The Decision Filter Every Land Clearing Business Owner Needs

Speaker A: Shiny Object syndrome for us will likely never go away for sales.

Speaker B: The crazy statistic right now it takes six to eight touch points, six to eight tries to get someone on the

Speaker A: phone on average, just pick the one service and become known for that. I would have saved myself so much time. If it can be done on a computer, it will be handled by AI at some point.

Speaker B: The bigger your business is or the more businesses or the more commitments you have, the more decision making you have. And decision making fatigue is a real thing.

Speaker A: What we're going to be talking about today is founder brain overload. You've got so many different decisions bouncing around in your mind at any given time. And by the end of this, if you stick around, I want to give you a framework for how to go make decisions. But it comes down to identifying where the most important thing is that you can be actually spending your brain energy on. And so by the end of this, stick around. But I'm going to keep rolling with this conversation because it's really interesting right now and I think a lot of people are interested in the AI conversation as have been. I, uh, we're using AI consistently over here. Jacob. I remember whenever you were out here, um, it was like right at the beginning of whenever AI was being launched, Open Claw was happening. Then Claude, you know, came behind and they just figured out how to launch fast and launch a competitor. And so I think we could both share something that's really interesting on both sides of. I've been. I jumped back over to Claude and been using that. You've been using Open Claw. But a big reason why I switched back to Claude is because of that reason. Like, I mean, I was spending 1, 2 quickly to 300 a day, right? And then I was like, holy crap. Like, yes, we're getting a lot done and yes, we're taking a lot off of the back office. And I'm also spending a lot per day. My question for you specifically, as it relates to this, we've got decisions, decisions, decisions. And what we're going to talk about today is what's a shiny object and what's not? What is a shiny object and what's not? And so for you guys who are listening on this, I see most of you, a lot of you, reverting back to the shiny object of equipment, okay? And so what I want you to listen to this conversation as, like, view it through the lens of equipment is your shiny object. If Jacob and I are talking about AI, let's view that as the equipment on our side right now, okay? Because I think we can all, no matter what business that you have, realize that there are important things that grow the business and then there are also shiny objects that deter us from growth. And I'll share an example of how I went down a rabbit hole of shiny object syndrome and identified before it became an issue. All right, and so my question for you, Jacob, AI, is it a shiny object or is it important?

Speaker B: That's going to be a variable. I feel it is important because we have a very small window until it is everywhere, just like the Internet, except it's moving faster than the Internet moved in the 90s. That being said, depending on what your business is doing, where it's at, it may not be the priority. It could become a shiny object for your business. Again, that's, uh, that's the whole too many decisions thing for me. It's definitely not a shiny object because my business will literally get destroyed if I don't, if I don't jump on it. And it's that every day it gets easier and easier to use and easier to access. And it's learning because everybody's using it. Right? So that's another thing that's sort of I gotta be, I gotta be careful with on my end. But then I think, well, if I can just incorporate it fast enough and provide more value in a shorter amount of time for my clients, then that's going to be a huge win. And I've already seen it happening. I know it can happen. So for me, it's definitely not a shiny object. But could it be for a lot of people? Yes.

Speaker A: I'm going to share in today's talk about where I identified. It was for me. And I also believe wholeheartedly and some, some, some of you are going to think I'm crazy for this. I believe that if it can be done on a computer, not only can it be done by AI, uh, like it, it will be done at some point by AI. And so the conversation that I had with our team a couple weeks ago here at Owner Ops, we've got three overseas employees. And you know, the big question in knowledge work right now are people who are doing work on the computer is, is my job irrelevant? And my conversation with them was everybody's question is, is my job going to stay or is it going to go? And my answer to you is, we have to figure out how to use a. You figure out how to use AI in your role, then you're good with me. And I just made that very clear as it relates to land clearing and Forestry mulching. I firmly believe that there is a scenario where back office can be handled by an AI team.

Speaker B: Oh yeah?

Speaker A: How, how far off do you think we are from that?

