Risking It All on a $850K Tree Business That CAN'T PAY THE BILLS

Little teeny tiny things will make them blow up sometimes.

You've definitely absorbed a lot of my frustration growing this business as fast as I have. Everything happened fast.

Make it look good and get the hell out of here.

We just kept having so many problems.

This and Alaskan crab fishing has some of the highest fatalities.

Someone's finger got hurt, we forgot this, we broke this light. Like, we can butt heads pretty good. Dead serious, Kevin.

No one gives a shit. Today we're in Pennsylvania visiting Jack from Morven Tree Service.

How work? Definitely made the work my identity for sure. A lot of time doing it the hard way to get it like that.

He made $850,000 in revenue last year, his first year in business.

Worked it out in my head that like, oh, the way that I'm doing it's fine already.

But he has over $400,000 worth of debt.

Well, because you need $300,000 worth of equipment for one crew.

And he overthinks everything.

I've done everything on my end to cover all my bases to say that, you know, I gave it my all.

This is the Business Turnaround Show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and HomeWorks software. I travel the country Fixing struggling businesses. Our goal is to give Jack a strategy to turn the company around in the next 6 weeks. Just trust me.

I'll get on it.

No, I trust you. I trust you. I don't want to give you more than 3 things. I just need you to do these things.

That's plenty.

Okay.

Hey Mike, my name is Jack Morton. I own Morton Tree Pruning. We're a niche tree service in Willow Grove, right outside of Philadelphia. I have— this is my first year out on my own. I've been doing tree work right out of high school for the last 16 years. We're tracking to do $850,000 in revenue. I have about $350,000— I paid some of it off, but around $300,000 of equipment loans.

So he submitted his application video months ago. All of 2025 is in the books. He did $671,000. So you're not doing $850,000 like he said he projected.

And so I have 5 W-2 employees and I operate with about 3 or 4 of the top subcontractors in the area. They're very expensive, but they definitely do a really good job and help my guys train. I've known some of them for a long time, but we don't have a lot of money. And 2026 has to be profit mode because 2025 was definitely growth mode.

$670,000 for a tree service with 5 employees and 4 subs is actually generally not a lot. Some people would look at this and be like, oh, we have $45,000 bottom line profit and he took $70,000 as a payroll expense for his wages, the officer wages. This should be fine. The problem is when you're paying down debt, The loan payments don't come out on the P&L, they come out on the balance sheet. I do not have the balance sheet, I just have the P&L.

I would really enjoy your, your input on how you think that I could have strategy. Uh, goal is still around like $900,000, maybe a million depending on how the offseason goes. We do have some work, uh, even in January scheduled right now. That's something that you're interested in, I'd be really happy to speak with you. Uh, we did talk before about 2 years ago on a coaching call. Um, so yeah, follow your content, really appreciate all the stuff that you've given me even so far. Thank you very much.

So let's see what the drip coordinator says about Jack. Last year was his first year in business and he made $850,000 in revenue. He went in growth mode very quickly and now he's looking to go into profit mode. He has about $300,000. Okay, so something's not adding up because he keeps saying $850,000 and he said it most recently to Brianna on the, the recap prior to showing up. But I'm looking at the P&L and I'm seeing $670,000. So $180,000 is like there's a difference. That's a lot. That's like 30% of revenue. So I don't know what, what What's going on? Equipment debt, which he's not too worried about, but he does have about $65,000 home equity line of credit. But he didn't really sound too concerned about that as of now. His main pain point. So a home equity line of credit is you have equity in your house and you say, hey, I'm going to go and take a loan against the equity of my house. Am I against that? Not really, because it's usually the best terms and the lowest interest rate. The problem is you put yourself at a huge risk because now if the business doesn't do good or you run out of money, the bank is coming after your house. Okay. Let's look at his website. All of these services should have their own page. And I clicked on structural pruning and it went to a different page altogether that just has a big form all about tree removal. And then look at this. This is the one service page he has, is tree removal. What is alarming to me is that he would pay $2,500 to talk to me and I tell him what to change and that has not changed yet. Right here, you click on Get Your Estimate. Click, click, click, click, click, click. Doesn't go anywhere. That is alarming because now we're showing up for free and I'm probably gonna tell him very similar things and I don't know if he's gonna listen.

What's that? No. No, he's recon team to make sure that first thing in the morning we weren't punching each other in the face.

Because the neighbors have complained about people waiting at the dumps.

If—

remember, I was in an altercation with that guy at Pickertown.

Yeah. So what time do they open?

7 AM. But if we get there before 7, there's nowhere we can hang out.

That's good.

We should be good. Okay.

Oh yeah, I've known Kevin for 11 years. Um, it's kind of why we have the relationship where we can butt heads pretty good. This is the shop. We just got this space. We're actually leaving this month to go somewhere else. Got the weights all set up for the guys. A little culture buy for the boys. Um, we actually dumped the wood for free here, and then my landscaper buddy splits it and sells it.

