This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Ben Hansen, founder of Profit Doctor. Ben is a 5x Inc. 5000 founder who scaled his own staffing business from zero to $13 million with 100 employees, and now helps 7 and 8 figure CEOs stop the financial bleeding and become "overpaid entrepreneurs."

Justin opens up about K&D's own profit story: $2.5M of net profit on $20M in revenue at the end of 2024, a $650K loss in Q1 2025, and the climb back to a 3-5% net margin on $25M today. Ben walks through the exact prescription to fix it.

In this episode:

• Why "profititis" (revenue going up while profit goes flat or down) is the real diagnosis behind most trades businesses
• Money Mondays, the simple 90-minute weekly habit that compounds profitability faster than any sales push
• Contribution margin vs gross profit, and why most trades PLs are quietly hiding the real number
• The 50-20 Rule: cut half of your worst 20 percent of services in the next 30 days

Ben's biggest takeaway is simple. You cannot sell your way out of a profit problem. Profitability comes from intentional decisions on your calendar, not from more revenue.

If you are a trades CEO running on 0-5 percent net margin, working harder every year, and wondering why the money is not showing up, this one is a wake-up call and a 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 Ben LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benhansen/ Profit Doctor: https://profitdoctor.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/benhansen https://www.instagram.com/profitdoctorben/ https://www.youtube.com/@profitdoctorben 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 joined by Sean Laux, K&D's leader of innovation and technology, kicking off a new chapter of the Friday show: weekly deep dives on AI inside a trades business.

Sean and Justin break down the K&D AI stack, why most CEOs are getting AI wrong, and how to actually find ROI in a market where 56 percent of CEOs say AI has delivered nothing.

In this episode, we cover:

• The K&D AI operating system: normalized database, MCPs, and Justin's "Reggie" Claude agent
• Why a CFO skill that runs three recursive QA loops is replacing the CFO hire (and the Instagram hate that followed)
• Dan Martell's three levels of AI (assistant, automation, agent team) and where almost no one lives
• The AI guru warning: why a $250K retainer firm cannot understand your workflow in a day

Two assignments for the week: run a 10 to 20 question self-interview with AI on a problem you cannot solve, and build your first Claude Cowork automated task (a daily brief is a great starting point).

If you are a trades CEO under board pressure to ship AI ROI, a tech-curious operator just getting started, or anyone who has burned cash on an AI consultant and gotten nothing, this episode is the playbook.

Weekly Updates are powered by Kress!

JW Group Website / Justin LinkedIn / Justin Instagram / Justins Youtube K&D Website / K&D Instagram Disruptors Community Disruptors Advantage Newsletter

This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits back down with Jeremy Ross, division lead for K&D Landscaping's Design Build Construction division, for round two. In nine years Jeremy has scaled the division from a few hundred thousand to $8 million in trailing twelve month revenue with 8 crews, 2 project managers, 2 supervisors, and a full pre-construction team.

In this episode:

• How Jeremy built an $8M custom design build division and the operating system underneath it
• Why outsourcing design to Your Haven actually works when you know what good looks like (WGLL)
• Inside K&D's L10 meeting: good news, headlines, to-dos, KPIs, rocks, issue processing
• Why every K&D hire fights the meetings at first, then refuses to give them up

Jeremy's trade secret is simple. Trust your team to do the work and stop getting in their way. Delegation is not about taking things off your plate, it is about giving your team the chance to win at what they do best.

If you are running a design build division, leading a high performing team, or trying to figure out how to actually delegate without losing control, 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 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/