Speaker B: We're, we're not. You just have to have the time and, or money to learn, train and set that up. But I mean, it could be done right now. Did you hear the Nvidia guy talking about radiologists?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: So one of the first things that AI took by storm was reading X ray imaging. Radiologists study the images right after you get an MRI or whatever. So everybody's fear was radiologists are dead, right? They're gone. Well, the opposite happened. So AI is in every radiology department now, like by far, for years. But the opposite happened. There is a massive need for more radiologists and they can't hire fast enough because the job of radiologists was not to read the scan, it was to diagnose disease. And, uh, the scan was just a task that they did. Well, now they can do a hundred x more tasks than they used to. So now we're doing more, faster, more often for patients. So we need more radiologists because we can do more. Now I truly believe that is going to be the case in a lot of, a lot of scenarios. Like, like with my team, I was thinking I was going to have to be hiring two to three people a month for the next three years. Now that is not the case. Now I can make my people way more efficient. The tasks that they used to do, like account managers, I can take so much off their plate and make them 10x more efficient so that they can focus more on their core job, which is just that client relationship and diagnosing what's going on with their business and strategizing the next step.

Speaker A: So if it can be done on a computer, it will be handled by AI at some point. Now I sent you a loom video earlier this week and it had to do with how fast AI is moving. And so I want to get into this real quick because I think it's all going to be relevant here. And it all comes down to the decisions that we're trying to make in business. So right now, for some of you who are listening to this, you've got many different decisions along with AI. You've got, should I buy a new mulcher head? Should I run Facebook ads? Should I hire or sub out a crew? Should I hire out my friend who has a mulching business two hours away? I got a lead two hours away. Should I hire that out to him? Should I sub it out. What's the structure with that? Should I raise my prices? Should I lower my prices? I don't know if I'm competitive or not. Do I get Dodge or Ford? Which one's better? How about a new website? I hear all these people talking about AI. Like, do we build website with AI? Do we hire somebody like Jacob to build it? Do we use, uh, GoHighLevel for our CRM? Do we use Jobber? I heard Jacob and Austin talking about GoHighLevel and Java. Which one do I use? Do I buy a chipper? I've already got a forestry mulcher. Do I get a bigger machine? What about a mulching head? Do I use a fecan Fae? Do I need the newest one that has a 2 gpm increase? How about SEO? Like what about it? I keep hearing all these people, well, geez, I gotta go. Workers comp, right? Should we lease or should we buy the skid steer? QuickBooks? Does Jobber integrate with QuickBooks? Do I need business cards? Should I hand those out? Uh, what about a truck wrap? Do I need that? And then do we need to do an S corp with our llc? If you can resonate with any of these, you probably have this and a hundred more things that are going around in your brain at any given time. And so what I want to do with this is I want to give you a simple framework for how to focus your time, your effort, your energy and your brain space on the things that are going to actually grow. Your forestry mulching, your land clearing, or your tree business. We simply have way too many decisions going on. As founders, right? Here's the harsh reality. Your business is going to grow at the speed in which you make decisions. Let that set in for a second. Your business will grow at the speed in which you make decisions. And if that feels like a lot of pressure, it's what we signed up for. You quit the 40 hour work week job to work twice as much, make half as much in the beginning if you're lucky, and be the one responsible for making all the decisions. It's just what you signed up for. And the other harsh reality is we're never going to have all the info present. We have to build the skill of making decisions faster without all of the information present. And when things get hard, and when we don't know what decision to make, we revert back to whatever's comfortable for us. And so I'm going to tie in our AI conversation to this slide deck here shortly. But for some of you right now. What's comfortable is going on the Facebook groups or going on YouTube and watching the Should I buy a Cat 285 or 275? Or should I do a Bobcat T86 or a Bobcat T870? Should I buy a fecan mulcher head or a Shearex mulcher head? What about fae? That guy down the road has the fae. He's probably doing something more productive than me. I can tell you this, the customer does not care. They care zero whether or not you run a cat, a bobcat, especially a residential customer. They care zero about whether you have a feca, an Fae or a Surex. And so I believe that it is a complete waste of time to go spend time watching the YouTube videos on should this, you know, is this new head going to increase, you know, productivity by 2 gpm? I think it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If you have one of the reputable equipment brands and the reputable heads. Now some of you, that's going to ruffle some feathers. But by the end of this, my hope is that I will showcase to you what I believe is more important. Do you need to make decisions on this? Yes. And make a decision fast. Just pick the reputable equipment brand who has the spot that's close to you. All right. I see way too many guys spending way too many nights back and forth on should I choose a cat or should I choose a bobcat? Pick one.

