The Good Builder Podcast

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...

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...

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 ev...

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: t...

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 thi...

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...

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...

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...

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-ran...

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,...

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 p...

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: Where to find quality trades and subbies, especially when you're moving into a new area or scaling fast What to post on social media as a builder, and the types...

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 constructio...

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....

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 ha...

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 t...

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...

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...

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...

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 b...

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...

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...

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 admi...

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 a...

Your clients are more anxious than they have been in over a decade. The data explains why, and what you can do about it. This week on Tuesday Headlines we unpack two of the biggest stories shaping the Australian building industry right now. First, the client confidence data every builder needs to understand before their next sales conversation. Then, a clear-eyed look at why the Middle East supply...