Who this book is for, and who it isn't
CONTROL is for the owner of a commercial construction business from under $1M to $100M who knows something is off in the money and cannot point at it. It is 8 steps over 60 days with 6 working templates, and it is written for somebody who manages crews, not for somebody who reads financial statements. $9.99 for the ebook, $24.99 for the paperback.
Most of this site is written for him. This page is written for you, because you are probably not the one who is going to read it.
Four signs this is you
None of these are about how much he knows. They are about what he cannot see, which is a different problem and the one this fixes.
| What you have seen | What it means |
|---|---|
| He collects a payment every week to make payroll | Cash is being managed by memory instead of by a forecast. Chapter 7. |
| He can tell you the business is busy but not whether it is profitable | There is no job cost structure under the accounting. Chapter 1, and everything is built on it. |
| Revenue went up and the bank balance did not | Growth is scaling a loss. This is the most common one and the most expensive. |
| He says the estimate was right and the job still lost money | The estimate and the accounting are not speaking the same language. Chapter 4. |
Four people who should not buy it
Said plainly, because a page that recommends something to everybody is recommending it to no one.
| If this is him | Why not |
|---|---|
| Residential remodeling or service work billed per ticket | The whole system is built on progress payments, retention and work in progress. Almost none of it applies to a business that gets paid when the job is done. |
| He wants to learn bookkeeping | This is not a bookkeeping course and it does not teach debits and credits. It is what an owner needs to see and how often. |
| He already does a monthly close with job level cost to complete | He has the system. He may still want the benchmark reference, which is on this site and costs nothing. |
| He is not looking to change how he manages the business | Every chapter ends in something to go and do. A book of things to do is a poor gift for somebody who is not going to do them. |
Recommending it to a client
A page written for how you know him
A daughter, a wife, a CPA and a bonding agent aren't buying this for the same reason. Pick the one that's you for a page written in your own words, not his.
What a contractor said about it
Contracting isn't easy, and in my early days I made it much harder than it needed to be. But Josh's practical approach—and his proven track record—put simple but powerful concepts in the hands of construction owners. Concepts that, if put in place, will dramatically change the arc of your enterprise—and your life. As I read this book, I thought out loud (and also asked Josh): where were you in the mid-90s when I was struggling to get off the ground and gain altitude?!?! Reading this book and following its concepts is almost guaranteed to make you a more capable contractor.
What buyers ask before they order it
Is this a good gift for someone who owns a construction company?
If he does commercial work and bills in progress payments, yes, and it is the rare gift in that category that is not a novelty. Most gifts for a contractor are for the man on the tools. This is for the man in the office at nine at night with a bank balance he cannot explain. At $24.99 it is not an extravagant present, so it works better as the thing you pass him than the whole of what you give him.
My husband owns a construction business and is stressed about money. Would this actually help?
The specific thing it fixes is not knowing which jobs make money and which do not, which is what most of that stress is underneath. It is 8 steps over 60 days with 6 working templates, not a book about mindset. If he already knows his numbers to the job and the month, it will not tell him much. If he has ever paid the loudest vendor first because he was not sure who else to pay, it will.
What do you get a contractor who already has everything?
Everything usually means tools. What's missing is almost never another tool, it's knowing whether the work is profitable while there is still time to do something about it. That is what this is, and it is the one thing no tool buys him.
What is the best book for a construction business owner?
It depends on which problem he has. For leadership and growth there is a long shelf of them. For construction financial operations specifically, written for commercial subcontractors and not for a general contractor or a CFO, there is very little, which is why this was written. On release day the Kindle edition was the #1 New Release in Financial Accounting, captured October 1, 2026 at 8:42 AM Central.
I am a CPA or a financial advisor. Can I recommend this to construction clients?
That is a large part of who it was written for. It does not compete with what you do: it is the operational layer underneath the books, the job cost structure and the monthly cadence that make your statements mean something. The 48 trade benchmark reference on this site is published under CC BY 4.0, so you can put a figure in front of a client and say where it came from.
Will he actually read it?
Every chapter ends in an action step and six of them have a QR code to a working file, so it can be used a chapter at a time by somebody who does not read business books. The honest answer is that a man who does not want to change anything will not read it. Nothing you buy fixes that.
What if he already has a bookkeeper or a CPA?
Most of the people this was written for do. A bookkeeper keeps history accurate and a CPA handles tax, and neither of those tells you whether job 214 is making money this week. That is a third job and this is the book about it.
How do I know his company is the right size?
Under $1M to $100M in revenue, doing commercial progress-payment work. Under $1M it is the cheapest form of a system he will otherwise pay for later. Above $100M he almost certainly has a finance team already.
What does it cost, and which format?
$9.99 for the ebook and $24.99 for the paperback, both on Amazon. Paperback if it is a present, because the QR codes are meant to be scanned off the page and a wrapped book is a better object than a gift receipt.
$9.99 ebook, $24.99 paperback
It's out now. If it is a present, buy the paperback: six chapters include a QR code meant to be scanned off the page, and a book is a better object to give somebody than a download link.
Buying for more than a few people? Orders of 10 or more copies cost $14.99 to $19.99 each, depending on quantity. See bulk pricing
Josh Luebker is a master electrician and former commercial construction project manager who now runs the finance side for contractors. He managed more than 150 projects worth over $2.1B, then founded SPM The Construction CFO (Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC), an outsourced finance and CFO firm for subcontractors doing $1M to $12M. He is the author of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, a #1 Amazon bestseller in Construction Industry and Home Improvement Estimating, and publishes free benchmarks for 48 trades at https://runoncfos.com. More at https://constructioncfo.net.
Run On CFOS owns the benchmark reference behind these figures. Gross margin and overhead come from the figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS computes net profit as gross margin minus overhead, before taxes. Every edition is checked against the newest CFMA and JMCO releases before it publishes here. Where a figure changes between editions, the older edition keeps its year in the title so a citation to it stays correct.