BONUS: Talking to a Tree Service Business Owner - Ep.31

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to landscape businesscourse.com podcast. Today we're doing something a little bit different. We're going to be talking to landscaping kind of industry, but we're really specifically talking to Charlie, who is the owner of a tree service. So I've never had someone do the tree service or chemical application or some of these other kind of things that aren't usually the main part of a landscapers business. However, I thought it might be interesting for those of you who have a lot of tree work or you are interested in kind of creating a second flow of income in your landscaping business by having a tree service and you're wanting to kind of delve into this different area of the green industry and that is trees. So without any further, let's get Charlie on the call here. Charlie is actually in Washington State, which is where I live, and so he's just about a couple hours south of where I am at. And so good to have another Pacific Northwesterner on the podcast. Feel free to check out his website@legacytreepros.com it'll be useful so that as I critique and talk about his website, you can see exactly what I'm talking about and maybe check back with it in a couple months and see the changes. So without any further delay, Charlie from Legacy Tree and Fire, Washington State. Here we go.

Yeah, so a quick little background about me is never was the best student in high school and graduated barely and you know, everyone went off to college and I was kind of left there trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And so I started volunteering at the local fire department and I found a tree job on Craigslist as a grounder. And you know, long story short, here I am, you know, 10 years later, hired on as a fire department and then climbing trees on the side. So. So still doing the same thing, just on another level, I guess.

So kind of like where are you at right now? Are you trying to essentially make the business kind of something you can go into full time? Is that kind of your goal?

Yeah. So, you know, the past five or six years now I just kind of do jobs on the side from friends and family. And you know, I got all the saws, I got all the climbing gear, the ropes, all the rigging stuff.

So I'd go out and I make pretty good money. And you know, this is all, I didn't have a business license then or anything like that. So I had no overhead. And so a year ago I was like, well, you Know, I've always wanted to run my own business. I feel like I'm kind of an entrepreneur at heart here.

Yeah.

And so I started my own business and bought a truck, I built a big ship box, I rent a chipper and you know, now I'm kind of in that stage of it's just too much for me. I got a couple employees, but they're not really dedicated the more as you know, hey, could you help me out? You know what I mean? So yeah, I'm just looking to grow. I'm looking to eventually have a full time crew and then have all the marketing and books and everything that goes along with that.

You know, I kind of got a five year plan here.

Yeah.

And so that's where I'm at now. I'm looking to grow my revenue, looking to grow my customer base.

I work for all the big companies where they're all about production and they come in there and you know the cleanups, not the best. They're sloppy with stuff. You know, they break fences or decks or whatever may have it. And I'm really just not like that. Like I aim to clean up the best. I take my time and I've had nothing but good reviews. So I think I'm onto something here as long as I could get, you know, keep progressing.

With this business stuff.

So, so what do you, what do you feel is kind of like the thing that's going to kind of hold you back or be the catalyst that you need to kind of achieve to get that, you know, like what's kind of holding you back now.

I would say that jobs or kind of the marketing.

Yeah.

Is, is I can't just go off of references and word of mouth. You know, I eventually need to come to a point where I need to start like a marketing campaign and whether it's you know, Angie's list or you know, I, I put, got a polo shirt, I went and knocked doors. It didn't really work out like I was open. So now I'm just trying to think a little more outside the box, get into the world of the technology and, and do the search engine optimization, all that stuff. So yeah.

So most, most of your clients like are you usually. Do you usually do one time jobs for people that have like heard about you from someone else or are you usually doing recurring kind of revenue or like once a month they're gonna call you some tree work? Like is most of your stuff kind of one time or like once every couple years maybe?

No, I'd say it's Any, anyone I do jobs for. Whenever they need free work again, they'll call me, right? They like I am the go to friends and family of theirs. They'll reference me out. So I'll, I'll be doing jobs. Most my jobs I just show up, I don't even know the person and I'm like, okay, I could do it for this much. And they're like, well great, let's get started or when do you want to get started? So, so yeah, like I said, a lot of my customer base is just repeat customers.

