EPISODE 453:

If you're a contractor working 60 to 80-hour weeks and still putting out fires, here's an uncomfortable truth: Waffle House is probably more systematized than your construction business. Todd Dawalt sat at the counter during a lunch rush and walked out with four systems lessons that show exactly where your company is bleeding time and profit.

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

👉 It started with a cook's shirt that read "$2 Million Club." That sent Todd down a rabbit hole into how Waffle House runs its line with no iPads, no kitchen displays, and no software, just a grill and a process most contractors can't match. He breaks down the "pull, drop, mark" order handoff and why a real-time, face-to-face handoff kills the ambiguity that buries your project details in Dropbox folders and email threads.

From there Todd unpacks the "magic marker" plate code that lets any cook run the line at any location, and what it teaches you about building a "this is how we do it" playbook so your project managers and supers stop running five different versions of your company. He also makes the case for radical transparency, moving from a black box to a glass box, and why letting clients see how the sausage gets made earns you trust and far fewer fights over price.

The last lesson is the one Todd says might be the most valuable, and it comes back to that $2 Million Club shirt. Status and recognition move people harder than a small raise ever will. He shares how his own Extra Mile Club changed behavior across a 50-person company, and how to build your version so your best people feel seen before they go looking elsewhere.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 What a Waffle House Shirt Taught Me About Construction

01:38 Free Training: Get Out of Your Construction Business

02:22 Lesson 1: The Pull Drop Mark Method

05:50 Why Most Handoffs Break Down

08:04 Lesson 2: The Magic Marker System

13:30 Business Evaluation Call

16:02 Lesson 3: Radical Transparency

20:30 How Clients Fill Silence With Their Worst Fears

21:58 Lesson 4: The Two Million Dollar Club

24:00 The Extra Mile Club and the Poker Chip Story

27:00 Four Waffle House Lessons Recap

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

⚡How to Use the Moneyball Strategy to Run Your Construction Business Like a Machine: HERE

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⚡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!

EPISODE 452:

Hiring for your construction business shouldn't feel like an emergency every time you do it. In this episode, Todd Dawalt sits down with JL Talent Solutions founder Justin Landry to break down a five-step system for hiring better construction employees without leaning on gut feel.

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

👉 Most construction owners only start hiring when someone quits or the team is already stretched past its limit. Justin Landry calls this the reactive hiring trap, and it's why so many builders end up hiring for skills when the thing they were really missing was fit.

Justin has spent ten years helping high-end construction companies across North America make data-driven hires instead of gut-feel gambles. In this conversation, he and Todd dig into why the "all the good people are gone" story is usually fear doing the talking, and why your strongest candidates are almost never the ones actively scrolling job boards. Todd also makes the case for what an owner's time is actually worth, and why "I'll just do it myself" tends to cost far more than it looks.

From there, Justin walks through his Hire Right System, moving from how you build a candidate pipeline before you ever have an opening all the way to the structured, scorecard-based interview that takes the guesswork out of who you bring on. He also gets into why a fat paycheck alone won't land great people, and how a smaller company can put together an offer that beats what the big firms are waving around.

If hiring has felt like a fire drill every single time, Justin and Todd lay out a calmer, repeatable way to get it right.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Why Hiring Feels Like an Emergency Every Time

01:54 Free Masterclass: How to Escape Day to Day Operations

03:14 Introducing Justin Landry of JL Talent Solutions

04:50 The Reactive Hiring Trap and Why It Keeps You Stuck

06:00 Gut Fit vs. Right Fit: How to Hire for Culture

09:00 Why You Should Be Recruiting Even When You Have No Vacancies

13:10 Your Time Is Worth $1,000 an Hour

18:12 Business Evaluation Call

20:44 Scarcity Brain: The Real Reason Owners Avoid Hiring

22:16 Step 1: The Magnet: Build a Pipeline Before You Need It

25:44 Step 2: The Filter: Screen Smarter With Assessment Data

27:22 Step 3: The Blueprint: Match the Person to the Role

31:56 Step 4: The Walkthrough: Structured Scorecard Interview

39:20 Step 5: The Close: Make an Offer Built Around the Whole Person

43:44 Client Results: Andrew at GDG and Jeremy the Estimator

48:08 Three Options When You Know You Need to Hire

50:36 Free Hire Right System Scorecard and How to Reach Justin

Additional Resources:

⚡Escape from Day to Day Operations So You Can Focus on Being a Visionary CEO [Free Masterclass] - HERE

⚡Hiring System Scorecard & Checklist: HERE

⚡Learn more about JL Talent Solutions: 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.

