$23k/Month by Month 2: Exact Playbook (Not Clickbait)

I had 30k in revenue before I ever had a website or domain or anything. This could Definitely be a 3 to $400,000 company here. It could be 5, 6, 700,000, no doubt.

How much of what we said did you go out and implement and it worked. And how much of what we said was it like, yeah, this didn't work. I had to go out and find customers this way.

I'm not joking. Word for word. I had pretty much written down the exact text to send the exact software to try it out. There's pretty much no risk in my day to day.

That's amazing.

I work with the same contractors who can continue giving me same sub jobs all the time. So my marketing spend is almost zero and this wasn't going to hurt me. So I was like, I'm going to try this today.

Yeah. Tyler, I just want to hear what your story is specifically, like what made you want to quit your, your B2B sales job and do this and how has it been going so far?

Yeah, so yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, I was in, I graduated from college about four years ago. I have been in B2B sales since, who have been looking throughout that time to get entrepreneurship in some way. You know, classic. I read buy, then build and I was like, I'm going to buy a business. And I had zero dollars in my bank account. So that, you know, slowly crashed down reality wise. And then looked into some service franchises and there's a lot of moments of cold feet. I heard the idea about a stump grinding business from your podcast originally. I've documented this on, on Twitter a few times. But something clicked there. I'm not really sure why. I was on a tree crew in high school. I'd grind ground like a stump or two, you know, a handle grinder. At the time, never used a machine like what I use now. But yeah, you kind of put it in a perspective. I was like, oh, that's kind of just B2B sales. I know how to do that. And grinding stumps is not that complicated. Like maybe we can just give it a shot and see what happens. And, and yeah, it's slowly. I did not plan on ever quitting my job with stump grinding. I was like, this will help me save more cash. And it slowly progressed from there.

So you, you've always been a grinder?

Always.

Tyler the grinder. That's what they call him.

He's been grinding since college. Chris, you didn't know that?

Yeah, I do now.

When do we have that conversation? Chris?

July.

July 11th. I found the episode just so I had it for my notes. You know what I mean, when I. When I heard it, because I heard it the day it came out. And then August 3rd is when I did my first three jobs from July 11th.

Funny enough, Chris, you were in Utah when we recorded that episode, weren't you? It was serendipitous.

That's. That's perfect.

I don't really remember the whole conversation. What was it about stump grinding that you're like, this is like B2B sales? Cause I don't think stump grinding is like B2B sales, but it is B2B sales.

This is literally a B2B sales business.

95Ish percent of my revenue is. Is what's the differentiator? Reoccurring. So it doesn't. It's not recurring. But I work with the same contractors who continue giving me same sub jobs all the time. So my marketing spend is almost zero. So I build a relationship up front with a company that doesn't have a grinder. They either rent or, you know, they have an old one that's just not great. And it just makes more sense to have someone else do it. Either they don't love their sub currently or they're tired of renting. And we build that relationship slowly. And then now, you know, I just, I just make sure I answer my phone and get back to 10 text really fast, put it on the calendar and get it done.

So these aren't residential clients. The majority of your clients are like, what, apartment complexes? Businesses.

Let me interrupt you, Nick. Let's start a stump grinding business that only goes through tree trimming crews because they're outsourcing their stump grinding to other people. So his customers are the tree trimming business owners, but their customers are residential. He's just not going through residential customers.

Oh, I'm a retired.

They're subbing it out to him now.

I remember. Now I remember this part of the conversation.

And for anyone listening, if they want to go back and listen to this original podcast, it was Episode number 37. July 10th. B2B. Stump grinding. Cash cow or.

Yeah, yeah, no, we're all here. It's. It's perfect.

I'm caught up.

We're here physically.

Yeah.

All right.

So a lot of the stuff we just talk about in theory, right? Where we're like, yeah, dude, this is what you could. Did you go out and implement and it worked. And how much of what we said was it like, yeah, this didn't work. I had to go out and find customers this way.

