actually potentially work in. 


And what you're saying is a lot of builders tend to do a bit of everything, a bit of this and a bit of that. 


So they're jack of all trades, they're not making any money, they're competing on price, they're not seen as an expert and that's the problem. 


But as you turn around and say, well look, you're particularly good at doing deck or bedroom extensions or whatever it happens to be, I think we should focus what you do on more on that part of the building trade if you like, and you can become an expert on xyz. 


So what are some of the areas that some of your builders have become experts at thanks to your help? 


Andreas:For example, you could become a specialist in an area and build that type of houses in an area. Right. 


So there could be a price category of say between the, say between half a million and 750 grand. 


You're building those type of houses and then you could have a particular plan that you found to be very popular and you could build, say initially you build a spec house to prove the concept right and sell it while it's being built or before it's being built off the plane. 


And then while it's under construction, you start marketing that type of house and then people come look at it and it's a really good, and it's got a fixed price, great features, a lot of add ons that people can add on if they want to.


And you can sell that relatively easy and you know, every dollar that you're going to make out of that property, that type of build and you do that in a particular area in a subdivision, say in Lincoln, here in Christchurch and you focus. 


And so then when people come to that area, because that's what people do, they look, drive around, look around, they start seeing your signs, you know, your signage type of thing and they start calling you and because you're obviously the expert in that area. 


So it's actually relatively easy to become an expert in an area. 

Or I've got a guy that is an expert in renovation here in the Kashmir area in Christchurch and he just owns this territory, in a way, you know, if you want a renovation guy. 


And when he built somewhere in this area, you see him building there because there's all the signage. He's got flags up, and he does marketing in that area, he owns that area and he owns the renovation market. 


And there are so many different ideas and things that you could do. 


So, for example, and something I've been talking about a builder recently, which he may or may not actually do, is to become a specialist in helping people to convert their home to take on Airbnb guests, right? 


So you might have a big house, kids have left your home, and you think, well, could I do that? Right. 


You call this expert and he would look at your house and say, well, you could modify this, convert this garage into a studio unit, and you've got parking there and so on. All this kind of stuff, that's what people need. 


And, and you have a separate bathroom and all that kind of stuff. And then obviously, because he's an expert in converting homes for Airbnb, who would you use? Why would you use anyone else? 


Graham: Right, exactly. So. And there's dozens and dozens of ways that a builder could position themselves as an expert on something, whether it's by area or what they do or how they do it. 


That makes perfect sense. So you position yourself as an expert, as a builder, and you talked quite a bit in this interview so far about becoming efficient. That's obviously something you help your builders do a lot. 


Andreas: Well, the more specialized you are, the automatically you become more efficient. If you keep doing one thing and keep doing that again, like this guy was telling you about the houses that he builds between $500,000 and $750,000. 


He knows that price range intimately. He knows exactly how everything, what it costs, all the complications that he sorted those things out. 


So he can then out contract, for example, the building, the actual contract building, rather than him hiring a team and stuff like that, because. 


And that's what the big franchises do. They have that sorted. They, they're very efficient in what they do. They typically do that type of thing. They do it really well. And they know before the house is even being built, they know to the dollar how much money they're going to make. 


Graham: Back to what you were saying before, which is knowing your numbers. 


Andreas: Yes, yes. And you see the build. You know, most builders that I meet, they don't like that idea at first. 


They think, well, now I'm going to be doing the same thing again and again. And yeah, I'll get more efficient, but I'm not going to enjoy doing that. 


I say, well, you are not going to do that. You know, we're going to get you off the tools. 


You're going to fall in love with your business. And that is a transition that builders have to make. They have to transition from being the technician on the tools to becoming the business owner. 


Andreas: And once you do, obviously you do completely different things, but you still use your knowledge, you know, to go on site and check that the site is properly done, solve problems, train your team, hire the right people that have the right knowledge. 


All that kind of stuff is extremely useful that you have that knowledge, but you're not going to do that. 


You're not going to hit the nails unless you absolutely have to. 


Maybe build your own holiday home or something like that. Sure, go for it. That's. That's now. You've got the time now and the money. 


You can do fun stuff, but that's fun. It's not your business. Your business is falling in love with the business and enjoying making deals, making connections, finding opportunities, you know. 

Graham: So a lot of what you're saying with these builders that you're working with, and I think it's quite applicable with most business owners, you're getting them, first of all to think differently about their business rather than just as a business where they go and do stuff. 


They're creating a business which kind of runs efficiently, like you said, but it's also fun to own and actually and work in, if they choose to work in it. 


