Rebecca (00:00.758)
Hello and welcome to the Champagne Lounge podcast. If you're new to the show, this podcast is where I interview some of our fantastic members about who they are, what they do and why they do it. Welcome to the show today, Ruth Newman.
Ruth (00:14.336)
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Rebecca (00:17.382)
I'm excited to have this conversation because the Champagne Lounge is all around community and bringing communities together. And you and I met, I'm going to say a good 10, if not longer, years ago as part of a community that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore. But we met as part of the She Business community, I think back in 2012. Is that right?
Ruth (00:38.408)
It would have been around then, yeah. I'm not really sure of the year, but it was a long time ago. Yeah.
Rebecca (00:42.366)
A long time ago, and I love it because it just is such a testament to the way community works and how business ebbs and flows in different ways because there were years in the middle of that we drifted apart and we're now back together in another community group for a business mentoring thing as well as the Champagne Lounge. So I'm so excited to have you here today.
Ruth (01:03.904)
Thank you. It's very, very exciting to be part of it and to be part of the Champagne Lounge actually.
Rebecca (01:08.018)
Yeah, thank you. Okay, so for the people that don't know you, you're an architect and have your own architectural firm. What got you into architecture and how long have you been in the space?
Ruth (01:20.356)
Okay, I've been in this space for too many, no, maybe not too many years, but lots of years. So I think I graduated in 1988, which is probably before most people were born. I started my own business back in 2007.
So before that I worked in various practices and all that sort of stuff. I think I only actually got into architecture. I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid. So when I was about 10 or 12 and then I went and did tech drawing at high school and I really didn't like tech drawing so I decided no I'm not going to do architecture. So I went through the whole of high school thinking now I'm not going to be an architect and then the thing that I'd applied for that I really wanted to do was occupational therapy and I missed it by two marks.
So then I was like, okay, I'm not going to do anything else. I didn't want to do any of the other things that I'd applied for on the main form that you had to do for Sydney universities. And by fluke, Newcastle University happened to be a separate form at that time. And so I just went, oh, well, I'll apply at Newcastle. And because I wanted to do architecture when I was a kid, let's do, let's tick architecture. And then I did some work experience with BHP and Wollongong as chemical engineering. So I ticked that box as well.
And then.
Rebecca (02:37.902)
I love that you picked your degree very similar to how I picked mine. I was like, oh, this sounds like fun. I'll take that box.
Ruth (02:44.252)
Yeah, it really was that. It was just like, oh well, I'll give myself some options. And then probably, I guess, three weeks before university started. So I was probably a long way down the list of people getting offers. I got an offer for architecture in Newcastle. And that was like, okay, that's where I'm going. And off I went and I didn't look back. So, yeah.
Rebecca (03:04.394)
Amazing, amazing. And I know that you shared with me at different time, the ebbs and flows of your career through different types of architecture in different areas of the space. What areas have you worked in over those years and that you love or that you don't love?
Ruth (03:20.976)
I don't think there's too many that I really not liked doing because you get so much different experience and meet different people and all that sort of stuff. But over the years where I've done Pizza Hut, done Commonwealth Bank fit outs, I did a large, what is it, work with, like a building company out at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, which is now the University of Western Sydney. There was three big buildings out there, including a lecture theater and stuff.
That was pretty exciting and it was really nice to work with builders on that one because that was a different way of doing stuff. And then we've done a lot of government office fit out work with one of the companies I worked for and I had five years with Colesmire working for Katie's as their design and construction manager. So that gave me a really good insight into the retail space.
And so now in our own business, we do a bit of retail because we understand that space, as well as doing residential and commercial and still doing some of that government work, things like that. So lots of different stuff. Yeah, just hold lots of things. And they're all different because the residential stuff, for example, is quite
Rebecca (04:23.074)
So you do a whole heap. Yeah.
Ruth (04:34.undefined)
extended because you've got to get council approval and you've got to do those sort of things whereas retail it's all about the lease so we've got the lease and we've got a rent free period and we're going to we're going to start here or the shopping centre is going to open on 24th of November or something so we need to have it all finished done gone so it's really fast so completely different perspective on how you do the work.
Rebecca (04:53.59)
much quicker timeline.
