The Good Builder Podcast

Ask most builders who runs their HR, and the answer is "me."

That's the problem.

In this episode, Az sits down with Julie Bolitho, a recruitment and HR specialist who has spent close to 30 years in the building industry. She started at sixteen in a land surveying office, studied drafting at TAFE, and went on to work across the HIA, Apprenticeships Queensland and the Australian Industry Trade College before founding Dedicated Staffing Solutions. She knows a building business from the inside.

The throughline of this one is simple. Your people are your most...

Matt was never the classroom type. He left school without much love for books or essays, and for years he moved through job after job trying to find his place.

What he found was the trade.

In this episode, Az sits down with Matt from Vanstyn Constructions — a builder who turned hands-on instinct and hard-won life experience into a thriving business. Patios, carports, decks, renovations and extensions, across residential and commercial work in South East Queensland. Fifteen staff. A 4.9-star rating from 70 reviews. And more than a decade in business, in an industry where most do...

This week Az is back on the Monday couch with Josh Peapoint from Elevate Estimating.

Josh has just returned from two weeks in Bali with his family. No phone. No work. Just time off. That sets the tone for an honest chat about something most builders never stop to look at: the way they actually run their business.

The conversation starts with pricing. Diesel is coming down. The fuel levies that went on through the year are starting to come back off. Josh shares what he is seeing across builders around Australia, why suppliers have...

When an insolvency practitioner walks into the room, most builders assume it is the end. Hand over the keys. Pack it up. Game over.

But that is not how Chris from Jirsch Sutherland works.

In this episode, Aaron sits down with an insolvency practitioner who has worked on more than 2,000 matters. They call his kind the Grim Reaper of the building industry. The twist is that his first job is to keep your business alive, not bury it.

Chris explains the difference between insolvency, liquidation, and bankruptcy in plain terms. He walks through...

Our first New Zealand builder steps onto the couch, and Aaron reckons he summed up everything TGB stands for in about thirty seconds.

Dan Saunders started building in 1993 and formed DS Construction in 2002. In 2012 he built the first 8 Homestar-rated home in Australasia, the highest rating going at the time. Since then he's built close to 30 high-performance "super homes," helped get the Super Home Movement off the ground, and co-founded EcoPanel, a prefabricated wall system that can get a house closed in inside a week.

This one covers a lot of ground that lands the same...

Existing property prices are starting to move. And it matters more for builders than most people realise.

In this Monday episode, Az is joined again by Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers to make sense of what is happening in the market right now.

They start with DropBee (dropbee.au), a live dashboard built by a developer on Reddit that maps property price drops across Australia as they happen. At the time of recording there were more than 1,600 price drops across Queensland alone.

From there the conversation opens up. Why homes under one...

Most builders have tried AI by now. A lot of them have also quietly pulled it back.

In this episode, Az sits down with Anisha and Nayan from ScaleUp Smart to talk about what's really happening with AI in building businesses across Australia.

The pattern is clear. Builders go all in. They hand over estimating, marketing, follow-ups, even answering the phone. Then they bring most of it back in-house.

The reason isn't that AI can't do anything. It's that building is rarely black and white. Every job is different. Every client is different...

Most builders know recruitment matters. Few understand it the way Luke does.

Luke spent more than a decade inside building businesses before he placed a single candidate. Chippy. Estimator. Senior CA. Residential and commercial, on jobs from 200K through to 2 million plus. He has seen the industry from the tools, from the office, and now from the outside looking in.

That dual perspective is what makes this conversation different.

In this episode, Luke sits down with Aaron to talk about the road that led him to start Prime Build Recruitment. It was not...

The government has committed $2.4 billion to housing and infrastructure.

The intent sounds right. More homes. More support for first home buyers.

But there is a question sitting underneath all of it.

Who is actually going to build these homes?

Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers is back on the couch to work through what this budget push really means on the ground. We get into the trade shortage, the affordability problem, and the contradictions that builders and buyers are about to face. It is a calm, honest look at a very...

Most builders can swing a hammer. Far fewer can run a business. And the gap between those two things is exactly why, by Rod Frampton's own count, roughly one in 25 builders never makes it to a decade.

Rod is the founder of Frampton Builders, a Brisbane custom home and renovation business that's been going strong since 2014, and more recently Frampton Clean Rooms, a pharmaceutical-grade fit-out company that earned some of the best feedback the TGA has ever given a first-time facility. He's one of those rare operators who thinks like a CEO and works like a tradesman.<...

