Two Trips, One Clearer Picture

I’ve spent a good part of the last month in airports, and while that’s not on anyone’s list of pleasant experiences, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Between CFMA’s annual conference and my first national board meeting with the American Subcontractors Association (ASA) in Washington, D.C., I went from comparing notes with construction finance teams in breakout sessions to sitting alongside subcontractors making their case directly to lawmakers.

Though two very different rooms, they framed the same problem from opposite ends, and left me with one main takeaway: when the pressures on subcontractors are this ingrained, you don’t beat them by taking on more work. It's getting more deliberate about the work you take on in the first place.

On Capitol Hill: Subcontractor Pressures Took Center Stage

D.C. was a crash course in how deep these issues actually run. Every year, the ASA National Board travels to D.C. to meet with lawmakers about the problems subcontractors face and the legislative changes that could support their businesses.

Across nearly every meeting on Capitol Hill, two topics dominated: the labor shortage and getting subcontractors paid. While the workforce crisis has been a long-standing issue in the construction space, this year’s conversation centered on immigration. The stories people shared were hard to shake—workers detained on jobsites, trucks pulled over and towed, employees afraid to show up for work, and subcontractors passing on major projects because they know they do not have the labor to staff them.

The payment side of the conversation was just as pointed. On federal jobs, subcontractors cannot simply stop work when payment stops, which means they can—and often do—end up financing the gap themselves while they wait on change orders or delayed approvals. Sitting in those meetings underscored much of what I already know: for subs, getting paid is the constraint that defines how confidently they can run their business.

One of the more memorable moments was when a staffer told us that 95% of advocacy feels like a waste of time, but that the other 5% matters, because every so often a story lands. That stuck with me. On the Hill, these issues blur into talking points a lawmaker has heard a hundred times; what cuts through is someone making one of those talking points concrete—what a stalled payment or a detained crew actually does to a business trying to operate, hire, and grow.

At CFMA: An Appetite for Getting Growth Right

If D.C. was a lesson in how much is outside subs’ control, CFMA Annual was a lesson in what they can control. The growth conversation was much less about chasing more work and more about scaling without overwhelming their cash, systems, or judgment.

One session in particular stood out. The speaker described sorting customers into tiers: all-stars, veterans, rookies, and transactional accounts. The all-stars get pursued hard. Everyone else gets a clear-eyed look at what the relationship actually costs. The underlying idea is simple, but easy to forget when you're trying to grow: not all revenue is equal.

That lands differently once you've felt how cash moves through a contracting business. Every project ties up money you have to float for months before it comes back—mobilization, payroll, materials, and retention held until the very end (or two years after you’ve wrapped up your work on the job).

Knowing that, the subs that scale size up a client the way a lender sizes up a borrower—how they've paid in the past, how they handle change orders, how long they sit on retention—before they ever sign. They know that a job that looks profitable on paper can still be the wrong one if the client is notorious for slow payments. Choosing on purpose means being willing to turn down revenue that costs more than it returns.

Why I Keep Getting on Planes

As a co-founder and a new mom, being on the road is exhausting. But I wouldn't trade the chance to be in as many of these rooms, and as many of these conversations, as I can. Being surrounded by people who care about the future of subcontracting as much as my team and I do isn't just validating—it's what keeps me energized for the work.

I particularly loved the time I spent with our customers at CFMA. An hour spent talking with someone running billing or finance inside a growing subcontractor teaches me more than a stack of industry reports ever could. And presenting at CFMA the past two years was its own reminder of how hungry people still are for practical education in this space.

Maybe that’s how the 5% starts to compound:

• A lawmaker hears one story that strikes a personal chord. 
• A room full of operators compares notes, and leave with a fix for a problem they’d been stuck on. 
• A finance leader asks the question everyone else has been carrying but didn’t want to say out loud. 

While the details may change from room to room, the underlying pressures don’t. Labor constraints affect capacity, and payment delays affect confidence. While change on those fronts is slow, hard-won work, the operators who win don't wait on it—they get deliberate about which jobs, which clients, and which terms are actually worth it.

That mindset has real implications for how we think about Siteline. We already help subcontractors bill efficiently and gain greater visibility into payments and project health. But these trips pushed my thinking further: 

• How do we help a customer weigh the cash flow implications of a job before they take it? 
• How do we help them tell, earlier, which clients and projects are worth the investment—and which aren't? 
• How can we continue to support them in the broader challenge of getting paid in an industry where that is still far from guaranteed?

All that to say, I left both trips more convinced than ever that this work matters. The opportunity in front of us is bigger than simply making billing easier; it's helping subcontractors operate with more clarity and control as they grow. And I think that's worth a few more mornings in the airport.