Priscilla Hansen Mahoney is a business coach, consultant, strategist, and professional speaker who helps contractors, trades, and service-based businesses grow into stronger, more profitable companies.

As the owner of Blazing Trails Coaching, LLC, Priscilla works directly with business owners and leadership teams navigating growth, leadership transitions, operational challenges, succession, and the day-to-day realities of running a company where the work has to get done in the field.

Her speaking focuses on leadership, accountability, delegation, team development, operational improvement, Lean thinking, succession, and the transition from doing the work to leading the business.

Priscilla speaks for the National Association of Home Builders and has presented at the International Builders’ Show, Bernstein Shur’s Women in Construction event, and the Maine Women’s Conference. She also speaks for business associations, leadership groups, and industry organizations.

Her audiences include business owners, executives, managers, supervisors, crew leaders, and emerging leaders—especially those working in construction, the trades, and service-based businesses.

Priscilla’s message is grounded in a reality she sees every day: many businesses grow faster than their leadership systems.

The owner may still be answering every question. Managers may have been promoted because they were technically strong but never taught how to lead. Roles are often unclear. Decisions get pushed upward. Communication between the office and the field breaks down. Processes exist in people’s heads. Everyone is busy, but too much still depends on a handful of people.

Priscilla helps audiences recognize those patterns and understand what needs to change.

A major focus of her work is helping owners shift from solving every problem to building the team, structure, and systems that let others lead.

She speaks candidly about delegation, decision-making, accountability, role clarity, and leadership development. Her approach is practical because her work happens inside real businesses—not just in conference rooms or on presentation slides.

Priscilla regularly works with companies where schedules change, crews need answers, customers have expectations, profitability matters, and leadership decisions have immediate consequences. She understands the pressure owners and managers feel when they are trying to grow a business while still handling the daily fires.

That experience shapes the way she speaks.

Her presentations are practical, direct, and rooted in examples audiences recognize from their own businesses.

Priscilla also brings Lean thinking and process improvement into her speaking in a way that is accessible to companies outside traditional manufacturing environments.

She helps audiences look for wasted time, poor handoffs, unclear workflows, duplicate work, unnecessary steps, communication gaps, and other forms of operational friction that quietly drain productivity and profit.

Her Lean approach is heavily influenced by the principle of Genchi Genbutsu—“go and see.”

If you want to understand a business problem, go where the work is happening.

Talk to the people doing it.

Watch the process.

Look at the handoffs.

Understand what is actually happening before deciding how to fix it.

That principle is central to Priscilla’s consulting work and one reason her presentations connect so strongly with contractors, tradespeople, and service businesses. She does not treat operational problems as abstract concepts. She looks at how the work actually moves through the business.

Leadership development is another major part of Priscilla’s work.

She believes businesses cannot grow sustainably if all leadership responsibility remains concentrated at the top.

Owners need capable managers.

Managers need strong supervisors.

Supervisors and crew leaders need clear authority, practical leadership skills, and the confidence to make decisions.

Employees need to understand what they own, what is expected of them, and how their work contributes to the company.

For companies with field teams, this is especially important. The frontline leader often has enormous influence over productivity, communication, employee retention, customer experience, safety, and profitability.

Priscilla speaks about how to develop those leaders rather than simply promoting someone into a leadership role and hoping they figure it out.

She also speaks on succession and ownership transition.

Her work with business owners has shown her that succession is not only an ownership issue. It is a leadership and operational readiness issue.

A business is not truly ready for succession if critical knowledge lives in one person’s head, if every major decision depends on the founder, or if the leadership team cannot operate without constant intervention.

Priscilla helps audiences think differently about succession by focusing on leadership depth, management systems, decision rights, accountability, knowledge transfer, and the strength of the organization beneath the owner.

She also works with employee-owned businesses and speaks on leadership and governance within growing ESOP companies, including the importance of clear roles, management discipline, leadership depth, and employee-owner education.

Priscilla’s speaking style is conversational, practical, and often humorous.

She does not believe audiences need another hour of vague inspiration.

They need useful ideas.

They need language they can take back to their teams.

They need questions that help them see their business differently.

And they need practical actions they can use when they return to the office, shop, jobsite, or field.

Her experience as a professional speaker includes presenting at the International Builders’ Show, one of the residential construction industry’s premier national events, and speaking for the National Association of Home Builders.

She has also presented at Bernstein Shur’s Women in Construction event, speaking to professionals working across the construction industry, and at the Maine Women’s Conference, where she has shared her perspective with women leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

These speaking opportunities reflect both the depth of her experience and her ability to connect with different audiences while staying grounded in the realities of leadership and business growth.

Priscilla is an iPEC Certified Professional Coach, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Project Management practitioner, and Distinguished Toastmaster. She holds a degree in Business Management and has extensive experience in strategic planning, leadership development, team facilitation, operational improvement, and organizational development.

Through Blazing Trails Coaching, she works hands-on with business owners and leadership teams to strengthen operations, clarify responsibilities, improve accountability, develop leaders, and build businesses that can grow without depending on one person to hold everything together.

Her background also shapes the way she approaches leadership.

Priscilla grew up on a third-generation Maine farm, where responsibility, resourcefulness, and getting the work done were simply part of life.

She is also a Registered Maine Guide, an experience that reinforces many of the same principles she brings into business: preparation matters, leadership matters, conditions change, and the person in charge has to pay attention to what is actually happening—not just what was supposed to happen.

That mix of business strategy, leadership development, Lean thinking, and practical experience gives Priscilla a distinctive perspective on the stage.

She is especially well suited for audiences of contractors, trades professionals, service business owners, managers, supervisors, crew leaders, and companies navigating growth.

Her presentations are designed for people who are asking questions such as:

How do we grow without creating more chaos?

How do I get out of the middle of every decision?

How do I develop stronger managers?

How do I delegate without losing control?

How do we improve accountability?

How do we create clearer roles?

How do we improve communication between the office and the field?

How do we build systems people will actually use?

How do we prepare the next generation of leaders?

How do we build a company that can succeed beyond the owner?

Priscilla’s goal is not simply to give audiences information.

It is to help them recognize what is getting in the way, understand what stronger leadership looks like, and leave with practical ideas they can actually use.

Whether she is speaking to a national construction audience, a room full of business owners, a women’s leadership event, a management team, or a group of frontline leaders, Priscilla brings straight talk, real-world experience, and a strong belief that better businesses are built through better leadership, better systems, and people who know what they are responsible for.

Priscilla Hansen Mahoney owns Blazing Trails Coaching, LLC.

Her work is focused on helping contractors, trades, and service-based businesses grow profits, build teams, and work Lean.

Ask me how we can make a contractor’s business a better place to work, and you’ll see me light up.

I love helping owners turn the daily scramble into practical systems, develop confident leaders, and build teams that take pride in their work. There’s nothing like watching an owner realize they don’t have to carry every decision—or seeing a crew member grow into a leader they never imagined they could be.

As the founder of Blazing Trails Coaching, I’m passionate about helping contractors grow profits, build teams, and work lean. What puts the biggest smile on my face? Knowing that a stronger business can mean a better workday, more time with family, and new opportunities for the people who make it all happen.