Everyone talks about "modern methods of construction" like it's something new. Kersten Gentle has a different take: the timber frame and truss industry has been doing offsite prefab for decades. They're the OGs.

In this episode, Aaron sits down with Kersten, CEO of the Frame and Truss Manufacturers Association of Australia (FTMA), fresh off what he calls the most impressive industry conference he's ever attended. What follows is a conversation about how the industry actually moves forward — not through hype, but through relationships, knowledge sharing, and builders getting closer to the people who make their product.

...

The housing conversation in this country is stuck on one word: more. More homes. More tradies. More builders. Nagy Mourad thinks we're missing the word that actually matters.

Nagy has worn nearly every hat in construction. He's a registered builder, a developer, and a trainer and assessor who spent more than a decade teaching Victorian builders toward registration. Before any of that, he ran national field and contract operations for the biggest names in Australian telecommunications, including NBN, Optus, and Telstra. He came into building the hard way. His first development stalled for three years and three...

Most builders don't lose their marketing because they're bad at it. They lose it because they get busy.

In this episode, Az sits down with Drew, Sean and the team at Increase Construction in the TGB studio for an unscripted, real-world conversation about the problem nearly every builder runs into. You land a few good jobs, you feel sorted, so you quietly stop putting yourself out there. Three months later the work dries up and you're left wondering where the next lead is coming from.

We talk about why marketing is the first thing to...

Happy Friday, and what a week. One of the biggest we have had here at The Good Builder.

In this Friday wrap, Aaron runs through everything that happened inside TGB and out in the industry. We announced our Advisory Board, with MyConstruct and AVIA Homes the first two at the table and more names coming soon. We headed up to Twin Waters for the FTMA conference. And the next quarterly report is underway: the State of Builder Marketing, dropping in June.

Then it is into three headlines that matter for builders right now.

...

Phillip Livingston is a trades coordinator at Vitaleese, a Melbourne-based home modification specialist working across aged care, NDIS, and private clients. They're a VBA-licensed builder, a registered NDIS provider, and an approved supplier under the State-wide Equipment Program.

In other words, they sit right at the intersection of building work, compliance, and the people on the other end of it.

This is a sector most builders never get exposed to. And after this conversation, you'll understand why that needs to change.

One in six Australians are now over 65. Within a decade, the over-85...

Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers flips the script this week and puts Aaron in the hot seat. The brief: how does a young, blunt, female broker market a business in an industry built on display home theatre and base-price advertising — without turning into the thing she's trying to fix?

It's a working session disguised as a podcast. Emily wants to "set fire to display home marketing" but won't shit on builders to do it. Aaron unpacks why that instinct is right, and why most marketing advice given to builders and brokers is quietly broken.

Wh...

The 26-27 federal budget has landed, and there's plenty in it that builders, tradies, and construction businesses will feel on the ground before they ever read about it in a forecast.

This one isn't a normal budget. It's shaped by the global oil shock from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which has disrupted fuel supply chains, pushed up fertiliser costs, and added inflationary pressure to almost every line in a builder's invoice.

In this episode, Az breaks down the budget calmly, clearly, and from a builder's point of view. Here's what's covered:

Every now and then a guest walks onto the pod and you walk away genuinely fired up about the future of this industry.

Lewis Italiano is one of those guests.

He's a carpenter from WA, still finishing his apprenticeship, and already has a resume most blokes twice his age don't come close to. Gold at the regional and national WorldSkills competitions. A Medallion for Excellence representing Australia on the international stage in Lyon. Training stints through China, Japan and France. Master Builders Apprentice of the Year for 2025. WA Training Awards winner. And in between all...

Aaron is back with Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers for another Monday breakdown, and this week they dig into something Aaron has been watching in the Google search data for the past 12 months. The Australian housing market is splitting in two. On one end, more buyers are looking at modular, prefab, tiny homes and alternative builds. On the other, the luxury custom market is busier than ever. And right in the middle, the everyday buyer is getting squeezed.

Aaron and Emily unpack what is actually driving the search data, where the project home builder fits now...

Quality, on time, on budget. If that's how you sell yourself, you sound exactly like every other builder in Australia. And in a market this tight, sounding like everyone else is one of the most dangerous places you can be.

In this Friday wrap, Az covers three big stories breaking across the industry this week, then goes deep on the one thing every builder needs but most never sit down to define: their Unique Value Proposition.

