SCD006: Discovering How Digital Can Change An Industry - Serena Dot Ryan | Ad Strategist | Author

Show Notes

In this episode, Clinton shares his passion for problem solving and vision to make an industry better, one business at a time.

Listen to his journey of transitions, from studying concierge services to becoming the “Concierge of Tradies,” from being in the trades to running a technology business, and from being a plumber to being an educator. Know how digital helped Clinton to step up and transform an industry as well as how doing digital can change the lives of those in the trades industry in terms of work life balance.

About our Guest

Clinton Cowin, a plumber by trade, wanted to make it easier for trades people (aka ‘tradies’) to be in business. The biggest issue he noticed all trades people had was getting their paperwork organised. With this in mind he co-founded Tradiepad a dedicated education and advisory service for trades and service based businesses to become paperless, cloud-based and more efficient thanks to better use of the digital tools available to them.

Show Links

Website: https://www.tradiepad.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TradiePad/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tradiepad
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tradiepad/

Transcription

[Intro]

00:04

Hello. I’m Serena Dot Ryan and welcome to the See Digital Clearly show. This show is dedicated to inspiring action. Each episode, there is an interview with the forth-later doing great things for digital. They will share their insights and experience to get you inspired and focused to create the life you want thanks to digital.

Clinton Cowin from TradiePad is an unconventional entrepreneur who has so much passion, it’s quite frankly contagious. This guy started as a plumber, and discovered when the iPad was born, a way to be able to help those in the trades become paperless. Tradies hate paper. In fact, quite a few business owners do. And he is on a mission to help more navigate this world to be able to make their lives easier. After all, the digital tools that are available to us are meant to make our lives easier. Clinton has a fascinating story, and I look forward to helping you see what he’s been able to achieve and that inspire you to make the best of what you have. Enjoy.

01:21

S: Clinton how are you?

C: I’m very well. Thank you, Serena. How are you?

S: I’m great, thank you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us.

C: Absolute pleasure.

S: Now, I love your story, and I love the opportunity to be able to share it with our audience. You have an unconventional background, the question I want to ask you is: What is it that you want to be when you grow up?

C: Uh, that’s good question cause I’ve done lots of things in my career. That of all, I guess guided me to a certain extent to where I am now. But when I was at school or when I was finishing up high school, that inevitable question came around us. What are you going to be? What are you going to studying for? It was in those days, it was all, for me it’s all about hospitality so i studied hospitality.

S: Really

02:18

C: Yeah, yeah I studied hospitality. Whilst I was at school it was, I think it was the first year then they offered industry studies in high school and i did hospitality thinking that it was going to be a starting point for hotel management which is what I want to get into.

S: Oh my goodness.

C: Yeah, and the teachers said that will be great starting point for hotel management. And when it came down to it, the course was actually, the equivalent of a first year apprenticeship as a chef so it was absolutely different.

S: Oh my goodness.

C: Yeah it was a little bit different. Yeah it was different from what I was expecting. But it was still, it was still good experience. I still did, I still did some, like a whole practical experience, and work experience and a couple of pre-qualifications. I spent some time at the Regent Hotel in the city.

S: Oh I love that hotel. Oh my goodness.

C: Yeah, that was a five-star hotel. It was the hotel of the Olympics. So I did that when I was in year twelve. And a few years later I ended up working there in the concierge departments.

03:25

S: Oh no way! I can’t believe you just said that. Did you know I used to work in the concierge department as well at a few five-star hotels?

C: No.

S: I used to run down from the Old Sydney Park Road to the Regent, to get the laundry done.

C: Oh wow

S: I was the Old Sydney Park Road in the Rocks, do you remember that?

C: Yeah, just down the road, yeah.

S: Yes, down the road and then i moved to the Observatory Hotel which is now the Langham.

C: Wow.

S: And yeah, so, wow.

03:57

C: So, then, from there, whilst I was doing hospitality stuff, that was the hotel work that I was doing was in between winter snow seasons. Which is an old cross over that we had there.

S: We do indeed my goodness.

C: Yes I did um I was working in a resort, I was working in a lodge down in Parisian, working as a bar manager for one of the cool lodges. I’m living in the mountain and skiing all day and then coming back and working in hotels during the summer time. So yeah it was quite a bit of hospitality exposure. When I went to Canada and did the season over there as a ski instructor and then came back here and sort of get a real job.

