PODCAST · business
Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders
by GO First
Working 70-hour weeks. Margins at 9%. Booked solid but broke.Beyond the Bid brings builders, trade pros, and construction tech leaders together to unpack the systems that separate thriving companies from those stuck competing on price.We explore practical AI—real impact on workflows, estimating, and project management. We tackle cash flow chaos, scope creep, and the trap of being your own bottleneck.Operators, tech innovators, industry veterans—every episode delivers something you can implement tomorrow.Stop chasing bids. Start building systems.Weekly → beyondthebid.co
Episodes
-
Why Your Crew Quietly Refuses the AI You Bought | Estie Briggs
You bought the software. Your crew nodded through training. Then they went right back to the old way. Estie Briggs (Briggs Performance Consulting) spent 7 years rolling out software for a living. She says the tool rarely breaks first. The person does. What you will learn: Why every change asks...
-
The GC Who Built His Own Software So His Crew Can Clock Out at 4:30
Find where your business is leaking time and margin in 7 minutes, before your competitors do: https://www.gofirstconsulting.com Thomas Kurtz has been in the trades since he was 12 and would still rather bang nails than sit at a computer. So when his apps "kind of worked but didn't really work,"…
more -
Why Your Construction Handbook Needs an AI Policy
Free AI policy template for construction companies (from Kelly): https://www.eyeonautomations.com/blog/construction-ai-policy-template You paid for Copilot, locked it down, and sent a training link. So your team is pasting bids, contracts and P&Ls into free Claude instead, and nobody at the top...
-
Kill The 20-Hour Takeoff Before It Kills Your Margin
Try Handoff free for 7 days, full platform, no sales call: 7-Day Trial Dmitry Alexin is not a software guy who wandered into construction. He spent ten years at the intersection of machine learning and building, starting on the early team at Atoms, the construction technology company founded by...
-
Give Homeowners Value Before They Call You: The Claude Toolbox
Play Homeowner Bingo, the free tool Keith built in 20 minutes that outperforms everything else KCS ships: https://kcsimprovement.com/homeowner-toolbox/ Keith Crabtree came into his father's 40-year-old design-build company to run marketing. Two and a half years later he's the reason KCS…
more -
The Roofing Contractor Who Put His Back Office Inside AI
Get the free GO First AI Diagnostic and find your #1 margin leak in 7 minutes, before your competitors find theirs: https://www.gofirstconsulting.com Sam Taylor didn't come up through the trades. He came up through graphic design, art direction, and a marketing business that the '07-'08 crash…
more -
The Preconstruction Step That Kills Change Orders Before They Exist
Walk your own floor plan at full scale before your next project gets priced: https://www.projectivestudios.comEvery client who walks into this studio finds 10 to 15 items they want to revise on plans they already approved. Not change orders. Revisions caught before anything is ordered, poured, or...
-
The Router Table Rule | How Ted Cut a 3 Hour Estimate to 45 Minutes
Find the margin leak in your business before your competition finds theirs: www.gofirstconsulting.comTed Sihpol got beat to his own number by a client with a laptop. He quoted a waterfront renovation at $1,100 a square foot. A week later that client sent him a 21-page report he'd built with AI,...
-
Turn Your Best PM's Expertise Into a Training System
Steal Precision's design-first Project Roadmap before your next bid: https://buildwithprecision.com/design-and-development/Kevin Peloso can't fake 25 years of field experience. So he built a system that extracts it. He co-founded Precision Design & Build out of a real estate career, lost $50K on...
-
Get Your Crew to Actually Use AI | Andrew Nuhfer, AKN Interiors
Steal the Crew AI Adoption Checklist (free, the exact moves from this episode): beyondthebid.co Most builders adopt AI in a weekend. Their crew never touches it. Andrew Nuhfer cracked the part everyone gets wrong: getting a field-bred team of carpenters to actually run the tech. Andrew built AKN...
-
Fix the Two Profit Leaks Your Software Can't (ft. Chad Eslinger, Eslinger Homes)
Builders lose $750+ for every day a job runs behind. Chad's client system that stops it → https://constructionflowpro.com/ Most builders think their next profit leak is in the field. It's not. Chad Eslinger built custom homes for nearly 30 years before he found the two leaks no software can…
more -
How to Use AI in Your Construction Business Without Losing Control" (ft. Eric, Heartwood Craft)
Find the margin leak draining your profit before AI buries it deeper. Take the GO First AI Diagnostic: www.gofirstconsulting.com Most builders bolt AI onto a messy back end and wonder why the numbers never move. Eric, a one-man remodel shop out of Bozeman, did the opposite. He learned his own...
