For $5M–$30M Horizontal Contractors
Add 2–5 Net
Margin Points
in 12 Months.
If you're doing $5M–$30M in horizontal work and every job still runs through you, you're not broken. Your business has grown faster than your systems. We coach you through installing the structure, so the business hits its profit targets without you holding it together by hand.
Sound Familiar?
You're Working Hard.
The Business Isn't.
Contractors in the $5M–$30M range describe the same pattern: top line is healthy, but net margin sits at 2–4% and feels fragile. The revenue is there. The profit is not. And most days feel like firefighting instead of building.
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.
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.
Rework and variation are treated as "part of the business." But every callback and redo is a direct hit to your net margin.
You've tried to get more organized. It works for a week, then the job takes over again and the profit you meant to protect slips away.
You can't honestly tell someone exactly how work is supposed to get done around here. Which means you can't fix what's costing you.
If three or more of those hit, and you're between $5M and $30M, this call was built for you.
The Actual Problem
Industry Average
Sucks.
Most horizontal contractors assume the margin squeeze is just the nature of the work. It isn't. It's the natural outcome of a business that has grown faster than its systems.
The gap isn't effort. You already work hard. The gap is a specific, learnable skillset: seeing your operation as a set of repeatable processes, finding where friction and cost live, and building the structure that turns top-line revenue into bottom-line margin.
Learnable is the key word. Skills get built through coaching and practice. Which is exactly what this is.
What We Do
Professionals
Have Coaches.
In athletics, a coach builds specific skillsets that improve an athlete's performance. In business, a coach builds specific skillsets that improve a company's performance. Same job, different arena. And the same divide exists in both: amateurs practice when they feel like it. Professionals train on purpose.
Lean Dirt is performance coaching for owners of horizontal construction businesses. Civil, paving, crushing, grading, hauling. Heavy equipment, heavy labor, field operations. If you run one and you want it to perform better, this is for you.
What we coach
- 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
- Organizational development: clear roles, real accountability, an office that keeps pace with the field
- Performance at every level: individual, team, and business
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. And to be clear: this is not "equipment utilization" coaching with a new name. It's the field and the office. The business in its entirety.
Start Here. Free.
The 30-Minute
Operations Review
One call with Zack. We look at your numbers together, map where margin is leaking, and lay out what has to change over the next 12 months to add 2–5 net points. You leave with three things:
Your Current Net Margin Snapshot and a Clear 12-Month Target
We benchmark where you are today and define what a realistic 2–5 point improvement looks like for your specific business: your revenue range, your cost structure, your mix of work.
Plain-English Language for Why Your Profit Is Stuck
Most owners know the numbers are off but can't name the cause precisely. You'll get the framework to understand it and to explain it clearly to your team.
A Concrete First Project to Start Closing the Gap This Month
Whether you hire us or not, you leave with one specific thing to act on. A real starting point toward that 2–5 point improvement, not vague advice.
What Happens After
The Operations Review is the first step of a 12-month engagement, not a standalone freebie. If we find a real 2–5 point margin opportunity (we usually do), we'll show you exactly what the full program looks like: what the work is, how long it takes, and what it costs. No pressure. But we will be direct about what we see.
If We're a Fit
The 12-Month
Program
This is not a course or a binder of templates. It's a year of building real operating systems into your business, shoulder to shoulder.
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 Coaching Calls a Month
Structured working sessions to install each system: process standards, downtime tracking, rework elimination, planning rhythms. We build it with you and your team, not for you.
Daily WhatsApp Access
Real problems don't wait for the next call. When something breaks, you message Zack directly. Momentum is the whole game, and this is how we keep it.
Right Fit
Who This Is For
And Who It Isn't
This is for you if
- You're a horizontal contractor doing $5M–$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 net margin is stuck, fragile, or hard to explain
- You're willing to look honestly at how work actually gets done
- You want a business that runs without you 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
- 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–$30M horizontal contractors add 2–5 net margin points in 12 months. Business performance coaching has 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 methodology, 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 2–5 point margin opportunity and whether we're the right partner to chase it. If the answer is yes on both sides, we get to work.
Ready?
One Call.
Straight Talk.
Real Numbers.
Book your free 30-minute Operations Review. We'll map where your margin is going and what it takes to close the gap. If there's a real opportunity, we'll both know by the end of the call.