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

The year is half over. Are you halfway to your goals, or halfway to another year of almosts? In this episode, Todd DeWalt breaks down why so many construction business owners stay stuck overthinking the decision they already know they need to make, still camped on the wrong side of their own Rubicon, waiting on a little more research and a little more certainty before they move.

⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: https://go.constructionleadingedge.com/qualification?utm_source=audio%20podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=451

👉 Todd pulls from three places to make the point: Caesar crossing the Rubicon with no plan B, Sun Tzu putting his own troops on desperate ground so they'd fight with everything they had, and Colin Powell's 40/70 rule for when to stop gathering information and decide. The through-line is simple: most construction business owners don't have an information problem, they have a decision problem.

He breaks down why you save your sharpest problem-solving for emergencies you didn't choose, the angry client, the payroll you have to make, while you let the decisions that would actually change your life sit and gather dust. The fix isn't trying harder or reading one more book. It's flipping the order. Successful entrepreneurs commit first, then calculate the rest as they go.

You'll walk away knowing how to name the one decision you've been circling, how to run the 40/70 check on it, and how to take one visible action with real consequences before the episode is over.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Halfway to Your Goals or Another Year of Almosts?

01:32 Download the Free Strategic Planning Guide

02:36 Why Caesar Crossed the Rubicon

06:22 Sun Tzu's Desperate Ground: No Plan B Changes Everything

08:34 The 40/70 Rule: When to Pull the Trigger

11:00 The Commit Then Calculate Strategy

13:28 The Extra Gear That Only Shows Up With No Plan B

18:42 Why You Save Your Best for Emergencies You Didn't Choose

21:36 Name Your Rubicon: The Decision You Have Been Avoiding

27:08 Your Business Is Designed to Fail Without You

29:46 Cross Your Rubicon and Take Action

Additional Resources:

⚡Create your Strategic Plan for the Next 12 Months: 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!

EPISODE 450:

Why are you still stuck in the middle of everything, even with the best tools, a solid team, and steady projects coming in? In this episode, Todd DeWalt sits down with Eric Fortenberry, founder and CEO of JobTread, to dig into the real reasons contractors stay under-profitable and overworked, and what it takes to finally get off the hamster wheel.

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

👉 Eric has worked with over 12,000 construction businesses, and he sees the same pattern over and over: owners who don't know their numbers, won't delegate, and treat AI like an easy button. In this conversation, he and Todd break down the job costing most contractors skip, how to delegate so your team actually takes ownership, and why "don't trust and verify" is the rule for using AI on your projects.

Eric also gets candid about JobTread's culture and why he only hires people who've lived through the chaos of construction, how he built radical transparency into the company, and why he keeps turning down the private equity offers piling up in his inbox. If you're a CoConstruct user staring down the sunset, he explains why moving on your own timeline beats getting forced over at the last minute.

You'll walk away with a clearer view of where you're the bottleneck, where AI helps and where it quietly costs you, and what the next three to five years look like for an industry full of more informed, more demanding homeowners.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Why You Are Still the Bottleneck Even With Good Tools

03:14 Free Buyout Playbook

04:10 Introducing Eric Fortenberry Founder and CEO of JobTread

05:46 The Single Biggest Reason Contractors Stay Stuck

09:14 Why Delegation Fails Without Clear Outcomes

13:20 How JobTread Practically Teaches Delegation

17:30 AI in Construction: The Real Benefits and the Hidden Risks

27:14 The AI Bubble: Is It About to Burst?