Andreas: Yeah. I'll tell you what, if you have a business that hums and makes money and you've got teams out there doing work and you visit them, it becomes extremely rewarding and enjoyable. 


Whereas actually it's in the end, I've not met one of my clients that then turned around and said, I'd rather be on the tools again. 


Graham: You know, you've all said they really enjoy the new position that you help them create. 


Andreas: Yeah, it takes a little bit of time, a little bit of thinking, but once you get there, it's like you're not looking back. 


Graham:
Tell me, just as a comment here, how long does it take between X and Y, roughly, for a builder to turn around their business? 


So just from being on the tools to like having a business that works efficiently and then creating all these things.


Are we looking at 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months? So just a rough ballpark figure. 


Andreas: I would say a good start is about 12 months. 


It is a transition you know, because there's often quite a lot of basic things that need to be sorted in a business and then to really nail it is probably a three to five year journey. 


You know, some of it the builder can just continue once I've done my work with them, they continue on their journey until they, you know, it's kind of never ending actually because in the end they're going to do ongoing developments of new things. 

Graham: Okay, so I think it's really important that you brought up that point because it takes time to create something really good. 


It's not going to happen in a week or a month or two months. 


But that being said, you're still going to get some good results within the first few months with things like your wealth account and a few other things that you set up. 


You'll see progress, obviously. But it really important that you give yourself time to make these changes. At least a year. 


Andreas: Look, when you look at a successful business that has maybe become a franchise and it looks amazing from the outside and it is an amazing business, you know, it's a great model that they have and you look how long it took them to do it. 


It's probably 10 to 20 years to get to that point. 


And they have done the hard yards, they tried this, they failed. 


They tried this at half worked and then they got distracted and done that. They're back on track on this and try that out and things change and you

lose focus and get distracted. 


My job is to speed that thing up. To do what you would normally do in 10 to 20 years, we can maybe do in three to five years. 


And that's a huge benefit, you know. 


And you learn from mistakes. 


I've made mistakes my clients have made that I've learned of, you know, those type of things and then prevent from doing that again, you know. 


And you can do something that would take you on your own maybe like a month to do. You can actually do this maybe in two hours, for example, creating an amazing guarantee. 


I can do that with the client in two hours and we've got a nice guarantee that's market leading. There's no one else that has anything like it. Right. That makes you stand out. 

If you give that to tell a builder on his own saying, hey, I'd like you to create a guarantee that's better than anything out there, they would probably not ever get it created. 


They might copy somebody else's maybe, yeah. 


And then it's not genuine. It's not really their own thing.


 And therefore people pick that up quite quickly, you know, and saying this is. We call it a bullshit guarantee. You know, there's very weak and hasn't got any substance. 


Graham: Right. One of the things you and I talked about before, you said you teach your builder clients some interesting things, so they get a lot of good referrals. 


And I think one of the examples you gave me was a builder you work with who just has a really amazing process on how he treats his customers during the building process. 


So he gets all these referrals. 


Like he did things like, for example, you mentioned at the end of a building job, whether it's a renovation or a home build or whatever, he gets professional cleaners in to actually clean the home professionally. 


The whole area that he's worked on or could be the whole home, they give them an amazing gift basket, I believe, of carefully chosen things that you don't normally get from gift basket people. 


He does things like that and a whole bunch of other things. And people go, wow, that's amazing. And they're talking about this guy. And because he's getting all these referrals, he's able to charge at normal, at high prices and people are happy to pay because of the great service. And he's able to hire great staff at the same time as well. 


So that's that part of the process you teach your builder clients. 



Andreas: Absolutely. You know, we want to make it an awesome client experience right throughout from the beginning. 


When do people make first contact with this builder? 

Right, it starts there, how they answer the phone, the first phone call, their website, maybe some resources on it, you know, the video that they have. 


We want to have people remember each contact as amazing. 


And we want to put as many little steps in this process. 


What you mentioned at the end, almost every builder does that now. You know, they do the gift baskets and stuff. 


We think, we sit and think, what can we do differently? What can we do better? So, for example, one of my builders, what he did, he gets the neighbouring houses, the windows cleaned right. Commercially properly. 



And then, and the reasoning is like, we created so much dust and noise and whatever, we give a gift to the neighbors and clean that it costs $120 per house or something like that. 


And those neighbours were so impressed with that he got a job straight away from that. 


They recommended that to their friends and said, listen, that builder is amazing. 


