Austin Gray: The only thing more fun than operating a skid steerer is operating a skid steerer. When you're billing $375 an hour. 

Alex Boyd: A skid steerer can use a lot of it. So the risk isn't really as crazy as it may seem depending on how much you're affected by that barrier windshield. 

Austin Gray: One question I get a lot is, Hey, should I go rent equipment or should I buy equipment?

Alex Boyd: I bring that in for warranty work and it's down for 12 days outta the year, and I'm losing a minimum of $2,000 a day. That's assuming it's not a big job. 

Austin Gray: In this video, I've got Alex from Brushwork. Land clearing up in Ohio joining me. We're gonna talk all things, starting and growing a land clearing business from the ground up.

Alex Boyd: Everywhere you go around here, people need this service when it comes to business, I'm like, you give up your control. You might sacrifice some things in order for things to run better.

Austin Gray:  This is an episode a lot of you have been waiting for and asking for, so I'm excited to have Alex on the show.

Alex Boyd: Everything I could possibly think of that somebody would need this service. And found that there's actually quite a lot of traffic, obviously.

Austin Gray: What did you see initially where you're like, oh yeah, I absolutely want to start that, because I think a lot of people have that same thought of, oh, I need this service. I can't find it. I should start this business. A lot of people have that thought, but then there must've been something compelling where it was like, no, I should actually absolutely start this business.

Alex Boyd: Yes, all my neighbors needed this service as well. Everywhere you go around here, people need this service. And that's when I just started doing keyboard research. Everything I could possibly think of that somebody would search for that would need this service, and found that there's actually quite a lot of traffic on these keywords. And there's very little competition. At the time, I was comparing it against concrete and it was about 60% of the traffic of concrete. So not quite as large, but still pretty big considering there's hundreds of concrete companies and I've found some people that's like small owner operators advertising on marketplace, but they really, nobody was taking it seriously.

And there's even a couple commercial guys that have the big fecon machines, but they don't do residential. So there was just this staring at staring me in the face and this has gotta be done. So just went for it. 

Austin Gray: What keywords specifically did you find that were compelling to you? 

Alex Boyd: So a lot of it is like destroy honeysuckle, clear my woods restore my backyard. There was a huge list that I had. So it wasn't forestry mulching that people were looking up, which is interesting. That was actually a pretty low search volume, so I just asked family and friends if they even knew what it was and they didn't even know what forestry mulching was, but clear my woods had a lot of traffic. The destroy honeysuckle had quite a bit. So just get rid of Honeysuckle ahead a lot. Just kind of stuff that this business would be your only option in many cases. 

Austin Gray: You were in Ohio, right? Outside of Cincinnati? 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. Yep. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So regionally, this is what's really interesting to me. Clear my honeysuckle, Alex Boyd: yeah.

Austin Gray: Is gonna be specific to you, whereas nobody's gonna search that in my area. And this is where I think the gold is for you. And hats off to you for going and figuring this out. 'cause I remember when I was jumping into it, I'm like. Nobody knows unless you're in the equipment world. Everybody knows what forestry mulching is if you're an operator or if you're in the excavation business. Yeah. 'cause they're cool machines. Yeah. But to your point, I found the same thing. I'm like, what the heck are people searching for? 

Alex Boyd:  Yeah. 

Austin Gray: I know they need this service. But that was the piece of the equation that I had to go figure out.

Alex Boyd: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And I'm curious to hear what else you found. And your keyword research, and then I'll share what I found on my end too. 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: 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 backend 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. 

Alex Boyd: For me, it was just doing that huge list of keywords, just everything I could possibly imagine destroy wild rows, get rid of Breyers, compiling all that, and just seeing that the traffic was there. There were some other solutions that you could. You could justify silicon destroy wild roads. There might be a spray that you can use, but really, if they have this problem, they've got this problem on a larger scale. So I just, there's a lot of it that's, Hey, these keywords are telling me that people are searching for this, but there's also a lot of gut feeling driving around town, seeing my neighbors need this. So yeah, that's how it went in how we went into it. There's a little bit of gut to it, a little bit of risk to it. Keywords help eliminate your risk. A little bit, but you can't be a hundred percent that this is gonna work. 

Austin Gray: What was the first thing you did? Was it find the keywords and then go build the website and target the SEO around it? 

Alex Boyd: Well, I found the, yeah, identify the demand and then get the equipment. We didn't even really, 'cause I was so confident that there was gonna be a big demand for this. I didn't even start running ads until we decided to pull the trigger on the equipment. So. We basically, I started building the ad. We said, okay, we're gonna do this. I started building the Facebook ad, and then when we went and got the piece of equipment, I launched the ad. So I didn't line up anything before. I was so confident and my, and I look at it too, worst case scenario, a Skidsteer can do a lot of other services. So if you're buying one and I've got five acres, I would rent it from myself. Worst case scenario, the risk isn't that high to buy a skidsteer. It's not like I'm buying a huge D three bulldozer or something. A ski steer can use a lot of things. So the risk isn't really as crazy as it may seem depending on how much you're affected by that barrier of entry. So if you've got enough money to that, you're not sweating that barrier of entry too much, then, then the risk isn't really that crazy. 

‍Austin Gray: One question I get a lot is, Hey, should I go rent equipment or should I buy equipment? You bought equipment? Mm-hmm. Could you break down the price for the listeners of what the cost of the skidsteer was and the mulcher as well? 

Alex Boyd: So the original one was like, overall was 90,000 thereabouts. So the head, we paid 15,000 for used head used machine.

Austin Gray: Wow. What kind of head?

Alex Boyd:  Is a fecon bull hog head. 