Where are we going? Hey Jack, how's it going? Great to see you, man.

It's a great opportunity. Crazy, uh, you know, actually meeting you in person after watching all the videos and everything. My name is Jack Morven. I'm the owner of Morven Tree Pruning. The business is going in its second year. I've been doing tree work for the last 16 years. Maybe just show me around a little bit. The container is ours.

Yeah, this one's yours. Okay, got it.

Yeah, yep.

And they're like right next to you almost.

I was frustrated that I didn't go to college or go that route that everybody was going. But I was like, try to be the best at this and stick with it. It's been going well. It's been a lot. It's been hard, but definitely made the work my identity for sure.

Do you guys actually use the gym area?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I come up here and work out. My crew leader, he's always in here. He gets here super early, gets some sets in. So yeah, they work out.

So is it mostly the two trucks then?

Just the two trucks? No, one crew. Got one crew, one crew with a truck. Chipper truck, and then the mini loader and the stump grinder.

If you're going to make it and compete with some of these other companies, then you need to have some of this equipment. People don't want you on their property for 3 days.

So they all go out together, basically?

Yeah, sometimes we play the game and, you know, the climbers go ahead, or we like split up and meet back up and, you know, do it like that.

But for the employees that you have in-house, how many of those are climbers versus ground guys?

I have, uh, Kevin's my operations manager, who's my crew leader. He has climbing experience. He can hop in and stuff, but you know, it's not necessarily his role.

Some of my responsibilities are managing the crews, the equipment, as well as customer service.

And then I have an A climber, a B climber, and then 3 ground guys. The other guy, um, Kevin's son actually, he drives the trucks. He's really good with the machines. He does a lot of the mechanic work. Which is a huge saver because I'm so bad with all that stuff. Another ground guy, Keegan, he's doing great at doing all the stuff that nobody wants to do. You know, cleaning up that brush pile that, you know, is all wet and everything. You know, picking up all the tools at the beginning of the day and bringing it out into the truck instead of like going out there and looking at what the job is and have an opinion on where he's going to go. He goes right to his job every day. So we're happy about that. Some people don't understand when you're getting tree work done, it's likely the most dangerous thing that can happen on your property.

I mean, this and Alaskan crab fishing. Has some of the highest fatalities.

From things falling from gravity, from, you know, saws going, from equipment, from stump grinding.

We have our days where it's not as bad, but once we get into the removals and things like that, it is, you know, it can be a lot more dangerous.

So they just kind of congregate here in the morning, but most of the equipment's in the trucks, right? And they're just heading out for the day.

Yeah, yeah. So this morning they were dumping the mats from yesterday. Those mats were in the back of the truck and then they had the trailer on. That was sort of like a thing. We like, we should have dumped them in the morning. They didn't move the trailer and we we were trying to push it in and, you know, someone's finger got hurt and that kind of set the, uh, set the day off in like a rough, a rough start. Just kind of cascading failures for the rest of the day. We don't usually mulch, um, and then we had a mulch job. I haven't mulched in 5 years, but I was spreading it out there. Morale seemed low and then I was spreading out the dirt and honestly, with all the stuff that I have going on, I was spreading out the mulch and I was like, you know what, this is such a stress reliever. From, you know, we're going through a workers' comp audit. We're going, you know, then I had to pay the down payments for the workers' comp all in the same month. And I did my taxes all this year. So like probably in the last month it was like $15,000 to $20,000 of extra expenses and things. So I was sitting there spreading out the mulch being like, man, used to hate this stuff. But like, this is a stressor. I'm fine with this right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Good stuff. Cool. I guess we're going to head over to the office then.

Yes.

Sweet. Is that kind of like a different space? Like, like a rented—

I just rented it right now. I used to be at a company where, well, I was kind of soft partners with the person. We would have the mobile office. The one person would drive me and we would drive to all the estimates while I was in the back answering the phone and writing everything up. Been a long couple weeks, so got the front seat out of there. Kind of how I roll.

The 4L framework shows the 4 reasons why every home service business stops growing. It's either a lack of liquidity, a lack of leads, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership. Let's go through each of the 4 constraints inside of Morvan Tree Pruning and then figure out what are the things we've got to focus on to turn the company around in the next 6 weeks. So from a liquidity perspective right now, because I didn't get a balance sheet, from a cash position, is that negative right now? Are we floating with a line of credit? What's the current liquidity position?

So right now in my business account, I have like $40,000. I have a $100,000 line of credit. $65,000 is used. So $35,000 left on there. Got it.

So $65,000 is the line of credit. Is that the home equity line of credit?