Speaker B: If that's your biggest decision, then that's also your business. Must be just amazing.

Speaker A: I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin. And this last winter I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. And in both businesses I've implemented Jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting jobs, job schedules and invoicing and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us in Bearclaw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the back end of your business, look no further than Jobber. You can visit go.getjobber.com OwnerOps O W N R O P S the equipment is a shiny object. I identified a shiny object for me here recently. For those of you who are in the school group, you know that I went to build my own custom version of what already worked. I have a system that I've built over the last three years that already works. We are making money and everything is working. And guess what when I got bored, when I didn't know what to do next, or when something got hard, I went back and reverted to what I knew how to do. And what I knew how to do was build the back end system. So I wanted to tinker with it. I wanted to make it better. There were some little intricacies that I just didn't like, and I wanted to make it better. And some of you can probably relate with me on that. You're like, man, this mulching head could be this much more productive. It could be that much more productive. But in all reality, is that actually going to grow the business? And so when this hit me, like somebody. It felt like somebody grabbed a baseball bat and just smacked me over the head with it. When this hit me, this moment was I went on a walk because I knew that the app is built, it's ready to go. Like, it's fully functioning, fully rebuilt, fully replace Go, High Level and Jobber. It works. When I got to the point to where I was going to have to make the change in my business and someone else who has paid me for consulting over the last year was going to make the change as well, I realized that the decision I was about to make was going to, in the short term, at least, decrease the productivity of our business by 20%. And this is something Hormozi talks about consistently. Anytime we make a change in the business, we will see a dip, no matter what the change is. Why? Because if there are people involved, they have to go relearn something new which takes them away from doing their actual job. What I realized after spending six weeks of vibe coding this app to replace Go, High Level and Jobber, when it got to the point of actually making a change in the business, I had to ask myself, why the heck am I doing this? And if I was really honest with myself, it was because I'm not addressing the next thing that I need to do to go grow the business. And I wanted to revert back to what was comfortable for me. What was comfortable for me was hunkering down in my office, convincing myself that I was being productive. And some of you can probably relate. Where it feels productive is you go and you watch YouTube at night and you're like, man, this head over here. That Sure, X man. I think that that would help us. Help us get more jobs or that would help us be more productive. I thought that me custom coding an app to solve some of the little intricacies that are inefficient would help us grow a Bigger business. In all reality, it's like the system is already working. Why the heck would I make a change? And the baseball bat moment was whenever I called Colby because Colby had agreed to change over from Jobber and go high level and jump on this app as well. And when I felt the responsibility of somebody else who has paid me for consulting over a year, I knew that that would dip his business in the short term. And so therefore, I could not let myself lead him into that situation. And so I remember this. I called him and I was like, colby, it's a shiny object. And even he convinced me to really think through that reasoning. And after another week of sitting on, I was like, it's a shiny object. It's a shiny object. It's not allowing us to address the most important thing. And so here's what happens. You have a hard season in business. You approach something that is hard. So you start tinkering with the product. Okay, for some of you right now, you don't have leads and you don't know how to go get them. For some of you right now who have leads, you're not closing jobs. And so therefore, you just revert back to wanting to go tinker with the product. You want to go tinker with the equipment. Man, if I just tune this a little bit in, some magical setting in our brain, customers just flood out of the woodworks and come knocking on our doors. If I just tinker with this one thing and fix this one thing. But the reality is that's not true. We think that if we get more equipment. I see many guys fall into this. Hey, I'm a little bit busy with one skid steer. What if I go buy this giant excavator to do that one big job? Well, you just added a massive fat payment to your overhead. And if you're only doing one job, you might should reconsider that. And we think that by getting more equipment that that's somehow going to equate to more jobs. When in all reality, it comes back to these three things. It's leads