Dave Sheridan:  I was like, within inches of spending like 30 grand on a sailboat. I took my dad to go look at it and his reaction, something clicked. I'm like, this isn't the move for me. This is my house on the market, but burned the ship's moment, so to speak. 

Austin Gray: Did your wife think you were crazy? Yeah, maybe a little bit. He sold his house about $130,000 on equipment and went from corporate sales to climbing trees for a living. 

Dave Sheridan: I was in manufacturing software sales for the better part of a decade and was just kinda, I don't know, somewhat adrift. Trying to figure out a bunch something to do that would motivate me, challenge me. Year one, we started in May of 2023 and we did 290 K through the end of the year, and then last year we did 550. 

Austin Gray: In just two short years, Dave turned that leap of faith into a $550,000 tree service business. In this episode, he's going to share exactly how he did it. So let's dive in. Dave Sheridan with Ascension Tree Care. Welcome to the show. 

Dave Sheridan: Uh, thanks for having me, Austin. Huge fan of the show. Kills a lot of time on drives in between bids and jobs. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, so tell our listeners, where are you located? 

Dave Sheridan: So we're in Milford, Michigan. It's Metro Detroit. Those kind of familiar with Detroit. It's kind of urban sprawl. Tons of little different sub neighborhoods. But yeah, we're northwest of Detroit. 

Austin Gray: Cool. And how'd you get into the business? 

Dave Sheridan: Made a hard pivot in life. Was similar to Stump Guy Tie. We was blowing up all over the internet. I was in in the manufacturing software sales for the better part of a decade and was just kinda, I don't know, somewhat adrift trying to figure out a bunch something to do that would motivate me, challenge me and I didn't really know what to do. I was all, I honestly, it was, it's funny looking back at it, but I was within inches of, during COVID, I got in a whole huge sailboat YouTube channel binge, and I was like, within inches of spending like 30 grand on a sailboat, I took my dad to go look at it and just his reaction, just like something clicked.

I'm like. This isn't the move for me. And so I just, from then that point on just, I always wanted to be my own boss and started focusing on like, all right, let's try to figure out like a business opportunity to pivot into, and we have a cabin up north. Everybody goes up north in Michigan and we had to do tree work at it. And my brother is an arborist and so it was, I knew obviously what he did, but this was the first time I saw it in action and I was just blown away with like his skill level and just how technical, how precise he was able to put these trees on the ground. And I just, I left that trip, went home, got in Excel spreadsheet mode.

And because I knew he was trying to start his own thing too, just he was frustrated with the company he was working with. And I was always on him like, dude, you need to, you're taking too much risk. Like you gotta, but you gotta be making profit for the risk you're taking, climbing these trees, doing crane jobs and what not. So I, I went back, got an Excel spread spreadsheet mode and, you know, started crunching the numbers and it was like, oh, I think we, I wanna be involved in this. And so, yeah, we, it moved pretty quick from there. I listed my house on the market, uh, burned the ships moment, so to speak. And yeah, flash forward. Two and a half years and here we are.

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Austin Gray: You listed your house and took that capital and invested in equipment or what? Dave Sheridan: Yeah, most of it. So we bought a chip truck, uh chipper. 12 inch more bark chipper. Then, yeah, we bought a, a truck and a dump trailer. One of my other business partners had a dump trailer, so we're still using that rusty thing. It's getting pulled with a nice wrap truck, but that juxtaposition a little bit. 

Austin Gray: I love it. I love it, man. Just ride that thing out as you can. Yeah. Till it, till it, those things get beat the crap anyway. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. It seems like you can't really, I don't know. It's just, yeah, they just, they're gonna rust through eventually and it's, they're not gonna look pretty. And you can focus on sandblasting them, painting 'em all you want, but it's, yeah. They get beat up 

Austin Gray: And it's like, it was one of the dump trailers with the remote control on the back with the. 

Dave Sheridan:Yeah. It's a hydraulic lift. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So that's, uh, yeah, those things, those things just get beat. Yeah. Especially, yeah, just logs in it. Just rolling. The doors of the hinges have come off the doors a couple times and you gotta know a good welder if you're gonna do tree work, that's for sure.

Austin Gray: That's right. Yeah. You may be in your first year of business if you haven't broken a, a door on a dump trailer yet. 

Dave Sheridan: Oh, yeah. But yeah. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: By, by year two you've probably broken two. So how much was all that to invest? Dave Sheridan:So, yeah, so we got about a hundred and it was, yeah, about $130,000 worth of equipment off rip. So right when we started. And then since then, really the main thing we've added is a mini skid. So a ditch witch SK 900, which that's the, if any advice for anybody starting to treat service, like you're gonna wanna try to rent your mini skid to start, but just go buy one. It's like it'll pay for its weight in gold immediately. And then we have now another flatbed truck that's, we have our water tanks mounted for our plant healthcare business, which we fired up this year. 

Austin Gray: Nice. I can't wait to dive into that. Yeah. But before we get into plant healthcare. Which is recurring revenue. Everybody loves that. I've been hearing that, even the the big players in the tree world healthcare business. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: There's a nice acquisition target there. Alright, let's get specific here. Yep. On the mini skid, how much?

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, so those are, those run about like 40 grand. I'm talking like rough numbers obviously, but Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And then tell people who are not familiar with the tree industry why that's important.

‍Dave Sheridan: Yeah. So when we started, so we didn't have a mini skid obviously we had access to renting one. It was about like $400 a day. And so if we're doing a big removal, we'd rent one. But for like medium, small or any trim jobs, we would just cut it up into carryable size logs and just throw it on our sh on your shoulder and you realist. Realistically, you can only do that for so long. That's, it's brutal. You just, human body can only take so much and. Even if you are just a stud who can do that all day, every day for years on end, it's just not efficient. You're, it creates more cleanup. 'cause you're bucking these logs into firewood, which creates a ton of sawdust, but you're dragging one to two branches at a time.

And so now we, it was funny when we bought the Ditch Witch, it was like, 'cause even still one of our big capacity constraints is we just have the one dump trailer and you tow the mini skid lives in the dump trailer. You bring that to a job, cut down a tree, create a bunch of logs that need to be hauled away. And so the next thing we're gonna need to do is another truck and trailer so that we can leave at one time. 'cause now it's like, you gotta go dump the wood, come back, get the mini skid, which is super annoying. But yeah, it's so, so now it's more just, yeah, I forgot where I was going, but I'm picking it back up now.

Yeah, we initially, when we first bought it, we're like, all right, we'll only, we'll still just bring it. We're just saving on the rental costs now. And so we did that a little bit and then. It's, it quickly evolved to like the mini skits coming for every single job, whether we need it or not. Like we might sell an add-on or it's just gonna drag brush and so yeah. It's, it comes with us on every job and it's worth its weight in gold. We love that thing. 

