The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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

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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.

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!

EPISODE 443:

Jake spent three years running a construction business that felt like waist-deep mud. He blamed the labor market. He blamed the economy. He blamed himself. Then he found a signature at the bottom of a stack of invoices — and everything clicked.

His chaos had a name. And it had been there the whole time.

In this solo episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd Dawalt tells the story of Jake a fictional composite built from real conversations with hundreds of construction business owners to illustrate one of the most common reasons construction businesses stay stuck: the people, patterns, and gray areas that quietly block every attempt to grow. Jake's story isn't real. But the moment of recognition probably will be.

👉 If you've been telling yourself things will calm down soon, this episode is for you. Tune in.

Jake had Charlie a 30-year veteran who kept things murky, kept Jake in firefighting mode, and had a quiet interest in keeping the business exactly where it was. He had Sarah, whose passive resistance and finger-pointing turned every attempted change into a confrontation. And he had a vision he couldn't seem to move toward, no matter how hard he pushed.

The story is a vehicle for three questions Todd puts directly to the listener: What's the biggest gray area in your business right now? Is your business designed around the people you have, or the vision you want to achieve? And how long have you been telling yourself you'll fix it when you have time? These aren't rhetorical. They're diagnostic the same questions Todd has used working with over 400 construction companies to identify what's actually holding the business back.

Jake's turning point wasn't a new hire or a better system. It was a decision. He stopped waiting to feel ready, stopped designing his business around the people he happened to have, and started building toward a destination he'd actually defined. Three months later, he was at his kid's soccer practice. He was the coach.

Key Takeaways:

• 00:00 Jake's story begins — three years of running through mud

• 01:15 Introducing Charlie and Sarah — resistance from inside the business

• 05:20 The $50,000 window order mistake and where accountability broke down

• 07:00 The beach vacation call — what it cost Jake beyond the job

• 09:20 The invoice signature — chaos hiding in plain sight

• 10:25 Charlie's real role: keeping Jake stuck in the urgent

• 11:20 Jake fires Charlie

• 13:45 How Jake rebuilt — vision, business design, and the playbook

• 18:05 Three questions for the listener

• 22:15 The call to action — results page and next steps

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: 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 442:

Most construction business owners are managing 20 things at once and wondering why the job still falls apart. They've got good people, solid clients, decent projects — and somehow it still ends in chaos, rework, and fires they didn't see coming.

The problem usually isn't the building. It's the handoff.

In this solo episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd Dawalt breaks down a framework he calls Nail the Handoff — a simple way to identify the three or four points in every construction project where the most damage happens and where your time and energy will have the greatest return. Drawing on 30 years in construction and work with over 400 companies, Todd walks through each handoff point: customer to contractor, sales to estimating, estimator to subs and suppliers, and pre-construction to operations. At each stage, he shows what breaks down, what it costs you, and what one tool can fix it.

👉 If your jobs seem to start smooth and then deteriorate — or if you're still the person holding all the pieces together — this episode is worth your full attention. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

00:02 The 20-plates problem — why construction chaos isn't random

01:20 Introducing the Nail the Handoff framework

02:20 The 2020 Olympic relay disqualification and what it means for your business

04:45 What botched handoffs actually look like in construction

10:45 Handoff #1: Customer to contractor — needs assessment and expectation setting

17:30 Handoff #2: Sales to estimating — what a complete handoff looks like

21:15 Handoff #3: Estimator to subs and suppliers — bid packages and scope clarity

27:15 Handoff #4: Pre-construction to operations — the loan closing model

36:05 Bonus move #1: Work right to left

37:35 Bonus move #2: Build processes with your team

38:30 Bonus move #3: Get paid for pre-construction

40:10 Real results — Andy Culp and John Springs on what changed

44:20 Grade your handoff — and what a weak one is actually costing you

Additional Resources:

☎️ Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge 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: 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 441:

Most builders assume cost plus is the safe play. No locked-in price. No exposure if materials spike or scope grows. But according to the author of Markup and Profits, cost plus contracts end up in lawsuits two to three times more often — and in arbitration nine times more often — than fixed-price contracts.

That's not a pricing problem. It's a process problem.

In this solo episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd Dawalt breaks down why cost plus contracts are far riskier than most builders realize — and what actually creates that risk. He walks through the hidden traps that turn cost plus jobs sideways: the "just enough to start" trap that lets you move forward without real clarity, the budget heart attack that hits clients at the 60-80% mark, the microscope effect that turns every invoice into a negotiation, and why cost plus limits your upside while doing almost nothing to protect your downside.

