The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Making $23K/Month by Month 2 with a B2B Home Service | Holdco Bros Discuss! Ep. #140

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

OG Episode that inspired Tyler: B2B Stump Grinding. Cash Cow or Dud?HoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, we feature Tyler (https://x.com/StumpGuyTy), a listener who acted on our B2B stump grinding idea after hearing it on a previous episode, which led him to quit his 9-to-5 job. Tyler shares how he followed our advice word-for-word, testing the concept in Boise before launching in Provo. By implementing our strategies, he achieved impressive results, with $23,000 in September alone. He provides key insights into building relationships with tree trimming companies, his pricing strategy, and cold outreach techniques and more.Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnikShare your ideas with us:[e-mail]@cofounders.comTimestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Highlights00:37 Tyler's Journey: From B2B Sales to Stump Grinding01:13 The Initial Spark: Discovering Stump Grinding01:41 Building the Business: Early Challenges and Successes02:27 The B2B Sales Connection04:41 Testing the Market: Boise vs. Provo06:03 First Jobs and Early Experiences12:05 Overcoming Hurdles: Mistakes and Lessons Learned15:11 Revenue Growth and Scaling the Business17:45 Financing the Stump Grinder18:40 Monthly Earnings Breakdown20:05 Building Business Relationships21:46 Pricing and Payment Structure23:22 Marketing Strategies29:03 Future Business Prospects32:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

I had 30K in revenue before I ever had a website or domain or anything. This could definitely be a $300,000 to $400,000 company here. It could be $5,000, $700,000, no doubt. How much of what we said did you go out and implement and it worked? And how much of what we said was it like, yeah, this didn't work. I had to go out and find customers this way. I'm not joking. Word for word.

I had pretty much written down the exact text to send, the exact software is to try it out. There's pretty much no risk in my day to day. That's amazing. I work with the same contractors who continue giving me same subjobs all the time. So my marketing spend is almost zero. And this wasn't going to hurt me. So I was like, I'm going to try this today. Yeah, Tyler, I just want to hear what your story is.

Specifically, like, what made you want to quit your B2B sales job and do this? And how has it been going so far? Yeah. So, yeah, that's a great question. So, yeah, I was in. I graduated from college about four years ago. I have been in B2B sales sense. We have been looking throughout that time to get entrepreneurship in some way.

You know, classic I read, buy than build and I was like, I'm going to buy a business. And I had zero dollars in my bank account. So that slowly crashed down reality wise and then looked into some service franchises. And there's a lot of moments of cold feet. I heard the idea about a stump grinding business from your podcast originally. I've documented this on Twitter a few times. But something clicked there. I'm not really sure why I was on a tree crew in high school. I'd grind ground like a stump or two, you know, a handle grinder at the time. Never used a machine like what I used now. But yeah, you kind of put it in a perspective.

I was like, oh, that's kind of just B2B sales. I know how to do that. And grinding stumps is not that complicated. Like maybe we can just give it a shot and see what happens. And yeah, it's slowly, I did not plan on ever quitting my job with stump grinding. I was like, this will help me save more cash. And it slowly progressed from there. So you've always been a grinder.

Always. Tyler the grinder. That's what they call him. He's been grinding since college, Chris. You didn't know that? Yeah, I do now. When did we have that? conversation, Chris? July? July 11th. I found the episode, just so I had it for my notes,

you know what I mean? When I heard it, because I heard it the day it came out. And then August 3rd is when I did my first three jobs from July 11th. Funny enough, Chris, you were in Utah when we recorded that episode, weren't you? It was serendipitous. That's perfect. I don't really remember the whole conversation. What was it about stump grinding that you're like, This is like B2B sales, because I don't think stump grinding is like B2B sales, but it is B2B sales. This is literally a B2B sales business. 95-ish percent of my revenue is, what's the differentiator? Reoccurring.

So it's not recurring, but I work with the same contractors who continue giving me same subjobs all the time. So my marketing spend is almost zero. So I build a relationship up front with a company that doesn't have a grinder. They either rent or, you know, they have an old one that's just not great. And it just makes more sense to have someone else do it. Either they don't love their sub currently or they're tired of renting. And we build that relationship slowly. And then now, you know, I just, I just make sure I answer my phone and get back to text really fast.

Put it on the calendar and get it done. So these aren't residential clients. The majority of your clients are like what apartment complexes, businesses. Let me interrupt you, Nick. Let's start a stump grinding business that only goes through tree trimming crews because they're outsourcing their stem grinding to other people. So his customers are the tree tree tree. business owners, but their customers are residential. He's just not going through residential customers.

