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

Release Date: 08/03/2026

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

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: HERE

👉 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 business never got touched. Todd Dawalt calls the hidden culprit the Owner Interruption Count: the running total of calls, texts, job site notifications, and questions that land on you in a single day. Once that number climbs past 75 or 100, the issue isn't your personal discipline. Your business has been designed so every decision flows back to you.

The answer Todd lays out is the deep work session: one or two protected blocks each week, each pointed at a single concrete outcome. He reframes what your time is actually worth, shows why scattered five-minute pockets never add up to real progress, and explains how attention residue drains your focus every time you switch tasks.

From there he shares ten field-tested tips, from getting out of your usual office and putting your phone on airplane mode, to using a virtual assistant to protect the block, leaning on accountability, and treating AI as a thinking partner. The point of every session is to solve a recurring problem at the root so it stops returning, and to free up more hours for the high-value work only you can do.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Why Good Intentions Don't Get Things Done
00:56 Download the Builder CEO Weekly Operating System
06:16 The Owner Interruption Count and What It Reveals
08:28 Business Evaluation Call
11:28 Why Your Time Is Worth $1,000 an Hour
17:36 Scattered Time Does Not Create Meaningful Progress
19:12 Tip 1: Schedule Deep Work Like a Client Appointment
22:22 Tip 2: Define a Specific Outcome Before You Start
24:08 Tip 3: Put the Phone Down and Protect the Block
26:00 Tip 4: Change Your Location to Change How You Think
28:12 Tip 5: Create a Protected Focus Block With a Timer
30:02 Tip 6: Use Your Virtual Assistant to Make It Happen
32:08 Tip 7: Add External Accountability
35:12 Tip 8: Use AI as a Deep Work Thinking Partner
36:28 Tip 9: Solve Problems Systematically, Not Just Once
37:54 Tip 10: Consistency Matters More Than a Perfect Routine
41:18 Five Questions to Identify What to Work On

Additional Resources:

⚡Builder CEO Weekly Operating System: HERE

⚡The Remote Assistant Playbook: HERE

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⚡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.

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