-
How to Stop Giving Free Estimates and Get Paid for Design (ft. Trent Raines)
🔧 Find the margin leak in your business in 7 minutes, before your competitor does: www.gofirstconsulting.comMost remodelers give estimates away for free. Trent Raines charges $30,000 before he'll bid your project, and it changed who walks through his door.Trent runs Collected Living Design, a...
-
How One Remodeler Built His Own AI Software to Run His Business
Build your own operating system instead of renting one. Join Nathan's BlueCollarOS community free before the next cohort fills → https://www.skool.com/bluecollaros-8198 The person who finds termite damage on demo day should be the one building the software, not Silicon Valley. Nathan Spearing has...
-
How Two Builders Rebuilt Their Entire Tech Stack Around AI (ft. McDevCo)
A drafter wanted a few thousand dollars and five weeks for a permit set. Ian McCormick did it in an hour with Claude. The permit was issued the next day. That is one piece of a much bigger overhaul. Ian and Sarah McCormick run McDevCo, a two-person custom home company building $5 million homes in...
-
How To Stack 4 Construction Businesses Without VC
Join Data X Friday Office Hours (free, every Friday 11am ET). Bring your toughest JobTread automation problem and Elliott, Peter, and Dominic will workshop it with you live: https://dax.toTwo builders just walked through the actual playbook that took them from $0 capital to 4 businesses each. No...
-
Scaling AI for Smarter Contracting | (ft. Edward Rivera of Ion Electrical)
Most trade contractors lose money two ways and never see either one. The daily leak: every clocked-in labor hour sits in timesheets and never feeds back into the next bid. So we keep estimating on a gut feeling and missing by 12 to 30 percent per job. The permanent leak: the 30-year veteran...
-
What Surviving 100 Years in Construction Actually Takes (ft. Christene Marie)
Get 21 Days of Free Vertical Alignments from Christene Marie (the morning practice she runs with Toyota execs and trades operators): https://verticalalignment.com Most construction brands die with the founder. Christene Marie's family business just hit 100 years — and she brands Toyota and Amazon...
-
The Builder Who Killed His SaaS Stack and Built His Own (ft. Steve Young)
🎯 Find Your Margin Leak in 7 Minutes (Before Q3): www.gofirstconsulting.com Steve Young paid a Fiverr developer $21K in 2022 to build him an AI proposal tool. Three years later he scrapped it and started writing his own stack in Claude Code—and his close rate climbed from 13% to 20%, with a...
-
The 5-Minute Rule Closing 40% More Roofing Deals In 2026
🎯 GET MIKE'S FREE SPEED-TO-LEAD GUIDE (copy-paste SMS templates that book inspections in under 5 minutes — install before your competitors do): https://www.theroofingrevenuesystem.com/speed-to-lead-guide Most builders close 1-2 out of every 10 leads they pay for. The other 8 die in the first…
more -
$1M Solo Stack | Zero Employees | Beyond the Bid
🎯 Find your margin leak in 7 minutes (before your competitors do): gofirstconsulting.com Most builders hit $1M and hire a crew. Scott Worley is on track for it solo — six jobs a year, three over $130K, zero W2 employees on payroll. Here's the stack and the philosophy $5M competitors are quietly...
-
The AI Assistant for JobTread That Makes Your Company Worth More
Join the Builder's Edge Wait List — get early access before your market catches up: https://buildersedge.ai Milan Vladeck has been on job sites his whole life. His dad was a custom home builder in San Diego. Milan grew up cutting rebar by hand, threading pipe with a wrench, doing everything the...
-
365 Jobs Into One AI Model: A Builder's Precon Weapon
🎯 Find your #1 profit bottleneck before your competitor does — Free AI Diagnostic: www.gofirstconsulting.com Sean Skellenger is the CEO of Skelly Build, an award-winning, woman-founded custom home and renovation firm in Austin, TX. He runs a 40-person fixed-price operation with specialized...
-
Stop Building Portfolios. Start Building Project Stories. (feat Joe Toscano | Service Stories)
Your crews take photos and write daily logs every day. That content just sits there. Joe Toscano built the system that turns it into leads automatically.Try Service Stories free for 30 days (90-day performance guarantee): https://www.servicestories.comMost contractor websites are glorified photo...
