Charlotte Build Expo 2026 | Keynotes & Seminars

You will hear the true story of how one simple-minded contractor started 2020 thin on cash not realizing what the rest of the year had in store.

Three years later his business is on a sure foot while taking on zero debt. He borrowed no money and has no need to ask his vendors, partners, or subs for additional time for payment. 

You can run a small or large firm on cash. You can stop the constant calls from creditors wondering when they are going to get their money. You can stop living from deposit to deposit. You can stop going to bed every night hoping the next receivable will be in the mailbox tomorrow.

In this life-changing talk, Scott Beebe (CEPA) will share real numbers from a simple contractor that will motivate and inspire you to build a business without being dictated by chaos, and placing you in the driver’s seat. 

Learning Objectives 

1. See how using one or two bank accounts in your business is crippling 

2. Watch real life examples unfold showing the growth of the cash over time…even when a business declines in annual revenue 

3. Walk away with a simple structure you can implement tomorrow and the roadmap to do so 

4. Confront the 4 major roadblocks keeping you from retaining the cash you have already received

Customers often focus on the lowest bid they receive. Contractors spend more time getting as low a number as possible as opposed to making a good profit on projects. Contractors are capable of winning work but struggle in securing a reasonable profit on their projects. The result is focusing on bidding and quoting as opposed to full customer engagement to drive higher profits. There are very effective methods to increase margins within a solid sales effort. These methods will be presented and examples of their success related. Contractors and suppliers alike will benefit from this detailed information.

The most expensive person on most contracting job sites is the owner — and they don't even know it. When the owner is the only one who knows how to make decisions, approve scopes, answer client questions, and solve field problems, the business has a ceiling it can never break through. In this keynote, you'll see live AI examples of how contractor owners across the country are removing themselves as the bottleneck — without losing control, without losing quality, and without adding headcount. This is not theory. You will watch it work.
 Learning Objectives:
 
 

1.     Identify the exact operational chokepoints where owner dependency is silently capping growth — and learn why adding employees without removing yourself as the bottleneck only accelerates chaos.

2.     See live AI examples of how contractor owners are documenting, delegating, and deploying their own decision-making standards into AI systems — so the business runs on their thinking, not their presence.

3.     Leave with a clear first step for building an AI-powered operating layer inside your own contracting business — starting with the one system that is costing you the most time every single week.

In this class we will layout how to determine what associations to join, how to work them and get business from your involvement. The single greatest way to find grouped customers and network contacts is right in your backyard association! Work them to the fullest and you'll never make a cold call again!

https://www.tomwoodcocksealthedeal.com

Based on the EOS (entrepreneurial operating system) 6 key components of running your business more effectively and maximizing profitability. EOS is based off the book Traction, written by Geno Wickman and used by hundreds of companies to break through the ceiling when they are stuck. This simple set of practical tools helps to increase accountability throughout the organization.  

Discover how to use ChatGPT effectively to reduce marketing costs and generate better leads. Learn the prompts that improve AI visibility, strengthen your website’s credibility, eliminate ineffective marketing messages, and identify hidden opportunities using Search Console. Leave with practical strategies you can implement immediately to attract more qualified customers.

In this lively and highly informative discussion, Ann McNeill, the "Master Builder" explains the steps, skills, and strategies needed for construction contractors to successfully bid on and obtain work with governments.

Ann has worked with all levels of government and specializes in helping small businesses thrive.

Most contractor owners are either ignoring AI entirely or buying expensive tools that deliver almost nothing — because they're putting ornaments on a tree that doesn't exist yet. In this hands-on workshop, you'll watch a live AI estimating agent run real scope packages in real time — and learn exactly why it works, how it was built, and how to build your own version for your contracting business. No coding. No tech background required. Just a documented process, a $20/month tool, and the right build order.
 Learning Objectives:
 
 

1.     Identify which of the three types of AI your business is currently using — and why only one of them creates a real competitive advantage for contractor owners.

2.     Apply the 10/80/10 Rule to your estimating workflow so AI does the heavy lifting while you stay in control of quality and approval.

3.     Walk away with a blueprint for building your own AI estimating agent — trained on your scope language, your trade packages, and your fixed-cost protection standards.

How to use federal programs to fast-track your revenue and legally bypass the bidding wars

Want to stop fighting over low-margin local bids and break into high-paying federal construction contracts? The U.S. Federal Government is the world's largest buyer of construction services, and by law, billions of dollars are locked away exclusively for firms utilizing specific federal programs.

