Estimating is not a clerical function. It’s early risk management—and it’s how you earn credibility long before a hardhat ever shows up on site.

Unless the schedule of values captures early cash needs in early pay periods, the subcontractor is financing the job—and that risk can put good companies out of business.

Positive framing doesn’t deny reality—it redirects frustration into the pressure that forges the next skill, system, or role.

“In construction, credibility is the shortest path to trust, and trust is the shortest path to award at defendable margins.”

“Work is the lifeblood of any organization, and when you win the right work consistently, you’ll feel it everywhere—from morale to margins to the decisions your team makes under pressure.”

There’s a line between empowering and abdicating. When a problem grows—margin erosion, repeated schedule slips, safety issues, client dissatisfaction—without correction from the larger staff, a visionary leader earns their title by jumping into the trenches.

If you spend your days rolling over, you’ll be treated like a service provider. But if you spend your days telling customers what needs to be done—and then doing it—you’ll be treated like a partner.

If you want respect, be the kind of manager who faces conflict with clarity and care. Avoidance, gossip, and hiding behind policy all erode trust—direct, timely conversations build it.

Most construction BD teams make the same mistake: they start selling the moment a prospect shows interest. But the real power move is resisting the urge to pitch and instead staying in discovery long enough to uncover the priorities, risks, politics, and decision criteria that actually drive decisions. When you wait, your final pitch becomes dramatically more relevant—because it’s simply a reflection of what the prospect already told you they care about. The discipline to slow down is the skill that separates average BD teams from elite ones.

There are many capable coaches, but far fewer who’ve lived the construction executive journey. You want someone who understands P&L responsibility, backlog risk, bonding realities, labor and capacity constraints, client and GC dynamics, and the field–office tension.

“Project excellence won’t save a company that can’t read the road. Markets shift. Backlogs thin. A-players get poached. Technology shows up whether you plan for it or not. If your managers can only think in weeks, you’ll live in reaction. If they can think in horizons, you’ll shape the next 12 months+.”

One of the best ways I have found for evaluating an executive's ability to think strategically is to start paying attention to their typical planning horizon. For those who don't know, a planning horizon is the period of time into the future in which you are looking to build your plan.

Every single person in your organization can be part of your recruiting efforts — they just need to be empowered to do it. When you rely solely on recruiters, you’re not only spending tens of thousands per hire, you’re missing out on the best recruiting resource you already have: your people. Teach them to build real relationships, reward their referrals, and watch how quickly your recruiting ecosystem grows.

Building a sales mindset isn’t about forcing deals or coming across as “salesy.” It’s about moving people naturally through three key stages: Target → Attention → Client. When you focus on building real relationships and consistently showing up with value, every conversation becomes a win—whether someone just heard of you, started following your work, or became a loyal client.

"By controlling three key moments in every sales meeting—the introduction, the recommendation, and the resolution—you can launch yourself from amateur to professional and close more work, all while building real trust with clients."