Bo Jones: Building Lincoln from the Ground Up | Career Pathways

Episode Summary

For more than twenty-five years, Bo Jones has been building Lincoln — the homes, the apartment complexes, the restorations of places like the Burlington Station in Red Cloud and the Grand Manse downtown. But the work he's most fired up about right now isn't a building. It's a website called CareerPathway.com, and it's quietly reshaping how Nebraska students discover what they could be.

About Bo Jones

Bo Jones is the founder of TruBuilt Construction, a Lincoln-based firm that has grown from one-off remodels into one of the city's go-to builders for homes, townhomes, and large apartment projects. He's a past president of the Home Builders Association of Lincoln and a frequent collaborator with Southeast Community College's construction program in Milford. He's also the creator of CareerPathway.com — a workforce platform now used in 49 states that connects students directly with the businesses, mentors, and industries hiring across Nebraska. He's the rare guest who can talk about pouring foundations and launching a software platform with the same easy fluency.

About the Conversation

This first episode of Common Grounds is, in many ways, exactly what the show was made for. Bo grew up ten blocks from where the conversation is recorded. He met his wife in a college life insurance class. He never took a construction course, and he now runs a company with twenty-five employees and more than 600 City of Lincoln building permits to its name. Along the way he watched his daughter struggle to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up — and instead of letting that frustration sit, he turned it into a tool for every kid in Nebraska.

What emerges is a conversation about workforce, mentorship, the quiet generosity of Lincoln's business community, and the kind of city where competitors will actually pick up the phone and help each other. It's also, in its own way, a conversation about what it looks like to build well — whether you're framing a wall or framing a future.

Conversation Highlights

• How TruBuilt grew from window repairs and fence jobs into projects most contractors only dream of
• The story behind CareerPathway.com — and the moment it crystallized for Bo
• Why "I'm not a textbook learner" became the seed of something bigger
• Lincoln's "secret sauce": competitors who help each other, and a public sector that listens
• More than 700 student-to-employer connections made through the platform last year
• The students who built 36 decks in five days over spring break
• The medical industry's surprising absence from the platform — and the opportunity inside it
• What Bo would tell someone outside Lincoln about his hometown

The Mug

Bo brought a Yeti — given to him by the team at the Home Builders Association after his year as president. As he told the hosts, his time with that organization has been one of the defining stretches of his career. The mug is a reminder of that.