Austin Gray:  I rented a skid steer, bought a brush, grapple, and did my first job. It was a $3,500 job. You need a website, you need a Google business profile. You need a way to go get in front of people. I like running Facebook ads right now. What we're having a lot of success with is before and after. So if you can go drum up your first jobs by either knocking on doors and handing out flyers, which a lot of people are like, oh no, I'm not gonna knock on doors. You gotta get your first job some way. Speed to lead is like the most important thing. A question I get all the time is, do I rent or do I buy?

For those of you who do not know me, I'm Austin. I have started Bear Cloud Land Services. We've grown this business into a seven figure business in a couple short seasons. We do land clearing for fire mitigation. We also do driveway grading out here as an upsell, and I started out with a skid-steer that was the first machine I bought.

I grew up operating. Skid steer mini X for my dad's concrete business back in Texas. And when I came out here, I saw a need for fire mitigation and I love starting businesses around providing solutions for other people's problems. I saw a problem and I was like, man, we can solve this problem with machinery. Everybody I saw doing it was trying to do it by hand and chainsaw, and I just knew that machines were a lot faster and secretly I always wanted to buy my own skid steer. So I went out and I think my first, yeah, my first couple jobs were with a trailer that I already had and just my personal truck. I rented a skid steer, bought a brush, grapple, and did my first job.

It was a $3,500 job. We cleaned out a bunch of juniper bushes underneath the undergrowth and then cut down a few trees and then hauled those trees off just using the trailer. And in the beginning, that's what my jobs consisted of. I just utilized the trailer. Cut up trees, hauled 'em off, took 'em to either a slash pile at another contractor's yard, I just paid to dump it there, or took it out to the landfill and they have a big slash pile out there.

At the end of the first season, I identified that there was enough demand. After the first couple jobs, I started a Google business profile, and that's what I encourage you guys to do. I see a lot of land clearing guys setting their Google business profile up as forestry service. I'm not convinced that's the best route to go.

I set mine up as a tree service in the beginning and it worked for us. And so that's my experience. So the first couple things you need whenever you're starting a land clearing business, what questions do you guys have started with a skid steer. It's a pretty simple business model, right? Like you need a website, you need a Google business profile. You need a way to go get in front of people. I like running Facebook ads right now. What we're having a lot of success with is before and after. So if you can go drum up your first jobs by either knocking on doors and handing out flyers, which a lot of people are like, oh no, I'm not gonna knock on doors.

You gotta get your first job some way. And it's pretty easy to go get jobs if you just go hand out tons and tons of flyers. 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. And 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. So I'm a big proponent of just printing off some simple flyers, going, identifying your ideal target area. Where does your ideal customer live? You probably know that if you don't already. Go to Google Maps and just search on around on the maps and find the like one to 30 acre properties that are heavily forested and those are likely areas that you should be targeting. So then one thing you can do is just print off some pliers.

Go out, knock on people's door and just hand them out. It's not like a crazy door-to-door sales pitch. I'm a big fan of just leaving flyers on people's doorsteps or knocking on the doors and just handing them, Hey, my name's Austin. I'm starting a new forestry mulching business, or I'm starting a new land clearing business. If you or any of your neighbors ever need this service in the future, my number is on this flyer. Gimme a call. Sound good? And it's not like a sales pitch or anything. What you're simply doing is getting your name and your new business out in front of people. And you do that a hundred, 200, 300 times and you're gonna find your first job.

And one thing that we are very adamant about is delivering five star service on every job. So in those early days, if you go set up a website and a Google Business profile, you can overdeliver on those jobs early on, and you should overdeliver on every job. But in. First couple jobs, like you absolutely have to deliver. What's up, Jerry? Ai, SEO. Jerry could just teach this masterclass right now. So Jerry's with the Stryker Digital, they, they crush our SEO for us. If you're in any other part of the us, highly recommend Stryker Digital. They do a great job with SEO. Geez, we got one person from YouTube and 41 from X. I guess X is the place we need to keep doing this.

All right? Okay, so if you go get those first jobs and you over deliver, appreciate you two. Jerry's a hustler, Jerry gets some stuff done. If you don't have a website, that's where you need to start. Just reach out to Jerry, reach out to the Stryker team. Their websites are very inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. I highly recommend you pay for one of their SEO packages as well. What do I like most about land clearing? One, it's a high ticket service, and two, I get to operate cool and fun machines. I mean, you get to buy, buy really cool machines, really fun machines. I secretly always wanted my own skid-steer 'cause I grew up operating my dad's skid steer.

And yeah, they're just fun. It's, it's super relaxing to operate, like you can get in this flow mode and you feel like you're just getting a ton done and once you experience how much the machine can actually work and how much you can accomplish in a day, it just gets addicting because you can get accomplished so much more with machinery than you can just by hand. And yeah, it just becomes this really intuitive thing. Like you, you just get to the point where you can operate really without thinking and it's just all second nature and everything's just one motion. And our lead guy, Josh, who runs our field crew, is an incredible operator and he always talks about just like, how do you let the machine do all the work?

Right? You're just there to guide it. And once you've hit that flow with the machine, it just becomes a really fun process. And so in this phase of business growth, I'm actually behind the scenes a lot more in the office and it's not as fun. Like I secretly want to be out there in the field. The first couple years of growing the business is really fun because you just get to be in the machine, you get to be doing sales, doing all the marketing. But I'll go back to where we left off there. When you are getting those first couple jobs, however you go get it, there's plenty of different ways you can just post a Facebook. You can go in your local community groups. Jerry, what are you guys doing? I'm curious, Jerry, go ahead and post this in the comments.

What do you recommend people do to utilize Facebook groups to go get their first couple jobs? I see you guys posting about this or I see Bodhi posting about this a lot too, and there are other people on X who do this really well. I like going straight to the people I like, just like shaking people's hands, looking them in the eye. Once again, I'm not like trying to do door to door sales. All I'm doing is trying to get the word out about our new business. So I one identified our target neighborhood. Two, I printed off flyers, just went into that neighborhood. And then like anybody who's outside when you're driving around, I stopped. I got out, gave 'em a flyer, gave 'em a business card, shook their hand, just stop and shoot the bull with them.

Get to know them as a person. Hey, we're offering fire mitigation services here. If you or any of your neighbors ever need this, please give me a call. And then you're gonna get your first job. Once you get your first job, it's time to over deliver and get the five star review. And then once you deliver the five star review, once you have your Google business profile set up, then the algorithm will start working for you. So. Deliver, get more jobs, get five star reviews, build a website, build a Google business profile, start building your social media channels and every single job you should be posting about it as well. And one thing I wish I would've known whenever I was starting that we're doing now is heavily targeted YouTube, where we just get on camera, where's my phone?

And like the other day, if you guys haven't yet, go subscribe to the uh, bear Claw YouTube channel. It's at Go Bear Claw. And you can see what we're doing. So like I'll just go out to the field and be like, I, we're in Grand County, this is on an excavation project. Hey, we're in Grand County on an excavation project.

And I get my field crew in the video, get our equipment working. And what I'm doing is training the algorithm or telling the algorithm what services we provide and where we're providing those services. And that targeted content. If you get. Good footage. You don't have to do any crazy edits. But what I'm really interested in right now and I'm testing out, is creating like really heavily targeted YouTube content.

So I did that last week for our excavation crew 'cause we added a dirt crew this year, and I'll be doing that for our land clearing and fire mitigation crew this next week. So that's something you guys can do whenever you get the jobs, just document it, pull out your phone. We live in the best time in the whole world to run a business because if you know how to leverage digital marketing and social media, you can get more jobs, like the algorithms will go to work for you.