Yeah. You know, it helped with some of the initial costs for workers' comp, down payments, general liability stuff. Bought all the chainsaws, climbing gear, rigging gear, ladders, all the, you know, knickknacks like that.

Then how much equipment debt do we have right now? About $300,000?

I would say $300,000 because it was $350,000 at the beginning of last year for an F550 chip truck, an F600 chip truck, a 12-inch chipper, and then a 16-foot trailer, a mini loader, and a stump grinder, all brand new.

Okay, so $300K is equipment, and I would assume a lot of that's pretty low interest, but like 3 or 5-year terms?

5-year term at 7.9%.

So all of it's under one loan?

The equipment?

All of it's under one loan? Uh, or is it all like, like each of the—

it's from the same person. I have like the same, uh, person, like I go to the same person for all the equipment loans and then they shop it out to two different places, I guess.

Who consulted you to get this equipment loan at 7.9%?

Someone who's very— who knows the industry very well.

I'm just concerned about whatever that voice is saying. I think it's saying other things that I don't know if I see the logic. Because if you can go to Ford and get a 3% or 4%, why would we pay 7.9% to a middleman unless we can't qualify for loans?

Everything happened fast, like, like when I was doing all this at the beginning, because again, like, I started probably within like 2 months, like, the stuff that I packed in all at the same time was like probably not smart, But like, we got it all done because I got the jobs and then it was like, now you get the equipment, you know, it wasn't going to be like get the equipment, then get the jobs. I did all the sales first. So then boom, you got this big backlog. It's like, all right, now you need all the equipment. And they made it so easy to get it.

They're offering the service of quick cash and they're taking on the risk of, and therefore they're getting the doubling of interest rate.

Okay.

There's people that I've like literally knew the first year of doing tree work that I still keep in touch with. And, uh, those relationships have, when I've gotten in a jam, saved me. Advice from those people that I could call them and be like, I'm stuck.

$40 grand of cash, we have about $65 on the HELOC, we have $300,000 of equipment loans, and then let's just call it $5-10 grand of other miscellaneous like the business line of credit, etc. We're looking at $8,000 a month in payments, and that in my opinion, is like the thing that's killing us right now.

That and definitely the workers' comp and the general liability, because there's another like $5,000 a month.

We'll come back to liquidity. I think that's where a lot of the meat is. When it comes to leads, I know we talked earlier about the website. Who is managing that now? Is that you or do you have a friend?

Uh, somebody else. Okay. Uh, yeah.

Are they able to make changes to that?

Yeah, yup. But I probably will transition to somebody else. The consulting call was so good with you to like call that out out as far as like, this needs to change like immediately, or this is a problem. He gave me some really good advice on my website. I thought my website was good. I thought I was, you know, had someone really good working on it. And, you know, I'm sure they were trying their best and everything. We had an interesting deal sort of worked out. But apparently it's, you know, could be a lot better because I did talk to him about kind of unsatisfactory.

Did you present like the things I had said, like changing with the service pages?

Oh yeah. Yep. I don't think any of that was done. Okay. Uh-huh. It's been a hectic last 2 or 3 months with the giant snowstorms that were coming through here. And, you know, I had a big backlog for the whole winter and kept having to reschedule everything and sent out a whole bunch of marketing still. And we've been rocking and rolling pretty hard.

So, but you're going to change it like you have a friend that's building a new one. Is that? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, I have another friend who's building a new one right now.

So this is why at Home Service Web Design and Lawn Care Web Design, we make sure that it's a subscription that within 4 to 6 weeks We had the site built, but more importantly, you can make unlimited changes. So if it's winter, we can promote different services for the trees that don't have leaves. If it's spring, we can promote different types of services based upon what is actually trending and where there's demand in the market. There's no reason for your friend or some random agency that you can't get a hold of to take months to make a few little changes and tweaks that could have a dramatic impact on the business. And most of these coming in through your phone number, like just calling you.

Calling, filling out the form on the website. Yeah.

And your process for that right now is like you get a call or you get the lead form and then you're trying to book the appointment within the next few days for you to go visit them, right?

Yes. Yep.

And do you know what your close rate is right now?

Right now it's at 70%.

70%.

Yeah. Which is high.

And is that 70% of estimates that you send are accepted?

Uh, it's—

Jack is probably one of the best person I've ever seen at doing estimates. Estimates in my life. He can land a job on site, like he closes them, close them. Like when I was doing estimates, a lot of my stuff always closed, but sometimes you'd have people that would say, yeah, I think we're gonna go for it. They didn't call back, and then a month, 2 months later, they called back. He's not leaving that site until they close.

Cool. All right, so send me— 70— over 70% close rate, that's safe to say that. Okay, when people do call or submit a form, how long does it usually take for you to get the quote to them? Like, are you usually next day you're booking?

Yeah, just about. Yep.

Okay, cool.