-
How a Hollywood Editor Built the Anti-Contractor Playbook (feat. Gil Vaisman)
Free ADU Site Consultation (No Commitment Required): https://www.goadu.com/contact-usGil Vaisman spent 10 years editing reality television in Hollywood before looking at the construction industry and seeing a broken narrative—homeowners terrified of surprise costs, contractors ghosting…
more -
The "License Myth" (feat. Stefani Thatcher)
Stop bidding on unbuildable plans:https://www.dostudios.co/coworkingMost builders assume a "Licensed Architect" stamp guarantees a buildable set of plans. It doesn’t. In fact, relying on credentials over constructability is the #1 reason pre-con budgets blow up before you even break ground.In…
more -
From 12 Months to 30 Seconds — AI That Gets Permits Approved Faster (feat. Robbie Leer)
LA permits take 12 months on average. Every month waiting bleeds $3K-$8K in holding costs—and most builders have zero visibility into when approvals will actually land. Robbie Leer spent a decade in real estate tech (Airbnb, Cloud Kitchens) watching permits kill project timelines. So he built…
more -
Stop Promoting Your Best into the Wrong Roles (feat. Traci Austin)
Download the "Tough Talk" Blueprint & Episode Resources: https://beyondthebid.co/traci-austin-promotion-trap You just took your best revenue generator ($45/hr) and turned them into a massive overhead expense. It’s called the "Best Guy Paradox," and it’s why most $3M-$15M builders are bleeding...
-
How to Systematize Jobsite Culture (feat. Estie Briggs, MSOD)
In construction, we hire for hard skills—can they read plans? Can they run a crew? But we fire for behavior.The yelling matches, the silence during change order negotiations, the "panic parties" when a schedule slips... builders often dismiss this as "just personality." But in reality, it is an...
-
The "Speed-to-Lead" Hiring System (feat. Paul Sanneman - Contractor Staffing Source)
You’d never let a $500k remodeling lead sit in your inbox for 4 days. So why do you do it to your Project Managers? Most builders treat hiring like a "project"—they wait until they are drowning in work, post a panic ad, and then complain about the "labor shortage" when they can't find a unicorn…
more -
Analyze 50 Properties Before Your Morning Coffee | AI Real Estate Investing
Everyone's hyped about AI. Nobody's showing you how to actually use it. Kevin Shtofman manages single-family rentals, self-storage, and triple-net retail—no property management team, no spreadsheet chaos. Here's how.The Brutal Truth:❌ "AI will replace your judgment" → ✅ AI shows its work—you ask...
-
How To Make AI Recommend You First | Contractor SEO in 2026 | Beyond the Bid
Your competitor is getting recommended by ChatGPT. You're not even showing up.Most contractors are still obsessing over Google rankings while homeowners have moved on. They're asking AI—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok—who to hire. And if your online presence isn't built for how people actually...
-
Build the Vibe: Decision Matrix for Bids 📊
The biggest time-waster for contractors? Unqualified leads. I fixed it in 23 minutes with AI. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦: Contractors waste 40+ hours on estimates that never convert. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: A lead qualification tool that scores opportunities BEFORE you invest time. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤…
more -
Your Vision Is Worthless (Unless You Do This)
Stop treating your story like it belongs on the About Us page. Morgan Smith used his business narrative to build a decision-making engine—one that filters clients, aligns his team, and kills the chaos of gut-instinct leadership. In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dan Grech and...
-
The Remote Ops Playbook | How to Run Jobs From 2,000 Miles Away
If you think you need to be the first one on the job site and the last one to leave just to protect your margins, you are believing a lie that keeps you trapped.In this episode, I sit down with Roggen Frick, who runs a heavy steel manufacturing plant in Colorado... while living full-time in South...
-
Stop Hiding the P&L: The Open-Book System for Builder Profit (ft. Dave Parkhurst)
Tired of your crew wasting materials or dragging out timelines? This episode reveals the exact Open-Book Management system to get your entire team bought into profitability. In this powerful episode of Beyond the Bid, Grant sits down with Dave Parkhurst, the 31-year CEO of Green Haven…
more -
Stop Guessing: The AI System That Clones Your Best Client
Stop wasting money on marketing that doesn't work! This episode shows you the new AI system that lets any business owner find their perfect, highest-paying customer with deadly accuracy. You'll stop the guesswork, end the price competition, and start getting predictable sales.Grant talks with...
-
The Showroom Funnel: How a Retail Store Fuels a Build Firm | Noah Hutchison - Hutch Design + Build
Stop chasing low-bid work. Noah Hutchison reveals his integrated design-build and retail store model for attracting predictable, high-margin projects. 🔥 Tired of the feast-or-famine referral cycle? This episode reveals a game-changing strategy to build a predictable pipeline of high-margin...
