The Contractor's Playbook: Built2Win
He Couldn't Afford a Hammer. Then He Built a $100M Construction Company.
There's a hammer hanging in the lobby with a piece of PVC and duct tape where the handle should be. "We could not afford a new hammer." Chris Coghlan sits down with Ben Burgess, P.E., founder of Burgess Civil, who started in June 2014 with a tiny bit of working capital, five men hired off Craigslist, and one rented office behind a real estate receptionist he asked to pretend she worked for him. Twelve years later: Burgess Civil employs roughly 200 people, has about $100 million in backlog, $130 million in DOT bonding capacity, and the site package on the USF football stadium. Ben didn't take a paycheck for the first three years — there are still employees at Burgess Civil with employee numbers lower than his. He ran the business and the projects during the week and estimated on weekends. Then a divorce settlement put him millions of dollars in personal debt in January 2020, and COVID shut down his residential work ten weeks later. Ben walks through all of it: the broken hammer hanging in his lobby, cutting from 95 people to 60 and getting back to 100 within 90 days, the heavy equipment simulator that catches operators who've never actually run one, and the daily green/red scoreboard that tells every foreman whether he made or lost money that day instead of sixty days later. If you're building a crew, deciding what to self-perform, or trying to figure out how to keep good people in the trades, this one is for you. ▶ Watch every episode on The Contractor's Playbook | Built2Win: The Contractor's Playbook | Built2Win Subscribe so you don't miss the next builder's story. New episodes every two weeks. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT THIS EPISODE ANSWERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ How do you survive losing money on the very first job you ever bid? What do you do when a personal crisis and a market shutdown land in the same ninety days? How do you know a new hire can actually run the machine he says he can run? How do you show a crew whether they made money today instead of sixty days from now? Can an 18-year-old who starts on a shovel really retire a millionaire? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ POWERED BY OUR SPONSORS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ring Power | Florida's Cat® Equipment Dealer ▶ https://linktw.in/pTVmkD Big League Construction Supply ▶ https://linktw.in/NIMVjE Johnson & Company | Commercial Insurance & Bonding ▶ https://linktw.in/HsgrSt #ad ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE GUEST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ben Burgess, P.E., is the founder and owner of Burgess Civil, LLC, a Tampa-based self-perform site and civil contractor he started in June 2014. A civil engineer out of NC State with an MBA from the University of Florida, he built the company from five Craigslist hires to roughly 200 people running clearing, earthwork, underground utilities, roadwork and paving across commercial, residential and DOT work in Tampa Bay. Burgess Civil is an Inc. 5000 and repeat Gator100 honoree, and describes itself as "a training company that happens to do construction" — with core values of Integrity, Learning, Availability and Mentorship printed on every hard hat. Website ▶ https://burgesscivil.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT BUILT2WIN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Built2Win is where the ones who build the world come to think bigger, lead better, and win at a higher level — long-form conversations on leadership, construction, and building something that lasts. Hosted by Chris Coghlan. Connect with us: Instagram ▶ / thecontractorsplaybook_b2w LinkedIn ▶ / the-contractors-playbook-built2win TikTok ▶ / contractorsplaybook_b2w Facebook ▶ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?... All links ▶ https://linktr.ee/TheContractorsPlayb... Website ▶ https://chriscogs.com