S: Now I have to ask a question. It might sound a little off field. But do you, have you seen the movie the Concierge starring Michael J. Fox?

C: No, I haven’t

S: Okay. Right. You do know Michael J. Fox yes?

C: I do yes, very well.

S: Okay, that’s good. I had a moment on a previous podcast where I was interviewing the lovely Andrew and Pete and they did not actually know who Michael J. Fox was, and I really felt my age because I realized I was older than them

C: I was going to say they mustn’t have grown up with Family Ties.

S: No, no, it suddenly dawned on me i was speaking to very, well, established marketers in their 20’s with full credit and props to them but they haven’t grown up with Michael J. Fox. So the reason I’m bringing that up is I saw Michael J. Fox in that movie and he said a line in their why does he do what he does. And he said he wanted to give people what they wanted before they knew they wanted it. It got me hooked! They actually got me working in concierge department in hotels cause i wanted to be Michael J. Fox

C: Yeah that’s cool, that is very much like that. It’s a very rewarding role working in that department.

06:10

S: Yeah, yeah absolutely. So when did you first notice the value of digital? Like it’s quite a field to go from working in those roles to where you are now.

C: Yeah 100%. There was a couple of steps between there. I did my hospitality time, and then I got into working in retail, sales, in a photographic store. I really did time there which got me into photography. When I was kind of blending the love of the snow and sports with photography. A little bit of extreme sports photography that kind of stuff. Which gave me a bit of digital skill, that’s where I first got into digital, or into computers I suppose. I didn’t study computer studies in school. I was always more into the trades doing woodwork and metal work so i didn’t study computer studies. But the photography helped me into starting to look at Photoshop and digital manipulation with photos and putting images together

S: Fantastic.

C: Yeah that’s where the computer skills came in. And then in my infinite wisdom I started to do the trade which got me into plumbing. So I left the hospitality and left the photography and become a plumber. And still a number of years I did my apprenticeship as a plumber, I did my license course to start the Hydraulic Engineering diploma. And then TradiePad came along. So TradiePad was kind of a amalgamation of all these things that I’ve done over the years.

Combining the people skills of hospitality, and the education side of ski instructing, the technical, or technology of digital side in photography and of course the trade knowing the trade business in working and helping running the trade business gave me the skills that I needed to understand how to bring technology which was completely foreign to the trades industry, or construction industry, and bring it into day to day operations within trade business because that’s what caught me into the digital I suppose was seeing the impact that digital and technology could have on operations of a trade business. Because the plumbing business that I was working within was paper based. Everything was paper.

08:42

S: Wow, yeah. I think being able to get that out business like, it’s an interesting one to see. You’ve seen the same, like I know I’m having been around tradies, and in my family working in construction as well. Like my dad, my brothers. There’s a lot of stress around things if that’s not your natural state. If you’re not used to doing it like if you are more natural being hands on then getting to the paperwork can actually be something that’s not necessarily a strength.

C: Absolutely, yes not the strength at all. And being a business person is not always a strength either. You getting to a trade because you enjoy working with your hands and you enjoy being practical. But running a business is a completely different skill set. So yeah it’s very foreign to a lot of people.

S: Yeah it could be a potential source of stress too.

C: Yeah it’s very much so.

S: Yeah.

C: Yeah.

S: So you found now that’s, you’ve got into doing TradiePad, it’s something that you decided. How did it come, you know, what you have now, like when did you decide that this was actually going to be your way of life cause you’ve gone from being in the trades to you know basically running a technology business?

10:14

C: Yeah. Absolutely, there’s a bit of a technology/education business. Because ultimately its technology training for trades and services. So how it came about was the released of the original iPad. When it first came out my business partner Dave and I had been, or prior to the iPad being released, my business partner Dave and I had been looking at putting laptops and printers into our vehicles, which worked in theory but in practice it just wasn’t really practical. Laptops and the internet connection weren’t very good and the printers were a little bit too fragile, so it was a little bit early.

