Matt Jones [00:00:00]:

Matt Jones here. If you want to check out the video version of this podcast, click on the first link in the description.

Helen Kay [00:00:05]:

But there's other lawyers like myself and I think we're a bit more few and far between where we're sort of like what could be a problem in the future and how can we actually put something in place to address it now? Very much I always analyze it to the difference between a heart surgeon and a dietitian. The dietitian is going to stop you getting to the heart surgeon if you follow their advice. We're like the dietitian we need to get these businesses so they don't end up with the litigators.

Matt Jones [00:00:51]:

Helen, Kate, welcome back to the Site Shed podcast.

Helen Kay [00:00:54]:

Thanks for having me back, Matt. Looking good.

Matt Jones [00:00:57]:

It's been a minute.

Helen Kay [00:00:59]:

We were just catching up before this went live. It's been quite a while. A lot of things have happened, no doubt.

Matt Jones [00:01:05]:

Like COVID.

Helen Kay [00:01:06]:

Yeah, that little thing.

Matt Jones [00:01:10]:

Yeah, it's been a good few years. So it's good to have you back on the show. Obviously you're our resident lawyer over here, so today we've come back to talk on how to get paid on commercial jobs. I know we've had quite a few conversations lately with our community in relation to issues that have arisen relating to payments that have fallen through, shall we say. So, yeah, it's really good, I think a very relevant point of conversation at the moment to be discussing how you can alleviate any of these potential risks and make sure that you're protecting yourself. In this instance, we've got similar content recorded previously, which I'll link to in the show notes for any of you guys that are interested in this. But yeah, I think like we said just before we came on Helen, this is one of those things that never.

Helen Kay [00:02:08]:

Really gets old and it's this topic. We do free initial consults and we get loads of calls from Tradies and we do sort of stop and collate at the end of the week and go what's happening in trade world? What's the biggest issues? And we'll usually prepare a blog on it and when we get invited to do podcasts, we'll talk on that topic. And definitely the fear around not getting paid, and in particular for Tradies who are getting engaged by developers or builders are starting to feel a little bit as though is it worth the risk?

Matt Jones [00:02:39]:

I mean, I've been in this situation myself where we worked for back when I was a plumber 1000 years ago and we worked for a tier two building company. And I feel like I can almost remember the exact point in time when it went from going working with builders to essentially working with lawyers. Because it was like overnight the builders weren't any builders, they weren't builders anymore. They were all like lawyers and they had these 4000 page contracts and it just turned into this I feel like it was just overnight. I remember it was on one job and I was like, oh, my God, this is it. That was really why I got out of the industry, to be honest, back then, and probably because I just didn't know how to handle the situation. So I'm really looking forward to diving into this.

Helen Kay [00:03:28]:

Awesome. Yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing a few insights because if someone can just take one thing away from what I say today and it puts them in a better position with making sure they get paid for their family, then I've sort of reached my purpose in life.

Matt Jones [00:03:42]:

I remember now what the recent episode that I was thinking of in relation to contracts, and it was Mastering the Art of Contract Negotiation. And it was back in episode 369, but it was with a fellow Kean shout out, Kean, but he was saying how so often when we receive these contracts, we just accept them as is and we don't, through fear or whatever it might be, want to negotiate on them. And he was saying how that's really not the right mindset. In fact, the first version that you'll get, that you'll typically get is the one where they'll try and pull the wool over your eyes and they are there to be negotiated.

Helen Kay [00:04:25]:

I couldn't agree more. I'll have to go back and listen to that because I'll be nodding away, listening to it because I used to do, as you know, my background from the top tier firm, acting for state governments, acting for the big developers like Mervac, multiplex Lendley, John Holland. And we did have a number of contracts. All of those companies have like ten different versions. And it's just knowing which version has been given out in the first instance, which is usually the very developer friendly, high liquidated damages, that type of one.

Matt Jones [00:04:56]:

Right? Yeah. So why don't we jump into this? I'd love to hear, I suppose, your take on the market at present and sort of get an understanding to the listeners and all the viewers out there in relation to why this is timely at the moment and maybe what are some of the things that have evolved within this works within this space over the last couple of years.

Helen Kay [00:05:17]:

Yeah, absolutely. So, like I say, we do listen. So we have these free calls and anyone can book on a free call with us if they just want to see if we can help them and help them just put in place protections, because that's what we do. We're on the protection side, not on the fighting side.