Austin Gray: Really?  15 grand. 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. Yep. 15,000. Yep. 

Austin Gray: Wow. 

Alex Boyd: At Bobcat. So this head was a part of their rental fleet before. So it was heavily discounted. I think the new one we paid for was 38,000. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, that's about what I paid for mine too.

Alex Boyd:  Yeah. Yeah. But the used, when we got 15, we went, basically went to the sales rep. I was like, get us the lowest barrier of entry into this. And that's what he came back with. I, looking back, I should have just went new, but you know that, I would say that was our first big mistake we made. 

‍Austin Gray: Why? 

‍Alex Boyd: Because the cost of running the used equipment is so much higher. The new equipment. Bobcat is amazing with the warranty. They're really good about, I will say the Fecon head, it's got a lot of hours on it. I don't know exactly how many hours are on it 'cause it was part of the rental fleet. But we've had zero issues at all outta that Fecon head. Maybe it's partly luck, maintenance, proper maintenance. But I'd also don't sweat the having an issue with the Fecon head 'cause Fecon is right down the road from us. 

‍Austin Gray: Oh really? 

‍Alex Boyd: And yeah, so they're like five miles away. They manufacturing facility. Yep. 

‍Austin Gray: Really? Yep. No way. 

Alex Boyd:  Yeah, so I didn't know that they were, I didn't know that's saw on Fecon parts. The guy who runs the parts department fishes at the lake near my house. 

‍Austin Gray: That's great.

‍Alex Boyd: Yeah. 

‍Austin Gray: Oh dude. With all the content you're creating, like they're gonna sponsor you so fast. Yeah, maybe I would like to try and run one of the big Fecon machines, but yeah. Yeah, for sure. Dude. That'll be cool whenever you get the opportunity to do that. I know you will. You're putting out some great content. People are resonating with it. You got a branding, marketing background, correct? 

‍Alex Boyd:  Yeah. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: What were you doing before this? 

Alex Boyd: So all kinds of things. There's a lot of different things that I've done. Branding and marketing is something I've always done for myself. So when I was 14, I started e-comm websites Learn, and I did, I would sell decals online. So I learned how to do graphic design. I would create my own decals. And then I had to learn how to sell it on an e-comm website. You, if you're selling e-comm, you have to compete on a national scale. So I just learned how to do the SEO, how to do the keyword research, how to create ads and market, and that started when I was really young and I've just done that stuff.

Going forward my whole life, like the most recent thing we were doing is we owned retail stores for vape and smoke shops. We had three retail stores, so that industry changed quite a bit. So we were looking for something new. We went a distribution company, so we used to manufacture and distribution. We were doing 4 million a year and we had 25 employees in that company. But DA regulations. So new FDA regulations came out. We weren't able to do much with it, but I will say the vape industry made it. So you have to get very creative with marketing because you can't market this stuff. It's not allowed, like you can't promote nicotine products. So we just got really creative with how we would market that stuff.

And yeah, just over time hone my skills on marketing. I always looked at it as a hobby too. I just really enjoyed it. So I don't typically do it for other people, unless it sounds like a good project to do. I've done stuff for friends with their businesses and I do it for free because I don't wanna, you don't want 'em get paid for your hobby because it's not fun anymore.

‍Austin Gray: So what specifically about marketing do you just love? 

‍Alex Boyd: So the psychology of it. I, I love that. If you, how do you create an image, just a picture, and then just put it out there and make somebody want to do some sort of action, and whether that's to buy your product or follow you or whatever. It's always been fascinating to me that you can just essentially just take a picture and make somebody wanna buy something. And I just love that aspect of it. 

‍Austin Gray: You think picture or video is, let me ask you this, you'll see me post both. Yep. How do you break down your time, like when you're gonna create content for forestry mulching? What's the breakdown percentage wise between video and still image? 

‍Alex Boyd:  Video is definitely at least 90% of the time still images. I'll go out on a job site and towards the end or somewhere in the middle, I'll stop and use my camera and get still images. That's still images. They're not as powerful as. Video. Video is more captivating. So I definitely spend a lot more time on video than I do photography. I will say if I were to pay somebody to do this, it would be very expensive.

So this is, this kind of thing is very hard to scale to a certain point. Your company has to get to a certain point to be able to, if you are gonna afford someone else to do this, 'cause your admin cost would be very high. I just do it myself because I like it.

Austin Gray: For sure. For sure. And that's the issue with agency stuff, right? It's like you as the owner still gotta go out and get the foot on.

‍Alex Boyd: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

‍Austin Gray: And there's an art to that. 

‍Alex Boyd:  Yeah. Yeah. And it is something too I like to have control over, which is I'm typically, when it comes to business, I'm like, you give up your control, you might sacrifice some things in order. For things to run better. But when it comes to this, it's one of those things where I like to be able to touch it and be involved. So even if I was running 10 machines and we're doing millions a year, I'd still be like the one doing this because I just, I like it. It's a hard thing for me to give up. 

‍Austin Gray: For sure. For sure. Okay, let's go back to the start of this. Before we dive deep down the content piece, because I do think there's going to be some interesting stuff that we can talk about for our listeners who are in other parts of the country in land clearing, land services, residential excavation. One thing that you said that I like and that I'm leaning into big time is nobody was doing it for the residential customer.

‍Alex Boyd: Yeah. 

‍Austin Gray: Like I'm building this company like straight B2C. Yeah, building a profitable ad funnel, and I'm sure you are doing this as well. So listeners, we'll get into that by the end of this. But I wanna go back to the start. You go and you buy this machine, 90 K, 15 K for the Fecon. Yeah. What do you do next? Talk us through the startup. 

