October 22, 2025 • 40 mins
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Back in July 2024, after hearing about this idea on our podcast in episode #37, Tyler Mumford decided to give it a shot. He launched his stump grinding business in Provo, Utah, and within his first two months made over $32,000. In episode #140, Tyler came back on the podcast to share how he actually made it happen. In this episode, Nik and I meet up with him on-site to see how he built real income fast with just a simple setup and some hard work. We talk about how he landed his first customers, what helped him grow so quickly, and the mindset that pushed him to quit his job and go all in. Tyler also shares how much he’s learned from putting himself out there, the kind of freedom it’s created for him, and why anyone can do the same if they’re willing to start.
• Follow Tyler on X: https://x.com/StumpGuyTy — he shares daily tips and updates from the field.
• Check out Tyler’s Gumroad page: https://tylerstump.gumroad.com/l/tncww — he’s put together resources for anyone looking to start their own stump grinding business.
Enjoy!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
How much did you make before youeven quit your job on this?
I did 9 grand of revenue with the full time. $32,000 in your
first two months if. It's one stump sitting there.
I have a $200 minimum. 200 bucksfor 5 minutes of work.
What? Percentage of the time do they
respond? 3040% So I didn't even have a
Google My Business to tell like month four or five.
And worst case scenario, this business, the grinders don't
really lose value, Trailers don't lose value.
I would have had a truck that I would have drove to my new job.
(00:21):
If someone's watching this and they're like, I'm broke, but I
love this business, what is the most cost official way to start
it? You could rent the truck, you
could rent a trailer, and you can rent a stump by the day.
What were you making to be abouta?
175K How do you? Find all these guys.
You scrape big lists throughout scraper.
I just find it incredible that you spent $0.00 to send a text,
you spend $0.00 to call them, and that five minute investment
(00:42):
pays you hundreds to thousands of dollars per month.
Can I tell you my number one contractor, how much you gave me
this summer? Yeah, I think you gave me 25
grand in four or five. Months.
I'm out of here. It's ridiculous whoever said
that money doesn't grow on treesnever thought to check in the
stump. So today I'm going to tell you
about Tyler. Tyler is a 28 year old that one
year ago was listening to my podcast where Nick and I were
(01:04):
talking about the stump grindingbusiness and how profitable it
would be. He liked that segment so much he
listened to it. 100 * 2 months later he had quit his job and
made $26,000 of net profit. And the best part?
He has no employees. So today we're going to cover
how to do, but he does, how to avoid any land mines and most
importantly, how to find customers.
(01:24):
So today I'm going to talk to Tyler.
I'm going to talk to Nick. We're going to break down this
business and show you exactly what you need to do to copy
everything he did. So let's go all right, if you
are a long time listener of thispod, you may remember episode 37
where my friend Nick and I talk about the stump grinding
business and then Tyler Mumford in Provo, UT heard it, loved it,
(01:48):
was inspired by it, started his own stump grinding business.
He did 9K the first month, 23 K the second month, and then in
episode 140, Nick and I had him on my podcast to talk to him
exactly about how it's gone. Well, this is Part 3.
This is the follow up to the follow up.
This one is the most in depth version yet because I flew to
Provo, UT a couple months ago. I caught a BYU game.
(02:10):
I met up with Tyler, I met up with Nick and we went and ground
some stumps and I got a ton moredetails on how a stump grinding
business is going. So if you are listening to this
on audio only, we have specifically edited this episode
to be just for you. But if you want a little more
dimension to this episode, then you can now either watch on
Spotify video or on YouTube and it should go live on YouTube on
(02:31):
October 22nd or 23rd. Please enjoy and be inspired.
How many jobs did you do before you got like a big fancy
trailer? I had like 70K in revenue before
I got anything wrapped or any branding or I think before I
even had to Google My Business. They've already cut you.
Got a call from who? The homeowner?
Yeah. Really.
Yeah. How'd they find you?
I'm like #1 on in Utah County. That's a brag.
How are you #1? A lot of reviews.
(02:52):
So, name of the game? Name of the game.
And I actually kind of backdoored some reviews.
So this is kind of cool because it's a sub business to start.
So everything, probably my first50 grand of revenue was just
from Subs. Explain what you mean by that.
OK, so walking through this, a tree company came here at one
time and took the trees down. What the tree company hates
doing is they hate doing the stumps themselves.
They have to bring another trailer.
(03:12):
They have to bring this whole setup outside of their chip
truck, their chipper. You guys get it?
You guys have a tree company? They hate doing the stumps for
the same reason you hate haulingaway the shaving.
It just doesn't go into. Your workflow, it's another
service not in the workflow. And so I approached a bunch of
different tree companies and asked who was doing their stumps
for them. Some of them had their own
machine, some rented somewhere using another sub.
The people that rented or using another sub are like my prime
(03:34):
customer because if you're renting, hey, I can save you
money and a headache of doing it.
If you're using another sub, I can be better than your sub.
Do it for maybe a dollar cheaper, or do it better, be
more on time, whatever. What do you mean you backdoored
into those reviews? Oh, so yeah, so that's how I got
my first 50 grand of revenue wasdoing jobs for tree companies
companies. But The thing is that wasn't my
customer technically, but with the tree company doesn't know is
(03:56):
I'm the last person here on the job site.
So after the job, after everything, once I got my GM
live, I would do the job. I would meet him first just to
be a good stub and just say, hey, I'm Tyler, I'm with a
different company. I'm here to do your stump.
I would do the job and then walkup to the the homeowner and be
like, hey, if you felt like I did a good job today and you
know, I put on a little charm, say, hey, could you give me a
review? They were giving the company
that didn't even land the customer review.
(04:17):
And so that's how I got my first7075 reviews.
And then it's not the most competitive industry in the
world. So it's not super hard to get to
the stop. Did you know that when you
started or did you go with the thesis of like, oh, I'm going to
go to be a sub, That's how I'm going to get all my business?
I thought it was going to be a complete sub business.
That's kind of the idea that I heard from your guys podcast and
that was my idea going in. But slowly but surely I was, I
(04:37):
was here about other guys getting jobs from Google.
So I was like, oh, there has to be some revenue there.
There's not a ton because usually people have this out
when the tree is out. But if you buy a house or
whatever it is and, and you're inheriting like a beat up
backyard, there's stumps and things that need done.
So they'll look up stump removaland I come up.
The crazy thing is, especially with the change in this, you've
got chat TBT, which is kind of eating Google's lunch on the
search side. Yeah, but Google business
(04:58):
profile. I mean, that's the name of the
game, especially for local businesses like this that that's
not going away. It's only growing in popularity.
OK, so how do you bid this? Like, I look at this, I'm like,
I don't know what I'm. It's a yeah, it's a stump, $50.
It's a. Great question.
You kind of eye it a bit more than you do full measurements.
But if it's one stump sitting there, I have a $200 minimum.
So if you want me to show up to your backyard, it's going to be
$200 better. It's this big or, you know, and
(05:19):
then it's on a price per inch. So you measure the diameter here
in where I live, I I charge about 7 bucks an inch.
Down South where there's more trees, I've heard guys charge as
low as like 3 bucks an inch. But they're getting tons bigger
machines and tons more labor anda year round and they're year
round. And yeah, so there's different
price per inches, for example, 18 inches.
And the widest point. From the widest point, I always
try to I the wise point. Nick, you're good at math 7 *
(05:42):
18. 7 * 18 is 126 dollars. OK, $126.00.
So for this it would just be 200.
Bucks, but you want to measure like most men.
You want to measure where you get the longest.
From the base, from the. Base Wow, that's interesting.
This takes me about 5 minutes. 200 bucks for 5 minutes of.
Work. Not every jobs that easy.
You got to be careful because you're not just including your
own man hours like this is a very expensive machine and it
(06:02):
depreciate so you have to price jobs well so you don't lose.
How tall is too tall? Too tall is about. 20 inches, it
depends on your grinder, but 20 inches off the ground, yeah,
there's a trade off. So the taller it is, the more
chips that are going to come offit.
So if you're doing the cleanup, a lot of times you want to cut
it as low as possible before yougrind.
That's why I have a really cool chainsaw with a three foot bar
in the back of my truck, which is cool.
(06:22):
So instead of like turning it down or calling a tree trimming
business, you'll just pull out the chainsaw.
Yeah. And if my rule is I'll cut
anything that's below 6 to 8 feet.
Does your website have tree trimming, land clearing, and
stump grinding? Because you just described 3
different businesses right there, am I right?
That's right. It's true.
Do not. The reason being is I I try to
stay in my lane because so many tree guys give me so much
business that I don't want to cannibalize that business.
(06:44):
And you don't want to do that. And I don't want to do it, but I
have subbed out a few tree jobs now because I my numbers around
and so I've made some good moneythat way.
We're getting a lot faster, a lot easier to do it.
There is some things to learn with the machine, but you're not
going to break it. How?
Did you find this exact job? This one came from Google, so
they just found. Just organic inbound.
Google I I do Google guaranteed.What's Google guaranteed?
Basically, Google guarantees theservice of certain businesses by
(07:05):
knowing that they're insured andthey have they hit a certain
level of requirement and then you pay per ad, but they put you
at the top. If you look up a service on
Google, they'll have at the top Google guaranteed businesses and
I come up. There the same as LSA.
Yes, similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's the same. You have to go through more of a
verification process, yes. Yeah, you know, if you're an
actually person. Guess what?
He's grinding stumps. OK.
(07:25):
That's this is what I'm good at.Did you get training?
Did you go out with somebody? I watched there's like 7 YouTube
videos of guys grinding stumps on YouTube.
Most of them even have a remote machine so it wasn't even
applicable to this. And I kind of was like all
right, I kind of get it kind of.And then I just I ripped it on a
job. Did you do like a practice job
or anything? I drove it up to your first paid
job. I didn't even have anyway, I
(07:46):
didn't know where to get a practice job and the tree
company sent me one and I was like, all right, let's let's do
it. It was a backyard job, open
backyard. I was very lucky with my first
job. It wasn't super scary, didn't
have any complications, or else I probably would have quit the
first step. But yeah, I just kind of ripped
it and and we got it done. That's a Chris Koerner special
right there. So I'm on the other end of the
spectrum. You and Chris are like, oh, how
hard could it be? I'm just gonna go freaking
figure it out. I'm gonna be like, well, it's
(08:06):
like a diagram show exactly whatdegree I need to lower it by.
There's probably an in between. What would you recommend to
somebody who's like just starting, just jump in like you
did or like should you get some practice first?
You can get some practice definitely if you're starting,
that's probably what I recommend.
I love it, I love it. He's like you.
You could. He's just, he's just being nice
about it. I don't think it's
overcomplicated. If you really want to practice,
come shadow me for a day, fly out to Utah and shadow me for a
(08:28):
day and I'll I'll teach you. But I actually I think you can
you can do this job with. Some practice is unnecessary
friction to just launching. Don't practice just.
Do it? I agree.
I agree. If you worry about practicing
too much, you may never get to the thing.
Totally. I drove it around my parking lot
that I parked the trailer at fora few times just to make sure I
looked. It's like I could kind of drive
it. And then, yeah, the actual
cutting part I figured out on the job.
(08:49):
I will say my salesman hated me.The one that rented me the
machine to start because I called him like once a day for a
couple weeks. Like, dude, it's making this
noise. He's like, yeah, that's normal.
Oh, it's doing this. He's like.
Grinding a stump? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. That's the grinding.
A stump. He made me feel very dumb many
times. He was nice about it, but he I
was like, yeah, I'm an idiot. And then one day you called him
and I'm like, hey, I'm flooding an apartment with a sprinkler.
(09:09):
He's like, that's not normal. He's like, I can't help you.
And I was like, great, all right, we'll figure it out.
Roughly what size are we talking?
Are we talking a foot across, 3 feet across?
What does it look like? Maybe between 2 1/2 and 3 feet
across. OK, so they're good size.
I'll get you an exact quote overtext.
But three stumps that are all like 3 feet across, we're
(09:29):
probably somewhere around around$800 to grind those out
somewhere. If if they're that size, if I
can just text you real quick andyou can text back a picture of
the three stumps and just a diameter measurement.