36:36 How the Construction Industry Will Change in the Next 3 to 5 Years

41:14 JobTread Culture and the Power of Radical Transparency

47:26 How JobTread Decides Which Features to Build Next

50:54 CoConstruct Is Shutting Down: What Users Should Do Now

57:34 Why Eric Will Never Sell JobTread

01:01:46 Radical Transparency as a Business Philosophy

01:05:18 Closing and Where to Find Eric

Additional Resources:

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

EPISODE 449:

Can you grow your construction business, pay yourself real profit, and still work a normal 40 to 50 hour week? Most construction business owners are working harder than ever and going backwards.

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

👉 If you're grinding 60-hour weeks and every decision still runs through you, the problem isn't what you think.

If you own a construction business, this is the question that keeps you up at night: how do you grow, pay yourself real profit, and get back to a normal week? Todd Dawalt has helped hundreds of contractors work through exactly that, and in this episode he reframes the whole thing. The long hours and the constant firefighting aren't the real problem. They're symptoms of something underneath.

Todd uses a story every contractor will recognize to show why working harder, hiring more, or buying another piece of software won't move the needle. There's a reason your best people don't step up and every decision still lands on your desk, and it has nothing to do with effort.

Whether you're a custom home builder, remodeler, general contractor, or trade business doing $3 to $10 million a year, this episode will change how you see what's holding you back. Listen in, then take the five-minute action item Todd lays out at the end.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Can You Actually Grow and Still Work 40 Hours a Week?

01:22 What Business Owners Tell Todd Every Week

03:36 Your Business Is Producing Exactly What It Was Designed To Produce

07:58 The Difference Between Symptoms and the Real Problem

10:00 The Shift From Being the Machine to Designing It

12:26 What It Looks Like When It Works: John Springstead and Darren Yester

15:16 Download the Free Strategic Planning Guide

16:08 How Andy Kulp Took Two Weeks Off and Barely Got a Phone Call

17:34 Why Pre-Construction Is the Secret Profit Phase

21:44 Business Evaluation Call

24:16 Five-Minute Action Step

Additional Resources:

⚡Download your Strategic Planning Guide: 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!

EPISODE 448:

Got construction clients who miss selection deadlines, go around your communication process, then blame you when the schedule slips? In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd Dawalt shares the one question that gets your team to hold clients accountable to your process without sounding rigid.

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

👉 You'll walk away with a simple three-step framework for getting clients to follow your process: find the parking brake, ask your team one question, and build your "This Is How We Do It" playbook.

When a client misses a selection deadline or texts the superintendent to get the answer they want, that's rarely where it ends. It becomes a materials delay that forces you to reschedule trades and eats into your profit. Todd breaks down why clients miss their commitments while your company takes the blame, and how every exception your team makes weakens the process until there's no real process left.

The reason your team struggles to hold clients accountable usually comes down to what Todd calls a competing commitment. Your project managers and selections coordinators may want to enforce the process, but they're also committed to avoiding conflict or not making the client feel rushed. That's the parking brake. Until you find it and release it, reminders and pressure won't move anything. Good leadership means locating the blocker and removing it, not pushing harder on the gas.

That leads to the one question Todd put in front of 20 leaders at an 800-person construction company in Guatemala: "How does it benefit our clients to follow our process?" Once your team connects your process to what the client actually cares about, their budget and their own schedule, they enforce it with confidence instead of reacting to it. Todd closes by showing you how to build a "This Is How We Do It" playbook, with scripts for late selections, change orders, and side-channel conversations.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 When Clients Ignore Your Process and You Take the Blame

02:00 Why One Late Decision Creates a Domino Effect

07:12 When Your Team Handles Client Pushback Differently

09:36 Business Evaluation Call

12:40 Step 1 Find the Parking Brake

17:18 Step 2 The One Question That Changes Everything

19:50 Whats in It for the Client to Follow Your Process

22:34 Step 3 Build Your This Is How We Do It Playbook

26:00 Set Client Expectations Early Before Theres a Problem

29:12 Give Your Team Scripts for Predictable Situations

35:18 Recap and Five Minute Action Step

Additional Resources:

⚡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!

