The Most Profitable One-Man Business You’ve Never Heard Of Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 Would you believe that you can make 60 grand a  month just with a bobcat like this? What got you onto this? A lot of demand. People that have  land, they they lose parts of their property every year as the hunting cycle grows in on them.  No employees, not a [music] bunch of startup costs cuz you can finance these things. You've paid  back all of your startup costs from your first job.

00:19 Yeah. That's incredible. [music] This year  we ended up doing about 565,000 in 6 months. Yeah. Holy crap. It's never been so simple to start a  business. What did your first [music] customer look like? Who were they? How did you find them?  Etc. So, they came into That's exactly what my friend Alex did. So, $6,000 job, $4,000 profit.  How big could it scale?

00:37 The sky's is the limit. I could easily see this getting to about $30  million a year. Holy cow. I said, "Alex, I got to fly you to Texas. You got to show my viewers  exactly how they can copy you." So, we'll make around 10 to 11,000 per snow [music] event. How do  you find those customers? So, without further ado, let's go meet Alex. All right, Alex, thank you  for coming.

00:59 Yeah, no problem. How was the flight? It was all right. It was cold getting on the  plane, but Okay. wasn't too bad. Okay. Well, tell us uh tell us about your business. So,  we do forestry mulching and land clearing. So, we just clear woods. Clear [music] land. And how  long have you been doing that? So, we're about 2 years in. Okay. And you you enjoy it?

01:18 Oh, we love  it. Now, of all things, you could have started cuz you're kind of an entrepreneur. Yeah. What got  you onto this? Um, a lot of demand for it. So, you know, where we live in Cincinnati, there's  invasive honeysuckle issue. People that have land, they they lose parts of their property every year  as the honeysuckle grows in on them. So, a lot of people didn't know about this kind of business  and they were [music] paying tree services lots and lots of money to do it by hand.

01:41 So, we came in  and said, "We can offer a more affordable solution and it's cooler [music] to watch." Yeah. Now,  have you ever used this yourself? Like were were you a customer of this? Yeah. So I have 5 acres  and about three of it was wooded. It was an old pasture that had grown up for about 15 years and  uh my old backyard was essentially unusable.

01:55 Yeah. So it was growing in on my barn and that's kind of  how I found this type of service was looking for a solution that was reasonable. You know, I mean it  would be tens of thousands to have a tree service to it. So landed on forestry mulching and noticed  it was mostly for commercial stuff and I said, "Hey, someone needs to do this residentially."

02:18 We looked at the only company I could find was pretty far away down in Lexington and uh so  I said, "Hey, we'll just start this." I mean, Cincinnati, it's a big city and you couldn't find  anyone to do this just to clear your land. No, couldn't find anybody. Wow. Yeah. Now, how did  you aside from just like looking on Google, how did you actually learn that there was more  demand than supply?

02:36 So I started I did a lot of keyword research on it just looking into you know  what if people are searching clear my land maybe not necessarily searching for forestry mulching  that's a more of a commercial term it's just more of clear my land get rid of this honeysuckle just  everything that I could possibly think of I would run it through keyword search terms and I had  hundreds and hundreds of them and then I compared that to concrete work and you know the demand for  forestry mulching was pretty close to concrete

03:01 it wasn't quite as much but you know there's a  thousand concrete companies. Yeah. So people were searching for these terms and so that's  how I just decided hey this is going to work. Now give me an example of like what they call a  longtail search term right like cuz you said you looked hundreds of them up. What's is it like land  clearing near me like affordable land clearing how clear land stuff like that like is that very  few people are searching but in aggregate there's a lot of them.

03:33 Yeah. So a longtail  keyword would be more like clear my woods, open up my land. They're not as like lane clearing  and forestry watching are more the commercial terms. Honeysuckle invasion. Yeah. Yeah. How  do I get rid of this honeysuckle? You know, like that would be a longtailed keyword. And then  on top of that, I use chat GPT and I just to kind of see like, hey, this is the service.