And if you get me that, that's all I need for a full quote and
then I can send that over to you.
And then if we find a good pricethat works, we can get you on
the schedule probably as soon asWednesday this week.
(09:52):
We're we're pretty busy right now, but we could definitely
find a time to get you in. OK, awesome.
Sounds good, yeah, Text me and Iwill send you a picture right
away. Perfect.
What was your name again? Emily.
Emily. Cool.
I'm Tyler. I'm the owner.
Thank you. How many calls a day do you get?
Two to three, probably two to three.
It depends. Contractors, jobs, I'm adding a
day. I'm probably adding anywhere
from like 3:00 to 5:00 a day during the busy season.
So 2 to 3 calls a day. How many jobs does that turn
(10:14):
into? Probably I I probably 60% of my
close rate. Most guys aren't answering their
phone. Most guys aren't getting quotes
pretty fast. A lot of a lot of people I
compete with our side hustle guys, which is totally fine.
But if I'm I, I can I could beatthem in pretty much everything.
Yes, and prioritize answering the phone exactly.
How much did you make before youeven quit your job on this?
My first month was August of 2024 and I did 9 grand of
(10:34):
revenue with the full time. With a full time job.
With a full time job, I did multiple jobs.
In Utah, you get the luxury of alot of daylight.
So I worked 9:00 to probably 3 year 4 at that old job with that
month. I would do jobs before I'd wake
up at like 5:45, grab the trailer, go do a job, go to the
office, change in the office bathroom downstairs.
I would park my trailer 2 parking lots away so that no one
(10:57):
knew that I was grinding stumps because it was like I, I felt, I
don't know why I felt embarrassed, but I felt
embarrassed. And then I'd go to work the full
day and then I'd have my grinderalready at the parking lot, get
in the trunk at 4:00 and then goRIP like 3 jobs after work.
And then I was home by 8:30. It was still light.
So 9000 before you quit your joband then once you quit your job
at the beginning a month too, what did you do that month, that
month? We just rocket fuel.
(11:18):
It went to we did 23K in the month. 23,000 I think that's
such an important distinction because you crushed it while you
had a job, which is awesome, that tells people that you don't
need to quit. But then when you did quit and
put all your chips in, you really crushed it.
Totally right. It was such a good example of
that and I just remember we had a pre planned vacation from
before I ever started stump grinding to California.
It was the end of August, and wetalked that whole trip about me
(11:41):
quitting my job. And I finally came home and I
was like, all right, I'm going to do do it.
And I walked into the office, quit my job.
And after that, I was like, all right, I have to pay for me and
my wife's life. Yeah.
Through this business I worked like a.
What was that feeling like when you walked out of the office?
Were you scared or were you excited?
Oh, it was electric. It's usually not anywhere in
between, right? Yeah, I drove my grinder to the
office because I had a full day of jobs right after I quit you.
(12:01):
Just rode on the grinder. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rode on the grinder. I quit.
No, it was the most electric feeling in the world.
Walking out of there, just knowing I didn't really like my
job then. It was a good job, but I didn't
like it. $32,000 in the first two months.
Yeah. How long did it take you to make
more in the business than you were making in your job?
To replace my income it kind of honest is about to say right
(12:22):
away like I don't know if I had the exact numbers like carrying
across because in business. Well, in sales, it's lumpy,
right? I didn't have the big Commission
checks coming in. It was more steady.
Some things that normally would have had as personal expenses
were running through the business.
So all in though, it felt like right away.
Basically that first month when you were full time in the
business, you made more than if you had not quit.
I think so. Yeah, yeah.
And I'd never felt like we ever took like a dip in lifestyle or
(12:44):
anything. The reason I also quit wasn't
just because I wanted to go fulltime.
I was looking at my schedule forthe next two weeks and I
realized if I did every job thatI had, I would not be able to
keep the job. Every stump job you had to.
Choose. You were forced in a way.
I would have been fired for sure.
I just had too much work. So she saw that on my schedule
and she's like, oh, that sounds like a good opportunity.
You know, made it easy on it. But it was also probably nerve,
(13:04):
nerve wracking in a sense that you're in a seasonal market and
you're going into the winter, right?
So you're like, all right, we could be really good through
October. But then what?
Did you know that? At that point, yes, I did.
And I was very, that was the piece I was most worried about.
We had a small amount of savingsso I was like, I think we could
make it if we did 0. How much savings?
We had probably 20 grand in savings, $20 yeah, 20 to about
(13:27):
20. I that's probably not exact, but
it was somewhere around there. And I knew like what our costs
were per month. So I was like, we could float
till March of next year if we need to.
But I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to get close.
So I just worked hard and I actually found a lot of winter
work. I mean as long as snow is not on
the ground, which Utah, it snowsa lot, but the snow else in a
day or two here where we live inUtah County.
So I actually found a good lot of.
(13:48):
Work. OK, So you were looking at that.
You're like, I made 32 grand in my first two months.
Profit off of that was what? Probably 26/25/20.
Six. OK.
All right, So $26,000, you got $20,000 in the bank.
So you're like, OK, we're sitting on some money.
We can probably make it through the winter months.
What was your like? Not every month.
Fixed cost for this business at the time was probably like 2 to
3 grand. Because you had probably payment
on the. Truck trailer, stump grinder.
(14:10):
So stump grinder you're renting?How much was that a month?
I bought it at that point. I bought it right when I but it
was it's 900 bucks a month. OK, so you finance it 900 bucks
a month? Yeah.
Truck trailer. Yeah, trailer is like 170 and
the truck is like 490 cold outreach and to do some
marketing, but that even came later.
So I think early on you're right, it was probably.
More towards 2K. So you're like, all right,
overhead on the business, $2000 a month.
(14:31):
Yeah, we're sitting on this cash.
Was your wife working? Yes, she was, and that was
helpful. And she was cool with the was
she like, all right, I'll give you 6 months, yeah.
To figure this out? Or was it like, no, you better
be making money in October? I asked her to give me a year,
so give me a year and I was like, I promise, like if it
doesn't work, I'll just go. I was good at my job before, so
I had a really good network I could bounce back into.
It So you reduce your risk by starting this before you quit.
(14:53):
Yep. You reduce your risk by leasing
a truck, leasing the equipment, renting a parking lot so you
don't have to buy a big lot. Yeah, you did everything right.
It seems yeah, we kept it low and the last piece of like de
risking was and I still feel this way a bit is is I did
everything myself. I wasn't scared to go do the
work. If I if this business would not
have survived the winter if I was like I need an employee
right away. I can't grind stumps.
(15:14):
I can't like go, go to that level.
I was just like, no, I'm going to do everything so I don't have
that cost yet. And in the future I want to
scale and do it right. But early on I was like, if it's
something I don't even mind doing and it's fun.
It's fun. It's a blast.
And this is what I do every day.I listen to a podcast in my
helmet and yeah, I just, I hang out.
It's one of the. Businesses.
I love businesses where there's a stark contrast between before
and after. Yeah, it's like it's so obvious,
(15:36):
the before and after for business like this.
Totally, and I still some days feel like I'm playing dress up
with like Carhartt and stuff andit is what I do every day.
But like, this is not who I was before.
But there's two types of guys that were Carhartt people in
Brooklyn and people that actually do work.
And I was the person in the techoffice wearing Carhartt, so
luckily I had those shirts. You were ready?
Yeah. I was ready to get ready.
But now they're actually like, dirty and like a little bit, you
(15:56):
know, like. He was in the office playing
stump grinding video games in his Carhartt.
I was, I was trying to act like tough to like the guy next.
To start this business, I already have the clue.
Yeah, exactly. That's pretty much most of them.
You reduce your risk by buying Carhartt while you still had a
tech. Job.
Yeah, and I gotta get a truck. Talking about actually, I didn't
have a truck before. I was wearing Carhartt in like a
Nissan Altima. Nothing gets Nissan Altimas, but
(16:17):
you can't wear Carhartt in that.How do you think this is going
so? Far.
I mean, I think it's going well.How do you think?
Pretty good. I think people are loving this
right now. And I want to keep doing stuff
like this. How do you keep?
Doing stuff like this, people need to subscribe.
Yeah. What's your What's your podcast?
I'm the Kerner office, all podcast platforms on YouTube.
What about you? I'm Nick Anomics, same thing,
all podcast platforms. On YouTube.
All right, So what are you guys waiting for?
Like and subscribe already. What can you do with these wood
(16:38):
chips? Do you like resell them?
Do you sell them as mulch or is it too much dirt mixed in?
There's some stuff you have to do, and I'm not a pro on this,
to make it into a mulch that yousell and so you.
Just throw it away. I give it to a landscape that
does that for free. They turn this into mulch and we
have a great relationship that Idumped for free rather than
driving down to the dump. It's right here in Provo, but I
don't currently do anything. With it, how inception would
(16:59):
that be? It's like start a mulching
business from the stump grinding.
If I had a place to just dump big piles I would do that and
have just mulch in my backyard for people to come shovel and
charge him for it. So Chris knows this.
He's a starter. I'm a buy guy.
I've only ever started or boughtbusinesses.
Chris has started businesses from scratch.
But I love this business becauseit doesn't require all of the
(17:21):
personal guarantees, the cash down, the risk associated with
buying a business. You tested it as a side hustle
and then you went into it full time.
You actually looked at buying businesses, didn't you?
Yeah, Yeah, I did. I've always been interested in
entrepreneurship and it felt like very unattainable.
I'd like the how TOS felt very unattainable because I didn't
have an entrepreneur in my family that I really knew of.
(17:42):
And so I, yeah, I was, I read buy, then build the, the classic
buying business book. Walker Dibel realized I didn't
have a lot of money. I mean, I'm young, I didn't have
a lot of money at all to buy business.
So I'm like, why am I dreaming about this?
And then I looked into franchises, which felt a little
bit more approachable, but that felt like a big risk signing on
the dotted line of a franchise. So when I heard this, it just
kind of the light bulb went off.I like to always think about
(18:03):
worst case scenarios and worst case scenario, this business,
the grinders don't really lose value.
Very a ton of value. Trailers don't lose value.
I would have had a truck that I would have drove to my new job,
and that's basically the downside.
If you would have bought a business that like the business
that you're currently doing right now, probably worth in the
mid 6 figures, $600,000, you would have had to put $100,000
down, get an SBA loan, you wouldhave to buy new equipment, you
(18:23):
would have the owner train you, all that stuff.
But you didn't approach. That is freaking a Chris Koerner
special, which is test, iterate,launch, right?
Like you tested the idea first. You didn't quit your job.
You iterated along the way. First you were renting and then
you decided to buy the stump grinder and then you actually
launched when you had enough data and information.
And I mean, that's one of the things I've learned from Chris
is totally test, iterate, launch.
Ready, Fire. Aim.
(18:43):
Absolutely, Absolutely. What I love about your story is
the fact that it was a perfect overlap of your interests and
your skills, Right. You had sales experience?
Yep. So you heard the podcast and
you're like, oh, OK, I I like that.
And then you had Didn't you workon a tree company in high
school? Yeah, I did.
So you're like. Oh, grinding stumps, that is a
pain point, but huh, OK, there'ssomething to that.
And then the third side of that kind of Venn diagram was the
(19:05):
fact that you were already entrepreneurial.
You wanted to start a business or buy a business, but you had
no money. So everything just aligned where
this became like the perfect business for you.
And I think that for for those listening or watching this, like
they need to find the thing thatapplies to them.
Not something that looks sexy, but something they have an
interest in, something they havea history in and a time in their
(19:25):
life or a period of their life when they're ready and or
willing to try or test somethinglike that.
And the other thing is, look at this guy, he's not afraid to get
dirty. And when you get an
entrepreneurship, you can't be afraid to get dirty.
Lots of people are like, I want to buy a business and hire an
operator and for whatever reason, we kind of talk down to
getting in the weeds. You have to get in the weeds.
You don't know what you're doing.
You don't know how to manage a checkbook.
You don't know how to collect. You don't know how to bill.
You don't know how to take callslike you just did.
(19:46):
You got to build the entrepreneurial muscle.
