Why Subscribe?
Because sometimes the best leadership lessons come from watching an empire crumble in slow motion while a CEO grins like a Bond villain in a black turtleneck.
This is Hard Knock University Dispatch! Where we don’t just study leadership, we autopsy its failures with sarcasm, receipts, and the occasional pop culture side quest. One week it’s Elizabeth Holmes as Dr. Evil. The next, it’s a rant about city water policy that somehow ends in a parable about project budgeting and parenting.
The real reason to subscribe?
Villains, Visionaries, and Very Bad Decisions
We break down leaders who built things and broke them. From Theranos to Thanos, I’m dissecting the project plans, toxic cultures, and delusional optimism behind high-profile implosions. If you like your case studies spicy, this is your new weekly ritual.Leadership Lessons from the Edge of Reason
Whether it’s a construction site meltdown, a startup founder with a god complex, or my kid negotiating screen time like a junior hostage negotiator, I turn the chaos into #HardKnockLessons you can actually use. Learn from my scars, or collect your own. It’s your call.Parables from the Field (and the Backyard)
Sometimes it’s a contractor story with a moral twist. Sometimes it’s a takedown of software so bloated it should have its own zip code (cough Buildertrend). Sometimes I just rant about lawn watering restrictions like it’s a TED Talk. Either way: it’s real, raw, and unfiltered.Dad Mode Meets PM Mode
Project managing humans (especially the small, messy ones) gives you leadership insight you can’t buy in a seminar. Add a little bourbon, a busted schedule, and a looming inspection, and I can go for hours if you’ll let me.
Subscribe if:
You believe leadership can be taught but usually the hard way.
You like your insights with humor, honesty, and a little villain analysis.
You’ve ever thought, “Is this meeting a cult?” and weren’t entirely joking.
My Background
I’m Mark Caples — builder, remodeler, project manager, leadership nerd, podcast host, and reluctant adult. I’ve spent the last 20+ years in the trenches of construction and project management, which is a fancy way of saying I’ve been yelled at by subcontractors, clients, city inspectors, and my own kids. Often in the same week.
I didn’t get here via MBA or Ivy League seminar. I got here through pigheaded discipline, blown budgets, stubborn ambition, and learning the hard way what works (and what really, really doesn’t). My education came from books, busted plans, and conversations with people who were smarter and more patient than me.
My resume includes:
Swinging a hammer as a broke kid trying to figure out load-bearing walls and life.
Scaling a remodeling business that almost killed me (financially, emotionally, and once by falling off a roof).
Selling that business after enough stress to pickle my adrenal glands.
Building Mark Dalton Homes, a custom home operation with better systems, stronger leadership, and fewer panic attacks.
Becoming a trainer and top-performing PM at a startup that let me combine grit with strategy.
Writing The Hard Knock School of Project Management to give people a playbook I wish I had.
Launching Hard Knock University — a podcast, newsletter, and full-blown movement for resilient leaders and builders.
Oh, and I yell about things on YouTube sometimes. I once made a video comparing Buildertrend to a “glorified night class disguised as software.” It went kind of viral in PM circles. Not exactly TikTok famous, but I’ll take it.
This Substack exists because I believe most leadership content is either too sanitized or too smug. I wanted to create something messier, funnier, and more honest. Something that speaks to people who don’t have the luxury of theory because they’re too busy dealing with reality.
Not Just Construction
I also write about:
Leadership through failure — because I’ve got receipts.
Fatherhood — the ultimate project with zero scope clarity.
Water conservation — yes, I did go on a rant about Canyon Lake, and yes, it was backed by math.
Startup culture, villain breakdowns, and life in the chaos trench.
I’ve never testified before Congress, but I’ve testified in a Home Depot aisle about the lies told by paint swatches. I’m not an academic, but I am building a community of ridiculously resilient leaders who thrive in chaos, crack jokes under pressure, and know when to pivot or punch back.
📚 Book: The Hard Knock School of Project Management
🎙️ Podcast YouTube Channel: Hard Knock University Podcast
🌐 Official Website: www.LeadershipKnocks.com
📬 Newsletter (you're already here, but share it!):
📱 LinkedIn: @LeadershipKnocks
📢 Speaking & Booking Info: Book Mark to Speak
Let’s build ridiculously resilient leaders together. I’m rooting for you!
