2026 Talk Topics & Titles

What if you could hire a world-class assistant that never sleeps, never forgets, and never burns out? Now you can. In this groundbreaking talk, Thomas shows you how to build a simple, fully customized AI agent that can think like you, speak like you, and help run your business with precision.

This is not the future. It is now, and it is built for contractors.

• →The contractor's chaos: why you need one smart agent, not ten more tools
• →What an AI agent really is — your digital COO, trained on your business
• →The 3-step blueprint: feed it your playbook, define its job, start the conversation
• →The top 5 things contractors use AI agents for today
• →Zero coding, zero headache — leave with a starter template ready to customize

Your most valuable people are too often trapped in the weeds — drowning in admin, chasing email threads, or updating spreadsheets instead of building value. Meanwhile, innovation stalls, creativity flatlines, and your best talent burns out.

Learn to leverage AI not as a shiny object but as a practical tool to offload repetitive, time-sucking tasks and free up your team's headspace. Thomas will show you how to shift from doing it all to building a business that thinks, operates, and grows without you at the center of every fire.

• →Identify the mental bottlenecks where clarity, not capacity, is the real issue
• →Discover the top 3 AI tools smart owners use to offload routine tasks (and how not to misuse them)
• →Design a simple workflow to delegate to AI while preserving your values and processes
• →Build a roadmap to reinvest freed-up headspace into innovation, leadership, and growth

Most contractors don't want robots running their business — they want less time in email, fewer 9pm quotes, and more time with people and projects that matter.

No jargon. No tech-bro nonsense. Just practical, real-world ways to use AI as a servant, not a master — so you can lead with clarity, not chaos.

• →PURPOSE — use AI to cut the noise and carve out time to lead, plan, and cast vision
• →PEOPLE — use AI to serve, not replace, your team and reduce burnout
• →PROCESS — document, refine, and automate repeatable systems without losing your touch
• →PROFIT — plug the time leaks that become profit leaks: bid rework, late invoices, missed follow-ups

"Nobody wants to work anymore!" That's the outcry — yet younger generations are desperate not just for work, but for meaningful work with clarity and predictability. In the AEC industries, both are hard to come by.

Thomas flips our idea of what a younger generation is looking for and why the trades are the perfect landing spot for hungry, ambitious talent. Come ready to think differently and gain a simple, free method that changes the game for your culture.

• →Learn the secret language of Gen Z — what they really want and why they're so anxious
• →Identify the parts of your business ripe for new team members to engage with
• →Build one simple tool during the session you can implement that afternoon
• →Take away the one tool that engages any Gen Z employee immediately

Most contractor owners cross their fingers and hope for the best when it comes to culture, profit, and product. Luck is not a strategy.

This highly engaging program reveals four critical blind spots sabotaging your business and team — and sends you home with one action item to implement immediately that will make you wish you had heard this talk ten years ago.

• →Learn the 3 foundational cornerstones of every contractor business
• →Understand the 3 non-negotiables of building and leading a vision-centered team
• →Discover how an owner's process leadership directly impacts people, profit, and productivity
• →Create a proven plan for predicting your profit

"I hate meetings." It's an unfortunate sentiment across owners and teams — most meetings are a fertile breeding ground for chaos, when they are attended at all.

Thomas flips the modern meeting on its head and lays out the five primary meeting types every business needs to create an airtight feedback loop where all involved feel heard, supported, and held accountable.

• →Uncover who should be in meetings — and who should not
• →Understand micro-management vs. healthy leadership: the less you say, the more you lead
• →Discover a time-tested agenda that's easy to follow for every meeting
• →Learn how to empower others and never lead a meeting again

Hear the true story of a simple-minded contractor who started 2020 thin on cash — and three years later runs his business on a sure foot with zero debt. He borrowed no money and never had to ask vendors, partners, or subs for extra time.

You can run a small or large firm on cash. Stop the creditor calls, stop living deposit-to-deposit, and stop going to bed hoping the next receivable hits tomorrow.

• →See how running on one or two bank accounts is quietly crippling your business
• →Watch real examples of cash growing over time — even when annual revenue declines
• →Walk away with a simple structure you can implement tomorrow, and the roadmap to do it
• →Confront the 4 major roadblocks keeping you from retaining the cash you've already earned

Hear the true story of a simple-minded contractor who started 2020 thin on cash — and three years later runs his business on a sure foot with zero debt.

You can run a small or large firm on cash. Stop the creditor calls, stop living deposit-to-deposit, and stop going to bed hoping the next receivable hits tomorrow.

• →See how running on one or two bank accounts is quietly crippling your business
• →Watch real examples of cash growing over time — even when annual revenue declines
• →Walk away with a simple structure you can implement tomorrow, and the roadmap to do it
• →Confront the 4 major roadblocks keeping you from retaining the cash you've already earned

Think cash flow only comes with more sales or more stress? Think again. In this no-fluff, high-impact session, Thomas walks you through five powerful strategies to increase your cash flow without spending a single extra dollar.

These are field-tested tactics used by successful contractors across the country. Plug the leaks, find the hidden money, and gain the clarity your business and life need.

