Cut Revenue in Half, Double Your Profit — with Luke Boyenger

Most contractors will tell you they run at 25%, 30%, even 40% gross margin. Almost none of them are right. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, host Rishi Srivastava sits down with Luke Boyenger — former EY auditor turned fractional CFO, running a firm built specifically for construction companies. Luke's family manufacturing business went bankrupt in the 2008 crisis, and the question "what did we get wrong?" sent him back to school at 24. What he found is the same gap he sees in nearly every contractor he talks to today: the finance seat is the last one to get filled. The uncomfortable thesis: revenue in construction doesn't create cash, it consumes it. Luke walks through why some contractors need to cut their business in half to double their profit, why a line of credit and your own cash is a fragile capital structure, why merchant cash advances trap good companies in a spiral, and why "revenue is something you should back your way into" after you've set a profit target. What we get into: - Why gross margin is almost always lower than owners think - $20M at $250K profit vs. $10M at $1M profit — real contractors who shrank and made more money - 60–120 day payment terms and why subcontractors are functioning as unpaid banks - What "capital infrastructure" actually means for a $10–30M subcontractor - The war chest: building 6–12 months of cash before you take distributions - The five KPIs every construction owner should review monthly - Why owners who know what to do still don't do it - Keeping business and personal finances clean — and why stacked entities and trusts usually backfire Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:00 From the trades to EY to fractional CFO 02:56 Where contractors are most confidently wrong 04:46 Profitability vs. "happy revenue" 06:44 Warning signs you're growing revenue at the expense of profit 09:00 Shrinking from $20M to $10M and making more money 10:21 Cash flow and capital infrastructure 14:10 MCAs, predatory lending, and 120% effective rates 15:09 Smarter capital tools before you're under pressure 17:20 Subcontractors as the industry's real banks 18:10 Operator vs. owner mindset 21:00 Managing by financial signals instead of gut feel 23:35 Why execution is so hard in construction finance 25:38 Weekly, monthly, and quarterly financial disciplines 26:35 Invoice terms, late-paying GCs, and how to bid for them 29:45 The biggest mistakes limiting $10–50M subcontractors 33:40 Separating business and personal finances 37:25 One uncomfortable financial truth for construction owners Finance at the Jobsite is hosted by Rishi Srivastava, founder of Beiing Human. New episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and YouTube — just search Finance at the Jobsite.