Alex Kirby: By year three, we were a debt free million dollar business. Cash flowed everything. I wish more people in the blue collar trades were willing to be embarrassed. I wish they were willing to put themselves out there because your next opportunity is on the other side of the fence of boldness. 

Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to another episode of The OWNR OPS  podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray. In this episode, I have Alex Kirby joining us. Alex built and sold a landscaping business. And he's going to share more about the journey and more about that process. 

 Alex Kirby:I don't want you to own your job. I want you to own a business. I started praying and saying, Lord, I need you to show me what to do on Fridays 'cause I have no idea. And about five days later, this guy comes up to me from the church and goes. And light bulb went off in my head when I was like, I'm from this town and I don't know anyone to recommend to this guy. That's weird. And so I was like, I'll do it. 

Austin Gray: But more importantly, Alex and I both agree on our faith as a guiding principle in not only our life but in business.

 Alex Kirby: As well said, our life will be changed forever. And my wife, the godly amazing sweet girl she is, she's sat trust. I built a custom website for the first time. I bought three RAM trucks. I bought three trailers. I bought four mowers. I paid cash for everything, and we did a million the next year, debt free because of her belief in me and not letting lifestyle creep come in.

Austin Gray: So we're going to dive in the topics of how faith and business correlate for both of us. And if that's your jam, then you're going to enjoy this episode. 

 Alex Kirby: A business owner's never allowed to have a bad day. Your people never need to hear you complaining. They never need to see you down. You need to bring the energy every day. You need to bring the heat. 

Austin Gray: If you have this desire to go build businesses like that is inherently built inside your DNA by the creator. But before we dive in, we have been having a lot of fun building our school group. I've documented a lot of, uh, resources that we've used to grow Bear Claw from zero to seven figures. Things like how to optimize your Google business profile, how to run profitable Facebook ads, how to dial in your messaging so that you're targeting your ideal customer so that you can find your most profitable jobs. How to set up an optimized jobber so that you can save time on the back end with all the office admin work.

How to streamline systems, things of that nature. So if you haven't joined yet, you can join at school.com/owner ops. That's SKOO l.com/owr OPS. My goal is to offer as much free value as I can in there. I would absolutely love to meet you if I have not already. It's free to join. Just jump in that group. Make sure to introduce yourself in the community, and can't wait to meet you in there. Without further ado, let's jump into the episode with Alex.

Austin Gray: Let's rock and roll. Alex Kirby, welcome to the podcast.

‍Alex Kirby: Glad to be here. never been snowboarding. 

‍Austin Gray: But really?

‍Alex Kirby: Never been.

‍Austin Gray: Oh man. I'm surprised y'all hadn't brought like a youth trip out here.

 Alex Kirby: I know I I have enough kids to bring a whole van,  📍 

Austin Gray: Do you?

 Alex Kirby: No. I've got,  my wife and I have our fourth on the way right now, about 10 more weeks. We have a six and a half year old girl who's a wild child. She's wild. three boys in a row, and they're gonna be four and a half years apart, like boom. So we're tapping out after that. But times over here in my family. No question.  

Austin Gray: I love it. We got a lot of talk, a lot to talk about faith business. You're a serial entrepreneur, you've got multiple businesses started landscape business and you mentioned that you guys are going to franchise.

‍Alex Kirby:Yeah, I'm actually talking to a lawyer guy today. One of the, one of the X World recommendations, X is a new world for me that I got on X last year for the first time ever. Man, the connections I've made on there is nuts. So someone hooked me up with the expert franchise lawyer. Everybody recommended them and I posted it yesterday. That's what's so cool about X dude. You just get the best recommendations like in two seconds.

Austin Gray: It's this like tight knit, but it's weird. It's just like a small group of where business owners hang out and I feel like outside of that I don't know, your friends and family aren't on there.

Alex Kirby: No. I don't know anybody but one guy on there from like real life.

Austin Gray: It's funny. It's like I, I'm the same, I don't know any of my friends or family who use the platform, but. Small business owners, they're on there. 

Alex Kirby: Lemme ask you this 'cause I don't, I'm not as an expert as you on the X thing. I can't tell who's real and phony on that platform or other platforms. I feel like I can tell, I can't tell who is what and what is who. Do you ever feel that way or am I way off there?  

Austin Gray: It's interesting and algorithm's gonna hate me for saying this, but I don't scroll that much right now. Like I've just been really focused on, alright, how can we build Bear Claw, which is our business.

 I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin, and this last winter I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. In both businesses, I've implemented jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting job schedules and invoicing, and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us in Bearclaw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the back end of your business, look no further than Jobber, you can visit Go dot get jobber.com/owner ops O-W-N-R-O-P-S.

Austin Gray: Focus, focus. And then with the podcast, I'm really dialing in the focus there for season three, which is gonna be starting at the beginning of the year.  And I really just want everything to be. Like where we'll move into the beginning of the year is everything is gonna come back to land services, the businesses that, or the business that I'm operating.  So I'm just gonna dive deep, like I'm diving into this book again and everything that we're doing from a business perspective, we're gonna refine. And then I've got, the online stuff, the podcast, and then our consulting offer and whatnot. It's just all gonna be married together. Instead of trying to do way too many things for way too many people. I'm just trying to simplify and then optimize where needed.  Let's talk landscape.

Alex Kirby: Yeah. Let's, yeah, let's talk it.

Austin Gray: Do it. What business did you start? When did you start it? 

‍ Alex Kirby: Yeah, man. So I started I started Trifecta Landscaping in 2017. And the story is pretty, pretty wild. I was a pastor straight outta college. I played baseball in college, big athlete my whole life. Went on a full ride to a division two school. 'cause people don't realize this before. NIL everything's changed like crazy. Like baseball was not a fully athletic scholarship D1 sport. So like I had division one offers plenty, like several division one offers, but it was 25, 30%. So do you go 50 K to a D1 school or do you go full ride to a D2? Big D2 school? It's pretty easy decision at the time..  Now most of them are fully funded because of NIL stuff, but, I went to a D2 school pretty close to my house. I'm, I live in Columbia, South Carolina, which is the capital of South Carolina where the Gamecocks are. Big game coming up for us football and was a pastor. Met Christ in college, became a Christian in college and studied Bible. And so got outta college and that's when I kinda realized that I didn't have any money and youth pastors don't make any money. And so 90 days into being married, got married to my wife right after college in the end of 2015 I came home one day, and was like, Hey, this isn't gonna work. And I should have chose better words. I'll say that. You don't say that to your new wife, right? But I meant financially, right? 

And so I got three extra jobs like immediately. And again, I hadn't read anything. I hadn't really talked to anybody. But the big thing was I was off on Fridays and so I was like, what can I do on Fridays to make extra money?  And some, I started praying and saying, Lord, I need you to show me what to do on Fridays. 'cause I have just no idea. About five days later, this guy comes up to me from the church and goes, Hey man, you're from this town. Can you point me in the direction of a lawn care guy? I'm like, I don't know any, I don't know a single one. And light bulb went off in my head when I was like, I don't, I'm from this town and I don't know anyone to recommend in this guy. That's weird. And so I was like, I'll do it. And that's the start. So I, that was like summer of 2016.  I never mowed grass, dude. My dad had 2, we had 2 acres. My dad was like, Mr. Manicure, right? So he never gave me a chance to learn how to do it. So I YouTubed it on the way to go mow this guy's house, like edging and stuff. 