Let's see. I would recommend to join local Facebook groups where your target customers are and just provide a lot of value first so they know who to call when they need your service. There's also a lot of people asking for recommendations on who to use for x service there all the time. Yeah, good stuff Jerry.

So after you start getting your first jobs, the main priority has to be get five star Google reviews. And then you just need to rinse and repeat that right? Post every single job to Facebook. Post every single job to YouTube. Post every single job. Take a photo and a short video and post that to your Google business profile. Jerry, if you have any recommendations for what people should post to their Google business profile as far as tags in the photos and videos that they're taking, please add that as well here in the comments. Google Business Profile just goes to work for you. It really does. Lemme see if I can pull mine up here.

I think we had, and it's nothing crazy, but I wanna say we had like 50. Yeah, so 5,722 views this last month. We have 57 current five star reviews. I'm a big stickler and I tell my team all the time, the standard is at five star review every Tuesday. I have a team meeting with them and. What I tell them or what I state is like the standard is five star service. Right now we have 57 5 star reviews. The second we get anything less than that, I'm gonna be really upset. I'm a pretty easygoing guy to work with. At least I think so. But I will be really mad if we get anything less than five star. I specifically remember in those early days, like getting one of the, uh, the tree cleanup jobs.

I actually left the broom and the rake. I didn't have it in my truck, and I got down just literally like on my hands and knees and put my gloves on and was just like cleaning up the road because I didn't wanna leave any sort of mess behind. I never want to give a reason for a customer to leave us anything less than a five star review. And I believe that if you as the owner and as the operator go and set that standard, then you can build the team and ask to hold them to that same standard as well. But you first gotta get out there and you just gotta grind and do it. I'm sure some of the questions you guys have are around like. Man, how do I go?

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How do I go start the business and how do I get my first pieces of equipment? A question I get all the time is, do I rent or do I buy? If you live in an area where you can rent a forestry mulcher, I recommend renting first. Get really good at selling the jobs, booking the jobs, and then go rent the machine as you need it.

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We're doing this right now with our dirt crew. We needed another skid steer and another mini excavator, and I just went to our local rental agents or rental equipment place and said We need a six month rental for this year, and we actually set it up to go month to month. One thing I like to do is just pay attention to the point in which you're demand.

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Gets to a level where you're asking the rental company to keep their machine for a whole month rental. Before you get to that, I don't think you should ever be considering buying. If you're definitely, if you're renting two months in a row, it's okay. The demand's here, and if you're renting three months in a row, that's when I think you should be buying the equipment, because yeah, when you buy the equipment, for example, my skid-steer payment is right at 2000 bucks a month.

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I, I believe it's $2,016. If you were to go rent that same machine, it's about four, I believe it's four grand or 4,200 bucks a month. So you can see you almost slash your cost in half, but you are signing your name on the line for five or six or seven years, however long you finance it out to, or three years if you do that.

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Um, in the early days, I opted for cashflow and so my first piece of equipment I went and bought and I financed that. And usually if you buy new like these equipment companies, especially right now, they're offering good deals because not a lot of people are starting and it's hard for them to sell equipment.

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I've even been seeing some good deals on used equipment right now, every morning when I wake up and do my morning duties, scrolling Facebook marketplace just to keep a pulse on the equipment market, I'm searching like Bobcat, T seven 70, Bobcat T eight 70. I'm a Bobcat guy right now, but it's just what my dad operated growing up.

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Cat makes great equipment. John Deere makes great equipment. I think people who argue over that stuff, it's pointless. Same with trucks, it doesn't really matter. Dodge, Ford and Chevy are all gonna get the job done. We operate Ford 'cause that's what our lead field operations guy likes, but I could care less on it.

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Equipment and brand agnostic, whatever gets the job done, whatever's easiest to get in place. Whatever the team likes, right? But I just encourage you pick one and go get one. Build good relationships with your equipment reps, and then start growing the business. I think the most important things you can focus on in the early days are sales and marketing, and then obviously fulfilling on operations.

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But in the beginning, you don't have a business if you don't have sales. So you have to figure out, how do I market, get in front of customers, and then how do I close jobs? We do land clearing specifically for fire mitigation, so our land clearing is gonna be a little bit different than down in the southeast Midwest, but I've been around the business long enough to know what guys charge, what you should be charging for your day rate skid steers.

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If you got a skid steer multry, you should be around 2,500 bucks a day. And Jerry, what are you laughing at? If you got a skid steer and a multry, you should be charging around 2,500 bucks a day. You can get by, you can get by charging two grand a day, I think, in the early days. But yeah, to make it work, you should at least be at 2,500 bucks a day on your bidding for that piece of equipment.

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If you're in the south or southeast, Midwest or Northeast, any anywhere up there like it's pretty straightforward 'cause you guys are just mulching, underbrush and those business models are very straightforward. You need a truck, I recommend a five 50 or we run Ford. So it's a F five 50 for us. It's Dodge, it's gonna be a 5,500 a trailer and skid steer and a mulcher.

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It's pretty straightforward for us out here in the west. We're op operating, doing fire mitigation. So we've got a whole tree chipper. It is a Bandit, 19 X pc. We have a Bobcat E 50 mini excavator with a log grapple on it. And then we also have a Bobcat th 70, which is a skid-steer with a Fecon bull hog forestry mulcher.

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We combine those three things together and our focus is high-end residential, basically second homeowners in mountain markets, people who have second homes, people who have expendable income, heavily forested properties, or some targeting that we go after. And our model is a little bit different than what people do in the South, southeast, and other parts of the country.

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We actually rely heavily on our mini excavator with a log grapple and our whole tree chipper. And the whole tree chipper is really cool because it comes with a remote. If you haven't seen this, you can just go to my YouTube channel, it's youtube.com at or youtube.com/at the owner op and I have plenty of videos.

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You can also go to the Bear Log YouTube channel that's at Go Bear Claw. There's a green machine that you'll see on there that it has a remote, and the excavator operator can be in the excavator operating that with the log grapple and moving the green track chipper around the forest. So that does the bulk of our work here in the west, and that duo with one operator is really efficient, especially if you live in areas where there's a lot of dead wood.

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Our problem out here in the western United States is the beetle came through in the early to mid two thousands, killed a bunch of lodgepole pine, and now a decade or two later we're dealing with a ton of that. So those trees died standing, then the wind came through and blew all those trees over, and then all the forests just is stacked up with dead wood.

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So everybody for the longest time is like, how do we clean this up? It's a huge wildfire risk. That's when I saw a lot of people talking about a problem and I'm like, man, can definitely clean that up with equipment. And so what we like to do is go around with that track chipper, take our mini excavator, use the log grapple, pick 'em up.

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We like the 360 rotating log grapple. And that is a huge efficiency boost over just an excavator with a bucket and a thumb. Because if you think about it, if you're a bucket in your thumb, you're going out and you're grabbing it like this, and all you can do is this, right? If you go out and grab it with a log grapple, you have the ability to twist and turn right?

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So think about it, if you position your, if this is your track chipper right here, and this is your excavator thumb, like you can position the tree to wherever you need to go to get it in the chipper, right? I'm telling you, it's a huge efficiency boost. The first federal clearing project that we landed up in Rocky Mountain National Park, we only had a bucket and we were like, holy crap, we gotta figure something out on this.

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So we did. We went and bought one. The one that I have is, I might be able to share my screen. The most ideal one is the lookup C-M-P-C-M-P, rotating grapple. Lemme see if I can share my screen. My friend has this one over in Steamboat and this thing is freaking sweet. Yeah, hydro grapple. That's what they're called.