‍

Alex Boyd: So just started, I create the ad was the first thing I did. So I at the time, because I hadn't. I had my own videos 'cause we just got the machine. I borrowed content off of YouTube for Cat Channel. 'cause I was like, Bobcat, they're not gonna really care. So 'cause to me it's like we're using their machine. They want you to succeed so you can buy more machines. But that only lasted for about a day because as soon as we got that machine, we brought it out to my property and started cutting stuff and I got my own. Videos and then, yeah, we started running the ads. I created the ads with the videos and I created 'em in a certain way that there's psychology behind that.

I don't know if you wanna get into that specifically, but, and then started blasting out this ad to my target audience. I picked out who's gonna be my perfect audience, and, uh, we got flooded with leads. We started taking on just would go out and give 'em a quote, and I was a shot in the dark. Our pricing has gone up dramatically since we started, but that's stuff we learned over time. We just set our pricing based off of what we saw, like a few other owner-operators suing just to. Hopefully that would work. Mimic their model. Then yeah, we've just increased our pricing over time and uh, yeah, that's it. 

‍Austin Gray: Where are you pricing wise right now? 

‍Alex Boyd: So right now we are at two like. 2000 a day for the mulching. Mulching specifically. And then we have a $200 mobilization cost on that, even a, and we, on our half days, 1200 plus a $200 mobilization cost. We also will charge for grapple work and for power raking grapple work is like an amazing add-on because in many cases, if you're clearing two acres of woods. And they've got big, large trees down and they want 'em moved. Typically they want 'em piled up 'cause it'll look, it still looks messy if these big trees aren't moved. It's an easy add-on and it is almost a hundred percent profit because you, maybe you're gonna spend 20 minutes running the grapple costs you 30500 to buy. It doesn't really add but maybe 20 minutes to your time and you can charge 500 bucks for it. So your machine's already out there too, so it's not like you're bringing your machine back to run the grapple again. Right? You can really get a lot of margin in there. Running other, these other attachments add-on services. 

‍Austin Gray: Are you running just one skid on each job? 

‍Alex Boyd: No, we run, you bring multiple one skid per job. Typically. We did two skids on one job for the first time last week. It just worked out that way because of the location of where the skids were. And I always tell when I tell customers, quote, you're basically buying machine time. So if I bring two skid steers out here and you buy eight hours of machine time, they both run for four, then they're done four hours. But you buy eight hours of machine time. But typically we just run one machine at each job. 

‍Austin Gray: Okay. Got it. Got it. And that's just because of, that's the type of jobs you're getting. Like what? Oh yeah. What, what would the size, average size, or a range, why don't you give us a range of size jobs? 

‍Alex Boyd: So they can go anywhere from a quarter acre to 20 acres.

‍Austin Gray: Okay. 

‍Alex Boyd: We've been asked to do larger, we just don't have the equipment for larger. So you need the bigger machines to really make it worth it, in my opinion. But yeah, a quarter acre easy. 'cause you charge a half day for those. We get a lot of half days. As long as we have enough half days on the schedule, it makes sense for us to continue to do half days because we stack 'em. So we'll do two half day jobs, and so now you've made 2,800 off those in revenue. But yeah, so that, that's typical job size. But n nothing above seven, nothing above 20, basically. 

‍Austin Gray: One machine, one operator. How do you get the skid to and from job sites? What are you using to tow it? 

‍Alex Boyd: So we just picked up a RAM 5,500. So right now, until we get our new trailer, my business partner has a CDL. He basically just goes and picks up this, picks up the machine, runs it out to a job site. Goes back to the shop, picks up the machine and takes it up to the job site he's working on. So when we schedule, we try to keep those in the similar area. Not efficient at all. Very expensive, very time consuming. That's why we got the Ram 5,500, so we can get a 30 foot, 30,000 pound trailer and pull two, so it'll be 32,000 pounds on the back of that thing. Very heavy load. Yeah. 

‍Austin Gray: How much did you spend on the 5,500? 

‍Alex Boyd:  Uh, the truck was 69,000. Not including local tax. 

‍Austin Gray: Is that new or lightly used?

‍Alex Boyd:  It's a 2024 new. 

‍Austin Gray: Okay. Yeah. Cool, cool. And then I'm just curious, I wanna press in here 'cause like I have thoughts and opinions on this as well, and listeners always ask about this and so I just always want to hear how other operators are approaching this, especially during startup phase. Buy that with cash or did you finance it?

‍Alex Boyd: The machine or the truck? 

‍Austin Gray: Everything, like the whole strategy. 

‍Alex Boyd:  So the original truck and the trailer, we paid cash for the second truck, the Ram 5,500. We financed the machine. We financed as well the machine. Both machines and heads are financed. 

‍Austin Gray: And what sort of terms did you get on that? 

‍Alex Boyd:  So the new machine was 0%, 60. The old other machine, it was like 7%, roughly around 7%, 60. 

‍Austin Gray: And that's 'cause that one was lightly used, is that right?

Alex Boyd:  Yeah. I wouldn't even lightly, it was more used than we probably should have went with it had about 1100 hours on it. But this was in their rental fleet. Okay. As as a dedicated forestry unit. So those are 1100 hard hours. On that machine. So yeah. And that payment's 1400 a month and then the 20 25 1 with the head is 1900 a month. 

Austin Gray: Wow

Alex Boyd: . Should have just paid the extra 500 bucks because the maintenance cost on the 2019 is definitely over 500 a month. 

‍Austin Gray: Definitely over 500 a month. Specific to what on maintenance?