If you aren’t aggressively leveraging certifications like 8(a), HUBZone, WOSB, and VOSB, you are leaving massive, guaranteed revenue on the table for your competitors. Even better—programs like Joint Ventures and the SBA Mentor-Protégé agreement allow you to team up with larger contractors to win massive federal projects you couldn't qualify for alone.

In this high-impact session, we strip away the complex government bureaucracy and give you the exact roadmap to position your construction firm for elite federal status.

What you will learn:

• The Big Three Catalysts: How to get positioned on the GSA Schedule, capture emergency FEMA funding, and leverage the 8(a) program for sole-source (no-bid) contracts.
• The Teaming Secret Weapon: How to legally use Joint Ventures and the Mentor-Protégé program to bid on massive federal projects using a larger partner's past performance.
• The Target Demographics: How to stack HUBZone, Veteran-Owned (VOSB), and Women-Owned (WOSB) status to eliminate 95% of your competition.
• The Fatal Compliance Trap: The #1 reason construction firms lose their federal certifications mid-project—and how to bulletproof your business against audit failures.

Stop guessing at government paperwork. Come learn the step-by-step framework to unlock a steady stream of highly profitable, recession-proof federal work.

It is paramount that contractors realize that the most important aspect of their business is sales. Without them you have nothing. Yet, the amount of attention given to sales by most contractors is minimal. This results in low profits and the ups and downs of revenue. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing is or how efficiently you run your business if you’re not closing deals. We’ll get you closing more projects at higher profits.

Most contractors don’t have a bookkeeping problem — they have a transparency problem. Thinking they
can skip investing in the accuracy of their numbers leads to thousands upon thousands of lost dollars and
sometimes, the demise of the business altogether. Accurate numbers tell a story: which jobs are actually
profitable, where cash is quietly leaking, and whether the business can survive its next growth spurt. Most
owners just aren’t set up to hear it, because "good enough" books were never built to talk back.
This session is not a bookkeeping tutorial. It's a live demonstration of how a P&L can look completely
correct, and still be wrong. Attendees leave with a clear picture of what their financials should look like
and be telling them, why the consequences of ignoring that story is often invisible until they’re
expensive, and what it actually looks like to run a contracting business that makes decisions from real
numbers instead of gut feel.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
Read their own P&L the way their business actually needs it read — and identify the financial blind
spots specific to job-costed, contract-based businesses, not generic small-business bookkeeping
advice.
Recognize the early warning signs that their books are hiding a problem instead of revealing one.
Understand the real, often-delayed cost of poor financial visibility.
Walk away with a short list of questions their financials should be able to answer today — and know
within minutes whether theirs can.

How to put AI to work in your business this week. The mindset shift (treat it like an employee, not a search bar), how to set up a workspace with roles and your real company docs, a simple prompt framework, and two starter plays: reviewing sub bids in 90 seconds and drafting a scope of work in two minutes. Everyone leaves with something they can run Monday.

Tired of losing good jobs to "bad" (over priced) financing? In this fast, fun, and practical session, we'll show you how to use the Figure Loan to help your customers say "yes" faster - and to bigger projects. Whether you're a remodeler, roofer, painter, or jack-of-all-trades, this talk will break down how you can grow your revenue without adding a single dollar of dealer fees.

We'll keep it simple and real. You'll walk away with:

• Why traditional financing doesn't always work (and what to do instead)

• How to present Figure's 100% digital Loan in plain English

• What to say when customers say, "We need to think about it..."

• Real-life examples of contractors using this tool to close more deals

• How to get started in less time than it takes to eat a burrito

This session is for residential contractors who want to make more money without being a finance expert. No jargon. No fluff. Just tools you can use right away.

Learn how to fix the two biggest marketing leaks costing contractors revenue: poor website engagement and slow lead follow-up. Discover how AI can improve website performance, automate personalized responses, re-engage lost prospects, and increase close rates. Build a smarter marketing system that converts more leads without increasing your advertising budget.

Is your financial house in order? Discover the tools construction company owners can use to strengthen lawsuit protection, reduce tax exposure, and build long-term financial security in a high-risk industry.

1) Learn how to manage common construction risks including job site injuries, property damage, subcontractor liability, contract disputes, and employee claims- and how proper business structure can help protect both business and personal assets.

2) Explore proven tax reduction strategies many contractors overlook, helping potentially save thousands each year through better entity structure, deductions, and planning.

3) Understand how to avoid probate, reduce estate taxes, and prepare for a smooth business transition using a clear succession planning checklist designed to protect your company and provide continuity for employees and family.