And I butchered his yard. I did a horrible job. Thankfully he was gracious enough to gimme another shot and for the next six months I side hustle it and get some clients right. Then long story short, the church job, there's some stuff going on at the church I didn't agree with, so I quit with 3000 bucks to my name. My wife and I, we quit some jobs offers at big places, but we just were like, our goal is just to have a big family. And Dave Ramsey was a big guy that I ended up reading and enjoying. I don't agree with everything, but 95% I do. And so I was like, you know what? Let's see if we can do, my wife actually was like, let's see if you can do this lawn care thing in 20, let's give it 90 days. And then 2017, January, February, March, and let's see what happens. We have enough money. I think we had six grand at the time. We have enough. She had a job. We have enough money to last 90 days.  And man, it, it just went bonkers from day one. I think the first year we did 250 k in revenue, second year, 500.  And by year three, we were a debt free million dollar business. Cash flowed everything. Like I said, Dave Ramsey was a big inspiration to me. And again, so I just, put in the seatbelt and said, all right, let me figure this out. I don't know anything about lawn care, landscaping. I don't know anything, baseball, you enjoy lawn care, right?

That was, people always ask me, why did you like it? I played baseball my whole life and we manicured our field all the time and taking care of fields, if that makes any sense. So that's where, like the love of that is. And I grew up on some land, so like I love being outside. So those two things made it pretty easy for me to do that.  

Austin Gray: That's awesome. And what, what, what year was this when you started?   

Alex Kirby: January, 2017. So the worst month possible to start a lawn care business. I remember being like, how am I supposed to do anything in this month? So we did a lot of cleanups. We did a lot of I don't know if you know what pine straw is, but we do a ton of that here in the south like pine needles, like people like that as like a mulch, like an alternative to mulch.

‍Austin Gray: Interesting.

‍ Alex Kirby: So so we put a ton of pine straw and a ton of cleanup. So those first two months before the grass started growing,

‍Austin Gray: Pine straw and, sorry we're gonna dive a little bit deep on this.

‍ Alex Kirby: I'm, this is pine needles.

‍Austin Gray: Oh these are pine needles.

‍Alex Kirby: yeah, like they bail 'em up in the woods with this a lot of, Hispanic people dup pine straw harvesting and they make this   📍 wood, wooden box, and then they have a pump arm and they funnel it they pile it up every 50 feet. So they do like with a rake. So like you can imagine there's pine trees, acres of it, and I've been out to the field so many times and they go in a circle for 40, 50 feet, make a big pile of it like you would a leaf pile. Then they grab it, put it in this chute, they push it down with an arm and then they tie it while it's pushed down and then they pull it out and it's know, bale's probably two and a half feet by one and a half feet, something like that.Like maybe three feet long.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I just looked it up.

Alex Kirby: Yeah. They sell like crazy here. Like people love it.  📍 

Austin Gray: And people use that in their flower beds.  📍 

‍ Alex Kirby: Yeah. Instead of mulch. Yeah. It is like a river rock alternative. Like it's the cheapest alternative for mulch and river rock. Installed. It's I think we're at eight 50 a bale now, but when I started it was like seven, 6 57. So cover one bale covers five, six feet by six feet probably. Maybe a little bit more.

Austin Gray: Okay. So it's in some sort of matting material.

 Alex Kirby: No, you just grab it and you shake it out, dude. Oh. And then it ends up you spread it like you would spread cotton candy cloud. And then you blow use the blower and you curl it on the edges to make it tight. And that's it.

Austin Gray: interesting. Very interesting. Sorry, I'm diving deep on, on the nitty gritty here.

Alex Kirby: I'm all about this. I love it.  📍 

Austin Gray: And then the reason I'm diving deep on this, 'cause and I just looked it up, like your pine needles are different, but,  

Alex Kirby: They're We chip a lot of, huh. They're long needle.

Austin Gray: Okay. Got it.

Alex Kirby: like they're pretty long. They can get to foot and a half long per needle. It's pretty long.

Austin Gray: Got it. Yeah, I'm, I'm always interested in, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, right? Yeah. if you were creating a product I love figuring out a way to go sell that product that would be considered waste to most people.

Alex Kirby: Yeah I mean they I used to flip it, I'd go to Latino people and, then go to a landscape supply and, put 50 cents on it and sell it to them for sure. It's a good product. It's, it sells, like landscape supply that I used to buy from would sell 200,000 bales a year, like  

Austin Gray: Really?

Alex Kirby: Crazy numbers.

Austin Gray: What is that? What'd you say? It was seven 50 or eight 50 a bale.  

Alex Kirby:That's installed. So like the wholesale or the retail price would be like 4 25 a bale. They buy it for three 50. They got 75 cents to a dollar profit in there. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it.  

Alex Kirby: But it just sits there it just sits in the truck. So there's no, just wait till people come in, they throw it on their own truck and they leave. Like it's a great product to just have sitting there and make money. It's like a, so we used to call it like the landscape soda machine, right? You just put it out there and then people buy it and then they leave.  

Austin Gray: Interesting. So you got your start by installing this in January in the winter months.   

Alex Kirby:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So first month I was installing this and doing like leaf cleanups from people after Christmas and. Property cleanups Hey, my yard's a mess, wife or four, at the time, 400 bucks for the day. I'll do it. It's like whatever I had to do to get to, I think our, I remember we, my wife and I made a tree, like a Christmas tree, and we're like, every thousand bucks, let's color it in. Our goal was like 8,000 the first month. And we did 8,200 I remember.

Austin Gray: That's awesome.  

Alex Kirby: And then, yeah, next month, somewhere in that same range and then just took off. I just, I had 60 lawns to cut in six, like by the middle of April. Like we were, so we got, and marketing's where I figured all that out. Like just always made sense to me. Organic, social media. So I'm a big believer if anyone's, I know your whole audience as OWNR OPS mostly. It's like marketing is, doesn't have to be sexy dude. It just ha have a plan, execute, and hustle.

 Austin Gray: How did you go get those first customers?   

Alex Kirby:Door hangers mostly, door hangers, and then something I call spider web marketing, which is I just made the term up, but everyone has their own version of it. But every single person in my phone, I texted from, I don't know, 2300 people in my life in my phone. I sent a three sentence text with a picture, said, Hey, it's Alex. Hope you're doing good casual. It's just wanna let you know I started a lawn care business in town. If I can ever serve you, please let me know. And I had a funny picture or something and so I text, I spent one entire night, like five hours just texting every person next thing boom, you got 20 people that called you back.   

Austin Gray: That's awesome. We just got done with the live stream from Andy with the Stryker Digital guys and we were talking about this specifically 'cause one of the guys joined and was like, how do I go get my first customer? And to your point, you said it, I know it's a cliche term, but it's just hustle in the beginning.

Alex Kirby: Yeah, a hundred percent. It, I'm a big believer in, again faith with action is the sauce. I trust you. I think you're gonna send people my way. I know you're gonna finish the work you began. But I know that in order for you to create a path, I have to walk.   I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk and you show me where to go.

