Tom Sachs did not follow a straight line into building. Fifteen years later, he runs one of the more respected franchise operations in regional Queensland. The path in between is worth paying attention to.

Tom Sachs started his working life lopping trees.

Not an obvious route into residential construction. But then again, Tom has never been particularly interested in obvious routes.

He left school early. Took a job because it involved chainsaws and climbing things. Then discovered, in a shed between jobs, that he loved working with timber. One thing led to another. An apprenticeship came through a contact of a contact. He ended up in commercial construction, doing concrete and steel, which was nothing like what he had imagined, but he stuck with it.

That stubbornness, combined with a habit of paying attention, is probably what made him.

From the Tools to the Office

Tom completed his apprenticeship in commercial construction and spent years trying to steer himself toward residential work. He eventually got there, contracting through various builders before landing an estimating role almost by accident.

A former colleague mentioned his name to a new franchise operator. The other job fell through at almost the same moment. Tom picked up the phone, had a conversation with Jason, the owner of a Brisbane West Stroud Homes franchise, and that was the beginning of a new chapter.

He was not looking for an office career. But he found that estimating made sense to him. He would go home and keep working on quotes. He liked understanding how the numbers connected to what was happening on site.

That combination, practical experience on the tools plus an appetite to understand the business side, is still relatively rare. Tom would be the first to say he did not plan it that way. But it gave him a foundation that most people have to work much harder to build.

Running the Franchise

Tom now runs the Stroud Homes franchise for the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane. He has been there through some of the most difficult trading conditions the industry has seen in recent memory.

His first year included COVID restrictions landing just as he was trying to establish a new display home. The HomeBuilder grant followed, bringing a surge of leads and sales. Then the supply chain collapsed, trades became impossible to lock in, and prices moved faster than contracts could account for.

He talks about that period with the calm of someone who lived through it and figured out what actually mattered.

“We realized all we can do is get these jobs done as quickly as possible. There is no one else available. These are the people who are going to do the work for us.”

His approach was to accept the price rises from subcontractors, make sure jobs were genuinely ready before calling them in, pay promptly, and build a reputation as someone worth showing up for. Not complicated. But not common either.

“If we accepted their price rise, they would book the job in and we could move forward. We knew that if we got them there, got through the work, paid them on time, they would come and do the next one.”

The subbies who felt messed around went elsewhere. The ones who trusted Tom kept coming back.

What He Learned About the Numbers

Tom is direct about what he thinks separates builders who stay in business from those who do not.

It is not skill on the tools. It is not even experience. It is understanding the numbers.

“You can be the best framer in town. But if you have not quoted properly, it does not matter how good you are putting that frame up. You are not going to have any more frames to put up.”

He is largely self-taught on the financial side. Early mentors showed him the basics. He listened to audiobooks on long drives between sites. He leaned on his wife, whose parents are psychologists, for perspective on leadership and people. He thought about things between jobs and tried to build systems that could carry the workload as the business grew.

He describes it simply. Know your numbers. Understand markup and margin, not just what is in the bank account. Look at how each job is tracking before it starts, during the build, and at the end.

That discipline, put in place early, is what gave the business room to breathe during the years when everything else was out of his control.

The Value of a Network

Tom joined Stroud partly because of the network.

He had worked closely with the Brisbane West franchise, understood the system, and had seen how franchisees could call on each other when problems came up. Not competitors. People with no reason to hold back.

“You have just so many people there that have either gone through it before or figured out something that you have not yet. Only a phone call away.”

That peer knowledge is something independent builders rarely have access to. Most questions get answered by trial and error, or not at all.

The network lets someone in regional Queensland call a franchisee in New Zealand who built the same design six months earlier and ask how a particular beam went through. It removes months of uncertainty from decisions that would otherwise get made blind.

Building the Team

Tom recently brought his wife Jenna into the business.

She came from hairdressing, then moved into social work, supporting carers through difficult periods. Not a traditional background for a building sales role. But Tom saw it differently.

“She just loves helping people. And she has got the skills for it.”

The same people skills that made her good at understanding what someone was going through, sitting with them, listening properly, turned out to translate directly into what clients need when they are building a home.

His wider team has been largely stable since the business began in the Lockyer Valley. He picked them carefully when he and Jason split the Brisbane West and Lockyer Valley operations. He trained them. He built a culture where the work itself was something people cared about.

“If you have got a good vibe yourself and you can build a good culture, and then get people that follow that culture, you just have the best team.”

What Makes a Good Builder

Tom was asked directly at the end of a recent podcast conversation.

His answer was short. Leadership. Knowing your numbers. Knowing how to build.

In that order.

He does not think of himself as exceptional. He still describes himself as just a chippy trying to do the right thing. But the way he talks about the business, the way he navigated the worst period the industry has seen in a generation, and the care he puts into the people around him suggest something more considered than that.

The builders who come through the side door often see things the straight-line builders miss. They have had to figure things out as they went. They have learned to ask questions and to pay attention to answers.

Tom Sachs is a good example of why non-traditional does not mean unprepared.

It often means the opposite.

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Author: TGB Editorial