Oh, I'm a retired. They're subbing it out to him. Now I remember. Now I remember this part of the conversation. And for anyone listening, if you want to go back and listen to this original podcast, it was episode number 37, July 10th, B2B stump grinding, cash cow or dud. That's right, because it wasn't just the stump grinding we were talking about. Yeah, okay.

Now I'm, I'm caught up time. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're all here. It's perfect. I'm caught up. We're here physically. Yeah.

All right. So a lot of the stuff we just talk about in theory, right? Where we're like, yeah, dude, this is what you could do. Here's the idea. How much of what we said, I mean, it's mainly Chris's idea, but like how much of what we said, did you go out and implement and it worked? And how much of what we said was it like, yeah, this didn't work. I had to go out and find customers this way. Yeah, I want to shout out Chris on this.

I've mentioned this on Twitter. But, and Chris, I try to always tell people what ideas came directly from you still to this day. I followed literally, I'm not joking, word for word. There was 10 minutes of the podcast that I probably listened to, I don't know, three, four, five times that I had pretty much written down word for word, the exact text to send, the exact softwares to try it out, trying it in a different market. So I actually tried it out in Boise, even though I was down here in Provo. I was never going to service a stump in Boisey, but I wanted to see the demand in a similar

market. So I literally did everything from that podcast, did not change anything. And, you know, there was stuff that wasn't covered in the podcast like brands of machines and, you know, trailers and different things that are just logistics for the business that I had to go learn myself. But how to actually drum up my first customers, it was it was directly from the podcast. Nick, let me jog your memory even more. Yeah. I went to Upwork and hired a virtual assistant to call hundreds of tree trimming companies in Houston because Houston's like a comparable market to DFW. because we were literally thinking about starting this.

And then I shared that data with anyone that wanted it in a spreadsheet. And I forget what it was. It was like 10% of the market was willing to sub it out to us. And I think we covered the data on an episode like a month later or so. Did you ever look at that data, Tyler, and use it? Or was it just kind of irrelevant? Yeah, I got that spreadsheet and that data. I mean, I looked at it.

It helped me organize my spreadsheet, actually, and how I did some of my outreach. And I asked you, I asked you about your cold caller and you're like, hey, you know, I'll give you it once he's done doing this cold calling for me. And I was like, all right, that's fine. Like, I'll just go do it myself. So I went and did most of the cold calling, cold texting, all myself early, early stages. Gotcha. So Boise was your test market?

Boisey was my test market. What did it show? Oh, it was crazy. I remember the first day I sent out like 45 texts. And I had guys calling me like, dude, you need to be in this backyard in like 20 minutes. And I was like, whoa, whoa, you know, I was like, easy, easy, easy. You know, like I, I didn't, there were some uncomfortable conversations there. I felt a little bit dishonest.

I was just lying. I just listened to a guy on a podcast. Yes. I don't, yeah. I was like, dude, I don't grind stumps. You guys are crazy. You know, it was, yeah, but no, it went fast. That's how fast I did like three days of that.

And then I was like, I'm going to stop doing this because I'm starting to get into some really weird conversations with people following up with me. Like, are you going to show up? I never told anyone I was going to show up anywhere. But there were people. you know, telling me they had jobs for me. But it was great. I used those opportunities as like a conversation. I have an Arizona number. That's where I grew up. And so I was just like, hey, coming from Arizona, this is the pricing down there. Like what is the pricing look like up here? Once again, you can judge me for my dishonesty. I totally understand. Oh, dude, that's smart.

Yeah, yeah. So you were framing it as, hey, I'm already out of market. This is what we usually pay. Help me understand what the pricing is. But really, you were just trying to get pricing. Yeah. And basically they would give me like, oh, yeah, it usually works like, this up here. And I was like, okay, you took a ton of notes. And then I was like, I'm sure it probably works pretty similar in Provo and Salt Lake. If people can't see Chris's face, but right now, hearing Tyler talk about, it's like, I didn't, I didn't lie to anybody outright and like just how uncomfortable he was having those conversations. Chris looks like James Franco in the meme where he's looking over. He has a noose around his neck and he looks over at the guy. And he goes, first time.

