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AI Is Lying, Customers Aren’t: Radical Transparency and Culture-Building with Eric Fortenberry | Ep. 450

Release Date: 06/29/2026

How To Hold Employees Accountable: The Big 5 System | Ep. 456

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

Todd Dawalt breaks down how to hold employees accountable in your construction business using the Big 5 Accountability System. It's a simple, repeatable way to build ownership across your team without micromanaging or hovering all day. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉If you're constantly repeating yourself and correcting the same mistakes, this episode hands you a five-step system to hold your team accountable without chasing everyone down. Hit play to build accountability into your business instead of carrying it on your shoulders. If...

How Builder CEOs Get Sh*t Done (Without More Willpower or Fixing Your ADHD Brain) | Ep. 455

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

If you stay busy all day but the work that actually grows your construction business keeps getting pushed to tomorrow, the problem probably isn't your willpower or your ADHD brain. In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the deep work system builder CEOs use to cut interruptions, protect their time, and get the important work done. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 You start the week knowing exactly what you need to work on, then somehow reach Friday having answered every email and put out every fire while the work that actually moves your...

How Cody Scaled His Custom Home Business to Increase Profit and Win Back His Life | Ep. 454

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

Custom home builder Cody Reimer went from a burned-out two-man crew to running a 12-person company that operates without him in the day-to-day. Todd Dawalt breaks down the construction business systems and the paid pre-construction process that moved Cody out of the field and into a real CEO role. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉When Cody Reimer reached out to Todd Dawalt, he was close to hanging up the belt. He had a two-man operation and a crew that had left one guy at a time. Worse, he was starting to see that he was the bottleneck. As...

Why Waffle House Is More Systematized Than Your Construction Business | Ep. 453

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

The 5-Step Hire Right System: How Construction Business Owners Can Hire Better with Justin Landry | Ep. 452

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

Crossing the Rubicon & the Desperate Ground Principle for Builders | Ep. 451

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 Todd pulls from three places to make the point: Caesar crossing the Rubicon with no plan B, Sun Tzu putting his own troops on...

AI Is Lying, Customers Aren’t: Radical Transparency and Culture-Building with Eric Fortenberry | Ep. 450

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

The Hidden Design Shift That Unlocks Growth, Profit, and Free Time in Your Construction Business | Ep. 449

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

The One Question That Finally Gets Your Clients To Follow Your Process | Ep. 448

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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....

Short-Staffed or Just Disorganized? 5 Tests Before You Hire | Ep. 447

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast

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: 👉 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...

More Episodes

⚡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

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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.

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