-
Own Your Marketing: The Anti-Agency Model for Builders w/ Sara Nay
🔥 Tired of writing big checks to marketing agencies with little to show for it? The cycle of "renting" your marketing ends today.In this game-changing episode, Sara Nay, CEO of the legendary Duct Tape Marketing, reveals the exact "Anti-Agency Model" that helps builders stop wasting money and…
more -
End Feast or Famine: The Neutron Bomb Sales Method for Builders
→ FREE RESOURCE: Get 21+ episodes of Tim's no-fluff sales training at the Sales Lab Live YouTube Channel! In this episode, I sit down with Tim Barry, a Sandler Sales Trainer and former construction business owner who has scaled and sold six businesses. After analyzing the sales process of over…
more -
Systematize Your Flip: $25K Profit Per Deal w/ Donny Corum
Flipping houses is risky. Donnie Korum reveals his 5-step Foreclosure Profit System that has guided 400+ flips to an average $25K profit per deal.Ready to make real estate investing predictable? Get a complimentary, no-pressure consultation with Donnie Korum's team at foreclosureprofitsystem.com...
-
Contractor Marketing & Al Search with Josh Blakeley Beyond the Bid
Tired of marketing that doesn't deliver? Josh Blakeley, author of "Backyard Empire," shares his playbook for contractors. Learn how to choose the right marketing partner, fix your lead management leaks, and future-proof your business for the age of AI search. Get actionable strategies to stop...
-
From Dental to Design Build: A Transformative Journey 🛠️
What could a former dental hygienist teach you about running a profitable design-build firm?Most builders are stuck competing on bids because they focus on the "what"—the scope and the measurements. They completely miss the client's "why," leaving them unable to build the deep trust required to...
-
Conquer Overhead Creep: Boost Construction Profits
The most expensive phrase in your business? "We've always done it that way." Your Business is Leaking Profit The Problem: As you grow, complexity increases, and so do hidden costs. This "Overhead Creep" eats your margins from the inside out. Leak #1: SaaS Sprawl; You're paying for multiple…
more -
Letting Go to Grow: Transitioning from Owner-Operator to Strategic CEO.
FROM HANDS-ON HERO TO STRATEGIC LEADER, THIS IS THE MINDSET SHIFT THAT UNLOCKS REAL GROWTH AND GIVES YOU YOUR FREEDOM BACK.⚡ TL;DL (Too Long, Didn’t Listen) You’re a builder, and you know the grind. You’ve built this business with your own two hands, wearing every single hat along the way. That...
-
Smart PM Software Selection Guide for Builders & Remodelers
Overwhelmed by Project Management Software options? Our expert guide helps builders choose the right PM tools to boost profit and efficiency. Avoid costly mistakes!TLDL (Too Long, Didn't Listen): Picking Project Management Software is overwhelming but CRUCIAL. The wrong choice bleeds cash and…
more -
Profitable on Paper, but Panicking at the Bank?
Ever look at a profit and loss statement that’s painting a pretty rosy picture, only to turn around and find yourself scrambling to cover payroll or that big materials invoice? If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. It’s one of the biggest (and most stressful) disconnects growing builders…
more -
Stop Being the Bottleneck! Strategic Delegation for Builder Growth
Tired of being the hero of every fire in your construction or remodeling business? If owner overload is capping your growth and sanity, this episode of Beyond the Bid is your blueprint to breaking free! Dive deep with us as we unpack the art and science of strategic delegation – it's not just...
-
Scaling from $1M to $5M: A Builder's Guide to Growth & Sustainability
Hitting $1 million in your construction business is a milestone, but the path to $5 million (and beyond) is littered with new challenges: operational chaos, inconsistent profits, and the constant feeling of being the bottleneck. How do you scale without burning out? THE 4 FUNDAMENTAL SHIFTS every...
-
Stop Gambling on Project Success
For Builders, Moving Beyond a Simple Checklist to a Strategic Pre-Construction Framework Isn't Just Smart – It's Essential for Survival and Growth. TLDL; (Too Long; Didn't Listen) Stop Firefighting, Start Strategizing: Your Pre-Construction Playbook is more than paperwork; it's a dynamic…
more
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Working 70-hour weeks. Margins at 9%. Booked solid but broke.Beyond the Bid brings builders, trade pros, and construction tech leaders together to unpack the systems that separate thriving companies from those stuck competing on price.We explore practical AI—real impact on workflows, estimating, and project management. We tackle cash flow chaos, scope creep, and the trap of being your own bottleneck.Operators, tech innovators, industry veterans—every episode delivers something you can implement tomorrow.Stop chasing bids. Start building systems.Weekly → beyondthebid.co
HOSTED BY
GO First
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders have?
Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders currently has 94 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders about?
Working 70-hour weeks. Margins at 9%. Booked solid but broke.Beyond the Bid brings builders, trade pros, and construction tech leaders together to unpack the systems that separate thriving companies from those stuck competing on price.We explore practical AI—real impact on workflows, estimating,...
How often does Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders release new episodes?
Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders has 94 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders?
You can listen to Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders?
Beyond the Bid | Practical AI for Builders is created and hosted by GO First.
URL copied to clipboard!