First time. Yeah, that's how Chris looks right now to Tyler. I've had so many awkward conversations. That's all I do is just send out text to hundreds of people to validate things or not. And then it's like, oh my gosh, next thing I know, there's an 80 foot Santa Claus in my front yard. Yep. That's true story. First time. Dude. Okay. So Boise was like, oh my gosh. Yep, it's here. It's a thing. Yeah. I'm going to now do this. Where are you? You're in Provo? I'm in Provo. Yeah. I'm sorry. Provo. I believe that's how it's pronounced. Correct. Provo. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, that's exactly how it went.

I brought the same idea down. I actually kind of wished that early on, I was like, I wish I was in Boise because I got a little bit better and like more opportunities in Boise than I did in my area. If only you do somebody in Boise. Yeah, I wasn't really willing to pick up and move everything right then. But no, it still worked out great. I found my first two to three contractors are guys that give me a ton of work still to this day. And then after you land your first two or three, the worry of not being able to pay equipment or trailer or some of that stuff kind of leaves. And it's just building from there.

So it was awesome to get to those first two, three relationships in the first few weeks and then solely after that built. But those first four weeks, too, I was doing all this at a office of a tech company. So that was fun. Are you just renting a grinder and then going out and doing these jobs or did you buy one? I rented for the first month. I found a dealership that was about to pull a new machine out of their new sales into their rental fleet. And they said, hey, you can rent this for the month. If you, you know, if you decide to buy it, we'll just roll the rental price into the buy price,

which was an awesome win-win for everyone. So did you never end up doing any jobs in Boise? You just use that to test? Yeah, didn't. I never traveled to Boise at all. So, yeah, it was just a test market. It's not surprising to me that the outreach fared better in Boise just because I feel like Provo is the most competitive market in the world for anything. You've got like 80,000 return missionaries

that have been rejected a million times each and they're just so ready to launch a business. Yeah. It's not surprising or it is surprising the Boise. It's not surprising that you had better luck in Boise because Provo is like the worst launching stuff. If you can make something work in Provo, mark my words, you can make it work anywhere. If you can make it here, kid, you can make it anywhere. Yeah. Freaking New York City. I mean, Nick, like on one hand, you have all these enterprising return missionary business owners. And then on the other hand, you have a bunch of people like me that are like, oh, okay, your price is $3.50.

Will you do $0.15? Yeah, the combination of those two is not good. We looked at Provo. Remember, we did it with the tree trimming. What's his name? Yeah, for tree trimming. And we were like, oh, man, it is hyper competitive out here in Provo. What was the time?

So you listen to it on the 11th, let's say July 11th. 11th. What's the timeline here between July 11th and like your first booked job? Like when did you start doing the testing in Boise? When did you start looking in Provo? And then when did you have your first book job? So I listed it at July 11th. I think I sent my first batch of text July 12th. As fast as that outscraper thing happened. I just, I just went. And the cool thing about this, I have not always been like this. I just want to like kind of play both sides of this a little bit in that like there was a direct way to go test this in a different market and this wasn't going to hurt me. So I was like, I'm going going to try this today. And so July 12th, I think I sent my first text. By the end of that week,

I was like, this has some legs to it. Like I started going into dealerships and talking about, or, you know, learning about brands of Stump Grinder. I also emailed probably 50 owners of stump grinding companies in different states, just like a quick, like, can I interview you? Can I ask you a few questions? That actually worked well for me really well. People are open with their time, especially these stump grinders. They were awesome and kind of got me up to speed really fast on brands and stuff. But yeah, anyways. And then I had my first book job, August 3rd. So I remember two jobs that were four stumps. One job was three stumps and the other job was one stump on August 3rd. That was a Saturday. And it was, it was electric. It was awesome. Any like horror stories,

like any just embarrassing stories, you screwed something up or something broke? Yeah, not on the day one, But absolutely, yeah. I had one at a townhome complex. It was for an HOA. And there's roots running everywhere. And at the last second, the tree guy was like, dude, I need you to get every single route out. And I was like, okay, we can do that.

But like, we're going to hit a sprinkler line somewhere. And he's like, that's fine. You know, like, let's just do it. We'll fix it. Yeah. I was like, all right, whatever, dude. Yeah. And this is my first time working with him too.

So I'm young and dumb and whatever. And we go hit this sprinkler line. It's right next. I can't make this up. This is a summer day in Utah right next to a window of a townhome. The sprinkler starts like the highest pressure water you've ever seen starts coming through this person's window. It's fine. The window is open.

