Most construction companies don’t break because the work is hard.
They break because leadership pressure compounds faster than the business is prepared to handle it.

In this episode of Builders, Makers, Doers, Andy and Elliot sit down with Tony Fucinaro, Managing Principal at MCL Construction, for a grounded conversation about what actually sustains a construction company as it grows.

Tony didn’t come up through a traditional construction path.
He started in the restaurant industry. High pressure. Tight margins. Real people problems.

That background shaped how he thinks about leadership, relationships, and decision-making under stress and why MCL chose a different path as it scaled from a small firm to nearly 300 employees.

This is not a project management episode.
It’s a leadership and ownership episode.

For construction, manufacturing, and specialty trades owners, this conversation goes deeper than job sites and schedules.

It’s about:

• Why relationship-first leadership outlasts low-bid thinking
• How critical thinking prevents small problems from becoming existential ones
• Why scaling gets harder when people become the real constraint
• The difference between authority and responsibility in leadership
• What owners must change as the business grows beyond them

Tony shares real lessons from decades inside MCL, including moments when the old way of doing construction simply stopped working and what had to change to protect the team, the culture, and the future of the business.

This episode explores:

1. Why most construction problems are thinking problems, not technical ones
2. How slowing down early creates speed later
3. Why leadership failures often show up as labor burnout
4. How owners quietly become the bottleneck without realizing it
5. What it really means to build a company that lasts beyond one generation

This episode isn’t about buildings.
It’s about building a business that can survive pressure, complexity, and time.

If you own or plan to own a trades business, this conversation will hit close to home.

🎧 Watch the full episode and subscribe to Builders, Makers, Doers.

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Connect with the Hosts

Andy Bassett
CEO, Ellerbrock-Norris
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-bassett-cpcu-cic-7711853/

Elliot Bassett
President and Partner, Ellerbrock-Norris
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliot-bassett-aip-cpcu-84499515/

🌐 https://www.ellerbrock-norris.com/