Austin Gray: I love it. I love the action piece. Absolutely love it. So from there you get your first 20 customers. What do you do from there for marketing? 

Alex Kirby: I I didn't do anything paid for long time. Two years probably. And like I said, we did 500 K the second year, so it was all organic to half a million. But my big break came and this is where I think you, your audience will like this story. was mowing, I don't know about you guys out there. We have a lot of spec home builders, right? So national builders or regional builders that build, 200 house neighborhoods consistently, right? And I was mowing houses in there for individuals and I kept seeing the properties looking terrible from the builder side, right? So they're like building and then putting 'em on the market. And so I'm just driving through one day and I'm like, man, like in the beginning of year two. I'm like, man, these houses look terrible. I wonder who's mowing these for them? I remembered that a girl in my youth group's dad worked at, I just remembered randomly her dad worked at one of the builders as like a high up guy. 

So I just texted her and was like, she was graduated at that now, at the time. I said, Hey, do you, does your dad still worked there? She goes, yeah. I said, can I get his number? And I, I'd met him several times. It wasn't like a stranger. I think we went to dinner a couple times after church with his family type thing.  And I called him and he was like, what's up Alex? And I'm like, Hey I see all these houses not mowed. Who doesn't you, he is he's too high up for that. He's I don't know. But we got it covered. Thanks. I emailed him month on the first, for the next eight months and just kept saying, Hey, is there an opportunity? Let me know. So going into year three, I emailed him in February like I always do, and he called me and said, you email me on the right day. We fired him last week. So that's a huge thing that I try to teach people. And we'll get to this later by, I do a lot of coaching, consulting stuff is like 80% of the battle is being consistent.

And what, I'm a baseball guy, so I say being on deck when it's your time to hit, man, like just be the girl at the dance who needs a partner.  And so I, they, this is a multi gazillion dollar company. They actually, so they sold for 150 million like a couple years later. That they gave me like four lawns, like one neighborhood to cut. They're like, we'll give you a test, and they had 25 neighborhoods in my city under construction, something like that. And so they gave me four lawns. And the next long story short. I ended up getting that whole account, it became a 600 k account every year until I sold the company. So I ended up, doing that a couple times.

So like I, I went to another builder and I couldn't get that guy to email me. I actually, this is a funny story, Austin. I dressed up like I was at a meeting, I had a meeting with a guy, I could not get him respond.  And I walked into their office and went to the, the new hire admin girl. She's Hey, can I help you? And I said, Hey, I'm Alex, I'm here with did I say? Like home service relations or something. I made up something like a title that didn't make, I literally said something like that, Austin, I'm serious. And I looked like I had my laptop and I looked like I had a briefcase and I looked like I had a meeting. 

I was like, I'm here. See Jeremy, I'm here with, landscaping relations or something like that. And she went and got him, dude. And so I ended up meeting him. We ended up doing 40 KA year with them. So for anybody listening, I know that sounds crazy, but. I believe if you want a customer and you just them in your atmosphere of, Hey, we wanna work with you. We're here if you need. 'cause we know that about like big companies or contractors or hospitals, firing people all the time. They're looking for expansion all the time. And they don't really have a staff that looks hard for people to work with. They don't really care as long as the job gets done. So if you can be the person on the outside prowling I think that's a great strategy for growth personally.

‍Austin Gray: I love it. I absolutely love it, and I believe that so many people need to hear this, especially in your industry the maintenance service. Like I see some people trying to run, I'm big on Facebook ads, but we're a high ticket service, one-off project, right? I can make that customer acquisition cost to average order value work very well. Whereas for you,  and I'm interested to hear like you may have a Facebook ad strategy with an offer that works and if you do, totally cool would love to hear about it. But I love the fact that you're bringing this up because like my snow shoveling business is the same. I don't run any Facebook ads.

I don't do any paid ads for that. I just went straight to the commercial property managers. Like where is the customer? The one customer who can get me a hundred, or the one customer who can get me 300? And that is what you are saying. And man, I see so many people overcomplicating it. It's all you gotta do is walk into the office. But I love the fact of how you got creative there to go get to the decision maker.

Austin Gray:  You know the phone system tool I've mentioned here called Open Phone that we use, they just rebranded to Quo. It's the same business phone system that you've heard me talk about on here before, but they have a new name now with Quo. You get one flexible app on your phone or computer to run your business from anywhere You can text clients, record calls, get AI summaries, and even have an AI agent answer your calls after hours. 90,000 businesses have already made the switch. Pricing starts at $15 a month and you can even try it for free. Visit quo.com/ownrops to get 20% off your first three months. That's quo.com/ownrops, and if you're moving from another phone service provider, they'll even port in your number for free quo. No missed calls. No missed customers.

‍ Alex Kirby: I didn't know, I was so young at the time, I didn't really, that's what's fun about being young. Sometimes you just don't care, right? Like I love the phrase if you don't ask, they're already saying no. Like they're already saying no, what's what I got to lose. And I wish more people. Believed in that. I wish more people in the, what I call blue collar, right? Blue collar trades were willing to be embarrassed. I wish they were willing to put themselves out there because your next opportunity is on the other side of the fence of boldness. It really is. And if you're willing to put yourself out there, look like a fool in the world's view you can change your life. And that's what landscaping did for me. And, to fast forward all that, if that's all right. Like sure grew we grew, again, I was known. I get, became larger on Instagram with doing a lot of content on how to grow a landscape business debt free. I was known as that guy. We ended up growing to 25 team members. under 2 million, in annual revenue. And I ended up selling, I did a asset sale. So I guess our, your audience should know probably some of this. So I ended up, private equity was trying to buy everybody in COVID times, right? So got hunted down by a couple of the PE people. They, made an offer. It was a terrible one, right? You gotta stay on two years and do the whole dance, right? For me, everyone asked me like, why did you wanna sell? For me I'm not like a Mr. Fix it handy guy. So lawn care. I had 10 trucks, I had 20 mowers.

Like the, we were about 80 20 maintenance to projects. It just be, and we were outta space. And so being a debt free guy, like I'm debt free. Like I pay cash for my house and my land too. So I got 10 acres. Like I stick to this mantra. Really responsibly and committed, right? thinking about building a facility, which is where we were at, we're at year seven, we're at 2 million. We need to get to five. I don't know about,  I don't know about your industry, but in the landscape world, basically the valley of the shadow of death is two to growing from two to five, there's not a lot of profit extra, right?  You're adding a lot of overhead, over 3 million, 4 million. And when you get to five, you start making you know, money again, and you've got your system put out. Facility was number one on the list. We're outta space and we got thir. Think about we got 25 people's cars, right? You need an acre to park that. Then you got all our stuff, that's another acre. Then you gotta have the building that's three acres. We're looking at three acres minimum, right? So I got a quote from, with a decent piece of land in a building for 950,000. I'm like, that doesn't sound fun to me at all. And so instead of doing that, and then, and also Austin, if you do that, you gotta stay in the game another eight to 10 years to get your investment back. So those two things collided for me. Like I didn't like the sound of either of those, signing a contract for eight years basically is how it felt. And then get going into debt. I had not gone into debt. I didn't wanna do it. I had a young family, yeah. I was telling you earlier, I've got a 6-year-old now, a 4-year-old, a two and a half year old now, another one coming at the time they were all under four.