Yeah, I want to shout out Chris on this. I've mentioned this on Twitter, but. And Chris, I try to always tell people what ideas came directly from you. Still, to this day, I followed, literally, I'm not joking, word for word. There's 10 minutes of the podcast that I probably listened to, I don't know, three, four, five times. And I had pretty much written down word for word, the exact text to send the exact softwares to try it out, trying it in a different market. So I actually tried out using. Tried it out in Boise, even though I was down here in Provo, I was never going to service a stump in Boise, but I wanted to see the demand in a similar market. So I literally did everything from that podcast. Did not change anything. And. And, you know, there was stuff that wasn't covered in the podcast, like brands of machines and, you know, trailers and different things that are just logistics for the business that I had to go learn myself. But how to actually drum up my first customers. It was. It was directly from the podcast.

Nick, let me jog your memory even more. Yeah, I went to upwork and hired a virtual assistant to call hundreds of tree trimming companies in Houston because Houston's like a comparable market to dfw because we were literally thinking about starting this. And then I shared that data with anyone that wanted it in a spreadsheet, and I forget what it was. It was like 10% of the market was willing to sub it out to us, and I think we covered the data on a.

On.

On an episode like a month later or so. Did you ever look at that data, Tyler, and use it, or was it just kind of irrelevant?

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

Gotcha.

So Boise was your test market?

Boise was my test market.

What did it show?

Oh, it was crazy. I remember the first day, I sent out, like, 45 texts, and I had guys calling me like, dude, you need to be in this backyard in, like, 20 minutes. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, I was like, easy, easy. Easy, you know? Like, I. I didn't. There's some uncomfortable conversations there. I felt a little bit dishonest.

I was just lying.

I just listened to a guy on a podcast.

Yes. I don't. Yeah, I was like, dude, I don't grind stumps. You guys are crazy. You know, it was. It was. Yeah. But no, it went fast. That's how fast. I did, like three days of that. And then I was like, I'm going to stop doing this because I'm starting to get into some really weird conversations with people following up with me, like, are you going to show up? I never told anyone I was going to show up anywhere, but there were people, you know, telling me they had jobs for me and. But it was great. I used those opportunities as, like, a conversation. I have an Arizona number. That's where I grew up. And so I was just like, hey, coming from Arizona, this is the pricing down there. Like, what do you. What does the pricing look like up here? Once again, you can judge me for my dishonesty. I mean, that's smart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you were framing it as, hey, I'm already out of market. This is what we usually pay. Help me understand what the pricing is. But really, you were just trying to get pricing.

Yeah. And basically they give me like, oh, yeah, it usually works like this up here. And I was like, okay. Took a ton of notes. And then I was like, I'm sure it probably works pretty similar in Provo and Salt Lake if people can't see.

Chris's face, but right now, hearing Tyler talk about, it's like, I didn't. I didn't lie to anybody outright. And, like, just how uncomfortable he was having those conversations. Chris looks like James Franco in the meme where he's looking over, he has a noose around his neck, and he looks over at the guy, he goes, first time.

First time.

Yeah. That's how. That's how Chris looks right now to Tyler.

I've had so many awkward conversations. That's all I do is just send out texts to hundreds of people to validate things or not. And then it's like, oh, my gosh, no. Next thing I know, there's a 80 foot Santa Claus in. In my front yard.

Yep.

Yeah, that's true story.

First time, dude. Okay, so. So Boise was like, oh, my gosh. Yep, it's here. It's a thing. Yeah, I'm gonna now do this. Where are you? You're in Provo.

I'm in Provo. Yeah.

I'm sorry, Provo. I believe that's how it's pronounced.

Pronounced correct.

Provo.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, that's exactly how it went. I. I brought the same idea down. I actually kind of wish that early on I was like, I wish I was in Boise because I got a little bit better and, like, more opportunities in Boise than I did in my area.

If only you knew somebody in Boise.