But then the iPad came out, and I thought oh, this is, maybe this is the thing we’ve been waiting for. Cause’ it’s nice and portable and it got a SIM card in it so its connected to the internet all the time. And they’re kind of robust enough, you put a decent case in them they’re robust enough to be able to be used on a job site. So far, this is the thing that we’ve been waiting for. So we got our hands in a couple of the iPad and though I’d be able to put all the software that were using. NYB, and Excel and those things I’ll be able to put in there. But of course none of that, as far six years ago, none of those apps existed yet at that stage.

So that led me to start looking at the app store. And I found a couple of apps that meant we could kind of cobble these systems together that meant we get rid of the paper. So we had a calendar system that got rid of our job cards in our diaries.And we used an app called Invoice2Go, which got rid of our books in our invoice books and a lot of our time-sheets, so it was a bit of a combination of solutions but it worked for us beautifully. And it was nice and low cost, it was accessible from anywhere, and it was absolutely ideal, and it literally changed our business changed our lives. So when I saw the impact of that, such a simple thing had on the business and on our lives I thought this is you know industry changing this is something that can not only help an individual but this can help the industry as a whole by helping to remove that stigma, I guess tradies, have a certain stigma associated with them about the quality of them being a business person. They don’t turn up in time, they never leave you an invoice, they never leave you a quote, and they never come back to you. And I guess its because as tradies we’ve been left behind a little bit with technology.

The rest of the business world has been using technology for decades, computers and laptops for decades but tradies have been left behind in the dark ages. So this has really helped us, technology really helps trades to leapfrog in getting to the box seat with having some tools that help them run their business more efficiently.

13:18

S: Yeah that’s just amazing. I just having this moment now thinking. You are like the concierge of tradies.

C: Haha you’re right.

S: You’re actually giving them what they want, what they need before even they need it.

C: Yeah that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And that’s where the education comes in to it because you don’t know what you don’t know. And the first point of contact or the first point of engagement that we have with our clients is for us to learn about their business so we can understand what they do and how they do it. But to be able to provide some education to them about what the stuff does and how it operates and how it can be beneficial. Because it’s one thing to have an iPad and have a couple of apps on there, and think that you know this is how its going change our life, but it understanding how all the pieces fit together and why the cloud is beneficial and why mobile devices are more appropriate or which mobile devices are more appropriate for which type of set up. So education is a massive component of the platform that we implement into people’s businesses.

S: So powerful. As you say we have all these tools yet they can only be as good as the person with them.

C: Exactly right. It’s like the system, it’s only as good as the data that goes into it.

14:43

S: Absolutely. That was amazing. So this, it’s incredible hearing what you’ve been able to achieve and where you are heading for as to transforming and industry. What did you find most challenging?

C: Well it was the change going from being a plumber to being an educator or a bit of a nerd. The biggest that I noticed that, having to change my mindset because as a tradie, there was a very loose concept of time keeping I suppose. And being on time, as a tradie is sometime between 8 and 12 or 12 and 2 and whatever it was all very vague. Whereas running a business, where I’m having to meet with people at a certain time or booking appointments, for a certain time having to change that mindset and be on time was massive. That was a big change for me. And getting my head around having to be on time down to the minute.

So I have to say that the technology has been quite beneficial for that because having a cloud-based calendar or having a calendar that’s running on my phone, running on my tablet, or running on my laptop, means I get reminders about when things are going on. Like I put to be reminded 15 minutes before, let’s say the podcast with Serena.. It most definitely helped, but at the same time changing the mindset to be thinking the right way and having the right business mindset in place was a big change for me. But no doubt about it, the tools certainly helped.

16:40

S: That’s good to know. Its digital has helped you stepped up in a way. like the opportunity to find what you need.

C: Yeah it really has. I guess we practice what we preach because TraidePad is completely online. So we don’t have, we got a team of 15 people and nobody works in the same hours. So we work completely online. Most people work from home. And we have online meetings. We use online software. So we are living and breathing digital all day everyday. So the podcast that were making today we use similar kind of meeting, technology to last and meet with clients all over the country and even internationally we got customers in New Zealand now that we are able to meet with via online meeting technology. And working remotely with the rest of the team, we used software that allows us to collaborate on documents and files together at the same time without even being within the same state or country as each other. So we really are practicing what we preach with digital. And TradiePad would not exist without it. It’s an absolutely critical part of what we do now. The cloud and mobile devices. I’m actually sitting in my car at the moment. Out in the edge of a big construction site at Western Sydney I’ve been onsite with the client all day. But the technology allows me to run the business and work from anywhere. So see I’m a firm believer.