You don't you don't have the experience requisite to like,
quote UN quote, hire an operator.
And if you want to be successfulin entrepreneurship, you have to
jump. And that's Chris has the MIH
gene to make a happy gene. So do you.
You're going to make it happen every single time.
You can only look at a spreadsheet for so long.
You actually acted. On the Make a Happy Gene,
though, there was years, many years before I actually started
this thing that I felt like I didn't have to make it happen
(20:07):
because either I wanted to like buy a business.
I wanted to start a franchise. All these things.
I got cold feet in you. 28 dude.I know, I know I'm hard on
myself, but from 25 to 28 this is what I wanted to do and I
wasn't doing it. So I was like, maybe I don't
have that, you know, make it happen, Gene.
But what you were saying, there is a business model that fits
everyone out there. I truly believe that.
But you have to have like a box around it.
And once you find it, you can't be afraid to actually go and
(20:29):
pursue it. And that was kind of my luck.
Everyone thinks I'm like this gogetter, you know, just super
brave. And there was years before that
that I felt like the guy that would never do anything about.
That that's why we love these isbecause you didn't start a tech
SAS. This isn't like a sexy business
that you bought. We just talk about how that
people can start any business. That's Chris's whole thing is
like you can start any business.You make money off of any
business. Yeah, Chris.
(20:50):
And once you start making off money off 1 business like your
belief in yourself to go make money off of other things that
you want to do just skyrockets. And that's what it's done for
me. OK, so July 11th, Chris and I
have a podcast where we're brainstorming this idea of
starting a stump grinder business, right?
So breakdown the timeline. How long did it take you to
actually execute on that? Yeah, so I heard that episode.
I'm a fan. So this is kind of weird, like
(21:11):
being with you guys. But like, heard the episode July
11th. By July 12th, I had kind of like
tested it in my own market. Wow.
And then by August 3rd, I'd doneeverything I needed insurance,
all the equipment, everything todo my first actual stump job on
August 3rd. And in that month it was just
off and running. We had jobs every day.
You did 9000 that first month, you did $23,000 that second
month, yeah, 25 thousand $26,000in profit, Yeah.
(21:33):
Yeah, I mean, it was, it was just off and running from there.
I listened to your guys podcast over and over and over again
because there's some things in there and how to like test my
market. And so I just listened to that
specific piece probably 10 times.
Got every software you guys talked about.
Actually tried it. I was going to my wife like,
look, this works. I got a few texts back.
I was like, holy crap, I have a business.
I didn't have a business, but I was like, I feel like I have a
business and I was just fired up.
(21:53):
All right, so we don't want people to think that this is all
just rainbows and butterflies. Tell us about some horror
stories that you've had in this business.
Yes, I, and I'm not saying this is passive income, I'll look
into the camera. This is not passive income, but
it is income and it's all, you know, you've worked hard to make
that income. But I've had a lot of nightmare
jobs hitting sprinkler lines, hitting electric lines.
One story from each of these. I hit a sprinkler line at a
(22:16):
townhouse, like a HOA townhouse type thing, and it was really
close to the window and the sprinkler line was pressurized.
Water just started spraying through their window.
It was inside the town open window.
Oh man, I had to. I started banging on the door
and no one was answering. And so I opened their door.
It was open. I opened their door and I was
like, hey, anyone home? Like there's water coming into
your house. Yeah, if the door is unlocked,
(22:36):
it's not breaking. And in the ring, that's kind.
Of what? I Yeah, yeah.
And they ended up shutting the window and and it was OK.
I felt lucky that I had insurance just in case, but we
never even had to use it. How?
Much is your insurance. It's like 400 bucks a month or.
Something that hard to find. No, not really.
So if you're watching this like one of that insurance you buy,
insurance you just buy. Just buy.
It's a cost that you have and you pay it with a few jobs just
(22:56):
like the one we showed today. And keep moving.
You never had any claims? No, never fuck on.
Nope. The only other time I was close
was there's a private electric line going to someone's back
shed. I call the city and they'll come
out and mark electric and water and all these different lines,
but they don't mark private ones.
So they put this a line in themselves.
They told me about it. So this is completely my bad.
And I was like, I probably won'thit it.
(23:18):
Sure enough, going hit it sparksflute everywhere is the scariest
thing. I thought I got electrocuted.
I didn't. I was like at my dad's.
I didn't know. And then you know, sure enough I
blew through their line. I paid for the fix.
It wasn't that big like I thought.
Sparks flying is just an yeah. It was horrifying.
It was actually so scary. It was electric.
So the reason we brought that idea up was because we have a
(23:38):
tree trimming business that Chris was passionate about.
We launched that business. We had a whole like framework of
tools and things that we used, but we had one pain for it.
Yeah, we like, we didn't want togrind the stumps, so we'd have
to go to United Rentals and we'dhave to go find a stump grinder.
And it was just a pain it, it didn't fit into our workflow.
So we started talking on this podcast if someone needs to
start a business to business stump grinding business.
Yeah, not business to consumer, which wasn't really a thing.
(24:01):
And it was just kind of of a theory.
And then you heard that, took itand ran with it.
And from what I understand, yourfirst customers came from B to
B. Didn't you like scrape a bunch
of tree trimming businesses? Yeah, I did kind of exactly what
you guys outlined in the podcast.
I scraped a whole list of tree trimming businesses from all of
the surrounding areas, from where we are here.
And then I started reaching out to him.
I didn't want to burn all the leads, so I didn't reach out to
(24:22):
everyone at one time, but I reached out to 20 or 30 people,
started getting hits back. And I was like, oh, there's
something here. And it, it aligned really well
with my skill set of, of I knew how to sell, I knew how to go B
to B. So I knew how to get in front of
these guys and paint their problem as something I could
solve. And and we started doing it and
they're sure enough there's a market.
For it what is like your framework for finding.
Customers, yeah, I call it a PRAframework.
(24:42):
It's a little bit complicated, but basically.
We're going to dive into that. Yeah, I want to hear that.
What I love about this home service business in particular
is how visual it is. You've got a clear before and
after. You've got a clear time lapse,
and you've been taking advantageof that.
You've been posting that stuff. Yeah.
What has come from that? Yeah, by small Twitter
following, I've I, I was gettingtons of DMS.
How do you do this? How do you do this?
(25:03):
Really basic questions and I've got really sick of hopping on
every call. So I just typed it all up into a
playbook and I sell it for a small amount and it's it's
changed other people's lives like it's crazy.
That's right. 11:50 Guys are full stump grinders across the
country from a little thing I typed up out of my brain.
Yeah, I mean, there's so many people out there starting
businesses that are the same andwe started TK owners so we could
just have them put their heads together and not, you know, go
(25:24):
through all these sprinkler inside the townhouse moments
that that you've had to go through. 100%.
That's that is freaking too funny.
Then where are they? Are they all over the place?
Yeah, Virginia, MN, South Carolina.
I saw one guy plus he's like, oh, I just quoted A200 stump
job. Yeah, that guy, yeah, that guys
a man. He's an old guy that guys like
65, really. So what is your monthly overhead
(25:45):
on this business? Do you want line item by line
item or do you want like a big just the?
Big things. Yeah, big cost probably all add
to depending on the month like 4to 5K currently where we're at.
Now, so this storage law, it's 100 bucks a month.
Yeah, yeah. Your truck lease, trailer lease.
Yep, machine lease. Yep, or insurance.
Insurance gas is probably my leading cost outside of all of
that. Just hauling it around and gas
(26:06):
for the machine and then small things like teeth.
I mean, they've got to get the oil changed on the machine, you
know, just all the classic. Business stuff?
What about things like marketing?
What are you spending on? Google What are you spending on?
Marketing's pretty low. I probably spend 5 to 600 bucks
total a month on Google like LSAstuff.
Your reviews are your marketing in a sense.
Yeah, my reviews and then contractors give me work.
Yeah. So if someone's watching this
(26:26):
and they're like I'm broke, but I love this business, what is
the most cost efficient way to start it?
Most cost efficient you probablydo need some access to a truck.
Is the only thing that you need access?
To you can rent to truck from Home Depot if you need if
you're. Really scrappy.
You could rent the truck, you could rent a trailer, and you
could rent a stump grinder by the day.
Yeah, if you want to rent a small stump grinder, most of
like the rental places, there's one called Sunbelt here, they
(26:48):
rent stump grinders. They're small, but they'll get
the job. Done.
And I think it's important that people don't try to focus on
making a ton of profit that first day, week or month.
Yeah, they need to lessen their risk by renting this stuff
because the unit economics honestly aren't great if you're
renting right. But that gets you learning, it
gets you traction, it gets you some good reviews before and
after. That's exactly what he did
right? He had your full time job and
you decided I'm going to do thison the side.
(27:08):
You didn't buy the machine rightaway.
You didn't hop into, you know, large expenses.
You tested it on the side. You figured out what you're
doing. You actually learned how to
grind stumps. And then when September came and
you realized you were booked out, you're like, all right, I
should probably jump into this alittle more something a little
harder. What were you making in your
B2B? Job I made about it just
depends. There's a lot of Commission, but
about 175 K. OK.
So about 15 grand a month, Yeah.All right.
(27:29):
What are you making currently inyour stump grinding business?
Probably higher than that, probably like 15 to 20, maybe 25
depending on the month. That's probably what we're
walking away with. And how long did it take for you
to get to that spot? Second month?
Second month. Yeah.
Now there is a seasonal part to this business.
It's not like I make that every month of every year, but I have
a lot more freedom to do what I want and, and and achieve those
things from from doing this. OK, So unit economics average
(27:50):
revenue per job it's? Probably around I would say 300
bucks. 300 bucks, OK. And then your average fixed cost
per month that you gave us was about 5000.
Dollars of roughly 4 to 5. I would say it's four most
months unless there's outsize. OK.
So let's say it's $5000, eight, $100 on average bridge.
So you need about 15 jobs, Yeah,just to get to break even.
Usually in week one of the monthis how I think about it.
(28:12):
I pay off my monthly expenses. How many jobs do you do in a
day? Able to do a day it.
Depends. A $300 job you could do five to
six of those in a day. Dang.
OK, yeah. So you could stack it pretty
quick. Oh yeah, yeah.
You got to be smart with your routes and stuff, but yeah, you
can stack it up. So Week 2, you're in a profit.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Would you say this is a competitive market?
Do you mean Utah itself or do you mean the stump granny
market? Utah.
(28:33):
Oh, Utah is a highly competitivemarket.
Yeah, very, very competitive. I've already had had multiple
people try to copy me with the same idea because I post on
Twitter about it. It doesn't really bother me
because I'm better than them, but like I.
Feel like if this could be so successful here, it could be
even more successful elsewhere. Absolutely.
What do you feel like, though, is the differentiator?
Like you said you were better than them.
In my mind, it's like a stump iseither ground or it's not
(28:54):
ground. Yeah.
What do you think you do better?What it like?
What's if somebody's getting into this?
What do they need to execute really really well on in order
to be successful? For me personally, I could give
you, I could give you tons of examples, but I'll give you an
example. You're a you're a tree guy,
you're a tree guy and you only get paid for the job once the
stump is ground, that means the job's done and you get the you
get the tree down Tuesday morning.
If you're a part time guy. And I say, hey, I need this
(29:15):
stump ground now so I can get paid.
And he's like, oh, I could be there Thursday afternoon because
he's busy till then and he worksa full time job, but I could be
there Tuesday morning so you canget paid that day.
Huge advantage right there for atree guy that needs money for
job responsiveness is a huge one.
Second one is having the equipment that isn't the rental
equipment. Once you get to that point.
And I mean, there's quite a few other things that differentiate,
(29:36):
but responsiveness is number onewith contractors because they're
just like me, they want to get paid.
The big reason a lot of people are watching this is, OK,
where's my first customer? Where's my 100th customer?
Do I go through the tree trimming businesses?
Do I go through Mary Homeowner? You talked about this PRA
method. We got to dive into that.
Yeah, absolutely. So the P stands for piggyback.
So we want to piggyback off of existing businesses that have a
(29:57):
pain point, which are tree companies that don't want to do
stuff. Are there other businesses other
than tree trimming that about their work to you?