Matt Jones [00:05:34]:

You've jumped ship. You've jumped ship.

Helen Kay [00:05:38]:

Yeah. Well, we kind of, like a lot of people don't realize this, Matt, but there are sort of different types of commercial lawyers, even within that field. So some of them just want to get into a fight and some of them know everything's a fight. Sometimes we go into a business sale and it becomes a fight and I'm like, oh, my gosh, we all have the same end goal here, why are we fighting? But there's other lawyers like myself, and I think we're a bit more few and far between, where we're sort of like, what could be a problem in the future and how can we actually put something in place to address it now? Very much, I always analyze it to the difference between like a heart surgeon and a dietitian. The dietitian is going to stop you getting to the heart surgeon if you follow their advice. We're like the dietitian, we need to get these businesses so they don't end up with the litigators. So we're listening to what's happening on the ground and a lot of people are telling us that they're not getting paid. Now, when we ask them, who's not paying you? It generally is commercials. And by that I mean developers, property managers and builders. Builders is probably the biggest one. Now, I'm not anti builders, I've got loads of fabulous builder clients who are doing things properly, but there's some builders out there that aren't and have traded whilst insolvent and have dragged everybody down with them. So that's probably the biggest thing that we're seeing now. We work very closely with insolvency lawyers and litigators and some absolutely genius administrators and we do find out from them what's happening on the ground. And there's more and more insolvencies for a number of reasons. The ATO are finally starting to crack down on people, so those director penalty notices went out and that can trigger an insolvency. The banks are finally starting to come in. So there was a period when you and I were talking, Matt, last time, where during COVID none of that was possible, no one could file for someone's insolvency and now we're starting to be able to. So, whilst the last few years we've seen a record low in insolvencies, we are now going to see a record high. It's inevitable cost of living. All of that, compounded with the fact that grants were propping people up and all of those over the last few years, and the inability to actually put someone into insolvency has now been removed. So, yeah, we will see more of it and we are seeing it quite a lot in the groups. So the problem and the reason why we're talking about this today is that often when these developers, builders, property managers do go bump, probably more. So the builders, we're finding that a lot of tradies didn't actually have contracts in place, so they received the call and they went out on site. And I think a lot of them are just doing it based on handshakes and a few emails, perhaps, maybe a quote that's gone out and got accepted, but no actual written contract. Now, we all know that if you do work with a property, a homeowner, a residential property for work over 3300 in Queensland or 5000 in New South Wales. You need a proper contract. Everyone's got it drilled into them, fair trading and QBCC. But when it becomes to commercial, people think you don't need a contract. Actually, you do. You really do need a contract for a number of reasons, which I'm sure we'll touch on during this podcast.

Matt Jones [00:08:55]:

Yeah, sure. I also feel for the builders because I know we've got so many clients that are builders. And coming from the trade background myself and I know it's very much the same for them, maybe at the smaller scale residential level. A lot of this stuff is just as foreign to them as it would be to me as being a plumber. And you go through your apprenticeship and they teach you how to swing a hammer and all this kind of stuff. And of course, when you do your Cert four building, there's certain components to that course which do touch on this stuff, but it's really not sufficient, like in the space of knowing all the things that you need to do. And the dynamic, I think, as well, which makes it very tricky, is all of us as a builder, inevitably you're the one who becomes responsible for managing all of the finance on the project, which is not an easy thing to know, especially if you're just ten minutes ago a carpenter.

Helen Kay [00:09:56]:

Yeah, exactly. And it's just knowing about when to bring in that proper help.

Matt Jones [00:10:01]:

Totally.

Helen Kay [00:10:02]:

A lot of people know that. Let's say the plumber knows he can't do the electric, so we'll bring in the electrician. The plumber who's running his own business also knows that he probably needs someone to do his books for him and an accountant to lodge his tax return. A lot of people just forget that they do need a lawyer. And lawyers aren't just remember I was saying before about certain different types. Lawyers aren't just there for the fight, they can be there to prevent the fight. And the most savvy businesses do have a good commercial lawyer that they'll go to, to just check in, just like they would with their accountant. My mobile phone goes all the time, Matt, with people just saying, hey, I'm just about to sign a commercial lease. Is that something I should send over to you? And I'm like, absolutely. And they go, oh, it's just a standard one. And I go, Look, I've been doing this for 24 years now. There is no such thing as a standard commercial lease. Every law firm, every landlord has their own one. So there's a few Nasties in there and let me just have a quick look at it. So you do need someone like that on your team. And I think once you get that power team of that accountant and someone doing their marketing and doing all the great stuff that you do and just having all that power team around you, that's when you can then become a success in your field.