and its sales and its capacity. Now, I want to talk about how to take the hundred tabs that you have open in your brain. We already covered this a bit. Do I need to change my pricing? Do I need to get a truck? Website ads, hiring, CRM insurance, mulcher logo, SEO? All of these things are bouncing around in our head at any given time. And do you need to make a decision on this? Yes, absolutely. But I want to give you a framework to run your decisions through so that you can allocate this very limited resource, which is your brain energy as a founder, to the most important thing that's going to grow the business. So we literally have three tabs that should be open. If we think about this as a Chrome web browser or Safari web browser, we should have leads, sales, capacity open. And these are the three. Especially between the 0 to 1 million phase that we should be working out of, the leads are going to make the phone ring, sales. We're obviously turning those calls into actual cash, which fuels the business forward and capacity. Can we hire the right people to go execute on the projects? And we've talked about this before, but every decision that you're trying to make, all these things that are bouncing around in your head right now in order to focus the energy, we need to figure out, will that decision help me solve the one bottleneck? If not enough people are calling you, then you have a leads issue, AKA marketing issue. If you're getting the calls, but you're not converting those into paying jobs, then you have a sales issue. And if you're getting leads and closing jobs, AKA your schedule is booked out. So you're booked out for nine weeks, right? But you're still in the machine operating, then we've got a capacity issue. This means we need to go higher and replace ourselves in the machine. And it can be boiled down to those three things. Now, this is assuming that you already have one piece of equipment, that you already have your pricing figured out. If you don't have your pricing figured out, we give away a crew day pricing template inside the Owner Ops school group. If you're not in there, you can jump in. It's School.com OwnerOps S-K-O-O-L.com OVNROPS if you've already fixed your pricing and if you already have equipment, these are the three things right here. So all of those things that are running through your brain should be filtered to those three things. And if leads is the bottleneck, we need to tell more people that we exist. It's very simple. We need to tell more people that we exist, which is marketing. We need to have more conversations with real estate agents, with general contractors, with builders. If you're clearing specifically, you can pick up the phone and call the other excavation contractors and let them know that you focus on clearing. Those are the actions that you can control that will actually help you solve the leads issue. You see over here, I have no more geared debates. The reason if you guys are in owner ops, why you Never see me sparking equipment conversations because I don't believe it's a great use of our time. You should pick the equipment that you need. There's a million different YouTube videos out there. Go pick a reputable brand, put a reputable head on it, and then let's just not have the dumb debates over equipment or the trucks. Dodge versus Ford. You'll never find me arguing over Dodge versus Ford. If you want to have the found on road dead conversation, go do that in the Facebook groups. It's not no one or ops group. Okay. We're going to talk about how to solve the leads issue, how to do sales better, and then how to hire. And if sales is the bottleneck, we can simplify it. There's three things that we need to do. You can simply outwork your competition and do better than most in your market if you just call your leads fast, if you book site visits fast, and then if you send quotes fast. So here's one thing that I can guarantee. There is a very small chance, very close to zero, that you get somebody to pay you for a job if you do not send them a quote or a proposal. If you do not give them the price and an opportunity to sign a quote, there's a very small chance that you win that job. Meaning if you go do a site visit on a Friday, or let's say you do a site visit on a Saturday and you wait one whole week to send the quote, you're just letting your chance go down and down and down and down every day that goes by. So how do we do this? We call leads fast, we book fast site visits, and we send fast quotes. So in order to send fast quotes, you have to know your pricing. And so this slide deck is assuming that you've already figured out your crude a pricing. But if you do these three things, you will outdo most of the people in your market just by simply calling faster. I believe in our industry, speed and confidence win. Speed and confidence. Speed and confidence win in sales. And then if you're booked out but you're still in the machine, then we have to realize that we are the limiter. As the owner operator, we are the limiter. And if you want. Once again, if you want to stay owner operator, that's fine. That's great. Jacob did make a good point. I believe it was last week or the week before. Do you remember the point you made on owner operator versus growing the business?