Lawsuit Protection 

·        Common sources of lawsuits in the construction industry, including job site injuries, subcontractor negligence, defective work claims, and contract disputes- and how to proactively reduce exposure.

·        How construction company owners can structure their business to help protect personal and professional assets from litigation.

·        Strategies to help protect the business when facing judgments that exceed insurance coverage or fall outside policy exclusions. 

·        Common asset protection mistakes construction owners make with entities, contracts, and insurance coordination and how to avoid them.

·        How to reduce vicarious liability for employees, subcontractors, and third-party vendors on job sites.

Tax Reduction and Estate Planning 

·        Five key tax reduction strategies construction company owners can use to potentially reduce income taxes by up to 40% annually.

·        Strategies to minimize or eliminate capital gains tax when selling a construction business, equipment-heavy assets, or investment property holdings.

·        What construction company owners should be doing now to prepare for a successful business succession or transfer of ownership.

·        Techniques to avoid probate and reduce estate taxes, helping ensure assets pass efficiently to heirs.

·        How to properly use corporations, LLCs, trusts, wills, and family limited partnerships in a construction business structure.

An introductory class explaining "no-bid" pathways in federal contracting, with definitions, eligibility, where they appear, and compliance basics. Participants will learn how relationships and market research factor in, and where to find authoritative rules and examples to capture government contracts.

Most contractors don’t have a bookkeeping problem — they have a transparency problem. Thinking they
can skip investing in the accuracy of their numbers leads to thousands upon thousands of lost dollars and
sometimes, the demise of the business altogether. Accurate numbers tell a story: which jobs are actually
profitable, where cash is quietly leaking, and whether the business can survive its next growth spurt. Most
owners just aren’t set up to hear it, because "good enough" books were never built to talk back.
This session is not a bookkeeping tutorial. It's a live demonstration of how a P&L can look completely
correct, and still be wrong. Attendees leave with a clear picture of what their financials should look like
and be telling them, why the consequences of ignoring that story is often invisible until they’re
expensive, and what it actually looks like to run a contracting business that makes decisions from real
numbers instead of gut feel.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
Read their own P&L the way their business actually needs it read — and identify the financial blind
spots specific to job-costed, contract-based businesses, not generic small-business bookkeeping
advice.
Recognize the early warning signs that their books are hiding a problem instead of revealing one.
Understand the real, often-delayed cost of poor financial visibility.
Walk away with a short list of questions their financials should be able to answer today — and know
within minutes whether theirs can.

This class empowers construction entrepreneurs with essential tools to build, grow, and sustain a successful business. Learn industry best practices, project management, marketing, and client relationship strategies. Gain actionable insights and practical skills to thirve in the competitive construction industry. 

Learn how to build a marketing system that consistently generates qualified leads. Discover the five channels every contractor should understand—Google Ads, Meta, retargeting, SEO, and AI search optimization—and how each supports business growth. Gain practical strategies for allocating your marketing budget, improving ROI, and creating a predictable pipeline of new opportunities.

The next level. How to set up AI agents that run on their own every morning (overnight bid intake, job-cost rollups), and the big one — building a single, always-current cost catalog from the invoices and bids you already have. This is where AI stops being a novelty and starts protecting margin.

A candid, practitioner-led panel on real-world AI in construction and government contracting: what's changing in workflows, compliance, bidding, and client expectations. Leaders share wins, stumbles, and practical guardrails so small and midsized firms can evaluate where AI fits-today and in the next 12 months.

Good marketing is meaningless if you don’t know how to close leads. Contractors spend significant dollars on marketing to produce leads. It’s necessary to use all the vehicles in regard to social media, A.I., web and e-newsletter marketing to gain leads. We’ll teach you how to raise your close rate and improve your ROI on that marketing investment. Marketing is NOT sales but can effectively lead to sales if leads are worked properly. Find out how.