Austin Gray: It it is. Those things are money. Yeah. One of my, one of, one of my favorite subs, like when I was first starting, I would just sub out a tree guy 'cause I don't climb or anything. Dave Sheridan: Sure. 

Austin Gray: But like, we would get these fire mitigation jobs with these trees up against the home and if I wanted to go get the $30,000 project, I gotta make sure and get those like four trees that are Right, 

Dave Sheridan: Right.

Austin Gray: By the home. So. Right. I would just pay the local, like solo subcontracted guy. Mm-hmm. You know, his rate and his pay him well to come in and get those down safely. But man, he, I, I wish I had a video of this and maybe I'll try to find it and splice it in here. Yeah. But he uses his and he would like rig up the tree as a solo guy and tie off on it and use that to directionally fell trees and, yep. It was so fun to watch in the early days. Yep. Let's jump into chip truck. I'm really interested in this chip truck and chipper. How much for each of those? 

Dave Sheridan:The chip truck we bought used and you, the chipper was used to both of those combined. I think it was like 32 for the chip truck, and then about 35 for the chipper.

Austin Gray: Cool. Yep. 

Dave Sheridan: And it's, that's another kind of where we want to expand. Like we could use a bigger chip truck already and a bigger chipper. I know you got all the, oh, I know your chipper is, you got like the tree eater now, but yeah, the 12 inch definitely has its limitations for sure. 

Austin Gray: No doubt. And I do want to dive into this, Dave, because this is really important. Like people, I have tree guys or tree businesses who are reaching out to me asking, Hey, what's your setup on the land clearing in site? Because like when I saw the opportunity out here specifically for that, and we've built the model specifically for that, now what I'll say is. We naturally get these one-off or two or three or four off tree jobs. Yep. Equipped, but we're not set up well to do that. So your model is completely different than my model and there are nuances within the business model and I do want to be like, I think this is really interesting stuff for people to hear the difference between land clearing slash fire mitigation and tree, and then why it doesn't really make sense for us to mobilize to a 1, 2, 3, or four tree job with our equipment. It's for you. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Like there's probably a limitation, right? 

Dave Sheridan:For sure. Yeah. Like we don't take on land clearing jobs just because we're just, we're not competitive. We don't have a full-sized skidsteer. And conversely, like you couldn't get your full-sized skidsteer in a lot of backyards that we work in. We, our sweet spot is we're surrounded by lakes in this part of Michigan and our best customers are like the lake house owners with no equipment access. Those jobs suck because they can't get equipment to 'em. But oftentimes that's why we have the mini skid is because it can fit through a 36 inch gate.

So that's obviously you want more power when dealing with logs 'cause it's the same principle. The more times you have to cut it, we can carry about a four if we're taking out a mature oak, but we can probably take carry like a four to five foot length log before we start losing power. And so yeah, it's for us to gear up for land clear and you would know it'd be a huge investment. Completely. I just view 'em as like completely, they're like tangentially might have made up a word there, but associated. But like it's a completely different business model. Completely different market and yeah. 

Austin Gray: Agreed. Agreed. So let's dive into chip truck. I want to know specifically what size you got on chip truck.

Dave Sheridan: Yep. 

Austin Gray: And you mentioned that you're to a point where you need something bigger now. Dave Sheridan: Yeah. So it's a Ford e. Four 50 and it's got a 14 yard box on the back. And the problem with it, the size is okay. I would say the most important thing that we overlooked was just the height of the box. 

Austin Gray: So it's interesting.

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, the, you need to think about like the chipper, like the shoot of the chipper. It's just like a little bit like, I don't know. It doesn't, it's so for us to fully pack it, like you need to keep the chipper angle, the chipper shoot angle up to pack it all the way in the back of the chip truck. I, I don't know, it's hard to visualize, but oftentimes like we're like three quarters, it's blowing chips like three quarters in three quarters. Yeah. 75% of the chips are going in the chip truck. But like for us to get 'em all the way to the back, like 25% are hitting the top of the box and just going on the ground, which we then have to rake up and throw in. Um, you can lower it and get a hundred percent of those chips to go in the back of the chip box, but you're not gonna be able to pack it full and take a full 14 yards to the dump. 

Austin Gray: Interesting. 

Dave Sheridan: So as these are the little nuances, as high as possible? For sure. Is ideal.

‍Austin Gray: Okay. Okay. Yeah. See these are the nuances that when you're starting, you just don't know until you get in. Right. So if you were buying it right now a chip truck, what would you get?

‍Dave Sheridan: There's so many different options. I would just get something a little bit with a little bit taller of a box. Honestly, it's been a perfect starter chip truck for us. I don't think it, obviously bigger is always better, but it's like at, at a certain point, if you're starting out, it's very easy to jump into the CDL territory where you're required to have a CDL to drive it. We're under that now and that's, that's huge. 'cause everybody can drive it. We do. My, my brother does have a CDL, but everybody can drive our chip truck, which is helpful 'cause he's, he's also one of our lead climbers, so he, he can't go run chips often. So, yeah, and it's like the 12 inch chipper, same thing. I think it's a perfect starter.

It's a, so it's a more bark and it's, it's a perfect starter chipper. It's the smallest production chipper out there. And so obviously we baby it, we, we try to not feed anything bigger than 10 inch diameter in there. Unless it's a soft wood, you can go a little bit bigger. But, uh, yeah, so it just means, it's just more time processing. You're, you have to put some relief cuts and if you're feeding a large branch with a bunch of unions, you know you're gonna want to take some time, put some relief cuts in those unions so that the crusher will, you know, crush it and feed it through the chipper and it won't get clogged. Austin Gray: So for startup, you think your setup is fine?

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, I, yeah. We've, I mean, we've done a ton of revenue with it. We're profitable with it. Biggers, it's always, you're gonna be faster with bigger, but then depending on what you can afford, there's bigger payments on all those things. 

Austin Gray: Sure. Now, at what point would you step into a 15 inch. 

Dave Sheridan: Pretty, probably pretty quick. Yeah, it's, we're at an inflection point because, but the residential, residential tree service world there, there's tons of competition and there's just tons of different levels of competition. I'm sure everybody in that you've had that there's tons of competition and plumbing, tons of competition, electrical. So there, there's just tons of competition and there's like different players. There's the guys with the chainsaw in their truck. There's the really skilled guys that are just weekend warriors. There's, and then all the way up to the guys that have $5 million worth of equipment and they're just, they're removing a tree that would take us an entire day in three hours.

