Matt Sleith from Palace Construction in Wellington found himself trapped in a constant cash flow nightmare. Despite running a successful building company, he was bleeding project profits because he confused margin with markup and wasted his own administrative hours acting as a delivery driver running materials to the job site. His crew suffered massive labor overruns simply because they lacked clear milestones to hit.

To plug these operational leaks, Matt implemented strict stage-by-stage labor calendars so his carpenters knew exactly how many hours they had for framing and cladding. He corrected his pricing spreadsheet to accurately reflect margin instead of markup, immediately recovering 12 percent of his project profits. Finally, he integrated Xero projects with a custom tracking app to monitor real-time back-costing, allowing him to completely step away from the daily site chaos and prepare for the birth of his first child.

Links & Resources

The Professional Builder: theprofessionalbuilder.com
Palace Construction: palaceconstruction.co.nz

🕒 Timestamped Key Points

• 00:03:15 Transitioning from a one-man operation to managing a six-person carpentry team.
• 00:06:01 Discovering missing money due to a complete lack of daily job tracking and back-costing.
• 00:10:00 Implementing strict labor calendars to stop crew members from dragging the chain on site.
• 00:19:18 Uncovering the mathematical difference between margin vs markup to instantly fix cash flow problems.
• 00:20:20 Recovering 12 percent of total project profits simply by correcting pricing spreadsheets.
• 00:23:46 Using the Foreman top 15 list to stop the owner from running materials to the job site.
• 00:43:58 Replacing lazy 400 dollar SEO retainers with a highly targeted 1 percent referral scheme.