Build Better with Matt Vetter

Recorded on the porch the Sunday after the Fourth. A sold-out Build Better Foundation Golf Outing, a grandfather’s 95th birthday up north, and a jobsite tour with a younger brother who built his own company from nothing. It turns into a case for the hard road. Trades scholarships: schaferconstruction.net/build-better-foundation

Steve Turner woke up on August 17, 2017 with an idea: put four words on a baseball cap. Bring Back the Trades.  Nine yearslater, he’s running Skills Expos across New England, awarding monthly trade school scholarships, and just delivered a TED Talk.  In this episode, Matt and Steve trace the full arc from hat to national nonprofit. They get into the Mike Rowe story (howit actually happened), the C...

Just got back from the best vacation of my life - and the contractor brain never shut off for a single day. In this solo episode Matt Vetter walks through what he saw across Vegas, Zion National Park, and Page, Arizona: the Hard Rock guitar-shaped building under construction where The Mirage used to be, the Mt. Carmel Tunnel at Zion (1.1 miles bored through solid rock, finished in 1930, no electri...

Keith Ledbetter took over ABC Southeastern Michigan ten years ago when the organization was getting threatening letters from the bank's attorney. Today he runs the largest construction trade school in Michigan with over 850 students across five campuses.   In this in-studio conversation, Matt and Keith get into therebuild, the merit shop philosophy, the data center wave that could reshape Mich...

A different kind of episode this week — the first Build Better mailbag. Five questions I get asked all the time, batched into one show. Matt covers what he wishes architects understood about working with a Design-Build GC vs. the old adversarial Design-Bid-Build model, the biggest mistake he's made as a leader and how he rectified it (hint: it's about who he kept around too long), why most...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue-collar badasses who care about doing things the right way. No shortcuts. No fluff. Just real co...

Welcome to Build Better . This is the first episode of the podcast, and I’m setting the tone for what this show is about. I didn’t start at the top. I started on job sites. I worked my way through the roles, learned the business from the inside out, and saw firsthand what actually makes projects succeed — and what quietly kills them. This show is for builders, business owners, developers, and blue...