So I was like, I just, three of 'em were, anyways, so I sold to a local guy, but I kept my brand because I knew my brand was really strong. So if you wanna talk into brand marketing stuff, but I had groan the number one reviews in town. We were ranked the number one at the time. I'm in the major city, so that's a very important where I'm at. Social media was off the chain, our lead flow was unreal. All the things that really mattered. And then we're big on online, on social media.  I think on Facebook we have 5,800 likes or something, followers.  So I kept the brand. So the guy bought my customers and employees, he bought the assets. I got a really good lawyer. I kept signed an 18 month non-compete and got a nice cash out. And then I got to reimagine what I wanted the company to look like, because when you grow to that size, it's like, hard to tear down that beast, to go back, 'cause we were, what I'm trying to say is we were two residential maintenance heavy, and so I realized that, how am I gonna tear this beast down? We were like, I don't know, 40% commercial, 40% residential, 20% projects. I wanted to be closer to 10 to 15% residential, and 60 to 70% commercial the

And because as you're about, as you said earlier, like one off tickets at 80 bucks, just don't do it.  With the way inflation was going, the way that, you have to pay decent people the size I was at, right? it just wasn't worth it. We were making good money, but it was gonna be a hard four or five years growing to that 5 million, like I said in that way. So I basically reset and then now, like I said, I kept the brand and we just launched my first location here in town and the goal I think is we're gonna be franchising it for 2026. So I'm working on that hard the next three or four months. Got the, gonna try to have a couple here in my town. And then, a lot of these guys that have talked to me over the years who have stuck businesses who are stuck at that 250 number and lawn care, that seems that's the number two to 300 K guys get stuck at. And  for So I like to tell people, I don't want you to own your job. I want you to own a business. so I'm gonna try to, transform those guys from what they're doing to a trifecta and then take 'em to seven 50 is the goal. We're trying, seven 50 seems to be the number where you can comfortably make six figures and have a good business. that's kind the plan right now.  

Austin Gray: I love it. I love that. What do you think the person at 250 struggles with the most?   

Alex Kirby: Oh, that's good. I think one is comfortability. He and not comfort in a good way. He's complacent and comfortable because he's scared of his inadequacies. And so he's never gone to a conference, he's never read a book on business. He's only listened to the people at the Hardee's who talk about business when they're eating their biscuits every morning. Oh, you can't do that these days. There's no way, things are cost too, all those old guys that you just hear and listen to at church or whatever. And so I think that they believe the hype, like especially in the lawn and landscape industry. So many guys just think that this is the way it is, or you can't find good help. Oh my gosh, how many times I've heard that from people, dude. 

Austin Gray: That's the number one right there. 

Alex Kirby:Number one. And so then they just make excuses for themselves and every year they're frustrated. They make 70 K, 80 K and they're like grinding, like working their bodies to the bone and they just don't see the vision for more. The other one is lifestyle creep. So I'm, so my, we didn't talk about this, but my wife and I in 17, 18 to 19, been married 2 years. When we started the lawn care company, paid ourselves $40,000 all three years salary, and we put every dollar back in the company. Other than that, we lived with a married couple, two married couples that first year in 17 to save money. To cash flow of the business. second year, we bought a tiny house and we lived in a tiny house for 18 and 19 on her par, her grandparents' land. And we didn't buy anything, dude. We just, I remember at the end of 2018, I had a hundred thousand in the bank and I said, Hey, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but if I put 80% of this back into the company and go from two crews to five I'm gonna cry.  

Think about this. I said, our life will be changed forever. And my wife, the godly amazing sweet girl she is, she sat trust you.  That's all she said. And I built a custom website for the first time. three RAM trucks. I bought three trailers. I bought four mowers. I paid cash for everything. We, and we did a million the next year debt free because of her belief in me and not letting lifestyle creep come in. And, I say that I'm getting emotional 'cause I'm sitting here in my podcast studio at my house on my 10 acres and my family's down there, Hank, a thousand feet away. My wife's raising our kids, homeschooling 'em, and all the things we dreamed about. And I haven't gotta think about that in a little while. And I just want to tell anyone listening to this, if you see the vision, don't let dust get in the way. Don't let people tell you, oh, you should buy a house now. Oh, you should get a better truck. Oh, you should don't let them tell you what you should do. Sacrifice the success for a little while and then you can do almost anything. I'm a big believer in that Austin.

Austin Gray: How much did your faith have to play into that?  

Alex Kirby:Everything. The short story on my faith journey is, I was grown up in church, in a Baptist church, and I let baseball be the idol of my life. I just, it, I care more about it than anything. And then I go to college and, struggle going out, the whole deal. And finally God got a hold of my heart sophomore year. And he's never led me astray. I've led myself astray for sure, but he's never led me astray. And anytime I needed to fi find the path back, he had a flashlight saying, it's right here. You can just go right here. I got you. And it came to the business, God, I, he always was showing me the next step. He didn't show me the destination. But, Lord, I don't I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I'm trying, and I know you're gonna show me the, just the next step. I don't need to see the finish line. I didn't know I was gonna sell my business. I didn't know I didn't see that finish line. I didn't know that. It was a really hard decision like to answer this at the context of that. I was really torn and I woke up February 1st, 2023, mowing seasons coming right? And I was so torn with what to do. I woke up and the Holy Spirit told me, today's the day I remember it wasn't an audible voice, but like in my heart. And that's when I told my team that I was selling the company that day. And and I sold, like I said, I sold the residentials to one guy and I sold the commercial and every, everything else to another guy, but faith is everything. I don't see, I don't see how people, I was listening to a podcast yesterday about I like Tucker Carlson sometimes. 

I like the people he has on there. And he had a pa evangelist for 45 years. And he was basically saying it if there is nothing, then we're doing means nothing. I just it means everything to me because I don't understand how people build something just to know they're gonna leave it. And it just it didn't matter. For me, I, my faith means a legacy for my kids. It means helping missionaries. I just was able to, there's a missionary lady that we just supported. means when my wife's friend is pregnant and they need diapers and wipes, I can give it to 'em because. I'm I believe that more Christians with money is a good thing. I'm super against the poverty mindset in the church. How can we help people if we don't have, so yeah, faith means everything to me, brother.

