The Most Profitable Local Business Everyone Overlooks

I'm like, okay, there's definitely demand for this. And I started looking into the companies, couldn't find any. So I just was like, holy smokes. You know, I definitely kind of stumbled upon this industry. We're like, all right, let's do it. So the first month, I was like, 17,000.

What's your average job size?

It's about 3,100. We've got around 70,000 on the schedule for each month up to October.

You'll do a million next year.

The new machinery got 0% financing for 60 months. Somebody's going to kill him with that little machine. You just have somebody who's operating joysticks from standing off to the side.

Had you ever used one before?

We've never used one.

Have you ever done a home service business before?

No.

So I was scrolling on Twitter the other day, and I find this guy named Alex, and he started a brush clearing company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his first month, he did almost $18,000 in revenue with 85% net profit margins. Why did he start this? Because he has a marketing background. He can do a little keyword research. Nothing more extensive than what I talk about on this podcast all the time. And he learned, holy crap, there is a ton of demand for brush clearing in my area, and almost no one is fulfilling this demand because he had just bought five acres and he needed brush clearing. So, having never started a home service or a local business or a sweaty startup before, he said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to start a brush clearing business, because I know there is so much demand for it, and I can charge $2,000 a day. You can get the equipment financed, you can start this for very little money. And there's a ton of markets that have way more demand than supply for brush clearing. Forestry mulching, as it's called. We got super tactical about his Facebook ads, what types of ads he's running, how he's using YouTube, which I did not see coming, and how much money he's making today. Only 13 months into this business and what his margins are, we held nothing back. You are going to love this. Please share it with a friend, especially someone that might be interested in starting a local service business with very little money and very high margins. Tell me about how you even stumbled upon this industry.

So I bought a house, and we have five acres. Four of it was wooded. And I was like, okay, well, I have this nice yard, but I can't even use it, so how do I clear this? And I started looking into It. And I couldn't find anybody. The closest person was over 100 miles away.

I don't want to dox you, but, like, what. What is the population or the size of your city? How far are you from a major metroplex that we might have heard of just to give us some bearing.

So I'm about 30 minutes from downtown Cincinnati.

Okay. In like, a small rural city.

It used to be 10 years ago, it was a lot more rural. There's a lot more suburbs out here now. But so I'm kind of right on the edge of the suburbs. So there's like a thousand acre farm near me.

Mm.

And then, you know, on the other side, you've got just tons and tons of subdivisions, so kind of right on that edge.

It's funny because we're very similar. I. I live 30 minutes from downtown Dallas, and I'm, like, right near all the major Dallas suburbs. Plano, McKinney and all that. But I'm in, like, this little rural pocket.

Yep. Where it's the best, isn't it? You saw property.

Perfect. We have three acres.

Yeah.

Not a lot of it is wooded, but I've rented a skid steer about four times.

Yeah.

I have no problem finding someone to because, I mean, there's 8 million people in Dallas and I'm close enough.

Right, right.

You're in a much different situation from as far as, like, population is concerned.

Yeah. Texas is interesting. They're one of the few saturated malting markets from what I've heard.

Interesting.

Yeah. So somebody out there must be really promoting it and doing really well with it or a multitude of companies. One of the guys I've met is from Texas, and he just traveled up here because there. There was no competition.

Wow. Okay. So you bought five acres, four of which were wooded, and you need someone to come out and clear it, at least to some extent. You can't find anyone within 100 miles.

Yep. So then that got me thinking. I said, well, you know, could. Could I do this? And I started looking into it. I started looking around at my neighbors, and I'm like, everybody needs this in Ohio. And I'm not necessarily sure in other states, but in Ohio in particular, especially our area, we have this plant called honeysuckle. I know it's pretty prevalent everywhere, but here in particular, it's really bad. And everybody has this problem. It's overgrowing on them constantly. What happens if you have any sort of property and you mow? It'll over time, you know, five years from now, you've lost 15ft of your property because it just keeps creeping over and over and over. So I just saw that everywhere, and I'm like, okay, this is. There's definitely demand for this. And I started looking into the companies, couldn't find any. I found some owner operators that were just promoting a marketplace. They didn't really have, like a brand or anything kind of established. And so I started doing keyword research. And I'm kind of learning, you know, off of X, that I'm kind of doing like this old school version of keyword research, probably because I did it a lot back in the early 2000 or mid 2000s. But I just sat down and I said, okay, what? People don't seem to know what forestry mulching is. If I type in forestry mulching, I'm hardly getting any sort of results. I talk to friends, talk to family. They're like, what is forestry mulching? So I just started asking them. I said, okay, let's say you wanted to clear your. Your property. You've got this problem. It's been overgrowing. You've lost 20ft. What are you gonna search to try and find this? And so people were giving me ideas, you know, clear my woods, get rid of this wild rose, destroy honeysuckle. And I just started taking this list into a spreadsheet of all the different terms that people would search for. And then I used a keyword tool, typing in those and seeing how much. How many results they're getting.