03:52 What would  people look for? So just created a big list, ran it through a keyword tool and just saw there  was a lot of demand. Okay. So, you buy five acres. Yeah. Three of it is unusable. Y you start looking  for someone to clear it. Tree trimming companies are like, "We'll do it. It'll take us two weeks  and it'll be $12,000." And you're like, "No, there's got to be a better way."

04:14 You start  looking up land clearing, forest mulching. Their company's doing it, but mostly commercially.  They're using these industry specific terms that consumers don't even know, right? They don't even  know what to search for. And you kind of find this arbitrage opportunity, right? Coming from like  being an internet marketer. Yep. and you say, "I should do this."

04:31 Yeah. Is that accurate?  Yeah. Okay. So, what did you do next? Like, you go spend a bunch of money on one of these  things or what? Pretty much. Yeah. So, you know, the smart thing would probably have been to start  the business and and then buy the equipment, get the customers. I was very confident in the  demand. Yeah. We bought the machine first and then sought the customers.

04:49 What made you think to  compare it to uh like concrete work? Is it because it's like a comparable price point? Yeah, it is  really. I mean, it is pretty comparable. concrete. I just kind of looked at it was more so because  I just see concrete companies all the time, you know, and I just if I can compare it to their  demand, I guess at least have a general idea of how many concrete companies are out there.

05:07 Yeah.  And how many people are looking for their service, you know, while it's not necessarily in the same  ballpark. The price-wise, it kind of is. So all of these search terms, the traffic that you found  was specifically for like greater Cincinnati, not just nation. Yeah. So essentially  50 miles outside of where we are. Yeah. our range. I'm just making these numbers up, but  let's say you look up all these longtail concrete work search terms and a thousand people a day in  Cincinnati are searching for them and

05:31 there's 100 companies ready to fulfill that service and  then for land clearing there's 800 people a day searching for it and there's two companies and  you're like, "Huh, there's something." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a no-brainer. Yeah, for sure.  Okay. All right. So, when did like the website come and like the entity formation like walk  us through from like day one to day 30?

05:49 Yeah, day one is more as we start to I start building  the website first as at the same time we're kind of getting quotes on the equipment. So we  probably launched the website within a few days of actually buying the equipment because I needed  something that I could send leads to and then the idea of the YouTube channel came about to educate  people and then that kind of started.

06:13 So when we got the machine and then we used the machine on  my property, I took a bunch of videos and clips and stuff and I created a YouTube video to kind  of educate people on what this is. Okay. I then utilized started running the ads then the ads I  would include the YouTube link in there and then send them through that and then to the website to  close the sale.

06:36 So once we launched and people saw it and it I mean we took off very quickly.  Okay. when you look at acquiring customers, like how do you approach that? Do you have like  what sort of a process do you use for that? So, we have a three-step framework for Okay. All right. I  want to get into that. Okay. But first, like what did your first customer look like?

06:55 Like who were  they? How did you find them? Etc. So, they came in through through our ads and um she actually had  a parent pass away and their property had been sitting vacant for like 15 years, overgrown.  So she wanted the property that she grew up in to look like it did when she lived there  when she was a kid. And so we went out there, didn't really know we were doing, started quoting  by the day at the time.

07:19 We had some experience running equipment our property, but we cleared her  property. She, you know, went with us and learned a lot on that job. But she was just absolutely  over the moon about it. You know, when we were done, she was crying. She was so happy like this  is what it looked like. Yeah. And so that was kind of very rewarding. And it's not something that  we thought about when we started.

07:38 You didn't expect someone to cry. Right. Right. Right.  Yeah. We didn't expect it. And so it just kind of reinforced this idea like, hey, we're on the  right path. We're doing something very valuable for people. Yeah. That's awesome. And once sales  start coming in, do you use something to make sure that you're in compliance with the state? I mean,  so you don't even have to think about it because one of the first things you got to do is register  as an LLC before you start pulling in real money just to protect

08:08 yourself. Any business you start  needs to be protected because if you get sued, you don't want to be personally liable. I use  Bizzy for all of my entity formations. Basically, filing an LLC. Busy is awesome because they  actually don't even charge you to file for an LLC. You just pay your states fees and they  provide a nice clean interface for it because they just handle all of it in the background.