Rebecca (04:57.898)
And I guess also the client on the other end isn't as emotionally involved potentially on a commercial or government contract as they would be in a residential.
Ruth (05:07.316)
Yeah, and they're also spending somebody else's money, which makes a massive difference. It's like corporate in any thing, they're spending somebody else's money. They might have a budget, but it's not their money. Completely different.
Rebecca (05:10.371)
Yes, yes.
Rebecca (05:19.11)
Yeah, yeah. Now, you know, and I know, and most people following me know that I'm mid-Renos on a massive heritage project. It's something that we have never done before. It's something that I'm very grateful for the people in my orbit, yourself included, to be like, hey, I've got questions on this. Where do I start? Renovations, building houses is something that most people will probably just do once in their lifetime, not multiple times. So I know that during
our sort of starting process and having you as a close friend, I've asked a lot of questions. But for someone who's listening going, okay, well, I've got this on the horizon. I think I want to bring in an architect. I'm not quite sure if I need one. Where does a residential person as a family or a couple or as an individual, where do you come in as part of the planning process? And what are the things that they need to be asking an architect before they get into trouble?
Ruth (06:14.697)
That's a good question. Yeah, very much so. So it kind of depends where you're at in the process and whether you have any experience in the building industry at all. There's a very clever lady who has a website called Undercover Architect.
Rebecca (06:15.779)
How long is a piece of string, right?
Ruth (06:31.228)
And she does, it's all online stuff and online courses. And she actually educates people on what to do and where to start. And that's a really good place to start if somebody has no idea whatsoever. With other architects, you need to talk to them about how they work, what they're gonna do, how they charge, what their design philosophy is and how they might be dealing with you. For example, they might have a particular design style
And if that doesn't work for you, then you shouldn't be doing it. If they, oh, doing it with them, yes, yeah. And realistically, one of the biggest things is if you don't get along at that first meeting, or you have a, I guess it's kind of a...
Rebecca (07:04.822)
Or doing it with them, I suppose. Yeah.
Ruth (07:18.196)
that gut feeling that you don't click with them, don't work with them, because you'll be working with them for two or three years potentially. And if you don't, if you potentially don't think they're right at the first place, I mean, it might be that you have that gut feeling of you don't really understand and that's different to actually you don't get along with the person. If you don't think you're going to get along with them, definitely don't work with them.
Rebecca (07:25.838)
It's a long time.
Rebecca (07:42.126)
That's really sound advice, because I think a lot of people will jump into the first person that they get introduced to by a recommendation, and if it doesn't work, it can very quickly spiral out of control and cost a lot of money, right?
Ruth (07:53.808)
Exactly. Or you like John Smith's design around the corner so you want John Smith or Jane Smith, whoever it may be, and you just want it because you like the work that they do. But if you don't get along with them, it's not going to be a good relationship.
Rebecca (08:09.542)
Mm-hmm. And so over the course of doing this and working with individuals, I know you and I have talked a lot around how you're sort of evolving your architectural practice to newer ways of working and different ways of thinking to keep evolving the business so it's not the industry's changed, right? The industry's changing, people's way of working is changing. How have you been able to navigate that over the course of the last
15 years, 20 years in your business and in the industry to make sure that you're at the forefront of the way people are working. Because I know there's been a lot of legislation changes and also the way people work after COVID is very different.
Ruth (08:53.184)
That probably, the legislation changes is probably one of the really big challenges, particularly in New South Wales. It's not so...
so much of an issue in some of the other states. Well, we have a national building regulation that everybody has to follow and it's pretty similar in all the states. The actual approval processes and all those sort of things differ in each state. So you also need to make sure that the person you're working with understands all that. But with the building commissioner that's being appointed by the New South Wales government, the regulations are changing and getting tighter and all those sort of things. And even just the way that we would lodge
application to Council has changed so much in the last 12 months that you need to have really detailed systems on this is how we do it and this is what has happened next and then do the CPD training and all that sort of stuff on what's changing and how it's changing and what the impacts are.
I think the National Building Code has changed twice this year. It has a massive change every three years. And this year it changed so much that all the clause numbers within the code, which is about 500 pages or something, all the clause numbers changed. So where on all your documentation you refer to clause C1.1, it's not C1.1 anymore. So you've got to keep ahead of all of those sort of things and understand all of that because your buildings have to comply with it.