Which tool did you use?

I think it was Semrush. It's been about two years since I.

Did it, but unlike Ahrefs, they actually have a free trial. So.

Yeah. Yeah, that's. Yep, yep. I almost never pay for those tools.

No, never.

Yeah. So I just noticed there's this huge search, search traffic. So I just was like, holy smokes. You know, I definitely kind of, kind of stumbled upon this industry, don't know anything about it, and just started looking into the equipment. And then my. My business partner, Zach, he was a part of this whole idea process as well. And I was just, you know, all the time like, okay, let's see. This is what the search data is showing this. I think we can do this. And then we just kind of were like, all right, let's do it. I know how to run ads. I know marketing. I think, you know, we can solve this problem that I'm. I'm seeing with other companies and what I mean by that. So I actually reached out to some tree service companies because if you're trying to get this done, you would think, okay, maybe I'll just contact the tree service company. And what I found was these guys don't know how to sell this, this service. And they also don't have the operators. So you can't take a tree service guy and stick them in these machines. So they've never really pursued this, even though they got asked about it a lot. How to sell it is through content marketing. And that's, I was like, okay, I think that's the answer. That's how we sell this. And so we went and bought the machine and we didn't have any jobs on a schedule. I kind of cobbled together an ad. I actually used like Bobcat's YouTube channel where they had a four stream launching demo to kind of cobble together my first ad.

You borrowed their video?

I was like, well, it's Bobcat. I'm using their equipment. They're probably cool, right? Sure. I was like, until I at least get my own videos. And yeah, so I mean, we got inundated pretty quickly.

Now when you say content marketing, you mean like paid content marketing? Not necessarily.

Not necessarily. So like YouTube, I, I consider YouTube like content marketing. It should be used as content marketing. You know, people have YouTube channels where they're trying to get tons of views. And I didn't approach YouTube that way. I don't really, I don't care at all about the view count. I needed something that, that would support the business and support the service and support the marketing process. So I kind of see YouTube as a content marketing outlet in a sense.

So are you. Because to me, content marketing is not the first thing I think of when I think of a local service business. Because, you know, the YouTube algorithm will spread your video far and wide. Not necessarily to people that live in Cincinnati or thereabouts. So how do you approach that?

So I actually use local keywords. So when you're putting in your tags, I use the local keywords. I'll do like Cincinnati forestry mulching as part of my tags on YouTube videos. And the reason is, is because if somebody local is searching that on Google and you know how it shows the video results kind of up there first, it's more likely to show my video to them. So because it's specifically for my area, so I kind of use adwords, keywords and ascends onto my YouTube tags.

So here's how this works. I make you free videos. I actually know what I'm talking about. I have no greasy sales pitch at the end. And if you implement What I talk about, you'll make a lot more money and have a better life. And all I ask for in return is that you hit the subscribe button and maybe even the notification bell. Just like that. Thank you. So is the hope then that someone local to your area who needs your service, they don't know it yet. They're just kind of. They're typing around, they're clicking around, they're looking for content related to it because maybe they want to rent one themselves and do it or something. And. And then they see you and then they're thinking, yeah, let me just have this guy do it.

