When most people talk about business growth, they reach for the obvious levers: more leads, more staff, more machinery, more margin. In manufacturing, especially, the conversation tends to centre on output, efficiency, and “getting things out the door”.

But on a today’s episode of The Good Builder Podcast, Apollo Patios leader and co-owner Dan Mulhern offered a different starting point: build the kind of workplace you would actually want to turn up to even if you weren’t the boss.

It sounds simple. In reality, it is a discipline. And in an industry where pressure, deadlines, and demanding customers can grind teams down, Mulhern’s approach stood out because it was deeply practical, built from lived experience, and openly human.

Across a wide-ranging conversation with host Aaron, Mulhern unpacked the journey that took him from major corporate roles including a pivotal period at BlueScope into the world of patio manufacturing, where he now helps lead a business delivering roughly 20 custom-built patio kits a day across South East Queensland.

Along the way, he spoke candidly about career decisions many would avoid, the “hundreds of little things” that shape culture, and a personal mental health crash that forced him to rethink what success is meant to feel like.

A reluctant leader who learned to choose the right ladder

Mulhern’s career, by his own description, was not a straight-line climb. In fact, he said he actively avoided leadership early on.

He recalled a moment in 2014 at BlueScope when a restructure created an unexpected opening. The call came from HR, asking for his resume within days. The interview followed quickly. The opportunity was real, prestigious, and for many, an obvious “yes”.

Mulhern did say yes and later learned something important: sometimes the role that looks like the peak is not the right seat for you.

He moved into the Building Market Manager role in Queensland, a position he described as one of the biggest jobs in Australian manufacturing with Queensland being BlueScope’s largest Colorbond market. It came with pressure, responsibility, and a major shift from external relationship work to internal systems, approvals, and administration.

Then he made the move most people talk themselves out of. He stepped back.

Not because he disliked the company. Not because he was failing. But because the role did not suit how he worked best.

Mulhern described it as choosing the “right ladder” rather than simply climbing the next rung. A mentor’s advice stuck with him: if you are not happy doing it, stop doing it.

In an industry where status and title often define identity, the decision to walk away from a revered role became a thread that ran through the rest of his story: self-awareness beats ego, and enjoying your work matters more than looking successful.

The shift from “Sunday dreads” to wanting Monday to start

Mulhern described a period in his working life where weekends were not relief they were something he dreaded.

He spoke about “Sunday dreads”, anxiety, and a sense of losing control as soon as the working week paused. It was the kind of slow grind many leaders normalise: you keep moving, you keep pushing, and you tell yourself it is just the cost of responsibility.

But his description of the present day was the opposite. He talked about enjoying weekends, spending time with his wife and son, and arriving at Sunday night “itching” to get back to work not because he is addicted to work, but because he genuinely wants to rip in with his team.

That shift, he suggested, does not happen through motivation posters or corporate slogans. It happens through culture built deliberately and a workplace environment that feels safe, human, and high-performing at the same time.

“Walk the floor” is not a tactic if you actually know people

One of the most telling parts of the conversation was Mulhern’s explanation of how he starts his day.

He does not walk into the office first. He goes through the factory floor.

He greets the team. He talks to people. Not in the forced way some managers try to copy because they have read it in a leadership book but in a way that signals familiarity and trust. He joked that nearly everyone has a nickname, and that those nicknames mean something because he knows the people behind them.

It is easy to dismiss this as “nice culture stuff”. In manufacturing, it is not.

A factory operation is a chain. Remove one link, and everything suffers. Mulhern’s point was that if people feel invisible, they behave like interchangeable parts. If people feel seen, they tend to act like owners of their work.

He contrasted that with environments where teams are physically and culturally separated; office, sales, factory and interaction is minimal, awkward, or tense. In those environments, people may not even know each other’s names, and a simple cross-department issue becomes a stress point.

Mulhern’s view was blunt: if you would not want to work there, why would good people stay?

Hiring for cultural fit, and letting the team meet candidates

Mulhern also challenged the common approach to hiring in operational businesses.

Rather than treating recruitment as a checklist exercise “does this person know the ERP system?” he described hiring as a cultural decision first.

In roles requiring heavy collaboration, Apollo brings shortlisted candidates in to meet the team they will work with. Not as an interrogation, but as a casual conversation. The team gets a say. It creates buy-in early and helps avoid the hidden friction that often shows up weeks after someone starts.

He framed it simply: good people are hard to find, and when you find them, you have to give them a reason to stay.

This is one of the consistent themes across the Apollo story: the business does not treat people as replaceable. It treats retention as an operational advantage not a HR function.

One-on-ones that change depending on the person

Mulhern’s approach to leadership routines was another standout because it rejected the “one-size-fits-all” model.

Every Monday begins with a management meeting. Safety is the first conversation a carryover from BlueScope that Mulhern says is non-negotiable, and linked directly to his biggest fear as a manufacturing business owner: someone going home injured or worse.

After the management meeting, he spends the day doing one-on-ones.

But the structure changes depending on the person.