Rebecca (10:09.294)
That's massive.
Ruth (10:23.746)
to when your builder's finished and your builder's ready to hand it over and it doesn't matter what sort of project this is, they all have to give certificates to say that they're compliant and that's where the challenge is and trying to make sure that we have it compliant in the first place and then the builder follows it.
Rebecca (10:42.706)
Yeah, that's massive to stay on top of. Not just doing the projects and managing the people, but staying on top of changing legislation must be extremely challenging.
Ruth (10:45.375)
Mmm.
Ruth (10:51.536)
It is challenging and it's particularly challenging for those people working in the multi-storey units space. I don't work in that space but the massive changes first came into there into that area and so it's yeah very big changes if you're working in that space. Even down to once you've bought your apartment and you want to do renovations within your apartment you may have to go back to the original designer.
and get things approved through there because of the waterproofing and because of the services and the whatever and are you going to ruin it for the person downstairs or are you going to pull out a wall that's going to make the building fall down?
Rebecca (11:31.498)
Wow, that's massive. You don't think about these things as individuals when you're coming into buying a house or buying a property or an apartment, you really don't think to ask those questions. So, I think we've shared some definite golden nuggets there around what to look out for. And I'll link to that website as well in terms of where to start, because it is a little bit of a changing landscape all the time and it's good to stay on top of it. But as well as, as business and lots of, you know, we could talk business and, you know,
Ruth (11:44.492)
Thank you.
Rebecca (12:01.218)
building business and transforming businesses till the cows come home. But you have a love of doing the drawings now, right? The drawings, having some time to just get into a creative mode rather than just constantly on client projects. And you've got a bit of a passion project coming to life or has just been born into the world, I should say, around chicken coops. So give us a little bit of an idea about how you've gone from...
or included, I should say, not gone from too, but have started to include DIY, you know, boutique chicken coops into what Ruth Newman offers the world.
Ruth (12:37.528)
Okay, so one of my clients is a local school and we're building a building where their old chicken coop was. So I was approached to design a chicken coop for them so that they could build it elsewhere in the school and the builders would know what was needed to be built. So that was what I did and had so much fun designing it and working out.
Rebecca (12:38.702)
Thank you.
Ruth (13:00.96)
doing all the research and working out how nesting boxes worked and all of the rest of it and how to make a chicken coop work for the school, even down to so that the children at the school could collect the eggs from outside the coop rather than have to go in and let the chickens out and all those sort of things. And I had so much fun with that and the final product is fabulous, it really worked well. And when we did the design, we did a 3D image which was shared throughout the...
school newsletter and that really engaged the community. It was a great thing. It was just a silly little quick 3D image but people could see what it was and could understand that Chicken Coop was coming and what it was going to look like and really engaged the parents as well as the staff.
And it was just quite an exciting project to work on. So then had the thought process that maybe we could keep doing that and design some different ones and have some options available that people could then just go online and purchase and buy the plans and build their own chicken coop or get a builder to build their own chicken coop. Because they're not particularly small chicken coops. They're not the ones that you buy just...
Rebecca (14:10.15)
one or two chickens.
Ruth (14:11.044)
Yeah for one or two chickens. This one has, the one at school I think has seven chickens but could, it's big enough to have about 15 chickens.
Rebecca (14:19.186)
Wow. I love that when you were telling me the story of, I think it was last year, maybe earlier in the year, when we were at one of our business retreats in the glorious Hawaii, because that's how we roll these days, and that you'd said to him, I don't need to design one, like surely the builder can just knock one up. And I think you said, the principal had said to you, no, I want them to follow the actual design. I want you to design it so they follow a plan and I get what I want, which I think is really interesting that...
Ruth (14:29.78)
Thank you.
Ruth (14:45.012)
Yes. Thanks, Lola.
Rebecca (14:48.478)
He had to almost convince you to design the chicken coop in the first place. And now it's become something that I think, well, I know that I'm going to be jumping straight onto having a chicken coop design, but having that there so that people can have something that's aesthetically pleasing in their garden and has been thought about, I think is a really exciting prospect. So when does that go live? I know you've been talking about this for a little while and it's taking a lot of time because
Ruth (15:15.284)
Yeah.