Absolutely. Landscapers landscape install.
You don't want the the lawn guy.The line guys don't give you
anything. Landscape installers do.
And then fence installers if there's a stump in the fence
line and then the last one is concrete guys.
The last three are like more fewand far between, but they still
need a guy sometimes. Yeah.
(30:18):
How do you find all these guys? You straight big lists
throughout scraper. Great website, you're very
familiar without scraper scrape big big lists of these in
certain geographies. And you just call them, e-mail
them, text them. I usually cold text in bunches,
so 20 to 30. I haven't gotten a hold of every
single ones on my list because some numbers they have aren't.
Yeah, great for them, but that'sthe best way to get in the door.
(30:40):
If they respond to me in any way, shape or form, I'll call
them. Even if it's a no.
Yeah. OK, cool.
I know you're not interested, but this is what I'm doing.
So you're just copy pasting the same text 2030 times?
What is in that text? It's really simple one it's a
picture of my business card, usually right in front of my
Ford shows authority exactly Ford logo on the truck.
It looks like I'm out working. And then it's hey, my name is
Tyler Run a company called grindtime stump grinding.
(31:02):
This is rough, but I was wondering what you do with your
stumps. Do you do them yourself?
Do you sub it out or do you own a machine?
Yeah. And they'll give me one of those
3 answers and then I can go. What percentage of the time do
they respond? 3040% which is pretty good.
I don't do as much of that cold outreach.
It's too busy. Start.
I did. I'm busy and I get referrals and
I still do that sometimes, but it's just it's not as common.
OK. So you launch with piggybacking
(31:23):
which finding someone who already has the distribution to
your ideal customer. Yeah, but you don't do that
anymore. So how are you getting business
now? All of those guys that were
giving me jobs, they're still giving me jobs.
They're still giving you jobs. Oh yeah, so that's the start,
right? You get your I'm like OK, I'm
starting to get to like 15 grandmonths just from contractors.
And then you start taking this is where they are comes in.
You start backdooring reviews from these same customers.
(31:44):
So I'm the last one there. From what I know is all the tree
guys I work for are totally finewith this because they love that
the customer loves me. And so I introduced myself to
the customer because it's after the tree got removed.
I then do the stump job and thenafter I walked to their front
door and say, hey, I run a different company.
I just started and I'm, I'm working really hard to grow my
company here in Utah County. Would you please give me a
review? Sell your story.
That's what you're doing. Absolutely.
(32:05):
If you do that every single timeto a mom, dad, doesn't not
matter, they will pull out theirphone.
It's a little uncomfortable. I wait for them to pull out
their phone. So yeah, I would really like it
helps me grow the. Business, if you leave, they're
not going to do. It no, they're just would you
please? It would help me so much if you
give me a review and then you just stop and they go yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I just wait and then
they go. Oh, wait.
Like now, and they start pullingout their phone and I'm like,
(32:27):
yeah, I got the link right here.It's tactics like that that
really just make this like this video just makes it better
because that matters. That matters so much.
And what you said about the business card, like your your
shoes, your Timberlands in the background in the grass or the
shavings in the background of the picture of you holding the
business card. It's not AI generated.
It's real. You can go to Vista print and
(32:47):
get those for free mailed to you.
Like those little touches make all the difference 100.
Contractors want to know that you're out working and sweating
with them. And so they don't want to think
that you're some guy behind a computer.
Yeah. So like, dude, that guy's in a
backyard asking me if I want to do stuff.
So I'm not actually in a backyard there, but I was in a
backyard and take the picture, Right.
You know, so that's, that helps.Well, I I.
Just think, it's crazy to think about.
You could have had two guys who did the same thing, right?
(33:07):
They got business, they went out, they fulfilled the job.
They did just as good of a job. The customer was just as happy.
But because you decided to be awkward for five seconds, yeah,
you got a review 100% and somebody else didn't.
It's like you're you're uncomfortable for five seconds.
You've got to sit in that discomfort for five seconds and
all of a sudden and it's a differentiator.
Piggyback P reviews are those drive all of your ongoing
business. And before I even get to a, this
(33:29):
is my ADHD talking. Yeah.
I just find it incredible that you spent $0.00 to send a text.
They respond, they show interest, you spend $0.00 to
call them. Yeah.
And that five minute investment pays you hundreds to thousands
of dollars per month. Oh yeah, As long as you don't
screw it up per month forever. Yeah.
I mean, can I tell you my numberone contractor how much he gave
me this summer? Yeah, I think he gave me 25
grand in four or five months. From one text I'm from.
(33:51):
From a text, it's ridiculous. And he was like, yeah, I
actually don't like my contractor at all, but I've
never tried looking for anyone else.
I'll try you out. Yeah, well, that's how the
relationship. Started Even if you're 9 jobs
then and you really screw it up,they're gonna stick with you,
OK? They're used to the other guy
screwing it up every other job. Well and right when I screwed
up, I sent a picture say hey, I just hit a sprinkler line here.
I'm getting it fixed. Don't worry about it, but this
(34:11):
is what is happening. I got this.
Yeah. And they're like, yeah, dude,
things happen all the time. They're.
Trees. They're contractors.
Too. They take out fences half the
time with trees, you know what Imean?
They have big things that happento them, so.
Before you get to the AI, want to hit one more thing on the
reviews side. So my background's healthcare.
Yeah. And we have a saying with our
clinicians, if if you didn't document it, it didn't happen
because we get audited all the time.
And if the auditor comes in and looks and they don't see it in
(34:33):
the notes, yeah, it doesn't matter how much you good you
did, you're going to get tagged for that, right.
I think that translates to everybusiness owner.
If you didn't document, if you didn't get the review, like it
didn't happen. So like, yes, you got paid that
one time for that service, but it doesn't actually translate to
broader brand buildings. I just, I love this.
Like I'm going to get reviews every single time so that people
can see I could build credibility.
I can establish trust. And anyways, I can't, I can't
(34:56):
emphasize it enough. I, I will give you one more
piece of sauce here. The reviews.
I actually didn't start trying to get reviews.
I didn't even have a Google My Business until like month four
or five. Holy cow.
But I did have a big spreadsheetof every job I've done.
And if they gave me the customer's number, it was in the
spreadsheet. So I just ran a full blown like
text blast with smart, you know,text of of my company, have
(35:16):
selfie of me, whatever it was and just be like, Hey, I did
your stump job a few months. You don't remember who I am
totally fine. But we're getting started.
And the day that I started my GMB, I think I got like 15
reviews that day. And those 15 reviews on day one
sends a signal to Google that, yeah, this guy's for real.
Oh yeah, he's probably been in business before he ever created
a Google Business profile. Which they're not used to,
right? Totally.
So then they prioritize you in the algorithm.
(35:37):
Yeah, my SEO guy, he's a friend,so This is why he did it.
But he kind of fired me. He was like, dude, you're at the
top. Like you're getting reviews.
Like we don't put me out of you don't really need to keep paying
me for SEO if you want me to do other stuff, like happy to do
that, But that was pretty fast. All right, what's the?
A the a so piggyback, you get reviews and then you answer the
phone. You guys saw me do it on that
job. I answer every phone call.
(35:57):
My wife gets annoyed I walked out of a movie last night
because I answered the phone during the movie.
Really. I answer the phone without fail.
Contractor Google, you will not call my phone if it's my
business line and get a missed call.
Call in your first month what orfirst few months?
What percentage of your revenue came from other businesses first
today? What percentage of your revenue
is coming from other businesses?When I started was 100% and it
(36:19):
was 100% for about 6 months, like literally 100% unless maybe
a neighbor saw me or something. But it was 100% contractors that
gave me the business. Now it's probably 70-30, maybe
6040 of my own customers and contractors.
So we're growing that side pretty steadily and I think this
is a pretty healthy spot to set where I get my own jobs.
But contractors fill most of my week and then I put the small
(36:41):
jobs that I get. Elsewhere, well it's a trade off
because they're not recurring jobs that they're more
profitable. Exactly and you get 2 reviews
for the price of 1. You get the homeowners review
and the business owners review. Totally.
Yeah. So it's kind of mixing the
revenue, right? You got your one offs that is
just the Google calls and these are great and they they help you
pump revenue. But if you don't have good
contractor relationships those days that you get 0 calls from
(37:02):
Google, you're going to want theguy texting you that they have a
job for you next week. So you want both?
I want you to be honest with me.What's the plan?
Hire more employees? Expand in new markets?
What are you doing next with this business?
My honest answer to that is I think I'm going to move into a
bigger service and never leave this behind.
I don't want to say it's on autopilot because I do work hard
every day, but it is not. It doesn't take a ton of brain
(37:24):
work to get the revenue. Getting the business is kind of
on autopilot. It kind of is, and so I could
put a guy in my seat to do the grinding every single day and
still make enough money to pay our bills and save some.
Extra how much money, how much profit would you make per year
today if you didn't grow it and you outsourced your operations?
North of 115, probably 120. Wow.
To sit at home. Probably, yeah.
(37:44):
Yeah, probably. Maybe a bit more depending on
where this is growing to, but currently right now if it just
stayed where it is right now, itprobably about there.
The point I wanted to highlight is a lot of people think, oh, I
started a business, now it's gotto grow.
Now I got to double it. Now I got to triple it.
Like you've gotten to the place where your business is kicking
off good cash. You've managed it.
You don't need to grow, but you've you've grown to the point
now where your life is kind of where you want it to be.
(38:06):
But you've gained an experience as an entrepreneur.
Yeah. So now you can move into
something else. And you understand, OK, how do I
market? How do I price things?
How do I manage people? What do logistics look like?
Right. But you got that experience with
a great business. Yeah, you got your feet wet with
it. You kind of know what you do and
don't like, and you can move on with very low risk.
Like to me, that's the best example for someone who's
getting into entrepreneurship. And the freedom that I have now
(38:26):
is like unmatched compared to when I was in AW2 job.
I can go explore those other ideas that I have or businesses
that my wife wants to start or is starting and say, oh, you
need me for 1/2 day to help you with this thing Easy.
Like I'll just not schedule jobsfor Wednesday afternoon and go
do them or I'll take a full day off or I'll do this XYZ.
Once you get into the game, it'sso much easier to like keep
playing other. Games level up in the game.
That's what this is to me, is I got into the game.
(38:48):
I'm going to keep it as part of my game for probably a very long
time, but I don't think this will be my only game.
And I freaking I love. That, I mean, that's the keyword
freedom. That's like, that's why we're
all doing this, right? It's not even necessarily
financial freedom, it's just freedom 100%.
Chris has been a hustler his whole life.
He's never worked for anybody after college.
Like he's he's just always done his own thing.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum.
I wanted to like have everythinglined up.
And what I've learned now is youlearn by doing totally.
(39:10):
And as you learn by doing, you can get into other things, but
then you have freedom. Then you have control of your
time if your schedule. Anyways, your story is really
inspiring. Thank you.
Appreciate you. All right, so someone's watching
this and they're like, I love this business, I want to do this
business. What would you tell them to do?
Yeah, First off, I'd tell them to go do something about it and
actually just start it. The second thing I'd tell them
to do if they want a little bit more hand holding is I've put
together like a small community playbook course kind of on, on
(39:32):
how to get this done and to avoid some of the pitfalls that
I fell into. I, I really wish I had someone
to hold my hand and answer some of these questions early on so
that to save my time because I'mout grinding stumps, I put this
together for people to come together and learn how to do it,
to do this in their market. Had 100 people who bought your
playbook and more than a dozen who've actually launched
businesses in other markets, right?
Yeah. So we already know it works.
(39:53):
We know it works in pretty much any market that people try it
in, no matter what the Twitter haters say.
It does work in California. It does work in the Northeast.
It does work everywhere. And and yeah, it's amazing to
see. There's been 8 to 12 guys that I
know of. There's probably more but that
are grinding stumps and make an extra income with.
It well, I mean, I filmed this video right here about appliance
rental and hundreds of people started them and some of them
are like on top of each other inthe same market.
(40:14):
Do you offer any sort of like loose protection on people?
