Trent and Friends Podcast

Mark Shapiro built a real estate portfolio worth over a billion dollars. Then it all came apart, and he was sentenced to 85 years in federal prison for a crime he says he never committed. Over 14 years later, President Trump gave him a pardon. This episode covers all of it: the rise, the fall, what actually happened inside, and how he's rebuilding now that he's out. Trent and Mark also get...

Sean Michael Crane spent his childhood watching addiction destroy his family. By 14, he was headed down the same road. By 23, he was facing a potential life sentence for attempted murder, sitting in a six by six jail cell with nothing but time. What he built in that cell is the reason he's here today. Sean now coaches some of the biggest operators in the trades, and the pattern he keeps finding is...

Some conversations change you. This is one of them. Chance Forman has been building something out of nothing since he was a kid. He's the kind of man who figures it out no matter what's in front of him. Then his daughter Lilly was born. And everything changed. What followed was seven years of hospital rooms, cross-country train rides, care conferences, doctors who told him to let her go, b...

Harley Winters spent years at the highest levels of the sales training world as the former CRO for Jeremy Miner. He walked into a room full of home service business owners and made one claim: emotion is the only deciding factor in every decision your customer makes. The room had opinions. What started as a conversation about sales gurus targeting the trades turned into one of the more honest and h...

Trent Lowenstein took the stage at a Standard Plumbing Supply event hosted at the Any Hour Services office to walk trades business owners through the exact flywheel Next Level Pros teaches — from marketing spend to customer retention. Trent breaks down why 8–12% is the marketing benchmark and how to allocate it across channels, what a $200 lead actually means for your CSR's job, the sales proc...

From sleeping in his car with just $200 in his pocket to becoming the "Batman" of the home service space, Dmitri Lipinskiy's one-in-a-generation story proves what happens when you refuse to quit. In this raw confrontation, we pull back the curtain on how he exposes corrupt contractors, fights multi-million dollar lawsuits, and defends both homeowners and ethical business owners from intentional fr...

Trent Lowenstein sits down with Dustin Van Orman and Bill Russell — two guys who've done six exits across five verticals, totaling over $130 million in sales — to break down exactly what makes a trade business worth buying. If you're sitting at $2-5 million and wondering what it actually takes to attract private equity, this is the conversation you need to hear. Dustin and Bill get into th...

Trent has been Jewish his whole life. And in the last two years, he's heard more conspiracies about what Jews believe than in all 35 years before that combined. So he brought in Rabbi Zalman — Chabad rabbi, subject matter expert, and someone who's spent his career making Judaism accessible to people inside and outside the faith — to set the record straight. No agenda. No filter. Just two p...

Want to work with Trent? Get in touch here: https://www.godmodeconsulting.comIs "burning the ships" a requirement for being a successful entrepreneur, or is building within a bigger ecosystem the smartest move you’ll ever make? We tear down the 4:00 AM hustle myth and the "Wizard of Oz" facade of business to reveal why high-level strategy always beats raw effort in the trades....

Bryce Kelly grew up in a double wide with nothing to fall back on — and later sold his company for over $120 million. In this conversation, Trent sits down with Bryce to figure out what actually separates people who make it from people who don't. They get into the mindset that comes from having nothing to lose, why Bryce's dad pushed him harder than anyone even after his own failures, how ADHD and...

Most shop owners promote their best tech and wonder why everything falls apart. The skills that make a great technician have almost nothing to do with what makes a great leader — and confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes in the trades. Trent sits down with Lincoln Walpole, former CFO of AnyHour ($10M to $500M), and Jacob Reese from Standard Plumbing Supply to break down the real...

What started as a conversation about AI turned into one of the most unexpected theology discussions we've ever had. Tom Howard — a Mormon with a depth of religious knowledge that will genuinely surprise you — breaks down the questions that stumped every priest and pastor he ever met, why Mormon theology answered them when nothing else could, the Jewish marriage customs that suggest Jesus may h...

Are you afraid AI is going to take your job? Good. That fear might save your business. Trent sits down with Tom Howard (Service Titan) and Aaron Cooper (CEO of Same Day AI) to talk about what AI actually means for contractors and home service businesses — right now and in the next 2-5 years. What we cover:Why AI is bigger than the Industrial Revolution and the internetHow Same Day AI books jobs at...

What does it mean to play life in “Godmode” and how can it change the way you approach business, success, and personal growth? In this episode of Trent and Friends, Trent Lowenstein sits down with Ellen Rohr to break down the Godmode mindset, using concepts from video games to explain how top performers think, make decisions, and show up in their lives. They cover:How to see yourself as “Player On...