Sometimes, finding things in common with your in-laws can be tough. Not for Matt Sablinkis and Cam Fraser.
Matt had started dating Cam’s sister – Sarah just as he had finished his apprenticeship.
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Cam followed not long after in becoming a qualified chippy, and it didn’t take long for the for the bros to realise they’d make the ideal team. “It started over a beery night where we said we should just work together,” Matt said.
Once they had decided to go out on their own, all it took was another beer (or two) to come up with their company name: Limitless Build.
“We had another beery night to brainstorm names – if the name sounded good after a few compared to when we’re sober, then it’s a good name” Matt added.
Up for anything
Both Matt and Cam have been carpenters for a bit over 10 years, and it doesn’t look like they’re getting bored anytime soon.
“Everyday is different, we’re some place new day in, day out. Getting to experience all of melbourne,” Matt said. “It’s really satisfying and rewarding driving past a house you built.”
Cam is a big fan of tackling challenges head-on, and loved the obstacles he encountered as a carpenter everyday.
“It’s great solving problems on the fly as well,” he said. “When you do renovations when you’re an apprentice and trying to figure out solutions on the fly is the hardest thing for every chippy.
“So when you’ve dealt with high energy situations like that, you can handle anything it almost feels like. “I don’t get nearly as stressed on a normal day at all because of carpentry, and I’ve got newborn triplets as well as two more boys.”
Limitless Build really hit its stride during Covid, when demand for outdoor structures like pergolas skyrocketed. Once things started to settle down, Matt and Cam noticed their clientele shift towards more high-end residential builds.
“Covid really made us home in our business properly,” he said. “Our original business model in 2022 was trying to be high-end outdoor living. “But to grow your team, you kind of need feelers everywhere. So now, we do high-end residential as well, and we’re doing it a lot more.”
The whole gang
Limitless Build has about 10 full-time staff on deck, including Matt and Cam’s partners Sarah and Jaimee respectively working in the office. One thing Matt and Cam said helped build their business substantially was bringing in a business coach.
“Getting a business coach is the best thing we did,” Cam said. “You can be the best chippy out there, but no one’s gonna teach you how to run a business on their dime – you’ve gotta figure it out for yourself. “If you get someone in your corner the whole time, it’s a piece of cake.”
Matt said getting a coach helped give Cam and himself room to breathe and enjoy their life out of work.
“Coaching threw us in the deep end, but spat us out above everything else,” Matt said. “It helped us get more family time too – the more we implemented certain things, the more time we had at home.”
A healthy team mentality is another thing Matt and Cam believe has helped keep their business in good stead.
“We do six-month KPI meetings with each person to see how they’re doing, and we can them improve,” Matt said.
“That’s why we like our team, we’re not just about work, we want to help grow your skills and teach you what we know. “If you go somewhere else, that’s fine – we’ve helped to give you a path.
“One of our dreams is to have a waiting list of people wanting to work with us.”
Cam echoed Matt’s statement, adding tradie mental health was a huge area of focus for the team. “We concentrate on our team mentality, including mental health,” he said.
“It’s really important to use that everyone gets along, but also that if there’s something stressing you out, we encourage people to talk about it.”
Up and at ‘em
Cam and Matt have been member of Carpentry Australia for about five years. As well as helping set them up with a business coach, the pair said it was great to have an association geared purely to helping carpenters.
“They know how to improve the carpentry industry – they’ve been great with us,” “They’re just for carpenters, it’s great having someone in your corner like that.” Matt and Cam are always looking ahead to how they can turn Limitless Build into a carpentry powerhouse.
While they love being out on the tools, Matt and Cam wanna get to a point where they can spend more time growing Limitless Build from behind the scenes.
“We wanna expand, but we don’t want to become some massive company,” Cam said.
“We’d love to build it to a point where Matt and myself can do a lot more of running the company efficiently, making sure everyone’s happy and that we’ve got a great customer experience that they deserve.
“The more you go into building high-end projects, the more you need to give a customer experience that reflects that. A lot of that is done behind a computer, or making sure you’re bringing the client in to see the progress – communication is a massive part of Limitless Build.”
You can find more about Limitless Build at limitlessbuild.com.au or @limitlessbuild on Instagram.