I've literally had bosses say, listen, I know you know a lot about trees, but I don't want you going up there and doing all that because it's going to take all day. And I'll be like, well, that's what you wrote on the slip. And they're like, I don't care, go open that tree up, make it look good, and get the hell out of here. We don't do that. We go to the hard spots, make the specific cuts that are supposed to be made, and that helps Jack sell the work.

Is that the limiting factor to getting more work done, like having more climbers?

Or is it just a function of labor in general to get more work done?

Well, because we have a ton of leads to get more of these work. Like, if we're drowning in leads, we have plenty of work coming in.

Well, because you need $300,000 worth of equipment for one crew. Got it. So to, you know, have a second crew to like split out because of it, I would need to take on all that other equipment to have the crew. And then Kevin's really the only person that I would trust talking to the customers because we sell like a premium service as far as the tree pruning. My estimates are written up like like nobody else is writing them up. And, you know, to follow through on that, you need someone who can really talk to the customers because people trust us a lot to prune their trees.

The estimates get very, very cutthroat, but at the end of the day, what we're providing the customer, they're starting to realize, you know what, I think I'm going to go with these guys over these guys. Because to be honest, a lot of tree guys get that fly-by-night label. The customers are starting to think, well, they're just tree guys, they're rough around the edges. But we keep it extremely professional.

So you're charging them the day rate, but then you're giving all this other detail.

Yeah, the details about what we're actually doing to the trees, like making like selective cuts and things like that. Um, not just writing trim tree on there. You want to have a strong center leader in the tree. So this one actually has a codominant stem that goes up to the left that's over top of the house that has a lean going over top of it. When the best form of this tree is if it was almost turned around and this back lean was going this way, And the problem is that people come out and they trim the tree and they say that they're going to thin it for structure and they just take a bunch of the little branches in the middle out. Where to train a tree, you have to do your work at the ends of the tree.

So how long would this take you to create this estimate?

This estimate would probably take me like if I like I get right in my truck and start writing it up, like probably 20 to 25 minutes.

Okay.

Really the best form of the tree is to be like this one. We have that strong central leader and not too many co-dominant stems going up to the side because this is how the trees grow in the forest. They have, you know, because they don't have sunlight from 360 degrees around. And that's why pruning is important, because trees overproduce because of the sunlight that they're getting on your property. And then they're just making so many branches because they know they're going to break off and there's going to be more to replace them. So, you know, pruning at those places at the right time can make it happen. And, you know, not over top of your house. So you're not break— cleaning stuff up every 2 weeks.

From your perspective, where's the most stress in this whole kind of process?

We ramped up so quickly because I had so much experience with the sales and I had like my sales and marketing and branding plan so figured out before I started everything. I brought on like a whole bunch of people and kind of expected them to like handle everything at the rate, like, and at the rate that I was kind of doing all my stuff, like, basically be as good at their job as I was at my job. Um, and then we just kept having so many problems. Something that was like a small mistake just can like add up so quickly cost-wise, and the margins are so thin that like that comes right out of my pocket. Not like giant stuff, but like little stuff that like kept adding up because the margins are so thin. And I figured that if I just kept hiring people and like kept bringing in the subs and incentivizing people with like high salaries that we wouldn't— we'd have enough people there to not trip over the little things. But like, I haven't been understanding that, like, I'm the owner of the business. I've been doing this for 16 years. It's like everything to me. And like, you know, the guy who's only been working here for like 8 months, there's no way that like he's going to realistically be able to give the effort that I'm giving. We forgot this. We broke this light. Like, we dumped this thing at the dump. You know, we went to the wrong address, like stuff like that. So like, and the margins are so thin. And I was praying that if I just kept bringing in like good guys and like having everything done because we pay trainers to come in and stuff like that, that we wouldn't have all the little problems and just like that would be where I made the money. But like, it's not really how it's going. So that's probably, you know, what I have to work on so that, you know, not biting anybody's head off over a broken rake.

All right. So to better understand the P&L, we have $670K on the P&L, $850K. So about $180K of cash. Very common in tree stuff to take some cash. What is the actual profit and loss?

So that, so that, so that cash. So this is probably what the confusion is that basically went to because on there there's only like Probably like $20,000 to like subcontractors. That cash basically all went to—

Oh, what?

Yeah, all went to— Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.

So basically any cash that's coming in, you're basically then handing that cash to the subs. That's why the subcontracted labor doesn't look like a lot.

Got it.

Okay. All right.

That makes sense.

All right. So the first thing is like, I know it seems crazy, but you got to increase your prices by 20%. I know that sounds crazy. I know it's like, well, people are going to say no. And you hear every like rebuttal around price. But you are closing 72% of your jobs.

Uh-huh.

And in my mind, whenever I hear 72%, you are in massive growth mode. Uh-huh. That's why you grew to almost $1 million in revenue in a year.

Mm-hmm.

