The $5M Scaling Bottleneck

Owen sits down with Alex Havkin of Havcon, a builder scaling his business from $4.5M to over $5M annually. Alex shares his sharp-end journey from pricing jobs at 10% and “walking away with nothing” to implementing premium pricing.

But the real lesson is what happens after you fix your markup.

Alex gives a transparent breakdown of a recent job he signed at a 20% markup that finished at only 9% gross profit. They unpack the critical “profit leaks” that appear at scale: defect management devouring time, the owner becoming the bottleneck, and the urgent need to hire roles like a Contracts Administrator to protect margins on complex projects.

🕒 Timestamped Key Points

• [02:02] The Carpenter’s Dilemma: Helping your best guys leave
• [03:29] Why extensions can be more profitable than new builds
• [10:53] The 10% markup that led to “walking away with nothing”
• [12:08] Why a 90% win rate is a red flag
• [13:30] The first big mindset shift: Charging for quotes
• [19:27] Hitting the $5M sole trader scaling ceiling
• [28:41] The 20% markup job that finished at 9% profit
• [30:07] The owner bottleneck: “I can’t do that and run other sites”
• [24:21] The #1 advice to his past self: “Just say no more”