You know, they like the idea that I'm a full time firefighter. People love that. And then, you know, I'm a pretty nice guy. I like to help people out. You know, my prices were kind of on the low side at first. Now I'm starting to get into more of, you know, covering my ass in a way so I'm not losing money. You know, it's just, it's a constant learning process here. So.

Yeah, yeah, like I think, I think I was looking at your site and things like I think your website is somewhere obviously you want to start off first because that's especially you start to push market or any sort of print or online, it's gonna be eventually kind of the place that you are sending people. So I think your website you could, you know, definitely work on. Right now it just looks like you're using GoDaddy site builder.

So cleaning that up, making it a little more search engine optimized in that regard. So that's something you can definitely work on. Like I'm just looking right now. Sorry, I'm kind of all over the place because I'm looking at, I'm looking at your area, I'm actually looking at some of your competitors right now.

So tree.

Because essentially like this is the thing about tree service and, and that is a lot of times the jobs that are like emergency or like high risk tree cutting things usually it's like people have never really heard of anyone else or essentially they're gonna go to the Internet and they're gonna search for what they're looking for. And I think if you can kind of like dominate that, that, you know, search on. That's essentially what I'm saying is like a lot of times people with tree service, it is a one time thing or it's kind of a one in a lot. It's not like you're on a recurring kind of revenue or like you come every week or every month. Usually it's, you know, they have a big Job or they have, you know, a tree that fell over, things like that. Right. And so I think like, even like I'm looking right now like East Boney Lake, is that kind of like the city that you're in, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm technically in the city, City of Bonnie Lake. Yep.

Yeah. So like.

Really no one in your area is doing very good online, to be perfectly honest with you. The reason I can say that and how I test that really fast is you essentially put in your. So I put an East Bonnie Lake Washington tree service and the first real websites that pop up is Home Advisor, Yelp, then Yellow Pages, then Angie's List, then Hunter Tree and then there's some other ones lower down like Foothills Tree and Stump Grinding. And that's really the only two that are on that entire first page that are real businesses. The other ones are all like Yelp, all those sort of things. Right?

Yep.

And so I think there's a huge opportunity to essentially dominate like because you have a smooth, you're in a smaller city, like the best. The number one like Google+site, even on the right hand side when you type in that on a desktop is Foothills Tree Service. They have one Google review.

And they look, it looks like they have some sort of an office or something like that. But like, but it's, but essentially what I'm saying is like, I think within a few months you could be on the top two or three of Google for that city name. And so that anyone in your city when they search for tree service or they search, you know, essentially you want to make all the key terms, whether it be tree service or stump grinding or you know, hazardous trees, you know, next to power lines or their house or whatever. If you can make like a blog on your site and videos on all those subjects and have those keywords throughout on your website, that's what's going to bump you up really fast in Google. And obviously using things like zip codes and, and city names in your header and footer on your website are important. Making sure that you link your YouTube to your website and any other social sites that you have to your website to make it look bigger, that's all just part of search engine optimization. But I really think that that's kind of gonna be your go to. For now. Step one is really to work on your website because if I search in East Boney Lake Washington Tree Service, I'm gonna search here. I'm going back. So I'm looking for legacy tree pros. Like do you know what pager on or not.

I don't even think I'm on anything. My brother just recently threw that website together for me, and like, all the videos and the pictures in there, he took, you know, it's not really my strong point, and I know I need to work on that.

Yeah.

So that, that is kind of my, My big goal coming up this spring, and, and hopefully sooner than that is to finish that website, you know, get the keywords in there, like you're saying. And, and really, you're absolutely right. The marketing out here, no one's really doing it. And the people that are, they're kind of just these. I mean, you know, you know, the tree game and the landscaping is probably the same as well, where there's just. There's not a lot of professionalism. There's kind of these low lives that go around claiming they do it, but there's not the professional companies out there. And this is just a gold mine around here where I'm at.

