Herb Sargent is board chair of Sargent Corporation, a heavy civil contractor in Maine that turned 100 this year. Scott Peper is CEO and founder of Mobilization Funding, which helps contractors cash flow their projects. They wrote a book together, and they came on to talk about the opportunity in your construction business you’re most excited about that turns out to be a Trojan horse.
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What a Trojan Horse Looks Like in a Construction Business
Herb has wheeled in more than one. He names a project, a bad hire, a bad acquisition and a new operation bolted onto the business. Each time, he says, nobody penciled it out or decided ahead of time how much they’d lose before giving it the heave-ho.
One was a design-build project the company was excited about. Sargent had plenty of backlog and didn’t need the job. They chased it anyway, and it became “a millstone around our neck” for a while.
Design-build carried more liability than Sargent’s usual work, and the company wasn’t yet well heeled at structuring the design and geotech contracts. One person drove the pursuit and built a team around it.
Herb borrows a line from Jim Collins. “Let’s fire musket balls before cannonballs.” Sargent, he admits, went “right to the cannonballs.”
Set a Loss Limit Before You Start
Sargent spent ten years in the ready mix business. “We lost money every single year at it,” Herb says.
What should they have done? Picked a number on the way in. This is as low as we go, and then we’re out.
“Instead of doing that, we kept betting on it.”
The acquisition Herb writes about in the book went the same way. Sargent felt backed into a corner, and Herb calls the homework they did “weak, quite frankly.” Today Sargent’s board has external directors who ask the tough questions.
Why Ego Is the Trojan Horse in Construction Leadership
So what wheels the horse through the gate? “Our ego is the Trojan horse,” Herb says. “Our ego tells us that we can make money at ready mix.”
Scott says his humility has grown over the years. His ego still talks to him. “My ego used to tell me, do it… My ego now tells me the same thing, but it says, what don’t you know?”
Use Your Estimator as an Insulator
Herb puts the estimator between the job and the ego. The estimator’s job “is to tell us what it’s gonna cost.” Then leadership decides how hard to go after it.
That keeps leadership out of the cuts and fills, where somebody gets excited and says, “This is a Sargent job. We got to have this job.”
The bonding company keeps you honest too. “We’re renting their balance sheet when we go to work on a public project that’s bonded,” Herb says.
Cash Flow Warning Signs Lenders Look For
Scott sees the Trojan horse from the lender’s side. One sentence tells him something’s off. “I gotta keep money coming in.”
Here’s what it usually means. The contractor overbilled a job and spent that money starting other jobs. “You now have a series of jobs you’re halfway through that have no profit and no cash flow on.”
Scott also pushes contractors on new kinds of work. One flooring contractor that had stayed under 10 stories opened a Miami office to take on 30- and 40-story condo towers. They priced every floor at the same square-foot rate, and Scott told them the 30th floor would cost more than the first.
Construction Management: Get the Field Talking to Accounting
Picture a project running two or three weeks ahead of schedule. The first big material buy comes sooner. The PM assumes the money is sitting there, and accounting had other plans for it.
Now there’s no cash or trade credit for the material. “Now you just lost the three weeks that you just spent two months building,” Scott says.
Sargent is employee-owned, and Herb wants foremen to see the enterprise above their job without carrying the stress of it. “I don’t want them to be burdened about finances. But I want them to know they have an impact.”
How to Get Veterans to Mentor Young Hands
Sargent is a young company now. Herb says about 60 percent of the workforce is under 40.
Six or seven years ago, the superintendents complained about one operator. He was the best operator they had, and he hated the young guys.
Herb sat down with him and asked what he wanted his legacy to be. The operator said he didn’t worry about legacy.
So Herb laid it out. He could retire after 35 years with a plaque, or he could pour into the young guys and leave something that lasts another half a century.
About a year and a half later, Herb saw him on a job with a foreman around 23 years old. Herb asked the young foreman how he liked working with Stevie.
“I love Stevie. We’re going fishing after work today.”
It took a 15-minute conversation.
How to Tell if You’re the Bottleneck in Your Construction Business
“At some point every owner is the bottleneck if your organization continues to grow,” Scott says. What matters is whether the owner sees it and builds a plan to fix it.
The owner who doesn’t see it is standing in a dumpster fire telling you it’s not hot. His phone blows up every three minutes.
Herb hit that wall in the late 1990s with 60 or 70 people. He was on every job every day until it hit him. “I am the bottleneck. We’re not going any further.”
He brought in a VP of operations, his old boss from a former company, and stopped approving every invoice and every submittal. “When you’re the person that has to have all the answers, that is the bottleneck.”
Hand Someone the Keys for Half a Day
Herb’s test is simple. Leave for half a day, put someone in charge and tell them what winning looks like. Debrief afterward.
He’s found that the people who get that half day get better at the job they already have.
Why the New Hire Didn’t Fix It
What about the owner who hires help and is still the bottleneck two years later? Scott says the hire is the beginning of the process. Hire on character and capacity, then teach the skills.
“The people you hire don’t scale your business. Your systems and your processes scale your business.”
About Field Tested
Herb and Scott connected on LinkedIn. After Herb went on Scott’s podcast, Scott told him a three- or four-hour version of that conversation would make a book.
Each chapter stands on its own, with a story and action steps. Thinking about buying a company? Start with the Trojan horse chapter.
Field Tested: Lessons in Leading, Losing, and Winning in Construction is out on Amazon November 3, 2026. Pre-order it now.
Here’s your homework. Think about the last opportunity you chased outside your normal work. Did you set the number where you’d walk away before you started?
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About the Guests
Herb Sargent is the board chair of Sargent Corporation, a heavy civil construction company founded by his grandfather as HE Sargent in Maine in 1926 with a used dump truck and little else. Herb left the company in 1991 after it was sold, started Sargent & Sargent with his brother, Shane, and then bought HE Sargent in 2005, merging the two companies into Sargent Corporation. In 2013, he sold 100 percent of Sargent to the people who built it, turning every employee into an owner. It was a decision rooted in the belief that the people are the company. Herb divides his time between Maine and Florida with his wife, Tristine.
Scott Peper is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Mobilization Funding. Prior to Mobilization Funding, Scott spent 17 years in the healthcare industry, where he held numerous positions in sales, sales management, corporate contracting, and executive management. He is a TEDx speaker, the host of the business and entrepreneurial podcast “The Mobilization Mindset,” and author of The Big Book of Cash Flow. He is known across the construction industry for the content and education he offers to the community and his expertise in helping businesses successfully cash flow their projects and customers.
Field Tested on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Field-Tested-Lessons-Leading-Construction/dp/B0HM2TXYS3
Connect with Herb Sargent
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herb-sargent-esop/
Sargent Corporation: https://sargent.us/
Starbuck and Sargent podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starbuck-sargent/id1856531285
Starbuck and Sargent podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/69cwlj204MHTi2VU4YqfFz
Starbuck and Sargent podcast (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLDSUenRA8FnAutJfYt6ZMQTnLxSfEx33ng
Connect with Scott Peper
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-peper-9387288/
Mobilization Funding: https://mobilizationfunding.com/
Mobilization Funding on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mobilization-funding/
The Mobilization Mindset podcast: https://mobilizationfunding.com/videos/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MobilizationFunding
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