Matt Jones [00:11:11]:

Yeah, I guess it's just like mitigating the unknown, even what I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago to look over something. There's things that you should just lean on people for when it comes to I thought it was fine and your guys looked over it and they were like, actually, we changed all this stuff. And they did. But I think one of the apprehensions obviously we're here today to talk about how to get paid on commercial jobs. So I'm sure we'll segue into that shortly. But I know one of the concerns and apprehensions that whether justified or not, and I know bringing this up in the podcast we did with Keen is that whole mindset around, well, I don't want to appear like I'm being awkward in case I don't get the job kind of thing.

Helen Kay [00:12:00]:

Yeah, exactly. People do raises with me, they say, so a lot of people come to me for terms and conditions to pop behind their quote to send out. And we've done a podcast on that before, I believe, and really important to send those out with every quote. And some of them will say to me, particularly when they're new in business, won't this scare people off? And I say to them, well, if it does, you've just scared the right people off. You've scared the people off who were never going to pay you or we're going to get you back for 800 variations and not pay you for them. And people, the feedback has been great that they've actually some people haven't gone ahead with them, maybe, and then gone ahead with their competitor and then they found out that their competitor didn't get paid and it's like brilliant. So it's just like a good insurance. It's like driving around in an uninsured car. If you're going on jobs and you haven't got terms and conditions or a contract in place, you've left yourself out there high and dry. There's so much risk hanging over you.

Matt Jones [00:12:58]:

I think as well, what people don't necessarily realize or appreciate is those terms and conditions, they're not just there, they're there to protect everyone at the end of the day. And I think some people get caught up in this mindset that it's just basically a way for you to pull a wool over potential clients eyes, which is not the case.

Helen Kay [00:13:17]:

No. And they're all fallback clauses, really. I mean, you could pop a clause in there, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but you can pop a clause in there to say interest is due on unpaid amounts. That doesn't mean that as soon as your client doesn't pay the bill by the automatically interest comes out of their bank account and you screw them over. It's a decision for you to make, having the contractual right to do it, whether you based on that client and the relationship and all the circumstances, whether you want to use that right but not having it there to be able to use when you need it is when people really get in.

Matt Jones [00:13:53]:

I don't think I've ever once had to enforce that but it's in our terms but I've never had rule to once enforce it. Like you say no.

Helen Kay [00:14:00]:

But a little threat of it, a little reminder of yes. No, that's appreciate that. You're having payment difficulties. Your invoice is 60 days overdue, and we do have the right in our contract to charge interest, which would mean you would owe us X. Or by Friday, you could pay us the amount you owe us, which is y you've got a very good chance of getting paid that amount rather than waiting for debt collection fees. Interest. All the other stuff that you've gently reminded them was in the contract that they signed by sending it back to them going here's the contract you signed.

Matt Jones [00:14:33]:

Yeah, exactly right. So let's segue across, I suppose, onto the other side there when we're talking from the perspective of contractors or whatever that have been engaged by a principal contractor to do a job, and now they're having issues getting paid. Or, well, maybe even before that. What are some of the things they should be doing to prevent that situation arising where they don't get paid?

Helen Kay [00:14:56]:

