Michael Dakhoul

The story of coming to Australia from Lebanon with just ten dollars in his pocket might sound like a tearful movie script, but Michael Dakhoul saw it as a huge opportunity. Leaving a crumbling cityscape behind him, he now contributes significantly to the shining development of his adopted new frontier of Australia through his highly successful quantity surveying business.

Imagine how different your life would be if you were bold enough to follow that dream you had as a child. There would be more firemen in the world, more Cinderella’s and more Darth Vaders.

In the case of Michael Dakhoul, there would be more movie directors. Interestingly, Michael does direct, but it’s a different kind of creative project.

“It was my dream as a young boy, growing up in Lebanon, to be a film director; to be Clint Eastwood. To first have a successful acting career before moving into directing.”

Instead of being recognised as one of the country’s leading quantity surveyors, Michael could have been collecting Academy Awards as a leading director in Hollywood.

The quantum leap from the life he’d imagined began when reality struck in his late teens.

Looking back, Michael remembers, “I did drama when I was in high school and I wanted to be a theatre actor. I was still pursuing that when I went to university.

“I had enrolled to study architecture but spent all my days next door at the theatre classes. So I guess you could say I was pretty serious about it.”

For many of the early years of his life Michael grew up in a country torn apart by war, “but we still managed to study, we still went to school, and we still had dreams.”

As Michael frankly recalls, “it was dangerous at times, but we survived; a lot of people didn’t. It was a dirty war. Nobody really knows the reason for it. A lot of people say it was religion-based, but it wasn’t; if anything it was more stupidity.”

Most of Michael’s family had already left Lebanon and emigrated to Australia. Once his grandparents left, only Michael, his brother and mother remained in Lebanon.

Michael was a year into his architectural degree when the remaining family decided to come to Australia. “I arrived with ten dollars in my pocket.”

A new life in a new country, and a new dream – or more to the point in Michael’s case, a reality check. Any thoughts of being a movie director were left behind in Lebanon as Michael tried to pick up his architectural studies in Australia.

It was a difficult transition as one university after another refused to accept him. “I wasn’t accepted because I couldn’t pass the English exam.”

Arabic is the national language of Lebanon, but there’s a strong presence of French and English, depending on which school you attended. Historically, Lebanon was a French colony and there are many references to that heritage, particularly in the school system.

The situation there had been “either choose a school that teaches you Arabic as a language but everything else is in English, or you go to an Arabic school which teaches you everything in French.

“So Arabic literature was a subject, but maths, physics, science, everything else was taught in either French or English.”

Michael had attended a ‘French’ school. They still learnt some English, and while “I could communicate well enough in English, it wasn’t good enough for universities here.”

Fortunately, Michael enrolled at St George TAFE in Sydney and they accepted him on the basis that he also took English classes. This also led to Michael changing his career direction.

Michael did an architectural drafting course, and after graduating, worked as a draftsman for a couple of years.

Initially, Michael worked with an architect and then “moved to the building side of it. I did another TAFE course and worked with a building company. Then, because my English was much better, I went to university and got a degree in construction.

“I got a job working with a quantity surveying firm and about ten years ago I went out on my own, started Construction Consultants and I haven’t looked back.”

The childhood dream was to work in the film industry. After a few life lessons and a change of country, the script for Michael Dakhoul’s life led him into the building industry, although Michael still likes to think there’s a bit of Clint Eastwood in what he does at Construction Consultants.

“We offer services to the development and construction industry, from inception to completion. We can create projects for our clients, or we can come into a project at different phases.”

By way of explanation, Michael expands by noting that, “as quantity surveyors we’re the professionals in the building industry who look after the financial side. We look at all elements involved in construction and we look at time factors as well as risks involved in the job, and then our report is submitted to the bank.”

Alternatively, Michael’s team can be retained as project managers where clients engage the company to take control of a project. Here his highly qualified and experienced project managers guide and monitor progress, retain the necessary experts, and comply with Government requirements in order to get to the tendering stage. They then obtain tenders, monitor construction and follow through until a project is completed, while always keeping their clients fully informed.

In essence, this is analogous to film directing and keeps the spark of those early dreams alive in that “we’re bringing a lot of people together with a common goal: to achieve a finished product which is successful for all parties. Really, it’s not that dissimilar to what Eastwood does on a movie set – it’s a nice way to look at it.”

There are several keywords driving the Construction Consultants business. One is knowledge: the knowledge Michael has gained over thirty years of being in the industry.

Michael’s quick to note that he believes “we’re the best project managers because we are the most cost-focused, given my background as a quantity surveyor. We look at the economics of a project. Our knowledge is unsurpassed in the industry.”

Equally important is service, and it’s an area Michael has developed through a process of self-learning, through books he’s read, and advice from mentors.

Michael recalls “the first book I read was ‘How To Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie. It made me realise I needed to improve my skills with people if I was to be successful in business. Prior to that I never saw myself as a people person, and I needed to understand what service meant and how to apply it.”

Through reading and attending self-development seminars, Michael learnt the value of having a mentor, and he didn’t have to look too far.

On arriving in Australia, “my brother and I were helping our uncle, pumping petrol in a service station. This was before self-service, and our hands would be black from handling the pumps, the money and all the dirty jobs. But this one customer would stop his car and come and shake our hands; he was interested in us. I loved his humility and his approach – he treated us as human beings, as people, and I never forgot that.