Not only did he come to us before he started building and told us that we can contact him anytime if there's any issue and he sorts it out and his team is polite and they don't swear on the side, that kind of stuff. 


And at the end of it, can you believe it, they actually cleaned our windows because they created the dust and stuff. 


These guys are amazing. Right? 


Graham: Wow. 


Andreas:
So you can often get great referrals and stuff like that from people like your architect. You know how you deal with an architect, how do you deal with the tradie that comes on site, or the rep from mitre 10, or Bunnings or Placemakers.

If they come on site, you know, they are potential clients as well, and they can see that you're a good operator. 


They'll tell other people. So those people are extremely important. You can create a real network of people giving you referrals and it all depends on the decisions that you make and the experience that you create for all those people. Right. 


Graham: That's excellent. So it's like making this whole customer experience, like you say, making it an amazing customer experience from the very first contact, the first phone call, first visit to the website to when the job's finished. 


And you're always thinking, how can you make this amazing for the customer or anyone that's coming into contact with a builder or the building project? 


So you can get referrals, you can get repeat sales, get people talking about you and you're always saying, how can we be different in a way that the clients think, wow, that was great. 


That window cleaning example was brilliant. I've never even heard of a builder doing something like that. Such a good idea. So inexpensive and so easy then to get your building business talked about. 


Andreas: Yeah. 


Graham: And you presumably have dozens and dozens of ideas like that you can help your builder clients do. 


Andreas: Yes, and it’s not just my ideas, Graham. 


I sit with the builder and we brainstorm stuff, you know, and say, what could you do? How would it look like? Who are the people involved? You know, and it's often quite unique stuff. 


It's not just stuff that I pull out of my head, it is sitting and understanding the builder. 


Graham: Excellent, excellent. Tell me, if a builder. You work mainly with builders, so if someone wants to find out more about what you do, what was your website again? 


Andreas:


It's Builders Coach


www.builderscoach.co.nz

 

Graham: What are a A couple of the resources they should look for or take notice of when they do visit your website?


Andreas: There's like a blog page. I call it the Silver Bullets. And there are lots and lots of very useful tools that people can just have a bit of an idea on what can be done, what it looks like, just to maybe familiarize yourself with the idea of why you should consider using a coach.


There are different coaching services. 


You know, there are people that do big bulk group coaching things and what I do is obviously boutique. 


I work one to one with clients and that is my niche, you know, and therefore I sit in person with the client and help them and understand their unique situation really well. 


I've written up some stuff that you can get on my website to sort of figure out what type of coaching would potentially work best for you. And in addition to cash flow and heaps of stuff. 


Graham: Yeah, fantastic. 


And what I'm getting from you today is that the changes you're getting people to make, getting to make lots of changes, but the changes that make it quite small, they're quite tiny. 


A small change here and a small change here, little tweak there. But doing a few dozen things like that over a period of time. 


So they're quite easy to fit in to what they're already doing. They just change this a bit. They change this a bit, they change this a bit under your guidance, obviously. 


But the cumulative effect over time is amazing

. And tell me, look, one more thing before we wrap this up, and this is just a general business question right now, imagine you're hopping on a plane in a 3, 4 minutes time. 


I'm saying, Andreas, before you go, look, we've talked a lot about builders and how to improve what they're doing. 


If you were addressing just a general business audience of business owners and saying, and I said to you, like, what are one or two or even three other things that they could do in their business to stand out, get noticed, make more profits. 


What are one or two things you'd recommend that most businesses think about doing? 


Andreas: Number one, I would say, is invest in yourself. 


You know, make you are the person that owns that business and makes the decisions and it's your thinking that will permeate right through everything. 


So it's up to you. 


And part of that is become a very nice person. You know, many people don't realize how important that is to be successful. 


You look at successful people, I would say the majority of those people that are really nice people and they are clever, they self educated, they invest in themselves more than in anything else. 


That would be my overriding message. That's my overriding message. Yeah. 


Graham: Well that's great. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Andreas. That was fantastic. 


Really appreciate you sharing those things. I particularly like your idea of the wealth account for businesses. I think there's an idea that can be used in any business, not just in your building business. 


Andreas: Sure. 


Graham: I also like the idea that business should be fun, and it should also be very profitable. 


You're making good money. You deserve to make good money and you need to. 


And of course the key idea that I've also got is to specialize and become known as the master in a particular area or niche or whatever. 


And that's, I think a lot of businesses in general could become known as experts in a certain part of what they do as well, not just builders. 


Andreas: That's right. 


Graham: Thank you very much, Andreas. 


Andreas: It was my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. 

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