He shares how UVP work drove $700 million in growth at GJ Gardner Homes, how it helped Avondale Homes hit $24...

Tom Sachs didn't take the traditional path into building. He left school early, started lopping trees, discovered a love for working with timber in a mate's shed, and eventually found his way into a carpentry apprenticeship. From commercial construction to residential building, and finally to owning a Stroud Homes franchise in the Lockyer Valley — Tom's story is anything but straight lines.

In this episode, Az sits down with Tom to unpack the journey, the lessons, and the mindset that shaped the builder he is today.

What we cover:

Reddit doesn't lie. It's where clients go when they don't know where else to turn. And right now, it's full of confusion, frustration, and questions that the building industry hasn't answered well enough.

This week, Az and co-host Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers spent time in the trenches of Reddit and Facebook groups, reading what real clients are actually saying about building a home in Australia. What they found wasn't just a trust problem. It was an education problem, a marketing problem, and honestly, an industry honesty problem.

They talk about base price marketing...

A big Friday Daily Dose...and a couple of important changes coming at The Good Builder.

From next week, the Daily Dose is moving to three episodes a week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

More room to breathe, deeper conversations, bigger guests, and more space for the research and data builders have been asking for.

In today's episode, Az unpacks:

— Why TGB is shifting to three days a week and what builders can expect
— A 900% uplift in search terms for both modular and luxury custom builders, and what it tells us abou...

This one was completely off the cuff.

Toby from BuildGrid flew up from Melbourne to visit us at The Good Builder Studio, and Jake from MyConstruct happened to be in town too. So we hit record.

What came out of it is one of the more practical conversations we've had on the podcast. Two of the country's most respected construction software founders sitting on the couch, explaining a new partnership that's now live and what it actually means for builders on the ground.

Here's the short version. If you sign up to MyConstruct...

Dan Urquhart from 1000 Feet Deep is back on the podcast, and this one gets real.

Az opens up about the season he's in right now...fired up, frustrated, and questioning where all the money in the industry is actually going. Dan meets him there with a calm, grounded conversation about how leaders move through hard seasons without losing themselves or their business in the process.

This is a wide-ranging chat about leadership, team, culture, and the foundations that hold a building business together when the season shifts. Dan shares what he learned through COVID at...

Productivity isn't a buzzword. It's the thing quietly costing builders more than they realise.

In this episode, Az sits down with Toby Loft — co-founder of BuildGrid — for a wide-ranging conversation about what's actually holding the construction industry back, and what a smarter, more future-focused approach looks like.

Toby has spent years inside the industry, including a long stint at Mitre 10, watching how builders, trades, and suppliers operate, where the friction lives, and what happens when procurement gets done properly.

This episode covers:

Emily Pollard is back for her third Monday co-host session, and this one goes deep on something every builder needs to understand — how clients actually choose who they build with.

Emily is the founder of Nesta Builder Brokers, a service that helps clients across South East Queensland find the right builder, assess contracts, and make smarter decisions before they sign anything. She works with a panel of 20 builders and pulls 135 data points on each one. She sees this process up close every single day.

In this episode, Az and Emily break down:

This week's episode, we go straight to the source.

Five of the most common questions coming in from The Good Builder community right now, answered in one hit. No fluff, just practical answers you can actually use.

In this episode we cover:

Most builders will take any deal they can get.

Ash doesn't.

In this episode, Az sits down with Ash, State Sales Manager at Glenvill Homes, inside their new Docklands headquarters in Melbourne. Glenville is one of Australia's quieter success stories. No marketing machine. No noise. Just a business built on sharp standards, deep trust, and a culture of doing things right.

Ash's path into construction wasn't straight. A computer games degree, a stint at Telstra and Apple, and a cold call from a recruiter eventually landed him inside a business he's helped grow...

Most builders know materials, margins and project management. Very few know what the materials going into their homes are doing to the people living inside them.

In this episode, Aaron sits down with Zara D'Cotta, building biologist, EMF specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home. Zara spent years navigating her own cancer diagnosis, environmental illness, and the search for a safe place to live. That experience became the foundation for her work helping builders, architects, and designers across Australia and New Zealand understand the relationship between the built environment and human health.

This conversation covers...

Az is back from Melbourne with something every builder using AI on their website needs to hear.

The AI isn't broken. That's actually what makes it dangerous.