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This is like a 20, I wanna say it's like a 20 or $25,000 attachment if any of you guys watch. But CMP attachments, hydro grapple. This thing is freaking sweet for building boulder walls. You can see right here Garrett Williams with g and m Outdoors up in Minnesota. I believe he's Big Lakes, Minnesota or something like that.

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He's on YouTube. They've got an incredible operation. I've had them on the podcast a couple times, but. Man, they build the crap outta some boulder walls and, and they make a lot of money doing it. And this thing is just super efficient. I had one of my friends who came in as a subcontractor on that federal contract.

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He just has a small excavation business in Steamboat. It was when he was getting his business started, he brought his Bobcat E 60 over and he had this attachment on it and we just had him feeding the chipper the whole time because this thing is so nice. So you can dual purpose this thing for building boulder walls and use it on your forestry crew as well.

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These things are sweet. Um, I was a little cheap in the beginning. I didn't wanna spend the 25 grand, this was like year one. So what did I end up buying? KRP. Lemme see if I can find it for y'all. Log grapple. K-R-P-A-N. Yeah, it was this one right here. So this is the one we have right here. So it's like little under two grand.

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You have to get this three ton rotator. So yeah, that, that looks better. I wanna say it was close with shipping. It was like close to three grand. This one still works. The reason I don't like it that much is because it has a bunch of auxiliary hoses on it and it's really easy to get pinched up and until the operator gets used to it, you end up just blowing hoses or pinching hoses and yeah, we were making, I remember last year we landed this job, sweet job and we had that one on YouTube.

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See if I can find it real quick. We landed this sweet job on YouTube. Oh, what in the world? Alright, fire mitigation. Your videos. This one. Wildfire mitigation, cleaning up Colorado Forest. So here's one thing I'll share about YouTube. Last year I had hired a media team and we were like. Going really into the edits and trying to do a bunch of cool stuff and all that.

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But what I realized is it doesn't matter. What you need to do is be really good at your thumbnail and your title so you can see how my YouTube stuff has has developed. You can also see view count over here. I care very little about view count. Right now what I care about is relevancy. So you can see over here I'm targeting for excavation in Tabernash Colorado.

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Excavating a custom home foundation in Grand County, Colorado. I'm really trying to push our dirt services now as an upsell since we built that crew. And so take note, like as you guys watch this, take note of what I'm doing right now. This is three years of testing things. I'll tell you, I wasted a lot of time.

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Because here was one video for example, that went, we put it so much time in the filming and getting the editing and the content and everything, and you see these people who are like blowing up on YouTube and you're like, yeah, we could do that. And that's gonna be good for brand awareness, but in all reality, it doesn't really matter.

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30, you can see 34,000 people here viewed this, but it didn't, as far as I know, it didn't equate to more snowplowing contracts for us here in Grand County in our service area. What I should have done is just gone out there and been like H-O-A-H-O-A Road snowplowing in Grand County and just the title, the just keyword stuff, service plus service area, and then.

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Then do the same thing with the description. None of this matters, right? What are you doing? Just creating a, creating stuff for people to watch. Cool. Who cares? There's no business model to it. What's the point of spending your time doing it? Unless you're just doing it for fun and you have tons of money and time on your hands, which I still gotta work and I still gotta make money.

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So everything we need to do, especially if you're in an early stage startup, if you're starting a land clearing business, like everything you need to do should be land clearing in your area and post that to Facebook, post it to YouTube. Post it to Instagram. What I'm hearing from other people like Bodhi at Stryker is SEO is gonna start picking up on this stuff.

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Jerry, what would you coach people up on right now? What's the one thing you would tell people to do if they're starting a land clearing business? Purely from a marketing perspective, what's the one thing other than start a Google business profile? Everybody should start a Google business profile right now if you haven't already.

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And if you don't have a location, like if you don't have a pin dropped somewhere in your town for your specific service, absolutely go get that done. Striker Digital created a YouTube video for how to get verified at a local listing, and you should absolutely do that. Now, I have a theory on this and some people may agree, some people may disagree with this.

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I think it's very important that you think about the psychology of what your customer is thinking when they search for your service. Alright, so I'll show you guys this. I strategically wanted our business to be placed on Main Street in our area. Why? Because all of the other businesses are right here in this district.

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So if a customer searches for our services and we show up, sorry, I need to go share my screen here. If a customer searches, alright, your services and you show up way out in the boonies somewhere, and then if somebody shows up in like the professional business district of your area, I do believe that there's a psychological thing that goes on in that customer's mind like, oh, this is the professional business.

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And especially if they click on your profile and you have tons of five star reviews, you're boosting trust immediately in your customer's mind. That's a theory I have. That's the route that I've taken with my businesses whenever I launch. It's like, how do I go rent an office space that is centralized to the customers I wanna serve?

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But we'll also show up in an area that looks like I'm a professional business immediately right out of the gate. One leg. What question? Do you have a current, do you have a land clearing business right now? Do you have a land clearing business? If you can hear me, I appreciate you giving me the feedback though on the audio.

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Hey, for any of you who are listening to this right now, I do have a school group that you can go join right now. Um, it's for Land Clearing Pros, or it's called Land Clearing Pros. Uh, no, but I'm looking more into helping businesses with SSEO. Okay. If you're interested in starting a land clearing business, go check out Land Clearing Pros.

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Uh, I just spun up this school group. I do have another school group called Owner Ops. And that's for like general local service business startups. We talk more just like general business, like how to go do marketing, how to go build your sales system, how to do hiring. Yeah, so that's more just generalized.

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I wanted to start honing in on this land clearing stuff though, because I'm seeing a lot of people reach out about, I'm just asking for help on this. So I figured I'd just start creating some more content on land clearing. So for those of you who, I'm gonna post this in the comments right here, those of you who want to get access to, I'm basically just gonna be documenting all of my businesses, SOPs, marketing systems, everything associated with building or land clearing for fire mitigation business out here.

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And I'll put that here in the chat. You guys can go to the chat and click on that if you want to jump in there. But let's, let's keep riffing. If anybody has any questions, please ask them in the comments section. So whenever you're starting out, yeah, I believe it's important At a certain point, after you figure out that there is demand to go get a reliable machine, the benefits of buying new, let's talk about that.

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Buying new versus used benefits of buying new are, you can negotiate a warranty on your machine. So they're gonna give you like one, maybe two years right out the gate. Here's how you play the game. You go get a quote from Bobcat, then go find your Kubota dealer, then go to your CAT dealer, you go get your first quote, they're gonna give you like whatever, $120,000 for the new machine.

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And then you say, here's what I want. I want, I wanna do forestry mulching, so I need you to give me a quote for. Let's take Fecon. I use Fecon and most people can or most dealers can get that. I need you to gimme a quote on a Fecon forestry mulcher. Which one? The Bull Hog or the Black Hawk? Either one are great.

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We go with the bull hog because you can change out knives and carbides on it, and it's more general. All purpose. Get the right size for your machine. Your equipment rep should know that, okay, I need a quote for a high flow skidsteer. With Bobcat, it's either gonna be the T seven 70 or the T eight 70. I would get quotes on both of those, and then I would get the quote on the forestry mulcher as well.

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Then you're gonna get the quote from them, and then you're gonna say, okay, thank you sir. I appreciate it. Then you're gonna go to Kubota, find the dealer locally who has the Kubota dealership, and then go ask them for their high flow skidsteer. Ask them to get you a quote on a forestry mulcher. I don't know if they can get fecon, at least my dealer or our dealer out here couldn't, I don't remember what brand it was.