 Austin Gray: For the longest time in my twenties I think that was my big clash. It's like, how do I do faith in business together? And somewhere along the line, I, I was raising the church as well. My twenties was pretty rough from a faith perspective. I questioned everything. Thirties has been awesome. Having a family has been awesome. A strong believing wife has helped.  Kids has helped because it challenges you to think, what values do I actually believe in, and where did those values come from?  For me, even if I question, still question things, like everything comes back to what I learned in here growing up. And so once I answered that question, it all became clear that, hey, that's the actual concept of faith. It's your anchor point, right? If you

 Alex Kirby: Yeah. Something anchoring you, you're just a whimsical flower in the wind, man. It's funny you bring that up because so like I spent 20, 24 kind of going, okay, what's next?  I've been running a marketing company. We market for blue collar businesses mostly. we do mostly social media management ads. We don't really mess with SEO all that much, but social media ads and email and marketing. So I'd had that going since 23. But the, I've really spent 24 kind of a little bit lost, to be honest. Like, all right, I've been doing this thing. I got the exit, substantial amount of money everything. What, God, what do you want me to do next? And I've been doing a lot of coaching on the side. 'cause I just like my pastoring stuff comes out. I love helping guys like. It's there was, I didn't tell you about, there was a mentor that kind of helped me start, that was in my church that had a multi-million dollar landscape company after I'd started that, taught me the ropes a little bit and enjoy that. So I spent 24. I was lost. Actually just, it is embarrassing to say, but it's okay. I actually just had to apologize to a lot of my employees who are no longer with me in my marketing company and say I was sorry 'cause I was a bad boss for 2024. So I just, I just wasn't on my game like I was before.

And I, I guess this is a side note for people listening, but like your people know if you're not on your game and they. They need to know they can trust you. And a great quote that one of my mentors told me is, a business owner's never let, never allowed to have a bad day. And what he means by that is your people don't need hear, never need to hear you complaining. They never need to see you down.  There's transparency. Sure. But you need to bring the energy every day. You need to bring the heat. If you're having a bad day, you go to your people on X, you go to your small group, you go to your, I know there's peer groups like tribe and stuff.  That's where you have a bad day. Don't have a bad day in front of your people. It brings 'em down big time. And I had a bad year is what I'm trying to get at. And my people knew it and I really hurt some people. So anyways, 2024 was me just going through the wilderness, like the Israelites. I'm like trying to figure it out. And beginning of this year, I finally started really praying and fasting. Like I had a weird year with God. I everything was weird. My health was weird. I'm working out again now, but just didn't take care of myself really. So the beginning of this year, probably like March, I really started finally having some clarity and about what am I good at and what am I passionate about and what can I do to help people with those two things. So we're actually about to launch like the blue collar kingdom, is what we're calling it. So what you just said is, how do I help people grow their business and grow the kingdom at the same time? So we're launching like a community for believers who wanna not just learn. There's plenty of resources out there like Hormozi right?

Like on how to grow your business, but there's almost, I tried to find it. There's almost nothing about how to grow a kingdom business in a practical way. How do I interview with God in mind? How do I fire with God in mind? How do I, how much should I be giving with my business finances? How much hours should I be working with the kingdom in mind? So that ethos, that idea is what we're doing there. So it's gonna be just an online, free community. There'll be a paid version, obviously. But I've been doing that for a couple years now with a group of guys every Tuesday. So I have about 12, 15 consulting guys and we talk business for half the time. And then we all talk about how to honor Jesus with our businesses, the other half.  And so that, so I'm putting that into a real thing here in a few weeks. So anybody, I don't know, that's gonna be fun. That's gonna be fun. And then I'm launching my consulting company officially as well, to help people. so that's gonna be called Conquer Consulting. You'll see that launch too. And then my Landscape franchise. Those are my three things that I'm really focusing on, like you were talking about a minute ago, Austin, like trying to get things that work together. The marketing company, I've got a great team. I've got a I'm bringing on a partner for that. So that can it's there, but the those consulting and community driven things with my landscape franchise is really where I want to drive so I can so I can help people and grow the kingdom. Man, I'm a big king. That's the word I like to use. So kingdom  📍 

Austin Gray: Love it man. Love it. 

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bodie and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw Land Services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more, visit stryker digital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com.  

‍Alex Kirby: Are you a Sagan guy? I can't remember. Are you a global talent Sagan guy? I can't remember that.

‍Austin Gray: No, I hadn't jumped in there. Okay. that's John Matser.  

‍Alex Kirby:  John, I didn't know 'cause I know I've been talking to your assistant and stuff, but yeah, that's a, that's been a fun journey for me. Never had a remote person at all, but until 18 months ago. It's been pretty fun.

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, it's great. No, I just used online jobs pH for recruiting. Sweet. Yeah. But I hear what he's got going. It's a great thing.

‍Alex Kirby: Yeah, it's pretty good. I know a lot of guys that you ran with do use it,  so I didn't know again, we're, I didn't know, but it's pretty sweet. It's a good fit for some, it's but yeah the pH thing I've heard good things about too. The, just the job board.

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, and I mean, like they're mixed reviews on that because, yeah. I'm hesitant to go there. I. 

Alex Kirby: We don't have 

Austin Gray: No, I was just gonna say if people are interested in online jobs, pH basically the strategy that I use is, is, you know, getting really clear on your job description, what you're looking for, post that job description and then ask for a Loom video introduction from them. Because what, what will happen, and I see this happen a lot, is people will post a job and you get like a hundred plus applicants and then you spend a ton of time interviewing people and trying to qualify.  So if you just do one simple thing for any listeners who are listening and to provide some context, we're talking about hiring virtual assistants or executive assistants here in the Philippines. You met Shadel she's great. Absolutely great incredible person. And I think the coolest thing about hiring overseas, like her main goal is like she bought some land and wants to build a house and. Like we're sharing that goal internally, right? And we have that goal by a specific date next year, and she's helping with the podcast and everything, and we have some paid offers, right?

And she's incentivized to like, help with all those, and she gets commission and payment. And so it's that's top of my list too. And there's something about that man, I truly believe, and we can weave this back into faith and entrepreneurship, but like for me, this is how the bigger purpose gets fulfilled with entrepreneurship, right?  Of course, there's the game of playing business and you're a competitor. You play baseball. I played football. It's you wanna win the game and I wanna win the game, right? And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And for the longest time when I was first starting out, I'm like, man, am I like valuing the wrong things because of what the Bible says about, money and idols and whatnot. And ultimately to where you've gone is I think ultimately where I've landed as well. It's let's just bring God in part of this process, ask for the right direction, ask for the right steps.  Every morning my prayer is God, can I just have the strength, the wisdom, and the decision making ability to make the right decisions that you want me to make? And you know what's cool is whenever you ask,he shows up .

‍Alex Kirby: Always.   

Austin Gray: And it's awesome. It really is. And so you said something. 

Alex Kirby: Can I say this real quick? You said something that I've struggled with and I wanna hit on it for others. Just because I'm winning doesn't mean you have to lose is a phrase I like yeah, for sure. I didn't, I don't believe that a lot of the times, like my competitiveness gets the best of me. But that's true. Like I don't have to step on other people to climb. We can climb together. Like we can both win. But in sports, right? It was always a victor and a defeated, right? So it's like it's counter-cultural to the way I grew up. But in the kingdom and kingdom business, the more people that are climbing, the better man. And so that's something that I have to battle. The other part is you mentioned how the scriptures I'll say this little, I'd been doing this little segment. I'm starting called 60 seconds Sermons online. So I'll give you one. Everyone talks about the money is the root of all evil, right?

People say that growing up, but when you really study it, it actually is the love of money is the root of all evil. so if you leave that word love out, it ruins money. But when you put the love in there and the motive you figure out motive is the entire problem when it comes to sin most of the time. Your heart posture, if you will. I'm with you. I want more people in the kingdom to be wealthy because the amount of good things that can happen you're watching Mr. Beast do this right now on a worldly perspective. Like dude is literally funding clean water for millions and millions of people because of a YouTube channel. So imagine we're having this happen right now in Christianity, Forrest Frank, you familiar with? 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Yeah.  