In conversations with Gavin Sloan from Live Chat Monitoring, one of the world's largest live chat and AI agent providers with over 4,500 clients, a clear pattern emerged. Builders who deployed AI agents on their websites found those agents happily recommending competitors, quoting prices, outlining timelines, and answering every question so thoroughly that prospects never felt the need to book.

The fix isn't expensive. It's not technical...

Your contract could be killing deals before they even start.

This week on the Monday episode, Az is joined again by Emily Pollard from Nesta Builder Brokers — and she brings the heat. Emily has read hundreds of building contracts. What she finds inside them would surprise most builders. And what clients think when they read them? That might surprise you even more.

They cover the contract clauses that are quietly blowing up sales, how provisional sums are being used in ways that cost clients tens of thousands they never saw coming, why some special conditions ma...

Most builders don't talk about underpinning. Most homeowners are scared of the word. And most of the industry doesn't understand what actually causes a foundation to move — or who's responsible when it does.

Nicole Rosenthal is the Director of Foundation Solutions, a specialist screw pile underpinning company based in Southeast Queensland. With 31 years in the construction industry — starting as a receptionist at an engineering firm and working her way through operations, marketing, and business ownership — Nicole brings a depth of knowledge that's rare in this space.

In this episode, Nicole breaks down what underpinning actually is, wh...

Today's guest is Matt Hope, former master franchisee of GJ Gardner in NSW, ACT, and WA, and now co-founder of Wattle Court, a residential building franchise built for the second, third, and fourth home buyer market.

Matt spent 20 years working inside franchise building businesses. He grew his GJ Gardner group to 34 franchisees doing $800 million and became the largest in the national network. He's now applying everything he learned to build a different kind of franchise — one that's selective, values-driven, and built for the long term.

In this conversation, Matt and Az cover:

Why kn...

Az sits down with Nick from Goop Guys for a conversation that goes well beyond surface protection.

They talk about the real cost of defects, the difference between builders who think proactively and those who don't, and why protecting windows, benchtops, and flooring during a build isn't a luxury add-on — it's a margin decision.

Nick shares what he's seeing across residential and commercial builds nationally, from $800,000 window schedules on custom homes to the surge in commercial inquiries ahead of the 2032 Olympics in Southeast Queensland. They also get into the uncomfortable truth about builders who quote ti...

This week on Tuesday Headlines, powered by MyConstruct, Az covers four stories that matter for Australian builders right now.

First up, Emily Pollard of Nesta Builder Brokers is raising the alarm on something the industry has been ignoring. The people selling new homes to Australians, builder brokers, new home sales consultants, channel partners, are completely unregulated. No licence. No ethics board. No oversight of any kind. And every builder absorbing the cost of a failed prelim or a misled client is paying the price for it. Go back and listen to Monday's episode with Emily if you...

Today's episode is a big one for The Good Builder.

We'd like to introduce Emily Pollard, our first ever co-host, and someone who has been quietly doing some of the most important work in the Australian building industry.

Emily is the founder of Nesta Builder Brokers, a platform that bridges the gap between educated buyers and quality builders. She spent five years inside Stroud Homes developing a deep, practical understanding of the entire build journey — from first enquiry through to contract — and she brings that experience to every conversation.

In this episode, Az and...

Farah Drake has been in the building industry for over 30 years. She started out helping her dad, fell in love with being on site, and never left. Today she runs Willow Grove Homes and Granny Flats in South East Melbourne — a registered building company specialising in granny flats, small second dwellings, and multi-generational housing. She is also one of a small number of female building company directors in Australia.

This episode is a different kind of conversation. Farah talks about what it was like to be a woman in construction 30 years ago — the comments, the dismissals, and push...

Peter Wood is back. Head of Villa World Homes by Avid Property Group, 50-plus years in the industry, and the most-listened-to guest in Good Builder history. Last time he left the community with an answer on what makes a good builder that no one has matched since. This time, the conversation goes deeper.

Az and Peter cover the real pressures hitting builders right now, material surcharges, the administrative burden behind every price rise, and what it actually means to have 180 homes on the ground when costs are moving daily. They dig into the AV Jennings integration, the...

A year ago, we started this podcast with no studio, no blueprint, and no audience. Just a belief that the people building this country deserved a better conversation.

Today, 30,000 of you are tuning in. And that changes everything about what comes next.

In this episode we want to talk directly to you about where The Good Builder is heading. Because this platform was never about us. It was always about giving this industry a voice.

We're opening the studio — in person and online — to builders, tradies, suppliers, and subcontractors who have something worth sayi...