And so it's like we're just trying to decide like what kind of company do we want to be? And as we get into plant healthcare and get that fired up, it's, it's, I don't know, it's presenting a lot of options for us. Could we just continue growing that like we always want to be. Able to handle the entirety of our customer's needs when it comes to anything tree related, removal, trimming, planting, healthcare. But do we really want to continue? But it's, I don't, I wouldn't say it's a race to the bottom for tree removal, but it's price is, people are much more price sensitive on, on tree removals. And it's everybody that has a chainsaw, pretty much in a truck, they're bidding those tree removal jobs. So I would say for a 15 inch chipper, we'd probably, I'd like the end of this year would be great, but we're, we're just getting the data back on the plant healthcare. So it's, I don't know, it's tough to say what, what's gonna happen when we look at what we wanna buy come tax season. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Because if you go into plant healthcare, you've got a decent investment there to build that correctly, right? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. Correct. Yeah. It's So, yeah, if the investment to get started up with that. So yeah, there's the monetary investment and then there's the knowledge investment. And I, my, my brother's, he was former, he studied environmental science in college, was a former arborist at a local city here, worked for the county. So he's honestly, he's a top tier, like in the area. He is one of the top most knowledgeable arborist. And it's, it's still a lot like from his like perspective to, to charge someone $150 to come out for an eval, to give them a quote. And you're, you're assessing, you're diagnosing, you're, the research is always changing. The, the application methods are always changing. So it's a huge learning curve just yet just to get going for someone who's already pretty knowledgeable in this area.

But then the, the financial really the financial element of it, it's not crazy to get started. If we paid 13,000 for a used flatbed truck and then 10,000 for a water tank with a motor Honda motor on it, and then you gotta buy the chemicals and PPE and stuff. But, uh, from that perspective, from the financial perspective, it's not a crazy leap to get into. It's just, it's, you gotta be sharp and you gotta, it's from a systems perspective, it's crazy as well. 

Austin Gray: One of my friends here locally does all the plant healthcare. Yeah. Um, and if you guys, he also hosts a podcast too on it. Okay. So if you guys ever want an introduction there, I'm sure he would be willing.

Dave Sheridan: What podcast is that? 

Austin Gray: It's discovering forestry. 

Dave Sheridan: Oh, yeah. I, yeah, I listen to that. I, we know the, his co-host helps us out over here in Michi. He lives in Michigan. 

Austin Gray: Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. Small world. Small world. Yeah. Our kids go to daycare together. Nice. And, uh, it's, it's a really small community. Yeah. And he's obviously in the tree space as well. Yeah, for sure. Um, great guy. So plug for, uh, and please tell me Corey's co-host. 

Dave Sheridan: Arbor Jet. Joe Aiken. Yes. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So yeah, Corey and Joe, I've listened to their podcast too. Especially just from, yeah, more from like the forestry side. But Corey is very knowledgeable on plant healthcare. Yep. And they just dive deep into the actual tree industry. All of the very, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they go really deep on it. So if you're interested in that, go check out Discovering Forestry podcast. I think I have one of his hats right up here. I know I have an Arbor jet hat that he gave me here. Oh yeah. So anyways, yeah. Shout out. Shout out to those guys. It is a cool podcast if you're in the tree space. Let's talk revenue. Yeah. What'd you guys do? Year one and year two? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. So year one we started in May of 2023 and we did 290 K through the end of the year. And then last year we did five 50. Uh, this year so far we've done, through June, we did 2 78, and then we're. We're looking to do 75K this July, so should be at 353 to end a month, knock on wood.

Austin Gray: Very cool. Very cool. And then how long is your season out there? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, so we, I mean that we try to, we operate 12 months out of the year from, from plant healthcare. It's really, it's like a seven month season and then for tree work, so we have oak wilt here and it's pretty much just means you can't trim oaks or elms out. There's dutch elm disease as well, so we just push all our elm and oak trims to the winter. And so you, like last year it took us till January to get through our list of oak trims and then Yeah, usually January and February are pretty slow, but unless there, unless a winter storm comes through and that, then things heat up quite a bit.

Austin Gray: Do you guys do anything in the winter service wise? 

Dave Sheridan: No. We need to figure that out. It's either. Because that, that definitely just decimate your profit margin not to not earning a ton of revenue in January and February. Like for instance, this January and February we did 15 and 20k of revenue. And so that's, it's, we're surviving obviously, and we're paying our able to pay ourselves. And the fact that it's three partners we can scale down and we can do a lot of work just with the three of us. But that's obviously not ideal long term. 

Austin Gray: It is a big topic and it's a question I get a lot from people in the states where Yeah, you do have a winter. Yeah. How much snow do you guys get? 

Dave Sheridan: It's incon, it's been inconsistent. We get a lot of snow in Michigan though. Probably not as much as you up in the mountains, but that you fired up a snowplow business, right? 

Austin Gray: Yeah, we had to, yeah. Yeah. But we also have a, I've got like a solid four month run where we can actually make money there. 

Dave Sheridan: Right. 

Austin Gray: Um, and it could be a five month deal on a good snow year. Yeah. I love too, man. I love it. It's so fun. 

Dave Sheridan: See, we, I don't know. It's I, Dan and Scott, my business partners, they've both plowed before and they hate it. And so it's, I don't know, it's a type of thing where it's, we don't wanna start, obviously we could pay people to do it, but you have to be willing to do it if you're gonna pay people to do it 'cause people are gonna call in and you're selling contracts and I don't know, it's on the it. I guess ideally I'd like to just figure out a way to just make enough money during the 10 months that we're gonna, we feel good that we're gonna be able to receive revenue that we can just like pay, pay to live in the January and February Lowell. But, uh, it's, we're still young. We gotta, that might be a pipe dream. Probably is, but we're dreamers, so what can you say? 

Austin Gray: Yeah, there you go. How many months out of the year do you guys get snow? 

Dave Sheridan: So it'll start in November. Really hit or miss and then, yeah, it'll go through, it'll go through March, but it's melting. Like we get crazy freeze thaw cycles here in, in southern Michigan, so it's, yeah, it'll dump like probably two to two to three times a year and then it'll all melt and turn the mud pretty quick. 

Austin Gray: I hear ya. I hear ya. Well, yeah, for anybody, anybody listening who has the question of what to do in the winter, snow is always an option. And just like residential tree care, just the land clearing. Yep. Just like excavation, like there is demand and Yes. It's basically building a separate business, you know? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: It's not as easy as plug and play. Let's just use all of our same equipment. Like the ideal thing is to put the equipment to work in most scenarios, but like we just bid on this one contract where it's like we need three loaders for that. You know what I mean? We don't have any loaders, so, right. We've gotta go build a model to go rent the equipment and Right. Hope that they accept the contract for another. 

Dave Sheridan: What are you using to push snow then? Are, is it your skid steerers or are you, do you have trucks dedicated to it now? 

