For $5M to $30M Horizontal Contractors
You Got Here
on Gut.
The Next Level
Runs on a Playbook.
Right now the way your business runs lives in one place: your head. We spend 12 months getting it out of your head and into a playbook the whole company can run. So the business runs on something you can see, not something you have to be.
Sound Familiar?
It's All
in Your Head.
Contractors in the $5M to $30M range describe the same pattern. The top line is healthy. The profit is thinner than it should be and feels fragile. And the only reason the whole thing holds together is that you are personally holding it together, one decision at a time.
You're the answer to every question on every job. Nothing moves without you, and every hour you spend in the field is an hour nobody is running the business.
The way the work is supposed to get done lives in your head, not on paper. So it gets done your way only when you're standing there.
Equipment goes down and nobody knows what to do, or what broke it in the first place. Downtime is eating your margin and nobody is tracking it.
You know money is leaking somewhere: rework, schedule slip, idle time. You just can't put your finger on exactly where, or how much.
You've tried to get organized. It works for a week, then the job takes over again and the profit you meant to protect slips away.
If you stepped away for a month, you're not confident the business would run the way you need it to. That's not a people problem. It's a playbook problem.
If three or more of those hit, and you're between $5M and $30M, this call was built for you.
The Actual Problem
Gut Got You Here.
It Won't Get You There.
The instinct that built this business is real. You can walk a job and feel what's off. You can price work in your head and be right. That gut is an asset, and it got you to where you are.
But gut has a ceiling, and you've hit it. It doesn't scale past your own two feet. It can't be handed to a foreman or an estimator. And it can't be improved on purpose, because nobody can see it, including you. The way out is to get what's in your head into the open.
A playbook is the opposite of gut. It's visible. It's teachable. It belongs to the whole company instead of one person. And once it's written down, it can finally be sharpened quarter after quarter, instead of starting over every time the job gets busy.
What We Do
We Build the Playbook
and the Skill to Run It.
Most help for owners stops at one half of the problem. Consultants hand you systems and leave, so the systems die the day they walk out. Coaches work on you and never touch the actual operation, so nothing in the business changes. Neither one makes you better at running the place.
We do both halves, on purpose. We build the first operating systems with you so they're real and running. And we teach you the skill underneath them, so you can find the next leak, fix it, and keep the playbook sharp long after we're gone. You don't end up dependent on us. You end up capable.
What goes in the playbook
- Gross margin: knowing it by job and business line, growing it, defending it
- Production: real rates, real targets, and the discipline to hit them
- Downtime: measuring what it actually costs you, then cutting it
- Standardization: one written way to do the work, so results stop depending on who showed up
- Roles and accountability: who owns what, so the answer isn't always you
- The skill to read your own business and find the next constraint, systematically, not by gut
What we refuse to do
- Vision-statement workshops
- Personality tests and culture decks
- Motivational talk that evaporates by Monday
- Vague "leadership journeys" with no number attached
- Anything we can't measure in inputs and outputs
The Commitment (And the Challenge)
Every hour we spend together stays on the parts of your business that tangibly move the needle. Inputs and outputs. If we can't name the number a piece of work moves, we don't do that work. This is the field and the office. The business in its entirety, written down where everyone can see it.
Start Here. Free.
The 30-Minute
Operations Review
One call with Zack. We look at your numbers together and find the single biggest thing holding your margin back. By the end, you'll know what it is, why it keeps happening, and whether we're the right ones to help you fix it.
Your #1 Constraint, Named
We find the single biggest thing holding your margin back. Not a list of ten problems. The one bottleneck costing you the most right now, said plainly.
Why It's There, and Why It Keeps Coming Back
You'll understand the actual cause, not the symptom. Most owners have been fighting the same fire for years without seeing what's feeding it. You'll see it.
A Straight Answer on Whether We Can Help
No pitch, no pressure. If there's a real opportunity and we're the right ones to build it with you, we'll tell you what that looks like. If there isn't, we'll tell you that too.
What Happens After
The Operations Review is the first step of a 12-month engagement, not a standalone freebie. If we find a real margin opportunity, and we usually do, we'll show you exactly what the work looks like: what we build, how long it takes, and what it costs. No pressure. But we will be direct about what we see.
If We're a Fit
Inside the
12 Months
This is not a course or a binder of templates. It's a year of building the playbook into your business, shoulder to shoulder, and building your skill to run it without us.
3-Day Onsite
We come to you. We walk your jobs, your shop, and your office, map how work actually flows, and find exactly where margin is leaking. You get a prioritized 12-month roadmap before we leave.
Two Working Sessions a Month
Structured sessions where we write the playbook one piece at a time: production standards, downtime tracking, rework elimination, planning rhythms. We build it with you and your team, not for you, so it sticks when we're gone.
Daily WhatsApp Access
Real problems don't wait for the next session. When something breaks, you message Zack directly. Momentum is the whole game, and this is how we keep it.
The Skill That Outlasts Us
Through all of it, we teach you to find the next constraint on your own, systematically instead of by gut, and to keep sharpening the playbook every quarter. When the year ends, the capability stays with you.
Right Fit
Who This Is For
And Who It Isn't
This is for you if
- You're a horizontal contractor doing $5M to $30M in annual revenue (typically under ~50 people)
- You're the owner in an overhead role, not running a crew every day
- Revenue is healthy but the business still runs on you and your gut
- You're willing to look honestly at how work actually gets done
- You want a business that runs on a playbook, not on you being in every conversation
Skip this if
- You're under $5M in revenue or still in the field full-time
- You only want more bids, not a better-run business
- You want a consultant to come in and do it for you and leave
- You think the problems are entirely your team's fault
- You're looking for a quick fix with no follow-through
Who You're Talking To
Why Lean Dirt
Zack Estes, Dirt World SummitLean Dirt helps $5M to $30M horizontal contractors get the business out of their head and into a playbook. Business performance methods have never been built for the dirt world. Most frameworks are written for manufacturers, tech companies, or corporate ops teams. None of it translates cleanly to a field-based business.
We work exclusively with horizontal contractors: civil, paving, crushing, grading, hauling. The methods we use (lean thinking, systems thinking, continuous improvement) are adapted for how this work actually runs: variable sites, production that depends on equipment and labor, and owners who have grown past the field while the business hasn't caught up.
The Operations Review is where we decide, together, whether there's a real opportunity here and whether we're the right partner to build it with you. If the answer is yes on both sides, we get to work.
Ready?
Get It Out
of Your Head.
Book your free 30-minute Operations Review. We'll find where your margin is going and map what it takes to put the business on a playbook. If there's a real opportunity, we'll both know by the end of the call.