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Like lock loft ness or something like that. So then Kubota's gonna give you a cheaper price. I know it 'cause they're always cheaper than Bobcat, or usually they are, in my experience. So let's say you get a quote for 120 K from Bobcat. Kubota's gonna be at like 1 0 5, 1 0 8 or something like that. Then you're gonna go back to Cat.

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You be like, Hey, I, I'm, I would love to get a quote for a Cat 2 99 with a forestry melter, and they're gonna give you a quote on that, and it's probably gonna be as expensive or more expensive than Bobcat. Then what you, what you need to do is just wait, just remember this. He who does not need to make a purchase has the most leverage.

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So just wait from Bobcat and Cat, let them reach back out to you. All right. After you have the quote, you can say, okay, Mr. Equipment rep. Yeah, sorry, I haven't, sorry, it's been a week or whatever. I'm really considering this Kubota right now. 'cause they came in at 1 0 5. Then they're gonna be like, oh, let me see what I can go do.

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I'm gonna go talk, play the whole used car game with you, and then they're gonna come back and they're gonna knock some price off the quote, and then it's not gonna be close. And then you're just gonna say, Hey, I'm sorry, Kubota is the, I know they just gave me a quote for 1 0 5, so I need you at least match that and just play the game with them back and forth until they get you priced down.

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Once they get you the price. This is very important. So don't start. Just know that you have to work this in sequence once they get your price down to where it's comparable to Kubota. I can't remember if mine ever got all the way down to it. I think maybe we got down there in price, but then I went back and I was like, okay, so I want a five year warranty.

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I'll sign on this deal if I do. If you gimme a five year warranty and they're like, oh, I can't, can't do a five da da, and then you're gonna settle on a three or something like that and they're gonna want to add a couple thousand bucks back. So that's how you play the game with the equipment reps. You can go as long as you want, but at the end of the day, I recommend just at a certain point, once you've identified that there's three months of demand, just go.

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Or the other thing is, like in my area, I couldn't get the skidsteer with the forestry mulcher, so I actually had to make an equipment purchase faster. My first season, I really only had two months of operating before the snow flew in. 'cause I started and I had, I think I had August and s, it was like mid-August I wanna say.

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So I really had all of September, all of October in my first year before snow set in, and I was able to generate enough demand that I was comfortable before the end of the year. To go pull the trigger on that purchase. And so what I told them was, I knew I wouldn't be operating until the next May and I said, I'll do this deal, but I want, I don't remember the exact terms of the deal, but I did something where it was like, I want this delivered in May and I want my first payment to happen.

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Then. So then I spent that whole month like putting, excuse me, that whole winter, putting together my marketing plan, refining my website. That's when I hired Stryker and I was like, Hey, I know SEO takes a long time. I need you guys to like ramp up for land clearing, forestry, mulching, fire mitigation, that sort of stuff.

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Then we started optimizing the Google business profile and by the next May, I think this is, oh, we started, we went for, I haven't looked at the SEO terms recently because it's been so long since I've been in those weeds. 'cause I trust Tracker so much and they do such a good job. But I think we optimized for like brush control too, because that was a search term that.

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Was just, it was just like nobody else was optimizing for. So by that next year, what I did over the winter was I called all the builders in the area who I could think of and property management companies. And I just told him it's very similar to like stump guy ties. If you guys follow him on X, his B2B strategy, like all he does is cold outreach to other tree companies.

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He picked one service and guys like the longer I've gotten in the business, the best businesses are one service, one avatar and go after it and get that to a million, right? I think we got a little too fast out of the gate, like adding in dirt, but whatever. We're here and, and it's working. I think if I could go back and tell my first year self, just focus on fire mitigation and focus all your energy and effort on that.

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Because in year one I was telling people like I would do driveway grading as well. And like I said, it worked out. I knew I was gonna have a skid steer and I wanted to optimize for cash flow, right? If they'll pay me to do these fire mitigation jobs and I can put that to work with forestry mulching grate, if they'll, if they need driveway repair, gravel driveway repair, I knew I could do grading.

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So I just started calling everybody. And I specifically remember calling builders and just being like, Hey, I'm not trying to take your excavation work 'cause I know you got your subs, I know you have your network. And the the reality is they're not gonna give you their excavation work for foundation. If you only have, if you're a solo guidance gets, they're just not gonna do it.

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Especially like really highend custom home builders. What they do need help with though is little odds and ends excavation stuff. So in foundations, building, building, anything. You have these like weird timeframes. So your excavation crew will come in, they'll dig the foundation, then your concrete guys come in, pour the concrete, or they do the forms on the concrete.

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Then your excavation guys come back and backfill. But there are these weird inflection points where it's all crap. Like I got the electrical guy coming and I need the trench dog from the house where the meter is gonna be all the way out to the transformer or something like that where I need my gas line dug to, to tie into the main line.

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But we gotta dig like around the house and do all this stuff. And the main excavator has already got his million dollars worth of equipment mobilized to another project and they're like, I can't get to you until next month. So the approach I took was like, Hey, I've got this. I've just bought this skid steer and I just bought this mulcher so I can do any sort of clearing to help get you guys in.

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I can also help you guys with little odds and ends like driveway grading, driveway repair, and one of the. First couple builders I talked to was like, dude, I think you're onto something. He was like, if a guy just focused on driveway grading here with a skidsteer, there's demand for that because he's, everybody jumps into the big stuff because you see the big dollars, right?

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Especially once you get going and once you have more equipment. But his perspective was there's a ton of work for driveway repair. So that's why I decided to do both in the beginning. And it actually worked out for us because I had the one skid-steer and I was able to bounce back and forth between the driveway grading jobs that I was getting or the repair jobs.

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And really all it is like bringing in more gravel. 'cause you get potholes in these rural areas on gravel roads. And people don't like potholes and they don't like ruts. So the pain, I love starting businesses around pains, and you can do this one with Facebook ads very easily. I'll see if I can show you guys a Facebook ad here.

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Lemme see if I can pull it up. If not, I will, I dunno, get in this flow and I wanna keep talking, so I'll just show you. You can run a driveway grading or a driveway repair ad. I'm really big on talking head videos right now. If you are willing to get on camera. And I encourage you and I push you and look, I know it feel, you're like awesome.

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It feels cringe. What are my friends gonna think of me? What are my family gonna think of me? It's like I have all those doubts and false beliefs and everything as well. And do people probably look at it and be like, wow, he's stupid. Probably. Yeah, they probably still do. But guess how much I care? Very little now.

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Why? Because it's working and it's driving business. I'm telling you, the Facebook ads work if you hit 'em right. Do you use a mic or just iPhone mic when making videos? I do, dude. You can go get a Amazon, you can get like the lavalier, I think that's how you say it. If not, sorry, please correct me. But lav mics, I ordered my first ones for 20 bucks and they'll connect.

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They just have a, like a transmitter that plugs in the bottom of your iPhone and you can clip it right here, connect with Bluetooth. Or actually that's not even Bluetooth. I think it, I can't remember. May. Maybe it is. Anyway, sorry. I, I just like to move too fast. I hold up the phone, connect the mic. It does make videos sound better, but don't let this hold you up.

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If you're in an area where, where it's not super windy or there's not a ton of equipment running in the background. Your iPhone is gonna be just fine. The, the reason I have found the lab mics to be helpful is because oftentimes when I film videos, I'll have equipment running in the background and the phone will pick all that up and the audio feels like I have to scream, Hey, it's Austin.