‍Austin Gray: Yeah, kinda. It was like, we have trucks for our business. Mm-hmm. Like we need to have plows on those things and they need to be running in the, yeah. 

Dave Sheridan: Gotcha. 

Austin Gray: And then I put the skid steers in as much as I can even tracked machines. I want that thing making you money. I want that thing. Yeah. Or at least supplementing where it can. So we'll save that for another episode. I wanna keep focusing on trace here. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Because I, we've got plant healthcare to dive into. Yep. Revenue recap was, you're currently at three, you're gonna be at like 350 something. What's the goal by the end of the year? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, so our, I mean our original goal was seven 50 I think. We'll, I'm confident we'll finish at six 50, but you never know with storms, they can have a huge impact, so I'm not ready to rule out the seven 50. But yeah, very confident, we'll attain six 50. 

Austin Gray: Now I'm really interested. You said you have three partners in the business? Yeah. Yep. Are those the only three people in the business right now? No. So yeah, we're, so right now it's me, my, my brother who's our arborist, probably our lead climber. And then we got Scott, who's our friend who he handles all the maintenance and operations. And then, yeah, I handle kinda the admin, the, the growth side of things. So I'm doing the estimates and whatnot and yeah. Then we have two pretty much groundies that are learning how to climb that we're trying, showing 'em the ropes, so to speak. And then my sister is part-time office admin, so she'll help answering the phone. She's a stay at home mom and just, yeah, it kills it with that when she can, but obviously she, she's only got so much availability, which is, yeah, it's so nice when she's on the phones, but it's brutal when she's not. And then, yeah, ours also, my dad helps us out, so it's, yeah, quite the family business here and my dad helps us out.

‍

He was helping us out on the ground, just on a contract basis. He's like kind of classic farm boy and we had to maybe just pull him back from that a little bit and just 'cause he's, he's gonna see a log. He is, I'm gonna throw that on my shoulder. And it's just nice to the age where it's, yeah, maybe let's not do that. Let's let the $40,000 machine lift that log. And so we, we, we, uh, probably a bad decision as well. We also had him, he's been in sales his entire life and so we had him doing some sales for us as well too. And he was, he did a great job of selling, but maybe not the best job, which it's not his fault, he's never climbed a tree.

But we, he would underbid, underestimate a, a few jobs. And it was, looking back at, it was stupid, but the stage we're in, it's too, sales is too important to be outsourcing at that stage. Like we can't afford it. And we make the joke that we, we didn't lay him off, we just restructured his position. Yeah, he got, we had him stop doing the sales and, and now, so now he's, he's our plant healthcare technician. He's going out and doing the applications. So we, we found a good home for dad, who is, that gets a little restless in his retirement and wants to do stuff. So we found a great role for him. 

Austin Gray: That's great. That is awesome. Yeah. You gotta love the baby boomer generation. A lot of people, a lot of people on X are knocking 'em and Oh, they didn't do any marketing. They, it's like those guys know how to work. 

Dave Sheridan: They work. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And a lot of them, a lot of them are sharp and Yep. I'm of the mindset, it's like Gen Z. We gotta take as much learning lessons from them as we can because we live in an age right now where a lot of people don't have the grit the baby boomers did. And as people who latch onto that and see that as a thing that they can take away and, and learn people like your dad, people like my dad. Physically know how to work and out people and Yeah. Have the mindset where it's like that log sitting right there. I'm getting that thing to that dump trailer. Whether that log likes it or not, it's just, 

Dave Sheridan: I think we all, yeah, I'm, I have three siblings and like our family take took his like work ethic and I think that was like a huge, huge factor in where we're all today, but we all have that attitude. It's like there's nothing more motivating than seeing someone else on your crew, like putting out and working hard. I literally can't, like none of us in our crew, I feel like we have a good, solid crew in that regard. That it's like we're just not the type of people that if someone's going the extra mile, dragging brush or throwing a log on their shoulder, like you can't just sit back and watch them do that and while you're just like, chilling, chilling at the truck or something like that. It's just, it's the comradery, like just an important aspect of it.

Austin Gray:  It is. It is. Whenever you started, how did you go get your first jobs? 

Dave Sheridan: We, we just plugged, we, early on, we really just relied heavily on our immediate network. And so we just put it out there that we're starting this and went on social and everything. And usually with tree work, I'm not sure how, if you see this with like land clearing and whatnot, but if you say tell anybody at a bar where family party or something like that, yeah, we're doing tree work. Oh, I got a tree that I need to, needs to come down. And so that kind of got us through as for a while and until we could get like our, our marketing channels built up, which is was primarily Google. We did Home Advisor for a while and it, it worked pretty good to, you're gonna get leads, it's maybe not the most cost effective way to get leads, so we don't do it anymore. But it did get us quite a few jobs starting out, but it came at quite a cost. But yeah, so I would say 

Austin Gray: What other channels? 

Dave Sheridan:Yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, we do, we're we're, now we're Google A PPC. So paid for clicks. Paid clicks, primarily. Then we do EDDM direct mailers, that that works pretty well. We get a good return on off that. We did dabble a little bit on Yelp, and then we post on Facebook groups a lot as well too, so. 

Austin Gray: Okay, cool. When you say Google, what do you mean? Google Business? Google, like local LSA?

Dave Sheridan: Not LSA. I need to fire up LSA and get that going. It's just, yeah, just the, yeah, you're bidding on clicks, essentially. Ooh. And that, that gets crazy. And I was the, I've had, I have some horror stories of I was managing that I thought coming from sales, I, I don't know, I guess I was always looked down on marketing a little bit and, uh, interesting. I just thought, I just thought it was like easy. I don't know, like you, you just take it for, take things for granted when you're just at a certain level of sales, people just hand you leads and you don't really think about like where they come from and you just focus on chasing 'em down or you cold call and you build your own leads and whatnot.

And so it's. I don't know. I just for some reason thought I'd be able to like just be good at marketing right off rip. And that was, that was quite the humbling moment 'cause I was really not, and yeah, I could get the phone to ring, but not at a cost that was profitable for the business. I like the first January we had, I think I spent more on Google ads than we brought it in revenue. So that was just a complete disaster for sure. And yeah, so yeah, I since then partnered with people who know what they're doing and we've got those cost per conversions down to a reasonable rate. But yeah, it's, it seems like it's an ongoing thing. Just try to dial in, optimize and analyze where your leads are coming from.

Austin Gray: Yeah, no doubt about it. You guys have Google business profile? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. Yep, yep. We just got our a hundred review. 

Austin Gray: That's incredible. 