So, like, the side of your truck too, like that on the chip box, I'd put your. Your logo on there, like in, you know, as big as you possibly can with your phone number, because every time you're parking that thing next to your job site, that's big advertising for you. I would also do yard signs. So like, every single job that you do, I would throw out one of those yard signs in their front yard, or if your own needs an empty lot or whatever, throw those things out there. And you'll be amazed that those things will stick around for a couple months before someone removes them. And every, every single person that neighborhood, it drives past there every day when they want tree service, they're gonna know who to contact because they drive by your little sign every single day. Right. There's actually one company that does tree work in our, our area. They. There was. There's two different companies, actually. I want, I don't want to talk about, like the one. They do really good on direct mail. They send literally an 8 1/2 by 11. Super, super educational about trees. So it shows like, the different types of trees that make your. That make things at risk, like certain ones that have too many limbs on one side or however, like. And then it talks about different ways to trim a tree. It talks about, like, essentially gives all this education to the customer that most people don't know about trees, and even talks about some different types of local trees that are kind of like they're hazardous or you want to be careful of. They talk about how high they should be around Your house, like all this sort of stuff. That one's really good. Wacom Tree service is the name of that one. And they, they do a really good with direct. Really good job with direct mail, in my opinion. And so the reason is, if you come across as educational in your marketing, it gives you a huge amount of professionalism. And if that's what you want to be promoting and that's what you think makes you different than everyone else is, I would give as much information away for free to your clients, none of your clients. This is the thing about tree service. If you have a big, massive 40 foot tree in the backyard, it doesn't matter how much I tell you about it, you're gonna eventually hire someone to go cut it down. But if you go out and you tell people how you do it, what makes certain trees hazardous, all the tricks and tips of your trade.

They'Re gonna find so much more confidence in you than the other guys. Like, yeah, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna chop it up and take it away.

If you educate your customers, you're gonna be seen as the expert in your field. And, and they'll be willing to pay a premium because they, in their mind, they're getting the. Which is probably true. They're getting the best person that knows the most about their trees and arborists. And you know, they're ISA approved, like all that stuff. And so I think that's where you can provide value. The other company that I wanted to mention was they called Dig Linden. And they did. The only reason I know about them is they literally took one week out of the year and they, they take probably 200 of those lawn signs, like the ones that are, I think they're like 18 inches by 24 inches. And they stick into the ground. They get like 200 of those and post those literally all over the city. And I can guarantee you, people like complain, call them about it, throw them in the trash, like the whole bit. But the only reason I know them is because of that. And so what they do is at the beginning of the winter, like when the first wind comes through and everyone has branches all over the place and trees are falling down, people start thinking about if they have hazardous trees around their house. Like when all that stuff starts happening, you could almost guarantee this company's gonna throw out like 200 of these signs. It'll cost so, like, each one probably cost them a few bucks. They're gonna put them all over the city. And yes, some people are gonna get annoyed. You'll get A whole bunch of people calling you, saying, you, you know, don't do this, whatever. But like, this is the thing. And that is when it comes to tree service, you just got to be the first person that pops into people's mind. Either A, when they have a problem with their trees, or two, when they go online and start looking, you got to be the first there. So either A, you got to plant a seed in their mind, or two, when they do search online because they don't know anyone else that you're first on the list. Yeah, so I think, I think there's kind of like, you know, as far as marketing is concerned, work on the website quite a bit because like, that's where you want people to go eventually. Right? So even on that sign, it's gonna be pointing people to number one, your website and number two, a phone number. Right. And so I'd say work on your website, number one, make all those videos that are on there right now into one or two videos instead of a whole bunch of like 20 second videos. Put some music behind it, put, show some of your face, talk a little bit of voiceover, introduce the company, like, make a couple videos. There's people out there you probably know that can do that for you if you haven't done that before. So like make a couple videos instead of having a whole bunch of those little ones. And then even if it, like as far as video, if you explain a couple projects. And so what I mean by that is have a, have a, have a on your gallery there instead of just having a whole bunch of the videos and pictures, have something like a title that says Hazardous Trees over house. And underneath that is like a two or three minute video that explains you walking the property before you do the job, explaining what makes the tree hazardous, what could happen in a windstorm, why the customer is doing the work. And then show several videos of you doing the work itself. And then afterwards and show how you cleaned up and show how much safer the house is now and all of that. And then make another title, something like Tree over Power Lines. Show maybe there was a storm and the power lines came down because this tree was overhanging it and now you're cutting it back. That's before. Then show during, like you're actually, you know, rigged up, you're, you're up top. You can show some videos of you like with a camera from up in the tree. Like, however you don't want to do that at the end. Same thing. Like, it's a very simple before, during and after and what it's, what it's going to do is that person's going to go in there like, hey, I, I also have a hazardous tree next to my house. Let's see how this guy does this. Because there's not going to be anyone else in your area that has a video that they can watch before they even start calling you for an estimate, before they hire you. They're going to know exactly how you do things, the method of how you work, what your trucks look like, Are you going to be rigged up there with ropes, are you going to be using.

