Learnings and Missteps by Depth Builder

You walk away from a conversation and nothing happens. No follow-up, no rapport, no real connection. What if the problem isn’t that you’re boring, but that you’re trying too hard to be interesting? In this episode, we break down why leading with your resume, credentials, and accomplishments can quietly sabotage the connections you want, and what to do instead. Resume stuff has its place on a job a...

A “big zero” in writing credentials and a C in English. That’s how Doug Berry describes his qualifications, and he’s now a children’s book author, a sci-fi novelist, and a Josie Music Award nominee headed to the Grand Ole Opry. Doug is a recently retired Air Force veteran from South Carolina who asks the question most of us are afraid to answer: why am I not working on my dream? For Doug, it start...

Fourteen years on the tools. About twenty in safety. A safety expert witness. An author. And a woman who got a 98 on her journeyman's test, better than the guys who did all four years. Kim Pierce is the kind of safety professional Jesse says he wishes he'd had on every job. She doesn't stand over the crew like a "bird dog" and then tattle to the foreman. She shows up early...

Six years after episode zero, Jesse is back with his original co-host (and baby brother) Rene for a 250th episode full of laughs. They recorded at 6 a.m. on a Sunday, with Rene hiding out at his office so his four kids, the "raptors," wouldn't crash the interview. Rene explains why he stepped back from co-hosting, and he shares the whiteboard drawing behind his advice for new podcas...

Sales blames marketing. Marketing blames ops. Ops blames sales. Neel Zbinden says it usually starts at the top. After 30 years in restaurants, Neel quit on April 1st with no plan. A few months later she was in construction marketing, teaching herself the job through trial and error. Today she's the founder of Z Collab Group and co-founder and president of Contractors, Closers, and Connections...

Most superintendents don't run jobs; they survive them by firefighting their way to the finish line. Jody Fitzgerald did it that way for 40 years, until it cost him more than he was willing to keep paying. In this week’s conversation with Jesse, he breaks down what separates a superintendent who protects tomorrow's work from one who's just good at creating the next fire. What you&ap...

Every leader has that employee who clocks in, does the bare minimum, and clocks out. Jesse says that's not a "them" problem — it's a "you" problem. In this episode, he flips the script on who your most important customer really is (hint: it's not the one paying the invoice) and breaks down why the people on your team who seem checked out are actually starved for...

Stephanie Reichman has done everything "right". She is the co-founder of AEC Tech Jobs, creator of More Than an Engineer, a stage speaker, and a customer success manager at Bluebeam. So why did hitting a major follower milestone leave her flat instead of fired up? In this episode, Stephanie returns to unpack the moment she stopped chasing "cheat codes" for success and started b...

A 31-year ironworker doesn't scare easily. But ask Dino DePasquale what keeps him up at night, and it's not the job site; it's the industry's silence around mental health. Dino built DePasquale Steel over 21 years and created the Steel Erector's Playbook along the way. In this episode, he goes to the side of construction leadership nobody puts on a business card: the suici...

Here’s a test for you: write down every single thing on your plate today and tomorrow. Now circle only the ones that would fall apart if someone other than you did them. Most people circle almost nothing. And that's the problem. In this episode, Jesse breaks down "strategically selfish"; a framework for builders and leaders who can't delegate, can't say no, and are quietly...

Tim Tuoni went from riding backhoes as a kid to running Tuoni Site Development, and he's got zero patience for people who think construction guys are just difficult for the sake of it. In this episode, Tim breaks down what actually gets mislabeled as "a-hole energy" in this industry: it's standards. It's direct communication. It's not tolerating half-effort on a highw...

Leadership in construction is lonely. The 2 a.m. gut-check calls. The mistakes nobody at the office needs to know about. The moments where "fake it till you make it" stops working and you just need someone who gets it. This episode, Jesse opens the door to something new: the Construction Leadership Lab: a peer community built for leaders who are done pretending they have it all figured o...