Like, congratulations. Like, that's huge. Like, as much as people will say stupid stuff in the comments, you build a million-dollar business in one year.

Uh-huh.

That's amazing. You have been so much in growth mode. It's going to pain you if you raise prices by 20%. It's gonna feel like all these people are saying no, and they're all saying you're expensive. But ultimately, if you closed 50%, but you had 20% higher prices, you'd be way better off. And if you put some of that extra, extra profit towards marketing, you would get enough leads to continue to fill your funnel.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think because I'm like doing most like so many of these different roles that like tracking that stuff and being able to like see where that's all going, like while dealing with all the issues and then answering all the calls, answering all the emails and stuff like that, trying to do like the high level accounting of like getting that profit in the moment. It's kind of throwing me off to see like, you know, what I can do with that, what to use that for.

The cool thing is with price increases is a decision. It does not take long. It's a matter of going into your software and be like, all right, day rate no longer $5,000, $6,000, you know, hourly rate instead of $600, $720. Like it is a function of making a decision. Business is easier and all the little stuff that goes, goes wrong every single day, that doesn't go away. But having more money helps.

I think that's my problem, uh, is thinking that stuff's gonna go away.

It will never go away. Yeah, especially in tree service. Like, it's going to happen. It is a feature and not a bug. So to think that, oh, like, when every job goes perfectly, then I will make money, is ludicrous because it will never go perfectly.

It's been something I've been struggling with, of, you know, having someone make a small mistake and then me making it seem like potentially a bigger mistake.

No matter who is on that tree, like especially in tree jobs, everything is going like the dumping at the dump, like that happens, backing into like breaking lights, damage. It's literally part of the industry.

They can't be perfect out there.

Yeah, I know.

So the fact that from the very, very beginning we were not flying under the radar, we're trying to do it right, put an extreme amount of pressure on it. So these little teeny tiny things will make them blow up sometimes. And that's another part of my job, is to realize that, let him get it out.

It's a chicken and egg thing. You're like, I want the problems to go away, but the problems go away when you get more organized and have profit ability to be able to, hey, like, let's not rush to a job. Let's spend a little extra time like going over the project. Those things happen when you have the breathability that's caused from profitability.

I definitely need to work on that, like in a, in business and probably my personal life. I'm not kidding. So frustrated about things and, you know, realizing that, you know, it's not like everything collapses for a small problem.

So like, I want the next thing to be estimate videos, meaning when you make an estimate, you're going to make a video of the whole project. So when you're done with Mr. Jones, you spent an hour going over everything and you've talked about, hey, this is our day rate. Like, like you've sold them, like, you know how it is. Like, you basically got them in the bag. I want an estimate video. That video is going to be zoomed out. 0.5, you're going to be showing the whole project so that you don't have to go back. Kevin doesn't have to go back. And then that video gets attached to the estimate as well. So the customer can see the entire scope of the job and you don't ever have to come back.

No, I mean, that's— I've thought about that and like I've worked it out in my head that like, oh, the way that I'm doing it's fine already. But, you know, it's definitely something I should probably try to slow down that time and then or take away, you know, less time writing it all up and then and having them see it right there.

Yeah, like a customer would rather watch a 2-minute video than look through a 3-page, like, to us, that is a great estimate. To them, they're like, was all the problems I talked about with him going to get solved? What's the price? The first thing they're doing, I bet if you had a scan of where their eyes are going, they look at your estimate like, oh, there's a lot, okay, what's the bottom line price? And then they're just judging you on that number 'cause they know they talked about everything. And really what you're creating up above is like, terms and conditions. It is covering your butt. It is kind of a job list for your crew of like what to do. They don't care. They're literally all scrolling to the bottom of a 3-page estimate and just looking at the price.

Yeah, I think, you know, I guess my thought process is they're like, all right, this guy knows what he's talking about. This guy sent me 3 pages. The other guy sent me 3 sentences. So I think that kind of like adds the value because it's so specific. But, you know, it's still a bottleneck as far as like all the time that I spend on it.

A lot of times focusing on the big domino in the business allows for a whole bunch of cascading effects and problems that are in the biz to be solved if we just focus on the major thing. And right now, the ability to have estimate videos, videos attached to the job for the crew to see out in the field would allow way less operational complexity. There would be less mistakes, there would be less times they forget equipment, there'd be less damages because the crew would actually know what they're supposed to be doing and everyone would be on the same page. Does SingleOps allow videos to be inside? For the crew to see?

Uh, Kevin can see it through his side on Single Ops if he pulls it all up.

Is it pictures or video though?

I think it can do video. It definitely can do pictures. I think it can do video. Uh, okay, so photos. So photos. Okay, so not a— okay, it's not video.