08:29 So,  I'm not wondering if I miss something or set it up wrong. I just know it's taken care of and then  I get to focus on actually running the business instead of babysitting paperwork. Separate your  business from your personal stuff. And then there's the annual filings, registered agent, all  these things that you don't think about until they become a problem.

08:48 So Bizzy supports this channel.  I use them personally. I file all my LLC's with Bizzy. Check out busy.com. All right. So this is  part of what we'll be mulching today. Tell me what we're looking at here. So this is what we would  consider. So the way we do our pricing is by the quarter acre. We used to do it by the day. We've  kind of adapted that model.

09:03 So, this one we would consider like a medium brush density. Okay. And  a tier one terrain for us. So, it's pretty flat. Very manageable by the skid. Okay. And this would  be like a tier two densities. It's if it's This is tier two here. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a little  bit difficult to walk through is kind of a the easiest way to put it. Um nothing too crazy large.

09:23 This is definitely pretty it's medium work for the machine. It's not going to be anything too crazy.  So, that's kind of how we decide how we quote things and it allows us to be scalable with our  pricing. Okay. So, how many tiers are there? So, we've got three tiers of brush density and three  tiers of terrain. Okay. Okay. So, do you have like a formula in your head where if it's like tier  3 plus tier 1 plus 7 acres equals this price or Yeah.

09:51 So, it is formulated. So, when we quote  a property, I'll highlight the area that we're clearing. Let's say it's 5 acres. I can separate  that out. If this area is a tier 2 terrain, it has a multiplier applied to that base quarter  acre price. Okay. Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. However, if like you wanted to start  out like we did, you could also just do it by day.

10:12 Okay. And be pretty comfortable with your pricing  and customers are pretty happy with that pricing model as well. Okay. Uh we just kind of adapted as  we expanded and [music] needed a little bit more definition to how we price. Yeah. So, roughly,  let's say it's a tier 2 density, 3 acres. How many days would that take? Half a day, two days?  Three acres would be on a tier 2 density roughly 3 days.

10:32 Okay. And what would you charge for that?  That would be somewhere around 6,000. Okay. Yeah. A little bit higher than that, but yeah, about 6  to 7. And your costs on that are really no labor if you're doing it yourself. Right. Right. So, we  have one guy, one machine. So, very simple. Um, I go out and quote it. I mark everything out  for the operator.

10:51 They can see what we're doing. They can see the area that we're clearing and  they just show up with the machine and run it through. So our cost on that is pretty low,  pretty reasonable. How much in fuel roughly? So we'll probably run about $80 to $100 a day in  diesel fuel. Okay. Let's say 300 bucks for fuel. If you're paying someone to do it, what are you  paying him per day?

11:10 So they're making about $250 to $300 a day. Okay. Let's say 300. So 1,000 bucks  for labor, 600 bucks for fuel. Yep. 1,600. You've got to put some aside for repairs. Yep. Right.  How much roughly do you set aside? Um, it's about 8% is what we put aside for years. We used to do  10% but we just, you know, it ended up being too much. Let's be conservative and say 10.

11:33 So, we're  at like 2,000 now, I think. Is that right? We're at 2,000 and then payment on the vehicle, what is  that per month? 1,500 a month. A month. So, it's like your costs even if you pay someone to do it  are like 30% 40%. And and and that would be if it was just mulching. And you know, other things that  we offer, which most customers take advantage of, is going to be something like grapple work.