"QuickBooks doesn’t work." "It never gives me the right numbers." We hear some version of this
constantly, and it’s almost never true. QuickBooks Online can do everything a contractor needs: job
costing, payroll allocation, work-in-progress tracking, all of it. The software isn’t the problem. The
problem is what got put into it, by someone who didn’t know what "correctly" looked like.
This session is the natural next step after "The Story Your Numbers Are Telling You." Where that session
showed what the numbers reveal once they’re right, this one shows why so many contractors’ numbers
never get there in the first place — and exactly what to check in your own file before you blame the
software.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
Explain why "the software is wrong" is almost always a data-entry problem in disguise — and why
that’s actually good news, because data entry is fixable.
Recognize the specific, common breakdowns that quietly wreck job costing in QuickBooks: jobs
tagged as customers, income counted twice, payroll that never lands on a job, and bills that go
missing until they’re paid.
Walk away knowing what to ask the person doing their books — whether that’s themselves, an
employee, or Devine Consulting.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" has been said for over 100 years — and it has never once been the real problem. The real problem is that contractor owners are trying to grow a culture without a recipe, hiring without a process, and leading without a playbook. In this workshop, you'll learn how to build the cultural ingredients that make people want to work for you — and how AI is now being deployed to find, screen, onboard, and retain the talent your competitors can't keep.
 Learning Objectives:
 
 

1.     Understand why culture is not luck, not ping pong tables, and not a generational problem — it is a direct result of the ingredients you intentionally put into your business, and how to start controlling those ingredients immediately.

2.     Build a repeatable, AI-assisted hiring and onboarding process that runs even when you're buried in jobs — so your best candidates don't disappear while you're putting out fires.

3.     Deploy the culture calendar framework to create a predictable, communication-rich environment that makes the next generation of workers not just show up — but stay.

Is your financial house in order? Discover the tools construction company owners can use to strengthen lawsuit protection, reduce tax exposure, and build long-term financial security in a high-risk industry.

1) Learn how to manage common construction risks including job site injuries, property damage, subcontractor liability, contract disputes, and employee claims- and how proper business structure can help protect both business and personal assets.

2) Explore proven tax reduction strategies many contractors overlook, helping potentially save thousands each year through better entity structure, deductions, and planning.

3) Understand how to avoid probate, reduce estate taxes, and prepare for a smooth business transition using a clear succession planning checklist designed to protect your company and provide continuity for employees and family.

Lawsuit Protection 

·        Common sources of lawsuits in the construction industry, including job site injuries, subcontractor negligence, defective work claims, and contract disputes- and how to proactively reduce exposure.

·        How construction company owners can structure their business to help protect personal and professional assets from litigation.

·        Strategies to help protect the business when facing judgments that exceed insurance coverage or fall outside policy exclusions. 

·        Common asset protection mistakes construction owners make with entities, contracts, and insurance coordination and how to avoid them.

·        How to reduce vicarious liability for employees, subcontractors, and third-party vendors on job sites.

Tax Reduction and Estate Planning 

·        Five key tax reduction strategies construction company owners can use to potentially reduce income taxes by up to 40% annually.

·        Strategies to minimize or eliminate capital gains tax when selling a construction business, equipment-heavy assets, or investment property holdings.

·        What construction company owners should be doing now to prepare for a successful business succession or transfer of ownership.

·        Techniques to avoid probate and reduce estate taxes, helping ensure assets pass efficiently to heirs.

·        How to properly use corporations, LLCs, trusts, wills, and family limited partnerships in a construction business structure.

Marketing doesn't have to mean trying every new platform, chasing every trend, or spending money on tactics that aren't connected to a clear goal. 
In this practical session, small business owners will learn five core strategies for creating simpler, more effective marketing in 2026. Attendees will identify where their business is today, clarify who they need to reach, understand how customers make decisions, determine what their marketing needs to accomplish, and develop a message that connects. 
The session will also explore how tools such as Al can support marketing without replacing the strategy, experience, and human connection that make a business stand out. 
Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of what to focus on now, what can wait, and how to make more intentional marketing decisions. 

"QuickBooks doesn’t work." "It never gives me the right numbers." We hear some version of this
constantly, and it’s almost never true. QuickBooks Online can do everything a contractor needs: job
costing, payroll allocation, work-in-progress tracking, all of it. The software isn’t the problem. The
problem is what got put into it, by someone who didn’t know what "correctly" looked like.
This session is the natural next step after "The Story Your Numbers Are Telling You." Where that session
showed what the numbers reveal once they’re right, this one shows why so many contractors’ numbers
never get there in the first place — and exactly what to check in your own file before you blame the
software.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
Explain why "the software is wrong" is almost always a data-entry problem in disguise — and why
that’s actually good news, because data entry is fixable.
Recognize the specific, common breakdowns that quietly wreck job costing in QuickBooks: jobs
tagged as customers, income counted twice, payroll that never lands on a job, and bills that go
missing until they’re paid.
Walk away knowing what to ask the person doing their books — whether that’s themselves, an
employee, or Devine Consulting.