Yeah, I wasn't really willing to pick up and move everything right then, but no, it still worked out great. I found my first two to three contractors are guys that give me a ton of work still to this day. And then, you know, you know, after you land your first two or three, the worry of, like, not being able to pay equipment or trailer or just some of that stuff kind of leaves and it's just building from there. So it was awesome to get to those first two, three relationships in the first few weeks, and then slowly after that built. But those. Those first four weeks too. I was doing all this at a. A office of a tech company, so that was fun.

Are you just renting a grinder and going out and doing these jobs, or did you buy one?

I rented for the first month. I found a dealership that was about to pull a new machine out of their new, like, sales into their rental fleet, and they said, hey, you can rent this for the month if you, you know, if you decide to buy it, we'll just roll the rental price into the buy price, which was an awesome win, win for everyone.

So did you never end up doing any jobs in Boise? You just used that to. To test?

Yeah. Didn't I was. I never traveled to Boise at all. So, yeah, it was just a test market.

It's not surprising to me that the outreach fared better in Boise just because I feel like Provo is the most competitive market in the world for anything. You've got like 80,000 return missionaries that have been rejected a million times each, and they're just so ready to launch a business.

Yeah.

It's not surprising, or it is surprising that Boise.

It's not surprising that you had better luck in Boise because Provo is like, the worst for launching stuff. If you can make something work in Provo, mark my words, you can make it work anywhere.

If you can make it here, kid, you can make it anywhere. Freaking New York City.

I mean, Nick, like, on one hand you have all these enterprising return missionary business owners, and then on the other hand, you have a bunch of people like me that are like, oh, okay, Your price is 350. Well, you do 14 cents.

Like what?

Yeah, the combination of those two is not good. We look. We looked at Provo. Remember we did it with.

For tree trimming.

What's his name? Yeah, for tree trimming. And we were like, oh, man, it is high, like, hyper competitive out here in Provo. What was the time? So you listened to it on the 11th, let's say July 11th. What's the timeline here between July 11th and, like, your first booked job? Like, when. When did you start doing the testing in Boise? When did you start looking in Provo? And then when did you have your first book job?

So I listened to it. July 11th, I think I sent my first batch of texts. July 12th. As fast as that outscraper thing happened, I just bias for action. I just went. And the cool thing about this, I have not always been like this. I just want to, like, kind of play both sides of this a little bit in. In that, like, there was a direct way to go test this in a different market, and this wasn't going to hurt me. So I was like, I'm going to try this today. And so July 12, I think I sent my first text. By the end of that week. I was like, this has some legs to it. Like, I started going into dealerships and talking about or, you know, learning about brands of stump grinder. I also emailed probably 50 owners of Stump grinding companies in different states. Just like a quick, like, can I interview you? Can I ask you.

Oh, interesting.

That actually worked well for me. Really well. People are open with their time, especially these stump grinders. They were awesome and kind of got me up to speed really fast on brands and stuff. But yeah, anyways, and then I had my first book job August 3rd. So I remember two jobs that were four stumps. One job was three stumps, and the other job was one stump on August 3rd. That was a Saturday. And it was. It was was. It was electric. It was awesome.

Any, like, horror stories? Like, any just embarrassing stories you screwed something up or something broke?

Yeah, not on the day one, but absolutely. Yeah. I had one at a town home complex. It was for an hoa and there's roots running everywhere. And at the last second, the tree guy was like, dude, I need you to get every single root out. And I was like, okay, we can do that, but, like, we're going to hit a sprinkler line somewhere. And he's like, that's fine, you know, like, let's just do it.

We'll fix it.

Yeah. I was like, all right, whatever, dude. Yeah. And this is my first time working with them, too. So I'm young and dumb and whatever. And we go hit the sprinkler line. It's right next. I can't make this up. This is a summer day in Utah right next to a window of a townhome. The sprinkler starts, like, the highest pressure water you've ever seen starts coming through this person's window. It's fine.

It's fine.

