How Cody Scaled His Custom Home Business to Increase Profit and Win Back His Life | Ep. 454
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Release Date: 07/27/2026
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,...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
info_outlineCustom 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: HERE
👉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 long as every decision ran through Cody, the business had no room to grow.
The turnaround started with systems. The first real one was a paid pre-construction process, which became Oaken Builders' biggest sales and marketing tool. Instead of giving away free estimates, Cody learned to sell on value. He asks clients about their past building experiences and what they're really afraid of, then shows how planning the house on paper protects both their budget and their peace of mind. Clients say yes. He also built an accountability chart and a CEO calendar so his hours stay on the work that moves the business forward.
The results show up in the numbers and at home. Top-line revenue and margins are both up, and the team has grown to twelve people in defined seats. Cody now works under forty hours a week, and he recently took a full week off on short notice without anything falling apart. A lot of that traces back to a who-not-how shift: stop asking how you'll get it all done and start asking who's built to do it.
Key Takeaways:
00:00 From Two Man Operation to 12 Person Team: Cody Reimer's Story
01:06 Free Assessment: Is Your Construction Business Ready to Scale?
04:02 Introducing Cody Reimer of Oaken Builders
06:00 The Low Point: Close to Quitting and Considering a Career Change
09:16 The Big Realization: You Are the Problem in Your Business
12:36 Why Entrepreneurs Chase New Ideas Instead of Building One Thing
14:48 The E-Myth Light Bulb Moment
15:38 The First Monday the Phone Was Quiet
17:40 The Three Systems That Changed Everything
20:00 Business Evaluation Call
22:28 How Cody Sells Pre-Construction as a Paid Service
25:40 Pre-Construction Happens Whether You Plan It or Not
29:10 How the Business Runs Without Him Now
31:24 Who Not How: Hiring the Right People for the Right Seats
35:00 The Mental Malware That Keeps Owners Stuck
37:10 Keys to Actually Implementing Change in Your Business
40:06 CEO Alliance: What It Is and What It Did for Cody
42:26 From Sanding Nail Holes to Strategic Planning Sessions
Additional Resources:
⚡Is Your Construction Business Ready to Scale [Free Assessment]: HERE
⚡Oaken Builders: 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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