Speaker B: Yes, because we always kind of say like, oh, well, that that's okay. But the thing Is your cap on the highest end by yourself is usually three to 400,000. Some scenarios with big jobs landing maybe 500,000 profit on that. If you're good, maybe six figures. Well, you can get a lot of jobs for six figures where you're not taking all of the risk. You don't have these heavy machines driving around. You don't have these heavy liability assets that could break, roll over, fall off in a creek, fall off the trailer because someone cuts you off and kill somebody. And now you're getting sued. Tree fall over while you're working. It's not even your fault. You get sued, you have to use insurance. It's like there's so much risk. Why would you want to stay small and take that risk? And I'm not saying you have to be a billion dollar company, but staying an owner operator forever to me is very risky for the reward you get.

Speaker A: It is a great point. And so at this point, when capacity is the bottleneck, our job is to go figure out how to hire. And this is when I see a lot of people get capped. Especially if you are an owner operator, you can get leads, you can sell. You're good at selling, most of you are because you care about the actual end product. As an owner operator, if you get in front of the customer, you can sell just based off of your expertise and your passion for the service that you offer. Once again, you likely care. So you call people at least decently fast. And then when I say confidence, you could equate that to your passion sort of turns into confidence at that point, right? So you're selling off of speed and confidence if you're an owner operator. But when you get to the point to where you're still in the machine and you're responsible for leads and sales, you realize that you are quickly capped. And unless you go solve the hiring issue, you will be capped there for the rest of your career. That's the harsh reality. And so you have to make the decision at this point, do I want to actually grow the business or do I want to stay owner operator? And if you want to grow the business, we need to focus on how to hire. And the big excuse that I hear people make, man, they just don't make them like they used to. I can't find no good help anymore. If you are listening to this, if you're still on this live stream and you find yourself making that excuse, my ask is that you eliminate that from your vocabulary. Because every time you say that you experience that reality, you convince yourself that that's the reality that you are living. Until you first change that thought and that verbalization, you will continue to experience that reality. My recommendation is to flip it and reframe it to there are great people out there and these people want to do a great job. That's been the mindset from the very beginning. My goal and my job as the owner or the founder, whatever you want to call it, the person who started the business, is to go build the team of leaders. I cannot do this on my own. When you realize that, that you're the limiter, and you definitely cannot do this on your own, your job becomes going to find the people who are better than you at each different phase of the role. Excuse me, Each different phase of the business. And so I believe that this is arguably one of the most important roles of a business owner, is to go recruit great talent and then support them.

Speaker B: Can I say one thing there? Even if you're a year away from this, which if you want to grow fast, you can hire pretty fast, but I'm saying even if you want to grow slow and you're a year away from this, the culture, the reputation, the documentation, the way that you look to your community, all of that matters so much right now. Even if you're a year away from hiring because you need to be an attractive company, a lot of guys get annoyed by people like reaching out to them to say, like, hey, are you hiring? To me, that's amazing. Oh, you're getting organic leads without paying for them for potential employees. Like right now, I'm spending a ton of money to make my business more attractive in my hometown so that we can attract a players locally. And my previous businesses, I did that and people were always asking if we were hiring. Well, now I built rise nationally, but not necessarily in my hometown. So now I'm having to late, I need to hire now and I'm having to build that reputation. Um, so just saying, I know we were talking about decision making, but just, just know that your business, you need to build a company that people would want to work for even if you're not hiring yet.

