We’re excited to share that Stahla Services was recently featured on the Rise Up podcast where our Co-owners, Grant and Erin Stahla, discussed their remarkable journey of revolutionizing the portable sanitation industry through faith, partnership, and relentless commitment to excellence.
During this engaging conversation with host Justin, Grant and Erin opened up about starting with a single restroom trailer over 11 years ago and transforming it into a multi-location operation with 65 trailers serving clients nationwide. Their story reveals how entrepreneurship grounded in faith and marriage can create not just a successful business, but a movement that elevates an entire industry.
What We Discussed: From College Idea to Industry Leader
Grant shared the fascinating origin story of how Stahla Services began during his final semester at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. While taking four entrepreneurship classes simultaneously, he explored various business ideas—from converting shipping containers into hunting blinds to creating mobile entertainment stations. The breakthrough came when family members suggested he investigate bathroom trailers, a concept he’d never encountered growing up in the Midwest. Within one month of discovering this market gap, Grant built a website and purchased the first restroom trailer, launching what would become a revolutionary force in portable sanitation.
The conversation revealed how the business evolved through strategic phases. Grant operated solo for the first several years before meeting Erin, who brought her exceptional business acumen from a Chick-fil-A career path. They got married three and a half years ago, and Erin transitioned full-time into the business because, as she explained, “creating a lifestyle business usually takes two.” This partnership transformed Stahla Services from a single-location operation into a three-location enterprise serving Denver, Kansas City, and Omaha, with nationwide reach through Stahla Logistics.
The podcast also explored how we’ve expanded beyond our core rental business. Stahla Leads, our innovative online marketplace at stalaleads.com, emerged from turning a marketing challenge into opportunity. After spending over a million dollars on Google Ads and discovering most leads were outside our service areas, we created a platform to connect those customers with qualified local vendors for just $10 per lead. As Grant emphasized, “We really want to be that rising tide that lifts all ships within our industry.” This abundance mindset extends to our shower trailers, laundry trailers, and decontamination trailers—every solution designed to serve genuine customer needs.
Values-Driven Leadership: Faith as the Foundation
One of the most powerful segments of the podcast centered on how faith informs every aspect of our business operations. Grant and Erin were remarkably transparent about their commitment to “running a business like God intended,” from hiring and firing to financial decisions and customer service. This isn’t just corporate speak—it’s woven into our interview process, where we clearly communicate to potential team members that while they don’t need to share our beliefs, they’ll be working in a culture where faith guides decision-making.
Erin articulated a crucial principle: “We create the ceiling of the company.” This recognition of how leadership shapes organizational culture has driven Grant and Erin to prioritize their spiritual lives, starting their days in Scripture and maintaining clear priorities: faith first, their marriage second, then friends, family, and business. This intentional ordering prevents the common entrepreneurial trap of letting business success come at the expense of what matters most.
The podcast revealed how this values-driven approach influences everything from our ADA restroom trailers to how we treat team members. We’ve built a culture of A-players not by compromising our values, but by being clear about them from the start. Whether someone is a strong believer or taking a different spiritual path, they thrive in an environment where integrity, service excellence, and genuine care for people aren’t optional extras—they’re the foundation of how we operate.
Real-World Impact: Marriage, Business, and Partnership
Justin explored the often-overlooked dynamics of running a business as a married couple, and Erin provided remarkable insights. She acknowledged that many people’s initial reaction is “I could never,” often imagining the worst aspects of their spouse amplified daily. But as Erin explained, “It’s for more people than they even realize because people write it off so quickly.” Every workplace has frustrations and difficult coworkers—choosing to navigate those challenges with your spouse can actually be a strategic advantage when approached correctly.
The conversation revealed practical strategies Grant and Erin employ to maintain both business effectiveness and marital health. They work in separate areas of their home, maintain their own lanes and projects, then collaborate on shared initiatives. Critically, they don’t tell each other what to do because they both hate that dynamic. Grant emphasized the importance of building each other up, particularly noting that male business owners typically receive disproportionate credit even when their female partners do most of the work. This awareness shapes how they publicly recognize each other’s contributions.
Their partnership extends beyond operations into strategic thinking. Grant excels at zero-to-one creation—taking an idea and building initial structure around it. Erin brings exceptional strategic thinking about organizational structure, debt ratios, hiring decisions, and long-term growth planning. Whether coordinating logistics for 8-stall restroom trailers or strategizing expansion, their complementary skills create something neither could achieve alone. Their marriage purpose statement—”to impact and inspire vibrant living by design”—directly informs business decisions, ensuring the company serves their relationship rather than the reverse.
Understanding the Investment: Financial Wisdom Through Hardship
Grant candidly shared one of the most valuable lessons from their journey: the critical importance of understanding profit from day one. For his first seven years, he felt profit was somehow wrong or greedy, focusing instead on long-term vision. This mindset nearly led to bankruptcy in year seven, forcing a complete recalibration of how they approached financial decision-making.
The turning point came during an extraordinarily difficult period right after their wedding, when they’d overextended on trailer purchases expecting revenue that didn’t materialize. Grant described the “terrible feeling” of trailers sitting unused in parking lots while financial pressure mounted. This crisis coincided with all their Google Business profiles inexplicably going down, cutting off a primary lead source. From this crucible emerged both Stahla Leads and Stahla Logistics—born from the necessity of figuring out lead generation and ensuring no customer inquiry went unanswered.
