Trades Talk Podcast

Trades Talk Podcast is a captivating and dynamic program that is led by Justin White. He’ll delve into the triumphs of various trade industries, showcasing the successes of those who have made a significant impact. With his extensive network of industry connections, Justin provides an unparalleled view into the world of visionary leaders. Prepare to be inspired and enlightened with the trade secrets, career advice, and business tips that are shared. Make sure to have a notepad on hand, as this show promises to be an unforgettable journey!

Trades Talk Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Justin White, with 100 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Justin White hosts Trades Talk Podcast, a business show with 100 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #193

  Nathan Dirksen: 38 Years From Crewman to CEO, and the Non-Family Leader of a 70 Year Family Business

  Aug 26, 20261h 3m

  This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Nathan Dirksen, CEO of 7 Dees, the Portland-area landscape company celebrating its 70th year in business. Nathan started in a pair of cowboy boots and a white t-shirt as employee number 30 in 1988, worked his way up through operations, and stepped into the CEO seat as the first non-family leader of the third generation Snodgrass family business. 7 Dees is now approaching $50 million in revenue with 350 employees, six retail garden centers, and full service divisions across residential maintenance, commercial construction, commercial maintenance, design build, and interior plantscape. Nathan unpacks the whole 38 year journey and what he has learned along the way. In this episode: The 70 year 7 Dees story: seven Snodgrass siblings, six retail garden centers, and how a design build shop expanded into every service line without losing the fundamentals Working under three Snodgrass brothers (David, Dean, Drew) and stepping into the CEO seat as a non-family leader (Nathan's mentor Dean Snodgrass literally taught him how to hold a crucial conversation) The 1998 Career Development program that turned Nathan's team into a promotion pipeline (13 current employees started as interns, some 18 years ago) Crucial conversations 101: bring facts, remove emotion, and stop waiting when the rest of the company already knows a decision needs to be made The "customer for life" vision: a homeowner who drinks coffee on the back deck, drives by their commercial property, and stops by the retail store on the way home, all with 7 Dees inside every moment Nathan's trade secret is simple. There are people around you who can do the job better than you. Get out of their way. Take your hand out, lift them up, and let them take you further than you could ever take yourself. If you are a trades operator working inside a family business as a non-family leader, a crewman wondering if you can climb all the way to the top, or a founder trying to build the kind of company someone would spend 38 years inside, this one is a masterclass in humility and long term thinking. JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo 7 Dees: https://www.dennis7dees.com/ K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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  Episode #192

  Weekly Update #62: Inside the Landscape M&A Frenzy (12 Deals in 3 Weeks)

  Aug 21, 202634 min

  On this Weekly Update of Trades Talk, Justin White pulls back the curtain on the landscape M&A boom. Fresh off a week of nonstop calls with buyers, brokers, and private equity firms, he breaks down who is actually reaching out to you and what they really want. He also gets into connecting your software to AI the right way, then closes with the one question every owner should sit with this weekend. In this episode: The real difference between an advisor, a broker, and the strategic buyer knocking on your door Why 12 landscape deals closed in three weeks, and who actually did the buying The key man risk that can sink your sale before it even starts How to wire QuickBooks and Aspire into Claude without handing over everything Justin ties it all back to a bigger question from the Cameron Herold episode: what is it all for? Whether you are thinking about selling, building, or just working too hard, this one will make you step back and ask why. Weekly Updates are powered by Kress! https://www.jwhitegroup.com/kress JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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  Episode #191