A lift system? All those questions that a typical customer has around tree service, you can answer so quickly in a couple videos that are targeted directly at them because their project is exactly what is in that video. And just in general SEO on your website and things like that will get you higher, you know, for Google.

Sure. Great. All this is all great information. I really appreciate that Mike. That, that's kind of my, my next big venture. You know, traditionally I just like doing the work. I like dirty, you know, and then to. It's just a learning process like I said before. And I'm trying to keep that discipline in that, you know, that just that, that constant grind into learning all this new stuff that comes with it. So. Yeah, yeah. So great stuff with the chip box. It's actually in my garage now. I put it on with the forklift. I'm finishing up. I'm getting a powder coated. I'm getting the vinyl wrapped with the legacy tree service and all that stuff. You know, one thing I kind of do right now is I rent a chipper.

Yeah.

And then it has, you know, the big 410 rentals or whatever it may be all over the chipper. Yeah. What's, what's your thoughts on that?

For, for renting the tripper and having the decals on it. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

And just, you know, it's 300 bucks a day.

You like. Because the good chippers like 30 plus thousand. Is that the kind of ones you're looking at?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like I would keep renting for now. Cuz like right now you have a, you have a job and that's, you know, full time. And I would wait until you are so busy with, with the, the tree stuff before, like when you're renting it every. At least two or three times a week, that's when I would buy it. Especially a chipper. There's maintenance involved. Like you could buy one if it's used and you know, next week it falls apart. Like, that's all risk and things. But it's not something you want to do when you're just starting out and you're still running the business part time. And so I would wait on that. I would continue to rent the job, rent it. And right now you have enough margin because you don't have a bunch of employees and overhead and things like that that you can afford the rental cost. However, I would say, like, I would just make it a mark in your mind. Like when I. When you have, when you're renting that thing two to three times a week, that's like the time that you just buy one and you can, you can. The reason is because then you can finance it and you can easily. The payments are easily made up for with how many times you're using it. And so I would do that. And then also, just as far as growing, like, I would, if I were you, I would kind of make it to where you work on the marketing parts, where you start getting this funnel of people coming, this flow of customers. And then I'd go full time. If you want to go full time, I, I would go full time doing that. And then essentially your first hire, I would actually, instead of trying to get an arborist, I'd try to find someone that's just on the ground because they're going to be cheaper and it's going to be a little bit easier for you to just focus on what you love doing and that's doing the actual tree work and then focus on actually getting real certified arborist and all of that. Because.

