Build to Run is for the contractor who's still the estimator, the fixer, and the guy everyone calls when a job goes sideways — GCs, specialty contractors, subcontractors, who are tired of being the person their entire company depends on.
Mike Trampetti gets into what actually eats up a contractor's week: estimates only the owner can price, jobs that go sideways, teams that can't make decisions, and businesses that stall the second the owner steps away.
Some episodes are a problem that already got fixed, told straight.
Some are where business owners work through real problems with Mike while the answer is being figured out.
No textbook advice. Just honest conversations about building a construction company that can scale without everything running through you.
Built to Scale. Wired to Last.
Construction KPIs on a live dashboard, and unpaid invoices nobody was chasing, some for most of a year. Here are the four things that make someone own a number, and what to do this week. I’ve sat in the leadership meeting where the receivables are right there on the screen, retainage and change orders included, and when I ask “who’s chasing this?”, the answer is that the office has been working on it for a few weeks. Seeing a number and owning a number are two different things. I ...
2 Nov 2026
"Why Didn't I Hire Earlier?" Scaling a Construction Business, with Andrei Turea | Ep. 6
How do you scale a construction business when part of you thinks nobody can do it better? Andrei Turea and his partner grew Green Attic from insulation to about 65 people. Andrei and Dima started Green Attic in 2009: Andrei on sales, Dima on operations, and a rule that neither one goes into the other's kitchen. For years, every team meeting ran through the two of them. A big shift came through hiring: a first admin at about $500 a week, a sales follow-up person, and eventually an ...
23 Oct 2026
The Real Reason Your Construction Business Is Slow Right Now | Ep. 5
Revenue slid for about ten weeks, and every week the team had a new theory. The answer was a capacity problem sitting on the vacation calendar. Here are the two numbers to pull this week. Head count tells you how many names are on the payroll. Capacity tells you how much work actually leaves the building. When you treat them as the same number, you bid jobs with a crew you don’t have and spend every August explaining a dip you could have planned for in February. I’ll walk you through th...
19 Oct 2026
Short on Payroll, Cut Off by the Bank: Contractor Cash Flow, with Tim Caballero | Ep. 4
Contractor cash flow, the hard way: in 2008 Tim Caballero was short on payroll and his bank said no. I asked how he got out of the hole, and what he has tracked every Monday since. Tim started as a union ironworker in 1990 and founded Metropolitan Steel in 2003. Today it's one of the largest steel erectors in Chicago. In 2008 he maxed out a home equity line to make payroll and was months away from closing, until a call to fill jobs left by a closed competitor, paid weekly, started getti...
12 Oct 2026
Why Your Construction Business Isn't Scaling (And How to Fix It) | Ep. 1
Struggling to scale your construction business? If every decision routes through the cab of your truck, you might be the bottleneck. Four questions to measure it and one handoff to fix this week. It’s 4:00 on a Friday, three missed calls, and your PM, your estimator, and a customer are all stuck waiting on you. That’s owner dependency, the most expensive problem I see in construction and trade businesses, from $5 million shops to $50 million shops. Revenue’s up, the crews are busy, and ...
12 Oct 2026
Why Your Team Is Losing You Jobs | Ep. 2
Is your team losing jobs between departments? Three people from one company came to my house, and I ended up carrying their paperwork. Here’s the handoff rule that helps stop it. I needed a mini split for a master bedroom that runs hot. By the third visit, the salesperson was asking me for the R-value from his own company’s attic inspection, and the reply to my email was an address for a different department. That’s a communication breakdown between departments, and nothing in th...
12 Oct 2026
From One Van to Three Companies: Hiring His First Salesperson, with Dima Nicolaescu | Ep. 3
How to grow a construction business from one van into three companies? Mike Trampetti sits down with Dima Nicolaescu of Green Attic Insulation, Green Attic Roofing, and EcoBuild in Chicago to break down exactly how he did it. If you're a construction business owner stuck doing everything yourself, this conversation on how to grow a construction business is for you. Dima shares how he started in 2009 doing subcontracting work, bought a van on his wife's credit card, learned advertising o...
30 Sept 2026
Welcome to Build To Run (Teaser)
Andiamo. Welcome to Build To Run! I'm Mike Trampetti. This is a podcast for people who own construction and trade businesses and are tired of being the reason everything works. We talk about operations, finance, systems, and people, the unglamorous machinery that decides whether your company functions on a Tuesday when you're not there. You won't hear marketing advice here. What I do well is sit across from an owner who's stuck, listen for ten minutes, and tell them exactly what's wron...
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