The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

Selling a construction business is something most owners avoid thinking about until they have no choice. In this episode, investor and business owner Mark Powers breaks down what makes a construction company valuable and how to build yours to be worth something when you step away.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 Most construction business owners assume they'll figure out the exit when the time comes, and by then it's usually too late to get real value. In this episode, Todd Dawalt sits down with Mark Powers, a construction business owner and investor who has acquired multiple companies, including two marine contracting firms in Florida, to break down what makes a construction business sellable and why so many are worth far less than their owners think.

Mark explains why gross revenue is a vanity number and what buyers actually look at when they put a value on a company. He walks through how he sizes up a business before buying and the pitfalls that can sink a deal after the handshake, including what he always wants to know about the seller. He and Todd also get into the culture problems that come with buying a competitor and why you can't change everything on day one.

There's also the risk most owners never plan for: when the owner is the business, the value walks out the door the moment they step away. Mark and Todd share real stories of families left holding the bag and explain why designing your company to run without you is the smartest move you can make, whether you ever sell or not. Tune in to the full episode to learn how to build a business that works for you instead of the other way around.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

01:04 Mark Powers, Serial Acquirer

03:32 Revenue vs Profit: What Buyers See

04:25 Why The Seller Is Selling Matters

06:29 Valuation Multiples Explained

08:06 What Else Adds Business Value

16:35 Biggest Acquisition Risk: Culture

18:27 Handling A Toxic Employee

24:00 Design Your Business To Sell

29:20 A Sudden Tragedy, No Exit Plan

32:16 Stop Building A Frankenstein Business

37:55 Build Systems With Your Team

42:10 Most Owners Never Plan To Exit

Additional Resources:

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The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

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Most construction business owners think higher profit comes from more work and more projects. In Episode 468, Todd Dawalt argues that the faster route to a more profitable construction business is taking on less of the wrong work, and he breaks down the three profit circles that help a general contractor decide what work to take on and what to turn down. It's a practical look at the systems and documented processes that keep profit margins from slipping.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 If every project your company takes on feels a little different, estimating drags on, and your team keeps bringing the same questions back to your desk, the problem might not be a shortage of work. It might be that you keep taking on work your construction business was never built to do. In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the three profit circles every builder and remodeler should define before saying yes to the next job.

He shows how every exception to those circles carries a cost that compounds over time. The project 80 miles away, the difficult client who wants the process bent, the job type you rarely touch: each one looks reasonable on its own, and each one pulls you further into the day-to-day. Todd also shares the hard lesson he learned expanding into markets that looked profitable on paper and weren't, and why keeping the crew busy is one of the most expensive reasons to take a job.

You'll hear why a strategic blueprint and a documented playbook are what separate a business that runs on judgment calls from one that runs on clear expectations, plus the questions Todd would have you ask your team this week about what you're saying yes to. If your construction business is busy but the profit isn't where you want it, this episode gives you a sharper way to see where the complexity is coming from.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro 01:15 What Breaks Without A Profit Circle 03:00 Profit Circle #1: Type Of Work 05:04 Repetition Boosts Profit Margins 07:12 Profit Circle #2: Ideal Client 09:36 Use A Playbook To Filter Clients 11:09 Profit Circle #3: Geography 13:47 Why Owners Can't Say No 15:59 The Exception Chain Reaction 17:27 Every Exception Has A Cost 19:07 No Vision Means No Filter 21:00 Strategic Blueprint Vs Playbook 23:57 Questions To Define Your Circle

Additional Resources:

⚡Get Started with Belay - HERE

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⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information - HERE

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

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Is your construction business actually sellable, and what is it worth to a real buyer? In Episode 467, Justin Escajeda breaks down how to sell a construction business and what makes a construction company valuable from the buyer's side of the table.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 You spent years building a profitable construction company with a solid reputation, so you assume that when the time comes, a buyer will pay what it's worth. Justin Escajeda sees it differently. He owns more than a dozen construction and trade companies through Escajeda Holdings, and he sits on the side of the deal most owners never do: the one writing the check.

The business that feels valuable to you can look very different to the person buying it. How much does the whole operation really depend on you? Does your tax return back up the profit you talk about, or undercut it? Justin is blunt about what sends him running during due diligence, and about the one asset sellers overvalue almost every time.

Price is usually the biggest disconnect of all. Figures like five million get thrown around with little behind them, and the number a buyer actually brings is often a shock. In this episode, Justin and Todd Dawalt get into what separates a sellable construction business from one that stalls on the market, and how early you need to start if you want a clean exit. Even if selling is a decade away, listen to the full conversation and start seeing your company the way a buyer will.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

02:08 Consistent Profitability

03:35 Can The Business Run Without You?

05:50 Why Cash Buyers Matter Most

11:28 How Owner-Dependent Is Too Dependent?

