Advertise on podcast: Build Better with Matt Vetter

Most of what gets sold as Design-Build is Design-Bid-Build wearing a costume.  Matt breaks down the difference between architect-led and true Design-Build, why the budget has to come first, how GCs helped build low-bid culture, and the one question every owner should ask before signing: who is actually leading the design?

The Denver recap.  Three days locked in a boardroom with my board of advisors, six owners who can't get out of their own seats. I'm wearing three hats on our accountability chart, androughly a third of my time (probably closer to half) goes to work that's below what my company needs from me.  The room pushed me to do a real time audit.  I can't do it.  So we talked about who can. Also: why a group like this has to be 100 percent confidential, why delegation has to be real and not pretend, and what happens at the next check-in when you don't do what you said you would. What's your number?

Matt is not dead.  He was sick, traveling, and busier than he has been in a long time, and the show went quiet for about a month. In this short comeback episode, he owns the irony: he tellsowners to build a company that runs without them, and his own podcast had one single point of failure.  He reads thetexts that came in when the show went dark, previews what is changing in the studio, and asks you one question.  What in your company stops when you catch a cold? If your business can't survive you catching a cold, you don't have a business.  You have a job with overhead.

Waiting for construction costs to come back down is themost expensive decision an owner can make. Labor is a demographic problem, not a cyclical one.  A market correction will never unretire someone.  Materials spike and then set a new floor, and that floor becomes the new normal about four years later.  And the cost around the building,entitlement, permitting, third party review, insurance, has roughly doubled the timeline that used to get an owner from zero to boots on the ground. The part nobody counts is not on the invoice.  It is the years of use, the rent, the capacity, the hires, and the revenue you never got out of a building that does not exist.

Eight construction company owners.  None of them work for me.  None of them can fire me.  All of them have seen my financials. Next week I fly to Denver to spend three days in a room with my board of advisors.  In this episode: what a board of advisors actually is and what it is not, the three reasons most owners never build one, the three seats every board needs, and the stuff I am walking in carrying. If everyone on your board agrees with you, you do not have a board.  You have an audience.   Build Better with Matt Vetter.  New episodes every Thursday.

Tomorrow I write a check for $20,000 to the Southeast Michigan Construction Academy, to be cut up into scholarships for people entering trade school.  I do not know yet where it lands.  I am fine with that.  This one is about the difference between funding the tradesand recruiting for yourself, what it actually cost to build the Build Better Foundation into a real 501(c)(3), and why more than 90 percent of the people we write checks to will never work for me.  Build Better Foundation:schaferconstruction.net/build-better-foundation

Twelve months before I lost my temper on a phone call, I made the decision that actually caused the problem. A hire made out of desperation.  A client who was a bulldog, and I knew it before I signed.  A year spent as a pressure relief valve instead of running my company.  The explosion took five minutes.  The mistake underneath it took twelve monthsand cost a good man his job. Propping somebody up in the wrong seat is not kindness.  It is delay, and it gets paid in their time.

Bill Reiman did not inherit RK Reiman Construction.  He earned it, over roughly twenty years, and he and his brother onlybecame owners three years ago.  In this episode he walks through the whole arc: growing up in his father's concrete yard outside Chicago, the family's move to Southwest Florida in 1995, the years as an underpaid laborer, the one conversation with his dad that redirected his entire life, and what it takes to run a luxury home building company, a realestate practice with SERHANT, a property management business, a media operation, and a podcast at the same time. He also makes a case against the way most people talk about work-life balance, explains why being too honest has cost him listings, and tells the story of the out-of-state superintendent who found the company through the podcast.  In the last stretch the roles reverse and Bill gives some direct advice on when to stop doing your own media and start paying someone else to.

One Friday, three business lessons. Matt recaps the 2026 Schafer Summer Smash: why an awkward company party means you are still growing, why culture is who stays to help load the coolers, and what it means to carry north of 40 mouths to feed. Then, a sunset business meeting next to a deflating bounce house with his 12 year old, who watched the whole day and pitched his own company anyway. Plus the oldest son a few months into running his own business, and why the struggle is the catching. Nobody really wants to be The Guy. Until they see what The Guy built.

