Founder and Director of
Catt Architects, Melbourne, Award-winning architect
Gary Catt discusses the benefits to his company of implementing the Five-step Company Efficiency Program entitled Model of Admin Know-How.
Here is Gary Catt:
A quick recap of Gary Catt’s life looks like this:
After ten years of working for a Melbourne company of engineers and surveyors, Gary decides to quit his job and start a partnership with a client.
After a five-car pile-up in the company car, Gary turns in the badge of the Mercedes as a parting gesture.
He goes from a city office with all the amenities to the industrial complex of a major road-making business in the outer suburbs.
With no sense of ethics, Gary encourages an employee from his prior employer to leave and join him, and then coaxes away his subsequent replacement. “All’s fair in business,” he thinks.
He designs and builds a number of offices and factories for the next two years and finds he is giving away the design work he has always loved to contract architects.
He’s on wages and can see that the promise of a profit share is far away on the horizon.
Gary runs into continuous setbacks in the company and he’s headed downhill fast. His depression leads him to a new-age group and eventually leads to him quitting the business partnership. His partner is outraged which leaves Gary confused because he thought this was the solution to his problems.
He’s left with a major failed purpose, feels betrayed by everyone, and realises he’s burnt many bridges. “I couldn’t even drive home,”he says. “I had to stop the car. ‘Where to from here?’ I thought.”
With the support of his wife, Ali, he determined to start again and be the architect he was always supposed to be. Starting out alone, “I established a one-man operation working from the back of my house and began to promote and establish and bump along the bottom.”
Gary’s life had become a confusion and he’d suddenly gone from having prospective corporate clients to facing a small bathroom renovation as his only job leading up to the Christmas break.
“I was back to me as my only staff, no clue as to what to do now, almost nothing in the bank and no future work in the pipe,” explains Gary, “and I was still stuck at the back of my house. Enter Hubbard management technology.”
Finding Workable Business Systems
“I was at a party when I ran into an acquaintance who told me about a place where you could go to learn about this exciting L. Ron Hubbard’s business technology. He also said the guy who ran it knew me. I was stunned. It turned out to be a buddy from my high school days who I hadn’t seen for over 20 years and the place was literally within five minutes walking distance from where I lived.”
Gary went to see him and his old high school friend soon began to consult him with Hubbard management technology, including data on the subject of ethics. After comparing activities in his past, such as getting a free meal at a top restaurant just by talking his way through, to what he was learning about ethics, he decided to take a course on the subject and started immediately.
“I stayed up all night doing the practicals on this course. By the morning, I was a changed man.
“Before I had Hubbard management tech, I was hooking up with the wrong people. I took on clients so low on the Tone Scale* that I went effect of them and had trouble getting paid.”
“I did not keep statistics so didn’t know what was happening to our bottom line in time to handle impending drops in production and I roller-coastered financially and emotionally and was getting exhausted. Implementing Hubbard Management Systems was the turning point.”
After implementing Hubbard management technology, the company took off. Gary began to lecture to other businesses on successful applications, soon delivering weekly seminars on the Tone Scale, the Admin Scale*, the organising board and management by statistics – for the next three years.
He concurrently took several courses to learn all about this technology and became a member of WISE.
All of this, in addition to implementing the tech into his own architectural business, and the company continued to grow. “It was my commitment that if I was going to get up in front of people and convince them of the workability of Hubbard management technology, I must be able to walk the walk and talk the talk,” explained Gary.
Becoming a Model of Admin Know-How
“I attended my first WISE Convention a few years ago, along with my two key staff, one of which was my Co-Director & Production Manager, Andrew Hore. At the convention, he became very enthusiastic about Hubbard management tech and I could see we would now be working together on the business. He concluded that we must immediately do the full Model of Admin Know-How programs.
“This was my dream come true. This is what I had yearned for all these years. Studying and applying Hubbard management tech would empower Andrew to run the business in the future.”
They space-planned the back office for their own course room, upgraded to Company level members of WISE and started to train their staff on the range of courses available from WISE. Now all staff know and apply Hubbard management technology. Where he stands today: POWER
“All contracts are targeted and programmed to produce the monthly Value of Services Delivered statistics, statistics are collected and graphed. We apply condition formulas. We control our debtors. We have been solvent for more than a decade. We are increasingly profitable and have seen the statistics of the business rise year after year after year since applying Hubbard management tech. I know the state of the business at any time: We are in Power.”
Catt Architects has received many awards for its work, including the Interior of the Year Award, Urban Design Award for the City of Stonnington and the Australian Property Institute Award of Excellence.
A recent nationwide survey of architects showed that Catt Architects has outperformed the weighted average by 2X when comparing staff numbers and revenue.
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Definitions:
- Tone Scale:
- the Tone Scale plots the descending spiral of life from full vitality and consciousness through half vitality and half consciousness down to death. These various levels are common to all men.
- Admin Scale:
- A scale for use which gives a sequence (and relative seniority) of subjects relating to organisation. In short, for success, all these items in the scale must agree with all other items in the scale on the same subject.
- Statistics:
- A STATISTIC is a number or amount compared to an earlier number or amount of the same thing. STATISTICS refer to the quantity of work done or the value of it in money. Statistics are the only sound measure of any production or any job or any activity. These tell of production. They measure what is done. Thus, one can manage by statistics. One manages by statistics by studying them and evaluating them alongside other related statistics.
L. Ron Hubbard
