— 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!"
Services
How I Work
Three problems, in whatever order your business actually has them.
The Short Version
I help builders and trade business owners get out of the middle of every job, so the business keeps running when they are not standing in it.
The late nights, the constant phone, and the feeling that nothing closes out unless you push it are not badges of honor. They are signs that the business has outgrown the way it is being run.
Ron Gilliland Coaching works with contractors, builders, excavators, estimators and trade business owner-operators who are wearing too many hats and need to scale — or simply need their week back.
The Problem
The Business Still Needs You There
You built this from nothing — nights, weekends, and a willingness to do whatever the job needed. It worked. Clients call you. The crew shows up. On paper you won.
But the phone does not stop. Every bid, every change order, every awkward client conversation routes back through you. You tell yourself it will ease off after this project, or once you find the right person, and it never quite does.
Meanwhile you are still on the tools two or three days a week, because that is the only way the work gets covered.
The problem is not effort.
What It Looks Like
On the Other Side of It
A job goes sideways on a Tuesday and your lead handles it. You find out that evening, not at 6:40 the next morning, and the call you would have made is the call that got made.
Your day goes to the work only you can do — pricing, client relationships, the decisions that set up next quarter — instead of covering labor because someone did not show.
You take a week off. Jobs still close out. The schedule does not slip because you were not there to push it. And when you get back, nothing is on fire.
None of that requires a different personality. It requires a business built to carry weight you have been carrying alone.
See where to start → The Three
What We Work On
Most owners arrive knowing something has to change but not which thing. The first job is figuring that out, instead of applying somebody else's playbook to your operation. These three are tangled together in practice, so we start wherever the business is loudest and end up touching all of them.
- 01
Stuck on the Tools
Find where you are the bottleneck — and define the work that actually belongs to you.
We walk a real job end to end, from bid through close-out, and mark every point where the work stops until you touch it. Then we sort your week into four buckets: only you, train someone else, hand off now, and stop doing entirely. Most owners are carrying two or three things they have never once questioned.
And the week underneath it
The specific hours you are spending, which of them are load-bearing, and what happens to the business when you are worn down enough to make a bad call on a bid. We look at your actual calendar and rebuild it around the work only you can do.
- 02
Delegation That Does Not Develop the Crew
Hand off work in a way that builds leads who make the call you would have made.
Handing someone a task is not delegation — it is moving the problem down a level and waiting for the phone to ring. We work on how decisions get explained, what your leads need in order to read a situation the way you would, and how to let them get one wrong without it costing you a client.
- 03
Pricing and Systems That Quietly Cost You
Know what you bid, what you turn down, and which work is draining margin while looking busy.
Growth stalls when every job looks worth taking. We get clear on what you are genuinely better at than the shop down the road, what that is worth, and which category of work has been costing you money. Turning down the wrong job is usually the fastest raise available.
And the systems that break first
Most trade businesses run on systems that worked fine at six people and quietly failed at fifteen. We find the handoffs that break first, usually scheduling, change orders or close-out, then build something simple enough that the crew will actually use it when the day goes sideways.
How It Runs
What Actually Happens
01
An Honest Look
Where the business actually stands. What is working, what is draining you, and what you have been avoiding because there was never time to deal with it.
02
Find the Bottleneck
We trace a real job and find where the work stops until you touch it. That is usually most of the answer, and it is rarely where owners expect it to be.
03
Test It on One Job
One change, run live, on a real project. Small enough that being wrong costs you nothing, real enough that being right proves something.
04
Make It Stick
A 30 to 90 day plan you will actually follow, and the accountability to keep going after the novelty wears off and the busy season lands.
From Clients Across 26 Years
Straight Answers
Questions Owners
Actually Ask
Not all at once. We find the work only you can do, cost out the work you are doing from habit, and hand off one piece at a time — starting with whatever is cheapest to replace and most expensive in your hours.
The calls are usually a symptom. We look at which decisions genuinely need you, what your leads are missing to make those calls themselves, and where the handoff keeps breaking down. Then we change one of those and watch what happens on the next job.
It depends on where the work is actually stopping. If jobs stall waiting on your decisions, you need a lead. If they stall on coordination, you need a PM. If you are doing invoicing at nine at night, you need admin. We find out which before you spend the money.
By creating capacity before adding volume. We identify what only you should be doing, what can be handed off or systemized, and build a realistic plan to free up hours — without adding more of them to your week.
That is a completely legitimate goal, and a fair amount of this work goes that direction. Getting off the tools does not have to mean growing. Sometimes it means the same revenue with a better structure and a calmer owner.
The intensive runs a month, and the first change usually gets tested on a live job inside the first couple of weeks. I am not going to promise you a percentage, because I did not track numbers with past clients and I am not going to invent one now.
I grew up around blue-collar work and spent years building things with my hands, and I have coached owners in excavation, construction and the trades. I have not run a trade business myself — that is your job. Mine is the business built around it.
Good. That is how I work. We design small changes that give you real feedback fast, on one job, before you roll anything out across the whole operation.
Then I will say so on the fit call rather than sell you a month of coaching. If what you need is a bookkeeper or an estimator rather than a coach, that is a much more useful answer than an invoice from me.
Remotely, over Zoom, phone, text and email, with clients across the country. No travel time and no office visits means the hour goes to your crew and your jobs instead. Coaching hours run early, 6am to noon Pacific, which tends to suit people whose crews roll out at seven.
Ready?
Get Out of the Middle of It
You did not start this to become the only thing holding it together. Twenty minutes on the phone, no pitch, and you will know whether this is the right kind of help.
There are no stupid questions. That was my Dad's rule. It is mine too.