• →Plug the profit leaks — fix broken estimating, job costing, and contract practices
• →Subdivide your bank accounts (Profit First Light) — it costs nothing to open them
• →Cancel the cash vampires — audit and kill unseen recurring expenses
• →Track your weekly cash balance — 10 minutes every Friday in a free sheet
• →Implement a project start sheet — forecast incoming revenue by job and week

Most contractor owners cross their fingers and hope for the best when it comes to culture, profit, and product. Luck is not a strategy.

This highly engaging program reveals four critical blind spots sabotaging your business and team — and sends you home with one action item to implement immediately.

• →Learn the 3 foundational cornerstones of every contractor business
• →Understand the 3 non-negotiables of building and leading a vision-centered team
• →Discover how an owner's process leadership directly impacts people, profit, and productivity
• →Create a proven plan for predicting your profit

Hear the true story of a simple-minded contractor who started 2020 thin on cash — and three years later runs his business on a sure foot with zero debt.

You can run a small or large firm on cash. Stop the creditor calls, stop living deposit-to-deposit, and stop going to bed hoping the next receivable hits tomorrow.

• →See how running on one or two bank accounts is quietly crippling your business
• →Watch real examples of cash growing over time — even when annual revenue declines
• →Walk away with a simple structure you can implement tomorrow, and the roadmap to do it
• →Confront the 4 major roadblocks keeping you from retaining the cash you've already earned

Hear the true story of a simple-minded contractor who started 2020 thin on cash — and three years later runs his business on a sure foot with zero debt.

You can run a small or large firm on cash. Stop the creditor calls, stop living deposit-to-deposit, and stop going to bed hoping the next receivable hits tomorrow.

• →See how running on one or two bank accounts is quietly crippling your business
• →Watch real examples of cash growing over time — even when annual revenue declines
• →Walk away with a simple structure you can implement tomorrow, and the roadmap to do it
• →Confront the 4 major roadblocks keeping you from retaining the cash you've already earned

What if you could exit your business without selling your soul, sacrificing income, or staying tethered to the chaos you built? In this talk, Thomas walks through how to design your business with the end in mind — so when it's time to step away, your income doesn't disappear with your presence.

This is not about a fantasy sale. It is about building a business so well-structured, documented, and people-powered that someone else can run it while you still benefit from it.

• →Understand the "Sellable Without Selling" strategy — make it functionally sellable even if you never sell
• →Build your business like a franchise using the Master Process Roadmap
• →Develop income streams that don't rely on your daily involvement
• →Shift from hero to architect — transition out without chaos and avoid the earn-out trap

Most contractors build with grit, hustle, and hands-on know-how. But when it's time to exit — by sale, succession, or simply stepping back — the business they built often collapses under its own weight. Why? Because it wasn't built to run without them.

This is a roadmap for contractors who want a business that's not just profitable but transferable. You'll learn how to create systems that outlive your involvement, structure your business like an asset, and prepare for an exit that doesn't end in stress, loss, or chaos.

• →Recognize the key traits of a sellable contracting business
• →Document and systematize for transferability with your Master Process Roadmap
• →Develop an exit-ready organizational structure and financial clarity
• →Plan for an exit that pays you — without chaos, while preserving legacy and peace

We don't start a business to have it dominate our lives. The real test of a transitionable business is not whether it can run without the owner present — but whether it can grow when the owner is away.

Drawing on personal experience ditching phone and email to leave his business for 30 days, Thomas shares real stories of owners just like you who did the same while their business grew and transitioned without them.

• →Learn 3 blind spots that keep owners stuck doing it all themselves
• →Understand the opportunity in shifting your time from "doing" to "solving"
• →Build the roadmap to recruit, hire, and retain engaged talent
• →Discover the three foundational layers every business needs — no expensive software or borrowed money

Most meetings suck the life out of everyone and leave teams more confused than connected. Are meetings even necessary? What makes a great meeting? Who should be in them?

Drawing from hundreds of construction businesses, Thomas helps you identify exactly which meetings are needed, who needs to be involved, and what agendas will lead to an airtight communication loop where clarity is achieved and meaningful culture is built.

• →Achieve clarity on the 5 meetings every business should run
• →Leave with an agenda template you can use tomorrow
• →Understand the clarity your meetings should bring
• →Leverage meetings so you never lead one again — while developing new leaders

Thomas walks you through the difference between a "lifestyle business" and a "value-creation business" — one that allows you to unlock the purpose, people, process, and profit of your business while living with real impact today and tomorrow.

This talk catapults you from feeling like your business is a burden and reframes it into a massive asset that allows for significant value for you, your family, and many others. Want to sell your business someday? This is the talk you need.

• →Learn how much of your net worth is locked away in your business
• →Determine the most and least profitable systems in your business
• →Realize the number one myth about workforce engagement
• →Leave with ONE thing to implement tomorrow that builds real value

Most owners assume they have a marketing problem, a sales problem, or an operations problem. This talk provides unexpected insight into the real issue that owners wrestle with in the middle of the night — and how to solve it, starting with one page.

Having worked with hundreds of contractors across North America, Thomas shows you — on a single page — the tools every business owner needs to be liberated from chaos and make time for what matters most.

• →Use one sheet of paper to map incredible clarity into your existing business
• →Understand the myths most business owners silently believe
• →Identify the four must-have cornerstones of every contracting business
• →Leave the room with one action item to implement immediately