Jeff Lomber spent 23 years as an employee at Acme Enterprises before giving the owner an ultimatum, sketching a deal on the back of a napkin in Vegas, and buying the company himself. Jeff and Matt get into how an athletic trainer ended up running a national GC, what it really takes for an employee to buy the business, holding contractor licenses in over 40 states, using AI to manage a database of 32,000 subcontractors, and why two competitors keep showing up for each other. Jeff also opens the show by answering Matt’ssignature interview question before Matt could ask it. Build Better with Matt Vetter is a show about building bettercompanies, better careers, and a better construction industry.

Heather Krill did not apply for a job here. She researched us, decided this was where she wanted to work, knocked on the door, and was told we were not hiring. She asked to sit downanyway.  Two years later she has moved from project coordinator to Client Services Lead, and she has become the person who holds the front of our building together. In the first episode of our Meet the Team series, Heather and I talk about her first 90 days, why nobody at Schafer holds your hand, how a nickname became a permanent job, what she haslearned about selling something you actually believe in, and the trip to Milwaukee that told Kerry and me everything we needed to know.

Anne-Abel Smith wanted a job that wasn’t posted. So she messaged Jozef Melaj on LinkedIn. Then again. Then again. He finally caved and hired her as an office manager. Within six months she was running the financials, and one of the first things she did was tell White Light Electric to fire their accountant. Today she’s their CFO and strategic integrator. She’s the one who takes a visionary’s ideas, filters out the bad ones, and turns the good ones into a company that actually works. In this conversation we get into what an integrator really does, where the visionary’s job ends and hers begins, why healthy conflict at the top is a feature and not a bug, and where electrical contractors quietly bleed moneywithout knowing it. She closes with the three things every owner should check Monday morning: your systems, your people, and your cash. Without all three, you’re dead in the water.   Guest:Anne-Abel Smith, CFO and Strategic Integrator, White Light Electric. Host:Matt Vetter, President, Schafer Construction.

Recorded on the porch the Sunday after the Fourth. A sold-out Build Better Foundation Golf Outing, a grandfather’s 95th birthday up north, and a jobsite tour with a younger brother who built his own company from nothing. It turns into a case for the hard road. Trades scholarships: schaferconstruction.net/build-better-foundation

Steve Turner woke up on August 17, 2017 with an idea: put four words on a baseball cap. Bring Back the Trades.  Nine yearslater, he’s running Skills Expos across New England, awarding monthly trade school scholarships, and just delivered a TED Talk.  In this episode, Matt and Steve trace the full arc from hat to national nonprofit. They get into the Mike Rowe story (howit actually happened), the COO Steve hired on the spot, and the TED Talk speech coach who made Steve rewrite his entire message from scratch.  The insight that changed everything: it’s not trades OR college. It’s college AND trades.  Learn more about: Bring Back the Trades bringbackthetrades.com.  Build Better Foundation: schaferconstruction.net/build-better-foundation

Just got back from the best vacation of my life - and the contractor brain never shut off for a single day. In this solo episode Matt Vetter walks through what he saw across Vegas, Zion National Park, and Page, Arizona: the Hard Rock guitar-shaped building under construction where The Mirage used to be, the Mt. Carmel Tunnel at Zion (1.1 miles bored through solid rock, finished in 1930, no electricity, no artificial ventilation), earth-moving operations in 100-degree Arizona red rock, and a white-knuckle two-hour drive back to Vegas passing semis pulling three trailers on steep grades with no guardrails. Vegas is a city that has no right to exist. It exists because someone decided to build it. That is this industry.   3rd Annual Build Better Foundation Golf Outing - June 25, 2026 at Hartland Glen in Hartland, Michigan.Scholarships for young people entering the trades.www.schaferconstruction.net/build-better-foundation