Like you won't sell to the same people that are in the same
town. Yeah, that's actually the only
thing that really I feel like differentiates us outside of
having a a school with some really good information is that
I actually care about people. And if they're putting their
hard earned money towards something like this, I don't
want them to just have somethingthat's already been done in
their market. Yeah.
So if someone's in Tampa Bay or if someone's in Cincinnati and
(40:36):
they are part of our course or our school, we don't sell to
another person in Tampa Bay or Cincinnati to allow the guys in
our group to thrive because we want them to thrive.
And that's that's our whole goal.
How much did you make before youeven quit your job on this?
I did 9 grand of revenue with the full time. $32,000 in your
first two months if. It's one stump sitting there.
I have a $200 minimum. 200 bucksfor 5 minutes of work.
What? Percentage of the time do they
respond? 3040% So I didn't even have a
Google My Business to tell like month four or five.
And worst case scenario, this business, the grinders don't
really lose value, Trailers don't lose value.
I would have had a truck that I would have drove to my new job.
(00:21):
If someone's watching this and they're like, I'm broke, but I
love this business, what is the most cost official way to start
it? You could rent the truck, you
could rent a trailer, and you can rent a stump by the day.
What were you making to be abouta?
175K How do you? Find all these guys.
You scrape big lists throughout scraper.
I just find it incredible that you spent $0.00 to send a text,
you spend $0.00 to call them, and that five minute investment
(00:42):
pays you hundreds to thousands of dollars per month.
Can I tell you my number one contractor, how much you gave me
this summer? Yeah, I think you gave me 25
grand in four or five. Months.
I'm out of here. It's ridiculous whoever said
that money doesn't grow on treesnever thought to check in the
stump. So today I'm going to tell you
about Tyler. Tyler is a 28 year old that one
year ago was listening to my podcast where Nick and I were
(01:04):
talking about the stump grindingbusiness and how profitable it
would be. He liked that segment so much he
listened to it. 100 * 2 months later he had quit his job and
made $26,000 of net profit. And the best part?
He has no employees. So today we're going to cover
how to do, but he does, how to avoid any land mines and most
importantly, how to find customers.
(01:24):
So today I'm going to talk to Tyler.
I'm going to talk to Nick. We're going to break down this
business and show you exactly what you need to do to copy
everything he did. So let's go all right, if you
are a long time listener of thispod, you may remember episode 37
where my friend Nick and I talk about the stump grinding
business and then Tyler Mumford in Provo, UT heard it, loved it,
(01:48):
was inspired by it, started his own stump grinding business.
He did 9K the first month, 23 K the second month, and then in
episode 140, Nick and I had him on my podcast to talk to him
exactly about how it's gone. Well, this is Part 3.
This is the follow up to the follow up.
This one is the most in depth version yet because I flew to
Provo, UT a couple months ago. I caught a BYU game.
(02:10):
I met up with Tyler, I met up with Nick and we went and ground
some stumps and I got a ton moredetails on how a stump grinding
business is going. So if you are listening to this
on audio only, we have specifically edited this episode
to be just for you. But if you want a little more
dimension to this episode, then you can now either watch on
Spotify video or on YouTube and it should go live on YouTube on
(02:31):
October 22nd or 23rd. Please enjoy and be inspired.
How many jobs did you do before you got like a big fancy
trailer? I had like 70K in revenue before
I got anything wrapped or any branding or I think before I
even had to Google My Business. They've already cut you.
Got a call from who? The homeowner?
Yeah. Really.
Yeah. How'd they find you?
I'm like #1 on in Utah County. That's a brag.
How are you #1? A lot of reviews.
(02:52):
So, name of the game? Name of the game.
And I actually kind of backdoored some reviews.
So this is kind of cool because it's a sub business to start.
So everything, probably my first50 grand of revenue was just
from Subs. Explain what you mean by that.
OK, so walking through this, a tree company came here at one
time and took the trees down. What the tree company hates
doing is they hate doing the stumps themselves.
They have to bring another trailer.
(03:12):
They have to bring this whole setup outside of their chip
truck, their chipper. You guys get it?
You guys have a tree company? They hate doing the stumps for
the same reason you hate haulingaway the shaving.
It just doesn't go into. Your workflow, it's another
service not in the workflow. And so I approached a bunch of
different tree companies and asked who was doing their stumps
for them. Some of them had their own
machine, some rented somewhere using another sub.
The people that rented or using another sub are like my prime
(03:34):
customer because if you're renting, hey, I can save you
money and a headache of doing it.
If you're using another sub, I can be better than your sub.
Do it for maybe a dollar cheaper, or do it better, be
more on time, whatever. What do you mean you backdoored
into those reviews? Oh, so yeah, so that's how I got
my first 50 grand of revenue wasdoing jobs for tree companies
companies. But The thing is that wasn't my
customer technically, but with the tree company doesn't know is
(03:56):
I'm the last person here on the job site.
So after the job, after everything, once I got my GM
live, I would do the job. I would meet him first just to
be a good stub and just say, hey, I'm Tyler, I'm with a
different company. I'm here to do your stump.
I would do the job and then walkup to the the homeowner and be
like, hey, if you felt like I did a good job today and you
know, I put on a little charm, say, hey, could you give me a
review? They were giving the company
that didn't even land the customer review.
(04:17):
And so that's how I got my first7075 reviews.
And then it's not the most competitive industry in the
world. So it's not super hard to get to
the stop. Did you know that when you
started or did you go with the thesis of like, oh, I'm going to
go to be a sub, That's how I'm going to get all my business?
I thought it was going to be a complete sub business.
That's kind of the idea that I heard from your guys podcast and
that was my idea going in. But slowly but surely I was, I
(04:37):
was here about other guys getting jobs from Google.
So I was like, oh, there has to be some revenue there.
There's not a ton because usually people have this out
when the tree is out. But if you buy a house or
whatever it is and, and you're inheriting like a beat up
backyard, there's stumps and things that need done.
So they'll look up stump removaland I come up.
The crazy thing is, especially with the change in this, you've
got chat TBT, which is kind of eating Google's lunch on the
search side. Yeah, but Google business
(04:58):
profile. I mean, that's the name of the
game, especially for local businesses like this that that's
not going away. It's only growing in popularity.
OK, so how do you bid this? Like, I look at this, I'm like,
I don't know what I'm. It's a yeah, it's a stump, $50.
It's a. Great question.
You kind of eye it a bit more than you do full measurements.
But if it's one stump sitting there, I have a $200 minimum.
So if you want me to show up to your backyard, it's going to be
$200 better. It's this big or, you know, and
(05:19):
then it's on a price per inch. So you measure the diameter here
in where I live, I I charge about 7 bucks an inch.
Down South where there's more trees, I've heard guys charge as
low as like 3 bucks an inch. But they're getting tons bigger
machines and tons more labor anda year round and they're year
round. And yeah, so there's different
price per inches, for example, 18 inches.
And the widest point. From the widest point, I always
try to I the wise point. Nick, you're good at math 7 *
(05:42):
18. 7 * 18 is 126 dollars. OK, $126.00.
So for this it would just be 200.
Bucks, but you want to measure like most men.
You want to measure where you get the longest.
From the base, from the. Base Wow, that's interesting.
This takes me about 5 minutes. 200 bucks for 5 minutes of.
Work. Not every jobs that easy.
You got to be careful because you're not just including your
own man hours like this is a very expensive machine and it
(06:02):
depreciate so you have to price jobs well so you don't lose.
How tall is too tall? Too tall is about. 20 inches, it
depends on your grinder, but 20 inches off the ground, yeah,
there's a trade off. So the taller it is, the more
chips that are going to come offit.
So if you're doing the cleanup, a lot of times you want to cut
it as low as possible before yougrind.
That's why I have a really cool chainsaw with a three foot bar
in the back of my truck, which is cool.
(06:22):
So instead of like turning it down or calling a tree trimming
business, you'll just pull out the chainsaw.
Yeah. And if my rule is I'll cut
anything that's below 6 to 8 feet.
Does your website have tree trimming, land clearing, and
stump grinding? Because you just described 3
different businesses right there, am I right?
That's right. It's true.
Do not. The reason being is I I try to
stay in my lane because so many tree guys give me so much
business that I don't want to cannibalize that business.
(06:44):
And you don't want to do that. And I don't want to do it, but I
have subbed out a few tree jobs now because I my numbers around
and so I've made some good moneythat way.
We're getting a lot faster, a lot easier to do it.
There is some things to learn with the machine, but you're not
going to break it. How?
Did you find this exact job? This one came from Google, so
they just found. Just organic inbound.
Google I I do Google guaranteed.What's Google guaranteed?
Basically, Google guarantees theservice of certain businesses by
(07:05):
knowing that they're insured andthey have they hit a certain
level of requirement and then you pay per ad, but they put you
at the top. If you look up a service on
Google, they'll have at the top Google guaranteed businesses and
I come up. There the same as LSA.
Yes, similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's the same. You have to go through more of a
verification process, yes. Yeah, you know, if you're an
actually person. Guess what?
He's grinding stumps. OK.
(07:25):
That's this is what I'm good at.Did you get training?
Did you go out with somebody? I watched there's like 7 YouTube
videos of guys grinding stumps on YouTube.
Most of them even have a remote machine so it wasn't even
applicable to this. And I kind of was like all
right, I kind of get it kind of.And then I just I ripped it on a
job. Did you do like a practice job
or anything? I drove it up to your first paid
job. I didn't even have anyway, I
(07:46):
didn't know where to get a practice job and the tree
company sent me one and I was like, all right, let's let's do
it. It was a backyard job, open
backyard. I was very lucky with my first
job. It wasn't super scary, didn't
have any complications, or else I probably would have quit the
first step. But yeah, I just kind of ripped
it and and we got it done. That's a Chris Koerner special
right there. So I'm on the other end of the
spectrum. You and Chris are like, oh, how
hard could it be? I'm just gonna go freaking
figure it out. I'm gonna be like, well, it's
(08:06):
like a diagram show exactly whatdegree I need to lower it by.
There's probably an in between. What would you recommend to
somebody who's like just starting, just jump in like you
did or like should you get some practice first?
You can get some practice definitely if you're starting,
that's probably what I recommend.
I love it, I love it. He's like you.
You could. He's just, he's just being nice
about it. I don't think it's
overcomplicated. If you really want to practice,
come shadow me for a day, fly out to Utah and shadow me for a
(08:28):
day and I'll I'll teach you. But I actually I think you can
you can do this job with. Some practice is unnecessary
friction to just launching. Don't practice just.
Do it? I agree.
I agree. If you worry about practicing
too much, you may never get to the thing.
Totally. I drove it around my parking lot
that I parked the trailer at fora few times just to make sure I
looked. It's like I could kind of drive
it. And then, yeah, the actual
cutting part I figured out on the job.
(08:49):
I will say my salesman hated me.The one that rented me the
machine to start because I called him like once a day for a
couple weeks. Like, dude, it's making this
noise. He's like, yeah, that's normal.
Oh, it's doing this. He's like.
Grinding a stump? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. That's the grinding.
A stump. He made me feel very dumb many
times. He was nice about it, but he I
was like, yeah, I'm an idiot. And then one day you called him
and I'm like, hey, I'm flooding an apartment with a sprinkler.
(09:09):
He's like, that's not normal. He's like, I can't help you.
And I was like, great, all right, we'll figure it out.
Roughly what size are we talking?
Are we talking a foot across, 3 feet across?
What does it look like? Maybe between 2 1/2 and 3 feet
across. OK, so they're good size.
I'll get you an exact quote overtext.
But three stumps that are all like 3 feet across, we're
(09:29):
probably somewhere around around$800 to grind those out
somewhere. If if they're that size, if I
can just text you real quick andyou can text back a picture of
the three stumps and just a diameter measurement.
And if you get me that, that's all I need for a full quote and
then I can send that over to you.
And then if we find a good pricethat works, we can get you on
the schedule probably as soon asWednesday this week.
(09:52):
We're we're pretty busy right now, but we could definitely
find a time to get you in. OK, awesome.
Sounds good, yeah, Text me and Iwill send you a picture right
away. Perfect.
What was your name again? Emily.
Emily. Cool.
I'm Tyler. I'm the owner.