Yeah, well there's a lot of things we can do and like I say, having that good commercial lawyer who can put these plans in place, put a roadmap in place for you. So one of the most effective ways to ensure that you get paid is to have a clear and comprehensive legally binding contract. And by that I mean either a contract like a HIA Master Builders QBCC legally drafted contract or quote plus terms and conditions, basically something in writing with all the terms signed by both parties. That's a contract. So we do regularly help our tradie clients either draft or review contracts. So you mentioned before about people providing you their contract and people just going oh, I better not ask for any changes in case I'm seen to be awkward. You actually look quite unprofessional if you just sign it and send it back for me. In my world, you'd want to show that at least you've spent some time considering it. Even if you don't bring a lawyer in, say just having a really good read of the schedules, make sure the price is right, make sure those terms of payment are what you understood based on your conversations. If you said look, I'm going to have to invoice you in with 30 days and they've said that's fine. And then you see that and it says 60 days after the end of the month, after the invoice, you suddenly work out. Now that's too long, payment upfront for materials and then just make sure again either in the contract that you're sending out or the contract that you're accepting on behalf of the principal, they've sent it to you that it's got all your protections in. So all the stuff we've touched on, like late payment fees, the interest, the debt, collection costs, all of those kind of things, make sure those are all in there. Just really standard payment terms, late payment terms. Because the chances are that first draft will be principal friendly. And they're not going to gift you the rights to charge them interest for late payment. You're going to have to put that in yourself, right? Absolutely.

Matt Jones [00:16:55]:

So what you're saying is that first version should have everything and if you need to pull things out, you can.

Helen Kay [00:17:00]:

Yeah, well that first version probably won't have the contractors terms in or the Tradie that's being contracted by the commercial. It's unlikely to unless they've given the version, the Tradie friendly version. So I think just having just being really clear, probably from your own terms and conditions, what needs to go in, and then just having someone who can help you just pop those in there. Whether you attach your terms and conditions as overriding those here's ours and they override there's. Easy ways to do it. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but those contracts will be missing those things. So if you do want to get paid on a commercial job, you need to make sure that you've got a contract in place, you understand it and it's got some of those basic payment protections in and then there's a lot of other things, Matt, that we do. So if you're going to go out and buy materials on behalf of the client, so you need to be able to retain ownership of those goods. So you have the typical retention of title clauses. So it's basically say that you own those goods until you've received payment in full. Again, it's a really simple clause. It will be in your terms and conditions if you've had them drafted for you, but unlikely to be in that commercial contract that comes over. So just popping that in and then sort of going further than that. You'd probably want to be able to have the right, if you're not paid, to put a security interest on the client's assets. Now this is getting quite complicated, but again, it's a simple clause, the actual enforcing of it, a lawyer would basically be patting you on the back if you go and see one of those scary lawyers afterwards and say I'm owed on this contract, here's the contract and they see that you've got all those clauses in. So the retention of title, you've got the ability to charge the interest and their legal fees as well as being able to put a security interest on on the personal properties register. The litigator will just be like wow, basically you've done everything you can to put yourself in the best position here. This has made my life easier and they're really simple things, really simple clauses that you could get a lawyer to draft for you and you could just use them time and time again, as we call them, special conditions that we attach to contract.

Matt Jones [00:19:06]:

I was going to ask you about special conditions, actually, because I was wondering how that might apply across the board because they're typically things, I suppose, that may or may not live within terms and conditions, but they might be related specifically to a type of service or a specific job they want to do. I know we had a client recently and one of the things that they said they tripped up on was access. They didn't have a clause or a condition in their contract in relation to access anyway. I think in the end, the client sort of came to the party, but it wasn't actually in the contract, and it got brought to the table because they ended up having to get like, I don't know, in the end if they ended up having, like, the options, whether you're a crane or a helicopter, to get, like, stuff in and out of the backyard or something ridiculous.

Helen Kay [00:20:05]:

Yeah, those are the kind of things, let's say, for example, we're drafting a simple set of terms and conditions for a client who goes out and does jobs either on resi or commercial access is a big one, safe access to site, all of those kind of things. We do put it back on the client, whether the client is the residential owner or the builder. So anything that you've agreed specifically for a job should go in a set of special conditions, which is very specific to that job. If there's a certain place the skip bin needs to be, if you don't want them putting anything else in it, if there's places you will and won't dig, all of those kind of things. And it's just as simple as telling the lawyer and the lawyer will just draft them. It's not a massive job.

Matt Jones [00:20:46]:

So I've got a question. When the builder in this example might send you like a contract to sign or whatever, do you then go back to them with your own terms and say, please get these written into the contract?