Not necessarily. So that, that's kind of the. A perk of it is that if somebody's looking for it specifically, we're going to show up. But that's where the meta ads come in. Because, you know, I see meta ads totally different than Google AdWords. Google AdWords is somebody's looking for your service, bidding against other people looking for your service. Meta, to me, is they're not looking for my service. I'm going to knock on the door and sell this to them, essentially, right? That's the way I see meta. You're interrupting their. Their flow. You know, when they're scrolling through their timeline. And so we just made. I was like, okay, well, I'll make a cool video. You know, highlight the problem first, show that you're local. Local is the number one. Because people don't like. You're not going to pay attention to it if you're not local. If they see, oh, wow, these people are local. Oh, dang, this is cool. Look at this thing in slow motion, shredding this tree. And then I kind of introduce the service into that ad video. And then when people see that, I want them to say, well, I have this problem. They weren't necessarily looking for me. I just have to show them, like, here's a solution to a problem you probably complain about every spring when the leaves come back on the trees.

Right? Yeah.

And so that's the way I use meta ads. And then I put the YouTube link on the ad and then they go to our YouTube channel and they see, okay, look at all this content. Look at this job. Look at this before and after. These guys are, this machine is crazy. They've never seen this before. And then they, I gotta call them. And that's what happens. So we essentially reinforce that ad through our YouTube channel. We create fans. I mean, it's crazy. I would say almost every customer has watched our YouTube channel. Some of them have Watched every video, and they still do seem to the ones we've already, you know, served.

That's amazing. I'm so glad this conversation took this direction because I didn't know you were gonna talk about YouTube or content marketing at all.

Yeah, yeah.

So. But this is awesome because I own a tree trimming business, and that's not even on our radar content market.

So I'm actually. This winter, I'm gonna be doing one for tree service.

Okay.

Not. Not for my company. I'm gonna. I'm gonna help out somebody else.

So you're gonna be like kind of an agency to another local tree trimming business to help them with content?

Yeah, Yeah. I only do that kind of stuff if I think it's fun and cool to do. And I think this one, this is a big tree service company. I think he's like 6 million a year, and he's referral only. He does not advertise.

Wow. How long has he been around?

I want to say, doing Tree service for eight to 10 years.

Okay. So I pulled up your YouTube channel. You've been doing this for a year now on YouTube.

Yeah. So we. We just crossed our. We're about a year and a month that we've been doing this business.

Okay. And you started YouTube on day one, basically.

Started on day one, yep. Because I knew I needed the. I needed the videos. I like photography. I like videography as a hobby, so I just. I love doing it. Anyways, I knew people would think this is cool to watch, so I went out, took my cameras, and went out and recorded the first job. I utilized a lot of that footage for the ads.

Mm.

So, yeah. And then I just kind of kept going. I just like doing it. You know, eventually you'd have to pay someone to do it, but I just like it.

So are you editing it yourself as well?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so you're not that good.

But the thing is, it's like, it doesn't have to be that good. It just has to show.

So are you just setting up a phone on a tripod or two phones or two cameras or what does your hardware look like?

So I have like a camcorder, a 4K camcorder. I've got action cameras. I have a Sony mirrorless camera. I actually just got a, like, a pin on camera was the. The Go3s, the Insta360. So, yeah, I have all kinds of different cameras. I used to travel the country and go to national parks, so. And record stuff.

So this is awesome. Are you able to attribute A specific percentage of your business to YouTube and if so, what does it kind of look like, give or take, directly from YouTube or just like the customers that touched YouTube in some way?

Oh, I would say most so probably around 80%.

Wow. It's not independent of your meta ad strategy. It complements it.

It complements it. Yeah.

Okay.

The YouTube is for the ad strategy.

Yeah.

Basically, that's how you support it.

Are your most successful meta ads video?

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Instagram as well. Image ads aren't even worth it. I don't even run image ads. People just scroll right past. If you don't have, like, the perfect picture that's going to interrupt them scrolling on their feed, then, you know. So videos are. Videos are much more interesting.

You're confining it to a geographical radius and. Correct.

No, no, no, no. So. So, okay, that's. That's an interesting thing. I think a lot of people get wrong about meta ads and agencies get it wrong. A lot of people get this wrong. So I don't confine it necessarily by a radius. I specifically choose zip codes where they're more likely to have large property. So. Because if I don't want to blanket an ad to people who won't buy it, because then you're spending money to people who won't buy it. And then I target. And I say, okay, well, how do I target people who own land? Right. Specifically land. And so in those zip codes, I'll target people who have an interest in tractor supply company or rural king. And then. Yeah, so I'm. Yeah, I'm only bidding on people who are over the age of 35. So they have money. They. They likely have land, and they're within my range.