Dave Sheridan: We're pumped and yeah, we've, and we've started for the first two years, I'd say it was just. It was a hundred percent organic. We didn't say anything. The, they just leave reviews. And now we've, we've really started, uh, building a process to ask for the review once we're done, send a follow up text, follow up email later. And so that's, I would say our, the velocity of, of which we're receiving reviews has gone up since then, which is great to see. 

Austin Gray: That's fantastic. Do you know your cost per conversion or cost per acquisition off the top of your head?

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, I was, I ran the numbers. I figured you were gonna ask that. So I ran the numbers like last year. So as of last year, our customer acquisition cost was like, on average, like around two 50. And that's, I don't know, I could be running those numbers. I'm not super confident on those numbers. I know like with Google.

Austin Gray: $250?

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. Does that sound low? 

Austin Gray: Wow. It does sound low, but if you're getting it, that's on that par. 

Dave Sheridan: I'm not, I'm not gonna, I don't know. I'm not fully ready to stake my professional claim on that number, but 

Austin Gray: Hey, here's what I will say though, at least you're valuing it because I see so many people right now who just don't ever even try to figure that out, right? At at least you've taken the action to start that process. And even if you're not a hundred percent correct, at least you're taking the action to get there, right? And, and offline. I'm down to jump on a call and just run through a couple quick things to make sure you're Yeah, no, I'd appreciate that tracking correctly.

Dave Sheridan: Because I think the other thing, like lifetime value is gonna be interesting because I haven't calculated that for just what we consider our cut crew, but I know I, I looked into the numbers last year and our 13% of our customers just for tree removal and trimming, that was our customer retention rate. They called us back for another job, and that's after like only a year and a half. So I've seen other people in our industry say that their customer retention rate's more like 30-50%, which makes sense. Over time you're gonna get more people to call you back, but if you ever, if you're removing a treat. There's not much work left to do there if they only have one tree. And so I, I am interested in getting a lifetime value of customers documented as of today, and then seeing what plant healthcare does to that, because I think that'll be really interesting. 

Austin Gray: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

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 ps.

Austin Gray: Hey Dave, I have a couple people who, um, connected with. Who I'd love to introduce you to on that if you ever need any help. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: On one, the plant healthcare side, and then two, one of the guys we're doing, we have a school community for just owners and operators right now. And so we have a free group and listeners, we encourage them to go join the free group, uh, skool.com/ownrops, that's skool.com/ownrops. And we also have a paid group where, who are really taking their business serious, really wanna dive into the metrics. I also, and sorry, this is this, I don't wanna take too much time away for like no plug for this, but I'm bringing it up because it's, there is one guy in there who is a tree service guy and they're on track doing about the same annual revenue you are. They've got about the same goals, but they get all of their leads through a Google LSA. Okay. That's all he does ads on. Yeah. And so if it would be helpful. I'm sure he would love to just share knowledge on that. He's a great guy. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, I'd, no, I'd love to chat for sure. I've heard LSA is great come winter months because you don't get those runaway costs of PPC paid clicks. You can just pay for the leads. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, and I think he's getting, if I remember correctly, a $30 cost per lead. 

Dave Sheridan: Okay. Yeah, that sounds ideal. It's a little bit less than what cost per lead though. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say like our cost for conversion is about, it fluctuates depending on the keyword between like 60 for arborist, like the arborist keyword to upwards 150 for like tree removal near me kind of keyword yeah. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I was gonna see, let's see here, lemme pull up. So I've had a tough time on Google ads dialing in, fire mitigation stuff. There's not a ton of search terms. No, there's not a ton of search volume. Um, and in our area, land clearing is not searched either, so I've taken, I've tried to backdoor our market with targeting tree removal, search terms. Um, so I'm happy to dive into analytics too offline with you and share some of those search terms too. Uh, if any of that is helpful, 

Dave Sheridan: Let's do it. 

Austin Gray: Cool. Cool. Okay, so Google Ads. Are you running any Facebook ads? 

Dave Sheridan: No. I've tried running Facebook ads. I've never had any success with it. That doesn't mean like I don't think it works. It's just more like I've, I'm clearly not doing something right. I guess the struggle I've had with it is Google, you're, if someone's coming to Search and Tree Service near me, obviously they're, they have a problem that needs solved that's near me. Obviously, they're, they have a problem that needs had their neighbor or something, or Yeah. Stalking stuck in their ax or whatever. So I haven't figured out how to, like capture their attention and prompt action and yeah, I'd be interested to learn more about that for sure. 

Austin Gray: Are you open to getting on camera? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, I know man. You got to. So iPhone. I'll do a quick tutorial for anybody on Facebook ads. What's working for us right now? I'll just go off the cuff here. iPhone up. Hey, does your property look like this or do you have a tree that looks like this and you want it to look like that? And just do a quick Yeah, like transition before and afterwards. Works incredible. The second piece to it is I've split tested this. I'm running just a photo ad for before and after and I've done, Hey, does your property look like this? And then I show like a ton of dead wood in the background. Mm-hmm. And then you want it to look like that. And then I show like an area we've just cleared people like this, doing business with people.

And so we are seeing a lot better success with the talking head ads. Yeah. Um. And I've tested this with myself, with another team member, the media buyer, they use like the green screen feature. And uh, he did this for driveway grading too, and we just, we did two photos and one back and forth, and he, is your driveway look like this and you want it, or do you have runoff like killing your driveway like this and you want it to look like that? And then we show this like beautifully, perfectly graded driveway and we've tested all of those and it doesn't, I guess the point I'm trying to make is it doesn't really matter who's on camera. It matters like what you say and how quickly you get straight to the point on the after. And then like Bodie, my friend over at Stryker, he's talking a lot about organic content right now, what he's seeing.

I'd have to go back and read the posts, but I've been studying this from the YouTube perspective. So one thing that we're doing is like very similar things, like unedited videos, just like trying to get crew equipment face in the video of, Hey, we're here in Grand County doing an excavation project and then just show our crews and equipment working, getting, and then optimizing title and description and getting that on the YouTube algorithm because it is a search. It is a search engine. 

Dave Sheridan: It's owned by Google Tell. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, exactly. And what Bodhi is saying right now is there's something to do with SEO right now that's picking up on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok if you get on and do the organic content like that. Mm-hmm. And so that TikTok things that, uh, we're gonna test here too. And I just wanted to, right now where we have such an opportunity as local service business owners that if we are just get through the discomfort of getting on camera, we can help our businesses grow exponentially. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, no, I need to get way better at that. And I'm gonna, yeah, take, I was writing notes, so I'm definitely gonna implement the exact playbook for the Facebook. Facebook ads. We do have a YouTube channel and I was more diligent about building videos and I actually had fun with the editing, but it's, it just became like a ton of work and we just got busier. And so that's, uh, I'm starting to pull back away from the job site a little bit this year. Probably need to do more. So I think you've gone through a similar thing. It's a tough thing to, tough thing to do 'cause you just have so much fun. There's the comradery with the crew and like, now I'm starting to learn how to climb and finally getting like decent at climbing. And so that's pretty much like getting paid to rock climb almost with a chainsaw. And so it's hard to step back. But yeah, that, those are all like, if I do, then we have the time finally to edit those videos and start, put together a content plan, which is what you really need. 