‍Alex Boyd:  So just if a warranty issue, like what typically would've fallen under a warranty issue? Something that breaks, we have to pay out of pocket for, so right now it's in the, it's in the shop for a a head or I'm not a mechanical guy, so this is the head gasket seal. The went bad, so it was leaking oil out of the top of the head, so we had to get that replaced and it wasn't that expensive really. It was, I think they quoted us 1300 bucks. To replace that. So it's sitting there right now, and the challenge with that is that while they give us a heavy discount, if the machine's in the shop, we have to rent another machine so an 86. Whereas if we have, if it was the 2025 that had that issue, at least for the next three years, they'll give us a replacement machine at no cost to run.

‍Austin Gray: Make sure they will. Yeah. No, they do. They do. Yeah. So for, no, I'm just saying make sure they have one 'cause I've ran into it. Oh yeah, yeah. They're like, oh, we don't have one. I'm like, that's not what we agreed to. And sorry, I don't mean to be blasting Bobcat. Like I do love Bobcat. But yeah, like for listeners, just be aware of what you sign up for.

Yes. Make sure you hold people accountable to that because Yeah. Sometimes they'll just point the finger like we don't have one. Sorry. It's What do you mean sorry? This is what we agreed to and I paid for the freaking warranty. You know what I mean? 

‍Alex Boyd:  Yeah. Oh hundred percent. Sorry, I'm getting riled up here 'cause I've had several issues. Yeah, I actually, and to that point, I had an As SV rep stop out of one of our job sites and the first thing I asked him, 'cause he is trying to sell me the asv, which ASV is. Sweet machine. It's bad freaking sweet machine. Yeah, it's cool machine. But I asked him, I said, if it breaks and I gotta bring it in for warranty work, do you give me a loaner? And they said, no, no, we don't do that. We don't have any rental fee. Then I can't buy it. I literally can't because if I bring that in for warranty work and it's down for 12 days outta the year. And I'm losing a minimum of $2,000 a day. That's assuming it's not a big job. That means for 12 days that the machine is down, I could have bought a whole different machine for the whole year just off of the revenue loss.

So yeah, I said it got to the point where I can't even, I can't, even though I want it. It's badass. I love it. It's a cool machine, but I just can't buy it. It just, it won't work. Bobcat, we lucked out on, 'cause that was a question at the beginning. We didn't know to ask. We just, it really worked out for us. That's something that they offer and something that they do. And they have multiples too, which is cool because it's not just one. I think Caterpillar dealer around us only has one and it's always gone. But they'll loan it to you if it's there, if you have warranty work. But Bobcat, we just really, part of that we lucked out on, yeah, there's some luck involved a little bit now is, but you realize what you lucked out on after the fact.

‍Austin Gray: That's right. And I want to be real. Straightforward with people. I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything here. And so I'll share whatever, and I'm not here to bash anybody, but I am here to be real with listeners. 'cause what I don't want to happen is for people to be like, oh, Austin and Alex were talking about going and buying this machine. And they said, if you buy a warranty, then it would all be covered. Yeah. It's not always the case. I will tell you this, every single issue I've had, even with my new machine, I have to fight tooth and nail to get covered on warranty. I literally. I have to get on the phone, asked to go up the management chain.

I have to drive down there. I have to be like, guys, this should be covered under warranty. I've had that conversation multiple times. Yeah, and what I'm telling listeners right now, yes, I'm a fan of buying new machines and getting the warranty because like you can have that conversation, but here's what I will say. Know exactly what warranty you sign up for. Make sure that you get the exact warranty that you negotiate for in the buy price, and you should be asking for five years on every single thing, right? Yep. You're probably not gonna get five years. Probably gonna land at three, but you should be pushing in the negotiations when you buy four or five years.

Sorry, I'm on a little bit of a soapbox right now 'cause I've been frustrated running. I've been frustrated. Eight T, eight 70 Bobcat. I love it. It's a great, oh really? Love Bobcat. 

‍Alex Boyd:  Oh, hard time on warranty stuff. See, our dealer is actually really cool about it. They don't question it at all. That's one thing I like about the, but there are some things that it's obvious we should pay for, like stickers jammed through the radiator, but, but yeah, you're right though. You're right. There's definitely not every dealer is gonna be like that. Most of them probably aren't like that. 

‍Austin Gray: Here's what I will say. I have good things to say about my local Bobcat dealer 'cause they ultimately have taken care of it. But what I'm saying to listeners is what I don't want you guys to hear on this podcast is go buy the new machines and everything will be covered under warranty. That's what I'm trying to be very clear on. Yeah. And just know that you're gonna have to go fight to get that warranty. Covered every single time. Yeah. Like just be prepared for, guys, this is what I paid for. You guys are warranting this machine. You need to cover it. Be prepared to have that direct conversation with them.

‍Alex Boyd:  Yeah. No, you're a hundred percent right. Yeah.

‍Austin Gray:  I'll hop off my soapbox. Sorry. 

Alex Boyd:  I love it. We're passionate about it. 

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, I'm passionate about it 'cause it's a lot of money. Everything lot. I was laughing when you said $1,300 'cause I'm like, every single freaking repair that I get from Bobcat is a minimum of $1,300. Oh yeah. That just must be like the straight line item that you get.

Alex Boyd:  I tell you what though. Gasket 1300 guys, caterpillar. And while I think Bobcat's expensive, they're more expensive.

‍Austin Gray: Oh, absolutely. 

Alex Boyd:  But I've heard a SV bobcat as far as cost of running the equipment. I've always felt it was on the lower side compared to other brands. It's not low, it's not cheap, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely compared to other brands, a little bit more affordable. 

