I Ran a $4M Construction Company. Here’s What I Actually Took Home.

By Belkis Cruz

October 9, 2026 · Real Numbers

The number that sounds impressive at dinner parties: four million dollars in revenue.

I used to say it and let people fill in the blanks. Big company. Big money. Serious operator. All of that was true. But the blank people fill in is the part that isn’t.

I ran Casamia (formerly LBR Partners), a residential design-build firm, for years. We built beautiful homes. We had a team. I was on job sites, managing subs, reading contracts, chasing permits, and also somehow doing pickup at 3pm. That company taught me more about business than any MBA program could, which is a polite way of saying it also nearly broke me several times in ways I didn’t see coming.

Here’s what nobody tells you about running a construction company: the revenue number is almost a fiction. It sounds like yours. It’s not yours.

Where the Money Goes Before It’s Yours

On a $1M residential project, here’s a rough honest breakdown. Materials and subcontractors take somewhere between 60 and 70 cents of every dollar right off the top. That’s not a negotiating problem. That’s just construction. I had good subs, solid vendor relationships, and I still lived in that 60-70% range. The materials cost what they cost. Labor costs what it costs.

Then comes overhead, and this is where people get surprised. Insurance alone for a residential firm is genuinely alarming. General liability, workers’ comp, commercial auto, umbrella: I was spending over $40,000 a year on insurance before a single nail was driven. (I say this without exaggeration. You can go price it yourself. I’ll wait.)

Add payroll for admin and project management staff. Software. A small office, or at minimum a home office that actually functions. Bookkeeping, because you’re not doing your own books at this scale, and if you are, you’re making errors you don’t know about yet. Marketing. The random stuff that shows up every quarter because it’s construction and something always, always goes sideways. A change order you absorb. A client dispute that costs you a week of your project manager’s time. A punch-list that drags into month four.

By the time I paid everyone and everything else, net margin on a good year was somewhere between five and twelve percent. On a year with cost overruns or a difficult client, it went lower.

The Real Number Behind the Big Number

Let me give you an actual year. Revenue: around four million dollars. Net profit, after paying my team, my subs, my overhead, setting aside working capital for the next project, and paying taxes on the profit: roughly $240,000.

That number is real and it’s good. I’m not complaining. But if you heard “four million dollar company” and imagined I was sitting on a pile of cash somewhere, I want you to see what the spreadsheet actually said. Because I was also the person managing those projects, absorbing the stress of every delayed delivery and permit rejection, and doing it largely by myself. At a certain point you have to run the math on what that pays you per hour and whether it still makes sense.

I did run that math. That’s exactly why I eventually walked.

What Construction Taught Me About Everything Else

The margin reality of physical, project-based businesses is brutal. You’re essentially a bank for your clients while the project runs. You front material costs, pay subs on their schedule, and get paid on the client’s schedule, which is a polite way of saying you sometimes wait. Cash flow management in construction is a full-time job inside a full-time job.

When I started building digital products and service offerings, the margin comparison was almost embarrassing. A $2,000 website or funnel build costs me time, software I’m already paying for, and my brain. No subs, no materials, no insurance for equipment I don’t own. The net margin on a well-scoped digital project can be 80 to 90 percent. I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I actually wrote that down.

I’m not saying digital is easier. I’m saying the economics are different in ways that matter enormously if you’re thinking about where to put your next five years of energy.

The Thing I Wish Someone Had Written Down for Me

Revenue is a vanity metric until you understand what’s underneath it. A business doing $400K with 40% margins is a healthier business than one doing $4M with 5% margins, and it’s also a less exhausting business in ways that only make sense once you’ve lived inside both.

I am the person who ran the $4M version. I know what that spreadsheet actually says. And what it said, eventually, was: you are a very good operator who has maxed out the economics of this model. Go build something with better margins before this eats you alive.

So I did. And if you’re standing in front of a business model that looks impressive from the outside but leaves you confused about why your bank account doesn’t match the number you’re quoting people, pull out the spreadsheet. Not the revenue line. All of it.

Pray for a good year. Then open the Excel file and find out what good actually means.

Xo, Belkis