11:56 We  charge $750 to run the grapple. So $6,000 job, $4,000 profit. Yeah. And if you do it yourself,  $5,000 profit. Same job, give or take. Yep. Any ups, you know, any of the upsales too can  even increase it more. Yeah. So, okay. So, tell me what we're looking at here. So, this is a  Bobcat T86 with a Superflow Bobcat mulching head. Okay. And this one in particular has the knives  on it with a what they call bite limiter.

12:20 So, this little drum keeps the teeth from going too  far into the ground. Okay. Can you adjust these like the distance between this? You can. Yeah.  So, there would be like there's some adapters, but you don't really necessarily need to. These  are designed as all one. Okay. And then what is the carbide version that you were talking about?  So, the carbide version is rather than it being kind of like a blade right here, it's got carbide  tips on it, and it's a lot better if you're going to be in a rocky area.

12:52 If you need to hit the  ground for any reason, and you can push those teeth into the ground without dawing it. The  knives will doll, but they also cut through wood about 50% faster. Okay. What would the attachment  cost new and used, and what would the Bobcat cost new or used? So, our first attachment we got was a  Fecon attachment. We bought that used.

13:09 It was part of their rental stuff. We picked it up for 15,000.  Okay. A brand new one, you're going to be around 40,000. Okay. And then what about the machine?  So, an 86 is going to be about 115,000. Um, our first machine was a 770. We bought that used  for 74. Okay. Did you start by financing these or did you just have cash for the whole thing? So, we  definitely financed, you know, we put about 5,000 down um and financed the first machine.

13:41 Okay. What  was your first payment on your first machine and attachment? So, it's about 1,400. Okay. A month  for that. And that included that attachment as part of it. Okay. So, you got in this business  for five grand or was there more to it than that? Yeah. Well, we bought the trailer. So, we did buy  a trailer that was which you could have financed.

14:02 You could have We could have Yeah, the trailers  are pretty affordable. So, we we just paid cash for it, but it was about 11,000. Okay. Um, and  then we needed a truck that could pull it. So, we just bought a a used truck uh for about $8,000.  Okay. That could pull it safely. And uh so yeah, really the startup cost is uh pretty reasonable.  Yeah. And how much was your first job?

14:18 First job we did was about $6,500. Wow. Okay. The one where  the lady cried? Yeah. Yeah. That was a multi-day job. Yeah. So, if you had found a way to finance  the truck and trailer or lease the truck and trailer, five grand down for the equipment, you  could have paid back all of your startup costs from your first job. Yeah, that's incredible. And  then how much was your second job?

14:40 That's It's been a while since it was probably just a day job.  I think it was about 1,800. I think at the time we were at 1,800. Uh we moved to 2,000 per day  pretty quickly. Okay. How long between the time when you first started running ads in earnest to  closing that first deal? 2 days. Wow. Yeah. That's just when she was available to do the quote.

15:01 Yeah. I mean, as soon as I published that ad, I had people reaching out. Oh my gosh. So, we were  we were hitting the ground running pretty quick. And first 30 days, from the day you start ads, 30  days later, what was your revenue or andor profit if you remember? Uh, first 30 days, I think it was  about 25,000. 20 25 and profit. Profit. I mean, you've got your startup cost.

15:23 Oh, yeah. Yeah. You  know, just that month. Yeah. I mean, it was pretty 17 maybe 16. Wow. Yeah. All right. So, what year  is this machine here? Uh, this is a 2025. Okay. Could an F-150 pull this or do you need something  bigger? No, this would need especially this machine. This one's about 12,000 lb. Okay. So,  you're going to want at least uh a 3500 truck.

15:46 Yeah. Okay. And this one you would need a CDL to  pull. Okay. Yeah. Now, talk to me about renting machines because from what I understand, it's  pretty easy to rent a Bobcat. [music] The hard part is the attachment. Yeah. Exactly. I rent  Bobcats on Facebook Marketplace for my property, right? I've never tried to to rent the attachment.  Well, that's a good point, too.

