‍Mike Compton: So before we moved here we had a 10th of an acre right in the heart of the city. It would take me like 10 minutes to mow with an electric mower. And yeah, just got fed up of, inner city life. And my wife is from this area. And so yeah, we moved here three years ago and it's just opened honestly, so many doors.

Like with this business obviously, but just other things as well. Just more peace in life and we've got wonderful neighbors. We see deer and blue heron and all kinds of stuff, like every day. It's a really cool place to be and raise a family. 

Austin Gray:  That's awesome. I'm excited to have you on I already threw it on record. Mike Compton with SWVA stump co. Welcome him to the show guest. Mike, thanks for joining us.

Mike Compton: Absolutely. Austin, happy to be here.

Austin Gray:  Yeah. So you were just showing me the background that you have. Do you mind to show the creek that you have.

Mike Compton: Yeah, I'll try to show a little bit more. I'm on my covered patio. There's a creek back here, horseshoes around the back behind the dog pen and, oops, sorry. Goes over to like my neighbor's property over that way. They've got sheep and alpacas and yeah, it's a really neat place to live.

Austin Gray:  Of the state is that?

Mike Compton: It's the southwestern corner, so we're really close to the Tennessee and North Carolina borders as well. It's a little town called Abingdon, Virginia. only about 10,000 people. So yeah, it's typical small town America, man. Everyone's friendly and nice and eager to help. If you go to a grocery store and you want to find out, where do I find the, I don't know, peanut butter crackers or something.

Somebody's oh, let me just take you and show you. Instead of moving here from Atlanta, you'd go and you'd ask a worker, Hey, where can I find those peanut butter crackers? And they'd say, oh, I don't know, maybe aisle 14. Cool, thanks for the help. So yeah, it's just a different, it's a different place to live.

Austin Gray:  That's awesome. And before we jumped on here, you were saying how long have you been there at that property?

Mike Compton: Yeah, we moved here in March of 22. We moved up on a Friday night and woke up to two inches of snow, which, from the south and Georgia, snow was a rarity once every few years. And so that was a really fun way to start our southwest Virginia adventure.

Austin Gray:  Why that area? It looks incredible.

Mike Compton: Yeah, so my wife is from a smaller town about 30 minutes and grew up coming to the town we live in for doctor's visits, et cetera. And, yeah, we'd lived together in the inner city of Atlanta for about 10 years and it had a lot of good things we left. I'm from the area, so I left behind a lot of friends and family, and that's easily the hardest part about moving a few states away.

Thankfully it's only about a five hour drive. But yeah, I just was ready for something totally different and I told my wife I was ready to go, she said how do you feel about Southwest Virginia? I was like, if you say it's good, let's go. And so we made the jump and she was in the middle of grad school and it was just, probably timing couldn't have been worse in a lot of ways. I was just finishing up a UX user experience bootcamp program as part of my work and career journey. Moving to a town of 10,000 people, you're gonna have very limited employment options. So I was, gonna have to pretty much find a remote opportunity. Yeah, moved here, thankfully found a remote job and that's what I've been doing up until today is my last day there actually. So the timing of this podcast is pretty wild.

Austin Gray:  No way.

Mike Compton: Yep. Today's the day, man. exciting. 

Austin Gray:  But you've been, how long have you been going with SWVA Stomp Co.

Mike Compton: Good question. So this is five weeks, the end of five weeks of operating. The business formation ideation started in mid-January. The timing and story is a little funny and I try not to bore people with too many details, but I think it's important to capture, background and context.

So I've been at this job, my current job, it's a software company based outta St. Louis for three years. I wear a few different hats there. I got started with the company as an implementation specialist. We offer, or the company offers several different products, but the branch I work under or the product is for landscaping companies actually. So I was first brought on to onboard new landscaping businesses, pivoted to more of a traditional support role answering support ticket, into video editing and actually getting to put some of the ui ux skills to work. 

So we rolled out a, we used to have a web app for the landscaping businesses, but we rolled out a native app this year. I was the lead designer on that. So it's been, yeah, it's been great. Great opportunity, great experience. Learned a lot of good things that I would not want to do running my own company if it ever came to that. And early on when I started there, it involved some travel, which I knew was part of the gig, once I started doing it a few times, I just really hated the travel.

I don't know why it just, something about it throws off your rhythms, throws off your routines, just didn't care for it. So I approached the owner of the company and just basically asked, Hey, is there any way a role that I can pivot into traveling is removed?

And he said, yeah, sure. And so thankfully I didn't travel for two and a half more years. And then in January they asked me to go to a conference, which not a huge deal, it's like a two and a half hour drive. I just, I don't know, man, it struck me wrong. I was like, I don't really wanna go to this conference.

And so on the way to the conference is when I heard, Ty Mumford's podcast. I forget which one. It was some obscure one that I had not heard before. But anyway, I ended up hearing that podcast on the drive to this conference. And the timing was just unreal, 'cause I'm sitting here listening to this guy, he's my age almost.

I, I don't know. It was just his energy, the enthusiasm, and really a lot of what he was talking about, just prior work experience. Why things he was unhappy with in his job. It really just struck a chord with me and got my wheels turning. So Seva Stump Co was born out of hearing that podcast in mid-January and ever since it's just been all the pieces together. Yeah,

Austin Gray: That's cool. Was it Chris Kers podcast?

Mike Compton: I don't think it was that one either.

Austin Gray:  No.

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Mike Compton: Chris had that one last year. I know Ty mentioned hearing that one first, and I forget the name of the one that I heard tie on. Anyway, it was

Austin Gray:  Was it Nick Omics?

Mike Compton: man, I'd go

Austin Gray:  No.

Mike Compton: back. I'll see if I

Austin Gray:  Okay. All right.

Mike Compton: for you.

Austin Gray:  I'll have to ask him which other ones

Mike Compton: Was like some smaller host. I honestly can't remember, but I'll try to find it.

Austin Gray:  Ty is awesome. Like I've had him on several times at this point and man, I just get so much energy from talking to him as well. 