EPISODE 447:

Before you hire your next superintendent, project manager, or estimator, you need to know whether you have a capacity problem or a process problem. Todd Dawalt walks construction business owners through a five-step hiring framework to make smarter, more strategic staffing decisions.

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

👉 If your PMs are stretched thin, your supers can't be everywhere, and every question still finds its way back to you, it's easy to assume you need to hire. But in a lot of construction businesses, the bottleneck isn't headcount. It's a pre-construction deficiency, a fuzzy accountability chart, or a performance issue everyone's been working around.

Todd walks through the five things you need to do before you bring anyone on: confirm who's actually accountable for what, audit your handoff process, run the math on real management hours, have the honest conversation about whether someone on your current team isn't owning their role, and forecast the full cost of the hire, not just the salary.

The goal isn't to avoid hiring. It's to hire at the right time, for the right reason, with the financial data to back it up. Because adding headcount to a broken system doesn't fix the system. It just gives the chaos more room to spread.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Short-Staffed or Just Disorganized?

01:40 When Hiring Makes Things Worse

04:08 The Five-Step Framework

07:50 Business Evaluation Call

10:42 Step 1: Clarify Accountability First

14:32 Step 2: Fix Pre-Construction Before You Hire

18:44 Step 3: Do the Math on Hours

21:22 Step 4: Is It a Capacity or Performance Problem?

24:50 Step 5: Know the True Cost of the Hire

31:14 Three Hiring Pitfalls to Avoid

37:54 Five-Minute Action Step

Additional Resources:

⚡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!

EPISODE 446:

Something feels off in your construction business but you can't pinpoint it. Sales are slipping, the team's out of sync, or projects feel chaotic, and your instinct is to add more meetings, more software, more hours.

In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down why throwing action at the problem usually makes it worse, and walks through four diagnostic questions that help you find the real issue before you spend energy in the wrong place.

If you've been running with your feet in quicksand and can't figure out what's really wrong, this episode gives you a simple way to diagnose it before you waste another month.

👉 If you're tired of throwing action at problems that won't go away, tune in.

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

Most business owners think the answer is more. More meetings, more software, more hours, more oversight. Todd makes the case that the real problem is asking the wrong questions. When you default to addition every time something feels off, you end up with a heavier business and the same underlying issue you started with.

Todd walks through what to ask, starting with what you stopped doing that was working, then what you should stop doing altogether. You'll hear a real story about a custom home builder in Virginia who eliminated a painful step in their process. He also breaks down the 80/20 principle and why Steve Jobs cut 70% of Apple's products when he returned in 1997.

The framework closes with the fourth question most owners never ask, the one that pulls you out of the DIY box. If you've been trying to figure it all out alone, this is the shift that changes

Key Takeaways:

00:00 When Something Feels Off and You Can't Put Your Finger on It

02:04 Why Adding More Is Usually the Wrong Move

05:54 The Simple Framework: Pause Before You Act

07:42 Business Evaluation Call

10:42 Question 1: What Did You Stop Doing That Was Working?

12:44 Question 2: What Should You Stop Doing Altogether?

19:44 The Steve Jobs Subtraction Lesson

23:54 Question 3: What Is Actually Working? Find the Formula and Turn the Crank

27:34 Question 4: Who Can Help You Figure This Out?

32:04 Five Minute Action Item and Recap

Additional Resources:

⚡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!

Episode 445

If your prospects are ghosting you, dragging their feet, or making the final decision based on whoever has the lowest number, the problem probably isn't your price. It's that you're selling the plunger.

In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down why most contractors spend too much time talking about their company and not enough time talking about what the client actually wants. He shares a four-step sales framework for getting prospects to make faster decisions, stop hiding their budget, and see you as the obvious choice. Todd walks through how to uncover the desired end result, identify the risks and obstacles standing in the way, position yourself as the path of least resistance, and introduce the investment only after the value is fully established.

If you've been winging the sales process and wondering why deals keep stalling out, this episode gives you a repeatable framework you can put to work right away.