At HomeWorks, inside the Field Force mobile app, we've made sure that you can attach almost a 12-minute video in high definition. It compresses it automatically and puts it inside the app. It's accessible for your office and admin. It's accessible for the customer if you want them to see it in the portal, and it's accessible for your crew out in the field. So everyone's on the same page, and this becomes our source of truth to make sure that everything is done to specification as agreed upon, and that I, as the owner, don't have to go back to the, the job. I don't have to go back and walk the crew through the job. I don't have to send my project manager, in this case Kevin, back to the job site just to look at the job, and there'll be way less callbacks and mistakes made. Well, like the easy button is like, hey, Kevin, like spend the day, drive around 8 jobs. That's the easy button. The most cost-efficient way is that you spend 2 minutes at the end of each of those 5 jobs and it's 10 minutes. And like, well, I don't close all the jobs. Okay, 20 minutes. Let's assume 50% close ratio. It's going to take you 20 minutes and maybe a couple of extra minutes to upload the files. So let's call it 30 to 40 minutes is going to save you and him an entire day, which of his time is That's a significant amount.

Yeah.

Like that allows you to be able to do 1.2 to 1.3 with the same crew by just getting more efficient with operations.

Yeah.

And right now you or Kevin spending time going back to job sites is first off inefficient. Secondly, all these little issues that are popping up come from the crew not seeing the job prior to them showing up.

I probably have discounted in my head that they would actually look at it, but I bet it would be something that, you know, if you just kept repeating it, it would eventually be able to kick in and everything. I just haven't, you know, fully committed in that direction yet as far as like getting everybody in, you know, in on the estimates and seeing everything.

Uh, I keep hearing this word should, and I should probably do this. And given the fact that I have a history with Jack and he's had coaching calls with me, he doesn't seem to take action. He overthinks everything. And I'm happy to come out and help. But if he doesn't take action and nothing changes, he'll be in the exact same place with less money in 6 months. What would cause you to not commit to that? Because I hear a lot of like, I should do this. I know I should raise prices. I know I should.

I've just had— I've just had so much success with it in the past, like in comparison to like, like what other people are doing, like in the places that I've sold work for before. TreeWorks, like, you know, besides like my family and friends and stuff like that, like it's, it's like everything to me. I just like to make sure that I've done everything on my end to, you know, cover all my bases to say that, you know, I gave it my all. Even if that's not what's selling the job, doing that consistently every single time, I know that I'm closing a little more than somebody else and, you know, at higher rates. It's just I've just seen it work before. And, you know, maybe I haven't gotten feedback saying like, this is the reason why I've done it. But like, I guess in my head it feels like putting in that work.

He'll go out and do the initial estimate. After that, I'll do a follow-up with them, go out, introduce myself. I take a look at the job, I see what equipment we're going to need, where we're going to stage the trucks, whether or not we need traffic control, the danger, you know, the level of danger that the job is going to entail, if we're going to need extra hands. There's a lot of stuff that goes into it. It's not just a simple process because you got guys cutting a loft, you got people walking under them 24/7.

To do all those extra things could potentially be getting me the jobs. But it seems like it's, you know, potentially not necessary and potentially there's a more efficient, better way to do it.

As much as like, well, it's more steps and more process, you are going to save 90% just on operations. Assume it doesn't close a single other job. You're going to save 90% compared to what is currently the way you've been doing it, which is going back to the job and looking at it Like with Kev, like that is the most inefficient thing in the world. And there's going to be so many balls dropped because there's transfer of information lost between you and him and then him to the customer, him to the employees. And so all the little mistakes that are happening is because you're handing it off to him. He's handing it off to the crew and then they're making mistakes. There's no source of truth between you, the customer, and the crew. And that video is going to take you 2 minutes.

Dang, you're right. If the customer, the crew leader, and the crew can see that video, it really kind of clicked that everybody is going to know exactly what was said and that what was accepted by the customer was based off of the video and not the words or not the written words on the proposal. All right, I got to figure that out.

Oh, it's really simple. Google Drive. Upload, change file name to the name of the customer. When that job is accepted on the next day, you're gonna send that link to the crew and you're also gonna include on the estimate you send to the customer. Okay, you got this.

I'll do it.

You got this. All right, so estimate videos, that is meaning after the end of the job or at the end of the estimate when you're done meeting the customer, you say, hey, Mr. Jones, appreciate you, I'm gonna get an estimate to you within 24 24 hours, I'll make a video of the project for the crew. And just so you know, that video is going to be attached on the email I send to you so that you'll be able to view exactly what the crew's seeing on the day of the job. What are you thinking? Because there's something— there's a reason why you're, you're like, I don't know if that'll work.