Speaker A: I love it.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker A: So guys, ah, here's the decision filter. If you have a hundred or a thousand different tabs going cycling in your brain at any given time, just know that you're not alone. It's normal. Every single business owner, we all have all of these things that we need to make decisions on at any given time. And one of our strong suits is being able to see 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 steps ahead of the business. It can also be one of our biggest downfall. And I've realized that this is how my brain works. This is where I naturally want to go. I want to think about the future, I want to make decisions about the future. But what I've realized is that I will quickly stumble over what's right in front of me and what needs to be done if I don't bring myself back through this decision filter. So here's the straightforward question. One, what's the bottleneck? Right? Are you getting leads? If not, then you have a leads issue. You need to focus all your additional founder brain effort and energy on solving how to go get more leads. If you're already getting leads but you're not closing jobs, then you have a sales issue. Okay, we've already covered this. If you're getting leads and closing jobs and you're in the machine, then you have a hiring issue. And guess what? All of these are solvable. They are. So hear me out on this. They are solvable. Other people have solved them before. Therefore you can go solve this for your business. So whenever you're trying to make decisions on something, whenever you're thinking about which CRM do I need to do Jobber, should I get a new mulching head? What about insurance? Do you need to make decisions on all those? Yes, absolutely. But I want you to run it through this filter. Does it actually help me fix, uh, my main problem right now is what I'm about to go spend a three hour rabbit hole hole on actually solving the main issue. And look, this is what I ran into with the uh, you know, the rebuilding our software system. And I'm telling you, it was like I got hit with a baseball bat because I had to accept that I made the wrong decision of how to use my time. Not for a day, for like four to six weeks consistently. And that decision I made for how to use my time would have actually dipped the business for a chance of maybe increasing productivity like 2 to 5%. Maybe. As long as I'm real with myself, what would have been a better use of my time? Our business is humming right now. Okay, we're closing job. We're booked out to the end of June right now. But what if, what if I focused all that time and effort and energy on doing more before and after posts, more customer testimonials, asking for more five star reviews, creating more ad variants, testing more ads, getting more leads, asking if I could support our sales rep. Like that would have been a better use of my Time. And I think some of you are dealing with the same thing right now. You're looking at watching, you know, 100 different videos on, um, whether you should get the Sheerex or the Fecan head. And really all you need to do is just pick one. The reality is you don't know how to go get leads if you're just starting out. And so therefore, you want to spend your time doing the YouTube video research. And that's just reality. And the sooner you realize that, and the sooner that you need, you realize that you need to just make a decision on that is the sooner that you will move the business forward. So if you're trying to decide between a Shearex and a fecal mulching head, will this help in the next 30 days? Okay, yes, that would help. If I had to decide right now, what would I choose? Fecan. Uh, I run a fecal. I don't care which one you choose. But the point is make the decision right, right now. If you don't have all the information present, what one piece of info do I need to decide in the next 30 minutes? So next time that, that you're operating and that idea pops in your head, like, who, uh, should I sub this out to? My friend who owns a mulching company two hours away. I got a lead two hours away. Should I sub it out? Well, what is that going to require? Well, it's going to require you structuring a deal with him. It's going to require you coming up with a commission structure that makes sense for both. It's just like, does this help me solve my, my main constraint right now? We can use this framework for anything. So does this fix? My main problem is one number two, will this help me in the next 30 days? If yes, keep attacking it full force. If no, if I had to decide on this decision right now, what would I choose? If you remember what I started this slide deck with, your business is going to grow at the rate that you make decisions. Your business will grow at the rate in which you make decisions. So here's the challenge. What's your bottleneck right now? Is it sales? Is it leads? Is it hiring? If it's pricing? If you don't know your pricing, jump over in the school group. Okay, we give a crew day rate pricing. I have a free, uh, training series where I walk people through it school.com owner ops. But if it's leads, identify that. Guess what? That's solvable. There are. I don't take them. How many clients do you have right now hundreds.

Speaker B: Like 150.

Speaker A: There's 150 people across the nation getting leads because it's already proven to be solvable. Okay, we've talked about this multiple times, like for our industry right now. Facebook ads work. They do. Why? Because we have a problem aware market. And there are plenty of people out there telling you, oh, you don't need to run Facebook ads. Grow your business without Facebook ads. I can tell you this. It's because they're in different industries. Yep. They have solution aware markets. We have a problem aware market. Therefore, the fastest way to get to them is to flip on a Facebook ad. Follow the format that Jacob and I teach, and you will get leads like it's. It's not. If it's.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: Yes, you will. If you just follow the. Follow the format. Okay. Ah, if it's leads, it can be solvable. If it's sales. If you're already getting leads, then my question for you. How fast are you calling leads? How long do you make the customer wait until you book a site visit? This is how it should go. Hey, it's Austin with bearcloud Land Services. How are you?