I basically break into their house. I like slam, slam, slam. They don't come in two seconds. I open. I was like, Hey, is anyone home? You know, because I do not want to flood their whole living room.

Finally, they come downstairs. We shut the window. We finally figure out where the sprinkler turnoff is because HOAs are weird. It was like at the front of the property. and then he was like, oh yeah, you're going to be on the hook for this, by the way. So I never made any. I didn't make a dollar off that job, which was a nightmare.

A nightmare. But yeah, I mean, a few things like that. But overall, what you do as a stump grinder, as long as you call in like utility locates, it's pretty simple. Was that Derek Sorensen? It was Derek Sorensensen, wasn't it? Frickin Brayden Christensen. It was Brayden Christensen. Was it Brayton Christensen?

Gosh, dang it, dude. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. It was, yeah, Joseph something. Yeah, yeah. No, that's that. Oh. Any other stories like that?

Yeah. There was one where they wanted me to fit through like a gap between two sheds. And then there was a electric line running to the back shed. It was a private electric line. I saw it. I knew it was there. I'm an idiot. I was just like, dude, I can, you know, do this, whatever.

And so I hit it. I couldn't do it. I'm an idiot. And the back shed was the home office for the dad of that family. Didn't know that. And so he comes out like, I hit it, sparks fly everywhere. He comes out just pissed, you know, like so mad and rightfully so like that. That was completely on me. Flip. Yeah. Right around her. Exactly. What the freak is happening? You know, and then I was like, yeah, I'm sorry. I hit this. And I had to pay for that one too. Those are really the two worst ones. Outside of that, it's been small stuff here and there. Okay, here's my question for all the people who were like, actually, you can't do one of these

businesses without this type of insurance, this type of insurance, this month, when did you actually get insurance? Right away. I did do that right away. Yes. Yes, I have this one felt a little bit different. It didn't feel like I was, I don't know, what's it, you know, running a cleaning company. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. This one I felt like, I was like, I could actually probably do some damage somewhere. Yeah. And so I got insurance right away. Both those things I paid out of pocket. But yeah, no, I did. That makes sense.

Yeah. Can you give me an idea? So August was your first month. You've quit your job. Like you're not working, you're grinding full time. I quit my job September 1st. Yeah. Oh my gosh, too. To tell me what's your revenue been? Just hit me August, September, October, November, if you can. I have that somewhere. I could break it out individually. But so it was 9500 in August. And then in September, I had like so much on the calendar that I was like, it's either I quit or I get five. basically. And so I actually, I negotiated some severance because I was pretty good at my job. So I had a really good book. And I was like, hey, let me help pass these accounts off to someone that wants them and let me leave. And they're like, yeah, perfect. We'll pay you for a month. And I was like, let's freaking go. So September was 23K. So that was actually the biggest month still to this point. Really? Yes. And then it's slowly because you're like, I was just going to say yeah probably because it's like in the summer going into fall that's when people are doing the

majority of this type of work totally and then through the end of the year I did 69,000 in revenue from August 3rd to the end of the year and then in January I did like seven and this month I'll do 11 so it's starting to pick up again for the spring oh even in February you're doing 11 grand yeah yeah we're excited about that it's awesome I mean are you grinding through the snow yeah I try not too. I try not to do it on snow days, but yeah, some days it's scheduled and it's not coming down too bad. If it's like a blizzard, I'm not going to be grinding a stump. But if it's some light snow, yeah, we'll put on a few jackets and go. Let's talk unit economics like per job. What is your average job size? What is your average profit per job? And how do you think that'll change when you

start scaling and hiring? Yeah. So 390 is my average job size. And that's skewed upwards probably because of a few outliers. I've had like a four grand job and a five grand job that are considered, you know, one job there. I do not know my profit per job. Just going to be honest, their hand up. I try to keep track of all this stuff, but I don't know that currently. That's okay. I mean, rough ballpark. Like based on what you're like, because you own the thing now, you said there's no rental cost. You've got gas, your own time. I have to think your costs aren't that much. No, not at all. Directly like my stump grinding payments, 990. I pay 175 for my trailer. And then I pay like $450 for my truck.

I park it at a storage facility for, you know, $150. And then I have $450 of insurance monthly. So like total, you're talking like $2,000 to $2,500 of overhead. And I make that like I do $1,500 days routinely in the summer. And I mean, that's paying down your assets too, most of it. Right. Yeah, that's a good question. How much did this dump grinder cost?