Austin Gray: It's so hard. I was talking with Ty, uh, stump guy, Ty yesterday. On the phone about this because he's, as you see online, like he's just banging out jobs left and right. Mm-hmm. Still just cranking, even though everybody on there, it's time to hire. It's time to hire. And you know, I'm having the most fun in my life right now, come out here like working outside, getting paid to do so. Yeah. He films his own content. He's just got such a simple business model. Right. But we were just talking about that, how it's, because like I was in that for, I don't know, 18 months. Almost 24 months. And then now it is to me, as someone like you who enjoys that stuff, like my role is now more boring. I just know that this is what's needed for us to go.

Dave Sheridan: It's like, you know, to the next level, it's, I was in, I was on a computer for eight hours a day, or eight to 10 hours a day before this. And I, that was an aspect I liked. It's like I don't really have to go to the gym as much anymore. It's, and so that's part of the reason I think like the blue collar therapy was good for me and so I don't really wanna fully get out of it. But yeah, obviously for us to grow, I need to, and the short periods that I have gotten out of it and honestly leveraging Stumpguyty Playbook on Landing, we're landing commercial landscapers, builders golf courses and so it's, I and I spent like a couple hours on that. So like I'm obviously like the more time I can do that, I think the faster we'll grow, the faster we'll get those commercial contracts and whatnot. So. 

Austin Gray: So you've taken his B2B outreach playbook and then implemented that specific to your business? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, it literally took exactly what he did, rebranded it for us and Tree Service tweaked it a little bit, but yeah, the, yeah, the, like the actual steps of what Yeah, it's exactly what he posted on Twitter. It works and if anybody's questioned that it works. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, he's a beast. He is a beast and I love it. So tell me more though, doing B2B outreach, reaching out to who? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, so we're reaching out to landscapers that a lot of them will have tree service partners, but some don't. Or some get upset with their current partner or whatever. Landscapers. Fence builders. Fence installers, builders, like people that like to advertise for like they do additions or whatever. And then golf courses. So the golf courses. I would say the O overall, the la, I thought for some reason I thought fence contractors would be, we would've got the best results, but I didn't get any, I didn't get any hits on that. But we got, yeah, three landscapers out of it and then three golf courses to reply and then a couple builders as well. 

Austin Gray: Sweet. Good for you.

Dave Sheridan: And those are customers too. Those aren't like leads. So yeah, it's, it was very effective. And like I said, I put like a couple hours into it. I haven't done his follow up. Like sequences or anything like that. I think it could be a lot better if I focused on it and had the time to focus on it. 

Austin Gray: This is awesome. I'm gonna pull up the, let's see, which one was it? Stump grinding. I believe it. Okay. So here's two episodes and I'm just going to do a quick screen share for listeners here. If you are curious about that playbook, go check out these two episodes. I can't remember which specific one it was. I think it was the first one. Stump Grinding startup story right here from zero to 70 5K Stump Grinding Startup. Ty shares his playbook in there. We talked a lot about it and then I had him on for a second time and I think we dove deeper further into it.So if you're curious about the playbook that Dave is talking about, that Ty shares, he basically like the way he started his stunt grinding business is he went. It started, I believe, with just a cold texting strategy. And he, all he did was reach out to tree contractors and he texted all the tree contractors and said, Hey, I want to, or I'm starting a stomp grinding business.

Do you have any stomps for me this week? And then he literally sends that, I wanna say every single week on Monday, Hey, do you have any stumps for me? And it's just like a simple text. And then what Dave is saying is that he took that basically the playbook, model it, and then went and said, okay, what B2B or what other businesses should I be in front of to provide tree services to who could likely refer me more business, correct?

Dave Sheridan: Correct. Yep. Yeah. And I just focused, and so I didn't do the text aspect of it, I just focused on just the email and I, yeah, it's, it, I, yeah, it worked great. I would say use the exact like softwares that he, they're pretty cheap. All the software he's using Mixmax, it's very affordable. It's, yeah, it's all laid out there. Like you don't really even have to, the only thing you have to think about is just like, how are you gonna tailor this for your specific business? And I think it's applicable to a lot. 

Austin Gray: That's correct. That's it is correct. And I will share here, one thing we've been doing implementing that if you're in the land clearing business, you should be reaching out to every single excavation contractor in your area 'cause I'll tell you this. Excavation guys don't like being tree guys. Most of 'em at least. Most of them hate the clearing portion of it. It's just a pain in their neck. So if you're doing land clearing and going B2C with all your residential ads starting that you can reach out to the excavation contractors, implement Ty's exact same playbook, and grow a land clearing business with B2B clients, doing what Dave is doing, what Ty is doing as well. I, I think it could work for so many different subcontracted industries. Yeah. Don't you think? 

Dave Sheridan: For sure. For sure. And it's for our perspective, like we talk about the winter work, like the golf courses we're so encouraged this year because we built some great relationships with golf courses and they want to do the work in the winter. Like we ha we do some work in the summer, but obviously it's ideal to, the course is shut down, but they're probably still hiring people too. So it's one golf course is like the most ideal job in the world. We're just, we just go and climb all the trees, put everything on the ground, and they just go behind and clean up for us. And so we're just like, we got through an entire hole or removing like five trees, trimming probably 20 in a day, then they're, we don't even have to deal with the cleanup. And so it's just, we come, we show up in a truck with our climbing gear. It's perfect. Austin Gray: It's incredible. It's incredible. Those are the awesome ones. And then those just keep coming back when you build the B2B relationship. I can speak to it from our side. Even just with some of the general contractors. There are two guys on the commercial side, excuse me. One guy, one company who will give us like two, anywhere between 50 and a hundred K contracts a year. You know, and it's like the, that one. What are those? Where's the 20% of relationships that are gonna give you 80% of your work? 

Dave Sheridan:For sure. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And this, this can definitely help with that a hundred percent. What are some other, before we wrap up here, I wanna riff on this. I have another idea. So I want you to think about what are some other industries that could benefit from this strategy in service or trade based businesses? And then who would they target? I'll go first. If you're an excavation business owner, I would reach out to every plumbing business and say, Hey, send me any of your, uh, sewer repair jobs. Get in front of those, get in front of the plumbers. 'cause the plum plumbing companies don't want to do it. 