Helen Kay [00:21:00]:

Yeah. If they're not in there, you'd look a bit of an ass. If they're already in there and you just said, I want them in my wording. You got to be 100% sure that there's nothing similar in there, otherwise that's not going to be great for the relationship. But if you can really see or your lawyer or whoever you have helping you with contracts can see that there's no ability in there for you to charge interest on late payment, retain title in goods that you still haven't been paid for. Delay clauses there's all sorts of things that are bare minimum that we would do for our clients. If you can see that they're not in there and you can't find them, you'd be asking the question like these clauses aren't in there. Is this the right version? It doesn't seem to be anything in there to protect me. Could be that they give you a better version, these better versions that I say do exist. Or it could be that they say, look, if you want any changes, just stick it in writing and then you just get your Word document special conditions that a lawyer like ourselves has drawn up and you just present it's, got your logo on special conditions, override to the extent of any inconsistency and then they get attached. Now, the way the contracts work is there's usually a cause that says that any special conditions override got you. Yeah.

Matt Jones [00:22:09]:

I've seen some of these again 20 OD years ago, but some of these contracts were like an inch thick and like 100 pages. And then it's like you go out there and they expect you to just sign this thing on the spot for like millions of dollars. And most people probably do.

Helen Kay [00:22:32]:

Yeah. And this is probably why I'm sat where I am today, because my career started off in those top tier firms who were acting for those big builders and developers and state government, like I said, and we were preparing those big meaty contracts. Now, we had a huge legal team spread across the country, preparing different parts of it. Then we would be advising their in house legal teams so they've got these cracking really great in house legal teams who are all specialists in these construction areas. And between all of them then presenting it to the small tradie who's coming on for 150 grand job. And I could kind of see like Warren, I'm on the wrong side. That's the person who needs the help there. I'm helping other lawyers help other lawyers to help other lawyers and I want to be helping the business owner themselves. The one who needs to pay his mortgage.

Matt Jones [00:23:19]:

Yeah, exactly. Because I think that's the thing that and again, you have to take that contract and you have to give it to your lawyer to go through and read. And Ceasing is huge.

Helen Kay [00:23:33]:

Well, we don't read the whole thing. There's no way and there's no need for the schedules will be 40% of that and I don't know how many coats of paint something needs or rivets or all the widgets. So I usually skim through to start with. So if you sent me a big contract, I'd skim through and I'd say, look, I think your risk sits in these seven clauses, the payment clauses, the liability, the indemnities, the insurance, all those kind of things. And I'd say, if possible, I'd like to review these causes for the main high level risks. And then I'd quote for that and you'd be looking at three or four hour job, fixed fee. As you know, we do fixed fees, so there's none of this silly, oh, it actually took me 8 hours. Here's a different bill. We just need to narrow down what's the real risk here and that whole thing? The risks wouldn't be the whole thing. The risks would be there. And it's just having a lawyer that can go, those are the risks.

Matt Jones [00:24:27]:

Yeah. Okay. And I guess that's like, for better or worse, and I tend to steer towards the latter. That's probably part of a reason why they have these huge contracts is so they hope you can't find anything.

Helen Kay [00:24:39]:

Yeah, exactly. Well, we can find them.

Matt Jones [00:24:43]:

We've got well, no, you could find.

Helen Kay [00:24:44]:

Them, but we can find them.

Matt Jones [00:24:45]:

Average Bob the Builder.

Helen Kay [00:24:48]:

Well, we actually work with Average Bob the Builder as well and make sure that they're kind of educated to know what to look for. And perhaps the contract is under 100 grand.

Matt Jones [00:24:57]:

Yeah, right.

Helen Kay [00:24:58]:

One of these comes across your desk. These are the key things, and we'll give them some bullet points. You're looking for this? Try and get the word versions. Often our Tradies have really great Tradie wives who are very capable. They've worked in corporate world. They're raising the younger kids and helping out with the bookkeeping. But that doesn't mean they're not capable of doing some of this contract review stuff. So we'll actually upskill them to help them do it on the smaller contracts.

Matt Jones [00:25:25]:

The poor wives sometimes get thrown in the deep end there with a lot of these things. Oh, you're a woman. You can do my accounts.

Helen Kay [00:25:32]:

Exactly.

Matt Jones [00:25:35]:

You're a lawyer.

Helen Kay [00:25:35]:

Right.

Matt Jones [00:25:37]:

Surely you can read this 100 page legal document. Don't screw it up. Yeah. Interesting. So have we covered everything here? Like, is there anything else we need to discuss in relation to this?

