#477 Building a Multi-Million $ Team in a Small Town (ft. Slate Creek Builders)
Release Date: 01/21/2026
#493 Hiring, Firing, and Hard Conversations (ft. Squirrel Solutions)
Contractor Growth Network
Most remodelers call an HR person when something is already on fire. Somebody quit, somebody needs to be fired, or a role has been empty for three months and the owner is covering it at 9pm. In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan Shinholser sits down with Bryan Williams, owner of Squirrel Solutions, a fractional HR and operations firm working with remodelers and custom builders across the country. Bryan's whole premise is that the hire is almost never the actual problem. When an owner calls him about a designer or a project manager, his first move is to figure out...
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#492 4 Stories to Add to Your Sales Toolbelt (ft. Mark Dixon)
Contractor Growth Network
Shownotes Most sales training tells you to talk about your past projects. Mark Dixon talks about spaghetti. In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan Shinholser sits down with Mark Dixon, co-owner of Odd Fellows Contracting in Michigan and a remodeler with more than 40 years in the trade. Logan first heard Mark speak at the Rise Conference earlier this year and expected a talk about project storytelling. Instead he got Italian food. Mark walks through the three analogies he actually uses in the field: the spaghetti dinner that explains why nobody can price an addition...
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#491 Marketing Your Job to Sell the Next One (RISE Summit '26)
Contractor Growth Network
Your next project is probably within a mile of the one you're finishing right now. In this live session, Logan Shinholser breaks down how to systematically market the neighborhood you're already working in. It starts with a story about his neighbor Bo — a basement remodel, a nerdy Gantt chart, a Friday pizza party, and four of that contractor's yard signs appearing within a half mile over the next few months. The problem with the Bo model is that it depends on Bo. So the whole session is about taking what happens offline, by luck, and rebuilding it as something you actually control. Logan...
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#490 Answering Remodeler's Top Photography Questions
Contractor Growth Network
How do you find a good remodeling photographer — and once you've found them, how do you actually get photos worth paying for? In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Aaron Horner sits down with Luke Strappelli, a CGN client success manager, to answer the photography questions that come up over and over from remodeling clients. Aaron spent years traveling to shoot on-location photography for CGN clients and has been building a full photography guide, so this one gets tactical. They cover what actually separates a good photo from a bad one (spoiler: it's not just camera...
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#489 Your Remodeling Business' Marketing Strategy for 2027
Contractor Growth Network
A year ago, in episode 466, we laid out the entire six-step marketing strategy for a remodeling company. A lot has changed since — the market has slowed, AI search has gone from a curiosity to a real force, and the tactics that used to move the needle have shifted. In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan Shinholser and Aaron Horner give you a "State of the Union" on what CGN is now doing differently for its remodeling clients, and why. The foundation hasn't changed: know your ideal client and their real problem, articulate how you solve it, back it up with strong...
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# 488 AI Tools Built BY REMODELERS (ft. Data X)
Contractor Growth Network
Everyone keeps telling contractors they’ll be out of business in six months if they don’t adopt AI. The reality is calmer than that—and a lot more useful. In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan Shinholser sits down with Peter Ranney and Elliott Wittstruck, the founders of DataX, an AI optimization company built specifically for contractors running JobTread. Peter and Elliott come from the remodeling world themselves, and DataX started as a hodgepodge of tools they built to solve their own problems—Peter brute-forcing automations in Zapier, Elliott writing code...
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#487 Branding for the Billion Dollar Client (ft. Vought Construction)
Contractor Growth Network
Everybody says they do "high end." Almost nobody looks the part. In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan sits down with Devin Vought of Vought Construction — JobTread's 2025 Builder of the Year and a luxury home builder in the Bay Area whose clients are routinely worth hundreds of millions, sometimes billions. Devin breaks down what branding actually means when your prospects can buy anything they want. It's not the logo or the tagline. It's the client journey he's engineered behind the scenes — the demo-day party, the handmade pastries waiting for a client flying...
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#486 How to Get Cited by ChatGPT, Gemini & Claude in 90 Days
Contractor Growth Network
Is your remodeling company being recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude — or would you even know if it was? In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan sits down with Patrick Sculley, CGN's in-house SEO lead, to walk through a 90-day plan for getting cited in AI search. They start with the basics — what "cited" actually means, why personalization is making AI results different for every searcher, and why the old SEO formula of "more reviews + more backlinks = trust" doesn't hold the same weight anymore. Then they break the 90 days into three sprints. Days...
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#485 JobTread's Founder on AI, Automation, and The Future of Remodeling
Contractor Growth Network
What's the one thing in your business you wish could be automated? In this episode of the Contractor Growth Network podcast, Logan sits down with Eric Fortenberry — founder and CEO of JobTread — to dig into how AI is reshaping the way contractors run their businesses, and where the real risks are hiding underneath the hype. JobTread just rolled out a feature that lets contractors connect their own AI model directly into their JobTread account, and within two weeks over 1,500 users had spun up Claude and wired it in. Eric walks through what's working, what's blowing up in people's faces...
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#484 The Anatomy of a Great Remodeling Testimonial
Contractor Growth Network
How well does your company share stories of your past work? Many remodeling companies know that client testimonials are important, but are wasting the opportunity because of a lack of understanding around what a testimonial is supposed to do. In this episode Logan and Aaron are breaking some of the most impactful lessons they've learned over the years making impactful testimonials that actually sell more work. They walk through why most testimonial videos fail, the biggest mistakes contractors make when trying to capture them, and what it actually takes to create a video that builds trust and...
info_outlineLogan sits down with Sean Beliveau and Cassidy Jones of Slate Creek Builders to break down how they’ve built an award-winning remodeling team in a small college town—without relying on job boards, recruiters, or desperation hires.
Based in Blacksburg, Virginia, Slate Creek Builders has grown to a 14-person team delivering multi-million-dollar remodels in a market of just 35,000 people. In this conversation, they unpack how community reputation, always-on recruiting, strong systems, and a clearly defined org chart allow them to attract talent before they ever need it.
If you’re struggling to hire, retain great people, or build a culture that recruits for you, this episode offers a real-world playbook—especially for remodelers operating in smaller or tighter markets.
🎯 Timestamps:
00:00 — Why Slate Creek attracts talent without actively recruiting
03:00 — Building a high-end remodeling business in a small market
06:30 — How community reputation fuels growth and referrals
10:45 — The pressure (and upside) of working in a small town
14:00 — Why most of Slate Creek’s hires come from personal networks
17:00 — Always recruiting—even when you’re not hiring
20:45 — Hiring a “unicorn” without a job opening
23:15 — Using org charts to justify new roles
27:30 — How systems give confidence to hire ahead of demand
31:15 — Dividing leadership: vision vs. execution
34:30 — Protecting work-life balance as a core cultural value
38:00 — Learning from bad hires (and why desperation hires fail)
42:00 — Turning a questionable hire into a long-term win
46:30 — Separating emotion from estimating and pricing
50:30 — What Slate Creek looks for in cultural fit
55:00 — Hiring for skilled roles vs. training from scratch
59:30 — Why people stay once they join the team
01:02:30 — The benefits of building a business in a tight-knit community
If you want employees lining up before you post a job, systems that support confident growth, and a culture people genuinely want to be part of—this episode shows what that looks like in practice.