👉 If you've been using cost plus as a safety net, this episode will change how you think about it — and show you what actually keeps you protected. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

03:05 Why builders think cost plus limits their risk — and why it doesn't

08:45 Cost plus contracts end up in lawsuits 2-3x more often than fixed-price

12:55 The "just enough to start" trap and how cost plus enables it

17:15 Real legal case study: consumer fraud, treble damages, and what triggered it

24:25 The budget heart attack — what happens at the 60-80% mark

29:20 The microscope effect and the $40,000 Snickers bar

32:25 How billing disputes slow cash flow after your leverage is already gone

36:10 Cost plus limits your upside while barely protecting your downside

38:00 What real transparency looks like vs. open-book exposure

41:20 The three things to do right now if your pre-construction process needs work

Additional Resources:

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

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and 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 440:

Andy Kolp had clients, projects, and a reputation worth protecting. He also had gaps in his process — vague scope, trade bids coming in by text with no context, and jobs where the client ended up running the show. The projects finished. The clients were happy. But Epic Building Company had bent more than it should have.

So Andy set a goal for 2025: operate from a position of strength.

In this episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd sits down with Andy Kolp, owner of Epic Building Company in Columbus, Ohio, to break down what it actually looks like to tighten up every phase of your construction business — from pre-construction through closeout. Andy shares how he overhauled his scope development and trade bid process, why fixed-price contracts require more upfront work but protect everyone in the end, and how a simple weekly client update called the Epic Weekly Rundown nearly eliminated weekend calls and client surprises entirely.

👉 If you're tired of making decisions from the defensive, this episode shows you what it looks like to get ahead of your projects before they start. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

03:05 Meet Andy Kolp of Epic Building Company

04:10 Why Andy made "position of strength" his 2025 focus

08:45 What happens when you let clients run your process

12:55 Why pre-construction is the foundation of every successful project

15:00 The problem with vague trade bids — and how to fix it

17:15 What to say to contractors who skip straight from sell to build

20:15 Why fixed price beats cost plus for remodeling projects

24:25 What clients are actually paying for in pre-construction

29:20 Scope development and the three-part spec system

32:25 Trade partner site visits during pre-construction

36:10 The Epic Weekly Rundown — what it is and why it works

41:20 What freedom looks like after six years of systems work

46:50 What the CEO Alliance is and why it's hard to describe

Additional Resources:

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

⚡Follow us on Facebook , Instagram and 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!

#ConstructionLeadingEdge #PreConstruction #ConstructionBusiness

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

EPISODE 439:

Daaron Yester has been framing custom homes in Southern California's Coachella Valley for nearly 30 years. He had loyal crews, a strong reputation, and clients who kept coming back. He was also borrowing money to keep the business alive, undercharging on jobs, and trying to run every part of the company himself.

Something had to change.

In this episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd sits down with Daaron Yester, owner of DYC Framing Inc., to trace the turning point that took him from financial stress and operational chaos to a business with clear roles, tighter numbers, and a schedule that actually leaves room for his life. Daaron shares how getting into his numbers revealed the markup problem he'd been avoiding for years, why clarifying roles for people already on his team was the move that freed him up most, and what it really looks like when your GCs are running your company instead of you.

👉 If you've been in business for decades and still feel like you're holding everything together yourself, this one's worth your time. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

00:02:20 Meet Daaron Yester – DYC Framing and 30 years in the Coachella Valley

00:03:05 The scale of high-end custom work in Southern California

00:04:05 Misconceptions about wealthy clients

00:05:15 How Daaron got started in construction

00:07:05 Company size, team tenure, and rebuilding after 2008

00:08:10 Lessons from multiple downturns

00:11:05 How Daaron has kept crew members for 15–20 years

00:13:50 What led Daaron to reach out to CLE

00:16:35 Joining Systematize Your Construction Business – the decision to commit

00:18:25 The moment the program clicked

00:21:00 Clarifying roles: putting the right people in the right seats

00:23:05 Who was actually running the business

00:25:35 Why systems make you more professional with clients, not less

00:28:45 The two most impactful changes Daaron made

00:33:05 How Daaron's daily schedule has changed

00:36:30 Advice for owners who feel like they have to be everywhere 00:39:35 Keys to implementing systems and getting your team on board

00:43:35 What the CEO Alliance has meant for Daaron

00:45:10 Highlights from the Cancun live meetup

00:48:30 What Daaron would tell someone considering SYCB

00:49:45 One unconventional thing Daaron believes about business

00:52:15 Why construction owners try to do it alone

00:53:35 Where to go if you're ever passing through the area

Additional Resources:

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

⚡Follow us on Facebook Instagram and 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!

#ConstructionLeadingEdge #PreConstruction #ConstructionBusiness

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

EPISODE 438:

Why do construction business owners with real integrity still end up with frustrated clients? In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the systems gap between what you promise and what your customers actually experience — and why pre-construction is the fix.