‍Dave Sheridan: Yeah, I guess I would think, I would say like from a land clearing perspective, reach out to tree service owners 'cause there's a good portion of tree service owners that they're gonna get the leads for it or the request for it. And usually I just say I Google a couple companies and just pass it off that way. But it'd be nice to, we actually did get in touch with a forestry mulching guy and yeah, I don't, yeah, it'd be nice to just start bundling his service in to ours and quoting it for him. But that, yeah, that's one opportunity that comes to mind. It's funny that ever since that tie got big, like the stump grinding mafia is just blowing up and I got stump grinders reaching me like all the time. I started working with one Jeff Springer, who's on X as well. But yeah, it's funny, like it's that, yeah, that, I guess that's the example I can think of.

Austin Gray: It is. it's so awesome and I'm, I'm just so happy for him. 'cause here's the thing, it's like. I firmly believe that good things come to those who work hard and pie's out there working hard. There's so many people preaching, like work smart, work smarter. It's the same entrepreneurship books we've been reading and everybody's been talking about for the last couple decades. It's just boring, right? Yep. It is. It's so cool to see somebody out there just get, get out there just like you and you're doing the same thing, like you bootstrapped and helped start this business. And that's what the premise of this podcast was for. It's like, you guys like Ty, guys, like other guys who I've had on this, guys like Brock doing the septic thing. It's like people who are out there just putting in the work. I'm a firm believer that good things are gonna come. They already are coming to you. 

Dave Sheridan: Yep. And it's, I feel like it's, it's playing poker or something like that. You just, you make good bets, you're gonna lose some, just don't make a, don't go all in on a stupid bet. You're gonna be fine. We make mistakes all the time. I feel like I'm getting pretty good at estimating now, but for the most part, I, I'm still messing up bids from time to time. We just had a couple this week, but it's tar. Tough to foresee every variable, but it's just, just keep plugging and you'll be good. 

Austin Gray: I love that. I love it. The fact that you're just not afraid to just jump in. You literally sold your house and the 130 k into this thing. Yeah. So I'm sure there's a lot of motivation to make it work. 

Dave Sheridan: It's funny when you do stuff like that too. It's what good things happen. I, I was, honestly, I was adrift before I made that move and I mo went forward with it, had the burn the boats moment and I met my now wife like a week later just 'cause I, and I think there's like some to it, I was feeling good about it and I moved across the state. So our second date, I'm like, Hey Tara, just FYI, I know this is a little forward, but like my house is under contract right now. I'm closing. And so it's just, I don't know, it's just crazy things like I think a lot of like young men are like, been in that position I was. Just a little adrift, not sure what's going on, but not fulfilled physically, mentally, emotionally, and it's just the only advice I could tell is just what worked for me. And it was just make a move. Do something challenging. Go, go all in on it. Not in a way that like if it fails, you're gonna be dead, but just put all your effort into one thing and good things around your life will just happen without you even knowing why it happens. It just, it's just good things follow good. 

Austin Gray: I love it. I love it. Did your wife think you were crazy? 

Dave Sheridan:No. She, yeah, maybe a little bit. She was just kinda, yeah, it, I think she saw how like, it's, it's weird 'cause she didn't like, obviously she didn't know me before that and you know, I didn't change my personality or anything. I just think when you're, I think I was just like more, just more just confident that I was gonna be like more happy, just generally happy, just more fulfilled. And so it's tough. I think she just, she saw me after I made that decision and was in a really good place mentally and really engaged and really just locked in and I guess that worked out in my favor 'cause yeah, flash forward a couple years. We're married and starting a life together. 

Austin Gray: I love it. I love it. Kids?

Dave Sheridan:  Yeah. Got one. Got one on the way. So yeah.

Austin Gray: Awesome. Congratulations. 

Dave Sheridan: Yep. Thanks man. So yeah, big thing, big things are happening in the Sheridan world. 

Austin Gray: That is awesome. It's the, they're the best thing in the world. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah. Good motivation to do some cold outreach, for sure.

Austin Gray: Absolutely. Oh, it really is. And I think a lot of people stress, ab stress out about, oh, the, I don't know, am I gonna be able to allocate enough time? Sure you have less time. But yeah, man, the motivation that comes from looking at that little kid and just saying, this person is relying on me to put effort and to make things happen. And that is just such an awesome motivating factor. I'm excited for you. 

Dave Sheridan: Do you have kids? 

Austin Gray: I have two, yeah. 

Dave Sheridan: Oh, nice. What ages? 

Austin Gray: One's six weeks and the other is two and a half. 

Dave Sheridan: Oh, nice. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. That's cool. Congrats. Yeah, thank you. 

Austin Gray: They are awesome. Best thing in the world. Yep. I'm very thankful.

Dave Sheridan: And I'm excited. Future owners of Bearclaw Land Services. 

Austin Gray: I don't know, it's like I just take the perspective of whatever. I'm just gonna see what they naturally get excited about and whatever that is, I'm just gonna be there and I'm gonna support 'em and I'm gonna love 'em through it. And it doesn't matter what they pick. There's always gonna be ups and downs and that's the fun piece.

Dave Sheridan: I guess I'm curious, what is your plan then for, do you have uh, like an exit strategy or are you trying to build like a legacy? Do you even know? 

Austin Gray: Nope. Just do the next thing. Yeah. It's like I start businesses based off of problems. I see. I love working together with great people and building teams, and I think people see me and have heard about Bear Claw and obviously reach out. We get people who call the Bear Claw line. They're like, Hey, I listen to  OWNR OPS podcast, can you get me in touch with Austin? I'm like, guys, if you really wanna learn like. You should learn from my team. Like I, I'm the great teammates and I don't view this thing as a hierarchy. I view this thing as this is a football team and we're gonna go put the 11 best players on the field and we're gonna work together. And it's like your role as the owner and the operator changes. And my role right now is marketing and systems. And it is more boring than being in a forestry mulcher just ripping on just watching things. Like, yeah, that's just fun. Right, right. But that's just not what the business needs right now. So my goal is to continually get better every single day. That's my one goal, whatever that looks like. And right now what that means is challenging everybody else around me to get better every single day. So every week, whenever we go to the team meeting is, let's just make this week a great week.  What do you need to do to get better at your role on this team?

Dave Sheridan: I think, I feel like I, I do better with goals like that too. I don't know, like the goal of, like, the reason I asked a question of like exit strategy or like legacy is, 'cause I'm similar to, I don't know. I don't know what it's gonna look like. I know that I wanna build a business so that it like, would be valuable if someone wanted to buy it, but it's not, I don't wanna do those things just because it's valuable for an exit. It's, it's valuable for an exit because it's like, it means your business is running well and it's, you know, your numbers and everything's organized. Um, and yeah, it's just, I think the short term goal goals, just for me personally, are more motivating than the big five year plan, which I, I try to have a five-year plan, but it sometimes can be a little overwhelming and maybe a little less. I just feel like sometimes when I, I get myself caught in those long-term planning cycles, it's, see, is this really productive? Like, forecasting out potential sales down the road. I don't know. Might be better just to go try to find some customers in the short term. 

