Cut Revenue in Half, Double Your Profit — with Luke Boyenger

<p>Most contractors will tell you they run at 25%, 30%, even 40% gross margin. Almost none of them are right.</p><p>In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, host Rishi Srivastava sits down with Luke Boyenger — former EY auditor turned fractional CFO, running a firm built specifically for construction companies. Luke&#39;s family manufacturing business went bankrupt in the 2008 crisis, and the question &quot;what did we get wrong?&quot; sent him back to school at 24. What he found is the same gap he sees in nearly every contractor he talks to today: the finance seat is the last one to get filled.</p><p>The uncomfortable thesis: revenue in construction doesn&#39;t create cash, it consumes it. Luke walks through why some contractors need to cut their business in half to double their profit, why a line of credit and your own cash is a fragile capital structure, why merchant cash advances trap good companies in a spiral, and why &quot;revenue is something you should back your way into&quot; after you&#39;ve set a profit target.</p><p>What we get into:</p><ul><li>Why gross margin is almost always lower than owners think</li><li>$20M at $250K profit vs. $10M at $1M profit — real contractors who shrank and made more money</li><li>60–120 day payment terms and why subcontractors are functioning as unpaid banks</li><li>What &quot;capital infrastructure&quot; actually means for a $10–30M subcontractor</li><li>The war chest: building 6–12 months of cash before you take distributions</li><li>The five KPIs every construction owner should review monthly</li><li>Why owners who know what to do still don&#39;t do it</li><li>Keeping business and personal finances clean — and why stacked entities and trusts usually backfire</li></ul><p>Chapters<br>00:00 Intro<br>01:00 From the trades to EY to fractional CFO<br>02:56 Where contractors are most confidently wrong<br>04:46 Profitability vs. &quot;happy revenue&quot;<br>06:44 Warning signs you&#39;re growing revenue at the expense of profit<br>09:00 Shrinking from $20M to $10M and making more money<br>10:21 Cash flow and capital infrastructure<br>14:10 MCAs, predatory lending, and 120% effective rates<br>15:09 Smarter capital tools before you&#39;re under pressure<br>17:20 Subcontractors as the industry&#39;s real banks<br>18:10 Operator vs. owner mindset<br>21:00 Managing by financial signals instead of gut feel<br>23:35 Why execution is so hard in construction finance<br>25:38 Weekly, monthly, and quarterly financial disciplines<br>26:35 Invoice terms, late-paying GCs, and how to bid for them<br>29:45 The biggest mistakes limiting $10–50M subcontractors<br>33:40 Separating business and personal finances<br>37:25 One uncomfortable financial truth for construction owners</p><p>Finance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, founder of Beiing Human. New episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and YouTube — just search Finance at the Jobsite.</p>