‍Austin Gray: Hey, hear me out listeners. I love Bobcat. I grew up operating Bobcat. My dad has always owned Bobcat. The dealers have treated us well. What I'm trying to convey here it, 'cause I know a lot of you are gonna listen to this and want to go start a land clearing business, and you're probably gonna go to your local Bobcat dealer and some of you're gonna buy a new equipment. What I don't want to happen is two years down the line, be like, oh, Austin, Alex, on that podcast, sit, go buy a new warranty and everything will be fixed. I'm just trying to be real with you guys here. Yeah. I do love Bobcat though, and with, 

‍Alex Boyd: Yeah, you do have to fight for the warranty stuff at most places.

‍Austin Gray: I'd imagine at every single place you're going with that hat. It's not, yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you're clarifying this. It's gonna be any sort of heavy equipment dealer. Yeah. Their job is to sell you the equipment, right? Yeah. Their job is to sell you a package that's attractive, which is a warranty. Yeah. Yeah. They make more money the less they pay for. Just know that it's simple business. Yeah. Alright, so you got the what, T seven 70, is that right? Seven 70? 

Alex Boyd:  Yeah. And that was on the lightly used and the new machine. Yeah. We run 2 7, 7 seventies. Yeah, the 20 25 7 70. We, we got that one because we're familiar with the platform and our thought was as, as we scale the wear parts that we buy, we'll just buy more of them. It's easier to stock, easier to maintain equipment if you're not having to buy different parts for different machines. For sure. 

‍Austin Gray: Have you had any heating issues with the seven 70? 

Alex Boyd:  Yes, definitely at first, so especially the first summer, we are a little bit, so we're north of the Ohio River, so we don't necessarily get super hot, but we have days that get pretty hot, the heating issues. We would have to stop for 15 minutes and every hour, and then that time would get tacked on to the end of the job because they're buying machine time, essentially. But we did learn that 

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‍Alex Boyd:  in opening up the back, and actually you have to take off the fuel radiator blow out underneath there. Because it, for some reason, that debris really likes to get piled up there, and it's helped immensely, but it's something that we have to do quite often is clean that out. But it's still, even with that clean, you still can overheat. If it's over 85 degrees out, I would not run a seven 70 if I was south of where we're at. I wouldn't even do it because the. If you've got consistently 90 degrees, 85 degree plus weather, I would not run a seven 70. I would run an 86 where it doesn't have the cooling issues. The new one is a lot better, so the after 2022, they put a bigger fan on the seven 70, but it's still not great. Yeah, if I were any further south, wouldn't do it. If I was in a dryer, climate wouldn't do it. But yeah. Cool. Wouldn't be my first choice if I was in Florida. 

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, for sure. And I'll second that. Look, I've had a Bobcat rep from Texas. Tell me the same thing is we have so many seven seventies turned in the mulching. Yeah. Because of that, I have not had any issues with my eight 70 in Colorado in our climate. We do not run the cooler on the top. Do you run coolers? 

Alex Boyd:  No. 

Austin Gray: No? Okay. No. I've heard those can help.

‍Alex Boyd: Yeah. For the hydraulic oil. Yeah. Fecon sells 'em. We've looked at 'em. I just, it we, it's not enough of an issue because we don't get enough days over 85 degrees where it's a big problem. Something about that 85 degree, if it's 80. You're fine, unless they skip lunch or something and the machine's running for the full eight hours. But yeah, over 85 for some reason, every hour we'll have to stop. And you wouldn't think that outside temperature of that small of a degree matters, but I guess it does. So it's alm. It's very consistent. 

‍Austin Gray: Cool. Cool. Okay. I wanna talk business model here. Right now, is it just you and your business partner, or do y'all have more?

‍Alex Boyd: Yeah, me and my business partner, and then we have a another operator and a part-time operator. 

Austin Gray: Okay, got it. So you're charging two grand a day on the skid? 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. For mulching. Yeah. So plus the mobilization. And then we, like I said, we do most jobs require the grapple. 

‍Austin Gray: So 200 for mobilization, 500 for the grapple. So you're at what, 2,700 on? 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. A day rate? Yeah. The grapple varies on cost, though. Sometimes it's a thousand. It just depends how much down stuff they have. Okay. It's never under 200 though. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Do you charge mobilization to and from or just once? 

Alex Boyd: No. So this one mobilization cost that's drop off and pick up. Honestly, I think two hundred's low. I think that we could, our cost is actually more than that. It's hard for, I look at it more on a marketing perspective, is a customer, if you charge $400 for. Bring a machine out there. Oh, it can't be that much. It's hard for them to justify that price. So we have to move part of that mobilization expense into the mulching price.

‍Austin Gray: How do you quote your jobs per day on your estimates? 

Alex Boyd: Yeah, so per day, per so half day, full day or a multi-day, I don't like that model, but customers seem to like it and I would prefer to do it by acre. Or a quarter acre even. So break it down into smaller chunks and then, or, and by density of the brush, 'cause that's pretty, that's something you can pretty much tell when you arrive. That's more consistent. It's scalable in the future. It doesn't rely on experience, but the per day price, customers seem to like it. I tried the other way and I, my close rate dropped in half. So I guess it was more of a complicated pricing model. Just turn people off in your sales process. Austin Gray: What do you use for estimates, by the way? House Call. Pro House. Call Pro. How do you like that one? 

Alex Boyd: It's okay. I don't like that they charge you extra to use their API. You have to be on the max plan, which I think is crazy. Especially in today's world. There's so many things that connect to an API. But as far as the system goes, it's okay. I don't like the scheduling on mobile, but the desktop side is amazing. I like that they're adding new features all the time. I like that they've got automation set up, the SMS being direct through there, but it's not a hundred percent, but it's okay. 

‍Austin Gray: How much is the top tier plan to get access to the api?