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  And he just does it right. He doesn't make excuses. He just goes and figures it out. And I think that example of just being willing to wear all the different hats as an owner operator in the beginning is very similar to how I started my business. And yeah, resonate a lot with that. So what were some of the reasons that that podcast resonated with you?

Mike Compton: Oh man, that's a great question. Pretty much all my work before my current job at the software company for the past three years, everything else was manual, outside, physical work. And I think, let's see, three years ago I was in my late thirties and trying to figure out, man, do I really wanna keep doing this kind of work? Physical, hard work, into my elder years and I thought the answer was no. And turns out the answer is yes. 'Cause since we moved here, one of my biggest stress relievers would be going and fishing out like sticks and limbs that fall into the creek on the weekends, and be like, I'd tell my wife Hey, I, I gotta go, I gotta be outside.

And, I'd spend hours, it's so mindless, but just so satisfying at the same time putting on the waiters, fishing stuff out, throwing it in the big brush pile. It's just, I dunno, there's something, therapeutic about it and I really enjoyed it. And I think the rub for me was so just to try to give a quick summary on some of my prior work.

My very first job was with an event tent company building, like the huge tents for weddings and conferences and stuff like that. And then I pivoted into construction remodeling. I built pools for a summer and that was probably the hardest physical work I'd ever done. Lemme see. Then I spent a decade at the railroad, a lot of good experience, a lot of good stories from that. Great. It's a union job, so it comes with its pros and cons. Probably more cons than pros sorry man, I got off the, I got off the train tracks there so to speak. Where was I going with that? Oh, so yeah, anyway, just saying everything was physical outside.

Did concrete leveling, the injecting foam under concrete, so to level it out, did that for a year. And I think all of that, all that experience for all those jobs there was, I learned something on troubleshooting, right? Because rarely in these kinds of industries and gigs do things go perfect.

So you gotta get creative with. How to fix it. Sometimes it's easy, more often than not I think it's not, and one of the things I disliked about software or tech is that when it doesn't work, if you're not a coder or programmer, you're reliant on the devs to fix the problem. You can report it, you can test it and try to document it and all that stuff.

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But when it comes to fixing the problem, not a developer. I don't know how to fix it, and there's something about that disconnect that really irritates me. It just feels inefficient and slow. And anyway yeah, there, there was something about this that really just grabbed me.

I think primarily it was because, you don't have to spend two to four plus years learning how to become a plumber or an electrician or anything more technical. Stump grinding is very basic at the root level. And yeah the barrier to entry felt low outside of the financial side.

Austin Gray:  I hear you. A side note here, like the last two weeks I'm doing some consulting with a company down in Austin, a land clearing business. I resonate a lot with what you said on traveling wise. You just get outta your routine. I got back and it was all worth it 'cause I got to spend a lot of time with a really high level entrepreneur he challenged me.

He is look, if you wanna take Bear Claw the next level you've gotta make dang sure all your tracking, all your backend stuff. Anytime a new lead comes in through your pipeline. It's tracked, it's tagged. You wanna be able to market to those customers in the future. So the past two weeks, I have literally been in my office I told my wife there were like two days last week where I was literally in here like 12 to 14 hours straight. She's you're waking up so early. All of a sudden I'm like, but we have to get this stuff done. 

Mike Compton: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  And I resonate so much with this because I am literally at the Mercy, like I've been hiring people on Upwork, on Fiverr, like left and right and I'm just at the mercy of one, how fast they can move. And two, just hoping that they're like, not gonna hack my system or do something that's gonna screw that up. 

Mike Compton: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  So flipping that into kind of what you're talking about, like something as simple as what we do, trimming trees or like cleaning up dead wood, or you just using a stump grinder to grind stumps out in the outdoors. It's so therapeutic as opposed to sitting here just like banging your head against code or like at the mercy of somebody else who's trying to put the code together.

Mike Compton: Yeah it's hard, man. 12 to 14 hour days at a computer is no joke. I guess the last, like six months before January, so second half of last year, I just found myself in the evenings getting real, like grouchy with my kids and my spouse and, it's just not, you don't feel good, right? It's like spend all this time working, you're like, what is the freaking point of this? If you know I'm gonna be so crabby? And I had no reason to be, it was just like I was mentally in a way that physical hard work just does not hit your brain the same way. It's tough.

Austin Gray:  Oh man. We could go down that rabbit hole, but I'm literally feeling this, it's like a brain fog right now and I wonder how much of it is due to just screens, like electronics as opposed to whenever you go pull a 12 hour day outside, there is no better feeling than coming home and just laying in your bed after taking a shower.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  It's incredible.

Mike Compton: Yeah, that's how it was last Saturday. I had my biggest job yet last Saturday it was 59 stumps for a big farm property on my same road actually, which was very convenient. But yeah, 12 hours and I got home and I had just had so much energy. Yeah, I was tired, I was excited to see the kids and engage with them. Feel like I could be more present with my wife as well. And like you said, we had dinner and showered up and slept like a baby. So can't beat it.

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Austin Gray:  Let's jump into the business model here. So take us back to the beginning. You decide to start the stump grinding business. Where do you start?

Mike Compton: Gosh man. I'd been following Ty and, just engaging with his content, likes replying and he was always really good about responding. And I think he sent me a DM and just said, Hey man, tell me where you're located again. And so I told him. He was like, no pressure, but I've got this playbook thanks for engaging with the content. Throw you a little discount if you wanna buy it. And I was like, I've never bought a course or whatever from anyone on social media, but obviously I was interested. So I pulled the trigger he's not kidding. It's loaded. It's 80 something pages I think with, a lot of good information, which all relevant to me.

Mainly because I, like I said, I've got a background in some of this stuff. Not stump grinding, but just hard work equipment tools some of that stuff I didn't need. But the stuff that was super valuable was the cold calling strategies and approach. And just laying out, machine options.

I didn't know anything about any of the stump grinder brands. So yeah, it's packed full of value. And that really got the ball rolling. And then, his model of doing the rent to purchase from a dealer, a local dealer, he had. And that's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, there's just no one around me that offers that.