☎️ Schedule a free Business Evaluation Call with the CLE team → https://go.constructionleadingedge.com/qualification

You can be a builder with high standards and real integrity and still deliver a customer experience full of confusion, delays, and broken promises. The issue isn't character — it's that your business has outgrown the point where personal integrity alone can carry the load.

Todd walks through the trust erosion cycle that plays out on construction projects and explains why most financial surprises on a job weren't really surprises at all. They were problems your process didn't catch early enough.

The fix starts with pre-construction. Todd lays out the three pillars every builder needs locked down before signing a contract — a fully defined scope, a real project schedule, and an anticipated cost report based on actual buyout pricing.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro

00:50 Your customers experience your systems, not your intentions

06:10 How trust erodes on a construction project

08:05 The avoidance spiral and what silence costs you

11:45 What it looks like when systems support your integrity

16:40 Pre-construction is the lead domino

18:55 Pillar 1: Scope — what are you actually building?

21:35 Pillar 2: Schedule — build the job on paper first

23:20 Pillar 3: The anticipated cost report

26:35 At least 75% of your financial surprises were already there

29:55 Your five-minute action item

Additional Resources:

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

–

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE ⚡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!

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

EPISODE 437:

In 1937, the U.S. Army Air Corps sent out a design proposal with a set of detailed performance specifications for a new pursuit aircraft — one that didn't yet exist and that no plane at the time could match. That proposal eventually produced the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a fighter that flew over 130,000 missions and, according to some historians, helped tip the balance of the war in the Pacific.

In this episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd breaks down the business lessons hidden inside that story — and why the way the Army Air Corps built the P-38 is exactly how successful construction business owners should be thinking about strategy, vision, and delegation.

Todd walks through three core lessons: how to establish performance specifications for your business instead of just reacting to whatever comes at you, why the visionary's job is to define the what and then hand the how to the people who know best, and why the time to develop your strategy is long before you actually need it. He also walks through two detailed business examples — including how to design a pre-construction handoff process and how to build an organization chart for a company targeting $13M in revenue.

👉 If you've been running on instinct instead of strategy, this episode gives you a framework to change that. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:30 The story of the P-38 Lightning and how it started with a spec sheet
• 08:50 Lesson 1 — You get to set the performance specifications for your business
• 12:20 Right-to-left thinking: start with what you want, then work backwards
• 16:35 Lesson 2 — Define the what, then delegate the how to your team
• 22:10 Real-world example: designing a pre-construction handoff process
• 27:15 Real-world example: building your org chart around a revenue target
• 30:00 Lesson 3 — Develop your strategy before you need it
• 34:05 The questions every construction owner should be asking about the future
• 38:20 Free resource: Strategic Planning Guide download

Additional Resources:

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

–

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE ⚡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!

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

EPISODE 436:

John Springs has been in construction since 1991. For most of those years, everything lived in his head — no written systems, no pre-construction process, no clear handoffs. He was the first call for every problem, working 60-hour weeks, and couldn't step away without something falling apart.

Three years ago, that started to change.

In this episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, Todd sits down with John Springs, owner of John Springs Construction in Glen Rock, New Jersey, to break down exactly how he transformed his business from a one-man operation held together by hustle into a systematized company that grew from $1.7M to $3.1M in revenue — with two fewer employees. John shares how implementing a pre-construction process eliminated chaos before jobs even began, how he handed off field operations to his superintendent Jonathan, and why he now leaves the office every day at 4:00 PM.

👉 If your business still depends on you for everything, this episode shows you what's possible on the other side. Tune in.

Key Takeaways:

• Intro (00:00)

• John's background and how he got into construction (03:30)

• Going out on his own — and why it failed the first time (06:00)

• Starting John Springs Construction in 2011 (07:40)

• What led John to reach out to Construction Leading Edge (08:40)

• The root causes of his profit bleeds (12:20)

• The moment he knew the systems were actually working (13:50)

• How to handle customers who push back on your process (16:10)

• The pre-construction process and the job site hub (19:35)

• Learning to let employees do their jobs (20:30)

• Day-to-day life before vs. after SYCB (22:00)

• From $1.7M to $3.1M with two fewer employees (24:40)

• What eliminated the chaos — clarity of roles and pre-construction (26:45)

• The non-measurable results: sleep, time, watching his team grow (30:15)

• Biggest implementation challenge — and how to overcome it (33:05)

• The CEO Alliance and the value of peer accountability (36:15)

• One goal he didn't think was possible three years ago (41:45)

• Where to find John (45:40)

Additional Resources:

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

–

⚡Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE ⚡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!