Alex Boyd:  The top tier is like 300, 3 50. It's been a while. Three 50 I looked at it. Yeah. Three 50 a month. Yeah. Yeah. And then just for API, access to me is kind of, we could afford it. It is just really, so I'm trying to find other workarounds to, uh, but it's ultimately, we really should just get it. But I don't know, maybe we'll just switch platforms altogether before we get too far into it. Huh? There you go. A lot harder to switch five years from now than it is now. 

‍Austin Gray: But that is that to connect to Zapier, 

Alex Boyd: that's to connect to anything. Outside. Yeah. 

‍Austin Gray: Even if you use Zapier, like there's no integration. 

‍Alex Boyd: So Zapier, I'm not a hundred percent. So sometimes they'll have the an app. Right, that you pay an additional, so like QuickBooks, you pay an additional $20 a month to link it to your accounting software. Just stuff like that. Actually, QuickBooks might be one of the free ones, but there are apps like that. So even if you have the API, if it automatically connects to another service, you still might have to pay extra money to connect a different service if they have an app on house call, which is annoying.

But my goal was to connect it to make.com or N eight n. To for automation, so I could feed the lead information over through a Facebook automation, but they just lock out that API. So interesting. Which is not industry standard, by the way. It's not industry standard to gate your API behind a paywall, but they've done it.

‍Austin Gray: Like, why did you pay for the pro plan? What specific automations did you want to build?

Alex Boyd:  So I wanted to do like Facebook leads coming in, so I wanted to send that into N eight N, send out an email to the customer, automatically send a Telegram alert to us that a new lead came in. And then I also want that lead to feed into house Call Pro. So that's just one of the automations. But also being able to link it up to some sort of SMS service that's a little bit better than the one they're using. There's a lot of things that I wanna do. I still don't pay for the API access. I'm still, as leads come in, I'm copy pasting them over into the system that's just.

Because I just can't justify, I don't like that they had put their API behind a paywall. I just don't like it. I don't think it's a good practice for software companies to start doing, but I don't want to pay an extra 150, $200 a month to do it. So we'll probably actually end up switching. The more I talk this, you're passionate about the, the machines and the warranty service. This is something that I'm passionate about. But yeah, there's a lot of automations that I wanna set up that I can't do. Some I do have set up like the form on our website. It does everything I needed to do. 

‍Austin Gray: Have you used go high level in the past with any of the past businesses?

Alex Boyd:  So I, I did TR trial, the go high level. I didn't get into it a whole lot. I have a good friend of mine that was a part of their software from the very beginning and he went to like their. Seminars and expos and everything. So he knows a ton about it. And I probably will end up switching us to Indigo High level, especially if we're gonna be maintaining this amount of contact and communication between customers and I think it'll be ultimately a better system. And I have him as a resource who knows an exceptional amount about it. 

Austin Gray: So can I show you something? Screen share. Yeah. I don't want this to be like a straight sales pitch on the podcast, but, and I'll do my best not to, not to take more than five minutes on this. I do want to show you something though.

‍Alex Boyd: Sometimes if you really like something, it sounds like a sales pitch. No matter what, there's nothing you can do about it. That's right. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: I had the same issues earlier on. We use jobber and most of our listeners know that for, and people have been asking me this. What do you use jobber for and what do you use go high level for? So we white labeled go high level under owner ops, and I built out all of these text, email sequences, automations where it's like when a Facebook form gets filled out, then all of the texts and emails go out. And a lot of people have been asking me recently, this is why I want to cover this in the podcast, we use jobber from the time we're ready to quote to the time.

All the way through that we collect the payment, so quote, schedule, invoice, payment, and then before that we have a sales and marketing system. And the sales and marketing system is go high level. For those of you who are familiar with that, we just white labeled it under owner ops. And the reason I did that is because I had a lot of people asking me for this system. And so I built it out and then like people in our school group get access to this. Can you see my screen here? Yeah. Okay. So like we built this whole system where it's like it tracks new leads, tracks how many appointments we've booked, how many quotes we've sent, how many jobs we've won, what's the total number of revenue in this given time period, and what's our average order value here.

It also shows our field crew, our production metrics. So how many jobs did we schedule in that time? How many jobs did we complete? What's our current ar? And then how many invoices did we collect? And then what's the average invoice? We just deployed this dashboard like two weeks ago, so this data isn't a hundred percent yet 'cause it needs to keep running with the tagging system that we have. But the cool thing about this is that, that it links up with jobber. We've built the whole automation so that whenever a quote is sent in jobber, it gets automatically updated into here. And then the value is added as well. So you can see right now, like 3 56 K of quotes out. When we get new leads from website, Facebook or Google, it comes into here and then our sales process starts, right?

We can move it over to contact made or no contact made. We have automation set up for new leads so that whenever a new lead comes in, we are dripping text and email out of this system. So all this is built on a text system? Yeah. Called Twilio, and we're dripping, Hey, this is our sales rep's name from Bearclaw. Got your request online. I'll call shortly for my cell. Yeah. Then we hit 'em with emails and we build out this whole sequence. So there's four in that sequence. And then whenever it goes into no contact made from our sales rep. We get SMS. So we're basically just like trying to do before and after. Hey, wanted to share a quick YouTube video containing drone footage from a 20 acre wildfire mitigation project. Would love to jump on a call. Yeah. And then we just keep dripping that stuff. 

Alex Boyd: That's a, the much more customizable, better version of Housecall Pros pipeline. Basically. Like they have some sort of built in one where you can do, they do SMS and email campaigns if you pay an extra $50 a month for pipeline. But that one really was much more customizable. 

