Jerry Aliberti is principal of Thornwood, New York-based Pro-Accel, a construction consultancy focused on accelerating business growth. Opinions are the author’s own.
You started your construction company because you love building things. You were good at it. Maybe great at it. You could see a project through from concept to completion, and you took pride in every detail. Fast forward to today, and you're running a $10 million, $15 million, maybe even $25 million company.
But you're still probably running it like a $5 million business.
For a typical construction company owner, every critical decision flows through you. Your phone never stops ringing. You can't remember the last time you took a real vacation without checking in multiple times a day. Meanwhile, you're turning down profitable work because you don't have the capacity, watching your best people burn out, and seeing competitors who started after you scale right past you.
In other words, you’re the bottleneck. This isn't a revenue problem. It's a structural problem.
The business model and structure that got you from zero to $5 million or even $10 million will actively prevent you from reaching $50 million. What worked when you had five employees and could personally oversee every job becomes your biggest liability when you need to manage 50 people across multiple projects.
I watched a client struggle with this for years. At $12 million in revenue, he was approving every estimate, visiting every job site, making every hiring decision and personally handling client escalations. When I asked him if he could take a two week vacation, he laughed. "The place would fall apart," he said. That's when I knew we had work to do.
Scaling the business
Scaling a construction company requires three distinct structural phases, each with completely different organizational needs.
In the early phase, roughly $5 million to $15 million in revenue, you are the operation. It's a flat structure, maybe 5 to 15 employees, and you're probably still spending significant time in the field. This works until it doesn't.
The mid phase, from $15 million to $40 million, demands specialized departments with clear leaders. You need 20 to 50 employees organized into functional teams.
This is where most owners struggle because it requires giving up control and building. The companies that successfully navigate this transition understand that they can't have more than five to seven people reporting directly to any executive. Beyond that, quality and accountability plummet.
The advanced phase, beyond $40 million, requires autonomous business units with their own profit and loss responsibility. You're no longer managing projects or even people. You're managing systems and leaders. Your role shifts entirely to vision, strategy, and culture.
What kills growth is trying to operate in Phase 2 or 3 with a Phase 1 mindset and structure.
Evolve to break through
The companies that break through understand that hiring strategy must evolve as you grow. In the early stages, you need versatile generalists where culture fit matters most. In the mid stages, you need specialists with proven track records. At the advanced stages, you need leaders who have scaled companies before and can operate with minimal supervision.
This is the hardest part of scaling. You got into this business to build things. But success means letting go of that aspect to build the business instead.
The mindset shift from builder to CEO means accepting that other people won't do things exactly like you. They'll make different decisions. Some will be better. Some will be worse. And that has to be okay, because your job is no longer to do the work. It's to build the systems and develop the people who can do the work consistently.
This creates what we call the control paradox. Owners fear that if they delegate, quality will drop. But the truth is, they're already the bottleneck. Great people combined with great systems create consistency at scale that no single person can match.
The real cost of staying small
When an owner can't make this transition, everyone pays. The owner is exhausted and resentful. The team is frustrated because they can't make decisions without permission. Growth stalls. Profit margins compress because inefficiency costs more as you scale.
That client I mentioned who was stuck at $12 million for five years? Once he finally committed to restructuring, hired the right leadership team, and stepped out of daily operations, his company hit $23 million within 18 months. Same market. Same services. Different structure.
The business you're building should eventually run without you. Not because you're checked out, but because you've built something sustainable.
Right now, if you can't take a two week vacation without worrying the business will fall apart, you don't own a business. You own a job. An expensive, stressful job.
Instead, what you want is a business that can run without your constant involvement. A team that wants to stay and grow with you. Profit margins that compound as systems create efficiency. A company that's actually worth building, not just operating.
Can your company grow to $100 million? Probably. The real question is whether you're willing to become the leader a $100 million company needs. The company you want to build is waiting on the other side of the leader you need to become.