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: Perfect. Next goal, book the site visit. Like, that's. It's as simple as that. Should you listen to them over the phone? Do we have a question script? Yes. But the goal of the first phone call is to book the site visit as fast as possible. I can guarantee you if you go, drive to that job right now, book a site visit, show up, give them a quote on site, you have a much better chance. I'm getting fired up over here, man. So my.

Speaker B: My heart rate just went up.

Speaker A: You have a much better chance of winning that job. And it's so simple. How fast did you call your leads, how fast did you book your site visit, and how fast did you send them a quote? If you just do that and block and tackle on those things and show up, if you can walk, talk, and chew gum, and if you can shake the customer's hand, if you can look them in the eye, and if you can convey the confidence that you can get the job done right, you will win job. So if you have a new idea, run it through that filter. Hey, should I look at this new. This new FECON head that has. I don't even know. I really don't pay attention anymore. I think FECA and I saw on somebody mentioned, like, fusion technology. Should I get the new fusion technology? Right? I can tell you this. I'm not. Why? Because our equipment works and it makes us money. And I got a 4 year old mulching head and I care zero about the new fusion technology, but I care a lot about our uh, leads. Are we getting leads every week? Are we closing jobs and do we have the right people in the right place? Okay, and you can run every decision through this filter right here. Does it fix my main problem? Will it help me in the next 30 days? And if I had to decide right now, what would I choose?

Speaker B: One of the guys in Titans yesterday was basically coaching a newer guy on this exact thing. This guy's got 10 pieces of equipment, the biggest and the best forestry mulching equipment you could imagine. And he told him, hey, you keep running that skid steer on those seven acre jobs until you just can't anymore. Don't go. The equipment will come when it's time. He goes, don't, don't worry. He goes, I jumped into buying the coolest equipment. He goes, I bought my first track CMI when I got my first 10 acre job 10 years ago. He goes, I regret it. Don't jump into equipment too fast. Focus on doing the work.

Speaker A: Our job in business is to just not go out of business, right? Like that's the main goal. Stay in business. And so if we simplify this, how do we do that? We eliminate making a bad decision that could put us out of business. And if we simplify that even further, what does that mean? That means don't spend more than we make. So if we're making money with a skid steer and a mulcher, or if we're making money with an excavator and a mulcher, or why the heck would we not juice the ever living crap out of that until we just have that set up completely humming okay, we're getting leads for that unit, we're selling the service for that unit and we have somebody in the seat fulfilling at a rate that is acceptable for that unit. And until we can check all three of those boxes, we should not move on at all. But I see this so many times, it's like, okay, sweet, I'm getting leads. Sweet, I'm selling jobs. What about this 30 acre job that requires the next $300,000 piece of equipment? I can tell you this right now, confidently, very confidently, do not buy that $300,000 piece of equipment unless you have a full backlog of work for it. Because otherwise what you're going to do is you're going to drop your focus on the skid steer and the mulcher right here. Which is what you should be selling more of. And you should be hiring people to fulfill those seats. And then keep that machine busy and productive. And then you're going to go dilute your founder focus. Right, we talked about that already. And then you're going to go try to sell the $300,000 machine jobs over here. And then this is going to drop off. And then where the guys who fail happen is this machine just goes and sits in the yard and it doesn't work. And they still have the payment on that machine. Tell me what scenario that works. If you've got a skid steer and a mulcher, why the heck not juice the ever living crap out of it? Tell more people you exist. Call your leads faster. Book faster site visits, send faster quotes, and then hire the person to be in that piece of equipment. And once that's humming for four to six weeks. Sweet. We can look at the next thing. But until then, it's so simple. It's leads, sales, hiring. So here's your challenge. If you have a new idea, run it through that filter. Run it through the filter. And if you want help fixing the bottleneck, we've got the school group. School.com OwnerOps S K-O-O-L.com what we won't be talking about is whether you should buy fusion technology or the regular fee con hit. What we will be talking about is how to get leads, how to close jobs, and how to hire people. That's all I got for today.