‍Austin Gray: Yeah. So Jobber and I love Jobber huge. A huge fan of jobber. They don't have the front end like sales and marketing side of it. Sure. You can like, oh, really collect the customer's information and have requests, but they're very built for the time that you are ready to quote to the time that you collect the payment and everything in between. Yeah. So like we track all of our field crew time sheets in there. We have all of our schedule. Everybody knows which job they're going to, which day from the job or app. So like our whole field crew uses that, but back office sales and marketing. I'm like, man, we need a robust sales and marketing system. Yeah. And to your point, right. 

‍Alex Boyd: House Call Pro has all of that. It's just that it's not as good as go high level. Yeah. Um, if at least on that side of things, it just has, uh, a little bit of what go high level can do. It's, it still has like our average order. Si our average job size and all that kind of financial metrics, but also tracking the tech, assigning techs to jobs.

So the techs work in inside of it, and I work inside of it as well on a marketing side. But I want more and go high level, I think is the more. That's gonna give me a lot more control and a lot more power over what the SMS says. The more variable fields that I can put into it, all that kind of stuff. And that's, and I would've liked to just connect the API and to go high level or pull all that information in for the customers automatically. But it gets very expensive on software. A few. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, but necessary, right? Yeah. If you want to actually run a system. Yep. Okay. Let's go back to the Facebook ad before we, we've got about 10 minutes to the top of the hour. You have a hard stop at the top? No, it doesn't. No. Okay. 

Alex Boyd: I just have a quote at 11 Eastern, but he is only 15 minutes away.

‍Austin Gray: Alright. Alright. I'll be respectful of your time. I do want to dive into Facebook ads though. So one thing you asked earlier is. You said, I don't know if you want to dive into the strategy behind how I specifically created the video. Yeah. And the answer is yes. I would love to. Okay. 

Alex Boyd: Yeah, so the video is. It's a grab your attention. So it's got a slow-mo shot of the mulcher coming and chopping down brush, and then it snaps into local. So I have a local landmark in the video. In our case, it's a water tower that's got the branding on like city branding that everybody knows. And then it cuts to a time lapse of clearing this overgrown brush as residential property. And then it's like clear brush, great value, and then it's more like highlight reels clearing fence lining before and after. Then comes towards the end and it grabs their attention. It shows people that this is a problem, like this problem can be solved on their property. The machines are just cool to watch in general, so it's really, forestry marching is a great one for videos and grabbing people's attention.

And then on my ad text, I have most jobs done in a day. You, you always lead with local because people care about local first. They don't want an ad for a Coca-Cola coming across their Facebook feed when they're seeing all their family and friends. They want a local guy advertising or seeing that they want to feel like they're dealing with somebody from their community. And then most jobs done in a day free quote. My ad copy, I just run that as a lead add. So there's psychology behind all of this stuff. It's not. It's not just like a randomly, I happened upon a really good ad, but it's definitely something I've learned over time on how to fine tune these ads and make 'em perfect.

So the next ad I'm gonna be doing, this one's gonna take me a little bit longer to do, but I'm gonna do a nineties infomercial style ad because the number one complaint we get at least around here is this honeysuckle's growing into the people's properties. And I hear a lot, it's hitting me in the face, so I'm trying to mow and it keeps pushing me over. So I'm gonna do like this overly animated intro where it's a guy getting hit in the face with a honeysuckle branch and tumbling off his mower and just really grab their attention and then introduce the the service. There'll be like a hero shot of me and my business partner just really out there.

Creative break the break, the cycle of them scrolling, and the fact that it's local. People love that. If you really go out of your way to make something really unique. Memorable and you're local, people will start talking about you. 

‍Austin Gray: That is awesome. And you'll run that on meta? 

Alex Boyd: I'll run that on meta. Yep.Yep. Right now I've got ads off. I don't have enough equipment to do all the work we've got. I'm working on that aspect of it, but yeah. It's hard to tell people when you're doing residential that you're booked out months. 'cause they're like, when they make a decision, a purchase decision, they want it soon. They don't mind waiting some, but there's a break point. 

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, no doubt about it. Can you operate year round up there? 

Alex Boyd: Yes. And nos, and I know down in the south those guys can operate year round somewhere where it's dry or they can operate year round. Most of the winter we can't. So. However, there are farm properties that they don't mind ruts on their land. This is something that they just need 10 acres cleared. They're gonna knock it down with the bush hog twice a year, and they don't care if there's ruts. It doesn't bother them at all. So in the winter it just very wet. So if it's flat and wet, not a big deal. If it's hilly and wet, a little bit bigger deal so we can do those properties.

That's something we didn't do last year. But we ran into a guy who was like, what do you mean? I just do farm properties all winter. And I'm like, why didn't I think of that? So we have a lot of farm property customers, so I'm just like, Hey, if you're cool with me, move to the winter. I'll give you a little bit of a discount.

‍Austin Gray: Awesome. Yeah. You gonna get into snow at all? 

Alex Boyd: Yeah. We did snow last year and we'll do snow again this year. Snow is an interesting one because. We don't wanna sell contracts on snow here. The snowfall can be, you might get one major snow event the whole year, or you might get five. If you get five. You're making a lot of money if you get one.

And you have contracts. I guess if you have contracts, you really win on one, but if you have five snowfall events and you have contracts, you really lose. But for us, we just wait until it snows. And the landscaping companies out here, they all oversell their capability on snow because it doesn't make sense for them to invest in all the snow equipment when we don't have tons of major snow events.It's not like we're in Michigan and getting the lake effects snow. Maybe even out in Denver from the mountains, but for us, it doesn't, these companies have a hard time justifying that expense, but they sell the snow contracts and they get really screwed at the end of the year when the, when there is a lot of snow and they don't have any capacity to fill a, all the contracts they sold. So we charge 'em a premium. We found that's the best way to do it is because we get so much, so many people call and asking us if we'll go run our skids and clear snow. You can charge a premium. 