Yeah, I said radius. I meant geofence. If you're geofencing your ads.

Yes.

You're not trusting Facebook to show it to people in a certain geographical area. You're picking zip codes in this case.

Yeah. I don't trust Facebook's audience algorithm at all. I like to choose it, and you should pick it because there's no sense in advertising to people who wouldn't buy your service.

So do you do any paid stuff on YouTube or is it only organic?

No, I don't do any. No, it's all organic. Yeah.

Okay. Do you have, like, a particular cadence that you like to release YouTube videos or is it.

No, it's more so if I'm available to do it. Yeah, I may be. You know, I used to say record one out of every five jobs now it's maybe one out of every ten. I'm going to be doing a lot more videos because I've stopped ads. We're booked out too far. It's hard to tell somebody on a quote like, hey, how about October? Yeah, it's the middle of July, so. And I also want to leave that kind of last month of. Of heavy running open for referrals. I want people that, that we've done work for to be able to refer their friend and then us to be able to put them on schedule this year.

Okay, so back to the research. So there weren't clear search terms for this because it's an obscure service. Clearly people are searching for it. They're probably just not calling it like the official name.

Right. They have no idea what to look. Right. How to look.

Which gave you an opportunity. So you assembled a bunch of keywords yourself. Yeah. This probably took a few hours. Then you looked at the search volume relative. Few days. Yeah, the search volume relative to other industries and. Or other markets. Correct.

Yep.

And this was just like screaming at you, like, start this business.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. People have this problem I have. If I have the problem, then other people have it too, you know, so other people have it way worse, I've learned.

Yeah. So have you ever done a home service business before? Like a sweaty startup? Okay, that's. That's encouraging. All right, so let's talk timeline. Thirteen months ago, you hadn't booked any jobs. You didn't like, pre book stuff and then go rent a skid steer or buy a skid steer after you had jobs. Book. Correct. You bought a skid steer. How much was it? And then what did you do?

So I think it was around $90,000. And that was used with the head. And it was a used head as well. The reason that we didn't rent was because they were. Bobcat charges 2700 a day to rent it.

Oh. Oh, man.

Yeah. So. So I was like, that's. That's crazy. But they do that. And a lot of times they'll only rent to forestry companies. They won't even rent to other people, like an individual.

Because this isn't just an average skid steer you need. Right. Like, I rent a skid steer. I love it. It's my favorite Saturday of the month. And it's like 450 bucks for a day. And it just has a bucket. There's no fancy attachment. It's probably a $25,000 skid steer.

Yeah, yeah. So. So these skids Tiers, they have to be the large ones. They have to have at least high flow, so hydraulic flow. And they have to have the forestry kit. So the forestry kit is like an additional $15,000 kit. It's got a fall guard on the top, so if you cut it down a tree, it's not going to smash the cabin. It's got three quarter inch polycarbonate screens all the way around. So the windshield, the side windows, the debris kit as well. So it keeps debris from going down into the engine. They're pretty much. Once you get the forestry kit on these, they're purpose built for this.

Yeah. And then you need the head in addition to that.

Yeah. So the head is included in the 90,000. I think we paid 15,000 for the used head.

Okay.

Just bought a new head and it was 38,000.

Holy cow.

Yeah. For that. Yeah. And we just bought a new machine too. I think overall we ended up around 129 for the new machine. However, the new machine, totally worth it. We will probably end up paying double on this used machine because this stuff is hard on the equipment. It's. It's definitely hard on the equipment. And having that warranty is very, very important. And Bobcat is very good about their warranty. Pretty much everything they'll fix under warranty and they'll give you a new machine. So your, your cost on the machine under a warranty is very, very low.

So one of your regrets is not buying is buying used. If you could go back, you would buy new. What do the financing options look like on these, both new and used?

The new machine we got zero percent financing for 60 months.

What percent down?

We had to put 5,000 down on that.

That's nothing.

Yeah, not a lot.

Holy cow.

Yeah, they were doing some big Bobcat sales events. So the financing, I believe, is through Doosan or somebody who works directly. Doosan owns Bobcat. And then the used machine, we're around 7.8% at the time. So.

So what does your payment look like on both the 90,000 and the 130,000?

So the 90,000, around 1400amonth. 130. Around 1900amonth, man.

