Whether it’s managing immense workloads, or keeping apprentices invested in carpentry, Sean Jellie has tackled it all along his journey.
Sean is the Director of SJ Carpentry, which he runs with co-owner Joe.
While he’s been a chippy for about 15 years, Sean started his tradie journey with the idea of being a plumber.
“I was initially looking at plumbing apprenticeships, but a carpentry apprenticeship came up and I just took it,” he said.
“My first job was doing formwork on pipelines, so I had always had an interest in playing with timber, and it all went off from there.”
Sticking with it
Similar to other apprentices, Sean relates to the grind of getting those first few years under the belt.
Perseverance, however, paid off.
“When I speak to a lot of the younger kids now, they struggle in their third and fourth years, I think that’s because they’re trying to figure it all out,” he said.
“Once you do that, and you get good at something, the passion grows and you start to love it and you begin to produce quality work you can be proud of.
“That moment for me was probably during my second year out on my own.
“When you start going around and realising your value is going up with every year, companies start offering you more money and you realise you must be half decent at what you do.”
Fully loaded
Sean knew he wanted to start his own outfit at some point. As fate would have it, one of his former employers reached out saying they planned on putting down the tools for good.
They wanted Sean to take over.
“He knew I had the ambition to run my own business, so I just took over,” Sean said.
“I just rebranded the business and worked those connections. It was a bit daunting but I quickly brought an apprentice on and the ball got rolling from there.”
And SJ Carpentry was born.
“It wasn’t as clean as it sounds, we only had one builder who eventually left so it was me and one apprentice,” Sean added.
“But I had the signage done up on my car right away, I was driving around doing jobs in my local area, and a builder called asking if we could bring him on as an hourly subby.
“The more word spread and the more marketing we did, the more opportunities were coming through.
“You always keep the numbers of your supervisors; I rang a few of them up and they had some work going as well.”
While sourcing jobs started as a slow process, Sean quickly found himself on the other end of the spectrum. Jobs were flying in non-stop, and what started as Sean and his apprentice exploded to a team of about 30 tradies.
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Cheques and balances
With such a massive team, keeping everyone happy was nearly impossible.
“There’s a lot of work around, so we expanded quickly,” Sean said.
“When you sign a contract, you expect to get paid in 30 days at the moment. You speak to a lot of tradies and no one’s getting paid on time.
“Cashflow became an issue when pay wasn’t coming through on time. All of a sudden you’ve got between five-to-eight guys and you’re wondering ‘how the hell am I gonna pay them?’.”
Still relatively green on the business management side of things; Sean enlisted the help of a business coach to help him through the number crunching.
Four years later, and SJ Carpentry is running like a well-oiled chippy machine.
“You grow so quickly to where you feel like you have to say ‘yes’ to everyone,” Sean said.
“I know you shouldn’t say no to business, but that’s probably the best thing we’ve done recently – learning to say no.
“I think we’ve found our happy place, we have a lot of apprentices who have grown with us that are now leaders within the team.
“We’ve got a good mix of guys who are invested in the company.”
Built up
Sitting comfortably at about 18 tradies, SJ Carpentry is working on projects across Melbourne’s South-East between suburbs Brighton and Beaumaris.
Like many companies, SJ Carpentry found demand in high-end residential builds.
We’re talking $10-15 million properties with all the bells and whistles you’d expect them to have, including basketball courts.
Sean said he absolutely loved these projects because he got to play a role in bringing someone’s exciting vision to life.
“I love that sort of stuff,” he said.
“There’s so much detail and seeing what new things people want in their homes, you get to see it first and get your hands on it.”
You can find out more about SJ Carpentry on Instagram @sjcarpentryservices