The window is open. I basically break into their house. I like, slam, slam, slam. They don't come in two seconds. I open. I was like, hey, is anyone home? You know, because I do not want to flood their whole living room. Finally, they come downstairs. We shut the window. We finally figure out where the sprinkler Turnoff is, because HOAs are weird. It was, like, at the front of the property. And then he was like, oh, yeah, you're going to be on the hook for this, by the way. So I'd never made any. I didn't make a dollar off that job, which was a nightmare. But, yeah, I mean, a few things like that. But overall, what you do as a stump grinder, as long as you call in, like, utility locates, it's pretty simple.

Was that Derek Sorensen? It was Derek Sorensen, wasn't it? Freaking brother Sorensen.

It was Braden Christensen.

Was it Braden Christensen? Gosh dang it, dude.

Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it was. Yeah. Joseph something. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Any other. Any other stories like that?

Yeah, there was one where they wanted me to fit through, like, a gap between two sheds. And then there was a electric line running to the back shed. It was a private electric line. I saw it. I knew it was there. I mean, I was. I was just like, dude, I can, you know, do this whatever. And so I. I hit it. I couldn't do it. I'm an idiot. And the back shed was the home office for the dad of that family. Didn't know that. And so he comes out, like, I hit it. Sparks fly everywhere. He comes out just pissed, you know, like so mad. And rightfully so. Like, that was completely on me. Flip. Yeah, brother Elder, exactly what the frick is happening? You know? And then I was like, yeah, I'm sorry I hit this and had to pay for that one, too. Those are really the two worst ones. Outside of that, it's been small stuff here and there.

All right, here's my question for all the people who are like, actually, you can't do one of these businesses without this type of insurance, this type of Insurance this month. When did you actually get insurance?

Right away? I did do right away. Yes. Yes, I have. This one felt a little bit different. It didn't feel like I was. I don't know, what's, you know, running a cleaning company. Good. Yeah. Yeah. This one, I felt like I was like, I. I could actually probably do some damage somewhere.

Yeah.

And so I got insurance right away. Both those things I paid out of pocket, but, yeah, I did.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Can you. Can you give me an idea? So August was your first month. You've. You've quit your job. Like, you're not working, you're. You're grinding full time.

I quit my job September 1st. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh, dude. To tell me, what is the. What's your revenue been? Just hit me. August, September, October, November. If you can.

I have that somewhere. I could break it out individually, but. So it was 9,500 in August, and then in September, I had, like, so much on the calendar that I was like, it's either I quit or I get fired, basically. And so I actually, I negotiated some severance because I was pretty good at my job, so I had a really good book. And I was like, hey, let me help pass these accounts off to someone that wants them and let me leave. And they're like, yeah, perfect, we'll pay for a month. And I was like, let's freaking go. And so September was 23k, so that was actually my biggest month still to this point.

Really?

Yes.

I was just gonna say, yeah, probably because it's like in the summer, going into fall, that's when people are doing the majority of this type of work.

Totally. And then through the end of the year, I did 69,000 in revenue from August 3rd to the end of the year. And then in January, I did like seven. In this month, I'll do 11. So it's starting to pick up again for the spring.

Even in February, you're doing 11 grand?

Yeah. Yeah, we're excited about that. It's awesome.

I mean, are you grinding through the snow?

Yeah, some days, yeah, I. I try not to. I try not to do it on snow days, but yeah, some days it's scheduled and it's not coming down too bad. If it's like a blizzard, I'm not going to be grinding a stump. But if it's some light snow, yeah, we'll put on a few jackets and go.

Let's talk unit economics. Like, per job, what is your average job size? What is your average profit per job? And how do you think that'll change when you start scaling and hiring?

Yeah, so i390 is my average job size and that's skewed upwards probably because of a few outliers. I've had like a 4 grand job and a 5 grand job that are considered, you know, one job there. I do not know my profit per job. Just going to be honest their hand up. I try to keep track of all this stuff, but I don't know that currently that's okay.

