Wes Maas.

He has come a long way since his rugby league days, prepared to take a risk and follow a path he never considered.

"At 15 I definitely wasn't thinking about work, I was probably playing up and thinking about playing footy," he said.

He was lucky enough to make the NSW schoolboys rugby league team before playing for Parramatta, something that changed his focus away from school.

"I wasn't the most conscientious student, I think I was clever at maths, but other than that I wasn't the best student, I had the ability but didn't take it and make the most of it," he said.

At 17 Mr Maas left Dubbo and trained in the pre-season Junior Elite Training squad with Parramatta.

A few years later when he joined the West Tigers he busted his shoulder and had 18 months off for a reconstruction.

Little did he know, this would be the start of something much bigger.

Mr Maas was working at a hire company driving a truck but when he hurt his shoulder he moved into the office and learnt how to measure return on total assets and capital.

"I'd worked out I was only ever going to be an average footballer, and I wanted to come home and start a business that would be everlasting," he said.

"I wasn't coming back to Dubbo with a gigantic dream, I was coming back to earn a good living."

As someone who works in phases, Mr Maas set himself a five year plan: to be sustainable for his family and evolve from there.

When Mr Maas first moved home on September 11, 2002 he had $14,000 to his name.

Needing some more money for his plan, he borrowed $25,000 off the bank and went ahead and bought a bobcat.

"I first taught myself how to drive the bobcat on our next door neighbour's farm and then went out contracting," he said.

Mr Maas worked with his family who had a cleaning business and in his time off would drive the bobcat.

"About eight weeks in I was suddenly doing 50 hours a week in the bobcat and in another eight weeks I bought the second bobcat," he said.

"I definitely didn't plan the second bobcat when I first started, it was something that evolved over time."

From 2002 to 2007, Mr Maas went from one machine to 40, building civil projects including sewerage treatment plants for council's around NSW, before being contracted for a sewerage treatment plant in the Gold Coast.

"We wanted to grow, we were young and enthusiastic, we still are today but we were energetic to grow," he said.

"I realised if we wanted to grow we had to do it with scale and control and I worked out we could do that through plant hire and could do it on a much bigger scale then doing civil projects."

From 40 machines in 2007 they ended up with 400 machines by 2012 that they were hiring on a wet and dry basis, with and without operators.

The company's first plant hire was in 2007 by Abbey Group, and as that particular business grew and expanded so did Maas Group Holdings.

"We spread from being a small regional based plant hire business, to working all the way to the top of north Queensland and south Victoria, we worked on all the gas plants in Curtis Island and I think in a five year period we did most of our work outside of Dubbo," he said.

As an optimistic person, Mr Maas had no trepidation about the sudden growth of his business.

That was because he had trust in his clients and had surrounded himself with good people.

"One thing I've always been really, really lucky in is attracting and surrounding myself with really good people," he said.

"A lot of people talk about their workmates and say 'don't mix work with friends' but most of my best friends are at my work, I've been very lucky in that way."

Mr Maas said he has tried to model the business around others and pick the best things out of other businesses he's seen.

"We've been lucky in Dubbo to associate with Roger Fletcher and we've done a lot of work out there for a long period of time and seen how Roger surrounded himself with good people and good leaders," he said.

Mr Maas stated that no other business took him under their wing as his own business grew or lifted him up and supported him.

"One of the reasons why we listed [on the ASX] was to have more sounding boards, when you expand to our business size in a regional town you run out of sounding boards, it becomes limited who you can talk to about the projects we've been doing," he said.

Family has been core to who Mr Maas is as a businessman, as he watched his parents work hard to support him and his siblings.

Raised in Campbelltown until the age of 11, Mr Maas' parents wanted a better opportunity for their children as gangs were popping up in the region.

A television advertisement which stated: 'Be Happy Live in Dubbo', was just the sign the family needed to take a risk and move towns.

The family bought a block of land for $47,000 and his father set about building their first home in the region.

"It was a concrete slab, and blocks and a timber frame, it had gyprock on the walls, no wall coverings, no paint and he did the electrical work himself," he said.

"I actually electrocuted myself turning one of the light switches on and we lived like that for a few years, so we didn't come from much."

When Mr Maas first told them about his plan to start his business, he said he "scared the crap out of them".

"They had never been one to borrow money and that's something I've always done. I've learnt about the power of leverage and taught myself by reading, so mum and dad didn't help me on that side, I probably scared them more than anything," he said.

In 2012 with 400 machines, Maas Group Holding's went through a boom period over the next three years as a plant hire business, working predominantly in Queensland which was going through a coal and gas boom.

"We rode off the back of that, and were quite lucky to get those times," he said.

In that time, the business worked on seven projects that were worth more than $1 billion.

"We looked to diversify...so we sold down 150 odd pieces of plant, which was about a third of our fleet and we bought our first quarry and property in South Lakes, and also bought into an underground business known as EMS," he said.

The primary reason was to keep key staff busy and employed.

This was the beginning of creating the four segments of the business. These include:

"In the next five years to 2019 we grew those segments 10 times as big," he said.

As the business grew so did the amount of staff involved, which meant Mr Maas had to learn to open up.

"Before I would tell no one anything and we would just roll it out," he said.

But now with an executive management team of 13, and another 40 in the next level and another 80 below them, Mr Maas has become open and transparent with the plans.

"Every one of those 80 people could tell you where the business is going in the next three months and the next three years," he said.

Out of those 80 people, only one person has left the team in the last three years.

To keep moving forward and growing, Mr Maas uses a black book to write down all of his goals, something that frustrates his wife Emma.

"When talking about success it means just hitting our goals. Our definition of happiness is success and we've got a really successful model that we can replicate and rollout," he said.

"From the very start of the business, I wrote out those goals and I've continued to write them out over and over and in the early days I would never be able to go to sleep until I read my black book before I went to bed.

"I don't have to do that anymore."

With four children between the ages of nine and 15, he said it was extremely difficult to juggle both hats as a father and a businessman.

"As the business grows we always talk about commitment and care and it goes across everything you do in life, if you're committed or care it hurts you when you can't do things," he said.

"Obviously the business is significant in size and I've made significant commitments to all my partners and staff so it puts a lot of demand on time."

The only time you'll find Mr Maas without his phone on is when he goes to the cinema.

"It's not very often," Mr Maas said jokingly.

If you can't find Mr Maas in Dubbo or Sydney walking around, you just have to look to the sky.

"As a kid I thought I wanted to be a pilot and probably that pilot evolved to helicopter pilot. I said if I got to this stage I would buy a helicopter, I've always enjoyed flying," he said.

Mr Maas said it was a huge privilege to operate in the Dubbo community and to have that community support.

"I'm passionate about giving back as much as I can and giving back to children's charities and children's sporting groups," he said.

"We have to give to the kids who can't help themselves, if more people did this the world would be a better place."

If he could go back and tell his 15-year-old self what he had achieved, he said he "wouldn't have believed it".

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