Austin Gray: I agree with you on that. I believe it's just, yeah. Oh, and I would encourage listeners too, if you're just analyzing like what's the five year plan and you haven't started yet, but I personally think the best thing you can do is do what Dave did. If you truly wanna start, the best thing is just go do the next thing. 'cause there are a million things that you need to do to start, but you're never going to get to that five-year plan if you don't just start. Right. I, man, I, my personal perspective is just wake up every day and work hard at whatever it is that we're doing and get better challenge other people around me to get better. Like I, I genuinely want what's best for you and I hope that we can stay in touch. I hope that I get a text from you in a year where you're like, yeah, we crushed our goal and I wanna celebrate that with you. Um, and likewise for other guests on the podcast and for listeners, I genuinely want you guys to have success in your life and I. I don't know. I just personally follow the energy. It's like I, I felt the nudge to start this podcast and I did and I just kept recording the episodes. Mm-hmm. So I do wanna talk about this 'cause there's the difference in goals in my mind and it's like there's lead measures and there's lag measures. Are you familiar with that concept?

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, not really. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So listeners, go Google this right now. Lead measures versus lag measures. I'll give you the quick overview. Your lag measure is, okay, my five-year plan is to hit $5 million. It's a suite that's like an output, but like what inputs are you going to do to go get there? Right? So the lead measures being like back into this equation and you guys could go listen to the podcast with Sam also 'cause he's the roofer. He's doubled his business every year using this same formula. He starts with the end goal and then backs himself into the equation and then figures out what he needs to do for the inputs. How many people do I need to reach out to? How many ads do I need to be running? What channels do I need to be on? Because all those things and all those action steps lead to the output. And so I'm just unbelievably obsessed with the inputs that go in the podcast as an example. Right. I very rarely look at analytics probably once every two months or so because I'm uberly obsessed with just putting in the inputs of recording the episodes because I know that good things will come if we commit to the actions.

Dave Sheridan: For sure. Yeah, no, for sure. And yeah, I've been, it seems, yeah, it, I've been listening for a while and it just, it does feel like it just keeps getting better in terms of just like production value, guests quality and everything. And so we'll see if that, that dips after this guest. 

Austin Gray: But man, I was excited. I was really excited and I'm so glad that I got to meet you. Yeah. Listeners, seriously, if you're considering starting a business, I will say this, it's gonna be messy at the beginning, is in the pudding. Go back and listen to the first five or 10 episodes like I had, like Google Meet stuff, just like. I was in this, like I didn't have any, anything set up. I didn't have the right microphone, I didn't have anything. But it's just like when you start and you take action, good things come. And that's what HAP has happened with you, right? 

Dave Sheridan: Yep, yep. For sure. Yep. And it's, yeah, for the first, this first year of plant healthcare, it's, we're not stressing about profit margins or misquoting stuff. It's, let's just get out there, we'll do it, and we will analyze the data, we'll refine things this, we'll refine the systems to make ourselves more efficient, our pricing models and everything. But right now it's just building that customer base and it's really only one way to do that, and it's to go out and sell. So it's what we to do. 

Austin Gray: Absolutely. So here's what I wanna do, Dave. We are a little over the hour mark here. I wanna do a part two episode on Plant Healthcare with you. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, let's do it.

Austin Gray: Perfect. Is there anything else that as we wrap this episode up, you'd like to share with listeners? 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, maybe just, I think the partner discussion gets a little. Maybe, I don't know if controversial is the right word, but there's, it's like a marriage. The way I look at it, it's kinda like a marriage when there's the joke. It's like a marriage without the, without sex. I mean, there's some truth to that a little bit. You do have to treat it like a marriage, but there's a lot of value to being married, as obviously you've seen. And so I don't think there's like a, I'm not advocating that everybody should partner, but I think it's a good, for me personally, I can just speak to my experience, having partners with a differentiated skillset that you can trust and that you, and I think an important part of trust is having the upfront conversations about like, all right, like how are we gonna handle a dispute if someone wants to get outta the business?

Like, how are we gonna handle that? Who's responsible for what? Like what domains are we in charge of having those upfront conversations about like roles and responsibilities, and then fears as well too. I think that's just, there's a right way to do a partnership. And there's obviously, everybody's heard the horror stories of a wrong way to do a partnership, but if you can get it right, like we've seen, it's just, it's like right now Scott's working, going, doing a complete overhaul and stress test and all our trucks and making sure that they're good to go. That's something I don't know how to do and nor have the time to do really. Uh, and like Dan is in, we wouldn't have this plant healthcare business if it wasn't for Dan's expertise. On, on, on tree biology. 

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

Dave Sheridan: And that's just, that's just not something I can get to in a year. That's the decade of his. I think it's been a huge blessing for me personally and for our business and yeah, so that's, I guess that's the last thing I'd chat about.

Austin Gray: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that, and I appreciate you being on, Dave. This has been a pleasure to meet you and talk business with you. 

Dave Sheridan: Yeah, it was an honor. Well, I guess we'll talk part two to see how the plant healthcare business finished up. 

Austin Gray: Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's have some fun with it. And listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast where we talk every single week about starting and growing local service-based businesses in services and trades. I'm a firm believer that this is one of the biggest opportunities for millennials in Gen Z. If you're willing to get back into something blue collar or something sweaty, there's so much opportunity in every single market for all the different services that we talk about. If this is your first time listening to the episode, go back and listen to some of those episodes, like I mentioned in this one, Stump guy Ty came on and he started a stump grinding business simply by reaching out to tree service business owners like Dave. And he said, I'm doing one service, which is stump grinding and I would love to grind the stumps on your jobs. And he started his business doing that. Those are some good ones to check out.

I've, I think I've done two or three with him at this point. You can just search stump grinding OWNR OPS on YouTube, or you can find us on Spotify or Apple. Some other good ones I would, I would recommend are the ones that I've done with Brock Peel. Uh, he started a septic business and has grown it to a couple million bucks in revenue with a team of three. And he talks a lot about just the focus on delivering one service and doing it really well. So those are some good starting places. Would obviously love you to check out the rest of them, but that's a good place to start. We'll wrap this one up. Finally, I mentioned in the episode here we do have a school group. If you are starting or looking to start your own service business, you can join the free school group at school.com/owner ops. That's skool.com/ownrops. Look forward to seeing in there. Don't forget, work hard, do your best. Never settle for less.

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