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Whereas when you have the mic, you can talk just at a normal level like I'm talking right now. But I know everybody's question right now is, okay, I'll answer that. Should you get a lab mic? Yes. Can you get by with a $20 lav mic from Amazon? Yes. And that's what I would recommend doing right now. If you want to film videos, just go order that one on Amazon.

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Just type in lab, mic and order whatever the best sold one is. Now, I did just invest in like one of the DJ I, 'cause those are the best and I'm doing a lot of this content stuff. I think that's a couple hundred bucks, but you don't need it. Go grab your phone, show a job. This is once you get jobs, obviously, Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses.

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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. Show a job where you have ruts or potholes. No, I have a media team for the ads media buyers.

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They do all the editing, but seriously, I can show you guys and seriously, go join the, uh, just go join the school group 'cause I'm gonna be sharing a lot of this stuff in there. Right now I'm just riffing. I don't have anything really prepared for this, but I have templates in there, Facebook ad templates, and then I'll show the ads in there, like how they're edited and really anybody can do it with a little bit of time.

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I'm of the mindset though, that if you can just nail it inside the video. The edits aren't what is going to drive traffic, the format, and here's what I recommend. Does your driveway look like this? And then position it to where your face is in like part of the screen and the pothole is, or get a good angle on it to where it looks like, like you can see the potholes or see the ruts driveway look like this and just get that shot right there and then go do the job, complete it, and then wait till you have it all buttoned up and then go film another one where it's, and you want it to look like this.

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And then just splice those two videos together. If you don't know how to do it, literally just go on Fiverr and hire somebody to edit those videos. I'm sure there's somebody on X that you could just post where it's like, Hey, I need somebody to do contract work for editing these videos. Here's what I'm going for right now.

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I can show you the example that we use and. You can just have someone like splice 'em together Real quick for you, my, my point with this is I think a lot of people use mics and editing and all that stuff. It's just like they want to have it all figured out. My, what I encourage you to do, the most important thing you can do as an owner and as an operator is do this film.

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The ad, right? Hey, does your driveway look like this? And you want it to look like that. For land clearing, here's what you should do. Go show an area or go find an area that has not been cleared. This is really nice to do after the job. Okay? After you have an area that has been really nicely manicured, right up against another area where your client didn't have you do this.

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Just be like, and what we did for fire mitigation, like I just found an area with a ton of deadwood stacked up and then an area that we had cleared and I was just like, does your property look like this? And you want it to look like that? Wildfires are a huge risk here in Colorado. My name's Austin. We're with Bearclaw Land Services.

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We offer fire mitigation services here in Grand County, Colorado. If you'd like to get a free estimate, our crews are booking up fast this year. Just click the link below and we will give you a call as soon as possible. Like something very simple like that, right? And I think people just radically over complicate this.

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What people want to know, people, excuse me, what people wanna see is before and after. Think about it this way, and I still fall into this trap, right? I catch myself talking about what we have done. The reality, the reason 126 of you are on here right now is because you guys want to know, do I have something that can help you?

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You don't really care about me or what I've done. Same thing goes for you. Your customer doesn't really care about you or what you have done other than the fact that they just want to know what service you provide and that you're a real person. They want to know how you can help them. So showing them how you can help them, right?

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Does your property look like this and you want it to look like that? My name's Austin. I'm with bearclaw Land Services. We offer fire mitigation here in Grand County and we are book, we are offering free estimates right now for fire mitigation services. Our crew is booking up fast. Click the link below.

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Just get straight to the point. Tell them what they want or show them what they want to see, which is before and after, and that ad is going to generate some leads. I like Facebook form leads because it doesn't direct them off of off the page, but you also want to add some qualifying friction, meaning.

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You want to collect. Facebook allows you to collect their name and email pretty quickly because their email's already attached. You wanna get phone number address is really gonna qualify people because the people who are not serious about it aren't gonna give you the address. You will have a higher cost per lead with that.

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So you gotta make that decision. You self. I like thinking about qualifying questions. How many acres are you looking to get cleared? When are you thinking about having this, or what's the timeframe you would like to have this done? Are there any structures or is there anything else on the land that you would like to note?

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At this point, you just gotta think about like the qualifying questions. If somebody's really serious about this, what are they going to answer? You wanna give them a couple qualifying questions just to qualify them. Okay? And then once they get that, you need to have automation set up on the back end to where your, that lead information is gonna get texted to you.

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It's gonna get slacked to you. It's gonna get emailed to you. We hit all of our channels and I text it to myself, I text it to our sales rep, I text it to our Slack channels and we're, speed to lead is like the most important thing. So when you get that online lead, here's why I think people, the biggest mistake I think people make with Facebook ads is, oh, I tried Facebook ads and they didn't work.

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So how fast did you call your leads and how energetic were you on the phone? Did you sound like most other contractors? Hello? Yeah. Were you in the machine? Hello? Yeah, lemme call you back. That doesn't work. People are looking for a professional and when you show them that you, you're a professional.

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Meaning when they fill out the lead and you call them, like right now, I'm telling you, and I tell our guys this all the time. It's like when I was doing sales, the answer I would get, wow, that was fast. And it's, if I didn't get that answer, I knew I was too slow. What was my response? Yes. Our goal is to deliver five star service and that starts right now.

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Could you tell me a little bit about your project and what you're looking to have done on your land? Then it's boom. Holy crap. This person called me as soon as possible. What are they thinking in their minds? I can tell you what they're not thinking. They're not thinking about who else do I need to go search for to find?

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That's the goal. Speed to lead is literally the most important thing in your business right now. If you can get leads and call them as soon as possible and book a site visit as soon as possible in the early days when you don't have jobs, this should be your absolute main focus. The one thing, I guess there's a couple things I would do.

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I would hand out flyers like I mentioned earlier. If those of you who are joining late, like you can print out flyers, go find your target neighborhoods, demographics, put the phone number on there. Just go knock on doors and hand out flyers. Hey, my name is Austin. I'm with bearclaw. We're doing fire mitigation.

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I just started this business. If you or your neighbors need any of this now or in the future, please just gimme a call, okay? It's a really non-pushy way to get the word out about your new business. So then what's gonna happen? You're gonna hand out a hundred of those and the one person's gonna call you and you're gonna get one job out of it.

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And then when you get that one job, you'll set up your Google Business profile and you ask for that five star review, and you get that five star review. And then once you start replicating that process over and over again, you get more five star reviews. So the Google algorithms start, Google algorithm starts working for you.

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You're getting search volume from there. All the while you're still handing out flyers, right? 'cause you don't have job number two yet. So go print out those flyers again and go talk to more people. The number one role in business is just talk to your customers. All right? Any business works for any business.

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Just talk to your customers and tell them that you are in business and ask them for. The job that's, that is the number one rule when you're starting out. Tell the people you have this business and you provide this service and ask them to call you next time they need help with this. You do that a hundred times.

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Maybe you don't get a job. Go do it a hundred times. Again, you have a better chance of doing it. I don't know if people are gonna call you back or not. I can't. It's nothing I can guarantee. What I can guarantee you is that you increase your likelihood and your chances of getting more calls, the more actions and inputs you put in.

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That's what I care about. There's a difference in lead measures and lag measures when you set goals. I think way too many people are like, oh, I want to go build a million dollar business. Sweet. What are you gonna do? What inputs are you gonna put in to get yourself there? If you don't have a business, if you're just starting up, you need to put in some sort of manual inputs, whether that's running Facebook ads, handing out flyers.