16:00 What Slow Financials Signal to Buyers

17:33 Spotting Inflated Pre-Sale Profits

18:33 The Danger of One Big Customer

23:03 Most Owners Don't Know Their True Value

24:33 Valuation 101: 3-5x Earnings

27:10 Why Succession Plans Fail

28:38 Start Exit Planning 3-5 Years Out

37:35 Why Buying & Selling Hurts Culture

Additional Resources: ⚡Get Out of Your Construction Business: How to Make It Run Without You This Year [Free Masterclass] - HERE

⚡Get Started with Belay - HERE

⚡Justin Escajada's website

⚡Justin Escajada's Instagram

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The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

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Why does your construction business feel more chaotic the bigger it gets? In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the shortcut delusion and why today's fires are bills for shortcuts you took months ago.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 Meet Shortcut Steve. He's the voice in your head that says, "Let's just get started. We'll figure out the rest later." He tells you to take the job before you know how you'll staff it, hire the person before the role is clear, and grow before the systems exist. Todd Dawalt believed Shortcut Steve for years, and it cost him.

Here's the catch. A shortcut never makes the work disappear. It just pushes that work downstream, where you have less time and the money's already at risk. The handoff you skipped, the role you never defined, the project you mobilized before it was ready: those come back as the fires you're fighting right now. Growth won't save you either. If everything already flows back to you, adding projects and people just sends more of it your way. You didn't fix the problem. You scaled it.

AI makes a shortcut feel even easier, because now the checklist or the job description is one prompt away. But a prompt is not a process, and automating a broken workflow only breaks it faster. So how do you tell a necessary step from one Shortcut Steve wants you to skip? Todd walks through a simple test he calls Land the Plane, along with the question every owner should ask before the next big hire, project, or push to grow. Watch the full episode to find out who's really paying for the shortcuts in your business.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

01:25 The Shortcut Delusion Explained

02:10 Meet "Shortcut Steve"

05:00 Today's Fires Are Yesterday's Shortcuts

07:11 Growth Doesn't Fix Chaos, It Multiplies It

09:50 Why AI Makes Shortcuts More Tempting

11:05 3 Questions Before Starting Any Project

13:05 Everything's Easier to Fix Early

16:13 Who Really Pays for Your Shortcuts

Additional Resources:

⚡Get Started with Belay HERE

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⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: HERE

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

Your team keeps resisting new processes and software, and the way you roll out change might be the reason. Dr. Anna Hunter, Director of Learning & Development at JobTread, breaks down why teams resist change and how to lead them through it so it sticks.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 You introduce a new process or a new piece of software, and within a week the team is right back to the old way of working. You've explained it three times. They nodded along in the meeting, and then nothing changed. Before you blame the team, sit with the harder possibility: the way you're leading the change could be the thing producing the pushback.

Todd sits down with Dr. Anna Hunter, Director of Learning & Development at JobTread and author of "Adapt to Adopt: A Human Approach to Software Implementation." Anna works with contractors on the people side of change management, and she explains how capable leaders accidentally manufacture the resistance they're fighting. They dig into idea dumping, organizational whiplash, the difference between reluctance and resistance, why AI has become a shortcut around your own team, and the reason change can feel like a grieving process for the people living through it.

You'll also get a practical walkthrough for rolling out something new, from a software system to a simple daily log. Anna lays out how to earn real buy-in and build a team that stays steady when things shift, along with what to do about the person who refuses to come along. Whether you lead a crew of three or an entire company, leading people through change is most of the job. Listen to the full episode for how to make the change actually stick.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Are You Creating Resistance Without Knowing It?

03:52 Introducing Dr. Anna Hunter of JobTread

05:00 How Leaders Create Organizational Whiplash

08:52 Belay: Reclaim Your Time

10:28 Why AI Quick Fixes Leave Your Team Behind

21:22 Reluctance vs. Resistance: Know the Difference

24:28 Business Evaluation Call

26:08 Why Pushing Past Reluctance Backfires

29:00 Change Is a Grieving Process

36:06 When Someone Just Will Not Get on Board

42:00 Crash Course: Rolling Out Something New

54:00 Where to Find Adapt to Adopt

Additional Resources: ⚡Get Out of Your Construction Business: How to Make it Run Without You - HERE

⚡Check out JobTread: HERE

⚡Adapt to Adopt: A Human Approach to Software Implementation: HERE

⚡Get started with Belay: HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: https://constructionleadingedge.com/

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

#ConstructionBusiness #ContractorMindset #GeneralContractor #BuilderCEO #ConstructionSales #ConstructionLeadingEdge #ContractorGrowth

In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, Todd Dawalt explains why construction business owners keep solving the wrong problems, and how looking upstream at your pre-construction process fixes the chaos at its root cause.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 Years ago, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC was slowly being damaged by its own cleaning crew. The stone kept getting dirty, so the obvious fix was to clean it harder and more often. But the real cause was nowhere near the stone, and it took someone asking a completely different question to find it. Todd Dawalt uses that story to explain a pattern he sees in construction businesses all the time: owners work hard to solve the exact problem in front of them and end up making things worse.

