The LeanScaper Podcast

The era of order-taking is over and if your sales team is still sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, you’re in trouble. In this episode, Benji sits down with Ryan Groth, CEO of Sales Transformation Group, to unpack what today’s high-performance contractor sales orgs actually look like and how you can build one from scratch.

You’ll learn:

• Why “sales culture” is your biggest lever in today’s market
• How to future-proof your sales org in an AI-driven world
• What sales leaders must master (hint: CRM, coaching, and culture)
• Why it’s time to lead from the front - not from the boardroom

Hard truth's and tactical next steps every $1M–$10M contractor needs to hear.

Connect with Ryan Groth and STG at salestransformationgroup.com
 

SEO isn’t what it used to be and if your marketing agency is still chasing backlinks and blog posts, you’re falling behind. In this episode, Benji talks with Devon Hayes, co-founder of Elevation Marketing, about how AI and large language models have transformed search and what landscaping business owners must do to stay visible and competitive.

You’ll learn:
• Why your brand is now the biggest factor in Google rankings
• What “entity SEO” means and how it’s already impacting your business
• How to audit your online presence with a Pre-SEO Checklist
• Why reviews, SOPs, and internal ops matter more than you think If you’re paying an agency to “do SEO,” this is your wake-up call.

Get aligned, get visible, and get modern.

Get the SEO Readiness Checklist here
Connect with Devon here

You don’t scale a landscape company past $30M without learning how to hunt elephants and survive the feast.

In this episode, we sit down with Steve Wheatcroft, founder of ULS and now a LeanScaper advisor, to unpack the high-stakes game of enterprise sales in landscaping. From university project to $100M powerhouse, Steve built ULS by mastering the art of landing massive municipal, institutional, and retail contracts and living to tell the tale.

We dig deep into:
• What it really takes to win big clients (and why most landscapers screw it up)
• How elephant hunting nearly killed his business and what systems saved it
• The three core risks that come with big revenue jumps (cash, complexity, talent)
• How to know if you’re ready or if that elephant will eat you alive
• His step-by-step sales strategy and what most entrepreneurs get wrong in the bid cycle This one’s not theory. It’s hard-earned wisdom from a guy who’s done it, exited, and is now helping the next generation do it smarter. If you’re serious about scaling this is your roadmap.

🤝 To learn more about Steve's advising click here

What does “Lean” really mean - and why should every landscaper care? In this episode, Benji sits down with Tom Hughes to unpack the origins of Lean thinking, straight from Toyota’s post-WWII survival mode to today’s jobsite inefficiencies. 

You’ll learn:

-Why Lean was born from desperation, not inspiration

-The 7+2 types of waste every business leader should be targeting

-How landscapers lose time (and money) without realizing it

-Why focusing on the 98% of waste - not the 2% of value - is the secret to scale

From hanging a picture to running a multi-million dollar crew, this episode shows why most of what you think is productive… isn’t.

Favourite moment: “Comfort is the enemy of innovation.”

You don’t need to make your good stuff better - you need to kill your waste. Period.

👇 SUBSCRIBE for more episodes on building lean, profitable companies in the trades.

Ellen Rohr is one of the most respected women in the trades. As President of Zoom Drain and author of multiple best-selling books, she’s coached thousands of business owners toward profitability, purpose, and personal growth.

In this episode, Ellen opens up about:
• How she overcame her fear of numbers, mastered financial literacy, and used bookkeeping to transform her life
• The hard truth about trying to “change” your partner in business and the lesson that growth starts on the inside
• Why tradeswomen are still underrepresented on the frontlines and what needs to happen at the small business level to rewrite that story

This episode is a must-listen for any woman building a business in landscaping - raw, tactical, and full of heart.

Best-selling author and marketing powerhouse Marcus Sheridan joins Benji to reveal why trust - not tactics - is the real secret to sales growth. From breaking down the “trust deficit” to why most landscapers lose the sale before the call, this episode is a roadmap to building a brand buyers believe in.

Learn how to:
• Win the 80% of the sales journey that happens before the first contact 
• Future proof your sales process for the age of AI 
• Be bold enough to say what other brands won’t and show what others won’t show (people buy transparency) 

If you’re ready to grow your business and dominate your market - this is your blueprint.

After selling LMN for over $250 million, Mark Bradley could’ve walked away. But instead, he launched LeanScaper - with a mission to build a better future for every tradesperson in the green industry. In this powerful debut episode, Mark gets brutally honest about burnout, the mistakes that nearly cost him everything, and why the trades deserve more than low wages and broken systems.

🔍 Highlights:
• Why most landscapers are sabotaging themselves without realizing it
• The 4 pillars of the LeanScaperOS - and how they transform team culture, profitability, and operations
• What Mark wishes every small business owner knew before scaling This is more than a business episode. It’s a call to arms for the trades to demand better - and build it.

This episode is a super short clip to test whether transistor is fully functioning and pushing to both apple pod and spotify.

Test 1 2 Test 1 2

This is a trailer to get the RSS Feed Live and will be taken down as soon as our actual episode 1 is ready to publish.