Helen Kay [00:25:50]:

No, I think it's just sort of having that. So a lot of people will be thinking, gosh, what do I do now? Well, I think here's a question. Yeah.

Matt Jones [00:26:00]:

How about this? Obviously when you giving a contract, a tender on or whatever it might be, you don't want to delay too long at the risk of missing out on the job. So what's a reasonable timeframe to go and get this stuff? And where do you stand legally in relation to, okay, I'm going to take this away and get my lawyer to look at it as opposed to Bob 2ft away. Just like I'll just sign it.

Helen Kay [00:26:30]:

I don't look, any contracting party needs to give the other party time to review it and seek independent legal advice. Otherwise there's an issue. It could be deemed to be quite unfair and there's unfair contract legislation. It could be deemed to be quite unfair if someone didn't have a chance to review it. And particularly when you're talking about ones that big, a reasonable person, how long would it take to read it? So you need to be able to give them enough time. There's certain legislation, as you know, I do a lot of franchise work, helping people franchise their businesses. In that world. You have to give them 14 days. But unfortunately, the. Government haven't legislated that. That happens in other areas. But a reasonable amount of time, I would say, would be probably anywhere between seven to 14 days to actually go and seek the advice and have some conversations with the supervisor or whoever your representative is that you're talking to, just to say, look, we've spotted this, or Our lawyer spotted this, and we won't be able to do that in that time. If you give us a notice for that, we can't get people on site that evening. You're going to have to give us 48 hours. There's a lot of practical things like that but yeah, people definitely need to have time to do it. In terms of lawyers, that'd be a question you should be asking when you engage a lawyer. How long is this going to take? Because I've worked at firms where they've got the client in, it's all secure, we've got the money and then it just gets left. We like a lot of other more modern law firms, have a pipeline and you go into it and you get your work back within phenomenally quick time. Two, three, four or five days. And we usually guarantee five business days. So you'd be looking that's the sort of question you should be asking. And again fixing fees. So just to make sure you're not engaged in a law firm that's running a clock with an hourly rate, the.

Matt Jones [00:28:11]:

15 minutes time increment six minutes now.

Helen Kay [00:28:14]:

I believe is the trend. Every six minutes it counts. People can't leave. I've worked at those firms. You can't leave your desk until you bill 7 hours. Got a bill for bill for 7 hours a day and obviously encourages you to pop a little bit more on the clock. So fixed fee lawyers on the other hand, are very efficient. We get jobs done. I don't know how quickly yours was turned around by the team but it would have been very quick. It would have been phenomenal.

Matt Jones [00:28:41]:

Under a week for sure.

Helen Kay [00:28:42]:

Yeah, exactly. And that's our promise. Again. So just asking those right questions. Make sure you're hiring the right law firm if you want to get it looked at quickly and within a transparent price. So those definitely things you need to think about. And there's other things you asked before. Is there anything else? There's other things we've not talked about, like things like personal guarantees. So just zipping back to protecting yourself with commercial clients. People set up a company for a reason and it's to protect their own personal assets. So if you're engaging with the company, you're engaging with a one dollars entity essentially you could be. So if you get some personal guarantees from the directors then that can help. If the company starts to default, you can remind them that you've got a personal guarantee against them. It gives you that financial security to know that if they are having discussions with liquidators about closing up that you've still got that option, if they're not bankrupt personally, to go against them personally. And it shows a know, if you're dealing with Bob Smith from Smith Construction and Bob Smith's not willing to sign, to say that he guarantees his own company will pay you, then that's a bit of a red flag.

Matt Jones [00:29:59]:

Yeah. Interesting. I know you wanted to come back and discuss a few other topics in a couple of future episodes. What can we look forward to eagerly?

Helen Kay [00:30:10]:

Yeah, trying to remember what the topics were. And I know one of them which you were particularly interested in. And this is something that's happening in our world a lot because of the shortage of materials, shortage of labor, the increased costs of running trade businesses at the moment, and all these risks. A lot of people are joining forces, and we're seeing some quite successful companies now who are joining forces, whether they're doing exactly the same thing or whether they're doing complementary things.

Matt Jones [00:30:38]:

Like merged pulled resources.