Your project managers feel overwhelmed, so you look for ways to improve their performance. Clients make selections too slowly, so you go hunting for a better way to track allowances. These responses sound reasonable, but the problem showing up in the field usually started weeks earlier, upstream in pre-construction. Answering the surface question just helps you get better at solving the wrong thing, which can cost you months of effort and real profit while the chaos keeps coming back.

In this episode, Todd breaks down the "just enough to start" trap and why your business produces exactly the results it's designed to produce. He also gets into what it really takes to nail the handoff between pre-construction and the build. If it feels like problems are always landing on your desk, this one will help you see where they're actually coming from.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 The Jefferson Memorial Bird Poop Problem

02:20 Free Resources: Builder CEO System and Buyout Playbook

04:00 When Solving the Wrong Problem Makes Things Worse

05:46 The Just Enough to Start Trap

08:10 Nail the Handoff: What It Should Look Like

09:32 Belay: Reclaim Your Time

11:06 The Ten Most Common Wrong Questions in Construction

20:08 Step 1: Build a Strategic Blueprint for Your Business

21:44 Step 2: Become a Great Pre-Construction Company

23:18 Step 3: Build Your This Is How We Do It Playbook

Additional Resources:

⚡Download the How to Buyout a Construction Project Playbook - HERE

⚡Builder CEO Weekly Operating System - HERE

⚡Get started with Belay - HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel: HERE

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: https://constructionleadingedge.com/

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

On this rerun episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, custom home builder Eric Brownson sits down with our Director of Customer Success, Leyah Hostetter, to talk about how he used to wake up three hours behind, stuck in reactive mode and buried in daily firefighting. Here's how building a real pre-construction process changed how he runs his construction business.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 For twenty years, Eric Brownson ran his construction business the way a lot of custom home builders do: as the backstop for everything, taking on all the work his crew could handle and waking up most mornings feeling three hours behind before his feet hit the floor. The days were reactive, the stress never let up, and he'd convinced himself that hair-on-fire pace was simply the cost of building high-end homes in the mountains of Colorado.

A couple of realizations flipped how he saw the whole operation. First, he wasn't alone in it; builders everywhere were fighting the same fires. Second, and harder to swallow, the chaos traced back to one part of his business he'd spent decades treating as an afterthought: pre-construction. Naming that gap was one thing. Doing something about it is where this episode really opens up.

Eric gets candid about what he had to let go of and what shifted once he put a real pre-construction process in front of his projects. If you're a custom home builder or remodeler stuck in reactive mode, starting jobs before scope and selections are fully dialed in, his story is a look at what's waiting on the other side. Hit play to hear how he's climbing out, in his own words.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Introducing Eric Brownson of Sweet Homes 01:26 Business Evaluation Call 03:58 Eric's Background and Business 06:18 Waking Up Three Hours Behind 08:20 Thinking You Live on an Island 10:26 Belay: Reclaim Your Time 12:02 The Pre-Construction Light Bulb 15:54 Clients Motivated to Make Selections Early 18:00 How the Team Responded 19:00 Handing Off Project Management 20:42 Mornings Are Back

Additional Resources: ⚡Get started with Belay Solutions: HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

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⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: https://constructionleadingedge.com/

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

#ConstructionBusiness #ContractorMindset #GeneralContractor #BuilderCEO #ConstructionSales #ConstructionLeadingEdge #ContractorGrowth

Kris Miller runs a commercial, multifamily, and residential construction company in Denver, and he is on his way to cutting his workweek from 80 hours down to 10. In this episode, he shares the construction business systems that got him moving, from a simple weekly client update to an accountability chart that finally put the right people in the right seats.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 For years, Kris and his two partners treated the rough handoff between preconstruction and the field as just part of the job. They would get enough information to start a project, then spend the build tracking down answers they should have had on day one. It worked well enough, but it came with long hours and a steady stream of fires to put out.

A few changes started to move the needle. The first was a weekly update his team now sends to every client, an idea so simple that Kris and his partner Mike wondered why they had not done it years earlier. The second was mapping their whole process onto a whiteboard and getting honest about who really belonged in each seat. Leyah and Kris get into what those shifts did for the team, and why the easiest one had the biggest effect on customer questions.

Underneath the systems sits a bigger goal. Kris has already brought his own hours from 80 a week down to 40, and he is aiming for 10 by the end of the year. He talks about why he never bought into the grind, and what it felt like to take his first real trip since finishing the program. He is not all the way there yet, but he is close to running the company without being in the middle of every decision.

