{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Good Builder Podcast","title":"The Daily Dose #327 | Xero Economist Louise Southall on Productivity, Cash Flow and Why Construction Is Holding Up","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2714,"description":"Construction is one of the strongest performing sectors in the Australian economy right now. Louise Southall has the data to prove it.\nLouise is the Xero Economist. She joined Xero in 2020 and brings 30 years across economics and business advocacy, working with business organisations, councils, government agencies and charities. Her focus is Xero Small Business Insights, a program that uses anonymised and aggregated data from the Xero platform to show what is actually happening inside small businesses. Real sales, jobs and wages figures rather than survey responses. The Australian data set covers more than half a million small businesses.\nIn this episode she joins Az to unpack the June quarter for construction. Sales up more than ten per cent on a year ago. Employment up more than five per cent. Wages up around three per cent. She explains why the sector is outperforming most of the economy, what is cushioning it against cost of living pressure, and why Queensland keeps showing up near the top of the table.\nThe conversation goes well past the numbers. Louise makes the case that productivity is not one big step change. It is small changes at the margin. She talks about the red tape sitting inside your own business rather than in Canberra, the friction between quoting, doing the work, invoicing and getting paid, and why the Christmas shutdown conversation with your accountant needs to happen months before December.\nHer answer to what makes a good builder is worth the listen on its own, and it comes from three decades of watching small businesses succeed and fail. Most builders serve a trade apprenticeship. Very few serve the second one. Businesses rarely fail because the trade work is poor. They fail because the cash does not come in fast enough.\nAlso covered: skills shortage as the sector's main headwind, why the five to twelve staff bracket is the hardest place to sit, what technology adoption actually looks like when you are running quotes from the ute, and what...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/kfWyLokmOh8IknRiu8hFWliTL287_yQe0yBgRNp7WJc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yZmE4/MDdmMWNmOWU1Yjc4/ZGU2OTIxYTcwOTk0/OTk3YS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}