Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

 Welcome to the Construction Trailblazers Podcast. This is a punch list episode. Your quick run through of the most impactful moments from my full interviews with our guests. If you wanna catch the full conversations, head to construction trailblazers.com.

  📍 This punch list episode is from my conversation with Benjamin Holmgren.

He is the founder of Ground Crew, a community for dirt contractors. 📍 Let's hear how he first got the idea to put together these peer groups.

  📍 📍 📍 And I put this post up on LinkedIn and I said, Hey, if you, if anyone is interested in like a excavation peer group, comment below and you can fill out this form. And, just help me gauge interest. I shot off LinkedIn. I went to bed. I wake up this next morning and I open the form.

63 contractors had filled out the form.

  📍 📍 📍 I'm no influencer, I'm no nobody. And I was just staring, reading through all these responses yes, would do this. Here's how much we'd pay, whatever.

And it was like, you don't find these days very often in your career, but that was a day I am positive. I'll remember that day. For maybe the rest of my life because it was literally that Tuesday was like, everything changed. I'm like, I have to do this. And fast forward 14 months and we have eight peer groups now with eight to 10 contractors a piece all from. All around the country, all around the continent. I have some Canadians in the groups as well, and they're bracketed by revenue.

So three to 15 million, 15 to 50 million, 50 to 150 million. And I pair people up by revenue and then by location. So making sure we don't have competitors that overlap in these different groups, and it'd been going phenomenal. We meet twice a year and, in person and it's a huge blessing.

  📍 So not only did the peer groups have some amazing energy and impact and cheerleading from the LinkedIn community, there was also some real proof in the pudding and cheerleading that happened once the peer groups started.

Here's a story that Ben tells a lot about one of the group members, Tom, and the impact that meeting together with other business owners had on Tom's mind shift and how he decided to start running his business.

  📍 📍 📍 so we meet the first time, and Tom had been growing. He grew from, zero to 2 million, to 6 million, to 12 to 15, like very quickly.

And he was pulled in a thousand different directions, as you might imagine, as anybody, anyone would be. We spent two days together and he asked these questions and he's getting feedback and seeing how other people are doing it.

And at the end of the two days. We do this thing like, let's everybody share your takeaways, and we get around the table and and he can't talk. He's just choked up

oh.

and he takes a few deep breaths and eventually he's like, you know, I've been for five years or whatever.

I've been trying to sprint to do this thing and grow my top line. And then what's happened is that I get these bigger and bigger projects that require more cash, so I have to go sell more. And this is the first time I've realized I've been doing it wrong. I need to fix all this other stuff first before I grow this top line.

And then I'm freed up to go grow the top line when I'm actually making margin and things are protected and safe here, my team is in place, all this I can't keep doing this anymore. And that was so powerful for me to see because like my whole life I've done things.

Whether it's installing an irrigation system in somebody's yard or whatever, it's something for somebody to appreciate what you're doing, good deal. But to have somebody who that one thing that now we're a year and a half past that and he's still making effective changes to his business because of those two days, that'll change your life.

  📍 So how did Ben actually get these busy contractors to show up and share their real problems? Because without that vulnerability, peer groups just don't work.   📍 📍 📍

Some people take a little longer to warm up. Some people take longer to let their guard down, but I try to quickly get through that.

'Cause that's where the value is. If you don't show up humble. If you feel like you need to show up and have the answers or pretend like you know what you're talking about, it just doesn't work. There's nothing useful about it. I don't know how I've gotten this fortunate, but there's been very few people that I would put on that in that category.

And I suppose it's like the nature of showing up to things like this. You don't pay money, you don't pay me, you don't pay Delta Airlines to fly you there. You don't take the time away from your office in order to go to stuff like this unless you're ready to share.

  📍

Now on that note of vulnerability, Ben also shared an incredibly personal story that has had a huge impact on how he approaches work and balancing that with his personal and family life. Okay. 📍 📍 📍

a year and a half ago , at 29 years old, I had a stroke and melted part of my brain and stuff. 10 days later, my wife went to the hospital at 23 weeks pregnant, and our baby was trying to get out. She laid flat pump full of magnesium

for three weeks, baby stayed in. Little Stina was born at 26 weeks, one pound, 13 ounces. Way, way early. Thanks to God, she survived four months in the hospital. Brutal, brutal experience. I'm like half brain dead. It feels

like,

can't remember anything.

Can't drive for a while. Like all this just life altering stuff. You can't go through that experience and come out the other end and be the same person. And I started my business just after all that happened because it's, I'm either a glutton for punishment or I have the faith, the grain of a mustard seed or whatever, it was kinda like, it's not gonna get worse than this.

Now. You can question my judgment. But the point is, and the reason I'm saying this is you can't go through those experiences and then be the same person running around like I used to be just frantic.

I've been in sales for selling some sort of thing, whether it's landscaping services or instruments to concrete contractors or whatever, selling all this stuff. Stressing my brains out oh, gotta get this quota, gotta get this, and oh, I'm gonna lose my job. Or Hey, I'm crushing it feeling like a million bucks.

And it's just it just doesn't matter. It does matter, but it like, doesn't matter. Once you go through that stuff, it's

like,

I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna do the very best I can until four 30 or five. I'll go for a run, I'm gonna be with my kids and if I crush it, good deal. If I don't. We'll figure something else

out.

  📍 I also asked Ben, what are the ways that he stays focused and what are the practical ways that he can really stay balanced? Because a mindset shift is awesome, but real action also has to drive that behavior change. Here's the piece of advice that he gave.

📍 📍 I can share at least what's worked for me. For people like me who are high energy all over the place, sometimes not sure what we're supposed to be doing, taking some time.

In my case, it's in the mornings, taking some time to just write down your thoughts, write what you think,

and then finish with. A priority list. What needs to be done, even if nothing else gets done? What are the 1, 2, 3 things that I need to do in order for me to have a successful day, whether I crush some big goal or not?

Write that stuff down. And I have my little remarkable tablet here. I have probably 15 notebooks from years and years of writing. Write down my thoughts, get all this chaos outta my head, it just like grounds me like, Hey, here's what I need to do. And then at the end of the day, did I do my one priority? If I did good enough, like good deal.

📍 📍 Alright, that's it for today's punch list episode from my conversation with Benjamin Holmgren. 📍 You can catch the full conversation in more of his amazing mic drop 📍 moments on YouTube or wherever you catch your podcasts. 📍 And if you feel like you're also a trailblazer in the construction and building world, then I'd love to get to know you and see if we can highlight your story on a future Construction Trailblazers episode.

Reach out to me at hello@constructiontrailblazers.com. Catch you next time.