When I set out to record this episode of Constructive Conversations, I knew I was sitting down with someone who had built something rare in the heavy civil construction world — a genuine community. Aaron Witt, founder of BuildWitt, host of the Dirt Talk podcast, and self-proclaimed Chief Dirt Nerd, has spent years shining a light on an industry that keeps society running but rarely gets the recognition it deserves. Getting connected through the Contractors Association of West Virginia after they hosted Aaron at their mid-year meeting made this conversation happen, and I'm grateful it did.
What Exactly Is the Dirt World?
I asked Aaron to explain the Dirt World as if he were talking to a six-year-old, and his answer was both simple and profound. The dirt world, in his words, is everything we rely upon every day to keep our lives moving — earth moving, foundations for homes and roads, pipelines that deliver water, power lines that keep society energized. He coined the term because heavy civil construction and infrastructure just didn't have a fun, memorable name. Now it does.
It's not just earthmoving, he was quick to point out. It's concrete, asphalt, pipe, power lines — anything that keeps society moving every day of the week. Most people never think about where any of it comes from. Aaron has made it his mission to change that.
The Cold Call That Started It All
Aaron's origin story is one I think a lot of people in this industry will find both surprising and inspiring. His father was a tax lawyer who retired as a director at Deloitte — about as white collar as it gets. Aaron grew up in suburbia with no direct exposure to construction. But like a lot of young boys, he loved bulldozers from the time he could walk.
At 17, he noticed a massive construction project in his neighborhood — a 385 excavator digging 25 feet deep, placing 108-inch concrete pipe. He was captivated. Every afternoon after high school, he'd go watch the work. Eventually, he Googled the name on the side of the trucks — Pearson Construction Corporation — found their number, called the office, and asked to meet with Rich Pearson himself. Rich agreed to the meeting. And a week after Aaron graduated high school, he started as a laborer on a pipe crew.
That, he said, was it. He knew from day one that construction was for him. That instinct — and the willingness to pick up the phone and ask — set the entire trajectory of his career.
Building BuildWitt: From Instagram Photos to a Full Platform
Rich Pearson advised Aaron to go to college for engineering, and he did — graduating with a C average, as he laughed about, but graduating nonetheless. Along the way he worked for five different construction companies to figure out what he liked. After graduating, he headed to Texas to work in road construction, with a longer-term plan to eventually start his own contracting company.
At 22, he started posting photos of his work on social media — not with a grand strategy, but to build his personal brand and expand his career options. The content was something no one else was doing: high-quality storytelling in the construction industry. It grew fast. Before his 23rd birthday, he quit his job (he'd been recruited away from construction into a software company because of his online following), moved back in with his parents, bought a Sony camera, and started driving around the country visiting any job site that would have him.
There was no business plan. He'd photograph job sites for recruitment purposes, try to get companies to pay him, and if they liked it, maybe they'd pay him again. One client, then two, then six — and he had a business.
BuildWitt evolved over time from a marketing agency focused exclusively on civil construction and mining workforce development, to training software, to the annual Dirt World Summit — an event now in its fourth year that draws over 1,200 construction leaders. The marketing side has since been sold, and the focus now is on training and development software (BuildWitt Improve) and building the industry's next generation of leadership. Aaron himself spends his time podcasting, speaking, and visiting job sites — not just across America, but around the world.
Dirt Talk: 500+ Episodes and Counting
The Dirt Talk podcast launched in 2020 — and Aaron admitted he put it off for about a year because he was afraid he'd be terrible at it. His colleague Dan Briscoe finally convinced him to try. Now, more than 500 episodes later, the show publishes twice a week: a short 15-to-20-minute episode on what's happening inside BuildWitt week to week, and a longer Thursday episode that runs around two hours, featuring guests ranging from welders to CEOs of some of the largest contractors in America.
His approach to booking guests is something I found refreshing. He doesn't think about the audience when picking guests — he just talks to people he finds interesting. When you're genuinely excited about a conversation, he said, you don't have to fake it. That authenticity comes through. It's a lesson I've tried to apply to Constructive Conversations as well.
The Workforce Development Problem — and Where Leaders Are Getting It Wrong
This is the part of our conversation I suspect will resonate most with contractors. The skilled trades shortage is real, and Aaron had a perspective that I hadn't heard framed quite this way before.