Rebecca (15:16.894)
of the drawings and plans that you're doing. So what's been the process to bringing it to life for Feathered Estates to become a reality? Because it hasn't been necessarily an easy ride.
Ruth (15:27.716)
No, it hasn't definitely hasn't been easy. You would think that you just do the drawings, get it done, go done, whatever. But getting the drawings at the stage where it so the one at the school was done by a professional builder. And we don't
don't necessarily want it to be a professional builder. It could be a handyman or it could be a handy husband or handy wife or whatever. It doesn't need to necessarily have a builder. So getting that documentation at a stage where somebody could actually understand some drawings because that's actually the challenge with a lot of our work is getting people to understand the drawings. So trying to get that right and then do we do it which.
CAD program do we use and those sort of things and just working out what we would call it took me a long time to do that we did have an idea of Ruthie's houses but we've settled on Feathered Estates as you mentioned and it's just been a long process and it because it's in between doing our client work it's the same as anybody else that other things get in the way hopefully the plan is before Christmas it will be live
Rebecca (16:31.01)
Definitely.
Rebecca (16:35.338)
Amazing. So, while the time we're listening to this episode, it will be live because we're going to drop this one at the beginning of 2024. Which is really exciting. Like you don't actually realize sometimes when you're putting together a side hustle, like how much extra energy it takes to start something from scratch. And I know firsthand how hard it is to start something brand new from scratch going all in. So it's all, it's really great to see it come to life and
Ruth (16:35.456)
Christmas 2023.
Ruth (16:43.904)
Thanks a lot. Hoot hoot.
Rebecca (17:02.518)
The fun of it, like when we're talking and you're sharing it, I can see the joy and the excitement come up in your face when we're talking about that as a passion project. So that's really exciting to see. And I love that it's all started from a space of community, right? Like being engaged in the community, the community being engaged with that. So on the note of community, you're part of the Champagne Lounge. Why have you chosen to be part of this community and what do you enjoy about it?
Ruth (17:10.502)
more.
Ruth (17:19.053)
Yeah, definitely can.
Ruth (17:31.888)
The initial reason to join was to support you, obviously, because we've known each other for so long and you were starting a new venture and I was like, well, let's see where this goes. I really enjoyed meeting different people, whether it's been at the events or at the online events, really enjoyed the different perspectives, the different advice that we got. I was on one, even last week, where you were not there because you were at...
Rebecca (17:57.55)
was not.
Ruth (17:58.424)
So I was with some other women and we were talking about further the states at the time and while we're sitting there talking it through it was just like
Why am I doing it that way? There's a much easier way to do that. And it just came because of the conversation I was having with some people over a cup of tea or a glass of wine, I can't remember which one it was at. And I think it might've been wine Wednesday. And yeah, it was such a good, because you're just chatting and all that sort of stuff and it's a community that's supporting each other, it gave me a completely different idea and it was fabulous. Hmm.
Rebecca (18:17.474)
Hehehe
Rebecca (18:29.514)
I love that. I love that. That's just what it's all about. When someone asked me what do you mean there's no agenda? Like what do I learn? I'm like, no, you just come and come and chat. It's like a it's like a virtual lounge room or a virtual bar that you can just pop into and talk to whoever's there. So I'm so glad you managed to articulate that and tie it back into feathered estates. I love that.
Ruth (18:49.428)
Yes, well that's what we were talking about and they said oh I hear the architect that's doing that so they'd heard about it somewhere else as well so that was great. Yes exactly.
Rebecca (18:57.97)
Yes, power of community and conversation. I love it. So if you'd like to check out Feathered Estates or any of other elements of Ruth's work, I'll put all the links into the bottom of the show notes. And if you want to come have a chat, you know where to find her inside the Champagne Lounge. So Ruth, thank you so much for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed our chat and I definitely think our audience has taken away some nuggets of gold when it comes to potentially building houses and chicken coops.
Ruth (19:25.677)
and chicken. Thank you. See you later.
Rebecca (19:30.894)
That was great. I mean, it didn't cough too much. Woohoo.
Ruth (19:31.912)
Yeah, all good.
