Episode 150 | The Biggest Takeaways from the Builder to CEO Event

You're not bad at business—you might just be operating without the information you need.

In this episode of The Mobilization Mindset, Scott Peper and Drew Aldridge share their biggest takeaways from the recent Builder to CEO Summit, where construction business owners spent two days diving into cash flow, labor costs, financial reporting, and business performance.

They discuss:

• How better financial visibility leads to better decisions
• The competitive advantage of understanding your cash flow and business data
• Why getting the right information can dramatically reduce stress and improve performance

Scott and Drew also explain why many contractors aren't struggling because they're bad operators—they're simply missing the tools, systems, and insights needed to run the business side with the same precision they bring to the field.

Special thanks to the hosts and speakers from the Builder to CEO Summit:

Jerry Alberti
Owner, Pro Accel
Website: https://www.pro-accel.com

Patrick Shurney
Owner, 3P Consulting
Website: https://3pcllc.com

Chuck Mazzanti
Senior VP, Christensen Group Insurance
Website: https://www.christensengroup.com

Warren Cleveland
CEO, Captive Coalition
Website: https://www.captivecoalition.com


Learn more at mobilizationfunding.com

Subscribe to the Mobilization Minute newsletter:
https://mobilizationfunding.com/newsletter-subscriptions/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want folks to know that you really aren't bad at it. You just are operating without it. To think you got companies with 100 employees doing 50, 60 million dollars in revenue, actually completing projects with millimeter precision on massive amounts of acreage with huge pieces of equipment. They still figure out how to bill it, collect it, pay for it, and survive for a decade, but don't have a cash flow to know how the money's gonna flow in and out, but yet still get it all done and be successful.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And it's not, I mean, it's not just cash flow, it's all the other financial functions of the business too.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Welcome everybody to the next episode of the mobilization mindset. My name is Scott Pieper, CEO and founder of mobilization funding, and today we are going to be talking about the Builder to CEO summit. We had 12 companies here in our building: assurity contractors, two consultants, and we talked to these folks for two days, breaking down cash flows, breaking down their businesses, helping them understand labor cost. It was fantastic. And today we're gonna give you our biggest takeaways. You have my co-host today of Drew Aldridge. There I am. What's up? President of Mobilization Funding, and we are gonna break it down. Drew and I both did presentations. We talked to a lot of the contractors, we both followed up with them in detail and got some uh good, you know, afterthoughts from them. And uh let's share them out.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

What's what's your biggest, if you just had to sum up the one thing that you would take away from the whole cash flow summit conversations, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, I I Scott, I would say the first thing I noticed when they all came in that kind of that first day, these folks know exactly what they're doing as far as the trade goes. But in general, they they're doing what I like to call gripping it and ripping it every single day. Like more projects, bigger projects, let's freaking roll. And uh what I think they learned generally over the two-day period is how to grip it and rip it with just a little more precision as it relates to the infrastructure and the execution of their company. Maybe not the job, but the company.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, I I would agree with you. Um one of my takeaways in that same light. Well, first we give you all some context. These are companies that range from five million in revenue up to 60 or 70 million in revenue. And there's 12 of them. I would say the average was probably hovering around 20 million dollars. Yeah, pretty straightforward.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, I'd say even on the upper end of that. Yeah, even on the upper end of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, decent-sized companies, their executives were here, founders were here.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Mostly founders, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yep. And um, so to give you some perspective. And so what I'm about to say is I agree with Drew. I think a lot of folks, you know, grip and rip it, white knuckle it, some of to use some of their terms. One of them said, I feel like I'm just white knuckling it all the time. And I said, I agree, I think you are. And and what's impressive about it, to your point, is they know exactly what they're doing and how to do the work. Yeah. They could do the trade, they understand the problems, and what's really remarkable is they understand how to solve those problems.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

What is what is crazy to me, and it even more Some of the challenges, actually, some of the some of the challenges, like they lot first off, here's a big takeaway. They were super open. They had a bunch of their peers, maybe not in the same geography, but uh they had their their peers. Some of them were in the same trade, and one guy or one gal would raise their hand and say, dude, I'm getting like hit in the face right now with this particular project. Someone else across the room would say, I actually same thing is happening to me. I feel like I always have one or two jobs at a time that are just getting dragged out. Right? So it the thing that opened up to me that that was a huge takeaway for me, how freaking candid these people were. I mean, they were it's like shameless in the in the level of transparency they provided.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Well, what I was gonna say is crazy to me is how how blind to the information they are, yeah, that they're tr and how well they're still executing. And so, like when we showed them what the actual cash flows of the job are, or what labor cost should be, or what the budget is and what you're actually spending, showing them the gain fades, what your dollars are where your dollars are going and where they're coming in from, and then what that's gonna look like two, three, four months from now, two, three, four weeks from now, they instantly would be like, Well, that's why I'm having that problem. And that correlation to once you gave them the information to the why that problem was existing was amazing. And then I was easily able to see it's the absence of the information that they're still operating with is remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

You know, one thing that I kept on thinking about through sort of the those two days, and this kind of dawned on me maybe about halfway through through the first day, if I full transparency, if I were to go out and start a a site con, we had a couple of site contractors there. I'm just gonna use that as an example, a site contracting company. I understand financials, I understand business to a pretty reasonable degree, I would say. But if you put me on a on a on a on a construction site and said, okay, you have to clear this land, you have to set it up for utilities, all of that stuff, I would have to heavily, heavily lean on an expert in that. Someone who's done that before, like one of the folks sitting in that room.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

