Builder Stories

Bryan Sebring didn't just grow a business, he rebuilt one from scratch. After running his company in Chicagoland for over two decades, Bryan moved to Franklin, Tennessee and relaunched as a design build only firm serving a completely different market. He shares the controversial 15 day pricing window he uses to qualify leads and close faster, along with a "power of three" approach to budgeting range. Bryan also opens up about the peer group community that changed his business and why he treats every homeowner, even the ones he turns away, as a future advocate.

• The "dating before marriage" mindset Bryan uses to qualify homeowners before they ever see a price
• Why he intentionally gets fewer leads now than he did in Illinois, and why that's a good thing
• The controversial 15 day pricing window some builders call dishonest and Bryan calls incentive
• How Bryan turns down projects and still creates lifelong advocates out of the homeowners he refers elsewhere
• The unexpected way switching his accounting system finally made work in progress reporting possible

Vince Nardo helped grow his family's cabinet refacing shop into the largest home improvement company on the West Coast with 700 employees. The company operated in multiple states and even landed a partnership with Costco to sell their products. In 2022, he sold the business to private equity firm Audax. Two years later, the acquiring company went bankrupt and the 40-year legacy the Nardo family built was gone. Now Vince is out of retirement and building a national roofing brand from scratch, and he's sharing every hard lesson along the way.

• The simple metrics Vince used ensure growth of a 700-person company
• Why Reborn stopped thinking of itself as a sales and marketing company, and what it became instead
• How a meeting in Seattle turned into a partnership with Costco, and what selling under a retail giant taught his team
• The one question Vince says every contractor must ask before selling to private equity
• What convinced him to bet on himself again after losing everything he spent decades building

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Jane Dzielski has spent nearly a decade at Google turning massive datasets into answers about how consumers make decisions. She knows what people type when they need a contractor, and that behavior is changing fast. In this episode she breaks down search, reviews, ads, and AI for the home services industry. Contractors will walk away seeing their own marketing differently.

• Why showing up in fewer searches can win you better clients
• The one thing customers search for most, and why leaving it off your website costs you jobs
• What AI can and cannot read in your Google reviews
• The way your paid ads and organic results boost each other
• Which type of content to make first when you can only make one

Learn more about Jane's work here.

Dustin Hippensteel spent years convinced he had to do everything himself. Then three decisions quietly changed how his entire business runs. None of them cost much, and none were the flashy fixes most owners chase first. In this episode he breaks down what they were and why they mattered.

• The hire he was sure wouldn't work that now handles the load he used to drown in
• How to tell a coach worth paying for from one who just has good marketing
• The first system he wrote down that made every customer call land the same way
• The mindset he had to kill before any of it could actually stick
• How his wife turned days of software setup into twenty minutes

Learn more about True Grit here.

As the leader of Versa Homes, Felipe Freig builds multimillion dollar homes for executives and entrepreneurs. He dialed in the systems behind those builds so completely that he was able to step back from the daily grind. So he launched Versa Method Coaching to hand that same playbook to other contractors. In this episode he gets specific about what actually keeps a building business profitable.

• Why Felipe calls "transparency" a "crock" in the construction industry
• Why Felipe commits to a fixed price on multimillion dollar custom homes when almost no luxury builder will
• What luxury clients actually want instead of a line by line breakdown
• The one number Felipe says no client should ever see, and why showing it loses you the job
• The full SOP library running Felipe's company, and how a builder could soon have it dropped straight into their own system

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about Versa Method Coaching here.

Corey Plourde spent eighteen years climbing the corporate sales ladder before walking away to build his own remodeling company. Years later he hit a wall he could not see past and finally admitted he had run out of answers. In this conversation he opens up about the moment everything turned around and the year that followed became his most profitable ever. He also reveals why the change he feared most was the one that finally unlocked his growth.

• Why his most uncomfortable decision became his biggest breakthrough
• The mindset shift that finally helped him understand his true numbers
• How he nearly tripled his average job size in a single year
• What he wishes he had stopped spending money on in the early days
• The leadership blind spot he is still working to fix today

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about Core Remodeling Services here.

Todd Dawalt spent more than 30 years in construction learning expensive lessons the hard way. In this episode, he reveals the one stage of every project where the most profit slips away, usually long before work even begins. He shares the counterintuitive shift that helps companies make more money without adding to the team. Todd also explains how one builder was leaving $400,000 on the table every year without knowing it.

• Why hiring more people often makes a struggling business worse
• The part of a job where most inefficiencies hide, and why owners keep missing it
• What turns a fumbled project handoff into a smooth one
• The question that gets clients to gladly pay for work most contractors give away
• Where AI helps your business and where it can secretly hurt it

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about The Construction Leading Edge here. 00:00 Show Introduction 00:18 Meet Todd Dawalt 00:50 Todd Origin Story 02:33 Launching The Podcast 05:37 Cash Flow Wake Up 06:21 Coaching Operating System 07:31 Market Shifts After Covid 09:08 Profit Without Hiring 15:41 Find The Bottleneck 17:36 Why Change Now 19:42 Mental Malware Mindset 26:25 Lesson Without Scar 29:32 Systems Beat Intentions 32:49 Preconstruction Handoff 39:36 Paid Preconstruction Phase 44:08 AI Benefits And Risks 49:17 Resources And Wrap Up 52:45 Final Outro

Jake Gosselin built Churchfront into one of the most innovative AV firms in the country, all fueled by a 300,000 subscriber YouTube channel and a relentless drive to automate the work that used to drain his time. In this episode, he pulls back the curtain on the AI agents now running his business behind the scenes, including budgeting, procurement, and payroll. Jake also gets real about the security risks of connecting AI to your operations and the smart moves every owner should make first. This is the episode that will change how contractors think about AI inside their business.

• The surprising path Jake took from YouTube creator to multi million dollar design build firm
• Exactly what Jake's AI agents are doing inside his business every day
• The bold claim Jake makes about AI and why he stands behind it
• The security playbook every business owner needs before connecting AI to their software
• The one task Jake says every owner should hand off to AI right now

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about Churchfront here.

Liz Davies built a "small but mighty" luxury building and remodeling firm in Atlanta, and she did it without ever letting a project run on guesswork. In this episode, she pulls back the curtain on the pre construction approach that puts the right people in charge of the right decisions long before the first wall goes up. She reveals the one thing she says to hesitant clients that finally gets them off the fence. And she shares the single reel that hit nearly five million shares, plus the kind of content that keeps the right clients coming to her.

• The mindset shift that stops clients from blaming you for their own indecision
• Why passion beats budget every time you size up your next project
• How one unexpected hire became the engine behind years of growth
• The kind of social content that makes clients say "I want to work with you"
• What Liz is building now that goes far beyond any single project

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about ESD Homes here.

Phil Parsons of KP Homescapes shares how he moved from engineering and house flips into a focused outdoor living business built for profitable growth. In this episode, he reveals what happened when he created an "AI twin" for his business and how it transformed sales, training, and business strategy. Phil also shares how coaching helped him think bigger, why job costing changed the way he leads, and what happened when he stopped being the answer man for every problem.

• How an "AI twin" can help your business repeat what works
• Why thinking too small can hold your business back
• How to choose coaching that fits your real constraints
• Why knowing your numbers creates better decisions
• What changes when you stop being the answer man

Listen to the episode to learn more.

Learn more about KP Homescapes here.