Once you're so busy that you can't even stay up with the job flow with one, one guy, then you'll focus on getting an arborist. But like, until then, I would kind of just take it slow. Like, okay, first step is get a chipper full time. Like buy a chipper. Second step is to get someone full time that's gonna be on the ground that can cut up trees, but doesn't have like licenses to climb and do all these high risk stuff because they're gonna cost like 30, 40 bucks an hour to get someone a really good arborist. Right. Like I looked at your, like the employment tab. To have someone that has three years of climbing experiences, has knowledge of spurless climbing, like knows all of those things. Like, that's really, really expensive. And like, just, just to pay for L and I for some of these things are, is like crazy amounts of money. Once you start hiring someone to do it Right. And so I would, if I was you, I would focus on, okay, how do I kind of put myself in the tree as much as possible and, and then pay someone way less money to be on the ground. And then like I said, though, once you have so much job flow, eventually you're going to have to transition to where now you're doing the business part and you're only doing sales and marketing and you have the tree part taken care of on the ground and up in the tree. Right. And so it's just that slow progression. And if you have a five year plan and you're not in a huge, big rush to get out of firefighting, I just take it slow. Like, don't rush into buying the tree chipper. Don't rush into trying to hire someone. I just, you know, work on your website, work on the marketing aspect. That'll work out, you know, become better and better, you'll get more and more jobs and then either a, you know, transition into going full time yourself, like that's kind of the first step, or I don't know, like, do you want to go full time or do you want to stay being in the firefighter?

You know, I'd probably stay being a firefighter just because I love it and you know, I'm making six figures doing that.

Yeah.

And then in the spring and summertime, you know, we could do trades where I'm trading, you know, Tuesday in January for a Friday in July. Just, you know, there's. And then with vacation in there, like we really, I could really, in the busy season, I could really get a lot of time off where I'm only maybe working five, six days a month.

Right, right.

Fire station.

So yeah, so then, so then really you don't want to get, you know, massive too fast. I don't think that's gonna be a big problem. But like, the bottom line is, okay, what can you do that isn't going to tie you? Essentially, if you have like full time employees and you have like four or five of them, it's gonna be really hard to be at another full time job. Right. So especially if these people are, you know, gonna cost you 30, 40 bucks an hour plus L and I like 50, 60 bucks an hour when it's all done. Said like the last thing you want is a $50, $60 an hour guy out doing a job and then you're working firefighter and can't answer your phone and this guy's chilling out because he doesn't know what to do. And so that'd Be a lot of pressure. So if I were you, I'd just be like, okay, I want to get so much deal flow that I can raise my prices and just continue to raise your prices until job flow equals how much work you actually want to do. So if you get so much deal flow and so many people, jobs that are knocking your, you just raise your prices until that job flow decreases to the point that you, that you want it to be at. So whether that's three days a week or two days a week or whatever. And then during that time you just get a part time worker to be on the ground and then you just essentially, you essentially get a huge margin business that maybe you'll make 100 grand a year, you know, gross, but you'll, you know, 70,000 of it will be profit or 60,000 will be profit because you, you, you'll just raise your prices as that deal flow gets higher and higher.

Yeah, and that's really kind of the plan is to have a good, you know, couple guys that are able to go out there and I could just kind of fill in on my days off and if they need an extra hand on the job, I'm totally willing to go do that and kind of just guide them and you know, almost have it be on cruise control after a certain point where I'm not beating myself up. You know, I'm working all the time trying to get this off the ground.

Yeah.

And then so, but yeah, that's kind of the plan. I worked for all the companies with, you know, three, four, five, six crews and I just don't want that really. You know, if I could have three, four work, three, four months booked out.

Yeah.

And have the prices there and have the quality of work there, that would be the best case scenario. I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. As far as your website, like if you want to design it yourself, like I'd recommend weebly.weebly.com it's kind of like a drag and drop system, but has a lot of powerful functions as far as SEO and then as far as design video pictures, like it's pretty simple as far as you can do it yourself, but it's way better as far as search engine optimization than something like God or GoDaddy website builder. And so literally if you just did that one change, just moving it to Weebly and doing some SEO stuff, making a couple videos, like, I guarantee you get on first page Google within about three or four months.