And so the biggest slowdown for me was trying to figure out the stump grinder itself. Around here they were like 3,500 to $4,500 for a month and just try it for a month and see how it goes. Or what I landed on was buying a used unit. And I felt like it bought me a longer runway to test it out in the event it doesn't work. And I ended up having to sell the machine. The thought was I could probably resell it for the difference of what I would've paid for a one month rental. Family life, kid life, still juggling the W2, like it, just trying to cram it all into a month felt like a big lift. 

And so I just thought, if I can expand this by myself a little more time to really test it out again, I live in a small town I don't know really what it's gonna turn into. And so that's what I landed on. And so then it was finding the right machine and traveling to, to test it out and see it, the guy that I ended up buying from lives about three hours away.

It was like, it was a big weekend to go drive down, test it out, see it, decide I wanna do it. Then it's figuring out the financing side. That was a big slowdown. I was gonna get a small business loan through a local nonprofit, and then their timeline was a little slower than what I wanted.

We pivoted to try to pull out some home equity and then, we got almost all the way done with that process. And it turns out, which you would've thought they would've asked this on the beginning, but we have a detached garage that we Airbnb the upper part of. And so I guess because of that, they consider us a commercial property or something, and so it nulled and void our home equity loan.

So that I had to restart the loan process, which again, slowed it down. So anyway, there was spring break trips to New York and I had a 40th birthday bash with some buddies in Boston. There was like all these things that just kept getting in the way of being able to actually execute on getting the machine which you can't have a stump grinding business if you don't have a stump grinder.

So yeah, that was long and short of it, from mid-January, I'd say mid-January is when I learned about the idea. End of January, after conversations with my wife was like, all right, this is something we're gonna pursue. So all of Feb and then half of March was spent on business formation, finding the grinder financing. And then my first production week was like that March. I picked up the grinder on March 17th, and then five weeks since then, six weeks since then in operating.

Austin Gray:  That's awesome. So did you opt to buy the machine first or did you. Reach out to other contractors in the area. First to gauge demand.

Mike Compton: I've probably done all the things all the business guys would tell you not to do. I did the merch, had the website, had all the socials, LLC the grinder before reaching out to any contractors. And so all of my business so far for the first five to six  weeks, I think I've had I've reached out to two contractors. I've gotten three jobs from them so far. The rest has all been organic, yard signs, Google, friends, neighbors again, I don't know how sustainable this is. Feels probably a little crazy to, to have left my job or be leaving my job today. But I feel confident, next week hit the ground running with the contractor outreach. And I feel like that's gonna go. Relatively well, there are a few big name tree companies in the area, a bunch of small guys. And so initial strategy is gonna try to get in with the small guys first and just try to see where that goes before I hit up the big guys just scrolling their socials.

I see a lot of 'em have stump grinders already. Those bigger companies I mentioned which I know does not mean that they won't have opportunities for me. It just, it could be a little bit longer to get those balls rolling. So that, yeah, that's the strategy for next week. Hit the ground running with the contractor, outreach and just hope and that the organic stuff keeps coming in.

Austin Gray:  Awesome. 

Mike Compton: First paid job was on Saturday, March 22nd, and it was a neighbor of one of our friends. So some of our friends hired me or asked me to take care of four stumps for them, and they said, Hey, our neighbors got 10 or 12 that these other companies say they can't do. Being new and eager for business, I'm like I'm happy to take a look and see what's going on. And once I got there, I realized why other companies didn't wanna do it. 

The majority of the stumps were behind this rear backyard fence line and around the edges of that fence line. It was so tight. It was, I don't know, 20 something inches, which is definitely not big enough. Coupled with a grade, you couldn't get your machine back there. so I'm thinking the only way this is possible is to take some of their fence paneling down. And if they don't wanna do that, then yeah, I'm not gonna do the job either. But they were open to it. They knew it was my first job that I was new, and they were happy to, give me a shot.

And they were pleased with the outcome. Thankfully I didn't have any machine issues, didn't throw a track, didn't topple over or anything. But that was a big confidence boost, 'cause I'd only run the machine before that job time when I went to test it out at that gentleman in South Carolina.

So I didn't really know what its limitations were. Where to be cautious. I was overly cautious. Of course, I turned all the speeds down, the swing speed on the cutter head and the travel speed. I said, you know what, the slope and just not knowing the machine itself I'm just gonna be overly cautious.

So I spent all of that Saturday, probably eight hours working, and then another four on that Sunday. So 12 hours of time it was a $1,500 job. I felt like it was money well spent, time well spent. I know guys track their numbers in terms of like total man hours. Some guys I know track it just based on machine hours.

I haven't settled on, how I'm gonna track or what, which data point is more important to me. What I'm really concerned with is days worked and over the course of the year. So a big part of this that I didn't mention was hoping and banking on the seasonality of the stump grinding business, that I, hopefully I can cram enough business into March through October. Where even if November through February are really slow, that we've, saved the money allocated resources officially to where it's okay if I do $0 in those months and just have time to work at home. There's so many projects around here, stuff I wanna do around my house, just, more free time.

Like it, I hope is not lost in this podcast is everyone has a reason for striking out on their own or starting their own thing or staying at their W2. Everyone has reasons for those. And a big reason for me to go this route is is really just the time element. The money is secondary to me. I've never really been driven monetarily for better or worse. I could go into some stuff there, but yeah, it's just not a huge motivator to me. It's a byproduct. And yeah.

Austin Gray:  Yeah, I know. Several guys here who do that, they'll either work all winter and then take the summers to spend with their family and kids. Or vice versa. They'll work all summer and then they'll take the winters off and they'll go somewhere else.

Mike Compton: Yeah. How do you like to roll?

Austin Gray:  Man, I'm all in at this point. I always, in my twenties, I thought that lifestyle was cool and I focused a lot on like hunting and fishing and snowboarding and all that good stuff in my twenties. And yeah, I'm just so wired to be all in or all out. Like growing up it was football.

It was like, I was all in on football and then I played all through college and then like once that was over, it was like, what else is challenging? So then I went all in on archery elk hunting for my twenties, and it was like, I was training all the time and hunted a lot in the back country and then skied in the winter and all that stuff.