Thank you. How many calls a day do you get?
Two to three, probably two to three.
It depends. Contractors, jobs, I'm adding a
day. I'm probably adding anywhere
from like 3:00 to 5:00 a day during the busy season.
So 2 to 3 calls a day. How many jobs does that turn
(10:14):
into? Probably I I probably 60% of my
close rate. Most guys aren't answering their
phone. Most guys aren't getting quotes
pretty fast. A lot of a lot of people I
compete with our side hustle guys, which is totally fine.
But if I'm I, I can I could beatthem in pretty much everything.
Yes, and prioritize answering the phone exactly.
How much did you make before youeven quit your job on this?
My first month was August of 2024 and I did 9 grand of
(10:34):
revenue with the full time. With a full time job.
With a full time job, I did multiple jobs.
In Utah, you get the luxury of alot of daylight.
So I worked 9:00 to probably 3 year 4 at that old job with that
month. I would do jobs before I'd wake
up at like 5:45, grab the trailer, go do a job, go to the
office, change in the office bathroom downstairs.
I would park my trailer 2 parking lots away so that no one
(10:57):
knew that I was grinding stumps because it was like I, I felt, I
don't know why I felt embarrassed, but I felt
embarrassed. And then I'd go to work the full
day and then I'd have my grinderalready at the parking lot, get
in the trunk at 4:00 and then goRIP like 3 jobs after work.
And then I was home by 8:30. It was still light.
So 9000 before you quit your joband then once you quit your job
at the beginning a month too, what did you do that month, that
month? We just rocket fuel.
(11:18):
It went to we did 23K in the month. 23,000 I think that's
such an important distinction because you crushed it while you
had a job, which is awesome, that tells people that you don't
need to quit. But then when you did quit and
put all your chips in, you really crushed it.
Totally right. It was such a good example of
that and I just remember we had a pre planned vacation from
before I ever started stump grinding to California.
It was the end of August, and wetalked that whole trip about me
(11:41):
quitting my job. And I finally came home and I
was like, all right, I'm going to do do it.
And I walked into the office, quit my job.
And after that, I was like, all right, I have to pay for me and
my wife's life. Yeah.
Through this business I worked like a.
What was that feeling like when you walked out of the office?
Were you scared or were you excited?
Oh, it was electric. It's usually not anywhere in
between, right? Yeah, I drove my grinder to the
office because I had a full day of jobs right after I quit you.
(12:01):
Just rode on the grinder. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rode on the grinder. I quit.
No, it was the most electric feeling in the world.
Walking out of there, just knowing I didn't really like my
job then. It was a good job, but I didn't
like it. $32,000 in the first two months.
Yeah. How long did it take you to make
more in the business than you were making in your job?
To replace my income it kind of honest is about to say right
(12:22):
away like I don't know if I had the exact numbers like carrying
across because in business. Well, in sales, it's lumpy,
right? I didn't have the big Commission
checks coming in. It was more steady.
Some things that normally would have had as personal expenses
were running through the business.
So all in though, it felt like right away.
Basically that first month when you were full time in the
business, you made more than if you had not quit.
I think so. Yeah, yeah.
And I'd never felt like we ever took like a dip in lifestyle or
(12:44):
anything. The reason I also quit wasn't
just because I wanted to go fulltime.
I was looking at my schedule forthe next two weeks and I
realized if I did every job thatI had, I would not be able to
keep the job. Every stump job you had to.
Choose. You were forced in a way.
I would have been fired for sure.
I just had too much work. So she saw that on my schedule
and she's like, oh, that sounds like a good opportunity.
You know, made it easy on it. But it was also probably nerve,
(13:04):
nerve wracking in a sense that you're in a seasonal market and
you're going into the winter, right?
So you're like, all right, we could be really good through
October. But then what?
Did you know that? At that point, yes, I did.
And I was very, that was the piece I was most worried about.
We had a small amount of savingsso I was like, I think we could
make it if we did 0. How much savings?
We had probably 20 grand in savings, $20 yeah, 20 to about
(13:27):
20. I that's probably not exact, but
it was somewhere around there. And I knew like what our costs
were per month. So I was like, we could float
till March of next year if we need to.
But I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to get close.
So I just worked hard and I actually found a lot of winter
work. I mean as long as snow is not on
the ground, which Utah, it snowsa lot, but the snow else in a
day or two here where we live inUtah County.
So I actually found a good lot of.
(13:48):
Work. OK, So you were looking at that.
You're like, I made 32 grand in my first two months.
Profit off of that was what? Probably 26/25/20.
Six. OK.
All right, So $26,000, you got $20,000 in the bank.
So you're like, OK, we're sitting on some money.
We can probably make it through the winter months.
What was your like? Not every month.
Fixed cost for this business at the time was probably like 2 to
3 grand. Because you had probably payment
on the. Truck trailer, stump grinder.
(14:10):
So stump grinder you're renting?How much was that a month?
I bought it at that point. I bought it right when I but it
was it's 900 bucks a month. OK, so you finance it 900 bucks
a month? Yeah.
Truck trailer. Yeah, trailer is like 170 and
the truck is like 490 cold outreach and to do some
marketing, but that even came later.
So I think early on you're right, it was probably.
More towards 2K. So you're like, all right,
overhead on the business, $2000 a month.
(14:31):
Yeah, we're sitting on this cash.
Was your wife working? Yes, she was, and that was
helpful. And she was cool with the was
she like, all right, I'll give you 6 months, yeah.
To figure this out? Or was it like, no, you better
be making money in October? I asked her to give me a year,
so give me a year and I was like, I promise, like if it
doesn't work, I'll just go. I was good at my job before, so
I had a really good network I could bounce back into.
It So you reduce your risk by starting this before you quit.
(14:53):
Yep. You reduce your risk by leasing
a truck, leasing the equipment, renting a parking lot so you
don't have to buy a big lot. Yeah, you did everything right.
It seems yeah, we kept it low and the last piece of like de
risking was and I still feel this way a bit is is I did
everything myself. I wasn't scared to go do the
work. If I if this business would not
have survived the winter if I was like I need an employee
right away. I can't grind stumps.
(15:14):
I can't like go, go to that level.
I was just like, no, I'm going to do everything so I don't have
that cost yet. And in the future I want to
scale and do it right. But early on I was like, if it's
something I don't even mind doing and it's fun.
It's fun. It's a blast.
And this is what I do every day.I listen to a podcast in my
helmet and yeah, I just, I hang out.
It's one of the. Businesses.
I love businesses where there's a stark contrast between before
and after. Yeah, it's like it's so obvious,
(15:36):
the before and after for business like this.
Totally, and I still some days feel like I'm playing dress up
with like Carhartt and stuff andit is what I do every day.
But like, this is not who I was before.
But there's two types of guys that were Carhartt people in
Brooklyn and people that actually do work.
And I was the person in the techoffice wearing Carhartt, so
luckily I had those shirts. You were ready?
Yeah. I was ready to get ready.
But now they're actually like, dirty and like a little bit, you
(15:56):
know, like. He was in the office playing
stump grinding video games in his Carhartt.
I was, I was trying to act like tough to like the guy next.
To start this business, I already have the clue.
Yeah, exactly. That's pretty much most of them.
You reduce your risk by buying Carhartt while you still had a
tech. Job.
Yeah, and I gotta get a truck. Talking about actually, I didn't
have a truck before. I was wearing Carhartt in like a
Nissan Altima. Nothing gets Nissan Altimas, but
(16:17):
you can't wear Carhartt in that.How do you think this is going
so? Far.
I mean, I think it's going well.How do you think?
Pretty good. I think people are loving this
right now. And I want to keep doing stuff
like this. How do you keep?
Doing stuff like this, people need to subscribe.
Yeah. What's your What's your podcast?
I'm the Kerner office, all podcast platforms on YouTube.
What about you? I'm Nick Anomics, same thing,
all podcast platforms. On YouTube.
All right, So what are you guys waiting for?
Like and subscribe already. What can you do with these wood
(16:38):
chips? Do you like resell them?
Do you sell them as mulch or is it too much dirt mixed in?
There's some stuff you have to do, and I'm not a pro on this,
to make it into a mulch that yousell and so you.
Just throw it away. I give it to a landscape that
does that for free. They turn this into mulch and we
have a great relationship that Idumped for free rather than
driving down to the dump. It's right here in Provo, but I
don't currently do anything. With it, how inception would
(16:59):
that be? It's like start a mulching
business from the stump grinding.
If I had a place to just dump big piles I would do that and
have just mulch in my backyard for people to come shovel and
charge him for it. So Chris knows this.
He's a starter. I'm a buy guy.
I've only ever started or boughtbusinesses.
Chris has started businesses from scratch.
But I love this business becauseit doesn't require all of the
(17:21):
personal guarantees, the cash down, the risk associated with
buying a business. You tested it as a side hustle
and then you went into it full time.
You actually looked at buying businesses, didn't you?
Yeah, Yeah, I did. I've always been interested in
entrepreneurship and it felt like very unattainable.
I'd like the how TOS felt very unattainable because I didn't
have an entrepreneur in my family that I really knew of.
(17:42):
And so I, yeah, I was, I read buy, then build the, the classic
buying business book. Walker Dibel realized I didn't
have a lot of money. I mean, I'm young, I didn't have
a lot of money at all to buy business.
So I'm like, why am I dreaming about this?
And then I looked into franchises, which felt a little
bit more approachable, but that felt like a big risk signing on
the dotted line of a franchise. So when I heard this, it just
kind of the light bulb went off.I like to always think about
(18:03):
worst case scenarios and worst case scenario, this business,
the grinders don't really lose value.
Very a ton of value. Trailers don't lose value.
I would have had a truck that I would have drove to my new job,
and that's basically the downside.
If you would have bought a business that like the business
that you're currently doing right now, probably worth in the
mid 6 figures, $600,000, you would have had to put $100,000
down, get an SBA loan, you wouldhave to buy new equipment, you
(18:23):
would have the owner train you, all that stuff.
But you didn't approach. That is freaking a Chris Koerner
special, which is test, iterate,launch, right?
Like you tested the idea first. You didn't quit your job.
You iterated along the way. First you were renting and then
you decided to buy the stump grinder and then you actually
launched when you had enough data and information.
And I mean, that's one of the things I've learned from Chris
is totally test, iterate, launch.
Ready, Fire. Aim.
(18:43):
Absolutely, Absolutely. What I love about your story is
the fact that it was a perfect overlap of your interests and
your skills, Right. You had sales experience?
Yep. So you heard the podcast and
you're like, oh, OK, I I like that.
And then you had Didn't you workon a tree company in high
school? Yeah, I did.
So you're like. Oh, grinding stumps, that is a
pain point, but huh, OK, there'ssomething to that.
And then the third side of that kind of Venn diagram was the
(19:05):
fact that you were already entrepreneurial.
You wanted to start a business or buy a business, but you had
no money. So everything just aligned where
this became like the perfect business for you.
And I think that for for those listening or watching this, like
they need to find the thing thatapplies to them.
Not something that looks sexy, but something they have an
interest in, something they havea history in and a time in their
(19:25):
life or a period of their life when they're ready and or
willing to try or test somethinglike that.
And the other thing is, look at this guy, he's not afraid to get
dirty. And when you get an
entrepreneurship, you can't be afraid to get dirty.
Lots of people are like, I want to buy a business and hire an
operator and for whatever reason, we kind of talk down to
getting in the weeds. You have to get in the weeds.
You don't know what you're doing.
You don't know how to manage a checkbook.
You don't know how to collect. You don't know how to bill.
You don't know how to take callslike you just did.
(19:46):
You got to build the entrepreneurial muscle.
You don't you don't have the experience requisite to like,
quote UN quote, hire an operator.
And if you want to be successfulin entrepreneurship, you have to
jump. And that's Chris has the MIH
gene to make a happy gene. So do you.
You're going to make it happen every single time.
You can only look at a spreadsheet for so long.
You actually acted. On the Make a Happy Gene,
though, there was years, many years before I actually started
this thing that I felt like I didn't have to make it happen
(20:07):
because either I wanted to like buy a business.
I wanted to start a franchise. All these things.