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You can't just sit behind a computer and hope that things come to you. If you do decide to run Facebook ads and you do have a budget, a startup budget, go run that same one that I just said. Does your land look like this and you want it to look like this? My name's Austin. I'm with Bearclaw Land Services.

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We offer fire mitigation services here in Grand County. Click the link below. One of our team members will give you a call as soon as possible. Boom. Easy. People will click that. All right. Or they should, I guess I can't guarantee it in any market, it works for us. I've seen it work for other people. All right?

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And that's a very basic ad. If you jump in that Land Clearing Pros school group, like I'll be sharing some more templates that you can go off of. I assume they wanna see something real. Every, everything has been so edited, so much, nothing feels real anymore. Yes. And I will tell you, this is why I'm doing these lives.

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This is why I don't have anything prepared. This is why I'm not doing any fancy edits, where it's like owner ops, right? You don't care about that. You care about can I help you go make more money? That's what you care about. And I know that. So I'm stopping wasting my money on the editing and the fluff and all the bull crap that goes along with it and all the, oh, do I need to have this prepared and this prepared?

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No, I literally just clicked go live. I didn't even have my microphone connected, right? My, and see, yes, there you go. It's like you don't give a crap if I have edits. You don't even give a crap if I have a, when I started the podcast, I had this like white drywall. I didn't even have my office framed then in here.

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You know what I mean? You don't care about my bag drop, you don't care about my microphone. You just care. Do I have something that can help you make more money, specifically in the land clearing business? And look, I'm really confident that I do. So if you stick around or if you could just go join the school group, I've plugged the school group like crazy here, but I'm serious.

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Go join that group. Y'all know, once I started seeing people join You'all, know how nervous I got. So the reason I'm doing all this content guys is so I have, I bombed a speech in college and since then it like ruined me for speaking in public. I get this like big knots in my stomach anytime I've been asked to like say a prayer at a wedding or read a Bible verse.

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I specifically remember that one of my friends asked me to read a Bible verse at a wedding and I got so nervous and I was like, mouth was getting all short of breath and everything. So a big reason that I started doing content was I was like, I have this fear obviously, and I need to figure out a way to get over it.

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So one way to do it was to start getting on camera because I had a really nervous feeling about the same first time I did a Facebook ad too. What I can tell you is it gets easier the more reps you put in, but I haven't had that nervous feeling in a long time. This is the first live stream I've posted to X and I.

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What I would just encourage you guys to do, if you're listening to any of the Facebook ad stuff, you're gonna be nervous. It's gonna feel weird. You might, it might feel cringe, but it works. It literally works. If you haven't jumped in the Land Clearing group yet, go ahead and do, I posted the link here in the chat.

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I'm gonna be sharing like estimating templates, Facebook ad templates. I'm going to be talking about like how I hire VAs, how I'm using Loom and Chat GPT to create SOPs. We'll do a lot of stuff in there. School's a really cool platform backed by hor Moey, and that's just really cool to be able to, I'm viewing it as a way to one help you guys.

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Two, it challenges me to stop moving so fast and slow down and document things. So when I document these videos, I'm not only doing it for you, I'm doing it for internally for our team as well, which. Builds a better system and more SOPs. If you don't have a business, here's what you need. You need a website.

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You can DIYI would highly recommend not 'cause it's a complete waste of time and you're probably gonna mess something up. Go pay Stryker Digital to build a website. Or in the early days, I used a company called Launch kits.com. If you use them, I believe that they're gonna be about the same price as Stryker Launch kits.

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Launch Kits can build your website, and Stryker can still do all their SEO on top of that. So either one you choose will work. Just make sure that you're built on WordPress or it's custom coded. You want really fast websites and you want it done by a pro. Because look, if you don't do some specific things like I think they're called like title tags and meta descriptions for each page, you're just not gonna rank.

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But when you pay the pros to do it, you have a much better chance of moving faster. So that's your baseline for everything. Number two is you need a Google Business profile. If that's free to set up, we have resources for that. We will have the resources for how to set up the Google business profile. I have interviewed Bodhi, one of the co-founders of Stryker, and he has just showed, if you're starting new, here's what you need to do on your Google business profile.

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Set up your services, set up your products, link back to specific pages on your website. And man, I'm gonna have to ask Stryker for sponsorship money for this, how much I'm talking about Jerry. I'm just kidding. I love you guys and you guys deliver great results, so always happy to look. That was like the real thing whenever I started the podcast.

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I'm not gonna promote anybody else's services if I don't believe in it or if I haven't used it. And so if it sounds like I'm getting paid by them right now, I'm not. If it sounds like I get affiliate commissions from them right now to build your website, I'm not. I just know that it works. And I know that if you just get out of your own way and hire the pro and practice delegation one, you're gonna be a better delegator, which is gonna help you be a better business owner.

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It's a really hard thing to do early on, trust me, because I went through multiple years of business trying to do everything on my own before I started this business, and it just doesn't work. Like you get capped so fast. So the faster you can learn to find the pros and delegate to them and let them do their thing and get out of their way and stop trying to be the expert and think that you are better than everyone else at the different things, the faster you're gonna move.

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I would say that's the number one thing I've learned with this business is like, one, I'm not the best fit for every single role, even though I could operate a skid steer, I'm not the best operator. I just went and found someone who is better at operating than I am, and then I asked him to train our guys on operating.

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Why? Because I'm not the best operator. Like breakdowns actually happen when I'm in the machines because I just move too fast. I don't. A good equipment operator is slow, as smooth as fast, and that's who you want leading your fuel crew. Number two. Then I thought, oh man, I'm gonna go do sales right now and nobody can sell my business better than I can.

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It's just false, right? I didn't have a process of winging it. I'm just like, I'm a trailblazer. I move fast. I go do things, but I don't really slow down to put processes to it. So when, when we hired a professional sales, somebody who had a professional sales background, like he has a very structured process and speed to lead is the start of that.

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Harvard did a study, and I'm probably gonna butcher this, but I heard this somewhere the other day. Harvard did a study that if you call the lead in under 60 seconds, there's a 300. Don't quote me on this, go look it up. Just Harvard business study speed to lead. It was something like a 300% increase. In your chances of turning that lead into a customer.

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If you wait five minutes or more, I'm gonna butcher this. I just remember it was something drastic. It was something like, your chances go down by 80%, 390 per 91%. Thank you. Do you know one leg? Do you know what the percentage was in decrease? If you wait five minutes or more for losing that lead while he's pulling those stats, if that is a stat you can pull force one legged, that'd be great.

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While he's pulling those, I'll tell you what happens if you wait five minutes. If a customer fills out a form on your website or from Google Business or Facebook ad and you don't call them back and you don't acknowledge that you got that lead and you don't call them and book a site visit, guess what they're doing?

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They're going to competitor number two. Competitor number three, competitor number four. Why? Especially as Americans, we want it now, and especially as millennials. Move into the buyer's market. Like right now, we sell to, I would say 45 is the low end of our ideal customer. In our, in Bearclaw, it's mainly like 50 and up, 50 to 70-year-old people.

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They want it now, just think as 30 and 40 year people who are in the millennial generation. Dude, if we can't click a couple buttons and have it delivered on our doorstep within a couple hours, we're wondering what the heck is gone, is going wrong. Oh, this business sucks. Like they don't have one day shipping.

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Right? Think about how many people literally think like that. In today's day and age, millennials and Gen Z. Specifically as the millennials get into the people who are buying these higher ticket services, just think their expectations, right? If you're not on top of it, waiting one minute longer, it goes down to 120% waiting an hour, drops it to 36%.