So my twenties, I had a lot of fun. Then I got married and had kids and now we have a mortgage and this has to be paid for. So now that I've gotten into business the last three years, I'm just all in.

Mike Compton: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  I'm literally, I just work all the time and I have a lot of fun doing it. I have a lot of fun with this podcast. But yeah, my hot I only skied two days this year and I live in a mountain town, so there are a lot of people who would listen to this or people in town are like dude, your life sucks. 

Mike Compton: Whatcha doing, man?

Austin Gray: But like you, so my daughter's two and a half. How old are your kids?

Mike Compton:11 and seven and a half.

Austin Gray:  Okay, nice. So my goal is similar to yours. I'm looking at it more from a time perspective of, all right, I'm 33 right now. I'm gonna push really hard until I'm 40. And then when they're nine and seven, I want to have the complete freedom to, if I want to go ski with them all day on a Thursday or Friday, like absolutely take that time. So I'm just looking at it, rather than from a seasonal perspective, more from an extended season

Mike Compton: Sure.

Austin Gray:  That make sense?

Mike Compton: Yeah. And all, and it's different for everyone, right? Your kids are younger, so you have a little bit more runway to get everything established. Mine are at the age now where I want the time spend with him. My son is the 11-year-old, just turned 11, and you figure however many more summers we get with him, it's not very many, before he is off and doing his own thing. And yeah. That's a huge part of it.

Austin Gray:  Absolutely. Yeah, so I mean it's every year that goes by. I feel like you blink, and now she's three and we got number two on the way. And I'm sure you feel the same way about your 11-year-old

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  Now.

Mike Compton: Yep. Yeah, man, it's wild. But honestly it's fun to think about too. And I told him, I said, you're gonna be coming out with your dad this summer. You're gonna be my rake man. And that was something, my parents, my dad worked, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. And I think there it was just the generation you get in a job, you stay in a job.

And so these conversations around like entrepreneurship and small business and stuff was just not anywhere in my growing up. And that's on them. The reality of it. I was joking with a guy on Twitter the other day, and just saying how influential Twitter has been on my life in so many ways.

Just stuff that I've been exposed to that. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else, and just, I feel like most people on there, and I know it's on the algorithm and who you interact with and engage with and everything, but most people seem to be so friendly and wanna see other people succeed and happy to help for the most part.

And that's not true in real life, but like I said, man, it's just the exposure to ideas. The trajectory of my life over the last, forward has been completely altered from over four months ago. And it's just, it's unreal what you can tap into or find this same idea.

Like I know there's guys painting, parking lots and concrete repair and all kinds of stuff that, good for them, however they got into it. That's awesome. Those things don't sound remotely fun to me. But there was something about stump grinding that was like, Hey man I don't know how to run the machine.

I'm confident I can figure that out in a month or two. Everything else about the business. I feel a hundred percent ready to rock and roll on. I know certain people are born with confidence just innately For me, it comes from experience and having the receipts.

I've spent, like I said, most of my adult working life, working hard, physically hard. So there was nothing about this that intimidated me or now that I've been doing it for five weeks, that I'm like, eh, maybe I shouldn't have done this. It just feels, it feels right. It's funny I had a pretty good job yesterday this couple super nice, like an hour away and I got the job from a yard sign I placed when I was going to quote another job out that way, like a month ago.

It's just funny how, you talk about, SEO this and, not that it's not important. I'm striving to get my SEO better and my website better, but it all came from a yard sign and they were probably the best review I've gotten. The guy, just super complimentary. Left me an incredible review last night, and it was all about the intangibles, right?

The communication timeliness saying what you're gonna do, just fair. There was one stump on his property that when I first went to look at it, I told him, I said, I, I really don't know. It was on the real side slope and it was hanging over like this, and I just didn't know if I could get to it or not. When I got there yesterday, I realized eh, that's not gonna work. He had three extra little stumps that were not part of the original estimate. I went ahead and knocked him out. There was no conversation. It took me 20 extra minutes. then later on, once he realized what I had done, he said, Hey, thanks for knocking out those three extra stomps.

I said, Hey, no problem. I couldn't handle that big one that we were unsure about. Just figured, it was an even swap. And he is yeah, sounds great. And I don't know that inherently, I would've known that without, like I said, all the experience, all these other jobs. with people and providing some kind of service and troubleshooting. I would've probably just left it at, nah, I can't do it, that would've been it, but yeah, the experience, and that's where I say like the receipts like that, that gave me the confidence to know I can be an owner operator. I know how to do everything else. I just had to learn the grinding game. So it was very appealing.

Austin Gray:  What was your thoughts around so you mentioned you got your first job from, was that a friend or family?

Mike Compton: It was a neighbor

Austin Gray:  Neighbor. Okay. So you mentioned yard signs.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  A lot of people will reach out and ask, Hey I want to do this, or I wanna do X, y, and Z business. I just don't know how to go get the first jobs. How did you think about that? 

Mike Compton: Yeah, other than the contractor B2B outreach, the thought was just Facebook advertising. I haven't really dove deep into that yet, but just advertising what you do on Facebook, posting what you do on Facebook. Yard signs, friends and family referrals.

Merch was a big part of it for me. I know some people are like anti merch until you're established. To me it was part of the credibility thing to know Hey, when I start this business, I wanna look legit. I don't want to be Mr. Joe Stump grinding. And that's, whatever. There's a million of those and there's no knock on those people that, that do that.

They're probably very successful. But I wanted to create a brand, something that became recognizable. It's funny, I sent a poll when I was starting to think about this and what's to name it, I sent a poll out to friends and family. I think I got, I dunno. 15 to 20 replies on, Hey, here are like five names, what do you think? Eva Stump Co was actually one of the bottom ranking names that I had proposed. 

A lot of the other ones were more catchy and like the stump butcher and stuff. That's, I don't know, maybe a little more recognizable. But Eva is a, or SWVA is a term around here, for the area. It's well known if you're from the area. like even though it's Stump Co and not stump grinding, the logo is a saw blade, which whatever, some guys are like, it's not a saw, it's a grinding wheel, but, whatever, it should convey what we do. And yeah, like I said, I just wanted the merch because I felt like it's, you're a walking billboard, the back has what we do, where we do it. Yeah, I've had people stop me at a gas station and say, Hey, do you have any business cards? Just because I'm wearing the hat or I've got the hoodie on. And, so yeah, I just really was banking on, your question of how to get customers. felt like doing some of these really small things would go a long ways.