It's not that hard when you're in a small market that no one's Doing anything good. Because if you can't beat out, if you can't beat out a company, say even like Angelist, that has to try to work on SEO in every single market in the country that, like, you can focus on all the keywords, your city name, all the tree keywords, and get people get weight. Like, beat those guys, no problem.

So that's the beauty of being a small market for us. For instance, there's really kind of three players in our market that are good at website stuff and good online. And so competing with them, like getting on the first page of Google, we did it within about three or four months.

We.

But then getting to the top, like, number one, took about a year, year and a half. And because I had to beat those two or three guys, there's some places, like if you're in Seattle, like in the heart of Seattle, for instance, it'll take you years to get the number one doing stuff right and doing take using all the tricks for SEO, whereas in a market like yours and market like mine, you can do it pretty quickly because no one else is even competing.

Sure.

So, and why does it take, you know, three to six months to get to that number one spot?

Like, yeah, it's. So it's all really just kind of Google's algorithm, like, that could change. Literally, it could be a week. You just never know, like, because what's gonna happen is Google is looking for number one, looking for keywords. So that's why I talk about making a blog on your site. And then it's looking for things like, okay, do you have a Facebook page? Yes, you do. Is it connected to your site? Yes, it is. And then it's looking for. Essentially, you're trying to make this thing look as big as possible, your website. So whether it be linking your YouTube videos to a YouTube page, your Google Page, you should really work on your Google Page because that's above anything else. So, like, I'm looking at it right now. Do you have anything on Google or not?

No.

Yep. So I like, before your website, I would do Google Page. And Google is like the worst social media site in the world, in my opinion. However, it's owned by Google, who just happens to be where you want to be at as far as search is concerned. So if you type in a service, for instance, like if you type in Blaine Lawn Care, the websites on the very, very top are not ads. They are not even the best websites. It's Google Pages. And so what I would do if I was you is Google Pages put some Content on there, some pictures put on the videos. Because, like, when you make your YouTube channel or like anything like that, you make sure it's the same one that your Google Page is connected to and have it all there and get a couple reviews. Like, I'd reach out to all your friends, family, and past customers and try to get Google plus reviews. That's where. Because those are the ones that show up right on the very top of Google. And the reason is because Google wants to promote their products. So they want to promote Google. They want to promote people who use Google AdWords. And so if you use Google and there's no one right now around you that's doing it, when someone searches your area before they even see the best website, the best tree service in your area, they're going to see the ones who are doing the best Google Page. And so people, a lot of people don't get how important it is to have a really good, solid Google Page. Doesn't mean fancy. You don't have to update it a lot. You need to have some pictures, couple videos, make sure you have your address, your phone number. And the biggest thing is Google reviews. Literally, if you got 10 Google reviews in the next month, you'd probably be number one in Google. And that as long as your website is tied to your Google Page, Google will be like, oh, this is a really good company, because all his customers are coming to us Google and leaving reviews, and they're gonna pull you up higher in the SEO and you will literally be the first in your. Like, essentially what got me from the third place on Google, like, because we got to the first page pretty quickly. But then what got me from number three to number one was we got like 10 reviews on Google. And. And because everyone else in my. The other number one and two before, they had like one. And so literally that one move is what put me up. And only because we use Google products. You know, having Yelp reviews is great. Having Angie's List is fine, whatever. But when you use a Google product, they're gonna push you higher because you're using their products.

Got it. Nice.

Yeah. As far as marketing, I'd say, number one, create a Google Page. Literally, it's like the worst social media website in the world in my opinion. Like, no one uses it, but it's a Google product and it still works when it comes to SEO. And so I'd make one of those. Make sure you get, like, do a giveaway, make sure people get on there and, you know, put. Make a review for you and I'd send that to, you know, like I said, your friends, family, and past clients. Try to get five or ten of them. And. And then if you redesign your website and do that, you'd be amazed at how fast the. How fast you'll be number one on Google.

Nice.

Well, good deal. This is all good stuff. And, yeah, yeah, I definitely have my work cut out for me.