18:29

S: Fantastic I love hearing that. Because I think this what is meant to be here for is that to enable that flexibility without compromising productivity or opportunity.

C: Yeah exactly right. I had lost counts of the number of times clients have said to me “this is the first holiday I’ve had since I started the business.” Because we give our clients the ability to monitor and manage their business from anywhere. Whereas in the days gone by you would have to be there on site with your guys or you have to be in the office you have to give them their job cards and be able to manage the business whereas now you can do it from anywhere. So you can have a holiday you can go a way for a month or two months or however long you want and you can run the business from anywhere using the technology.

S: That’s just priceless. Caught in holidays and how hard it can be running a business.That’s brilliant.

C: Yeah we had a good story. A couple of weeks ago one of our clients that we moved over to Xero, signed up to Xero and part of their sign up process to Xero was they went on the Facebook Xero page and they liked Xero and that put them into the running to win a prize. Which they did win and it was a trip away to Fiji to a resort for 7 months or something and she is the most recent one she said “We haven’t had a holiday for so long,” but its perfect timing because she now has tools in place within her business that’s going to allow her she and her husband to go away but continue to manage their business while over there. So it’s quite ironic that Xero’s being the start of all of that. And they’ve been the ones that are given the prices.

20:26

S: Ha ha that’s just brilliant. Oh my goodness. Hearing how you’re helping others for this I’d like to ask where do you see yourself in ten years?

C: Ah, it’s a very good questions. I think ten years at the moment is a long, it seems like a long time. And it is and absolute lifetime when it comes to technology. You look at what happened in the last two or three years with technology, TradiePad as been around for, coming out to six years. But the changes we’ve seen not only within TradiePad as a business but in the technology space with functionality and features, and you look at what social media can do now and the changes that they have. I think it will be a completely different space. I think from a lifestyle perspective, I’ll be approaching 50 so I’ll be a lot older and wiser. Like what’ I’ve learnt in the past five or six years so in ten years I should be quite a lot wiser. But my kids will be getting close to leaving home so hopefully being out to travel a lot more. And being out to obviously run the business from anywhere.

I think TradiePad at that stage by that stage will be a very friendly business working in multiple different industries because at the moment we focus on trades and services. That’s where the, I guess the, grassroots would come from, an industry that we know. But I see so much opportunity in every industry for technology and digital supply role, that I think there’s a role for education for all businesses. So I’d love to see TradiePad across multiple industries and multiple verticals and learning and educating tools to sorts of different businesses. But I think what we will be educating on in ten years time will be very different to what we are educating on now. I think artificial intelligence will be out there and we may be fighting against robots and trying to defeat the machines like Terminator 2. Maybe not that much.

S: Yeah it’s interesting to see how that evolves, yeah.

23:04

C: Absolutely, absolutely. But now I think the digital space and technology space will be very different to we’re seeing now. I spoke recently at an even up in Queensland which was for an industry body for electricians and it was all about technology and what were looking at in the future. So what now we’re looking at is a lot of wearable technology. So things like smart helmets and things like exoskeletons that workers are able to wear that allow them to carry heavier weights and carry heavier machines and work on machines with very little effort. I think wearable technology can become more and more prevalent.

So that’s going to have an impact on software because it will be integrating with things like a smart helmet for example can be worn that can give work instructions and can collect job information and can be monitoring the work-site and monitoring human behavior and human telemetry or suppose I call it things like temperatures or that kind of thing. But the technology we’ll be educating on will be quiet different but ultimate its all about progress it’s all about integration and getting information flowing from point a to point b. So educating absolutely but what were educating on i really don’t know at this stage.

S: I love your openness about that too. I think it’s, we can quite easy in being comfortable to where we are now. And to say this is what we’re educating on or what we’re doing. But there’s an interesting thing where so much more is actually being created everyday. So do not stagnate is what I take from you are saying as well. It makes sense that we should be continuously being open to what’s coming next, and that gives us the opportunity to be at the cutting edge. Like for what you’re creating it’s certainly making lives easier through technology. So if you’re not actually open to new technology. I had this, my son said something to me on the weekend and I was like trying to figure out what it meant. Because you know, the square DVDs. And I’m like what? Yeah mum square DVDs. And then it has square DVDs, and I’m like and he was talking about video cassettes

C: Ha ha Oh wow I got boxed on that on the weekend.