Today, they operate from a position of financial wisdom and security. Grant emphasized that every purchase must cash flow itself, every business segment must stand on its own with its own P&L, and understanding the difference between balance sheet depreciation and real asset value is crucial. This disciplined approach now allows them to make smart investments—like a $200,000 service truck or a $100,000 premium restroom trailer—while maintaining the financial margin that creates sustainable growth. As Erin noted, operating from margin rather than constant pressure fundamentally changes daily operations, though they’re careful to create appropriate urgency even in seasons of success.
The Technicals: Three-Pronged Business Model
Justin asked Grant to break down the three core areas of Stahla Services, revealing our comprehensive approach to the specialty trailer market. Stahla Services operates three regional locations within roughly three-hour radiuses, owning our own trucks, employing our own teams, maintaining our own shops, and handling everything from delivery to AC unit repair to toilet replacement. This vertical integration ensures quality control and service excellence for 2-stall, 4-stall, and 6-stall restroom trailers.
Stahla Logistics extends our reach nationwide, servicing projects from Florida to Idaho, California to Texas. While often using our own trailers, we partner with local vendors to pump waste tanks, fill water, maintain generators, and handle on-site service needs. This model allows us to serve massive commercial projects—data center construction, power plant builds, meat packing plant locker room renovations—with the same quality standards regardless of location. Our expertise in shower trailers and specialized equipment makes us invaluable partners for military training operations and emergency response.
Stahla Leads at stalaleads.com completes our ecosystem as the industry’s only online marketplace for sanitation leads. We invest heavily in being the top of the funnel—showing up in Google Ads, SEO, chat GPT searches, and AI results—then connect customers with ideal local providers. When someone searches for weekend event rentals in California, we collect their information and list it on our marketplace where local vendors can purchase the lead for $10 and quote directly. This creates genuine win-win scenarios: customers receive three quality quotes, and vendors access qualified business opportunities without massive marketing investments.
Design & Strategy: Marketing in the AI Era
The conversation turned to how we’re adapting to rapidly evolving marketing landscapes, particularly AI’s impact on customer acquisition. Grant explained that while AI currently represents about 5% of our organic traffic, we’re aggressively pursuing AI visibility because it fundamentally changes how information discovery works. Unlike Google which primarily pulls from your website, AI searches multiple sources simultaneously—Facebook, Instagram, Wedding Wire, Google Business profiles, review sites—creating the first truly multi-platform search capability.
Our approach focuses on authenticity and strategic repetition. As Grant emphasized during the podcast, “We are the best restroom trailer and shower trailer rental company in the United States.” This isn’t empty boasting—it’s strategic positioning that we communicate consistently across platforms through authentic content like podcast appearances, video, and genuine customer interactions. The key is being specific about what we do while maintaining the authentic human presence that AI systems increasingly value.
Current lead generation splits roughly 50/50 between organic and paid advertising, with Google Search ads (not display or dynamic ads) driving most paid acquisition. For business-to-business clients—who represent 85% of our revenue through commercial construction, data centers, power plants, and industrial projects—cold outbound sales remains crucial. Our salespeople proactively contact commercial construction companies, positioning Stahla Services as “the easy button” for their portable facility needs. Whether it’s combo trailer rentals or specialized shower and restroom combinations, we’re making sure the right decision-makers know we exist.
Accessibility & Capacity: Serving All People Well
Justin, who lives with a physical disability, took a moment to personally thank Grant and Erin for prioritizing ADA accessibility in their trailer designs. His gratitude highlighted a critical gap in the portable sanitation industry—events where wheelchair users simply have no viable restroom options. This isn’t just good business; it’s the right thing to do, reflecting our commitment to serving all people with dignity and excellence.
Our capacity planning spans from intimate gatherings to massive commercial operations. The 15% of revenue from events includes everything from high-end weddings to multi-million dollar fundraisers, while the 85% commercial segment handles projects requiring seven large restroom trailers and three shower trailers for extended military training operations. This diversity demands operational excellence across every scale, supported by systems like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), HubSpot for customer management, and Smartsheets for project coordination.
The podcast revealed how we’re intentionally scaling while preserving what Erin called “the secret sauce of who we are.” They don’t want to outgrow their ability to deliver exceptional service, which means growing to meet genuine customer needs rather than chasing arbitrary size metrics. Whether someone needs a premium 1-stall ADA restroom trailer for an intimate event or multiple 16-station shower trailers for disaster relief, we’re building infrastructure and systems that maintain quality at every level.
As we’ve shared before, Grant and Erin Stahla are driven by a mission that goes beyond business. They are passionate about redefining portable sanitation through a company built on caring for people, delivering service excellence, and leading with faith. This includes their dedicated support of organizations like Love Justice International. This core commitment to integrity and service is woven into every interaction at Stahla Services.
We are deeply grateful to Justin and the Rise Up podcast team for creating space for such an honest, wide-ranging conversation about faith, marriage, and business. As Grant emphasized during the interview, “If you’re built to be an entrepreneur, do it. And if you’re married and thinking about pursuing business together, do it—but understand it’s going to be hard, just like working with any employee or coworker.” This realistic optimism captures our approach: acknowledge the challenges, build in safety measures, maintain clear priorities, and pursue excellence together.
Ready to experience what happens when faith, partnership, and operational excellence converge in portable sanitation? Explore our full range of solutions or check out our frequently asked questions. Get Your Personalized Quote Today! or call us at 844-900-3190. Let us show you why we’re not just in the trailer business—we’re in the business of elevating portable hygiene and serving people with excellence.