“His name was George Shad; he’s now my lawyer and a friend. He taught me the value of humility – never thinking you are better than anybody else.”

Further lessons were gained by Michael’s interactions with “a person younger than me, Norman Sarraf. He taught me the value of passion. Again, he’s extremely humble, but very passionate about what he does.

“I tell my staff ‘when you answer the phone, I don’t want you to sound like you’re dying on me; be excited, be passionate about what we are doing here’.”

Norman also taught Michael the lesson of “being generous with what you have. He would hire us to do a report for example and pay us before we’d done the job. He believes in rewarding people quickly and that’s extremely honourable.”

One of life’s most valuable lessons, though, came from Michael’s grandfather.

“I learnt honesty from him, extreme honesty. There’s no way you can build a business, or a life for that matter, without honesty. My grandfather was very particular about that; he’s been a very important figure in my life.”

Communication is also a driving factor behind both Michael’s personal success and that of his business – a legacy of being forced to master English when he arrived in Australia. He now values communication as a key ingredient in business.

Mastering the language is critical according to Michael, as “the basis for what we do relies on communication and it is so important to know how to communicate with people correctly.

“I instil the importance of it in all of my staff. Anything that comes out of our office has to be in perfect English, always reviewed and vetted by another. It’s too easy these days for people to misunderstand or misinterpret what you say, so you have to be clear and concise.”

Michael’s now fluent in English, French and Arabic and can also get by in Portuguese, “because it’s fairly close to French.” He quickly adds that, “if I was in France, I would definitely do the same in their language, it’s just so important.”

But Michael is concerned the art of communication is deteriorating. He fears its importance isn’t emphasised enough and believes standards have dropped markedly.
Sadly, he comments, “we receive material from engineers and other professionals which is really below standard; it has become an important issue.”

So the obvious question to follow this is, how does Michael handle texting? It takes a while for him to stop laughing, before finally admitting it’s an art form that’s taking over and conceding it’s an important form of communication in today’s world.

However, don’t expect Michael to do any deals via text, “It’s too easy to get things wrong. It can be fun way to book a meeting or a coffee, but you have to be more professional when finalising a deal.”

Michael makes no apologies for being a little old-fashioned; it was the platform for his success.

“In the early days I was working with an architect, I did a lot of drafting, so I designed a lot of things. That was before computers, and we did everything manually, we measured buildings, we drew everything by hand, it was the old way of designing things. That’s where I attained a lot of experience of reading and understanding plans.”

The knowledge, the work ethic and the principles that have guided him through life have led Michael to grow his business substantially.

He started with a staff of two, in one small office in Parramatta. He now has forty-two people working for him, spread over two offices in Parramatta, offices in Sydney city, Melbourne and a small presence in Perth.

Michael candidly admits that, “I never planned for it to be this big, but I’m not surprised because the industry has grown, and we’ve worked hard to gain an enviable reputation.

“It makes me proud to get to this level. We’ve got a beautiful team of people, a really superb team that has stayed with us. We rarely lose anyone, once here they tend to stay, so I take that as a sign we are doing something right.

The next phase for Michael is ensuring the business continues to prosper but relying less on him and more on those he’s been training.

A long-time believer in the catchphrase that ‘life is too short’, Michael feels strongly that “for me to keep working in my business forever is not smart, because nobody is going to guarantee what is going to happen tomorrow.

“My brother is back from The Gulf and has joined our business; my nephew has been in the business for a while and there are a couple of key people in my business who are really like family.

“So,my goal is to eventually pass a significant part of the business to them, leaving me to focus more on public relations, getting the work, and business development.”

Although that may seem like semi-retirement to some, for Michael “it’s more like moving myself into another level where I can take a month’s holiday, which I haven’t been able to do before.”

That next phase will also offer the opportunity to play more golf – “I haven’t played in ages” – to travel with his family – “they’ll have their own kids soon” – and of course see more plays and movies – “if I can’t direct at least I can be a critic.”

These are all important things to Michael, and many are the reasons he started his business in the first place.

Although “that’s the goal”, Michael states “right now I am focused on building the business and keeping the structure as it is.”

ADVICE

Apart from what we’ve already learnt from Michael about his success principles, there are a few other key areas of advice he’d offer for anyone starting their own business, especially in today’s environment.

One of the critical elements is having the right people around you.

“Having the right people in your camp gives you a degree of confidence which can keep you on track. You can’t let people down, so you have to be happy with your home base, which is you and your team.”

From there “it’s about reinforcing those qualities of trust, honesty and service. You have to come from the basis that everybody is your equal and you’re there to provide a service.”

Creating friendships in business is another area Michael believes has been a reason for his success, and he encourages those starting up a business to follow that example.

“Being able to befriend those you’re dealing with can make life a whole lot easier. We’ve created a lot of good friendships from our business – really good friendships – and we keep building on them. If you start looking at your client as a close friend, and more than just an acquaintance, you can’t go wrong. You can’t lose.”

One of the hardest things budding entrepreneurs struggle with is the ability to keep getting up when things get tough. That’s when Michael believes it’s important to truly believe in yourself and what you’re offering.

He strongly recommends investing time in “building yourself, building your personality, building your people skills. People will look for that in every business”.

“Clients come to you with their work because they like you. They will rarely look at what degrees you have: they will look at you, they will trust you and then they will use you. It is very important to build yourself as a person.”