I got cold feet in you. 28 dude.I know, I know I'm hard on
myself, but from 25 to 28 this is what I wanted to do and I
wasn't doing it. So I was like, maybe I don't
have that, you know, make it happen, Gene.
But what you were saying, there is a business model that fits
everyone out there. I truly believe that.
But you have to have like a box around it.
And once you find it, you can't be afraid to actually go and
(20:29):
pursue it. And that was kind of my luck.
Everyone thinks I'm like this gogetter, you know, just super
brave. And there was years before that
that I felt like the guy that would never do anything about.
That that's why we love these isbecause you didn't start a tech
SAS. This isn't like a sexy business
that you bought. We just talk about how that
people can start any business. That's Chris's whole thing is
like you can start any business.You make money off of any
business. Yeah, Chris.
(20:50):
And once you start making off money off 1 business like your
belief in yourself to go make money off of other things that
you want to do just skyrockets. And that's what it's done for
me. OK, so July 11th, Chris and I
have a podcast where we're brainstorming this idea of
starting a stump grinder business, right?
So breakdown the timeline. How long did it take you to
actually execute on that? Yeah, so I heard that episode.
I'm a fan. So this is kind of weird, like
(21:11):
being with you guys. But like, heard the episode July
11th. By July 12th, I had kind of like
tested it in my own market. Wow.
And then by August 3rd, I'd doneeverything I needed insurance,
all the equipment, everything todo my first actual stump job on
August 3rd. And in that month it was just
off and running. We had jobs every day.
You did 9000 that first month, you did $23,000 that second
month, yeah, 25 thousand $26,000in profit, Yeah.
(21:33):
Yeah, I mean, it was, it was just off and running from there.
I listened to your guys podcast over and over and over again
because there's some things in there and how to like test my
market. And so I just listened to that
specific piece probably 10 times.
Got every software you guys talked about.
Actually tried it. I was going to my wife like,
look, this works. I got a few texts back.
I was like, holy crap, I have a business.
I didn't have a business, but I was like, I feel like I have a
business and I was just fired up.
(21:53):
All right, so we don't want people to think that this is all
just rainbows and butterflies. Tell us about some horror
stories that you've had in this business.
Yes, I, and I'm not saying this is passive income, I'll look
into the camera. This is not passive income, but
it is income and it's all, you know, you've worked hard to make
that income. But I've had a lot of nightmare
jobs hitting sprinkler lines, hitting electric lines.
One story from each of these. I hit a sprinkler line at a
(22:16):
townhouse, like a HOA townhouse type thing, and it was really
close to the window and the sprinkler line was pressurized.
Water just started spraying through their window.
It was inside the town open window.
Oh man, I had to. I started banging on the door
and no one was answering. And so I opened their door.
It was open. I opened their door and I was
like, hey, anyone home? Like there's water coming into
your house. Yeah, if the door is unlocked,
(22:36):
it's not breaking. And in the ring, that's kind.
Of what? I Yeah, yeah.
And they ended up shutting the window and and it was OK.
I felt lucky that I had insurance just in case, but we
never even had to use it. How?
Much is your insurance. It's like 400 bucks a month or.
Something that hard to find. No, not really.
So if you're watching this like one of that insurance you buy,
insurance you just buy. Just buy.
It's a cost that you have and you pay it with a few jobs just
(22:56):
like the one we showed today. And keep moving.
You never had any claims? No, never fuck on.
Nope. The only other time I was close
was there's a private electric line going to someone's back
shed. I call the city and they'll come
out and mark electric and water and all these different lines,
but they don't mark private ones.
So they put this a line in themselves.
They told me about it. So this is completely my bad.
And I was like, I probably won'thit it.
(23:18):
Sure enough, going hit it sparksflute everywhere is the scariest
thing. I thought I got electrocuted.
I didn't. I was like at my dad's.
I didn't know. And then you know, sure enough I
blew through their line. I paid for the fix.
It wasn't that big like I thought.
Sparks flying is just an yeah. It was horrifying.
It was actually so scary. It was electric.
So the reason we brought that idea up was because we have a
(23:38):
tree trimming business that Chris was passionate about.
We launched that business. We had a whole like framework of
tools and things that we used, but we had one pain for it.
Yeah, we like, we didn't want togrind the stumps, so we'd have
to go to United Rentals and we'dhave to go find a stump grinder.
And it was just a pain it, it didn't fit into our workflow.
So we started talking on this podcast if someone needs to
start a business to business stump grinding business.
Yeah, not business to consumer, which wasn't really a thing.
(24:01):
And it was just kind of of a theory.
And then you heard that, took itand ran with it.
And from what I understand, yourfirst customers came from B to
B. Didn't you like scrape a bunch
of tree trimming businesses? Yeah, I did kind of exactly what
you guys outlined in the podcast.
I scraped a whole list of tree trimming businesses from all of
the surrounding areas, from where we are here.
And then I started reaching out to him.
I didn't want to burn all the leads, so I didn't reach out to
(24:22):
everyone at one time, but I reached out to 20 or 30 people,
started getting hits back. And I was like, oh, there's
something here. And it, it aligned really well
with my skill set of, of I knew how to sell, I knew how to go B
to B. So I knew how to get in front of
these guys and paint their problem as something I could
solve. And and we started doing it and
they're sure enough there's a market.
For it what is like your framework for finding.
Customers, yeah, I call it a PRAframework.
(24:42):
It's a little bit complicated, but basically.
We're going to dive into that. Yeah, I want to hear that.
What I love about this home service business in particular
is how visual it is. You've got a clear before and
after. You've got a clear time lapse,
and you've been taking advantageof that.
You've been posting that stuff. Yeah.
What has come from that? Yeah, by small Twitter
following, I've I, I was gettingtons of DMS.
How do you do this? How do you do this?
(25:03):
Really basic questions and I've got really sick of hopping on
every call. So I just typed it all up into a
playbook and I sell it for a small amount and it's it's
changed other people's lives like it's crazy.
That's right. 11:50 Guys are full stump grinders across the
country from a little thing I typed up out of my brain.
Yeah, I mean, there's so many people out there starting
businesses that are the same andwe started TK owners so we could
just have them put their heads together and not, you know, go
(25:24):
through all these sprinkler inside the townhouse moments
that that you've had to go through. 100%.
That's that is freaking too funny.
Then where are they? Are they all over the place?
Yeah, Virginia, MN, South Carolina.
I saw one guy plus he's like, oh, I just quoted A200 stump
job. Yeah, that guy, yeah, that guys
a man. He's an old guy that guys like
65, really. So what is your monthly overhead
(25:45):
on this business? Do you want line item by line
item or do you want like a big just the?
Big things. Yeah, big cost probably all add
to depending on the month like 4to 5K currently where we're at.
Now, so this storage law, it's 100 bucks a month.
Yeah, yeah. Your truck lease, trailer lease.
Yep, machine lease. Yep, or insurance.
Insurance gas is probably my leading cost outside of all of
that. Just hauling it around and gas
(26:06):
for the machine and then small things like teeth.
I mean, they've got to get the oil changed on the machine, you
know, just all the classic. Business stuff?
What about things like marketing?
What are you spending on? Google What are you spending on?
Marketing's pretty low. I probably spend 5 to 600 bucks
total a month on Google like LSAstuff.
Your reviews are your marketing in a sense.
Yeah, my reviews and then contractors give me work.
Yeah. So if someone's watching this
(26:26):
and they're like I'm broke, but I love this business, what is
the most cost efficient way to start it?
Most cost efficient you probablydo need some access to a truck.
Is the only thing that you need access?
To you can rent to truck from Home Depot if you need if
you're. Really scrappy.
You could rent the truck, you could rent a trailer, and you
could rent a stump grinder by the day.
Yeah, if you want to rent a small stump grinder, most of
like the rental places, there's one called Sunbelt here, they
(26:48):
rent stump grinders. They're small, but they'll get
the job. Done.
And I think it's important that people don't try to focus on
making a ton of profit that first day, week or month.
Yeah, they need to lessen their risk by renting this stuff
because the unit economics honestly aren't great if you're
renting right. But that gets you learning, it
gets you traction, it gets you some good reviews before and
after. That's exactly what he did
right? He had your full time job and
you decided I'm going to do thison the side.
(27:08):
You didn't buy the machine rightaway.
You didn't hop into, you know, large expenses.
You tested it on the side. You figured out what you're
doing. You actually learned how to
grind stumps. And then when September came and
you realized you were booked out, you're like, all right, I
should probably jump into this alittle more something a little
harder. What were you making in your
B2B? Job I made about it just
depends. There's a lot of Commission, but
about 175 K. OK.
So about 15 grand a month, Yeah.All right.
(27:29):
What are you making currently inyour stump grinding business?
Probably higher than that, probably like 15 to 20, maybe 25
depending on the month. That's probably what we're
walking away with. And how long did it take for you
to get to that spot? Second month?
Second month. Yeah.
Now there is a seasonal part to this business.
It's not like I make that every month of every year, but I have
a lot more freedom to do what I want and, and and achieve those
things from from doing this. OK, So unit economics average
(27:50):
revenue per job it's? Probably around I would say 300
bucks. 300 bucks, OK. And then your average fixed cost
per month that you gave us was about 5000.
Dollars of roughly 4 to 5. I would say it's four most
months unless there's outsize. OK.
So let's say it's $5000, eight, $100 on average bridge.
So you need about 15 jobs, Yeah,just to get to break even.
Usually in week one of the monthis how I think about it.
(28:12):
I pay off my monthly expenses. How many jobs do you do in a
day? Able to do a day it.
Depends. A $300 job you could do five to
six of those in a day. Dang.
OK, yeah. So you could stack it pretty
quick. Oh yeah, yeah.
You got to be smart with your routes and stuff, but yeah, you
can stack it up. So Week 2, you're in a profit.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Would you say this is a competitive market?
Do you mean Utah itself or do you mean the stump granny
market? Utah.
(28:33):
Oh, Utah is a highly competitivemarket.
Yeah, very, very competitive. I've already had had multiple
people try to copy me with the same idea because I post on
Twitter about it. It doesn't really bother me
because I'm better than them, but like I.
Feel like if this could be so successful here, it could be
even more successful elsewhere. Absolutely.
What do you feel like, though, is the differentiator?
Like you said you were better than them.
In my mind, it's like a stump iseither ground or it's not
(28:54):
ground. Yeah.
What do you think you do better?What it like?
What's if somebody's getting into this?
What do they need to execute really really well on in order
to be successful? For me personally, I could give
you, I could give you tons of examples, but I'll give you an
example. You're a you're a tree guy,
you're a tree guy and you only get paid for the job once the
stump is ground, that means the job's done and you get the you
get the tree down Tuesday morning.
If you're a part time guy. And I say, hey, I need this
(29:15):
stump ground now so I can get paid.
And he's like, oh, I could be there Thursday afternoon because
he's busy till then and he worksa full time job, but I could be
there Tuesday morning so you canget paid that day.
Huge advantage right there for atree guy that needs money for
job responsiveness is a huge one.
Second one is having the equipment that isn't the rental
equipment. Once you get to that point.
And I mean, there's quite a few other things that differentiate,
(29:36):
but responsiveness is number onewith contractors because they're
just like me, they want to get paid.
The big reason a lot of people are watching this is, OK,
where's my first customer? Where's my 100th customer?
Do I go through the tree trimming businesses?
Do I go through Mary Homeowner? You talked about this PRA
method. We got to dive into that.
Yeah, absolutely. So the P stands for piggyback.
So we want to piggyback off of existing businesses that have a
(29:57):
pain point, which are tree companies that don't want to do
stuff. Are there other businesses other
than tree trimming that about their work to you?
Absolutely. Landscapers landscape install.
You don't want the the lawn guy.The line guys don't give you
anything. Landscape installers do.
And then fence installers if there's a stump in the fence
line and then the last one is concrete guys.
The last three are like more fewand far between, but they still
need a guy sometimes. Yeah.
(30:18):
How do you find all these guys? You straight big lists
throughout scraper. Great website, you're very
familiar without scraper scrape big big lists of these in
certain geographies. And you just call them, e-mail
them, text them. I usually cold text in bunches,
so 20 to 30. I haven't gotten a hold of every
single ones on my list because some numbers they have aren't.