Some team members thrive on a structured, agenda-driven check-in. Others do not. For his factory manager, a formal sit-down meeting would not bring out the best in him so Mulhern runs those one-on-ones through conversations across the day: on the floor, in the lunchroom, around real work.

The point was not that structure is bad. It was that structure has to serve the person, not the other way around.

He described it like coaching: you are not simply the CEO issuing instructions; you are responsible for getting the best out of each player, and each player needs different support to perform.

When leadership means delivering posts to Maryborough

The interview repeatedly returned to the idea that culture is proved in the moments where it would be easier to hide behind the org chart.

Mulhern gave a recent example: a job in Maryborough needed powder-coated posts, and the business missed the timing to get them onto the truck. No one else was available. So he drove them himself a three-hour trip while also using the time to speak with customers and check in with internal team members.

It is not the driving that matters. It is the message: no task is beneath leadership when the customer and the team are depending on the outcome.

In Apollo’s world, a missing component is not a small issue. Their customers, patio dealers and the subcontract crews installing the work rely on kits being complete. A single missing post can stop the whole job. That means lost time, lost income, and real frustration on site.

Mulhern’s view was that Apollo has become known for reliability, not because they never make mistakes, but because they respond fast when they do.

A business crisis, and an unexpected opportunity to lead

Mulhern joined Apollo Patios in January 2023 in a sales role. Not long after, the business went through a significant disruption when the former CEO’s past conduct became public and he exited the role.

Mulhern said the company’s name was mentioned in media coverage related to that situation, creating pressure and uncertainty for the organisation. The chairman, Tim, stepped in as acting CEO despite not having deep manufacturing experience.

Mulhern described having an early reaction of shock then quickly reframing it: there was an opportunity to stabilise and rebuild.

Within days, he approached Tim and offered to help run the business. He then worked with the management team to assess the operation and start shaping the “Apollo you see today”.

Mulhern became general manager, and the business began scaling rapidly. He described growth from producing in a week what is now a below-average day, and headcount increasing from 12 to 35, with more hires planned.

The crucial detail was not the number. It was that key long-term staff stayed through the transition including a factory leader with 25 years in the business and, according to Mulhern, are now enjoying the momentum rather than being crushed by it.

In late 2023, when one director chose to exit the investment, the board invited Mulhern to buy into the business and take equity. He accepted quickly, saying he believed deeply in the future of the company.

The month he could not get out of bed

The most personal part of the interview came when Mulhern shared what he described as a “personal battle” that peaked in early September last year.

He spoke about anxiety building to daily attacks, stress escalating, and depression setting in. Then one morning, he could not physically get out of bed.

He described sobbing without initially realising it, and his son coming into the room worried something terrible had happened. His wife returned from a run, and Mulhern told her he needed to see a doctor.

At the GP, the conversation included a blunt but important question: was he having dark thoughts? He said no but he could understand how people get there.

Mulhern took a month off work. He saw a psychologist. He leaned on support from his wife, son, chairman, and management team. When he returned, he gathered the team and spoke about what had happened.

He said he did not want to be the “poster boy” for mental health but he also believed leaders have an obligation to be open, because stigma still exists and too many people suffer in silence.

His perspective was simple: mental health cannot be treated as a one-day-a-year campaign. The check-ins need to happen every day.

As a result of his experience, Apollo has increased awareness and training around psychosocial safety at work, and Mulhern said he takes an active role in ensuring people are not overworked or overloaded.

For him, the lesson was a hard reset: life is not about work, and work should not define your entire identity. You should be able to switch off, then switch back on when it is time to work again.

“Pick your niche” what Mulhern thinks makes a good builder

At the close of the podcast, Aaron Ng asked the core Good Builder question: what makes a good builder, business, or person?

Mulhern’s answer was aimed at clarity.

He argued many small businesses try to market themselves as specialists in everything residential, commercial, industrial, reroofs, new builds without truly being known for anything. In his view, most builders are small-to-medium operators, and the advantage they can build is focus.

Pick your mark. Pick your niche. Hone it. Do what you are genuinely good at, build a reputation from it, and success follows.

It was a business lesson, but also a personal one: clarity reduces stress, focus builds quality, and doing work you actually care about makes the hard parts sustainable.

Why this story matters beyond patios

Apollo’s story, as told through Mulhern’s lens, is not a generic “growth journey”. It is a case study in what happens when operational excellence is treated as a human system, not just a production system.

There are practical ideas builders, suppliers, and manufacturers can lift straight out of this conversation:

• Culture is not posters and values on a wall; it is behaviour repeated daily.
• Leadership routines must fit people, not force people into routines.
• The factory floor and the office should not feel like different businesses.
• Hiring should protect culture first, then fill skill gaps.
• Reliability is not perfection; it is response and accountability.
• Mental health is a workplace issue, not a private weakness.

Mulhern’s story also fits neatly into The Good Builder’s broader mission: restoring trust and raising the bar by highlighting operators who are getting it right, and being honest about what it takes. 

In an industry under constant scrutiny, trust is not built through branding alone. It is built through consistent delivery, internal alignment, and leaders willing to say: “I have been knocked around too and here is what I learned.

Author: TGB Editorial