The Builders Ladder: Business Growth Strategies for Residential Construction Businesses
Jun 28, 2026 · 50 min · 11 segments
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…
Marti AmosHost
Matt SleithGuest
I need to talk to you about your performance, about how things are going and how you're going to succeed and stay at this business.
And the other one is to be actually go that, well, all success lies on the back of doing something different.
to get a different result, otherwise you're going to keep doing exactly the same things.
You've got to get a plan and figure out, okay, who's achieved what I want to achieve? What do they do? What's their structure? What are the ingredients? What's their process? And then if I replicate the same system as them or a similar system, then I'll get a very similar result.
what were you looking for when you joined TPB? Probably a little bit more guidance than fake it till you make
Because in that first couple of years, the first two years everything was actually really easy like labor overruns there was two people like how far can you really overrun yep um you know and then all of a sudden there was six people and money's gone missing yep um and i couldn't figure out where it was where it was coming from um and you know there were there were the reality is this was there was lots of different holes and it was coming from lots of places and and stuff like that so Yeah, guidance.
outside of that, and manage a project, and I could do that, and I can do that, and I'm good at that.
Some people are just amazing, and they go out, and they understand it, and they're doing job tracking because... they're clever cunts and that's what
but you know for me that was you know my job tracking was is there money in the account at the end of the month or and you know and there was there always was but whether that was just because cash flow that's how cash flow works kind of thing or is that
I need to talk to you about your performance, about how things are going and how you're going to succeed and stay at this business.
And the other one is to be actually go that, well, all success lies on the back of doing something different.
to get a different result, otherwise you're going to keep doing exactly the same things.
You've got to get a plan and figure out, okay, who's achieved what I want to achieve? What do they do? What's their structure? What are the ingredients? What's their process? And then if I replicate the same system as them or a similar system, then I'll get a very similar result.
what were you looking for when you joined TPB? Probably a little bit more guidance than fake it till you make
Because in that first couple of years, the first two years everything was actually really easy like labor overruns there was two people like how far can you really overrun yep um you know and then all of a sudden there was six people and money's gone missing yep um and i couldn't figure out where it was where it was coming from um and you know there were there were the reality is this was there was lots of different holes and it was coming from lots of places and and stuff like that so Yeah, guidance.
outside of that, and manage a project, and I could do that, and I can do that, and I'm good at that.
Some people are just amazing, and they go out, and they understand it, and they're doing job tracking because... they're clever cunts and that's what
but you know for me that was you know my job tracking was is there money in the account at the end of the month or and you know and there was there always was but whether that was just because cash flow that's how cash flow works kind of thing or is that
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