Okay. So you could pay for that in one job?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what we want to stay under that. So we want to stay under one job and, well, at least, you know, the revenue of one job, we just like that number. It makes the payment negligible.

Yeah. Right. So just one job a month and our overhead is zero. Essentially, yeah. Are you storing this at your house on Your property?

I was. So we just got a shop space. So at my property, we had to store house. My barn wasn't big enough. Right. So they were sitting outside. We didn't want that to affect the machine. They're tearing up my yard, too, which I didn't like. So, yeah, we ended up getting a shop space. We just got the shop last month.

Okay.

And this.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Appreciate it. The shop is 1500amonth, so. Which is. I think it's on the high end, but we got the H vac because we're going to run winter as well.

And how many square feet?

It's 2,000 square feet.

Oh, that's good. That'd be really good for DFW. Okay. So day one, you've got this $90,000 liability. I'm shocked that you can get in this thing for five grand. I know that's a new deal, not a used machine deal, but that's shocking to me. Tyler, my stump grinding friend, he bought a 60, $70,000 stump grinder. I think he had to put 20% down on it.

Yeah. So I think a lot of that had to do with. We have a lot of history in businesses. So the lenders really looked at that, like, if you've never started a business, a successful business before, they really don't like that. So they don't like just taking the risk on new guys. But they will, you know they will. Especially if your credit's good. They don't care.

Yeah, yeah.

At the end of the day.

Or your wife's credit's good.

Yeah, yeah. Or your wife's credit's good.

Yeah. Okay. So day one.

So day one, I'm just, you know, we get the machine in, we take it to my property to start testing it out, getting used to it.

So had you ever used one before? Did you do this on your own property? Had you rented one or was this brand new to you?

We've never used one.

I love it.

So we have the same partners. They're our main operator right now. And he. He had run some stuff before. Not. Not quite like this.

Push the lawnmower before.

Yeah. But he picked it up pretty quick, so. And I used that opportunity of us testing it to get footage and. And things. And we also, like, kind of broke it down. Pull all the. Because it was a rental. It was in the rental fleet. So we pulled all the rent stickers off of it, put our branding on it. When we made the decision, I started the ads, and then we immediately started getting leads, and we basically had A job on the schedule within two days of getting the.

Let's talk tactical about your ads. You talked about your, your Targeting strategy geographically, buy zip more rural zip codes, 35 or older, landowners, tractor supply, interests, et cetera. What about like, placement? Are you, you video in the Facebook newsfeed, Instagram newsfeed stories, reels, etc.

Yes, I'm. I let pretty much all of everywhere. So I, my goal is kind of. It's a lead ad, but I want exposure. The more exposure I can get on it, the, the more placements I can get on it, the more people know about this service. And so that's why, you know, I, I've never been threatened by another company that's starting up or anything like that. Because in this industry we need people advertising, we need these companies because, yeah, we need, we're going to expand the ocean, essentially.

Yep. Grow the pie. And I think that's an important distinction because depending on what your strategy is, sometimes I only do like Facebook and Instagram reels, sometimes I only do Facebook newsfeed. But for something like this, I can see the value to doing. There's like 23 different ways places you put it, audience network, the right side of the page, stories, reels, Facebook reels. So I see your logic here because there are only so many people in six zip codes outside of Cincinnati that are 35 and older that own land. Like, that's a very small market. So you want to look everything everywhere all at once to them, right?

Yep.

Okay. All right, so you put it everywhere. Videos. What types of videos? Is it just you talking to the camera? Is it you, you know, in action?

It's sort of like a highlight reel kind of video. So it, it leads off with, you know, the machine kind of munching down this big mulch or this big viney area. And then it cuts to. Based in Loveland, Ohio. And I've got this drone shot of the big water tower with the, with the branding on that everybody knows about. Some kind of, you know, local landmark that I use. And then it cuts into like a time lapse of us just crushing through all this area. And then it's got just where it's like clear land, fast, you know, so it's very eye catching, very interesting.

Quick cut.

Yeah, quick cuts. I always look at ads where like, I don't think it's cool, then it's not cool. Nobody's gonna like it, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the way that. And. And I'm gonna be doing a new one soon. And. And I'm actually going to be doing a, like, an old 90s infomercial style. I'm gonna have some dude on a movie.