Meet the member - Josh

Tell us a bit about yourself, education and work experience

After graduating from The Geelong College in 2015 I went straight into studying an Advanced Diploma of Music with a pathway into a Bachelor of Music. After completing my degree in 2019, and stepping into a few failed business ventures with a friend, I decided that I needed to upskill myself and began studying a Bachelor of Business focusing on Entrepreneurship at RMIT in the year 2020.

For work on the side of my education, I dropped stacking the dairy section of Coles with dreams of becoming a professional musician. I was busking in-between the two Geelong malls having successful days and others not so much. This is where I met Cabinets by Computer’s general manager, Justin Collins, after being scouted to play his dad’s 60th birthday party.

Between 2016 to late 2020 my weekends were packed full of gigs across the Geelong, Ballarat and Melbourne regions playing pub, winery, party and wedding gigs.

My last gig before commencing my appointment at Cabinet by Computer was funnily enough playing at the Cabinets by Computer 2020 Christmas party which inevitably lead to my hiring as an administrative assistant in early 2021.

What role do you think that humour and fun play in the workplace?

It is something I have been fortunate enough to never experience, but I honestly couldn’t imagine working for a company where everything is lifeless and dogmatic. Enabling people to be themselves with their own sense of humour and personality enables a flourishing workplace where you can come to work, have fun, have a laugh but more importantly feel energised to be apart of the team through something as simple as humour.

Cabinets by Computer promotes this massively, encouraging individuality and a warm bubbling place to have a laugh with your colleagues to increase morale and energy to complete the objectives that we’re all trying to achieve.

I find that telling jokes, many of the time are very dry dad jokes, as either a daily affirmation using our company communication software or within our daily stand-up meetings in the morning, might make my colleagues eyes roll, but for that one person who might be having a bad day maybe all they need is a little chuckle to get on with what they are doing or perk them up. I know that if that was me having a blue day, then that would spruce me up ready for the day ahead.

What is your favourite part of your job?

My favourite aspect of my job is not being limited by my job description, and the fact that CBC has enabled me to step into fields that I would unlikely be able to explore in another workplace, such as sales, QA software testing and project management to name a few. Without these tasters of different aspects of business, I would have not been able to find my unknown passion for accounting or given the opportunity to pursue with that.

Also, the workplace culture is something that I really enjoy, with the ability to nut down for a couple of hours then release some steam on the table tennis table with another co-worker, creating mental tallies of victories and losses which brings a real competitive but healthy environment within the office.

Or the Friday roast lunches that we have gives you something to look forward to every week and always brings a smile to everyone when you can smell it cooking away.

A philosophy I like to live by is ‘If you love what you do, then you’ll never work a day in your life’.

If you could change anything in the industry what would it be?

It would have to be the way that professionals in the industry of cabinet making, cut to size manufacturers, builders, designers etc. approach technology. Many still use archaic devices in their daily practice, but the ones who breach into the technological world with software and services are the ones who not only set their business up better, but also find their routines and workflow become easier. For example, spending hours jotting down a kitchen plan for a customer, then hand submitting that to a manufacturer for them to extrapolate that job into their own system can be time consuming and tedious compared to an online ordering system like Cabinetry.Online, where the customer can create their job whilst also visualising it and receiving an instant quote cuts down the workflow immeasurably.

I would say trying to open the eyes of the old-fashioned professionals would be the most crucial thing to change.

If you were a superhero what would your name be and what superpowers would you have?

After discovering my affinity for Microsoft Excel, my ideal superhero identity would be Captain Xcell with the power of infinite knowledge and creativity of excel to supercharge the world with spreadsheets.