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CLN’s first step was expanding its peer groups. After operating essentially one primary monthly group since the pandemic, CLN began adding peer programming in early 2025. An AI and technology group brought new members into regular conversations, while John began inviting founders, consultants, and industry experts to participate.

John called the relationships that have developed “a game changer.”

The candid member conversations central to CLN remain, but the groups are increasingly built around practical ideas, information, and resources participants can take back to their companies.

“It’s hard to spend time, even if it’s an hour a month,” John said. “So, when they come to those sessions, we have the content, the speakers, and it’s an open-mic collaboration with them.”

Those conversations are also influencing what CLN builds next.

Technology provides a good example.

Across CLN peer groups, conferences, and other industry events, John kept hearing the same questions:

• Where should we start?
• How do we know where our company stands?
• Which products should we use?
• How do we build a strategy without chasing every new platform?

Those conversations helped shape CLN’s developing technology and AI Roadmap, designed to help companies assess where they are, understand available tools, compare options, and build a deliberate plan. The same approach is influencing future peer groups and CLN’s broader membership structure.

“From their responses and their needs, they’ve been the ones dictating what we’re creating,” John said. “Their responses, their communication, their collaboration is leading us to make decisions on how to help the industry.”

That does not mean CLN intends to become a technology organization. John sees technology as a way to strengthen what construction already does well.

“We’re not technology companies,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re contractors.”

The goal is to improve operations, profitability, risk management, and efficiency, while giving leaders more time to focus on their people and work that requires human judgment.

“I’m obsessed with making it easier for companies to navigate this stuff,” John said. “Their focus should be on their people, their company, their risk, and profitability. Not technology, and not be consumed by technology, but allow technology to help them.”

That brings John back to one of his favorite memories from his years in construction.

When a job-site problem required an RFI, John preferred not to simply send the question away and wait for someone else to solve it.

He would gather the people who understood the issue firsthand, perhaps an electrical foreman, mechanical foreman, and superintendent, and work through solutions together.

“My favorite thing to do was come up with a solution, and then send them the solution,” he said. “We got together; we came up with a couple solutions that could solve this problem. We did it together because that’s the knowledge of these great leaders.”

That knowledge accumulated over years in the field, through mistakes, successes, mentors, projects, and conversations.

As a new generation moves into leadership and technology becomes more deeply embedded in construction, John believes the industry should combine those strengths rather than choose between them.

“We want to make sure that we preserve communication and collaboration,” he said, while carefully incorporating technology that helps companies become more efficient.

That also explains CLN’s renewed emphasis on bringing people together in person. The Annual Conference will be the centerpiece, with additional in-person opportunities planned.

John remembers longtime construction leaders describing the appeal simply: “We come here to talk business with our friends.”

“We’re obsessed with maintaining the human connection,” John said. “Preserving the best part of the industry.”

CLN wants attendees to arrive in Dallas with ideas, plans, questions, and challenges. Some answers may come from the keynote stage. Others may emerge during a breakout session, over dinner, or in a conversation with another contractor who has faced the same problem.

“You ever go to a really good keynote and all of a sudden you leave because you just heard them say something that just blew your mind?” John said. “Where you’re like, Wow!'”

That “wow” factor has always been part of the value of a CLN Annual Conference. What changes in January is how CLN will help members see what’s coming next for the construction industry.

CLN will enter 2027 with expanded peer groups, new member resources, more specialized programming, and a clearer understanding of the challenges construction leaders are trying to solve. Many of these initiatives will be introduced in Dallas, but many more will be shaped by the ideas, experiences, and conversations among conference attendees.

And we want you to be involved.