Construction Leadership Development: Military-proven leadership principles applied to construction teams
Project Communication Solutions: How to reduce miscommunication that causes delays and cost overruns
Construction Team Management: Building workforce camaraderie and improving jobsite culture
Industry Career Growth: From field experience to executive leadership in construction
Construction Technology Innovation: How BuilderComs is solving communication challenges on construction projects
Mentorship in Construction: Why ongoing education drives construction industry evolution
About the Guest: Ron Nussbaum brings a unique perspective as a Marine Corps veteran turned construction industry leader. His company, BuilderComs, addresses one of construction’s biggest challenges: communication breakdowns that lead to project delays, budget overruns, and safety issues.
Why This Matters: Poor communication costs the construction industry billions annually. Learn actionable strategies to improve your projects, teams, and career trajectory from someone who’s transformed military leadership principles into construction success.
Everybody around me. Now I have this software company, like the trajectory of all of this is insane. Like if I tell myself, this is like, how has this even happened? So now I have this software company, and the goal is to build it up, fit communication in the construction industry, and then exit it.
Which leads me to where my passions really intersect. And that’s being able to help veterans with their businesses. And being in a financial perspective where I can just do this and make it happen and help transition guys and girls out of the military into a place where they can be successful and not have to worry about it. Like, that is where I’m trying to go. And that is why, like I say, I have a lot of learning to do. I have a lot of growing to do because in order to get there, it just takes a lot. And it’s a never-ending cycle. Leadership and personal development are tangible assets. If you are not continuously working on it, you will lose it.
So let me get a little bit personal. And if you don’t wanna answer it, you don’t have to. But this is one thing that I find being an educator myself and recognizing that we often have different learning styles. And that most of those that go into the military or go into construction, we have a more kinesthetic learning style where we do well in activity or motion or being able to observe. And so a lot of times when we’re going through high school, we might struggle a bit because we don’t really understand the same way that the teacher’s teaching the other 30 students, but yet we kind of find our way in auto mechanics or a woodshop or any of that.
And so how has your learning style been able to evolve all of these years later when you’re continuing to look at this personal growth opportunity for yourself?
So I found school to be relatively easy and more of a pain in the ass than anything. I ended up not even finishing my senior year. I was pretty much asked to leave school as a junior. I wasn’t even going to graduate, but my mom really wanted me to. And she’s like, if I can make it to where you only gotta do a couple of things, because I went to a private school, it was, I was right there to be able to graduate where you do it. And I said, yes. So I got my diploma, luckily, because you need one of those to go into the Marine Corps.
I will say is I, like we, learned doing things. That’s how; it’s all about repetitive tasks. Get it, just do, do, do. It’s high discipline. That’s how the military is. Construction, it’s why it converts so well is because it’s very repetitive. But the thing is, we can go learn a lot of other stuff outside of there, and that’s how we advance. That’s how you get better. You’re not going to learn on the job site how to be the best manager or how to be the best leader within a company. You’re going to learn that in your free time in books or audiobooks or programs that you take on your own. Like that, it’s up to us as myself, the listeners, to take any of the personal growth upon ourselves. Some companies might offer some stuff; take advantage of it because a lot of people don’t.
Yeah, no, this has been my entire goal with construction management online and offering skill builder mini courses that really give people very specific construction management tasks that they can learn from. I appreciate that plug that you just gave me.
Well, you know, in 2010, 2011, when I got out and I ended up in construction, there was nothing. I just went straight into business books and management and leadership books and just how do you build a business? How do you just become a leader? And I just became what I envisioned I would always want to work for. And anytime anything went sideways, I always asked myself that, was like, if I was that employee, if I was that person, would I have been happy with that outcome? If I were that person, would I have been happy with that outcome? And just continue learning from that. The thing is, with all of this, it’s just doing. We all suck at everything to begin with. Your first conversation as a manager with an employee is, it’s going to be awful. You should go into it with the understanding of that and be okay with that. Like, I don’t know. They already know. You sit somebody down, and they know. It’s your first time. Chances are, you probably know the person.
I remember when I had to fire the first person that I knew, and I knew really well. And you know what? That was a horrible experience, and it just didn’t go well at all. But I learned from it, and I got better. Not that we want to get better at firing people, but I think everybody can understand. It’s all about the reps and being okay with just not being good at something. Yeah. I mean, it’s all baby steps. It’s just being able to build that confidence time after time and recognize that the one thing you didn’t like about how you did it last time is the one thing you’re going to change the next time that you move forward and do it. And so I really appreciate that.