So video is cool, but you know what's better? long form audio via podcast and my newsletter tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter it's one email a week very tactical and then go to my audio podcast three episodes a week stuff like this you're gonna love it all free no sleazy sales bitch tkopod dot com stump grinder was 55000 so and so you're on payments right you didn't pay out of pocket i'm assuming yeah i had to put 20% down on that everything else i was zero down on the trailer and ask how did you finance it there's some awesome companies that will do startup loans for heavy equipment where they still lend it to your company with your personal credit is weighted in there.

And they kind of screw you with interest rates. But hey, I mean, I was in the game. Yeah, exactly. And my business credit started growing. So I actually was able to get like a business credit card pretty fast because of that. So like what's what's the term of the loan? Like how long over what's it? How's it amortized?

What's like what's your monthly payment? Five year loan, nine 90 payment. I put like 12 grand down because I had to put like 20 percent down. So. Okay. Yeah, dude, I was just doing the math as you were talking, and I'm like, all right, you said month, 1, 9,500, month, 2, 23,000. And then you did 69,000 total between August and December.

So you averaged about $12,000 a month for the rest of the year. And then you said January and February, you've done about $11,000 a month. About, yeah, yeah, just about across the two. What was your job before? I was a SaaS sales rep, if you will, so selling reoccurring SaaS products. So you're probably making more money. than this, but you're like back of the envelope, you're taking home at least nine grand a month. Yeah. What's so funny is because a lot of, you know, personal expenses are rolled up into a lot of

the things that I do for business. Like the, I am going to be very interested to see after the end of a full year with a lot of those upfront costs already handled. Like, I think I can make more. if I was going to be the one grinding all year this year, which I want to hire eventually, but right now it's just shoveling cash away. I actually think you'd be surprised how fast you could hit the mark of like a good W-2 if you're just willing to like be out there and just do do a lot of hard work. Well, that was going to be my question. 23,000 in September was a good month. You're coming into the months where in the spring and summer, well, you'll probably have big months again. What's your plan to be able to do, you know, 23, if not more than that a month?

So a few things. The first one was the beautiful thing about being a sub in the last person to talk to the customer is I've actually gotten a lot of reviews without ever spending a dollar in marketing because I believe and I'm like, hey, this is my, I have a little card, you know, that you put on the back of their phone and it pulls up my review link there. I'm like, hey, I work with name the tree company all the time. Like I do all their stumps for them. I'm a new company. Like I'm here in Provo. I'm working hard. Like, could I get a review? So I have 55 five star reviews. We're starting to get a little. bit more organic traffic directly from the customer and starting to rank a little bit better for stump grinding specifically. And then building more and more tree relationships. It's the biggest thing I can do. One tree relationship can give me anywhere from, you know, five grand on the year to like 20, 30 grand on the year of revenue. So it's just important that I build those as strong as I can, do anything I can to land my first job for that tree company and then do everything I can to, you know, be reoccurring for them. So you're not being super strict about like I, I'm only B2B. Like you would love both.

Yes, absolutely. Are your subs or your crews that are referring you? Are they cool with that? Have you talked to them about that? Or you just kind of leave in business cards on the slide? The review part, is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Or like, do they care that you're talking to the customer directly?

Probably not because you're not competing with them, right? They love it. Because I always, I sent them a message like, hey, just got done at Sally's. Like she's super stoked on how it all went. And like in their head, they're like, oh, great. Yeah, they love us. So I always leave that little tech. after. And it's a loud machine. So I always just knock and I'm pretty personable. So in their head,

it's still the tree company doing the service. You know what I mean? That's the only person they've communicated with. So I don't think my guys mind it too much. What about unit economics between you and the tree trimming company? Like what are they charging? What are they paying you? Yeah. Usually, so I price everything by a measurement of diameter of the stump. So if you take the widest diameter of the stump, you times it by $7 an inch is what I charge. usually. I'll go above and below that just depending on a few things. But a lot of tree companies will charge a customer anywhere from like $8 to $12 an inch. And they'll keep the part up top. Early on, I was giving percentages of that $7 an inch back to the tree company. But then I've been so good

for the tree companies that I've worked for, like so reliable that recently I've just been like, hey, $7 an inch is my price. If you want to take a cut, just charge, you know, upcharge. But I need the $7 an inch and they've all been really cool with that. Okay, so the customers aren't paying you. Customers aren't usually paying me directly. No, usually I get paid by the tree guy. Yep. Do you know what per inch that they're charging? Usually like 10 to 12 bucks an inch, usually. Okay. I guess you said that. Okay. And then sometimes, you know, if it's a huge job, they'll throw a stump in for free or, you know, there's a bunch of things that they'll do, but usually the job will make up for that if they throw it in for free. So when you go directly through