16:00 So, the Bobcat, the reason is is you have to run a forestry kit  on the machine. Okay. Um, so like on this machine, for example, you can see this is a fall guard.  So, if you knock any trees, come down in the cab. A regular Bobcat doesn't have that as the  Forester kit ones have it. And then you can see this door. It's a 3/4 in polycarbonate door. Okay?

16:20 So, it's a expensive add-on for the machines, but that's why they won't rent you one that doesn't  have that. Okay. That specific stuff. Bobcat does most Bobcat dealers will rent them, you know,  unless you're renting it for like a month. Yeah, it is expensive to rent. Well, I rented a  Bobcat. It didn't have the forest mulching kit, but just from an individual, it was like 350 a  day.

16:42 350 bucks a day. Yeah, these are quite quite a lot more. Yeah. All right. So, you just finished  this. Walk us through what we're looking at here. So this is kind of like the finished product of  mulching. Just kind of like a fine wood mulch. It takes about 12 to 18 months to break down and then  the grass will come back in. Okay. You don't need to remove it or anything.

17:02 It just No. And I would  actually recommend you don't remove it. Yeah. Is there any type of like tree or vegetation that  people should watch out for or just stuff that's too thick? Well, in our area we have what's called  Oage Orange Tree. Very hardwood. When you hit it, it's like concrete. We can mulch them. It just  takes a long time. Um it can break some teeth sometimes.

17:23 Yeah. Yeah. It just it depends. You  don't want to hit metal. So before a job, we'll go through and make sure all the metal's picked up.  Rubber, like tires, things like that. Barb wire. Barb wire. Yeah. So we actually include it as  part of our emails to the customers. So we'll say, "Hey, if you could clear the area of debris." If  they don't do that, that's fine.

17:40 We'll do it. It's just that's part of the billable time. Okay. All  right. So walk us through the revenue and profit numbers. So tell me what day you started the  business. So it was May of May of mid May 14th maybe somewhere around of 2024. 2024. Yeah. Okay.  So this is about 19 almost. Okay. So what did May through December your first year look like?

18:04 So  we did around 170 to 180 off the top of my head. Thousand. Yeah. Wow. Okay. How much of that was  profit? Gross profit was about 70%. Wow. Yeah. Okay. It was exactly like 69 point something. So,  six figures of profit your first seven months. Yeah. Give or take. Okay. That's incredible.  What was your best month that first year for the first seven months?

18:28 45,000. Wow. I say. Yeah.  And that was that's hustling. That's running that machine every day. Which month was that? I would  say it was October off top of my head. Yeah. So, your fifth month in business, just in that month  alone, you did $45,000 and over 30,000 of that was profit. Yeah. That's incredible. All right.  So, then January 2025 starts.

18:45 How does that year look? We're seasonal where we're at. Um, not  everybody would be seasonal. Like, you know, down here in Texas, they're not. They can run  all year. Um, so our second year was a very slow start. It was no mulching in January, February,  March. We had anticipated starting first week of April for spring. We just got record-breaking  rain.

19:09 So, we didn't end up getting started until June. Okay. How did it look from June to December?  So, we bought another machine cuz at the time we're selling jobs, right? So, we we just started  stacking jobs like crazy. I mean, it was just two every day. And do you collect a deposit? How does  that work? We actually don't unless it's over a certain amount.

19:35 So, if it's like over $10,000,  then we'll collect a 20% deposit. Okay. But yeah, this year we ended up doing about 565,000 in  6 months. Yeah. Holy crap. Yeah. And then we also picked up the remote controlled machine.  The RCU is amazing. It's a high dollar service for that one because it's very specific. It  serves hillsides and what kind of advantage we got.

20:00 Last year we stopped mulching at the end  of November, about third week of November. This year we've been able to just keep pushing. Yeah.  And I also learned from the first year that we need to have large farm properties and stuff set  up for the winter. Okay. So what I did was as I'm out doing quotes, let's say I'm doing a quote in  July, but it's a large farm property.