Ever quit on a goal the moment it stopped feeling like a win? This week's episode breaks down why treating progress as pass/fail is the quiet reason so many goals stall out before they get traction. He unpacks the start-stop cycle: new goals always run into friction from commitments you already have, and pass/fail thinking punishes you for that friction instead of accounting for it. Using fit...

AJ Waters wanted to design stadiums. Instead, he ended up rebuilding the operating system for one of the largest construction companies in the world and learning, the hard way, why so many digital transformations quietly collapse in the field. In this episode, AJ takes Jesse inside the messy reality of tech adoption at scale: what it was really like leading a major platform overhaul at Kiewit, why...

There's a version of "authentic" that's just an excuse to be obnoxious. Amy Houk isn't that version. Amy is the president of National Lien Services and RSC Preliminary Lien Services and joins Jesse to talk about turning 50 and how that moment changed everything: she stopped caring about most things and started caring a lot more about the things that mattered. She gets real...

Feedback is optional. Performance isn't. Most managers default to soft, vague feedback, the "poo-poo sandwich" of compliment, critique, compliment, because it feels safe. But feedback is suggestive by nature, appropriate for social settings or volunteer environments where the stakes are low. Performance conversations are different. They require clarity, accountability, and follow-th...

Bradley Henderson built a company that bridges the field-office gap in construction, but the story of how he got there is the one worth hearing. Plumb Line Operations founder and field worker advocate Bradley Henderson joins Jesse to talk about the personal cost of traveling construction work, what addiction and prison taught him about radical ownership, and why he now builds a "second chance...

Most construction leaders think they have an accountability problem. What they actually have is a clarity problem, and they're pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Coralee Beatty, founder of Thrive HQ and one of the most honest voices in the construction leadership space, joins Jesse to get into the real reasons teams underperform, people quit, and culture stays stuck. From her point o...

Every time you say yes to avoid discomfort, you're saying no to yourself. Over time, that trade leads straight to burnout — and to showing up for everyone else at a fraction of your capacity. In this episode, Jesse breaks down two foundational steps to stop operating on everyone else's terms and start advocating for yourself for real. What you'll hear: Step 1 — Do an inventory. Jess...

Boone White grew up with a stutter. Public speaking was something he avoided until years of running weekly safety meetings forced him to figure it out. He got better by going shorter, ditching the scripts, and replacing bullet points with stories. Now he's a general superintendent at ICM Construction, a construction influencer, and one of the more honest voices in the trades about what it act...

Most people think Lean is a manufacturing methodology. Sneha Kumari lives it as a mindset. Sneha is back on Learnings & Missteps. She's the president of Merlin AI and one of the most recognized women in manufacturing; and this conversation gets into the stuff that actually moves the needle. Jesse and Sneha dig into why Lean isn't just a process tool, it's a way of thinking about...

Time management for construction leaders isn't about working harder — it's about deciding what actually matters before the week decides for you. In this episode, Jesse breaks down the hyper-reactivity loop that keeps construction superintendents, foremen, and project managers double-booked and frazzled — and shares two practical tools to fix it. You'll learn: The "Book Your Wee...

Your people aren't running out of steam because they're soft. They're running out of electrolytes — and the water cooler isn't fixing it. Jennifer Martinez is a sports-medicine-trained performance specialist who decided the trades deserved the same recovery science as elite athletes. She calls it rapid restoration. And she's got an approach that turns depleted workers arou...

Hanna Bauer, founder of Heartnomics, joins Jesse to talk about what she calls "Leadership Tachycardia" — what happens when leaders skip recovery and wonder why they're running on empty. Hanna blends Six Sigma, systems thinking, and personal experience to help leaders align internally so they can execute externally. In this conversation: empowerment, fabricated stress, the difference...

You'd never start a project without knowing what it's going to cost you. But most people say yes to commitments without running those same numbers. Jesse calls it choose your consequence. Consequence isn't punishment. It's just the result of every decision you make — whether you thought it through or not. He puts his own life on the table. Explains why he doesn't date. Not...