Yeah, great for them, but that'sthe best way to get in the door.
(30:40):
If they respond to me in any way, shape or form, I'll call
them. Even if it's a no.
Yeah. OK, cool.
I know you're not interested, but this is what I'm doing.
So you're just copy pasting the same text 2030 times?
What is in that text? It's really simple one it's a
picture of my business card, usually right in front of my
Ford shows authority exactly Ford logo on the truck.
It looks like I'm out working. And then it's hey, my name is
Tyler Run a company called grindtime stump grinding.
(31:02):
This is rough, but I was wondering what you do with your
stumps. Do you do them yourself?
Do you sub it out or do you own a machine?
Yeah. And they'll give me one of those
3 answers and then I can go. What percentage of the time do
they respond? 3040% which is pretty good.
I don't do as much of that cold outreach.
It's too busy. Start.
I did. I'm busy and I get referrals and
I still do that sometimes, but it's just it's not as common.
OK. So you launch with piggybacking
(31:23):
which finding someone who already has the distribution to
your ideal customer. Yeah, but you don't do that
anymore. So how are you getting business
now? All of those guys that were
giving me jobs, they're still giving me jobs.
They're still giving you jobs. Oh yeah, so that's the start,
right? You get your I'm like OK, I'm
starting to get to like 15 grandmonths just from contractors.
And then you start taking this is where they are comes in.
You start backdooring reviews from these same customers.
(31:44):
So I'm the last one there. From what I know is all the tree
guys I work for are totally finewith this because they love that
the customer loves me. And so I introduced myself to
the customer because it's after the tree got removed.
I then do the stump job and thenafter I walked to their front
door and say, hey, I run a different company.
I just started and I'm, I'm working really hard to grow my
company here in Utah County. Would you please give me a
review? Sell your story.
That's what you're doing. Absolutely.
(32:05):
If you do that every single timeto a mom, dad, doesn't not
matter, they will pull out theirphone.
It's a little uncomfortable. I wait for them to pull out
their phone. So yeah, I would really like it
helps me grow the. Business, if you leave, they're
not going to do. It no, they're just would you
please? It would help me so much if you
give me a review and then you just stop and they go yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I just wait and then
they go. Oh, wait.
Like now, and they start pullingout their phone and I'm like,
(32:27):
yeah, I got the link right here.It's tactics like that that
really just make this like this video just makes it better
because that matters. That matters so much.
And what you said about the business card, like your your
shoes, your Timberlands in the background in the grass or the
shavings in the background of the picture of you holding the
business card. It's not AI generated.
It's real. You can go to Vista print and
(32:47):
get those for free mailed to you.
Like those little touches make all the difference 100.
Contractors want to know that you're out working and sweating
with them. And so they don't want to think
that you're some guy behind a computer.
Yeah. So like, dude, that guy's in a
backyard asking me if I want to do stuff.
So I'm not actually in a backyard there, but I was in a
backyard and take the picture, Right.
You know, so that's, that helps.Well, I I.
Just think, it's crazy to think about.
You could have had two guys who did the same thing, right?
(33:07):
They got business, they went out, they fulfilled the job.
They did just as good of a job. The customer was just as happy.
But because you decided to be awkward for five seconds, yeah,
you got a review 100% and somebody else didn't.
It's like you're you're uncomfortable for five seconds.
You've got to sit in that discomfort for five seconds and
all of a sudden and it's a differentiator.
Piggyback P reviews are those drive all of your ongoing
business. And before I even get to a, this
(33:29):
is my ADHD talking. Yeah.
I just find it incredible that you spent $0.00 to send a text.
They respond, they show interest, you spend $0.00 to
call them. Yeah.
And that five minute investment pays you hundreds to thousands
of dollars per month. Oh yeah, As long as you don't
screw it up per month forever. Yeah.
I mean, can I tell you my numberone contractor how much he gave
me this summer? Yeah, I think he gave me 25
grand in four or five months. From one text I'm from.
(33:51):
From a text, it's ridiculous. And he was like, yeah, I
actually don't like my contractor at all, but I've
never tried looking for anyone else.
I'll try you out. Yeah, well, that's how the
relationship. Started Even if you're 9 jobs
then and you really screw it up,they're gonna stick with you,
OK? They're used to the other guy
screwing it up every other job. Well and right when I screwed
up, I sent a picture say hey, I just hit a sprinkler line here.
I'm getting it fixed. Don't worry about it, but this
(34:11):
is what is happening. I got this.
Yeah. And they're like, yeah, dude,
things happen all the time. They're.
Trees. They're contractors.
Too. They take out fences half the
time with trees, you know what Imean?
They have big things that happento them, so.
Before you get to the AI, want to hit one more thing on the
reviews side. So my background's healthcare.
Yeah. And we have a saying with our
clinicians, if if you didn't document it, it didn't happen
because we get audited all the time.
And if the auditor comes in and looks and they don't see it in
(34:33):
the notes, yeah, it doesn't matter how much you good you
did, you're going to get tagged for that, right.
I think that translates to everybusiness owner.
If you didn't document, if you didn't get the review, like it
didn't happen. So like, yes, you got paid that
one time for that service, but it doesn't actually translate to
broader brand buildings. I just, I love this.
Like I'm going to get reviews every single time so that people
can see I could build credibility.
I can establish trust. And anyways, I can't, I can't
(34:56):
emphasize it enough. I, I will give you one more
piece of sauce here. The reviews.
I actually didn't start trying to get reviews.
I didn't even have a Google My Business until like month four
or five. Holy cow.
But I did have a big spreadsheetof every job I've done.
And if they gave me the customer's number, it was in the
spreadsheet. So I just ran a full blown like
text blast with smart, you know,text of of my company, have
(35:16):
selfie of me, whatever it was and just be like, Hey, I did
your stump job a few months. You don't remember who I am
totally fine. But we're getting started.
And the day that I started my GMB, I think I got like 15
reviews that day. And those 15 reviews on day one
sends a signal to Google that, yeah, this guy's for real.
Oh yeah, he's probably been in business before he ever created
a Google Business profile. Which they're not used to,
right? Totally.
So then they prioritize you in the algorithm.
(35:37):
Yeah, my SEO guy, he's a friend,so This is why he did it.
But he kind of fired me. He was like, dude, you're at the
top. Like you're getting reviews.
Like we don't put me out of you don't really need to keep paying
me for SEO if you want me to do other stuff, like happy to do
that, But that was pretty fast. All right, what's the?
A the a so piggyback, you get reviews and then you answer the
phone. You guys saw me do it on that
job. I answer every phone call.
(35:57):
My wife gets annoyed I walked out of a movie last night
because I answered the phone during the movie.
Really. I answer the phone without fail.
Contractor Google, you will not call my phone if it's my
business line and get a missed call.
Call in your first month what orfirst few months?
What percentage of your revenue came from other businesses first
today? What percentage of your revenue
is coming from other businesses?When I started was 100% and it
(36:19):
was 100% for about 6 months, like literally 100% unless maybe
a neighbor saw me or something. But it was 100% contractors that
gave me the business. Now it's probably 70-30, maybe
6040 of my own customers and contractors.
So we're growing that side pretty steadily and I think this
is a pretty healthy spot to set where I get my own jobs.
But contractors fill most of my week and then I put the small
(36:41):
jobs that I get. Elsewhere, well it's a trade off
because they're not recurring jobs that they're more
profitable. Exactly and you get 2 reviews
for the price of 1. You get the homeowners review
and the business owners review. Totally.
Yeah. So it's kind of mixing the
revenue, right? You got your one offs that is
just the Google calls and these are great and they they help you
pump revenue. But if you don't have good
contractor relationships those days that you get 0 calls from
(37:02):
Google, you're going to want theguy texting you that they have a
job for you next week. So you want both?
I want you to be honest with me.What's the plan?
Hire more employees? Expand in new markets?
What are you doing next with this business?
My honest answer to that is I think I'm going to move into a
bigger service and never leave this behind.
I don't want to say it's on autopilot because I do work hard
every day, but it is not. It doesn't take a ton of brain
(37:24):
work to get the revenue. Getting the business is kind of
on autopilot. It kind of is, and so I could
put a guy in my seat to do the grinding every single day and
still make enough money to pay our bills and save some.
Extra how much money, how much profit would you make per year
today if you didn't grow it and you outsourced your operations?
North of 115, probably 120. Wow.
To sit at home. Probably, yeah.
(37:44):
Yeah, probably. Maybe a bit more depending on
where this is growing to, but currently right now if it just
stayed where it is right now, itprobably about there.
The point I wanted to highlight is a lot of people think, oh, I
started a business, now it's gotto grow.
Now I got to double it. Now I got to triple it.
Like you've gotten to the place where your business is kicking
off good cash. You've managed it.
You don't need to grow, but you've you've grown to the point
now where your life is kind of where you want it to be.
(38:06):
But you've gained an experience as an entrepreneur.
Yeah. So now you can move into
something else. And you understand, OK, how do I
market? How do I price things?
How do I manage people? What do logistics look like?
Right. But you got that experience with
a great business. Yeah, you got your feet wet with
it. You kind of know what you do and
don't like, and you can move on with very low risk.
Like to me, that's the best example for someone who's
getting into entrepreneurship. And the freedom that I have now
(38:26):
is like unmatched compared to when I was in AW2 job.
I can go explore those other ideas that I have or businesses
that my wife wants to start or is starting and say, oh, you
need me for 1/2 day to help you with this thing Easy.
Like I'll just not schedule jobsfor Wednesday afternoon and go
do them or I'll take a full day off or I'll do this XYZ.
Once you get into the game, it'sso much easier to like keep
playing other. Games level up in the game.
That's what this is to me, is I got into the game.
(38:48):
I'm going to keep it as part of my game for probably a very long
time, but I don't think this will be my only game.
And I freaking I love. That, I mean, that's the keyword
freedom. That's like, that's why we're
all doing this, right? It's not even necessarily
financial freedom, it's just freedom 100%.
Chris has been a hustler his whole life.
He's never worked for anybody after college.
Like he's he's just always done his own thing.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum.
I wanted to like have everythinglined up.
And what I've learned now is youlearn by doing totally.
(39:10):
And as you learn by doing, you can get into other things, but
then you have freedom. Then you have control of your
time if your schedule. Anyways, your story is really
inspiring. Thank you.
Appreciate you. All right, so someone's watching
this and they're like, I love this business, I want to do this
business. What would you tell them to do?
Yeah, First off, I'd tell them to go do something about it and
actually just start it. The second thing I'd tell them
to do if they want a little bit more hand holding is I've put
together like a small community playbook course kind of on, on
(39:32):
how to get this done and to avoid some of the pitfalls that
I fell into. I, I really wish I had someone
to hold my hand and answer some of these questions early on so
that to save my time because I'mout grinding stumps, I put this
together for people to come together and learn how to do it,
to do this in their market. Had 100 people who bought your
playbook and more than a dozen who've actually launched
businesses in other markets, right?
Yeah. So we already know it works.
(39:53):
We know it works in pretty much any market that people try it
in, no matter what the Twitter haters say.
It does work in California. It does work in the Northeast.
It does work everywhere. And and yeah, it's amazing to
see. There's been 8 to 12 guys that I
know of. There's probably more but that
are grinding stumps and make an extra income with.
It well, I mean, I filmed this video right here about appliance
rental and hundreds of people started them and some of them
are like on top of each other inthe same market.
(40:14):
Do you offer any sort of like loose protection on people?
Like you won't sell to the same people that are in the same
town. Yeah, that's actually the only
thing that really I feel like differentiates us outside of
having a a school with some really good information is that
I actually care about people. And if they're putting their
hard earned money towards something like this, I don't
want them to just have somethingthat's already been done in
their market. Yeah.
So if someone's in Tampa Bay or if someone's in Cincinnati and
(40:36):
they are part of our course or our school, we don't sell to
another person in Tampa Bay or Cincinnati to allow the guys in
our group to thrive because we want them to thrive.
And that's that's our whole goal.
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