Trades Talk Podcast

This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Jack Jostes, founder and CEO of Ramblin Jackson, the snow and landscape exclusive marketing agency, host of The Landscaper's Guide podcast, and author of the new book The Landscaper's Guide to Direct Response Sales and Marketing. After 17 years building marketing systems inside the green industry, Jack lands on one core belief: the company that actually follows up is the company that wins.
Jack and Justin get tactical on why most contractors are sitting on a goldmine of unclosed bids, how to define your Hell Yes customer and build your entire marketing engine around them, and why it can take up to 18 touches to close a sale. They dig into multi-touch follow-up campaigns, using AI without losing the human touch, and the seasonal gold mining moves that fill your shoulder season schedule.
In this episode:
The Hell Yes customer: how to define your ideal lead and build your whole marketing engine around them, and how one contractor niched into HOAs and grew from $750K to over $5M
Direct response vs brand awareness: why measurable, repeatable follow-up beats being the best company in town, and why closing can take up to 18 touches
Gold mining your database: how a single Call Jam session of calling old, unclosed bids can fill next week's schedule, something Justin says works about 90 percent of the time
Multi-touch, multimedia follow-up: landing pages, QR postcards, cold email, LinkedIn, and real phone calls working together to land a single commercial account
The AI plus analog balance: automating with a landscape built CRM and engagement scoring while handwritten cards and personal calls do the closing, plus sending prospects a prompt that shapes what their AI learns about your company
Jack's biggest takeaway is simple. Be the one professional who actually follows up. Most businesses are terrible at it, which is exactly why the follow-up itself becomes your edge.
If you are a landscape or trades owner leaving estimates unclosed, buried in manual lead gen, or trying to build a sales engine that runs without you, this one is a playbook you can put to work this week.
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 Jack Jostes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackjostes/ Ramblin Jackson: https://ramblinjackson.com/ Jack's Free Book: https://landscapersguide.com/books 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/

On this Weekly Update of Trades Talk, Justin White is back after a week off, recording with his newborn daughter asleep right beside him. He opens up on what stepping away from K&D for 60 days has actually felt like, then turns to the forces about to reshape the trades: humanoid robots, AI adoption, and owning your own intelligence.
It is part personal, part strategy session, and a real look at where things are heading into 2027.
In this episode:
Why building a company that runs without you is far lonelier than anyone warns you Elon's G20 prediction of one billion humanoid robots, and what it means for anyone selling labor The forest and the saplings: why big AI adopters pull away while startups get starved Inside "KD Intelligence," the all knowing AI employee Justin is building to own K&D's data
The throughline is ownership. Own your time, own your data, own your intelligence, because the companies adopting AI now are compounding an advantage the rest cannot catch. Justin's homework is simple: go research the G20 Summit, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk, and start building your own stack today. He also previews the AI experience he and Sean Laux are hosting at NALP Elevate on November 8, which is nearly sold out.
Whether you are a trades owner testing whether your business can run without you, a leader trying to make sense of AI and robotics, or an operator who wants to be ahead instead of behind, this one will get you thinking.
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/

This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Fitz Owen from Garnet Captive Insurance. Fitz runs business development for one of the most respected group captive programs in the country, working with trades operators who are done watching their insurance premiums balloon 20 to 30 percent year over year despite running safe, well-managed companies.
Justin brings Fitz on to demystify what a group captive actually is, walk through how K&D just joined Garnet's landscape captive, and unpack the shift from being an insurance customer to being an owner of a for profit insurance company alongside a peer group of the industry's best operators.
In this episode:
Captive Insurance 101: what a group captive actually is, how members become owners of a for profit insurance company, and how premium dollars stay working for the members instead of the carriers
The nuclear verdict trap on auto insurance, why 20 to 30 percent annual premium increases are the new normal for well run trades companies, and how the captive breaks that cycle
The math on getting paid back: 45 to 50 percent of premium returning via profit distributions in a zero claim year, plus investment income on loss funding, plus distributions starting 18 to 24 months after your first program year expires
How the captive rewires safety culture from the inside: telematics, dash cams, real-time claims handling by a TPA that works for you (not the carrier), and the loss control library built into the captive's expense load
The peer group inside the captive: ~100 members per program capped at ~150, all in the same industries, sharing operating playbooks alongside the insurance conversation
Fitz's trade secret is simple. Belief in and deep understanding of your product is what separates the operators who win from the ones who just work hard. Whether you are selling landscape services or selling insurance, once you fully understand what you are offering, everything gets easier.
If you are a trades operator watching your auto premium balloon every year, a CEO tired of your insurance carrier winning while you do the safety work, or a leader looking for a peer group of top performers wrapped inside a real financial structure, 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 Fitz Owen (Email): owen@garnetcaptive.com Garnet Captive Insurance: https://www.garnetcaptive.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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/