20:17 I'll ask them. I'll say, "Hey, do you mind if we do this  in winter, do you have a certain time frame you want this done?" They say, "Oh, I don't mind at  all." And I'll offer them a 10% discount for us to move that to the winter. So I'll look at make  sure these are great properties, filling in the gaps. Right. Right. I'm basically now last year we  stopped all winter.

20:36 This year I learned, hey, we can actually run year round if I plan ahead. Yeah.  And I can point out, hey, this property doesn't hold water. This is a large farm property. They  don't care about ruts on their property. They just have a it's serving a specific purpose for them.  So I'll I filled up our whole winter schedule. So now we're running all winter.

20:57 Wow. So you're not  really seasonal right now, even in Ohio. Yeah. So we found a way to get around being seasonal. Oh  man. All right. So, first 6 months in business, $180,000, over 100,000 in profit. Then you take  some time off, it's winter, it's it's wet, it's raining, you don't know what you don't know. The  next 6 months after that, you do $565,000 in in revenue.

21:20 Y put those together in a 12-month time  frame, you do over a half a million in profit, like net profit. Yeah. That's incredible. Um,  now let's gross profit. Gross profit. Okay. Gross profit. Yeah. Yeah. Not net. What would  net be? So net is about 40%. Okay. about 3640. All right. So like 750 in revenue, call it 550  in gross profit and 300,000 in net profit, give or take.

21:45 And and that's you got to keep it that's  with a lot of growth investment. Yeah. So that's, you know, new trucks, trailers, equipment, ads.  Yeah. So next year we expecting that to be quite substantially higher. Yeah. What do you expect  to do next year? We expect to do over a million. We're hoping to hit 1.2 too. And we can do that  with the machines that we have now.

22:02 Wow. So, we don't have to buy any more equipment. Okay.  So, tell me about this three-step marketing method that you have. So, the three-step marketing  framework is capture, educate, sale. Okay. So, essentially, we do a meta ad to capture their  attention. Only video ads. Only video. Vertical. Vertical. Okay. Yep. It'll be showing that mulure  shots and the really interesting shots, you know, slow-mo shots of the mulure before and afters,  real attentiongrabbing stuff just to show people, hey, you have this problem.

22:36 Here's the solution.  Yeah. And then we include our YouTube channel link into that. In the ad. So, the call to action  to click in the ad is to your YouTube channel. It's to our website, but then our website also  features YouTube up front. Yeah. So, but I also include the YouTube link in the ad itself and the  ad text. Okay. Okay. So, kind of leading them, they can capture the YouTube through the site or  through the YouTube link on the ad.

22:57 Okay. Yeah. So, then our YouTube channel then educates them.  Most people don't know what forest streaming is, what land clearing is. So, we show them what it  is, show them how it's done. They can see what to expect on a job, what it looks like when we show  up, what the end result looks like 18 months from now. just kind of educate the customer on this  service and then that leads to the sale.

23:19 Okay. To saying, you know, kind of show by also showing our  work, it also shows them that we know what we're doing. Yeah. Right. It's legitimacy, right? It's  adding, right? Adding legitimacy to the company and and to the service itself. So, um and then  they funnel from there to our website where they contact us. Our leads are very hotly. They're  basically already sold by the time that I even go out there because they've already seen it all  through our YouTube channel.

23:47 Okay. So, what do you spend per lead on to what do you give to Facebook  for every lead on average? So, our per lead cost is $20. $20. All right. How many of those turn  into a physical quote? Almost all of them turn into a physical quote. Really? Yeah. And then  what percentage of your quotes close? So about 49% of our quotes close. Yeah. Okay. So let's  just say a lead's 25 bucks to be conservative.

24:17 You're spending $50 to acquire a customer. Yeah.  What is your average job size? Our average job is about $3,300. Holy cow. So that's like a 66x  return on ad spend. Oh yeah. Give or take. It's ridiculous. But I think it's incredible that video  is so central to this whole business. So, are do we need like a bunch of videography equipment or  can someone take their iPhone and a $20 tripod and just throw it up on a time lapse and just  like during a job?

