Working 80-Hour Weeks & Losing $400K: Kyle Zanetto & Luke Davies on Running a Profitable Building Company

Kyle Zanetto lost close to $400,000 in a single year working eighty-hour weeks. Luke Davies sat $75,000 in overdraft with a maxed-out mortgage and had to sell his house. Both now run successful Tasmanian building companies — and together founded Future Builder to stop other builders repeating their mistakes.

The core of the conversation is what sits between a good builder and a profitable building business: markup versus margin, estimating bottlenecks, recovering overheads, and how business structure determines the numbers. As Luke puts it, if someone tells you what your markup should be, they don't know your business.

Kyle explains how a 30-point client questionnaire now filters roughly fifty leads down to two, and why that shift — not cost-cutting — is what protects quality.

They also walk through Future Builder itself: the asset library, the courses, the Monday masterminds, and Alfie, the AI business companion Luke has been building for nine months that runs a 104-point health check across six business pillars and connects to Xero. 

The conversation moves into lean methodology on site, burnout and why builders won't ask for help, suicide in the industry, and what each of them would change in the NCC if given one shot.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• How a builders markup can make or break a business — and the difference between markup and net profit
• Kyle's 30-point client entry questionnaire: open-book negotiated tenders, 30% cash, and turning down 48 of 50 leads
• Luke's approach to saying yes to the right job even when the schedule is full
• Alfie, the AI business companion: business life stages from start-up to prime, the 104-point health check
• Lean methodology on the building site — spaghetti maps, rework, and the triple hit to the bottom line
• Burnout, self-awareness and hustle culture: the routines to business owners use to keep operating at high load

LEARN MORE
Future Builder: https://www.futurebuilder.co/
Zanetto Builders: https://www.zanettobuilders.com.au/
Davies Construction: https://www.daviesconstruction.com.au/
Sustainable Builders Alliance (SBA): https://www.thesba.com.au

BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Sustainable Builders Alliance (SBA): https://www.thesba.com.au