However, it's a shame that a lot of those folks who are really good at the site contracting stuff and get thrown into this thing we call business, they don't really have in in general have the or know about the resources to lean on the business side. Correct. So it's it's kind of you get to the same destination. Although, actually, I probably wouldn't even be able to win a project because I don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

It's a great analogy, though. I think to your point, if we won a project and you even put all the equipment on the site for us, and you and me, and however many other people that didn't know what they were doing, showed up on the job site, yeah, and had to get in the equipment and start it and and and do whatever it is we're supposed to do with the best and fanciest GPS guide equipment, all that what we would create is a complete mess.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

It would be akin. It would be akin to me going out there and getting in one of these pieces of equipment, and then you had someone who knew what they were doing out there, they would be like, son, step off that piece of equipment. It'd be like me going fishing with my father-in-law and feeling emasculated to the point where he's teaching me how to gas.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, I can see if I could get it going straight, I definitely wouldn't be able to stop it or turn it. And I could see myself driving like an excavator just into the woods, clearing a path, knocking down everything possible. And and honestly, I'm laughing because that's how ridiculous it would be for me to do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

It's insanity.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

And and it's equally as ridiculous to operate your business with no information. But yet I have to give these folks so much credit. They they do exactly that. They saw it'd be the equivalent what they're doing is the equivalent of me and you actually getting in there and figuring out how to do it. Yeah, and I like let's just say the simple thing for us to do that day was dig, start digging a pond as a site conduct, right? Yeah, maybe we got a whole how the hell am I supposed to know? I wouldn't even know. And and I and that's the I say that analogy with with all the passion in the world that it's literally when if someone gave us an instructional manual for this amazing piece of equipment and we knew what the buttons were, we'd obviously be able to push them. Yeah. Well, this is what the data that we were able to give folks are. Once they saw it, they knew what buttons to push. It was it so I just don't I just wanna the biggest takeaway I have is I want folks to know that you really aren't bad at it. You just are operating without it.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I would even go as far as to say if I was sitting in that piece of equipment and you gave me an instruction manual, I would say, you need to show me how to do this, you need to partner with me to show me how to do this. Instruction manual would not cut it. I can read, but I don't know what half that stuff is.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

And that was my biggest takeaway. And then yet to think you got companies with a hundred employees doing $50, $60 million in revenue, actually completing projects with millimeter precision on massive amounts of acreage with huge pieces of equipment. They still figure out how to bill it, collect it, pay for it, and survive for a decade, but but don't have a cash flow to know how the money's gonna flow in and out, but yet still get it all done and be successful.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

And it's not, I mean, it's not just cash flow, it's all the other financial functions of the business too. And budget and uh I mean feed, where your build, overbuild, underbuild. I mean, Jerry and Patrick did a really good job of outlining sort of their the you know, the PL side and the execution side on the field. Obviously, we did the cash flow side, but it it's all related, right? And it's all business, right? And and it's the same, it's the concept we just said. You put us in a in a in a machine on a on a site, it'd be it'd be it'd be disastrous, is what it would be.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

So if I were to sum this up, I would say if you listen to Drew and I talk, don't ever first thing is don't ever let us go on a construction site. That's one.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Number two, in a close second, there's a 500-foot rule for me around a construction site.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

The close second would be this is not your you are not bad. You are literally operating without information. When given the information, if you seek it out, you will find it quickly and easily. Some get help, they will create it for you. And when you see it for your business, you will be able to make decisions astronomically easier. And that hardness of how difficult it is to in operating a construction business without the information, it will definitely feel like relief to you when you are given this information, like a massive amount of relief. You will run your business better, you will feel better, you'll sleep better at night, you'll you'll know what to do, you'll be able to grow, you'll you'll be just straight up happier. It's gonna give you a competitive edge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Your competitors, if okay, if a room full of contractors generally didn't have that capacity at that point in time. Now, I think they left with that information. Yeah. Right. I mean, I I I I do feel confident that. And they came here with the desire to get it. And they came here desire to get it. But you look at all your competitors, if a room full came in not having that capacity, you know your competitors don't have that capacity.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

So if you have, you're not only feeling a lot better because you're less stressed because you have more information, but secondly, you're able to make decisions quicker than your competitors. Smart decisions. Let's caveat that. Smart decisions faster than your competitors. That's a competitive advantage in a market that is underinformed.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

100%.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

I mean, that's this, that's the takeaway. So, folks, be confident in going after that job that you can do the work. Be confident, just as confident, and go in to find the help, find the support, find good people that have done it before. Not someone, probably not someone related to you unless they've actually done it before. But find somebody out there that has already helped a company just like yours, get that information and trust this one fact, which is you will absolutely be able to run your business significantly better. You are probably operating with either no information or bad information, and yet you still are surviving and successful. You will do way better with the right info. Anything else?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

No, I was just looking real forward to saying gripping it and ripping it. That was really exciting for me. That was a highlight of my days, white knuckle gripping and just grip it and ripping it. It's like my golf game.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yes. On that note, your golf game is pretty bad too. Yeah. On that note, we have another event coming up in October. Cash Flow Summit. You can learn all these different things. You can do right here in our office. More great speakers, more great folks. We'll have more information on our website about that, mobilizationfunding.com. You will also be able to get more information if you follow on our webpage, our YouTube channel, and also the mobilization minute, which is our newsletter. We'll make announcements there. In the meantime, have a great week and may God bless you.