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It's incredible. Speed to lead is in incredible. I heard recently through somebody else, I was on a call with the other day that hor moey is considering launching a business. I guess I shouldn't spread rumors. I don't know about, this is just what I heard. Considering launching a business doing only speed to lead for local service and trade businesses.

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Why? Because traditionally, we as a group suck at this. Why? 'cause most of us are out there in the equipment, like trying to cut down a tree or running a chainsaw or fixing the pipe leak and hello, right? Or it's like you're right in the middle of something. You're really focused and you don't answer. Trust me, I've been there.

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The sooner you can figure out how to call your customers as soon as possible when you get the leads, the sooner you're gonna start closing more jobs, especially if you're paying for Facebook ads or Google Ads. We haven't even talked about Google Ads yet. If you're in the Southeast or the South, like land clearing as a search term is a term.

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You just bid on that one. There are some other terms too. I'm not a Google Ads expert. I pay a pro to do that for us as well. I try to look at things at this point in business, I just try to find the pros and get out of their way and let them do their thing. And I believe your job as the entrepreneur is to architect the system.

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Put the pieces of the puzzle together. If you go find people who are really good at what they do and recruit them and pay them well, and put them in the right seat and design a role that actually fits something that excites them. Here's one question I ask. All the time. It's like when I check in with people, it's like, where's your energy levels at?

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Zero being like, I need to like sleep right here, right now, otherwise I'm not gonna be able to keep going. And then 10 being all time like excited about everything. Right? And if it's not consistently above a seven, I think we have the wrong responsibilities or role for that person. I think it's a very easy thing to do.

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If you just find people who like genuinely enjoy their craft and put them in the right role and pay them well, then you're gonna have a business that keeps moving forward. Now, it's easier said than done, right? You gotta go recruit those people. But once again, coming back to the start, I would literally start with my baseline of like website, Google Business profile.

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And if it's me, I know how well Facebook ads work. If I'm starting a new business in a new market, I'm ripping Facebook ads right out the gate. Why? Because I want Facebook ads working for me while I'm handed out flyers and putting out yard signs. I wanna call the leads. I wanna book the site visit as fast as possible.

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I want to get on site with the customer. I wanna look them in the eye. I wanna shake their hand and I wanna bring something to take notes with, whether it's an iPad, whether it's a notepad. Alright, so here's how the site visit's going to go. I just want to give you some expectations. I'm going to be here.

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I wanna listen to everything that you have on your mind. My goal here is to take as many notes as possible. So if I do look down at this iPad, or if I do look down at this notepad, it's not because I'm not listening to you, it's just because I want to capture everything so that when I go back to put an estimate together, we have the exact estimate that you need for your services.

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Does that sound good? Yeah. Perfect. So why don't you just show me your number one concern area. Why did you have me come out here? Boom. Transition. Let them lead for a second, right? Then follow. Take notes as you go. How long have you been wanting to get this done? That's another qualifying question. This, this area has been bothering me for the last five years.

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So we get into all of this inside the school group as well. Like I have scripts for this. Getting in person with people and simply listening to their problems and taking notes is really, especially for 50, 60, 70-year-old people, if you show up as a millennial and do that and you're not just like strolling on your phone or anything like that, I recommend putting on do not disturb while you're on the site visit.

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Focus in on that person. Ask them questions about their job. Ask them why. Understand why they're wanting you to do this. 'cause then if you can understand why, you can understand the vision that they have for their property and you can understand its current state. And you just know that as a service provider, you are the bridge between their current state of their property and the vision that they have for their property.

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And if you understand that as a service provider, all you have to do is bridge the gap. Okay, you're currently here. This is how you want it to look. Photos speak a million words, especially in site visits, so I recommend putting photos of your really nice cleaned up properties on an iPad, showing those to your customer during your final pitch at the end of the site visit, right?

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Then I recommend sending a really fast estimate. The faster you can send the estimate, the higher your close rate's gonna be. What you want to do as a service provider is eliminate the opportunity of that person going to the next contractor or searching Google for the next contractor. You want them leaving that site visit, and our sales guy talks about this all the time.

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He's, I know when somebody's gonna sign up with this because you can, as a salesperson, I guess I shouldn't say everybody should. Some people can feel that energy. Some people can feel whether people are going to move forward or not. You want to listen so well and take such good notes and deliver such a fast estimate that you cut down on the chances of that person going and searching Google for your competitor.

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And if you do that over and over and over and over again, you can build a really great business. Now notice how we haven't talked about operations of this. If you don't know how to operate equipment, some of, you're probably gonna hate me for this, but it's like either you have one or two options. Either go find a different business to start if you don't know how to operate, if you don't have experience or two, hire someone who does right out the gate.

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But you do have to know that like these pieces of equipment are dangerous, they're very powerful. You can mess things up really quickly. And I think what a lot of people see online, oh, that's a sweet business model. You can charge $2,500 a day to go do this and. Yeah, I think if you really wanna start as an owner operator, it would be well worth your time to go work for an excavation company.

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Just getting skidsteer operating experience before doing this as an owner operator. I, that's personal belief. I was fortunate 'cause I got to work, grow up running a skidsteer for my dad. But yeah, I do encourage you guys if you are going to get in the seat, know all the safety precautions that you should be taking.

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This is heavy machinery and it can mess things up really quickly. And the forestry mulching attachments can send debris. I think on the front of the mulch it says debris can be sent up to 300 feet. It's like you send something through somebody's window and it can get bad real quick. So just be aware of that.

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All right, I appreciate you guys joining. I'll do some more of these. Any other questions specifically about starting or if you've got a business, what do you need help with right now? Somebody's gotta have a question. One leg. You got any more questions? Okay, I've, I have heard that there is a 22nd delay in whenever you type the question and when it shows up, so I'm trying to give enough time here to make sure that I'm not missing anything before I wrap up.

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But I do appreciate y'all joining. What's the most difficult situation you've met and how did you solve it? What I've learned is there inflection points at every phase of the business. When I hosted John Wilson, he's got the owned and operated podcast, and he is got Wilson companies up in Ohio. They do plumbing, hvac, electrical.

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He's got multiple different businesses. They do sewer and drain. He described it as there's a gut punch at different levels of the business and the gut punch just keeps getting harder and harder like that punch to the gut does and what he meant. I went back and re-listened to that episode recently. He meant that.

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Whenever you are faced with a decision that you don't know which route to go or what the right answer is, it's a gut punch. 'cause you don't know how to make that decision. You don't know which one is right or wrong. And right now we're in a phase where we've grown to one market, a decent sized business, or like a decent sized small business.

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So we have a team in place and the gut punch is, do we grow to another market or do we like optimize and build another crew here? The hardest piece about this business is the capital that's associated with it, or I guess the risk that you have to sign up for. So at each phase of building this business, that first one was whenever you buy that first piece of equipment, feels like a lot.

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Oh man, it's a hundred, a hundred thousand plus dollar skidsteer and mulcher. I'm gonna have a $2,000 a month payment when you're a solo owner operator. You're like, holy crap, here we go. We're signing up for this. And I can specifically remember that. And I called my dad because he is bought equipment multiple times before.

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And I was like, oh man, I got the contract to sign right now. And I was like, it just, I don't know if I should do it or if I should, I don't. And he just asked me one question. He is like, do you need it to provide the service? And I was like, yeah, do you have demand for it? I was like, yeah, then do it. What are you thinking about?

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And I love my dad for that. He just takes action. He works really hard. I have so much respect for my pops, but he just moves. He takes action. He doesn't overthink things. And I think there's a lot that we can learn from that, but that never goes away. I thought that, you know, if I thought that, okay, we're finally over the hump on that first one.