Alex Kirby: Okay. He's our, he's really our first mainstream global Christian success, in my opinion, like legit follower Christ. the stuff that's happening in culture right now because of him, not 'cause of him. What God's doing through him is pretty spectacular. I've got a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old and a two and a half year old. I've never been able to find music I like and that they like, that can be Christ centered. It was always one of us, one of us giving it up, right? I'm listening to Danny Go or whatever, and man, Forrest Frank we've been singing Lemonade for two weeks together. It's been pretty fun. Been  awesome.

Austin Gray: Yeah. That's awesome. Man we jumped around so many places. Oh, I want to for listeners, 'cause I jumped off task there.  It is all good.  The hiring VA overseas, the qualification that I was gonna share was ask them to do a loom video. You're gonna get three applicants, but they're all going to be relatively qualified or at least more qualified than the other a hundred or 150 you got. And so that's what I was gonna share about online jobs at pH. It sounds like you've used I don't even know how you pronounce it, Sagan.  

Alex Kirby: I like South Americans a lot 'cause they're on, they're close to my time zone .Yeah,  well, they're really well educated. They all go to get their bachelor's most of the time, so that's   absolutely. That's my favorite flavor of wings there. But they're all good.

Austin Gray: Absolutely. And you're using Sagan, or how do you say it?

Alex Kirby: Sagan. Yeah, I used

Austin Gray: Say Yeah. Cool. 

Alex Kirby: Great ex, great experience.

Austin Gray: Sweet. Man, we got a lot going on here. You got the same interests that I do. Service, business, marketing, yeah. Helping other people grow. The one thing that you brought up that I feel is very interesting, and we have a lot of listeners at this phase, is the guys at 250 k.

Yeah. Like I see so many people, especially owner operators, like kind of stagnate there. What do you think the main thing is that they need to break through that 250 k?

Alex Kirby: I'll speak for the landscape industry. The reason why most people get stuck at that number is because that's two crews or less. And so at running a crew and their best friend Tom, running a crew, they feel like they can manage that. So that's why 80% of businesses stay under 300 K in the lawn and landscape industry 'cause they don't trust anybody. They don't have any systems. I know this is such a, systems and processes is such a touch and sexy word or whatever, but they don't have anything that's holding the ball. bowling, like they don't have any, they don't have any bumpers, they don't have anything that's keeping this thing going down the line. So around that number is when you gotta start investing in yourself in a little bit. You gotta start going to seminars. You gotta start watching YouTube. You gotta start listening to podcasts. You gotta get a business coach. I don't charge but a couple hundred bucks for two hours. Like I don't charge this crazy number. Like I'm gonna say the number 'cause I, need to know that business coaching is affordable. If you don't have a thousand bucks to invest in yourself for four or five months, I don't know what to tell you. 

Austin Gray: Yeah.

Alex Kirby:  If you're willing to go to a marriage counselor for a hundred bucks an hour, why would you not do the same thing for your business? I just don't, I don't understand that. 95% of the people I've done a I've coached over 70 guys now these last five years. And 95, 90% of them have all almost doubled in revenue. And it's not only about revenue, I'm not saying that, but if you get somebody that's been there, done that, and knows what they're talking about, this is the problem. And so I'm not gonna get into this much, but the, my industry, the green industry land, lawn of landscape, there's so many phonies out there on Instagram and stuff that are paying, charging guys $400 an hour for coaching who've never had, but one employee don't pay that guy. This became, I told you I had a lot of brand deals and stuff for a long time and I don't wanna be negative and get into that, but like I started pushing back on some things in those influencer circles There's so many people who are ni, not naive, but they're just new, and, oh, you have 25,000 followers and you have a podcast. Oh, I'm gonna pay you. And this guy's never done 50 K in business.  He's just regurgitating what he knows. So that's something that has really upset me over the years with the influencer, model. 

I’m not against people making money. I want pe, I want you to charge what you think you're worth if you know what you're talking about. If you've actually had to fire somebody who has a wife and kids.  If you've ever had a workers' comp claim, if you know how to navigate 22 people in the morning and getting them out of the shop. Now, I'm not saying there's a size that qualifies. You don't hear that, but I'm just saying. As long as you actually know what you're talking about. Instead of just saying what you think you're supposed to say and charging people 400 bucks or 300 bucks or whatever, that stuff's crazy to me, but yes the guy stuck at 250. Invest in yourself. Number one, hustle until your legs hurt. Number two, do not slow down. Run the race. Go out there, bang doors. Text people, post on social media all the time. Free advertising, man. Post on social media. Take a video when you're at a line you're at a job like the tie, the stump grinder. I know he was on here, Ty, right? Like the dude. All he does is show what he's doing every day. That's all he does. And I know X is not where he really gets business much, but like the same strategy works on Facebook where you do get a lot of business. He's just sharing what he's doing. Share what you're doing. People think trades are more fascinating than you realize, right? Equipment is cool and big, loud jobs are cool, and you making your someone's lawn look. People like it more than you think. Why do you think, Spencer what is Spencer's name? The guy that does the Yeah, it's Spencer.

The guy that mows the overgrown lawns, he has, 8 million on YouTube.  You know what I'm I think I've come across this stuff once.  I know. I'm almost positive. It's Spencer, right? Yeah. I've met him a couple times. Really nice guy. Really nice guy. anyways, he goes, he goes into these properties and just videos himself, mowing, overgrown grass. Like, why do you think that blows up? Because people enjoy seeing satisfactory things for whatever reason. So don't sleep on posting Google Man, Google ads like was huge for my company. We only spent, we had so many leads, but like we spent 1500 bucks a month in ad spend and we were just crushing we are one, $1.7 million revenue, 1500 a month. Just we're booked out eight crews for three, four weeks out always.  

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, I can second that. And like so many people push back on 50 bucks a day ad spend, they're like, oh, I wanna dip my toes in $10, 20 bucks, like 50 just right now, at least 20, 25, August 29th. 50 bucks a day. If you're starting like do it 1500 bucks. Knock on some wood here. I can't control your sales process. But if you can sell, and if you have sold, and if you do call your leads fast and you spend $1,500 a day and all you do, like people are overcomplicating ads like this it's this right here.  

Alex Kirby: Yeah.

Austin Gray: Your service area, plus your service. Hey, South Carolina residents, sorry, I don't remember the town that you're in, but it's Hey, South Carolina. Hey Columbia residents, it's Alex. We do X, Y, and Z equipment running in the background. We're a five star rated company. All they need to hear, all they need to see is your face, your equipment, operating, stuff in the background, what you do, who you service. Call out your ideal client, put that 50 bucks a day, target the zip code, rip it, and you're gonna get leads.