  Cameron Herold: The COO Who Scaled 1-800-GOT-JUNK From $2M to $106M in Six Years

  Aug 19, 202654 min

  This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Cameron Herold , founder of the COO Alliance and one of the most respected voices in operational scaling. Cameron spent 6.5 years as COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, scaling the company from $2 million to $106 million alongside his best friend Brian Scudamore. He has since built the COO Alliance to 175 members, written 7 business books (Vivid Vision, Double Double, The Second in Command, Meetings Suck, Free PR, Grandma's Business Secrets, and more), and been paid to speak in 30 countries. This conversation is a masterclass on how to actually scale a service business, and Cameron pulls no punches. From his four-step "kill, optimize, automate, outsource" framework to why your A players are never applying to your job posts, this is the operator's operator sharing his full playbook. In this episode: Minimum Viable Everything (MVE): the framework Cameron coined that flips the script on optimization. Kill it first. Optimize it second. Automate it third. Outsource it last. And a lot of what you are working on right now does not need to happen at all Why your A players are never applying to your job posts: A players already have jobs and are crushing it. The only way to hire them is to poach them, and the only way to poach them is to build a company culture that other operators talk about. Cameron's basketball gym story is the tactical playbook Employee NPS as the #1 KPI: how Cameron ran 1-800-GOT-JUNK on Employee Net Promoter Score as the leading indicator of everything else (customer happiness, revenue, retention, referrals), and why perks make things worse The CEO / COO relationship as a marriage: Cameron's framework for how the two most important leaders in the company should operate together, including the Football Team analogy, the "happy house happy spouse" principle, and the skip-level meeting system Cameron learned from a Starbucks mentor Systems fail, not people: the perfect-system thesis using Cameron's speed governor analogy, plus a live coaching moment where Cameron challenges Justin to build a Claude agent that replaces the CPO shadowing every interview at K&D Cameron closes with the most unexpected trade secret we have captured on the show: none of this matters. We are all doing this on the time we have left on the planet to pay the bills. Family, hobbies, relationships, health, self. Those are the reasons you wake up in the morning, not the business. The death rate is still 100 percent. Enjoy the journey. If you are a trades CEO who has never had formal interviewing training, a founder wondering why your team feels overworked despite adding perks, or an operator who has never truly given your COO the space to run the company, this one is required listening. JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo Cameron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronherold/ Cameron Herold Website: https://cameronherold.com/ COO Alliance: https://www.cooalliance.com/ K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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  Episode #190

  Weekly Update #61: Consistency Beats Intensity (and AI Might Be Your Biggest Distraction)

  Aug 14, 202624 min

  On this Weekly Update of Trades Talk, Justin White is flying solo and going deep on four things: the custom Claude MCP that is unlocking K&D's Aspire data, the 30 year story behind autonomous mowing, why AI might be your biggest distraction, and the quiet power of consistency. It is part strategy session, part reality check for any leader who feels behind every time they open their phone. In this episode: How K&D wired Claude into its Aspire data to slice jobs by crew, by hour, and spot trends early The 30 year backstory behind the Kress Voyager and the rise of autonomous mowing Why Justin now agrees that AI is quietly distracting most CEOs from real growth The Charlie Munger rule that beats trying to be brilliant The throughline is simple: consistency beats intensity, and the long term wins rarely show up on this month's P&L. Whether you are chasing a big vision or just trying to not fall behind, this one is your reminder to guard your time and run your own race. Weekly Updates are powered by Kress! https://www.jwhitegroup.com/kress JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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  Episode #189

  Peter Murphy Lewis: 100 Jobs on Camera, 200 CEOs Coached, One Playbook for Trades Storytelling

  Aug 12, 202659 min

  Episode Description This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Peter Murphy Lewis , founder of Strategic Pete and one of the most creative storytellers working in marketing today. Peter went from Kansas to Boston, then to Chile on a diplomatic scholarship, built a travel company that hosted Beyonce and Paul McCartney, and eventually landed his own Chilean version of Dirty Jobs where he worked 100 different jobs on camera (including boxing a 120 pound national champion who beat him in three rounds). He now runs Strategic Pete, coaches 200-plus CEOs on storytelling, and does documentaries for private equity turnarounds, misunderstood industries, and companies preparing for exit. Justin brings him inside the K&D story to build a real content playbook live on air. In this episode: You do not have a content problem, you have a proof problem: why authenticity beats polish, and why the documentary format outperforms every other content type at changing minds The Elephant in the Room framework: find the biggest gap between what people think about your industry and what is actually true, then confront it head on Who should tell your story, and why it usually is not the CEO: raving fans, frontline crew, and kids/elderly as unexpected content vehicles The Landscape Ninjas concept: how K&D's all electric fleet became a story about noise, peace, and quiet homes, and Peter's exact experiment design for turning that into a viral series Storytelling as a PE tool: how the right video asset added a third bidder in a healthcare SaaS exit and materially increased the multiple Peter's trade secret is one you can start using today. Everyone is good at telling stories, but they struggle to tell their own. Start with a person who impacted your life. Tell their story. You will learn how to tell yours in the process. If you are a trades operator sitting on a K&D-sized content opportunity you have never unlocked, a founder preparing for an exit and wondering what actually moves the multiple, or a CEO who has been publishing content without a clear goal, this one is the wake up call and the playbook in the same hour. JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo Peter LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petermurphylewis/ Strategic Pete: https://strategicpete.com/ K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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