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I remember my first goal was if I can just generate 40 KA month. I had it all modeled out. I'm like, I can hire one person in the field. I can hire a back office va, I can pay for my skidsteer, I can cover the insurance and all this and I can generate X amount of profit. And I was like happy with that model.

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And I remember after we hit that, we started to get the demand for the bigger jobs, whereas like the Skidsteer and the forestry mulcher literally couldn't handle the volume of logs that we had to clean up. So then the next gut punch was, I need a track chipper, but I can't feed the track chipper. With the skidsteer you can with a grapple bucket.

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It's just not efficient at all. And like I see companies do it. I'm like, Ugh, you guys need an excavator. That's something I am really passionate about. I do believe our model right now for residential fire mitigation is, is dialed. It's the same model as if you guys watch V Belt and Sun on YouTube. He does land clearing for fire mitigation out in California.

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I should actually have him on the podcast. It'd be fun. We do the same model that he does. It's like excavator or mini excavator with a log grapple, feed the track chipper, let that do the bulk of your work. And then you have the skidsteer mulcher, I believe he has a prime tech, one of those dedicated mulcher and come up and clean up.

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What we use our skidsteer mulcher for is clearing the initial path, clearing the initial working area if it's really thick, then we get our mult, our chipper, and our mini X in. We start feeding logs. Then we're chipping. We're either chipping into piles or chipping and broadcast depending on what the customer wants and is okay with.

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And then we use that skid-steer to do like final cleanup. So it's a little bit different than the land clearing model down souther or out east. That next gut punch was now we're getting these opportunities. The demand is here for jobs over and above what the skid steer can provide, and it's no longer efficient.

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So now I not only need $180,000 track chipper, I need a mini excavator to feed that. So then the gut poncho was like, I gotta go by. I like buying new in the early days and where equipment was like, right now we're in a market where I think you can find some better deals on, used lightly used equipment and save a lot of that cash price.

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And so I just told the guy I work with Josh the other day, it's like I'm open to considering buying used right now lightly used because I'm getting, I'm seeing a lot of like better deals in this market right here, right now in 2025. And that just has to do with how these things go. But whenever I was ramping up during COVID, prices were high, everybody was buying equipment.

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There was no stuff, no good deals on the used market. My perspective was I need to buy new, get a warranty and finance that to optimize for cash flow in the early days, keep the payment as low as possible so that I could reinvest in hiring the right personnel in the marketing that we need to do. In the back office expenses in the insurance and things like that.

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And that gut punch was that you now need a hundred thousand dollars mini X with $180,000 track chipper. So then it's okay, that first gut punch was a hundred K, a little over a hundred K on the skid steer, and now we're talking like two 80. So then at that point, so this is getting real. I'm either in like all in or I'm all out.

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And so at that point I, I feel like there are just these lines in the sand where you're just like, I'm either gonna be a solo guy with a skidsteer, or I'm gonna actually build a company. And if I'm doing this, I'm gonna actually build a company 'cause I'm signing my name on the line for what feels like a lot to me.

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By the time it's all said and done. For this model specifically in fire mitigation, in land clearing for fire mitigation, you got half a million bucks of equipment. And if any of you guys are gonna start a land clearing business and you're gonna actually do this at scale or create any sort of significant business out of it.

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You're gonna have a couple skid steers, a couple mulcher, you're gonna have an F five 50, you're gonna have a gooseneck trailer. And depending on where you're at, if you're in the Western United States, you're likely going to just replicate the model that V Belt and Sun and I have built. So it's a significant capital investment and that gut punch keeps getting higher, right?

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So same thing, every single time, it's, I don't know if this is the right decision or not, it feels like it's the right one, and I have to make a decision. So what I would say here is when things feel difficult and when it feels like I don't know which direction to go. And Nick Hubert talks a lot about this when I had him on the podcast, he talked a lot about making decisions.

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And I do believe it's effective because you get one of two outcomes. You either succeed or you fail. But either way, you're, you're going to move forward. This episode is brought to you by dialed in bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry.

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If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialed in bookkeeping.com/owr ops. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first three months 50% off. But if you sit in that limbo phase of, I don't know, should we grow? Should we buy more equipment? I don't know. Should we buy the track chipper?

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Should we? I don't know, man. I don't know. I'm thinking about this. It's don't be the guy who like goes to all your friends and your family. They're like, I'm thinking about buying this track chipper, and then six months later thinking about buying this track chipper, either do it or shut up about it. I've been that guy, right?

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Because like in the early days, you're just like, so in your head as an owner operator, like, should I do this? Should I not? I would just say, pick one side of the fence and jump off. Either do it or don't. There's really only one of two options. What I've learned, excuse me. What I've learned is the faster you make that decision, if you're gonna grow, the faster you do actually grow.

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Because there is something, at least for me, like when I sign my name on that dotted line, I'm like, I know I gotta generate X amount per month now, or overhead. And our equipment payments just increased by another at that point, it's another 5,500 a month, right? So I know how much I have to generate to go make this thing work.

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And each time I've modeled that out on a spreadsheet, got really clear what I need to generate. And then if you haven't listened to the podcast with Sam Alsup, he's a roofing business owner who started with 50 K of his own cash. And then he's grown that I believe he's 30 years old and he does about 30 million bucks of revenue.

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That's what they closed 2024 at. They've doubled the business every single year since he started this year. His goal is 60 million. You wanna know how? 'cause he starts with the end in sight. It gets really clear on the number, and then he backs into the equation. Okay, if I wanna do 60 million, how many leads do I need to get?

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How many jobs do I need to, or how many estimates do I need to send? How many jobs do I need to close? And yeah, just puts the numbers and it's a very logical formula for him. And I think you can apply that same thing to any sort of high ticket service business. Like all businesses, literally, sales, marketing, finance, operations, and hiring and firing.

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It's like you just figure out a way to get your business in front of people, figure out a way to sell the jobs, figure out a way to deliver great service on the operational side, and then figure out a way to hire great people to just fulfill that whole process. And to me, that's what a business is. It doesn't matter if you're selling roofs or if you're selling land clearing, but if you know how to back into the equation, then it gives you the confidence to make that decision.

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So. If my monthly overhead or if my monthly equipment not is gonna be 7,500 bucks, how much revenue do I need to generate to go make this thing actually work for my family and I for our team members? And I, because at the end of the day, the business does that to generate profit. Like it's gotta actually make you money, otherwise you're just spinning your wheels and wasting your time.

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I love that backwards thinking. Let's see, instead of homepage first out. Yeah. So any anyone else listening to this, go listen to Sam Alls episode. That is a, I learned so much from it. Selfishly, like I love doing the podcast 'cause I just get to learn from people who are smarter than me and then I just go apply those learnings and principles into my business.

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Gosh, I've had a lot of fun doing this guys. I appreciate y'all joining. I do have to get to the rest of my Saturday and I wish all of y'all a great weekend right now. I literally just created that group yesterday. Would love to have some of you in there and I some of your questions because as that.

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Because I think it will help you out. It also helps me out in return and that's why I'm offering it right now. So go jump in that school group. I'll put it in the chat here. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for joining One Leg and thanks for participating. Anybody else on here? I'll do more of these. Looks like X is the main platform to stream live on.

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Also going on YouTube as well. Okay. Thanks for joining guys. Don't forget work hard. Do your best. Never settle for less. We'll see y'all either on the podcast next weekend or on the next live stream. Thanks for joining.

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