The Ownership Blueprint: How Ryan Markewich Put His Team in Charge

This week on Trades Talk, host Justin White sits down with Ryan Markewich, a Canadian landscape entrepreneur, coach, and early adopter of open book management, to unpack his journey from mowing lawns to building a business that now operates with employee ownership and long term vision at the core. Ryan started his company in Kelowna, British Columbia in 1994, going door to door to pay rent while dreaming bigger. Over time, he scaled to a multi million dollar operation, but not without burnout and hard lessons along the way. Influenced by personal development legends like Jim Rohn and John Maxwell, Ryan leaned into learning, coaching, and building a company around transparency and shared success. In this episode, Ryan shares: • How he used open book management and the Great Game of Business to build real accountability • Why he sold 85 percent of his company to his employees and how the structure works • What it means to run a company focused on long term thinking and consensus based leadership • Why teaching employees how business works is the key to building great teams • What he is planning next with R-Mark Coaching and the first landscape retreat in Mexico Ryan also talks about spending months each year in Mexico to reflect, challenge his thinking, and reconnect with what matters most. If you are interested in employee ownership, values based leadership, and scaling a business that puts people first, this episode is packed with wisdom and real world experience.