24:41 Is that realistic? Oh, yeah. You could just use your phone. Yeah. You can strap  it to your chest, get some stuff on the inside of the machine. You can set it up on a little tripod  and get a time lapse. Use like free apps, Cap Cut, Instagram edits. Like, you don't need editing  experience or anything. And you don't necessarily, it doesn't have to be good.

24:58 You have to just show  people what it is. It's visual. It's fun to watch. Right. Now, you're only showing your ads to people  in the greater Cincinnati area. Yeah. So, within about 50 mi of us, 50 mi. Okay. What other things  can you do with a Bobcat? Like if it's seasonal, what like snow removal. Let's say worst case  scenario, someone cannot get forestry mulching leads, but they have this Bobcat.

25:20 How can they  use it to make money? Oh, man. There's a million things you can do with a Bobcat. I mean, there's  hundreds of different attachments you can street sweeping, snow removal. They've got you could  have a tree spade. You could transplant trees with it. You can grind asphalt. That's a big one,  too. We actually see a lot of people with asphalt grinders dirt.

25:39 Yeah. Literally, it's a tool that  can be used for thousands of different things. Have you ever done snow removal? We do do snow  removal. Tell me how how the numbers break down on that. So, snow removal is very lucrative. So  if you get a good snow event, so we'll make around 10 to $11,000 per snow event and that is within  about 20 hours of clearing and then we spread that across different machines that we have.

26:06 Holy cow.  Yeah. So if you've got one machine, let's say, and you've just got to clear some snow and you  get a good season of snow, you've essentially just paid for that machine for the whole year. How do  you find those customers? So in that case, I mean, the demand for snow removal is extraordinary. So  the general contractors, at least in our area too, I know it can be different for people up north  where snow in itself is its own thing.

26:26 A general contractor will typically oversell their capacity  and uh we can just we come in, contact a general contractor. Hey, we've got the snow boxes.  We've got everything we need. What sites do you want us at? You know, and they'll always  give you something. They always need people. So that's just a different attachment. That's just  Yeah. And that's probably the the most affordable attachment is a snow box.

26:51 I mean, you can pick  those up for a couple thousand dollar. Wow. So, yeah. And you're just plowing? Yeah, we're just  pushing snow. Okay. So, just pushing it off of the parking lots and HOAs. So, you're doing it for  general contractors so they can keep working. So, yeah. I mean, general contractors, what they do  is they capture the snow contract.

27:07 So, they'll get they're they'll have a snow trigger. So, in  in our case, they'll have one some properties that are 1 in. So if it is one inch of snow on the  ground, you're out there pushing snow. It doesn't matter if you're expecting 13 inches. If it's at  one inch, you're running constantly. So they're getting paid by a landlord or something. Yeah.

27:26 They're getting they're subbing it out to you, right? Commercial property owners. Okay. Yeah. And  then they sub it to us. So then they get they make their cut and then So they might be getting  paid 20 grand for that parking lot. They're giving you 10 of it or 15 of it. Yeah. They're  making and killing off of it. Yeah. All right. So if someone's watching this, they don't have a  lot of money.

27:44 They've got some time. They have an internet connection, a credit card. What would you  suggest they do that first 30 days to start this business and to be as successful or more as you've  been? So, the first thing I would do is create a brand, build a website, you know, borrow images.  In our case, when we started out before we had all of our images, we just borrowed Bobcats, you  know, cuz it's we kind of looked at it like that.

28:09 It's uh it's advertising. Yeah, it's advertising.  They they probably wouldn't mind having stuff, but yeah, we just use that and put start an ad.  You don't have to put a ton of money into an ad. About put about $500 into it, you can get a  pretty good idea. What should a daily budget be, would you say? So, right now, we run about an $80  a day budget.