Merch was probably, I don't know, bucks. I got a few hoodies, enough t-shirts to last me a work week, a few hats. The yard signs might have been, I don't know, 200 bucks. Business cards aren't much. It's really not that big of an expense to put all the little things in place for, again, for me, I needed to feel more credible.

And does a hat give you that? I don't know. For me, it did, it helped me feel more confident being out and about walking around town yard signs, having a logo, colors, like it's minor, but I do think it's helped expedite how quick I can get up and going ultimately. And then the rest, now that I've gotten some reviews on Facebook and Google. When I go to reach out to these contractors, I feel like it just helps my legitimacy a little bit more. again, it's kinda the opposite of Ty's playbook and probably how traditional business guys would say to go about this, but really why you invited me to come on the podcast, I really wanted to shed light to other guys that are wanting to do stump grinding or anything else. 

I know that the common phrase now is you can just do things. And I don't know who started that or where it came from, but that really resonated with me. And I wanna drive that home for anyone else thinking about doing whatever. Just start, if you have a little bit of extra funds to some hats and a t-shirt to start your thing, do it, you could sit here and analyze all day, oh, should I spend $400 on this or should I put it to X, y, and z? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But in the big scheme of things, you just gotta pull the trigger and make it happen.

Austin Gray:  I love it. I love that so much. Just start. That's exactly what a lot of people need to hear. I feel like there are so many just spreadsheet analyzers, like pencil pushers and it's dude, I. I remember one time ' cause we have some stomp grinding stuff here. We don't do a ton of it, but we'll do it on our fire mitigation.

But we had a guy early on ask me to do some stomps and I posted about it, this is like several years ago. And some guy was like did you track your, like what was the maintenance percentage and like, how many specific hours were you on? I'm like, I don't know. It was like a $300 job and I was there for 10 minutes.

I'm not tracking that in the early days. I'm just trying to move fast and get things done and build a good reputation and do good work for people. And it's very similar to you. It's like the hat, the shirt, the sweatshirt, dude, for the last three days, my wife makes fun of me all the time.

She's like, all you ever wear is your shirts. And I'm like, it's because it's free advertising, right? Like when you walk to the gym or when you walk in the grocery store, I can't tell you how many times people have, come up in the back of the line at the grocery store and been like, Hey, do you have a card? Very similar to what you're saying at the gas station.

Mike Compton: Yeah, it's unreal. I know they get sick of us wearing this stuff, but man, until there's enough business that I don't have to wear it anymore, you can get used to it.

Austin Gray:  I'm three years in and it's not there yet. 

Mike Compton: Oh, man. Not giving me too much hope here, Austin.

Austin Gray:  No, it's just 'cause it gets more fun. It's like more and more people just call, and then more people come to your website, you see your analytics and all that good stuff. What were some other things you did? Yard signs other than that? Business cards, sweatshirts, hats, anything else specific?

Mike Compton: Yeah, I just got stickers on the grinder last week. So I think that helps. 'cause I think a lot of times with the orange color that it is, I think people probably just assume it's a trencher or something. So it's just real simple. It doesn't even have my logo. 'cause the, I don't know the limitations on how the machine is built and laid out. It wasn't really room to make the logo stand out. So it's just simple. Sw a stump, co phone number, big letters, and it says stump grinding and free estimates on both sides. And I remember one of Ty's posts that I just thought was awesome. I think it was after he got his truck wrapped maybe, but some guy sent him a text message like, Hey, nice truck man.

Or something like that. And I just, that really stuck out to me like, oh. Yes, you got, I gotta get, I'm using a almost 20-year-old paid off vehicle to tow with right now because it's free and something else I didn't have to spend money on. So when I do level up and get a different vehicle, I'll get that vehicle wrapped as well. But yeah the decals on the grinder, that's pretty much it.

Austin Gray:  Love it. What do you put on your yard signs?

Mike Compton: Same thing. Stump grinding at the top. Logo in the middle phone number. Again, this is one of those things that HARs back to the just do it thing. So the guy that I found to do the yard signs, same person who did the grinder decals. asked me to send him the logo or what I wanted the layout on the yard signs to look like.

And so I did, I mocked it up in Canva, sent it over to him, and they turned out that the text is too small. He took what I had done. I sent him the vector file, he put it on the sign and I got him. I was like, man, this kind of stinks, the text isn't big enough. It's a black background, just like my logo on the yard sign with a white text, but the size of the font is too small. I was like, you know what? I ordered the first round of 50 just to see how this thing went. And I know next time that I'm gonna change the layout.

I want the number bigger, I want the stump grinding bigger. I might even remove the logo. I don't know that I'm gonna even include it. But yeah, again, it was 300 bucks, 50 yard signs gets me in the game. Most of my work, the majority of my work has been yard signs, even though they're not perfect. So you live and you learn.

Austin Gray:  I love it.

Mike Compton: Yep, yep.

Austin Gray:  Make it that much better on the next round.

Mike Compton: Yeah, exactly. And that's what I did that UX bootcamp,

Austin Gray:  Uhhuh.

Mike Compton: Before I started the software job, and that's a big part of most modern software development is speed and iteration. Make mistakes, push it out, tweak what you need to tweak and just redo it over and over again. And it was the same way for my business cards. First round of business cards I hated. It was like a glossy finish, which I was not expecting. The text was too small. was, 30 bucks. I threw those in the trash and started over. Anyway, yeah, you can just, the faster you try stuff, the faster you get feedback from the market or your customers and you can tweak whatever you need to tweak.

Austin Gray:  It's such good advice, and listeners please hear 'em out on this because yeah I just think like more people need to hear that just move fast, try things, who cares if it breaks you just learn from it.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  I don't know how you think about this, but I'm not afraid to make a mistake once because I consider that a learning lesson. If I make the mistake twice, then that's on me, but if it's first, it's just a learning lesson, and if the more learning lessons we have, the better we get on round two.

