The Smart50 Awards 2023 Smart and Lasting Award winner: Association of Professional Builders

For our newest award category this year, we wanted to celebrate a hall-of-fame business that has been a constant fixture of  The Smart50 Awards, thanks in large part to its continual growth and exemplification of the Smart50 values of innovation, resilience and community. And there’s no company better aligned with these values than the Association of Professional Builders (APB).

Co-founders Russ Stephens and Sky Kolade started their journey more than a decade ago, leveraging Stephens’ 25 years of business experience and valuable lessons learned from owning a building company. The pair’s shared vision led them to establish a marketing agency exclusively dedicated to the construction industry. Over time, they realised that for building companies to truly thrive, they needed to have the right systems in place and a comprehensive understanding of financials, too.

This lightbulb moment resulted in the birth of the Association of Professional Builders in 2014. Unlike generic coaching companies, APB provides tailored support for residential home builders. The co-founders’ industry-specific knowledge, along with a team of executive business coaches, ensures that APB can deliver custom guidance that is truly impactful.

“While there are countless generic business coaches and so-called ‘gurus’ out there, they typically don’t have the specific industry knowledge required to help a building company,” Kolade said. “APB has consciously avoided this generalist approach.”

Despite substantial challenges over the past year, with rising material costs, a scarcity of skilled staff and a drop in consumer confidence due to interest-rate hikes, APB has achieved remarkable results. Its membership grew by 30%, and many of its members enjoyed substantial business growth. Through continuous coaching, one member doubled their gross profit margin from 15% to 30% and secured their biggest-ever contract at this increased margin. Other members saw impressive net-profit increases, a 12-month booking schedule and large tax savings by improving their work-in-progress accounting.

“Good business practices will overcome external factors that are out of your control,” Kolade said. “If you set your business up for success with documented systems and processes for sales, marketing, hiring, financial management and more, and refine them over time, your business will grow and succeed.”

“To achieve the sustained revenue growth required to land on the Smart50 list is an exceptional feat at any time. To do so multiple times – three, by my count – through years of bushfire, coronavirus and economic downturn, is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Ben Ice, special features editor at SmartCompany and judge on The Smart50 Awards.

Smart and Lasting Award winner, Association of Professional Builders placed 13th on the 2023 Smart50 List.