25:46

S: Ha ha. And for him, it was, that was all he know he could relate it he could put it in a machine and he could watch what was on it. So yeah obviously that’s obsolete so you gotta be open to what’s coming next.

C: Yes. Yeah absolutely. I mean being nimble in this ages is really important being able to shift and pivot to what comes along is critical in business. We being an educator we, were working on a whole range of different software products and be able to be across all of the different, all the new solutions that are coming around is my role really within the business now. It’s keeping my eye on the new things that are coming through and where I fit in to the ecosystem and what they do differently to other solutions and being able to pick up a new piece of software because it does something differently is really important. And being able to be nimble enough to run with a new concept or new solution or whatever it might me is really important to keep up and be on that cutting edge like you said. So I think change is inevitable. Its whether or not you embrace it to keep up.

27:07

S: Absolutely. So do you dedicate time, like each day or each week, to learning these new things?

C: I should have dedicated time for it. But it just kind of comes naturally. I’m across lots of different blogs and lots of different notification platforms that are keeping me in the loop with lots of different search terms, and lots of reviews and stuff like that. And I’m finding now that because TradiePad is starting to get recognized as a leader within the industry or as a go to person for technology within the construction industry we’ve got software companies coming to us in their early stages and saying have a look at this you know this is what we’re doing, how it works, and I guess it’s a matter of working at where they fit in to the ecosystem.

But yeah I’m starting to notice a lot more software coming out of the US and out of Europe where today that’s been Australia. Australia has been really leading the world with cloud-based and mobile-focused technology. Which is quite amazing but the US and the UK and Europe are really starting to catch up. So that’s where I’m focusing my effort to them. Keeping up with what those markets are developing. And its astounding. There were such a large number of developers and a large number of software companies over the years. Its astounding how quickly things can start to appear. So it’s a matter of knowing what to look for and where to look for it.

S: Yeah i think one thing you said there I picked up on is the notification. So all the views of digital is that you can get the notification that reduces the amount of time trying to search if it’s coming to you.

C: Yes, absolutely right. But I think its a double-edged sword there because you can get so bogged down and so cluttered with notifications these days that it’s knowing what to turn on and what to turn off and what to filter.

29:35

S: Yes

C: Because I found out very quickly that if you got too broad a search, you just get absolutely bombarded with all sorts of rubbish, which has quite an opposite impact.

S: Too true.

C: And a distraction from what you should be looking for. So knowing again I’ll come back to education. Know what tools are there and more importantly how to use them is so important. Use them to your benefit and use them as efficiently as possible.

S: Such a valuable piece of advice there too. To think that what you offer is allowing people to not spend those hours of research themselves like you’re getting the hard reality in for them.

C: Yeah, yeah that’s right. And I’m a firm believer of having a network of trust of advisers around you that can help with that kind of thing. Because there is no way as a business owner, you wear so many hats. And the more that you can focus on your core skill set or your, what you’re best at, and the more that you can farm out to other people that focus and excellence in what they do, the faster things happen and the better they happen. So I think I wore too many hats in the early days but I’m now more than happy to engage with experts to educate me on the things or help me with the things that I need which is how we connected, Serena.

31:16

S: It actually was! that’s right. Yeah I feel very humble and thankful that you came to me as well. My passion, as you know, is digital marketing. And helping you with that piece of the puzzle I think the best thing i can offer is the tools I help you with, help you more because you actually are very clear at what you want to be able to achieve and you got a good business model. I actually think what you have and hope you make that even better through amplification of what you’re doing. And it’s exciting to be out to do that with people who understand like yourself how valuable social media is to enhance who you already are. Not to speed something that’s an addition to what is needed.

C: Yeah yeah that’s right. And being, with education being such a huge part of what we do, I look at digital marketing and social media as a really good method of getting that word out there and providing or starting to provide that education. And I have to say it’s a whole new world. We’ve been, the business is build on digital. Its built on the cloud. Its build on modern technology but the education that we had in digital marketing in social media has been absolutely astounding. It’s a whole new tool that really needs, you really need to know how to use it to its potential to get the best out of that.