Libsyn Directory

The Firing: A Business Parable for Construction Owners | Ep. 443

Release Date: 05/11/2026

Stop Taking Shortcuts: The Shortcut Delusion | Ep. 466

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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,...

How You’re Accidentally Making Your Team Resist Change | Ep. 465

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

You’re Solving the Wrong Problems in Your Construction Business | Ep. 464

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

Stop Putting Out Fires by Building a Real Pre-Construction Process | Ep. 463

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 For twenty years, Eric Brownson ran his construction business the way a lot of custom home builders do: as the backstop for everything,...

Why Generic Business Coaching Never Works for Your Construction Company | Ep. 462

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

How to Turn Customer & Employee Excuses Into Action | Ep. 461

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

Why Starting Projects Too Soon Is Killing Your Profit | Ep. 460

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

How to Design Your Construction Business for Growth, Profit, and Freedom with Tom Raisanen | Ep. 459

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

Designing a construction business with the right systems and processes from day one is how you build for lasting profit and freedom. New Hampshire home builder Tom Raisanen shares how he set up pre-construction, project handoffs, a CEO schedule, and his first hire so the company can eventually run without him. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Here's how to build a construction business that runs without you, starting with the systems most owners wait too long to put in place. After 15 years in his family's construction business, Tom...

What To Do When Your Construction Business Finally Runs Without You | Ep. 458

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

You systematized your construction business and now it runs without you, so what do you actually do next? Todd Dawalt and CEO Alliance coach Monish Khadye break down the operator-to-owner shift and how to build a construction business that supports the life you want. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Most construction business owners spend years chasing the same goal: a company that runs without them. But what happens once you actually get there? In this episode, Todd Dawalt sits down with Monish Khadye, a coach who leads the CEO Alliance...

The Skywalk Collapse & The 5 Decision Questions Every Construction Leader Must Train Their Team On | Ep. 457

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt skywalk collapse came down to one unchecked decision, and it holds a hard lesson for every construction business owner. In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, Todd Dawalt shares a decision-making framework of five questions and four tips to train your team to make better calls in the field and in pre-construction. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉Your team makes dozens of decisions a day, and most were never trained on how. In this episode I break down the five questions and four tips that help...

More Episodes

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.

TOPICS