About Erick Loden

Built from the field up

Erick grew up around his family’s commercial roofing company and learned the business from the ground level. He worked on crews, moved through field supervision and management, became vice president, and purchased the company in 2014. That progression matters to the way he thinks about leadership: every decision made in an office eventually lands on someone doing the work.

Over the next eleven years, Erick led the company through substantial growth, developed people capable of carrying greater responsibility, and successfully sold the business in 2025. He did not arrive at entrepreneurship through a classroom case study or a personal-brand strategy. He experienced the difficult parts firsthand—family-business succession, cash-flow pressure, hiring, delegation, accountability, culture, profitability, and eventually preparing a company to continue beyond its owner.

Education grounded in real work

Erick earned two bachelor’s degrees concurrently from Linfield College—one in Business Management and one in Computer Science—completing both programs in four years. The combination gave him an early appreciation for both sides of building an organization: the people, financial, and leadership decisions that move a business forward, and the systems thinking required to solve complex problems.

His college years were practical as well as academic. Erick worked on a farm for three and a half years while also serving for three years as a teaching assistant and lab assistant in Linfield’s computer science department. Those experiences reinforced a lesson that continues to shape his work: education is most useful when it helps people think clearly, solve real problems, and contribute where the work is actually being done.

Profitability before vanity

The most important part of Erick’s operating story is not simply that the company became larger. During his ownership, operating profit increased nearly fifteenfold while annual revenue grew more than eightfold. That distinction shaped his belief that growth only matters when it creates a healthier business, stronger opportunities for employees, better service for customers, and greater freedom for the owner.

Erick’s experience also taught him that an owner cannot build something durable by remaining the answer to every question. Sustainable progress required clearer expectations, better systems, honest financial measurement, and leaders who could make sound decisions without waiting for permission. Building those capabilities made growth possible and helped prepare the business for a successful transition.

Leadership when the stakes are real

Alongside his business career, Erick accumulated more than two decades of Search & Rescue experience and training in Wyoming. That work reinforced lessons that apply far beyond emergency response: prepare before the pressure arrives, communicate clearly, respect the people closest to the problem, and accept responsibility for the outcome.

Those principles continue to influence how he evaluates leadership, teams, and decision-making. The goal is not to sound certain. It is to gather the right information, stay useful under pressure, and help capable people work together toward a clear result.

Why From The Ground Up Show

After selling the company, Erick created From The Ground Up Show to have the kinds of conversations that helped him most as an operator: long-form, candid discussions with entrepreneurs, tradespeople, veterans, sales professionals, franchise leaders, and others who earned their lessons through the work.

The show is built around curiosity rather than performance. Guests are invited to explain the decisions, failures, turning points, and habits behind meaningful success. Erick brings an operator’s ear to those conversations—asking what changed, what it cost, what did not work, and what another builder or leader can actually use.

What Erick works on today

Today, Erick’s work centers on entrepreneurship, leadership development, durable business growth, family-business transitions, profitability, succession, and building organizations that do not depend on one person for every decision. Through the podcast, speaking, and selective coaching conversations, he helps serious operators think more clearly about the business and life they are building.

• Growing a profitable blue-collar or service business
• Developing managers and leaders who can carry real responsibility
• Moving from owner-dependence toward a durable organization
• Navigating family-business succession, ownership transitions, and exits
• Making practical decisions under pressure