28:23 Okay. So, but when we started out, we ran $20 a day. Okay. Yeah. Are there any tools  that you would suggest that people use to build a website or a logo or like what types of tools do  you use for this business? So, when we initially started, we just used WordPress and I built a  website, but now with AI, you can just throw a website online with lovable, one prompt.

28:43 Yeah,  one prompt. You could oneshot the website. I mean, it's never been so simple to start a business.  Now, what are the must haves on the website? Lead capture, pictures, videos if you have it, you  know, your logo is a description of your service, before and afters if you can find something that  you can use. What would you have done differently going back in time?

29:04 How could people avoid  headaches? So, what I would have done differently is bought a new machine. I wouldn't have bought  used. Start new, not use. Yep. The reason is is because forestry can be hard on equipment and  and it's hard to determine what you're getting. It's just best to just start new. That way you  know exactly what's going on with the machine.

29:23 You know it's new. You know it's going to run.  You know it has a warranty. Yeah. Warranty is a big part of it. So yeah, I would have started new  because especially with you can get 0% financing on new. We looking back that's what we would have  done. Okay. What are your insurance costs run? Um, so insurance for us is actually pretty reasonable.  For one machine, I want to say is about $150 a month.

29:43 So, wow. Pretty reasonable. And the  reason in our case, they consider us an excavating company. Okay. Um, not a tree service. So, that's  [music] pretty affordable for insurance. What about like general liability insurance or more  like umbrella? Do you have that? Yeah. Yeah. What does that run? So, that's 225 a month. Any other  unexpected costs in this business?

29:59 unexpected costs or downsides, I would say. So, your wear  parts with mulching are going to wear faster. So, you're going to break hydraulic couplings.  Like I said, it's harder on the machine. So, having a stockpile of wear parts, if you buy in  bulk, it's a lot cheaper, you know. So, you know, you're going to break hydraulic couplings and  they're super easy to just unscrew and screw on.

30:26 So, yeah, I would say that wasn't something we  expected starting out, but we figured out pretty quickly. Yeah, unexpected costs went more around  machines. was like grease, fluids, fuel is pretty pretty easy. You know, the machines are kind of  made to run for 8 hours a day on a fuel tank. So, let's say that someone wants to start this  business. They don't want to hire, they don't want to scale, they just want it to be them and a  machine.

30:47 How big could this business get if they stayed 40 hours a week busy all year? How like  on a revenue and a profit basis? Um, I would say with one person, one machine running year round,  they could do reasonably about 35,000 a month. A month in profit or revenue? In revenue with one  machine. Yeah. How much of that profit would you say? I would say they're going to end up about  20,000 a month.

31:09 And Okay. Quarter million a year in in profit running this business yourself. Yep.  Running yourself. How big could it scale? Like if they just wanted to go all out hiring like [music]  big building. Yeah. Oh man, the sky's is the limit because you can get into commercial, you can get  into rightaway clearing. Um, you can government contracts. Yeah, solar fields is another big one.

31:32 So, you can do solar field clearing. There are hu huge companies that do this like Asplond and  they're a multi-billion dollar company. In just your city alone, depending on where you live,  like in Cincinnati, for example, I could easily see this getting to about $30 million a year.  Holy cow. Just in Cincinnati. So Cincinnati has 300,000 people and the whole metro area has 2  million people.

31:53 So you're saying in that area it could [music] this could be a your business could  scale in time to a $30 million business. Yeah, I could see it being quite large. Okay, Alex,  thank you for your time. Where can people find you if they want to learn more? So they can find us on  our YouTube channel at brushworksco and then our website is brushworksco.com.

32:15 Okay. And we'll link  to both of those. Thank you very much. Yeah. So, these videos take a lot of time and money  to film, and my entire goal is to get you to start a business with or without me. So, if you  appreciate this video, please just do me a favor, subscribe, share it with someone who might be  entrepreneurial. Even if you're watching this, you might think you're subscribed. Most of  you actually aren't. Thanks for hanging out.