Everything I've read, uh, successes that I have had in the past at other places, people, you know, referring to me for questions about trees, how to handle stuff like that, the networks that I've built together. I think that's made me fairly confident. I've just gotten like, like from like, I guess like industry people as far as like, you know, like arborists and, you know, things like that. Like it's like the way that I write it up. Like people have like congratulated me on it and been like, you know, your commitment to writing it up. Like I use a lot of words like one-third lateral reduction, structure prune, co-dominant stems by training to a central leader, arrange scaffolding branches in an ideal formation, remove the 5 D's, the dead, dying, diseased, detached, disfigured branches.

Yeah, but they're not buying from you.

I know.

The customers buying from you.

I know.

Other arborists and your competitors, of course they're going to congratulate you on your verbiage around trees. No one gives a care.

I'll put specific locations of all of the cuts that we're going to be making as far as the diameter. I'll put reasons on there as far as containment, aesthetics, safety, health. I'll say what kind of climber will be on the property that day. I'll put on there which standards we're going to be following, things like that. That's probably what he was referring to.

The customer just wants a problem solved and they're just going to make a decision as to whether or not they hire you based on, will this person solve my problem? And I believe you will, but they're not convinced of it because you're thinking in terms of like what the industry is going to congratulate you on. They don't pay you. Here's a quick exercise. Give your quote to your 5th grader. Ask them to read it and ask them to tell you what the job entails. If they can't do that, If they can say, oh yeah, it looks like you're going to be building a wall or trimming a tree, or you're going to be doing X, Y, and Z. If they can't figure it out, there's a really good shot you're confusing customers. And confused customers don't buy. You aren't confused because it makes perfect sense to you because you do this every day. They have seen 1 to 2 estimates for tree removal in their lifetime. So words like, like level 1, level 2, level A, level B, climber, they have no idea what that means.

Okay.

Like, they don't.

Oh, really?

No. Do you know what a level A climber is? No one knows.

Okay.

No one knows. You do, and that's why the arborists love your estimates, but they don't give us money.

My wife said that to me.

I like your wife. Oh my God. What's your wife's name?

Mia.

Mia, how long have you been married?

Uh, around 5 years.

Let's go.

Um, the fact that he called out the A climber thing when probably like for the last like 4 years or the last like 2 years, it's popped up like twice where she was like, nobody knows what that means. I'm like, everybody knows what an A means. And then he not even knowing said that.

I think Mia needs to be brought in the equation more often.

Oh boy. She's going to love that.

Like, if Mia can't understand your estimates, you shouldn't be going out to customers because how old is she? 32. Cool. Your ideal customer is between her age and 60 years old.

I'm probably wrong a lot in other things besides that with her. That was an eye-opener. Sorry, Mia. You were right.

She is going to be at the top end of level of technical ability as well as the ability to read big words because she's literally married to an arborist. And if she can't understand that verbiage, your customers aren't. I'm not guessing. The reason they're accepting is because they trust you and you're building that trust. Again, that's great. You're an amazing salesperson. I believe you because you're closing at 72% with estimates that people aren't reading.

They're not reading at all. No, I've been writing so much down.

So it's just a function of like I would, I would— I'm not even going to address like shortening the estimates for now. I just want to go after the videos because I know they'll have immediate returns on operation. And here's the thing, you're like, well, what happens when I don't get enough leads because I've raised my prices so much? We're going to fix the website.

Fix the website.

A website can be rebuilt from scratch in 4 to 6 weeks. Oh, we do it all the time. If he can't fix that problem, it's causing you to not raise prices like this. Not getting enough leads is causing you to pay $15,000 for marketing. This is not like, oh, like, we will get to it. It's a matter of I'm spending $50,000 a year fixing a problem that should not exist. I am reducing my prices by 20% on every job because I'm not solving the problem that exists. Okay. And so you're creating fires by not just being like, oh, like, step back for a second. If I doubled my leads, this would not become a problem.

All right. Boom.

Right now you are paying for mailers. These are— let's call them clicks. They are coming to your website. And there is a filter down here. We want customers, boom. And we can determine our customer acquisition cost by how much we spend to get the clicks and get customers at the bottom. In between here is conversion rate and there is close rate. Right now you get a really great checkmark on close rate. You have 70%. This conversion rate is the part that I would guess is less than 1%. Meaning that by saying, hey, I've always just, you know, depend on the mailers. Great, keep doing it. But if we can just move this from 1% to 2%, you will double the amount of customers you're getting at the bottom.

Yeah.

So like, we don't, we don't need to change anything besides conversion rate and it goes from 1% to 2%. You double the business.

All right.

Just trust me. I get it. No, I trust you. I don't want to give you more than 3 things.

I just need you to do these 3 things. Me?

Okay.

