Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast

Why does a customer deadline so often win out over a date night with your own kid? That question keeps coming back for Joel in this conversation with Josh, and it turns into a candid look at what actually decides where an entrepreneur’s attention goes. It starts with a Friday that was supposed to be a family day and ended up at the office anyway. From there, they get into people pleasing, why urge...

In this episode of the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, Josh and Kenton talk about one of the biggest lessons they’ve learned in business: more leads don’t necessarily mean more business. After a slower-than-usual home show, the conversation turns to lead quality, pre-qualification, referrals, and the real cost of chasing customers who were never a good fit. They discuss the difference between c...

In Episode 54 of the Forge Contractor Alliance podcast, Kenton and Josh tackle a difficult question for small contractors: what happens when you invest years into training someone, only for that employee to eventually leave and start their own company? The conversation digs into employee retention, trust, training, and the real investment that goes into developing people in a small trade business....

This episode covers a little bit of everything. Josh and Kenton talk about what it really looks like to build a business, lead a team, and figure things out along the way. They get into communication, the challenges that come with growth, and the things they both know they could probably do better. They also have a pretty honest conversation about money. Saving receipts, overspending, budgeting, a...

What happens when you stop building a business just for yourself and start thinking about what you can build for the people around you? In this episode, Chris and his partner sit down for a candid conversation about leadership, business, failure, and the evolution of what it means to build something that lasts. They talk about the lessons learned through running Ridgeline, the importance of taking...

The best systems aren't the ones that look complicated. They're the ones that make complicated work feel effortless. In Episode 52, Josh and Kenton continue the conversation around building scalable businesses by exploring one idea that sits at the center of great leadership and operational excellence: simplicity. Using examples from woodworking, contracting, and business operations, they discuss...

Every business owner dreams about growth, but growth has a way of exposing the weaknesses you didn't know were there. In Episode 51, Josh and Kenton discuss what it really means to build a company that can scale, inspired by Jim Collins' Good to Great and the lessons that have become especially relevant as Ridgeline Roofing and Gott Energy work through their merger. The conversation centers around...

Instead of teaching a framework or breaking down a business principle, we're inviting you into a real conversation that was happening behind the scenes. As Ridgeline Roofing & Solar and Gott Energy explore what a future together could look like, Josh and Joel sit down to work through the questions every growing company eventually faces. How do you scale without losing focus? When does a great...

Hiring can grow your company, but hiring the wrong people can quietly destroy the culture you've worked so hard to build. Forge Contractor Alliance, Josh, Kenton, and the team share honest stories from years of building companies, making hiring mistakes, and learning what truly matters when bringing people into your organization. From the dangers of hiring out of desperation to the importance of v...

Hiring is one of the hardest and most important responsibilities a business owner faces. In this episode of Forge, Josh, Joel, and the team dive into the realities of recruiting, hiring, and developing great people. They discuss why experienced hires don't always work out, the value of hiring for character and culture over technical skill, and how building a strong team often starts with finding p...

Hiring is one of the hardest parts of building a business, especially in the trades. In this episode of Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, the crew sits down for a real conversation around hiring, leadership, work ethic, and what it actually takes to build strong teams in small business contracting. Kenton, Josh and Joel, on the Forge Alliance team dive into their personal experiences hiring in ro...

Hiring people is easy. Hiring the right people is one of the hardest things a business owner will ever learn how to do. In this episode of the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, the conversation goes deep into the realities of hiring, leadership, company culture, and the long term impact people have on a business. The crew unpacks the difference between simply filling a role versus intentionally b...

What happens when entrepreneurs stop fearing AI and start learning how to use it properly? In this episode of the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, Josh sits down with Tim Joyce of Nooma Logic to talk about the real world impact of AI and automation in business, especially for contractors, entrepreneurs, and growing teams. From streamlining repetitive admin work to improving customer communicatio...

In this episode of the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, Josh sits down with Kalen Blake, the creative behind Ridgeline’s media and a key driver of the company’s growth over the past year. Kalen shares his path from working multiple jobs at a young age, to building and scaling an e-commerce business, to running a brick-and-mortar operation that generated millions in revenue before the age of 21....

In this episode of the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast, Kenton Friesen of Friesen Contracting and Josh Eisworth of Ridgeline Roofing and Solar sit down to unpack something every trades business struggles with but few truly dial in, training and recruiting. This is not a surface level conversation. It is a real and honest look at what it actually takes to build a team from the ground up, especial...

Welcome back to the Forge Contractor Alliance Podcast. Josh Eisworth from Ridgeline Roofing and Kenton from Kenton Friesen Contracting. Two contractors in the trenches every day, on the tools, in the books, working with crews, customers, and everything that comes with running a business. This podcast is just an extension of that, real conversations about what we’re actually dealing with. In this e...

In this episode of Forge, Kenton sits down with Chris Wiebe to unpack a side of business most contractors avoid the numbers. From hard lessons in financial blind spots to the reality of growing too fast without control, this conversation digs into what actually drives a healthy company. They break down the difference between revenue and real profit, why operational strength matters more than hustl...

In this episode of the Forge Contractor Podcast, Kenton sits down with Joel for a real and practical conversation about people pleasing. What it is, where it comes from, and how it slowly starts running your life if you’re not careful. What starts as a strength, being perceptive, caring about people, wanting to do a great job, can quietly turn into a burden. The hard truth is that a lot of us aren...

In this episode, Josh and Kenton sit down for a real, unfiltered conversation about something a lot of contractors think they understand, but most have never actually worked through what makes a business truly saleable. Speaking from their experience in Prince George, they unpack the gap between what owners believe they’ve built and what someone would actually pay for. The conversation quickly get...

In this episode of Forge, Josh and Kenton explore what it really looks like to build a business around the work you actually love. As the demands of leadership grow, so does the pressure to fit into a predefined version of what a CEO “should” be. But the reality is far less rigid. For many builders and entrepreneurs, the path forward isn’t about stepping away from the work that brings energy and c...

In this follow-up episode of Forge, Josh and Kenton continue the conversation about failure, resilience, and the long road of learning that comes with building a business. After reflecting on the collapse of Kenton’s early real estate momentum in the previous episode, the discussion turns toward what came after. The years that followed were not defined by a single event, but by the slower and ofte...

In this episode of Forge, Josh and Kenton dive into a deeply personal story from Kenton’s early years in business.  In his twenties, Kenton was heavily involved in real estate investing, building momentum with multiple properties, partnerships, and ambitious development projects.  It was a time marked by optimism, energy, and the feeling that anything was possible.  Deals were working, banks were...

In this long-distance episode of the Forge Podcast, Josh and Chris sit down nearly 800 kilometers apart and do what they’ve done for almost two decades challenge each other. What starts as a simple catch-up turns into a raw reflection on friendship, ego, business, faith, and the question that keeps surfacing in both of their lives why do we really do this? They rewind to the beginning dating roomm...

This episode is raw and real. We unpack what it is like to sit at the table with another fast growing company and seriously explore a full fledged joint venture in a brand new market. Valuations. Ownership splits. Hard conversations. Big vision. Even bigger responsibility. We just walked out of a meeting that felt like a dream come true. But here is what stood out. There was no greed in the room....

Sometimes the biggest chapters in your life start in the most ordinary places. This episode goes all the way back to a random moment in a Walmart parking lot, when Josh was still in high school, pushing carts, with no real plan for what came next. That one conversation turned into a job, then long days on rooftops, brutal winter projects, and years of learning what hard work actually looks like. J...