Mike Compton: Yep. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, you, did you wanna talk about mistakes? I'd say go fast with business stuff. Maybe don't go fast with Grindr and get yourself in a spot where you end up throwing a track and toppling the thing over and, yeah, just rough. But, hey man yeah I'll take it there.

I've I made some mistakes so far. I was doing a job, big job. This woman had a huge blow over, was on a serious slope. was probably 80% through it, feeling good. And I go, I'm going downhill. And I go to turn 'cause I need to get at a different angle. And when I turned, I was on so much mulch and wood chips, that track popped right off. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what the heck am I gonna do? I didn't even know that I had the tools to fix it, didn't know how to fix it. 

So I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, all right, I know I gotta get this thing elevated or jacked up on this one side. Don't have a jack or anything with me. I know you can use the grinder wheel and the push blade to get yourself some leverage, but when I do that, I realize, maybe a little counterintuitive, it almost got more top heavy. And so I was worried that it was gonna flip. And used my truck. I backed my truck down, so I'm like probably 30 feet down this grade. And I park my truck like up here, and I use some ratchet straps just to hold the grinder up while I can try to figure out how to get the track on. it sits like this for hours because I don't have the tools I need.

So thankfully the homeowner was super nice and they were already out and about, and I just sent 'em a text message. I said, Hey, can you get me a, I think it's a one and three quarter size socket to work on the track. And the time that I sent that text before they got back down goes the machine, one of those ratchet straps broke and it just toppled right over.

And I'm thinking, this whole business is about to go down the tubes. 'cause everything I had read was, man, if you topple a grinder, it can be really bad, repairs and just damage. So I'm thinking, it's like my second week operating, right? So I've thrown a track, know how to fix it.

I've now toppled the machine, 30 feet down this grade, no idea how I'm gonna get it up. Found a recovery company. They came, they pulled, they got it upright, towed it up the hill. We got it on the trailer, got it home, fixed the track, in the comfort of your garage with all the tools. It's not a hard thing to fix. Probably took me 10 minutes. And thank God that there was no permanent damage. Just honestly, I think landing on it was such a huge pile of chips. I think that's what saved me. It has not been easy. It's been enjoyable, but the machine issues have been serious, like way more than I expected.

I ended up getting a crack in the frame. I don't know. I've talked to a few people on ideas of how it happened or why it happened, and nobody knows. Thankfully I've got a guy who lives down the street, super nice dude. I texted him when I realized it was cracked and I said, Hey, do you know any reputable welders? And he said, Hey, I weld. He had it fixed and repaired the next day, which this was two weeks ago. And so that enabled me that quick turnaround. 24 hours, he had me back up and running. I didn't have to change schedules, it was just a godsend.

So yeah. Go fast, figure stuff out. Maybe be a little more cautious when, you're starting some kind of work that you're unfamiliar with. Maybe you don't lose a track and you don't topple over. But now it's, I look back and I laugh just man, what a fun and crazy first month operating, and hopefully I don't have any more machine issues, but I know that's probably a little naive to think.

Austin Gray:  Yeah. I'm glad your machine is all right 'cause that could have been bad.

Mike Compton: Yeah, there's no business without the grinder.

Austin Gray: How much was your machine?

Mike Compton:   Good question. I got quotes from a somewhat local dealer. The same spec machine that I have was 73 K new. So that was a little outta the question for what I wanted to spend. I bought a 1-year-old used machine, had about 370 hours on it and it was 53K gotta save a good little bit there buying used.

Austin Gray:  53,000 with 300 hours on it.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  And that was off. Where'd you find that Facebook marketplace?

Mike Compton: Yep. Found it on Facebook. This guy had posted it and think within 10 minutes I'd sent him a message, Hey, I'm interested, here's where I live, when can I come see it, basically? And so we worked it out. super nice guy. When all this stuff has been going on with the machine, I've been texting him pictures and it's become, real friendly banter at this point.

He's become a good pal. Yeah, super helpful facebook, I think in these small towns, I don't know how big, I know you said you live in a mountain town. 10,000 people. Facebook drives almost everything around here. And even though I didn't find it locally, it just seems small communities gravitate towards Facebook marketplace and posting, looking for recommendations and stuff like that. So if you're in a small area, do not forget Facebook for this type of stuff.

Austin Gray:  Yeah. Especially and that's just where, primarily the 45 to 65-year-old people hang out.

Mike Compton: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  and they're the people who are paying 

Mike Compton: Yep, that's right.

Austin Gray:  The Gen Z on TikTok. They're not buying, I'll tell you that. 

Mike Compton: Yeah

Austin Gray:  I just, our social media we already create all this stuff, and so I just have 'em repurposed, but I don't put any effort into focusing on it

Mike Compton: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  I don't know. Everybody's got different perspectives. I think it's for local service. I don't know. Some of you listeners you might bash me on this and somebody proved me wrong on this, and tell me why. Why we should allocate time to TikTok? I just don't think there are any buyers on there, like all the buyers are on Facebook.

Mike Compton: Agreed.

Austin Gray:  Facebook and Instagram.

Mike Compton: I haven't had Facebook or Instagram in 10 years. It's only been X and I really have no desire to be a content creator. It uses energy that I'd rather spend elsewhere. But I just know it's part of the game. It's part of finding business, keeping business, growing business. But if it was up to me, I wouldn't be on any of it. I don't know, maybe one day business will be good enough that I don't have to be on there. It's like people can watch only so many stump grinding videos, try to set music funny, catchy tunes to it with captions that are relevant and stuff like that.

But other than that, people are only gonna watch it so much and I'm like, do I really wanna spend any energy thinking about how to get creative with these videos? Eh, probably not. So we'll see.

Austin Gray:  Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about your equipment. So you said it's 53 K, you said you got a loan on it for listeners Ty mentioned this in his episode, he broke down like what his monthly payments were versus what he could have rented for. So can you remind us, and you may have mentioned this earlier, but where did you get your financing from? Was it a local bank?

Mike Compton: Yep. Got it.

Austin Gray:  Okay.