the customer, are you charging 10 to 12 per inch? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Usually I'll sit right around 10 when I'm going directly if someone got my number. Have you started getting direct customer referrals at this point? Yeah, yeah. Some direct customer referrals every once in a while, like tree companies just don't even want to deal with the stump grinding lead if it's a pure stump grinding lead. So they'll just shoot my number over to that customer and I'll get a call out left. So are you still paying $0 for marketing or are you starting to invest in that?

I'm starting to invest a little bit in some marketing. SEO I've paid for actually the whole time. So I have paid for my friend runs a little SEO company out here. And so I've been investing in that and like the website a little bit. But outside of that, I'm playing with some Facebook group direct marketing potentially, I think could work. Yeah, it playing with a few different things. How important do you think your sales ability is to this being successful to someone? Or is it not that heart of a sale?

It's not that heart of a sale to the tree company. if they don't like their guy or they're renting or their machine just went down, like they just need you. There's been a few times where I'm like, oh, that was, that was me. Like I showed up to their office. They're like, oh, yeah, we use this guy and we're really happy with them. And I hang out there for a little bit and talk to them. And by the end, they're like, dude, you know what? Like, we actually have a stump for you tomorrow or whatever. And those were times that I used my sales ability. But for the most part, it's a pretty easy sale. Okay. And when it comes to a tree trimming business owner, what type of owner is most likely to use you. Is it someone that owns a machine and it keeps breaking down?

Someone that rents a machine, someone that's already outsourcing it to your direct competitor. It's a mix between people that have rented and just have never found a guy they liked and someone that's tired of their sub. And then I'll get called like emergency wise when people's grinders go down a lot. Actually, guys that have told me no in the past, they'll hit my, you know, they'll call me and be like, our grinders down today. Can you pick this up? So that's, that's great too. How are you doing the marketing? Do you have a CRM? Do you have a Google sheet? Like, how are you tracking, oh, this is the tree trimming company. I want to target. I followed up with them, you know, this many times because you can keep it in your head only so far. And then at a certain

point, you've got to systematize it. I have a Google sheet. I haven't put anything into like, I would love to get a full-blown hub spot built out for myself eventually because that's always what I used at the tech companies. But currently it's all on a Google sheet with every text and email recorded that I've sent to these people. I'm starting like some cold email stuff, which has actually worked really well because I don't think anyone in the history has marketed stump grinding through cold email to tree contractors. I really think I'm breaking some ground there. And yeah, I don't know. That's worked really well. In what system are you using for job tracking, invoicing, collections, those types of things?

Sheets for all of that. I don't use anything else currently. Chris, I mean, this is what we talked about. That's what I love about people like you and Tyler. and these businesses, you didn't spend the time to like put up your fancy CRM. You're not like, okay, I got to have high level or I got to have job or, oh, this is my invoicing software. Like, no, dude, I got Google sheets. I've been reaching out to people because I went and scraped data and now I have their contact information and you just freaking went.

Yeah. Those are all friction to just actually launching the thing. Yeah. I checked the other day actually because someone asked me. I had 30K in revenue before I ever had like a website or domain or anything, which is awesome. Like I was like, oh, that's, you know, that's pretty cool. Wow. That's right. So you didn't have a website until October? Yeah, till like October. Yeah, exactly. Was it because you were like hesitant? We were like, I don't want to like commit to this because I don't know if it's my thing yet or were you just like too

too busy to even think about it. Yeah, I was more on the side of like busy. I was like, this is working. I don't really need more jobs right now. So let's just keep doing what's working and then we'll figure this out once it gets cold. And a lot of that's come since then. So your average job is 390. What does it look like? Is it one stump, three stumps? Do they get discounts for multiple stumps? My average job is somewhere between one to two stumps. Some were sitting there if you take them all. I did, you know, 20 stumps for a city and they were all big stumps. That was like a $4,600 job. And, you know, then you show up for minimums. My minimum is like 150. So anything below a certain size is just $150.50. Is any removal? Like, are you taking anything or is it, are you just grinding and leaving it?