So hearing that from him, you know, when I've been hearing it from other people, um, you know, which I probably should apologize to a couple people for telling me those things and then telling them that it's not me, it's them. You know, he really put some things in perspective of things that I need to do better, and you guys are out here crushing it all the time, and I do apologize for the way I was speaking to you recently. Um, yeah, it was, uh, it was actually really helpful. There's a couple things that, you know, I'm to work on, um, so that the guys can have, you know, more communication of like what's going on. Try to do some more like video stuff with the customers and less writing so many things on there, um, because Mike told me that there was too much words on my paperwork, Kevin. Can you believe that? They're not the best estimates in the world like we thought. Um, so potentially getting more videos of everything, uh, we think that could help out. Um, some pricing things, some stuff on the website, um But he promised me that the forgetting things and breaking little things in a business isn't going to go away. And I need to figure out where to, uh, you know, put that self in my head to, you know, be able to handle that, right? So, and like, dead serious, Kevin, like, I'm sorry for the way I was talking to you.

Give me some love. I love you, man. And I understand, I understand 100%.

Yeah, you had, you had—

I know when he always winds up coming back and apologizing at the end of the day. Like I said, we're friends too, you know, it is business, but We've been friends for a while, so it's tough. Like I said, it is a real tough industry.

You've definitely absorbed a lot of my frustration growing this business as fast as I have. So, you know, it's not easy work out here and, you know, it's been a process for sure. So I definitely— it's me. There's things that I need to work on for sure. Cool.

Well, I appreciate that you going out there and apologizing like that.

Yeah, no, definitely. Hearing it from him, as much as I've heard it from everybody else, really was the difference maker.

All right, Mia, is that her name?

Yes.

Mia. Okay. I think you should run everything by Mia.

Oh boy.

Okay. Yes, she, she will be a good lens as to what is best for the customer and hold you accountable to making some of these changes. Like, I sure hope she watches this. She will. Okay, good. I want her to hold you accountable to some of this because I do think you overthink some stuff.

You're not the first person to say that.

Okay, cool. So like, I would say without the cameras, I just want you to win. And right now you're getting in your own way. I would recommend if you want the business to do well, to just take action because you are overthinking everything and it comes through with a 3-page estimate. It comes through by 3 months ago when we talked about changing buttons, still not done. You're overthinking things. Uh-huh.

When you hear it from someone like him, a few things click there that I was like, you've been pushing this back. To hear it from him really made a difference. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I appreciate it.

And so does Mia say that quite often? Like, hey, you're just overthinking this? Uh-huh. Great. So like, I want, I want you and her to go over this together and I want her to hold you accountable. Like, no, these changes must be made. I am not guessing on any of these 3. If I could go through 5 other things and some of them I would be like, industry, I don't know as well as him. I might— these 3 things will work 110%. I have no question or doubt whatsoever. And it will change the business. Like, this will triple your profit. 20% increase in price, it'll triple your profit.

About that right now. Uh-huh.

Getting an estimate video will reduce the amount of like fires by half and increase the efficiency of your most skilled employee, Kevin. And if you fix the website, you'll double your leads. Like, I have no question about that. It's just a matter of whether or not you'll do it.

I redid the whole website. I ended up going with Home Service Web Design. And it's been, you know, they're— it's already done since we started. Yeah. So it's already up and live. And I mean, the feedback that I'm already getting about it from customers, people that I know, is, is amazing. And even myself, I mean, I thought I had a good website sort of before, but now kind of seeing this, I realized where, you know, there was some gaps. So very excited with that. I'm actually doing the Google Business Profile. As well. So hopefully that gets conversion a little better. The close rate was a little bit high. I'm still— and as far as like the raising the prices goes, I'm still closing fairly well. I raised the prices a good amount. I know he said go 20%. I'm really more in that like 10 to 15 right now, if I'm being honest. I'm definitely going to keep inching that up as the leads flow through. And then, yeah, the estimate videos, I'm working on coming up with a full system for every single job because some days there can be like 4 jobs. And I guess I potentially was— some of them, I don't know if I should take the whole video during the estimate because I don't know if it's going to come in, if it was worth kind of the time doing it. But some of the jobs, if I'm passing them and I know that I already have them, I'm taking some videos so that the crew can look through them before they get there. He made me realize that You know, probably not everybody knows as much about tree work as me that I talk to, and sometimes I think that I talk to people as if they kind of know and care as much as I do. So I've been trying to slow things down a little bit as far as, um, you know, how I write that stuff on the work orders, and then, um, you know, even just talking to the customers in general. And then as far as with my wife goes, you know, she was, she was pretty much correct because I'm always talking to her about business and work and things like that, and You know, she, she's told me before that, you know, not everybody knows exactly what you're saying. It just sounds like you know what you're talking about because, you know, you talk a lot about it. So this whole experience was great. I mean, you guys were great. I mean, you know, I learned a lot from Mike. I have watched the videos a good amount before and I still watch them now. So I'm going to continue that. And I try to tell as many people as possible that that's really the best content that you can get from the home service side of things. So, you know, definitely appreciate everything you guys have done for me.