Mike Compton: bank. 

Austin Gray:  And what were the terms of that?

Mike Compton: Oh gosh.

Austin Gray:  Five years, three years, seven years? I.

Mike Compton: I think it's seven years that maybe seven and a half percent.

Austin Gray: Okay.

Mike Compton: There's no prepayment penalties or anything.

Austin Gray:  Nice.

Mike Compton: Once we see how this thing's gonna go, like I wanna pay it off asap. I think that monthly payment on the, or the node is about 1000. the grinder, it's another maybe one 50 for the trailer. So I have a seven by 14 tilt deck trailer. Man, you wanna talk about getting lost in the analysis or paralysis by analysis? The trailer hunt is just, I honestly, I spent too much time thinking through the trailers and I don't know that I made the right decision. There's been a few jobs where I'm like, it'd be very nice to have a dump trailer.

Austin Gray:  Yeah.

Mike Compton: But. It is what it is at this point. If I need that next season, I'll pivot. But for now it's just a tilt deck. I can haul the grinder easily. I throw a couple pieces of plywood on the back end of the trailer behind the grinder, and I've found that's been a big hit with clients.

Some of the reviews I've gotten have been, Mike was very conscious about not tearing up our lawn. I haven't really run too many tracked machines before, but when I was doing a test run for some neighbors, like the first week I had it before that paid job, it was raining that night.

I didn't completely destroy their lawn, but it was enough to where I said, oh, okay. I've gotta be very conscious about whose yard I go into, how I run the machine when I'm in super soft grass, or if it's obvious that they care about their lawn. but just, little stuff like that sure.

Maybe you get a wheeled machine and you don't have to worry about it as much, but. Little stuff like that is, I think, a competitive advantage. When you can show a homeowner or a customer that care enough to just bring the plywood, but actually lug it around all day. There's been days I've spent probably an hour between 15 stumps moving plywood around.

And again, if I'm tracking my, what is my hourly and machine hour breakdown, I don't know. I don't really care. It's like I wanna get paid for doing a good job, and I want the homeowner to know that I took care of their place to the best of my ability. Like it's my own, I wouldn't want some contractor coming here and my lawn.

Not that I really care. You should see all the dandelions in my yard. But [00:43:00] just taking that little bit extra time to do and provide quality service.

Austin Gray:  Yeah, no doubt about it. How are you pricing your stumps?

Mike Compton: Oh

Austin Gray:  I.

Mike Compton: Trial and error. It depends on how many stumps is the short answer. If there are less than like 10, 10 to 15, I'll take inch measurements of all of them. And then been offering, a small discount if there's anything more than eight. I've been pricing by the inch to get going. And then I've recently started this tiered pricing where if it's under 36 inches, it's $1 amount. If it's 36 to I think 60, it's a different dollar amount. If it's anything above 60, it's a third tier. 'Cause what I've learned is, man, the bigger those freaking trees are, the roots are insane.

And while you don't have to chase all the roots, of course, you're primarily trying to get the stump. If it's on any kind of grade, man, those roots are, yeah, it's wild how far they go, how big they are. And so why that? Warrants more money, in my opinion, is you have to spend more time stopping the machine, clearing your path, moving the mulch. It just takes more time. So it's worth more money. I think I've done four estimates with the tiered system so far, I've only had one guy not respond every other job I've estimated, I've gotten. So one out of 17 I haven't heard back from and I've got a plan to reach out to 'em next week.

I know I've lost money on some of these jobs. Again, it's week five of operating, so I'm just counting it as part of the learning experience. when I was looking into the rental options, I had a few of the equipment places tell me, somewhat of what the going rate was for stump grinding per inch, and it's low compared to what Ty gets or what Ty's market allows. I can't do anything about that. It's the market I'm in, so I've gotta try to play the game. I did speak to one of the big tree companies and they only grind stumps for their own clients, and number that they told me blew my hair back high. And so I'm like, okay, that's really good info.

You know what I mean? I can try to meet in the middle between what I've been going at and what they're throwing out there and see what sticks. So yeah, pricing, it's gonna take, it's a lot of iterating on pricing. And I think, trying to be aware of who you're talking to, where do they live? it's like the end of the day, you're trying to gather information and analyze the data you have, right? Where do they live? What does their lawn look like? How long have the trees been down? Or how long have the stumps been there? Like, how much do they care? Are they gonna get other quotes?

Can I price it in a way to discourage them from getting another quote? At the end of the day, we got dollars we need to hit. Like you're saying, you gotta pay the bills. But as long as I can do that and still feel good about the product that I'm, or the service I'm providing to where I'm not undercutting myself too hard, it's okay if I take a little less on some jobs, so yeah, doing that dance, it's a work in progress.

Austin Gray:  Yeah, for sure. You mentioned the job that you did, 59 stumps. What was the total price tag on that job?

Mike Compton: Oh man. So it originally was 40 stumps and I priced them at $50 per stump because I was not gonna measure stumps. So I just took an average, they were probably six that were what I consider big, anything over 48 inches. The rest were less than 18 inches.

And then there were a few in that middle range. And so I just felt like per Stu felt fair. The fact that the property was close to me, it's on my road. A very short drive to get there. I knew once the machine was unloaded, I could just rock and roll, I didn't even have to move plywood, it's a farm property.

So basically the guy wanted these stumps cleared out to make his bush hogging easier. Yeah, all those factors went into that rate. And honestly, looking back thinking if I have another job like this come up again, how would I price it? Would I do it any different? And I might, for someone that owns a hundred plus acres, if they're gonna need stump grinding in the future, I want 'em to feel like not only did the service exceed their expectations, but the price was such that they could justify hiring me again. So 40 stumps to begin with. 50 bucks a stump. The day of it turned into 44 stumps so that same $50 per stump increment I was gonna keep going. And then as I was working through the day, he kept coming around and marking other stumps with these like little white plastic fence posts or something.

So it ended up with 59 stumps and ended up giving him a slight discount, for adding on more. So the total came out to 28 50 for 59 stumps, 12 man hours. I think it was eight machine hours, so that's eight machine hours is roughly 20 to 30 bucks in diesel. Fuel was negligible 'cause it's less than five minutes down the road. Packed lunch, so that's a sweet gig right there. And I hope to get more of those, but I dunno how often those will come around.

