Nathan Dirksen: 38 Years From Crewman to CEO, and the Non-Family Leader of a 70 Year Family Business
Trades Talk PodcastShow Notes
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/
More from Trades Talk Podcast
This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Robert Underwood, founder of AAA Landscape in Phoenix, Arizona. Robert borrowed $1,000 from his mom and a pickup truck from his uncle in 1975 and built one of the largest landscape companies in the Southwest, now more than seven hundred employees strong.
On this Weekly Update of Trades Talk, Justin White comes to you from the Monterey Bay in the middle of K&D’s Q4 all-hands planning session, and the news is stacking up fast.
This is a special one. Justin White sat down with Eli Zevin, General Manager of Aspire, the same day Aspire launched its brand new Command Center, and dropped the episode within the hour. If you run on Aspire, or are even thinking about it, this is the inside look at the biggest leap the software has taken yet.
This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Andy Worshek, retired US Navy Master Chief and the man who actually implemented Intent-Based Leadership on the USS Santa Fe under Captain L. David Marquet. When David declined the podcast, he personally referred us to Andy, and this conversation reveals why: David wrote the book, but Andy is the operator who lived it at the crew level and rebuilt his entire Navy career around it.
I sat out Aspire Ignite this week for the first time in five years and recorded this one from the hangar. If you came home from those events feeling behind, this episode is for you. You're not behind. But you might be about to automate a mess. I walk through the algorithm K&D is using to get ready for 2027: delete, simplify, accelerate, and only then automate. It comes from Elon Musk's playbook, and the Tesla battery cover story explains why most companies get the order wrong. Then I show you what it looks like in real life. We just deleted 256 receipts a month at K&D, which frees up about 280 hours a year of our highest-paid people's time. And a ServiceTitan survey of over 1,000 contractors found that only 15 percent are seeing real ROI from AI. That's not a reason to quit. It's a reason to fix your foundation first. I also break the business into the eight areas you should map your workflows under, from self care to technology, and why technology is deliberately last. Then the big news: Aspire's Command Center. AI inside Aspire that watches job hours against percent complete and tells you before a job goes sideways. I think it changed the industry this week. Sean Laux joins me Monday for an emergency podcast on it. And a quick note on 45 percent gross profit as the new break even. Last, Kress. We just bought our first 60 inch Voyager. Delivery is any day. If you haven't demoed the 60 or the stay and cut units, you owe it to yourself. Robotics as a service is here. Your Q4 challenge: document your workflows, your systems, your company. How you do things today is not the best way. Be ready to change it. Mentioned in this episode