about 70 to 80% of my jobs are grinding go is what we call it. So you grind, you leave it in a nice pile. You tell the customer, like, hey, use this in your yard, use this in your mulch beds, use this wherever. It's good stuff. And then the other 20, 30% are like people that need it gone for some reason or the other. And that's why I do have a dump trailer for that reason. I don't have anything else to pick up the mulch besides a shovel and a wheelbarrow. So those jobs aren't a lot less fun. But I do offer that and usually charge double if I need to do that. customer never understands why it's double, but it's double because you have to go dump in the middle of the day. It's a lot harder. It takes a lot longer. It's just it's a lot harder of a job. I wonder if there's any opportunity for that to take the mulch somewhere, right? Like have a relationship with a nursery or somewhere that you can sell the mulch to after. I haven't figured out selling the mulch, but I found at least places where I can dump for free at landscape yards, which has been nice. It's better. And it's closer than the dump is here. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't there a company called like mold? Munch masters or something that like they're like middleman between tree trimming companies and consumers they like sell mulch.

What are they called? I forgot what they're called. It's like chip drop or something like that. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Is that not work for you? So chip drops unique because they're kind of, what I have is mixed with dirt, if that makes sense. Oh, okay.

A tree company is chipping directly into the back of a truck. So it's pure wood chips. Mine is like a little dirtier. Landscape yards will take them though. Yeah. Now, I'm curious that you said you listened to that 10 minute clip over and over and over. Now, we're six months later now. What in that 10 minute clip ended up just not being very relevant or helpful.

And what in that 10 minute clip was just like gospel truth is still true today. Yeah, on the top end of like where this could scale to, like I don't want to put a limit on myself, but I remember I think there are some numbers starting around. Like this could be a, you know, three, four million dollar company. It's hard for me to see that a future of that ever being the case, even if you If you grow up really smart, it's just there's a lot of other options. People do own their own machines, big companies on their own machines. There's some limit to the market size there.

But what was gospel was, you know, grabbing lists from Outscraper, cold texting with a really simple cold text and then just following up from there. And that's what I did. I added a few, like of my own unique flare. After every text I sent, the day after I would just send, hey, just following up on this with like an up arrow. And a lot of people are disorganized with their texts. So they see it just following up on this. They call me instantly because they're like, oh, this guy's trying to give me business. And then I'll have them on the line like, dude, what's up?

I'm a stump grinder. And they're like, you could tell them like, crap, I shouldn't have called this guy. And yeah, but I already have them. And so we built a relationship that way. So I remember that three to four million dollar number. And that was based on how many tree trimming crews there were in greater DFW, which is like 950. And I'm getting like 5% of them.

And I just Googled like what the greater Provo-Orem Lehigh Metro population is, 733,000. So DFW is exactly, almost exactly 10 times more than that. Do you think this could be a $300,000 to $400,000 business? If so, then $3 to $4 million in DFW could still be accurate. There you go, 100%. And to be fair, I do serve as Salt Lake County too. I service Salt Lake County less than I service Utah County. So together between the two counties, it's like 1.7 million peopleish. But yeah, no, I think this could definitely be a $300,000 to $400,000 company here for sure. I think it could be five, six, seven, the hundred thousand, no doubt. I was just saying like top level.

I'm like, I don't know. Maybe it could move to Dallas. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Exactly. It couldn't be that by yourself, but if you started getting other people to grind for you, absolutely, then potentially use scale. How do you view this business?

Like, do you think this is the business Tyler's going to be doing five years from now? Or was this like a cool experiment that has now given you confidence to become an entrepreneur and do other things? more in the B camp. It will be what I'm doing for the next few years for sure. What I consider it to be is a cash-heavy business that allows me to learn business at a really, really low level of risk, like really low now. At this point, there's pretty much no risk in my day-to-day. And then I sit back and I do a ton to learn as much as I can about other business models and do other things outside of just stump grinding. Now, with that being said, though, I do want to push and see where it can go because what,

what I do at that point where I go pursue something maybe a little bit bigger or that has some bigger tam to it than stump grinding, what I do in the next few years will decide what I do with this business. Can I try to sell it? Can I try to put my brother in, you know, as the owner operator or as an operator and still take checks from the company? There's a lot of options. So really most of my day to day is focused on pushing it as far as I can. But I do think at some point I will want to move to something a little bit bigger. I'm like so tempted right now to just co-star this business. It just sounds awesome. Yeah, I won't. But it's fun. My question is if you were to wave a magic wand and get every single tree trimming business in your market, all 1.7 million people,

every tree trimming business owner on the phone and give them your best shot and then follow up as you do do with all of them. What percentage of them do you think you could get as a customer? That's a good question. Probably 20 to 25 percent, I think would be maybe 30 percent. would be right up around there. Higher than I thought. I really think I could do 30%. And you think five to 25 grand a year top line from each of them is realistic. Yes, it just depends on the size.