I mean rough ballpark like based on what you're like because you own the thing now, you should. There's no rental cost, you've got gas, your own time. I have to think your costs aren't that much.

No, not at all. Directly. Like my stump grinding payments 990. I pay 175 for my trailer and then I pay like 450 for my truck. I park it at a storage facility for you know, 150 bucks and then I have 450 of insurance monthly. So like total, you're talking like 2 grand to 2,500 of overhead. And I make that like I do $1,500 days routinely in the summer.

And I mean that's paying down your assets too. Most of it like right?

Yeah, that's a good question. How much did the Stump Grinder cost?

So video is cool, but you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter. Tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week. Stuff like this. You're gonna love it. All free, no sleazy sales.

Tkopod.com Stump grinder was 55000 so and.

So you're on payments, right? You didn't pay out of pocket, I'm assuming.

Yeah, I had to put 20 down on that. Everything else I was zero down on.

That's what I was gonna ask. How did you finance it?

There's some awesome companies that will do startup loans for heavy equipment where they've still lend it to your company with your personal credit is weighted in there and they kind of screw you with with interest rates. But hey, I mean I was in the game.

Yeah, exactly.

And my business credit started growing so I actually was able to get like a business credit card pretty fast cuz of that.

So like what's, what's the term of the loan? Like how long over. Over. What's it, how's it amortized? What's like what's your monthly payment, 5.

Year loan, 990 payment. I put like 12 grand down. Cause I had to put dang percent down. So.

Okay, yeah, dude, I was just doing the math as, as you were talking and I'm like, all right, you said month 19500 month to 23,000. And then you did 69,000 total between August and December. So you averaged about $12,000 a month for the rest of the year. And then you said January and February, you've done about $11,000 a month.

About. Yeah, yeah, just about across the two.

What was your job before?

I was a SaaS sales rep, if you will. So selling reoccurring SaaS products.

So you're probably making more money than this. But. But you're like back of the envelope, you're taking home at least nine grand a month.

Yeah. What's so funny is because a lot of, you know, personal expenses are rolled up into a lot of the things that I do for business. Like the. I am going to be very interested to see after the end of a full year with a lot of those upfront costs already handled, like, I think I can make more if I was going to be the one grinding all year this year, which I want to hire eventually. But right now it's just shoveling cash away. I actually think you, you'd be surprised how fast you could hit the mark of like a good W2 if you're just willing to like be out there and just do do a lot of hard work.

Well, that was gonna be my question. 23,000 in September was a good month. You're coming into the months where in the, you know, spring and summer. Well, you'll probably have big months again. What's your plan to be able to do, you know, 23, if not more than that, a month.

So a few things. The first one was the beauty. Beautiful thing about being a sub and the last person to talk to the customer is I've actually gotten a lot of reviews without ever spending a dollar because I believe. And I'm like, hey, this is my. I have a little card, you know, that you put on the back of their phone and it pulls up my, my review link there. I'm like, hey, I, you know, I work with name the tree company all the time. Like I, I do all their stumps for them. I'm a new company. Like, I'm here in Provo. I'm working hard. Like, could I get a review? So I have 55, five star reviews. We're starting to get a little bit more organic traffic directly from the customer and starting to rank a little bit better. For stump grinding specifically, and then building more and more tree relationships, it's the biggest, biggest thing I could do. One tree relationship can give me anywhere from, you know, 5 grand on the year to, like, 20, 30 grand on the year of revenue. So it's just important that I build those as strong as I can, do anything I can to land my first job for that tree company, and then do everything I can to, you know, be reoccurring for them.

So you're not being super strict about, like, I. I'm only B2B. Like, you would love both.

Yes, absolutely.

Are your subs or your. Your crews that are referring you. Are they cool with that? Have you talked to them about that? Or are you just kind of leaving business cards on the sly on the review part?

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah.

Or, like, do they care that you're talking to the customer directly? Probably not. Because you're not competing with them, right?

They love it because I send them a message like, hey, just got done at Sally's. Like, she's super.