‍Alex Kirby: Totally. It's, yeah and I think, guys you've talked to will say it, the sauce is having a lot of reviews to go with that, right? Because the  highly rated reviews with ad spend. I tell when our marketing agency, we run a lot of Google ads for people they're always like, what's the sauce? I'm like, they change the algorithm all the time, but I believe the sauce because Google's entire business model is based off of trust. If you look up best Italian near me for your date tonight, and it was not the best Italian, you are never going back to Google to look for it, right? As long as you have really good reviews with ad spend, you're gonna get leads as long, there's obviously outliers if you're in Austin, Texas and people are spending 10 KA month or something crazy.  

Austin Gray: Yep.  

Alex Kirby: But of the time, that's it.

Austin Gray: What services were you selling with your ads? We go were you just running ads for recurring lawn maintenance services or did you find a higher ticket service, like some sort of landscaping to .

Alex Kirby: Yeah. Mostly landscaping near me. You talking about keywords and stuff?

Austin Gray: Oh, no, I was talking about Facebook ads, so maybe you're talking about specific Google ads.  

Alex Kirby: Yeah. Good question. Sorry, I didn't hear, we didn't run a ton of, Facebook ads, as you said earlier, like we would run a couple hundred bucks a month for visibility sake. But as you said, like Miss, miss Jane down the street's, not gonna choose your lawn care guy because she saw a Facebook ad. Our goal was to find. Higher ti. So we ended up ha, we ended up selling like 50 accounts in 2021 and only going full service. So that was one thing. our a like our minimum ticket was 250, 300 bucks a month. And if we weren't doing the shrubs, the mowing in the leaf cleanups, we weren't doing it. You know why I did that? And some crazy thing happened. We were sitting in the office one day and this lady called in and she said, Hey I see your trucks trifecta trucks all over town. Why do the lawns never look good? And we were like, that's a weird thing to say. What do you mean, ma'am?  The guys cut the grass fine, but they don't, the shrubs look terrible. The turf, the fertilization, the turf, there's weeds everywhere. And I said, ma'am, they don't pay us to do that. And then she said, this Austin, I'll never forget this. She said how am I supposed to know that? Meaning that it made sense. It like clicked in my head. I'm like, wait a second. Our products, the, our results physically are the only thing that people can judge us off of.

And they don't know what services a customer's paying for. So if I'm only doing mowing for people because that's what they wanna pay for, my product looks like a half done job to anyone driving by. And that just bothered me to the core. So we went to full service only for thatone of those not the only reason, but because it was like, yeah, like we want the property to be popping and  yeah, so so we went to full service and that helped a lot.  So we, anybody, we have a big lake here. We have one of the, one of the most attractive lakes in the southeast in, in my town. So a lot of lake properties, we were mowing. A lot of country club people, like country clubs are big here, so we went to more of that customer than we did, joe down the road type thing.

Austin Gray:  I'm glad you brought that up because now it's be careful whose yard you put your sign in.

Alex Kirby: Yes, a hundred percent.

Austin Gray: And I've never thought about it that way,

Alex Kirby: I had until this old lady called in. Dude, I never thought about it.

Austin Gray: And it's so, so obvious, right? When you bring it to your attention. Yeah. Why would I put my sign in a yard that doesn't look perfect in your mind? Same thing. Same thing with us, right? If my brand is Bear Claw Land Services and we're doing the fire mitigation, well what if the driveway looks like crap?

Alex Kirby: Yep.

Austin Gray: Am I triggering the wrong response in customers? And so that's where if you saw me like looking off in the distance that's where my head is spinning right now, so that's a good word. 

Alex Kirby: Yeah, mine was like, mine's more mine's, yours is like tree, like the tree guy's not responsible for the grass. I think people get that, but  guys in charge of the landscape. And if the shrubs are not cut, I and they look that way for three months, people in the neighborhood walking their dog, that's our target customer. We want 7, 8, 10 people on the same street for 350 bucks a month. Why would they call us if it doesn't look good in totality they're making assumptions about us regardless. And that's, to wrap up the marketing thing, it's like we fully wrapped our trailers really nice and our box trucks we want because we want people to think something about us. We want that we're professional, that we've got our stuff together. And so the product has to match the marketing. What you're giving people has to mar match what your marketing is. And so that's where I had a little bit of a loose spot. And so now that we're, doing the franchise, the model that we're doing is totally I've totally changed what we, that the way I grew my first one, like our goal is to be, a 60, 20 20 company. We wanna be 60% commercial maintenance, 20% residential, 20% projects. That's, roughly obviously. But we don't want to be. And if we can take 10% of the residential way and add it to projects, great. If we can be 60, 30, 10, I'll be happy with that. yeah, somewhere in that 50, 25, 25. But we wanna be heavy on the commercial side I know how to sell that. That's the main thing is I know how to sell commercial maintenance. and. $150 tickets times 10 is super exhausting, rather than going to get a $1,500 person on a apartment complex.

Austin Gray: It's the truth. That's it is the absolute truth. Well, Alex, this has been fun.

Alex Kirby:  I've enjoyed it, man. Thank you so much for, I know we didn't really know each other except a little bit on X, but I've really enjoyed it. It's an honor to be on this show and about the Lord and talk about business. Man. Thank you a lot for having me.

‍Austin Gray: We're gonna have to do some more here because, i'm, I'm really interested in, in leaning in more to the concept of faith in business and, uh, it's come up a couple times. Yeah, it's come up a couple times on the last episodes that have been published. And, uh, I just got back from a men's retreat. Do you know Joby Martin?

Alex Kirby: He's down there in the southeast Florida, I think because his Instagram reels are all over my feed and they're awesome.

Austin Gray: Yeah. about the dude that looks like he came right out of a cave and killed Yeah. So he was I guess he's partnered up with, or he and the pastor at our church, Jim Bergen do they launched this, they do the Rocky Mountain Men's Summit every year, and I think they do other men's retreats around the country. So Joby was it was like he and Jim were speaking at that event, and that was his past week.  That's freaking awesome, man. There is nothing better than I came home so jacked up to just serve my wife and kids, and they just, I don't know, man. It's like stuff that, or I personally believe that we've gotten real woke, especially out here in Colorado are a lot of things that I didn't even know going on cause I'm not on Instagram. I spend any of my social media time on X and I create YouTube videos, but my wife is on Instagram and she'll tell me as we're learning how to discipline and parent and whatnot. I have a 3-year-old and a I guess she's about 10 weeks now. It's been a blur.   

Alex Kirby: Yeah, man yeah. Those first 90 days are like, where am I in the matrix right now? 

Austin Gray: Exactly. Get this is terrible. This is absolutely terrible. Somebody was like, somebody's oh, when was her birthday? And this was like seven weeks in. And I was like I haven't even thought about what day that was. I've just been  so funny fighting to stay. Just but that's what they talk about. This mens are juice. You got kids, great. You got a business, great, it's gonna be work. You're not getting any sleep. Join the club. Right? You're not the only one. Stop making excuses. Show up, pour another cup of coffee if you have to, and, and show up and be great. And so, like, that's sort of the message that, that they're pushing is like, you have a role and responsibility as a man, as a father, and as a husband, as the spiritual leader of the household. And it's like. Your job. One thing, one thing they said is like, your job is not to make sure your kids are friends with you. It's like to make sure that they have

Alex Kirby: Yeah.