But yes, yeah, there's some. It could even be bigger, to be honest, if you get a huge company. But those guys run like two to three grinders and just don't need me. Yeah. Okay, so let's be conservative here because we know that there's about one tree trimming business for every 10,000 people. So if you're in a city on an island, you know, 100,000 people, there's going to be 10 tree-triming businesses.

Let's say that someone isn't as good at selling as you and they can only close 20% of them. That's going to be two. Let's say 5 to 25,000 per year. Let's be conservative and say $10,000. So theoretically in a city of $100,000, you would do $20,000 a year top line. Or does that sound like too low, like too conservative? No, that sounds about right. Yeah, sounds about right.

How many tree trimming companies are there in the 1.7 million, I guess, Metroplex that you're operating in? I don't have an exact number. I know my data scrape pulled like 500 plus. Yeah. There's duplicates and stuff in there too. I remember, Nick, when we did this research for tree trimming, we didn't like Provo because Dallas was one in 10,000. Provo was one in 5,000 people. Yeah. So it was good for you. There's less tree coverage too here than in Dallas.

if you compare them directly. There's a little, there's a few less trees here, just a little bit drier. Last question. What is the exact make and model of your grinder and would you recommend it to others? Bandit 2550. Yes, I would definitely recommend it to others. It's a great. You have to get to a certain amount of horsepower that you're dangerous in the industry.

Because if you're at the low horsepower that people could rent the same machine, it's like, why would we do that? You know what I mean? Yeah. But then there's top levels that are way bigger. than mine, that would be awesome to have. They're just come with about double the price point. So it's a great middle ground. But I always tell guys, hey, go find the dealerships in your area because there's four brands and there's really not always four dealerships for each, you know, a brand for each

dealership in your area. So dealership support is important in Stump Grinney because these things take a beating and you're going to need, you're going to need to replace things on them. So I always tell people that. Well, what advice would you give to somebody who's thinking about doing this in their local market. Yeah, I would tell them to go listen to that first podcast. I would tell them to go listen to this. And then I, can I shout other people's podcasts on here? Is that okay? Of course. Yeah, we'll bleep it out. Okay. Yeah, perfect. Say it if you want. It's not anything. Yeah, exactly. Austin Gray, he's big on Twitter as well. He runs the owner operator podcast. He interviewed me there. And I, we went really into detail about like the the small things in the business because he runs a, you know, land clearing heavy machinery business as

well, so that's awesome. And then I'll plug my own stuff. I don't talk about this at all, but I do have a lot of people now. A community. Not a community. Not a course. Well, I guess it is, it is a PDF. There it is. Well, okay, it's kind of a, no, keep going. No, it's, I have gotten a little bit of a following on Twitter. So I have a lot of people ask for phone calls and stuff like that. And one week, I think I hopped on like 15 phone calls and I was like, what am I doing with my week? And so I put together this 84 page PDF. It's like it's a no-brainer price. It's like 149. My average job is 390. So if you ever land a stump grinding job, you will pay for the PDF. And that's what I'd recommend to because I put some stuff on there that's a lot of it's from

the original podcast with you, Chris, but then there's a lot of like stump granny specific stuff on there. That's just super niche. Chris, what percentage do we get from that? 89%. We got 89%. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, exactly. Gumroad gets the other five and then I'm left with like four and a half percent there. It's perfect. Yeah. Dude, Tyler, nice work, man. It was awesome. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. I just wanted to say real quick, like I have listened to every episode of both of your podcasts. So I'm not just saying that. Thank you. I am really, this is awesome. I just really appreciate being here and meeting you guys. I know it's kind of sounds funny, but it's like meeting. I'm excited about it. morning. So I would ask you whose podcast you like better, but I don't want to have my feelings hurt. Don't ask. Don't ask. I listened to Chris's first because I saw tweets from Chris earlier. I'm his first love. I've caught me. I've caught up on both. So, dude, dude, congratulations. Can't wait to check in with you in a year, my friend. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you, Tyler. This is awesome. You're awesome. Thank you. Have a good day. All right. What

you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.