And also, in the appreciation and understanding of mentorship and being able to lean on the experience of other people in that moment that you don’t have the experience necessary to take that first step. So can you talk about any mentors that you’ve had or how you were able to specifically ask someone for their mentorship in the development of your construction leadership?
Yeah. I mean, the mentors are so important. Having mentor groups around you, being involved. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be meeting with… I’m involved with the University of North Carolina in Wilmington here with a mentor at the Center for Entrepreneurship. I have a mentor group of six guys that we meet every month, and they continue to just challenge me. That’s the point of it is to help move you along and let you see the blind spots that you don’t see. Or, in my case, it’s like I said, I’m just a Marine that was in construction that owns a software company. So what did I do? I went and found a bunch of people that have been in software to mentor me in that because that’s my growth that needs to happen. I can go run 30 crews tomorrow. No problem at all. Let’s go rock and roll growing a software company completely different. It’s just a different machine.
Well, I agree with you, but I also believe that the perspective that you bring to those six gentlemen have probably opened their eyes to different aspects that, even in their software expertise, could change the way that they approach things too. And so recognizing that when you’re looking for mentorship, it’s not one-sided. It’s not just you seeking from someone else. It’s often them learning from you in that moment too. So I think that’s a valuable lesson.
Absolutely. And that’s why a few of the guys do it. I’m here to help where I can. But to be honest, I get more out of this than typically the person we’re mentoring gets because, once again, it’s building some camaraderie. It’s building a group. We get together, and we brainstorm ideas. They get to hear me talk about the pitfalls, the successes, and everything that’s going on. But that’s how it always should be. You should always have somebody that you’re working with.
And what I suggest is:
We’re all human. No, people don’t want to. It’s a split road. People don’t want to see people be successful, but at the same time, they don’t want to leave them out hanging. But I also know a lot of superintendents who like telling stories, and they’ll tell you all the love stories they are and I’m ready to listen to those stories too. If you’re out in the field, it’s free game. When you’re traveling and on the road, you have these guys around you. You’re exactly right, Corey. They want to talk. I want to talk. Everybody wants to talk. You give them an opportunity and just ask questions. That is the best way. They don’t even know they’re mentoring you. They don’t even know that they’re having this huge impact, but you just ask questions about stuff you don’t understand and then shut up and let them talk. Exactly.
Well, I’m going to let you talk about your software company for a little bit. How did you make that transition from working, from going to the military, coming into construction, and then seeing a need in the construction industry to build Builders.com?
I got tired of getting chewed by customers is what ended up happening. And I really dove into why. Like, why do we have this problem? And everything came back to communication. Every problem, it just seemed like no one was ever talking to the right person. Like my phone would ring, and it would be somebody wanting to talk to me about something that’s happening on their project. And they’re like, I went on the website, I found you; you seem to be the guy to talk to. You’re at the top of the totem pole. And I’m like, I am sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner. I am the absolute worst person in the company to talk to. We have 30 crews going. I do not know everything about every project. And I had no way to know everything about every project. And I would show up at houses, and I’d only have half the story that my guys wanted me to know. I want to have the customer’s half as well. And it would always end up in the situations in the driveway.
And one night I was lying in bed, and it just hit me. It’s like, if I just had a piece of software that worked as air traffic control, and they got all the communication in one place, and then made sure homeowners were talking to the right people, and the right people were always having the conversation, and then it created a record of everything. So I could, within five minutes, know everything that was said, everything that was done on a project. This could not just fix this for me. We could solve this problem for the entire construction industry. And I made the decision to bring that software to market. It is now BuilderComms. We were a top 20 startup for the International Builders Show this year. And that’s what I do now. My passion is around fixing communication.
35% of construction projects end in a dispute without any documentation around it. It’s just a bunch of he said, she said. No one knows exactly what was going on. We’re in a world where I think we can get that number drastically down with BuilderComms. And on average, miscommunication costs you $4,300 a year per employee that you have. So that’s what I do now.
That’s fantastic. I love that. Of course, I love documentation, which there was an argument on LinkedIn the other day about if you have to have that much documentation, you shouldn’t be in construction. But I feel like it’s all proactive and preventative, the way I look at it. But I love the fact that you were able to identify a problem like that because in construction, we’re problem solvers. That’s what we do.
If you were talking to a student or to someone who was trying to look at developing a succession plan for their employees and their company, based off of your experience and how you’ve evolved your construction over the years, what kind of leadership information or discussion would you have with someone who’s looking at designing their career path in the construction industry?