If you are tired of running your construction business on guesswork and long hours, this conversation is worth your time. Let's get into it.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Introducing Chris Miller of KLM Construction

03:14 Life Before the Program

05:38 Construction Does Not Have to Be Chaotic

07:26 The Weekly Report That Killed Client Questions

09:28 Why Generic Business Coaches Failed Him

11:52 The Accountability Chart Light Bulb

13:06 Nailing the Handoff

14:08 From 80 Hours Down to 10

15:32 Done With the Work Work Work Mentality

16:14 Closing and Next Steps

Additional Resources:

⚡Get started with Belay: HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: https://constructionleadingedge.com/

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

Every construction business owner hears the same objections: now isn't a good time, this will take too long, and it's too big to tackle. In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the three excuses that keep customers and employees from taking action, and the calibrated questions that get them to move.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 If you run a construction company, you already know the moment. A prospect tells you now just isn't a good time, and the job stalls out and dies. Or you ask an employee to take on a new process and they say they don't have time, so the change never happens. Push too hard and they dig in. Back off and nothing moves. You can tell there's something underneath the excuse, but you can't quite name it, and you definitely can't get past it.

In this episode, Todd Dawalt walks through the three excuses that show up again and again in the construction sales process and any time you try to get your team to change something. The catch is that these excuses don't sound like excuses when you're the one making them. They sound like facts. Todd breaks down the distortion of reality hiding behind each one, and the kind of questions that get the other person to inspect their own thinking rather than dig in and defend it.

And there's one more place these excuses show up that hits a lot closer to home than most owners expect. If there's a decision you keep pushing to January, a hard conversation you keep putting off, or a project that feels too big to start, this one is for you. Give it a listen before your next sales call or team meeting, and see how many you catch yourself making.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 The Excuse That Killed the Deal

01:20 Excuse 1: Now Is Not the Right Time

05:08 The Doctor and the Busy Schedule

06:04 Jedi Questions for the Timing Excuse

08:02 Excuse 2: It Is Going to Be Too Hard

10:12 Belay: Get Your Time Back

11:48 The Real Cost of Doing Nothing

13:20 Jedi Questions for the Inconvenience Excuse

14:02 Excuse 3: It Is Too Big to Tackle

16:44 The Mount Everest Problem

20:12 What Construction Business Owners Do to Themselves

22:36 Now Is Not the Right Time for You

26:02 This Is Going to Be Too Hard for You

29:18 This Is Too Big for You

33:24 Three Steps to Break the Pattern

38:46 Which Excuse Are You Using Most?

Additional Resources: ⚡Get started with Belay: HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: https://constructionleadingedge.com/

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!

Todd Dawalt explains why starting construction projects before they're fully ready creates "dead days," the hidden overhead that bleeds profit out of your business. This episode breaks down the "just enough to start" trap and how a complete pre-construction handoff and buyout protect your schedule and margins.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE

👉 Most construction companies are rewarded for movement. Everybody wants to see sawdust and smell diesel, so jobs kick off the moment there's "just enough to start." Todd Dawalt calls this the just enough to start trap, and it's where dead days come from: working days on an active project when real production could have happened but didn't. Nobody's doing billable work, yet your overhead keeps burning. On a company spending $2,000 a day just to exist, those hidden losses stack up fast.

Here's the part most owners miss: a dead day shows up in production, but the cause almost always lives back in pre-construction, sometimes months before the job site ever goes quiet. Todd breaks down the five root causes of dead days and why the empty job site you're staring at was almost never created on the job site. Chasing the fix during production means barking up the wrong tree.

The fix runs counter to instinct. Todd makes the case that starting sooner rarely means finishing sooner, then walks through what it takes to hand a job off complete, so your field team isn't finishing the planning while they build. He also shows why throwing more sales and more people at the problem only makes it worse as you grow. If your jobs start loose and finish late, this episode shows where that profit is going and what to change first.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Starting Sooner Is Why You Finish Late

01:00 What a Dead Day Costs You

07:26 Free Buyout Playbook

08:14 The Hidden Profit Bleed Nobody Tracks

09:50 Your Daily Overhead Burn Rate

15:38 Belay: Get Your Time Back

16:30 Stop Blaming Your Subs and Super

17:32 Five Root Causes of Dead Days

24:00 Start Slow to Finish Fast

24:54 Step 1: Finish Selections Before Handoff

25:50 Step 2: Buy Out Before Production Starts

26:40 Step 3: Own Pre-Construction Accountability

28:32 Why Growth Makes It Worse

32:28 Business Evaluation Call

Additional Resources:

⚡Download the How to Buyout a Construction Project Playbook - HERE

⚡Get started with Belay: HERE

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: HERE

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.

Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!