Previous generations didn't have a skills gap because most people grew up around the trades. They naturally developed a work ethic and hands-on skills without formal training. But over one or two generations, the United States shifted from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy — finance, real estate, pharmaceuticals, technology. We stopped making things. And now we have an entire generation that never had exposure to the trades growing up, and who also can't learn on the job the way previous generations could, because litigation and insurance requirements mean they can't make the same kinds of trial-and-error mistakes.
The infrastructure need hasn't gone away. We still need roads, water, sewer, power. But the pipeline of people who know how to build and maintain all of it has dried up.
Aaron's answer isn't to fight the college system or blame the next generation. His answer starts with the mirror. What if we as leaders are part of the problem? That reframe — from pointing outward to looking inward — is the core of his message. The companies he sees winning aren't winning because of secret bidding strategies or equipment advantages. They're winning because they have leaders who accept responsibility and focus on their people.
The Hardest Leadership Lessons
Aaron was remarkably candid about his own leadership journey. He's been learning how to lead at the same time he's been figuring out who he is as a person — and those two things colliding, he said, creates complete chaos. He's made mistakes, hurt people, and carried a lot of shame along the way.
What he's been working on recently is learning to forgive himself for those mistakes — not to excuse them, but to stop carrying the weight indefinitely. He's still accountable. The mistakes still happened. But he has to do something constructive with them and move forward.
He also pushed back on the idea that leadership can be learned entirely from books. You can read Extreme Ownership a hundred times, he said, but that doesn't make you a leader. You have to build experience, and most of that experience comes from really painful failure. There's no shortcut. There's just doing your best, making mistakes, learning from them, and repeating that cycle for years.
America's Infrastructure: A Missed Opportunity
One of the more provocative threads in our conversation was about the state of American infrastructure and where all the money is actually going. Aaron has now visited job sites on six of seven continents, and what surprised him most traveling the world wasn't how different construction is elsewhere — it's how similar it is, and how America, despite having the dollars, is performing in the middle of the pack.
The numbers he cited were sobering. The cost per mile of interstate, inflation adjusted, is now three times what it was when the interstate system was originally built. The most recent historic infrastructure bill was a trillion dollars — and the feedback he's heard from major construction executives is that, after all the layers of consultants and overhead, much of it simply covered inflation. We spent a trillion dollars and the roads aren't noticeably better.
He sees it as a massive opportunity, though. Not a reason for despair, but a reason to get to work. His goal is to help build an industry that leads the world again — and he believes it starts with developing better leaders who develop better people.
Lightning Round Highlights
Favorite job site sound: A dozer backing up — the clanking.
Favorite piece of equipment: Big excavator. But anything that moves dirt works for him.
Book recommendation: The Psychology of Money — the best personal finance book he's read, and he's read it twice.
Pitch to a skeptical parent about the trades: We've spent decades pushing people into professional careers, and people are less happy and less healthy than ever. Working under fluorescent lights doing meaningless work with people you don't like will do that. Nobody in the trades has to wonder what they're doing in the world or why.
Nashville restaurant recommendation: 1230 Club downtown — great dinner, live music that isn't obnoxious, right on Broadway if you want to stay out.
One Message for Every Contractor Leader in America
I closed by asking Aaron what he would say to every contractor leader in the country if he had 60 seconds. His answer was simple: get better. Get healthier, mentally and physically. Work on communication. Spend more time with your people. The leader, he said, is the lid on the jar. If the leader isn't getting better, there's no reason to expect the organization to get better either.
That message stuck with me. I've spent 27-plus years working alongside contractors, and it's the ones who take that responsibility seriously — who hold themselves accountable and pour into the people around them — that consistently build something lasting.
If you haven't already found Aaron's content, go look him up. The Dirt Talk podcast, his videos on YouTube, and his newsletter Building BuildWitt through LinkedIn are all worth your time. And if you have a chance to get to the Dirt World Summit — this year it's November 9–11 in Phoenix — make it happen.
Thanks again to the Contractors Association of West Virginia for making the connection, and to Aaron for spending over an hour with me and our listeners.
Constructive Conversations is a podcast by Brown Edwards & Company. Listen below, wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
• 52 min
From Cold Call to Chief Dirt Nerd: Building the Future of the Dirt World with Aaron Witt
Construct-ive Conversations
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