The sky’s the limit. I think what everybody thinks about when they think about construction is they just think about the field workers. Like, oh, man, you want me to go swing a hammer in that? Couldn’t it be any farther from the truth? Every occupation operates within construction. I tell people, if you’re in law school and you’re going to be a lawyer, there would be no better place to be a lawyer than in the construction space. It’s awesome. If you’re in finance, if you’re an accountant, if you’re a bookkeeper, or if you like to answer the phone and set appointments, all these are jobs that are in the construction space, and they all have the potential to continue to grow.
And the thing is, you get that camaraderie because that leadership is you’re going to run into somebody like a Ron Neusbaum that’s running one of these companies. And it’s the same leadership in the appointment center as it is in service in the accounting department, and you get the same culture. It might not be as tough and, I don’t know, you could say offensive as what it might be out in the field, but you’re going to get that same camaraderie, and I think that’s what people miss. I think it’s important people should spend time out in the field; they should understand what the field workers do. That’s because I was a grunt and I was a laborer. I just believe everybody should have to suffer like we do to be able to do anything.
Why, although there’s real trajectories past the field, and the sky is the limit. I mean, some of the biggest companies in America and in the construction companies, if you want to go run a business or be a CEO or be a COO, some of the biggest opportunities are in construction. You just don’t win; it’s just not sexy. It’s why we don’t hear about it. But I’ll tell you, there are some construction guys out there, and not like owners, employees that are making a lot of money running construction companies. But because of its construction, I believe that’s one of the reasons the notoriety is just not there, like the oil. Like a guy like Tommy Malo, who would do 285 million in garage doors, one of the best business minds of our time, does not get half of the media attention because it’s just not a sexy industry.
Yeah, well, I mean, being a woman, I would consider those high-income sexy. But you know, because we’re all like, I used to get, you know, we’re diving a little into something here. My wife worked in a plastic surgery office for 15 years, and I would go to these Christmas parties, and these doctors who put in operate a couple million dollar a year plastic surgery business would laugh at me when I said I ran a construction business and we’re doing 25 million in revenue. It would blow my mind that they thought that it was such a whatever that I worked in construction, that they found it funny when we ran circles around. They couldn’t last one day. Well, they’re still paying off their student loans, right?
Yeah, and that’s great for you to make enough to pay off their student loans for them. But yeah, that’s another great trajectory if you are a student out there. Like there is, you don’t have to have a college diploma to do this and to be successful in it.
Yeah, I agree, but I believe also that that’s being sold a little bit too hard because that does take a special individual who does have the wherewithal to know that if you’re going to go into entrepreneurship, you’re going to be working your ass off. It’s not just something you walk into just because you don’t have a degree. And often, to me, college really isn’t about a certificate or degree; it’s just a change in the life education that you get in the different relationships that you build in those moments that you’re outside of your parents’ wings anymore. It’s your first life experience of real adulthood.
But you bring me around to really what I love about construction, and that is that if you can manage your life, you can manage a project. Right? Just the skills that we have in our lives are able to transition to our success in the construction industry. And so I love how you’ve been able to do that by going from the military and working in construction and now developing technology in construction, which is so incredibly important. And I just think that you offer a tremendous amount of value to the construction industry, and I’m so grateful that you were my first podcast guest and for the opportunity to be able to have a little bit of behind-the-curtain coaching from an expert. So thank you so much.
No, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be the first guest here. I love this. I think anytime a couple of people come together and have a conversation around the construction industry, where it’s headed, and how we can be better leaders, like nothing bad can possibly come from that. And it’s what the construction industry needs. From that, and it’s what the construction industry needs because not everybody relates to Ron Nussbaum, and those people might relate to you. I think what matters is we start getting these conversations out there. We have the voices to do it.
When you think about how big podcasting is and how small of a percentage of construction-based podcasts there are, there’s plenty of room for a lot of people to be doing this because the construction industry is just going to continue to grow. It’s the sole basis for all industries in the world. We literally would not have anything on our planet if it weren’t for the construction industry. So it is about time that we step it up and start talking about it and start redefining what sexy looks like so construction can fall into that category as well.
Absolutely. So Ron, thank you again so much, and I do want to thank you for your contribution to the construction industry and for the education and value that you bring to us. But if people wanted to learn more about Builder Comms or about the Construction Champions podcast, where can they reach out to you?
Absolutely. So you can find me on any social media, from LinkedIn to TikTok and everything in between. Buildercomms.com. You can find the podcast on there. You can find out more about what we do as well as all of our social media links on there as well. So Ron Neusbaum is pretty easy to find. I try to do my best to be easy to find. Thank you.