‍Austin Gray: How do you charge for that? 

Alex Boyd: So by the hour, we can charge 375 an hour per skid, depending on how desperate they are for someone to go out and clear the lots, which nobody's ever said no. So maybe we could even go higher. 

Austin Gray: $375 an hour per skid with a bucket and a skid steer. 

Alex Boyd: Yep. Yeah, we a unique snow environment. You've got $200,000 landscape contracts at big corporations, and these landscaping companies don't have the equipment because why would you buy the equipment if you're getting one snow? You're just praying. They have some equipment, they've got the trucks and the salt spreaders, but they don't have the heavy equipment for heavy snow vents, 10 hour days. Oh no, we run straight 20. If we get a big snow event, we'll just keep swapping people in. We ran, this is Dylan, 24 hours straight. Yeah, I think we ran 48 hours straight. I'm not a skid steer operator, but I could push snow around so I was even stepping in and running it. We just keep that machine running going because you can make so much money. So quickly. 

‍Austin Gray: That is awesome. There's nothing more fun than operating a skidsteer. The only thing more fun than operating a Skidsteer is operating a skidsteer when you're billing $375 an hour. Yep. That's awesome, man. That is awesome. 

Alex Boyd: They need it. And the funny thing is like they'll try to give us these contracts. There was one, they're like, I'll give you this Proctor and Gamble contract. You can just have it. You can just be a per, I'm like, I don't want it. I don't want the Proctor and Gamble contract because then I'm locked into some sort of. A rate that I've gotta charge continuously every years to come. I don't want that. So we turned 'em down. And funny enough, we actually got a call mid this year from another landscaping company looking for somebody to clear snow. And they said they picked up the big p and g contract in Mason. And I was like, that's funny because we turned that one down last year.

So that guy lost his contract because he didn't get anybody to do it. And then p and g went with somebody else who then called us later and asked us to do it. So that's how little equipment there is out there. These guys are out there looking for these people and they try to get, the smart ones try to get you on early so they can settle on a rate in the summer, so that way when it snows, you're committed to that rate. But if you've got the equipment out here, you're smarter to just wait till it snows. It seems riskier 'cause it might not snow at all. We've had a couple winters where didn't really get accumulating snowfall at all, but if you've only got heavy equipment, you only get paid when it snows  anyways.

‍Austin Gray: I love it. I love it. Alex, I think we need to do another episode. Yeah. And we can talk land clearing. All day long and I'm super excited to follow the business. I'm super excited to follow the content that you're putting out. I love the fact that you're leaning into the forestry mulching and just like figuring out the video that works. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on sharing insights. I know there are gonna be a lot of people who listen to this podcast who really enjoy the information that you share. So I appreciate it.

Alex Boyd:  I'm a listener to your podcast. I've listened to you quite a few times before.

Austin Gray:  Thanks. I appreciate it. Well, it's, it's fun getting into these industries that not a lot of other people have jumped into yet and applied a digital marketing strategy like you are. And so I think we're in a very unique time, especially whenever you apply your skillset to an industry that is typically a B2B industry. When I'm talking about excavation as a whole, right? Yeah. Most people go into the excavation business to be, I'm gonna go dig a general contractor's foundation. Yeah. Yeah. I still think we're in the very, very early days of a B2C paid acquisition model on a high ticket service like this.

Alex Boyd:  Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. The typical homeowner doesn't know about this stuff still, but they need it.

Austin Gray: For sure. 

Alex Boyd: So I get asked all the time, who do you know that can dig a pond? Because they'll search for people to dig a pond and they can't find anybody. It's the same situation as clear in my woods, and I always recommend. Certain company, but yeah, they're all out there searching for this service. That is typically a B2B service. 

‍Austin Gray: That's right. That's right.

‍Austin Gray:  Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bode 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.

‍Austin Gray:  And I think that's where listeners, if you have not listened to the video that I've mentioned before on the podcast, or mozy has one video that radically changed how I think about building the business. And it's the LTV to CAC ratio. So it's you just search LTV slash CAC on YouTube. Hormozi, watch that video. And this is where, like what Alex is talking about, once you get in the business, you get asked for opportunities. And that's where there are opportunities for upsells along the way to increase the lifetime value of that customer.

And so that's what I'm super interested in. Next time that we jump on, I'm interested to hear about how you're thinking about your business strategy. Are you focusing a hundred percent on land clearing or are you going to build in upsell services and we'll save that. One for the next one. Sure. Alex, is there anything else that you'd like to share with listeners before we wrap this one up?

‍Alex Boyd: Not off the top of my head. I gotta go do a quote, so Love it. 

‍Austin Gray: Where can people find you online? 

Alex Boyd: So you can find us on YouTube at brushwork Co. Our website is brushwork co.com. Austin Gray: Fantastic. All right, listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. Hey, we launched a free school group specifically for local service based owners. You can join their school.com. That's skool.com/ownrops, and in there. We talk all about building local service based businesses. Share information like we did here on this podcast. And then that app that I shared, the white level, white labeled version of Go High level is something that our pro members get access to.

We've documented our whole system that we use for sales and marketing, and you can just. Plug and play, rewrite the emails specific to your local service industry. We've already built all the automations, put hundreds of hours into building this system, and it is available for the pro members. So if that's something that you do wanna look into, you can just go join the free group and then there's more information in there skool.com/ownrops. Thanks again for listening, guys. Don't forget, work hard, do your best. Never settle for less.

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