— Karina Hultgren, Local Guide"Ron asks such great thought provoking questions really making his clients think strategically about what they want. In addition, Ron is one of the kindest people you will ever meet! I highly recommend him!"
Your Coach
Ron Gilliland CPCC
My Dad had the can-fix-anything spirit.
My job is helping you build the business that spirit deserves.
Where This Started
Glenn “Bud” Gilliland Spent His Life on the Tools
He loaded ninety-pound bags of concrete by hand onto flatbed trailers before he was twenty. He drove a million miles without an accident. He became a master mechanic who could fix anything, and eventually a shop foreman who ran his crew on one simple rule: there are no stupid questions.
He never ran his own business. He didn't have the chance to build the systems, the pricing, the team that would have let him step back from the work and still keep what he built running without him.
He worked hard, and worked alone, well past the point most people call it quits.
I think about him every time I sit down with a builder or trade business owner who's still doing everything themselves — not because they don't know how to lead, but because no one ever showed them how to get off the tools without the whole thing falling apart.
Background
I Grew Up Around
Blue-Collar Work
I spent years building things with my hands. I know what the work does to a body, what a bad day on a job feels like, and why “just hire someone” is easier said than it is done.
What I want to be straight about: I have not run a trade business myself. That is what my clients do. What I have done, for twenty-six years, is sit across from owners while they figure out how to run theirs — through growth stages, hiring decisions, pricing they were afraid to change, and the slow work of handing off things they had always done alone.
My path into coaching wasn't traditional. I was originally on track to become a marriage and family therapist, and I discovered that the counseling psychology and change-management tools that help people transform their personal lives apply directly to the problems that show up at work. Most business problems turn out to be human problems wearing a hard hat.
I blend the Co-Active Coaching model with Prosci's ADKAR® change framework and a background in organizational development. In practice that means less theory and more of a straight conversation about what is actually happening on your jobs.
See what we'd work on →How I Work
No Theory Deck
My coaching is practical and grounded in real operations. The work usually comes down to four things:
- Find where you are the bottleneck. Not in theory — in the actual sequence of a job, from bid to close-out.
- Define the work that truly belongs to you. And name, out loud, everything that does not.
- Delegate in a way that develops the crew. Handing off work is how leads get built. Done badly, it is just moving the problem.
- Test simple changes that free up time. On one job first. Then the next one.
You do not leave with a theory deck. You leave with a clearer view of what is happening in the business, a realistic 30–90 day plan, and a better way to grow without burning out.
See how this works in practice → 
Credentials
The Part That
Actually Matters
Ron Gilliland, CPCC is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, working with clients across the country.
All of my coaching is remote: Zoom, phone, text and email. After years of coaching owners in the US I now live in Portugal, so there is no travel and no office visits. That time goes to your crew, your jobs and the decisions on your plate instead.
The certification is the professional floor. What it does not tell you is whether someone can sit in a truck with you and be useful. Twenty-six years of coaching owners is what taught me the difference between advice that sounds right in a room and advice that survives contact with a jobsite.
The thread through all of it: helping owners see their own track record clearly, stop making decisions out of fear, and quiet the voice that says they have to do everything themselves.
Read three real engagements →
What You Can Expect
Straight Talk,
No Hustle Sermon
You will not get generic business advice or a lecture about your morning routine. You will not be told to want it more. If you are working seventy hours, the answer is not another hour.
You will get someone who takes the operational detail seriously — how the schedule actually gets built, who is really making the call on change orders, what happens to a job when you are not there — because that is where the answer usually is.
And if I do not think I am the right help for what you are dealing with, I will tell you that on the first call rather than sell you a package.
There are no stupid questions. That was my Dad's rule. It is mine too.
Book a free 20-minute fit call → Beyond the trades
Builders and trade business owners are where my most impactful work happens, and it is what this site is built around. It is not the only work I do.
Over twenty-six years I have coached professionals, founders and executives across a lot of industries, and that work continues — much of the method the trades work runs on came out of it. If you found your way here through a referral and you are not in the trades, get in touch anyway.
From Clients Across 26 Years
Ready?
Let's Have a Real Conversation
Twenty minutes, no pitch. Tell me what is actually happening on your jobs.