Austin Gray: Life. And that, that hit me hard where it was like, man,  I have a responsibility to teach principals that I believe in and I have a responsibility to teach my kids about the fruits of the spirit, even at a 3-year-old age. And like, if they don't learn that . it's on me. It's on me.

Alex Kirby: Yep.

Austin Gray: And it's no different than in business. If there are problems that are happening in business, guess whose fault it is? I'm the owner, it's ultimately my fault. We haven't put the right person in the right place. We haven't set the right process in place. We haven't built the right system. We haven't allocated the right resources. And so I'm just in this phase of life where it's like. Take massive responsibility. Let's stop pointing fingers at everyone else  that's good. That's really  and let's take the responsibility and weeding faith in the business. At this point, it's I don't believe we're we're meant to sit back in that chair and just meditate and try to manifest success.  

Alex Kirby: I'll say this to end, but God is challenging me about with this blue collar kingdom group I'm in community. I'm launching here is Alex. It's not about fitting me into your business, it's about building your business on my rock. Like that is how he's changing my perspective on this whole thing is it's not about where can God, where can we do a devotional? Where can we fit him into this thing we're doing? is no. Just like you build your family on me. Your business is built on me. There might be, this is gonna be, people are gonna probably go, whoa, but there might be a day where you a job for 2200 bucks and realize it's a single mom or a widow and you go, you know what? doing it. I'm just doing it. That's a kingdom business. That's not, oh, when can we post a verse once a month on our Facebook? That's what I'm, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Don't hear me guys, but I want my businesses moving forward to be just insane lights for Christ. And that is what we're known for. Not putting down someone's throat. I'm not saying we're gonna be preaching at people or any of that, but man, if this, beautiful can the world become? Because, 'cause look, business is the one consistency that everyone has a job or everyone does business. It's like the one thing that's like everyone has a part in. why wouldn't we think that God would use it to be the vessel of his message? not to be boring is my last thing, but do you know how Paul did his mission? Paul, like how do you think he paid for it all? Austin, remember ?

Austin Gray: Ooh, this is interesting. There was a lady who was, I believe she was an entrepreneur and she funded every step of his journey. \

Alex Kirby: Priscilla and Aquila, if you remember them. And the letters, the epistles people don't really realize, but they basically were wealthy and funded this whole campaign and husband and wife, right? And so it's who's more important? The one on the boat or the one that made it sail. And we give Paul the credit, right? Paul's the hero of our faith and he should be. Man, if Priscilla and Quila aren't the ones who did God's work with the finances, we don't have Paul, we don't have Church of Corinth, we don't have things. So that's where God's really, like I said, God's really testing me and I, forging something outta me, it's be that guy. You don't have to have 10 businesses that do X amount of millions. If you help 10 guys that do million dollar businesses, like that. That's the reward is seeing other people build a kingdom, not just your own kingdom. If that makes sense.  

Austin Gray: And it makes a lot of sense. That's a good word. And I think every, you know, everybody's on their own journey, especially with faith. For me, the hardest thing was to figure out how to merge the two. I felt like if I, because I'm an all-in or all out person, and I felt like if I was all in on this business thing, then I couldn't be all in on my faith and for the longest time. That's what I struggle with. And I also think that's what held me back in business. But here's where I've come to, and this has just come through a lot of prayer and a lot of Hey, what am I here to do? If you have this desire to go build businesses, like that is inherently built inside your DNA by the creator. At least I personally believe that. So this is what excites me. I freaking love, I do this for fun. Yeah, the podcast makes money now, but I just did this for fun to meet guys like yourself and to talk shop, because this is what I get excited about. It's a game to me. It's like football was a game, just like baseball was a game. It's a game .

Alex Kirby: Agreed.

Austin Gray: And it's something to put harness energy and effort into doing good work into. And so where I'm at right now is like they, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. They can be built together and oh, by the way. At least this is just from my personal journey. If you ask God for help, and if you ask God for direction, like he will provide it. And it is freaking awesome whenever you start seeing those things, I've had multiple times where it's like, here's our problem that we're trying to solve. How am I supposed to solve this? Hey God, if we're supposed to grow, if we're supposed to like solve this problem, can you help? And it is insane how things will come out of seems like they come out of nowhere and it's pretty awesome whenever you start paying attention to it. And then to your point where you were saying, I believe everybody has their role on this earth. Like you were a former pastor, you may be called back into that at some point. Right now you're not like you've been called into business and entrepreneurship. And to your point with, with Paul and the relationship he had with the person who was funding that.

Somebody has to do it. And so there was a, a fallacy that I fell into in my twenties where it was like, man, if you're valuing money or if you're valuing business y your heart's in the wrong place. And I don't know where that got embedded. I'm 34. So part of the millennial gen, part of the millennial generation, somewhere along the line,  I don't know if it was embedded by church. I don't know if it was embedded by organizations. It was almost like glorified to like live that lifestyle of like, man, we aren't making any money, but we're serving the kingdom. 

Alex Kirby: I call it the poverty mindset. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. And I like I need to flush it out more personally. For me, it wasn't a healthy mindset to be in.Yeah.I not maybe some people are called  and I. Maybe some people are called to just go devote their lives and like Paul, right? But at the end of the day, there is a funding source that is funding that person. So I can't speak for that person who is called, but what I do know is this is what I get excited about his business. I love playing the game and  

Alex Kirby: love it.  

Austin Gray: You do as well. And so it's like how can we do that to the best of our ability? Show up, ask out for help, direction, guidance, and make an impact along the way.  

Alex Kirby: Amen, bro. I. Gotta do this again.Have  have to. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Where can people find you, Alex?

Alex Kirby: So you can find me on X. I think it's the kingdom. What is my handle? I think it's the kingdom dad. I like, like I said, I use the word kingdom a lot. Yeah. The Kingdom dad there. Find me on Instagram. I'm about to launch a personal brand, whatever. I've never really launched even a real personal Instagram before. It's a new thing for me. And then you can find, you can find me Facebook. It's Alex Kirby. But yeah, launching my, my, my consulting company will be launched by the time this comes out. It's gonna be called Conquer Consulting helping people with vision, strategy, sales, marketing and hirings main and for the kingdom. Everything like kingdom focused. And then the blue collar kingdom. Find that on skool and Facebook. That's where we marriage, ministry and business together and. about how they're not mutually exclusive, just like you said. And if you're, if you're a long land, long landscape guy, if you're interested in the franchise stuff, if you're stuck, trifecta, landscaping, never told you, but it's called trifecta 'cause we didn't wanna be Trinity. And so I was like what's an alternative? And that's where Trifecta came from.  

Austin Gray: Sweet. I love it man. Loved it, brother. 

Alex Kirby: Thank you so much. Austin.

Austin Gray: Of course.Awesome . Yeah. Thanks for being on listeners. Thanks again for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast where we publish episodes every Friday about building and growing local service-based businesses. If you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, we send a summarized bullet point list inside of an email on Saturdays. You can join that ownrops.com/newsletter. That's OW NR ops.com/newsletter. And just like Alex, we've got a skool group for listeners here. It's a free group. You can jump in school.com/ownrops. That's skool.com/ownrops. Guys, don't forget, work hard, do your best, never settle for less. See y'all next week.

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