Austin Gray:  And you slept good that night, huh?

Mike Compton: Oh man. Like a baby. 

Austin Gray: Yeah.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray:  Awesome.

Mike Compton: Yep.

Austin Gray: That's so great.

Mike Compton: I think that's something that, I don't know all the viewers are or listeners are, but Grinding is if you don't have a secondary machine to scoop the mulch or push the mulch around, like it's, you better put your big boy pants on cause if you're dealing with any kind of anything that's not just straight wood chips, you're gonna be using some muscles. There's been days I'm like, man, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. 'Cause you watch the videos and you're like, oh yeah, that machine's doing all the work. You see a time lapse video of a 30 minute stump condensed to 30 seconds and you realize what all really goes into that 30 minutes stump. 

Austin Gray:  Tell us more about that before we wrap up here. Why is it harder than you thought?

Mike Compton: Really 

Austin Gray:  I

Mike Compton: You have to move the mulch, at least with the machine I have, it's a 50 horsepower unit. It doesn't have the deepest cutting depth. So if you get on any kind of grade and then you're your grinder wheels up here you're grinding this stump. To be able to get down deep enough, you're gonna have to constantly be moving the mulch that's compiling under your tracks or your wheels in the front. It, sometimes you have space to just work your way around the stump, which can make your life easier. But again, the angles change. And so yeah, there's a lot of stopping and raking and moving mulch and wood chips and one or two stumps, But you do it all day, eight to 12 hours.

Like it's hard. I've had one lady who asked me the same day to, was not part of the estimate. She asked me if I could move the remaining mulch and put it, some dump spot in the back of her property. Each wheelbarrow load was like a hundred yards total. I calculated, I think I ended up doing 10 of those loads. It wasn't part of the deal. Nice as could be. didn't charge her any extra, I just ate that one and changed the language in my estimates. Now, like any work requested same day that's not part of this estimate will be charged, X percentage on top of the estimate. Again, you just learn, I wasn't happy doing it, but whatever. Got a little more steps in. Yeah, she was pleased. 

Austin Gray:  You can always find the positive, right?

Mike Compton: Hey man, we try to, 

Austin Gray:  Yeah,

Mike Compton: to be negative about in the world and to be positive about all this stuff is the only way to keep the train on the tracks I think.

Austin Gray:  That’s right. That's right. Hopefully you get your son out there with you this summer and he can help you out with some of the raking

Mike Compton: that's right, man.

Austin Gray:  I.

Mike Compton: Muscles on his little skinny body.

Austin Gray:  Yeah, definitely man. I always worked with my dad in the summers starting in seventh grade and those are some of the best memories of my life.

Mike Compton: I bet you have a ton of memories and you learn the value of, doing stuff when it's hot and you're sweaty and you're dirty and yeah, just gotta push through sometimes.

Austin Gray:  Absolutely. Yeah. Those values still live in me today. And I just saw an example of some guy who was showing up every single day, no matter if it was 105 degrees outside, never made excuses. He was always there. He always took care of the customer. And yeah, I think that's gonna be a really cool experience for your son.

Mike Compton: Thank you, man. Yeah, me too. That's the hope.

Austin Gray:  Cool. Hey Mike, it's been great to have you on. What else would you like to share with listeners before we wrap up?

Mike Compton: Thanks for having me, Austin. I really appreciate it. First time I've been on a podcast or invited to do anything like this. So yeah, I appreciate the opportunity first off, I just wanna say if anyone has questions, you can find me on Twitter, my handle is at EMVA whatever.

Shoot me any questions you have about stump grinding or honestly anything like I'm an open book. Been through a lot in life. I'm 40 years old starting this in my forties. It's never too late, don't be scared to start. One other thing I wanna say. I know there's been some dialogue with Ty, a recent exchange he had with somebody, some competitor, some guy in his market. He got some pushback and it seemed like there was a little bit of an accusation that, he's not generous with his time. 

And I just wanna say Ty has been very generous with his time with me. When I was having the machine issues, Ty sent me a text personally just checking in, seeing how I was doing. When I was quoting that first paid job, the one that had the fence line. I had no idea what I was doing pricing wise. And I texted him, said, Hey man if you have five minutes, I'd love to pick your brain on this. And he called me almost right away, said, Hey man, I'm rushed. I'm really sorry what you got.

And we talked through it five minutes or less, helped me figure out how to price that first gig. So had tip to tie Chris Corner. Nick, you guys are inspiring a lot of people. You as well, Austin, just yeah, the platform and talking through all this stuff. Like I said, people need exposure. You never know what's out there. And don't be scared to jump in.

Austin Gray:  Cool. Thanks for that, Mike. We appreciate it. And listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. We publish episodes every week with people like Mike who are out there just starting businesses like stump grinding businesses, especially as owner operators.

These are the most fun episodes for me. 'cause I have a lot in common with somebody like Mike. We talk a lot about starting outdoor based service businesses, and we believe that if you're willing to get your hands dirty, that there's a lot of opportunity right now. So we publish episodes every week on Fridays.

We also send a newsletter with a recap of the summaries of the learning lessons that we talked about with the guests on Friday. So you can sign up for the newsletter if you haven't already. It's ownrops.com/newsletter. That's ownrops.com/newsletter. And today that we're recording, right now it is Friday, April 25th.

I had the founder of open phone on to discuss their integration with Jobber, which is the management platform that we use to run our business. And that episode is publishing today. They're doing something. Really cool here. And we're going to do a text line for listeners so you can text in any questions that you have about starting your business.

And we'll read those and I'll ask those questions with guests like Mike, and we'll answer questions live. So look in the description here below. I'm gonna make sure I don't butcher this number. It's 9 7 0 5 8 5 OWNR, so that's 9 7 0 5 8 5 OWNR. You can just text that number that's going to send an automation, and then we'll have it stored in the database and we'll answer those questions about your business live with our guests.

Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to work hard. Do your best, never settle for less. See you guys next week. 

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