Helen Kay [00:30:41]:

Yeah, joint ventures pulled resources. And I want to just talk to you about how that could be of a real benefit to some businesses who want to grow or want to sort of get out of the slump that they might be in. It's not always a case of close the business or sell the business and go back and work for the man. There are other options, and that is one option, to actually merge in with someone else. And it's quite exciting when we see these new companies emerge and catch up with them and see how successful they are.

Matt Jones [00:31:08]:

It's funny you say that, because I know, like, a colleague of mine, his whole growth plan is growth through acquisition. And it's been for a very long time. And it's a smart play because it's very hard to find labor, but it's very easy to buy a business that has a team of 20. But yes, they do a similar thing. And I remember years ago, we had a couple of we had a plumbing client down in Melbourne and an electrical client down in Melbourne, and they wanted to both grow and expand. And the plumbing company wanted to add electrical because at the time, everyone was like, we're plumbing, electrical. They want to go down the American route. And same with the other guys. And I said, Why don't you guys just meet and talk? They're very similar business. They didn't know each other, but they were very similar size business, similar goals, both really cool dudes. And we just made an intro. I made an intro to them and say, look, you guys should talk about this because this is a potential. Anyway, they ended up doing it. They ended up merging, and it went great for them.

Helen Kay [00:32:12]:

Awesome. Well, that's what we're seeing as well. We're really seeing people who've got a real strategic direction. And some of the things that these people can do with these pulled resources, whether it's the equipment, the skills, the labor, and just having that person that can help you with these difficult things that happen, it's real magic. It happens a lot in the legal world does happen with us.

Matt Jones [00:32:39]:

I've seen suits. I know all about it.

Helen Kay [00:32:41]:

I haven't seen it. I don't want cabbage like that.

Matt Jones [00:32:48]:

I know recently as well, we did a podcast and it was talking about how it was more sort of on the purchasing business side of things. And the fellow was saying how there's a lot of strategies now where businesses are kind of well, if you look at angel investors or private equity or a lot of these private equity businesses are buying trade businesses of rolling them into pooling them and then flipping them because they're upping the value and flipping them, basically taking a bunch of $1 million businesses and turning them into a $10 million sort of conglomerate and then selling it for Ten X.

Helen Kay [00:33:40]:

And you want to watch what people like that because they know what they're doing.

Matt Jones [00:33:43]:

Oh, yeah.

Helen Kay [00:33:44]:

And how can we do this? Okay, we're not going to go and get funding to do all this, but how can we join in with plumbing and electrical? How can we pool our resources? How can we offer dry hire because we don't have any of the equipment, all of those things. And I think it would take two or three things. It'd take a really good lawyer, it would take a good accountant as well to help you with all the tax side of rolling assets into the new entity, but also really great business coach to sort of coach you on that strategy and what the next two or three years would look like. But yeah, definitely. That's what I'm going to come back and talk about and I'm quite excited about that.

Matt Jones [00:34:15]:

Yeah, cool. All right, awesome. Well, anyway, so thanks for your time today. Where can people find you, Helen?

Helen Kay [00:34:23]:

Well, I'm hanging around at Riselagal, so Riselagle.com Au every day they make me come into so you can find me on the socials. You can just book in a free call. If you've got anything I've said about today that's resonated in terms know, I don't have terms and conditions or these contracts come across my desk and I don't read the bloody things. I need someone to if you just want to get an idea of what it sort of looks like to have a lawyer on your team, then just go on to Riselgal.com dot Au and the little contacts tab and just book in a free call or shoot me an email.

Matt Jones [00:35:00]:

Yeah, awesome. All right, great. Well, thanks, Matt. I'll put some links to all that stuff in the show notes. Good to have you back on the show. And yeah, look forward to the follow up.

Helen Kay [00:35:08]:

Yeah, they'll be the interesting ones.

Matt Jones [00:35:11]:

Yeah, totally.

Helen Kay [00:35:12]:

Awesome. Thanks, Matt.

Matt Jones [00:35:13]:

That's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Site Shed podcast if you like the sound of 30 qualified proposals in the space of 90 days, I just want to recap. Head across to tradie.wiki/offer, watch the videos, fill in the form and make sure you book a time to have a chat with me. This is for businesses that are making $50,000 a month in revenue, are located in Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the USA. And you're a trade business or a contractor that works with project based work. Head across to tradie.wiki/offer yes, I realized it sounds too good to be true. Trust me, it works. Do it now. I look forward to chatting to you soon. Ciao.