Beers With Contractors

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, Will urges trades and home service business owners to prepare early for 2027 by equipping themselves and their teams with better knowledge and systems before year-end. He frames a contracting company like a department-based “tech stack,” emphasizing the flow from marketing to administrative/call center functions, sales, and especially operations (not “pro...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, Will welcomes back Terry for a Q&A episode while Terry discusses the fall semester and a homecoming barbecue for construction students. They touch on recent tech security concerns affecting construction software and warn small contractors about vulnerabilities (including WordPress/PHP-hosted email), emphasizing outsourced IT/security and careful handl...

In this recap episode of Beers with Contractors, the hosts discuss why many companies leak around 20% of profits and how willingness to change affects savings. They identify common profit leaks: poor utilization (unused software licenses, vacant office space, misused labor), employee spending culture and incentives, and decentralized contracting without a cost-management center. The conversation d...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, Will apologizes for the delayed “Beers with Contractors Tradies” episode and references the prior episode on setting 2027 goals using hard-edge metrics (sales, leads, staffing, equipment, finances). This episode shifts to the soft edge of business—people and culture—focusing on how owners in home services and construction must navigate and institutionaliz...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, Will opens an October episode by encouraging comments and explaining his annual goal-planning process: start in October, collaborate with the team, and lock budgets by mid-November, noting the first budgeting year is often messy but improves control. Using a MidCon home-service case study, he shows how to reverse-engineer a 2027 target from installs (not...

In this special solo episode of Beers with Contractors, host Will encourages contractors to start Q4 annual planning early and then walks through how to handle vendor price increases without guessing, using a crawl space vapor barrier example where material cost rises from $0.25 to $0.27 per foot and the customer price moves from $4.50 to about $4.88 to maintain margin, potentially improving net p...

✈️ Safety isn’t just another box to tick on your to-do list. If you’re running a construction or home services business, your job is to make sure everyone gets home safe. In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Will and Terry talk about why safety has to start with leadership and become part of your company culture. Because it’s not enough to have safety talks sitting in a folder. Yo...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, host Will and Terry welcome host Christopher Rice of Builder Prime to clarify how CRMs, ERPs, and field service management tools fit together in home services and to explain Builder Prime as a “business operating platform” managing the customer lifecycle from lead intake through scheduling, estimating, invoicing, production, and final payment. Chris empha...

✈️ Your banker should be more than just the person you call when you need a loan. In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Will and Terry break down why building a real relationship with your banker can become a serious advantage for your business. From credit lines and business loans to your next investment property or simply managing cash flow, the right banking relationship can hel...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, hosts Will welcomes Terry back to Beers with Contractors, joking about his absence, then they discuss construction headlines and trends. They note US construction spending fell 0.5% in July 2026 (down 3.8% year over year) with residential especially soft, while commercial remains active, increasingly driven by AI data center work that may be overly concen...

✈️ What if you could quickly tell whether an investment property is worth the risk? In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Terry breaks down the 1% and 2% rules—a simple way to look at rental income potential before putting your money into a property. For example, a $300,000 property using the 1% rule means targeting $3,000/month in rent. But the numbers are only part of the equatio...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, hosts Will interviews Scott Pierce, founder of Third Edge Consulting and a certified Pinnacle business guide, about why growth often creates chaos for contractors and why “better” matters more than simply getting bigger. Scott emphasizes differentiating through a great customer experience, watching for warning signs like shrinking profitability and outdat...

✈️ Why do some contractors go from $1M to $5M… while others stay stuck at $3M? You’ve probably seen it yourself. Two companies in the same market, doing similar work yet one keeps growing while the other seems to stay in the same place. So what’s the difference? In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Will challenges contractors to look beyond systems, processes, and market condition...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, hosts Will interviews Daniel Stark, founder of Stark Foundations (2009), about improving foundation repair engineering through better field diagnostics, communication, and faster processes. Stark describes common contractor mistakes such as misidentifying pier-and-curtain-wall foundations and placing piers on curtain walls, and he shares examples where re...

✈️ Your next great hire might be closer than you think. Every contractor is looking for good people. But what if the best way to find your next hire isn’t through a headhunter or another job posting? In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Terry talks about a different way contractors can start building their talent pipeline — and why getting involved in your local community could be...

On Beers with Contractors, Will welcomes Kristen Bulza to discuss why having women in leadership is a “cheat code” in construction and home services. Kristen shares her path from running a small construction crew in Los Angeles and working as a police and fire dispatcher—where she learned to avoid micromanaging, embrace learning from mistakes, and lead with empathy—to managing an install office an...

✈️ Do you know the numbers your managers should know in your home services business? Most contractors know they need to track their KPIs. But are you tracking the right ones? In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Will breaks down the key numbers that can tell you what’s really happening inside your business — from your financial health to the levers that directly impact your profit...

On Beers with Contractors, Will interviews multifamily real estate specialist Aubrey Noblitt about how contractors can build long-term wealth by owning and rehabilitating real estate and tapping local incentives many don’t know exist. They discuss financing options like DSCR loans, FHA two-to-fourplex opportunities, house hacking, and why multifamily vacancy can be lower than other commercial sect...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, hosts Will and Terry welcome Shannon Weinstein, a CPA and fractional CFO behind Keep What You Earn, to address contractor financial pitfalls that spark debate online. Shannon explains why many $5–$10M home service businesses feel broke: owners confuse profit with cash flow and rely on bank balances instead of cash-flow projections. She outlines key metric...

✈️ How much does your business actually need to make before you’re profitable? If you don’t know your break-even number, you’re flying your business blind. In this week’s Beers with Contractors Flight Sampler, Will breaks down the simple formula every contractor should know: Fixed Expenses ÷ Gross Profit Margin = Break-Even Sounds simple, right? But knowing your number can completely change how yo...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, Will reframes in-home sales for contractors by using movie roles to shift mindset: the customer is the protagonist (hero) of their own story, and salespeople should avoid trying to be the hero or the customer’s best friend (deuteragonist). Instead, contractors should act as the guide/mentor—helping customers understand the problem, solution, and price whi...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, hosts Will and Terry talk with Meghan Ritchie of Trustal Recruiting about hiring for locally owned home services companies. Meghan shares her background from marketing agency work to becoming a GM in Atlanta, managing 26 trucks, and explains how recruiting should be treated like marketing: budget a consistent percentage of projected revenue, stay focused...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, host Will and Terry banter about Terry’s Florida trip and a new studio they joke is a “death trap,” then welcome Ryan Weiss, Director of Business Development at ArcSite. Ryan explains ArcSite as a mobile-first drawing, estimation, takeoff, and proposal platform used in the field on an iPad to create project drawings, drag-and-drop products from a robust l...

In this episode of Beers with Contractors, host Will and Terry welcome Cory Boehs of Kool Foam and discuss his path from framing and starting Kool Foam in 2007 to building a higher-integrity spray foam business with his wife Suzanne (now 51% owner). Cory explains how the industry shifted from customer education to commoditization, with poor installs driven by low training and lack of understanding...

In this Q&A episode of Beers with Contractors, Will and Terry discuss common contractor business challenges: profit margin vs. markup (including how material-based markup and costly callbacks destroy gross profit), marketing ROI (using an 8% budget target, prioritizing Google/search, SEO, CRM and call tracking, and avoiding billboards/TV), and branding basics like truck decals and lead trackin...