👉 If you're tired of putting in the work only to get ghosted at the finish line, tune in.

Most contractors think they lose deals on price. Todd makes the case that the real problem is leading with the wrong thing. When you talk about your company history, your core values, and your fleet of trucks, you turn yourself into a commodity. Clients aren't buying a plunger. They're buying a result, and the contractor who figures out what that result actually is will win the job every time.

Todd walks through four steps for shifting from commodity to trusted advisor. It starts with asking the right questions to identify what the client truly wants, then uncovering the risks and landmines they may not have considered. This is where you separate yourself from the competition, not by pitching harder, but by listening better and showing them you understand their project at a level nobody else has.

The framework closes by helping you create urgency without pressure. Todd shares how to get clients to articulate the cost of doing nothing, why price should always come last, and how positioning yourself as the path of least resistance changes the entire dynamic of the sales conversation.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Why Prospects Ghost You and Deals Fall Apart at the Finish Line

03:00 Your Business Is Like a Toilet Plunger

05:00 Selling the Plunger vs. Selling the Result

08:10 The Four-Step Sales Framework Overview

09:00 Step 1: Identify the Desired End Result

12:00 Future Pacing and Flipping to the Back of the Book

14:00 Step 2: Uncover the Pitfalls, Risks, and Obstacles

17:30 How to Create Urgency by Pointing Out the Cost of Inaction

20:15 Step 3: Position Yourself as the Path of Least Resistance

22:10 People Buy on Emotion and Back It Up With Logic

24:05 Step 4: Introduce the Investment After the Value Is Established

26:20 What Your Pipeline Looks Like When You Stop Competing on Price

Additional Resources:

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

⚡ Free Training "How to Build a Sales System That Fills Your Pipeline with High-Margin Work" HERE

⚡ Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel

⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: HERE

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

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

EPISODE 444:

Most construction business owners think their job site fires are operations problems. They're not. They're pre-construction problems that nobody caught in time.

In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the Toyota manufacturing concept of Jidoka and what it means for your construction business. He walks through why bad information keeps moving downstream undetected, how the "just enough to start" trap creates chaos on every job, and what a real validation process looks like inside pre-construction. Todd shares a four-step framework for identifying critical control points, creating second-set-of-eyes checks, applying the Missouri Standard, and fixing root causes instead of just the immediate fire. He also covers how weak controls open the door to fraud, including a real case where an office manager embezzled over $1.7 million from a home builder over eight years.

If your business is still running on memory, good intentions, and tribal knowledge, this episode is a hard look at what that actually costs you.

👉 If you've been moving projects forward before they're actually ready, this episode will change how you think about pre-construction. Tune in.

Most fires on a job site don't start in the field. They start weeks or months earlier, when a vague scope moved forward, a selection wasn't confirmed, or a handoff happened before the project was actually ready. By the time the problem shows up, the meter's running, and it's expensive to fix. Todd uses Toyota's manufacturing concept of Jidoka to explain why catching defects downstream is a losing game, and why validation has to be built into the process earlier.

Todd walks through two critical control points every construction business needs to focus on: the buyout phase and the handoff from pre-construction to production. He lays out a four-step framework for identifying where errors turn into defects, building second-set-of-eyes checks at those points, applying the Missouri Standard ("show me it's done"), and fixing root causes so the same problem stops reappearing on every job.

Key Takeaways:

0:00 The Root Cause Behind Most Job Site Fires

03:05 Why Your Team Keeps Missing Problems

07:45 When Your Client Catches the Mistake First

09:10 Toyota's Jidoka and the Pull the Cord Method

11:05 The Two Pre-Construction Control Points

13:10 Step 1: Where an Error Becomes a Defect

19:25 Step 2: Validation and the Second Set of Eyes

23:05 The $1.7 Million Embezzlement Case

25:05 Step 3: The Missouri Standard

27:25 Step 4: Fix the Root Cause

Additional Resources:

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

☎️ Schedule a free Business Evaluation Call with the CLE team → HERE

⚡ Download the How to Buyout a Construction Project Playbook: 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!