Speaker B: That was gold, dude. Gold. Hopefully they heard it today.

Speaker A: I just, I've been seeing it so much in the school group and I, I want to communicate it because I know. And look, guys, like I've, I've ran into the same issues like I had. I had shiny object syndrome, and I'm getting better at it. And shiny object syndrome for us will likely never go away. We just have to get better at acknowledging when it's a shiny object and then identifying if us, uh, spending our time on that is going to actually help us move the business forward or not. You still struggle with shiny object?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: When was the last one you had?

Speaker B: Well, my worst case was when I was running four businesses, working a job, and thinking that that was realistic. But in the height of that, I added another one because I just thought, man, this is a great business. I could, I could build that better. And no, what really happens is you just water it down now. Can Mark Cuban do that? Yeah, because he just deploys $10 million and hires a bunch of people. In our level where we're doing most of the things, especially the decision making. That's what you talked about today. This only compounds over time, like, the bigger your business is or the more businesses or the more commitments you have, the more decision making you have. And decision making fatigue is a real thing. You said it earlier. You only have so much capacity. Well, at the one point where I owned everything that I owned, I was the decision maker for all of them. Horrible idea. In Rise, I think I've been a lot better. Like, the last year has been an aggressive cutting away and getting away from the shiny object. And I've said no to a lot of things in that time. I guess the closest thing to shiny object for me right now would be like coaching, because I've had so much reward from paying people for coaching that I got to the point where I was paying like five different people and I wasn't being able to take action on all of the things in all of the places because I overloaded with it. That would probably be my most recent.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's something I've noticed about you from the beginning is like, you're very clear about where you're going with rise. And I can just tell from our conversations and get to know you over the last year that it's just not wavering from it at all. And that's a cool, cool place to be in. Because, man, some of you who are listening to this, like, I feel for you because I remember when I started Bear Claw and guys look at me as the example for what not to do. Early on, here's what I did. I had the vision of being the fire mitigation company. I saw the problem. I set out to do it. It gets hard. So you say yes to gravel driveways, you say yes to boulder walls, you say yes to excavation.

Speaker B: And then you text your marketing company and you're like, I want an excavation ad and I want a driveway ad and I want a metal building ad.

Speaker A: That happens to us all the time. All the time. Not only does it stress you as a founder, it stresses everybody else on the team. And if I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be pick the fire mitigation thing and plow through it. Just pick the one service and become known for that. I would have saved myself so much time. I would have saved our team confusion. I would have saved our customers confusion. We would have built a better brand faster. And look, I grew up working for my dad's concrete business, and we also built homes. I get it. Okay, most of us in blue collar, this is what we run into. We just say yes because we don't know how to market or we don't know how to actually build a team. And so therefore, we say yes to the next thing when the customer asks us to clear the trees, to dig the foundation, to pour the concrete, to frame the house, to put the roof on. And then all of a sudden, you're just a generalist and you have no brand and no recognition for anything. Hear me out, guys. Like, if you're on this and you're in the group and you're just starting. I know it's hard because. And especially some of the guys who I've talked to this last week, it's like demand is the big question. We are at an awesome time with this industry because we have a problem, aware market, and it's a new thing and there's a solution and people want to pay for it, and people are willing to pay for it. They just need to know that the solution exists. So unless you're in a town of like, I don't know, 180 people in the flatlands in Nebraska with no trees, if you have brush, if you have trees, if you live in a wooded area and you live close to a population, if there's a wealthy demographic anywhere close to you, there's likely demand for this.

Speaker B: The guy I was talking about earlier that is 15 years in and has all the cool equipment that everybody could want and stays real busy, he lives in a county that has 4, 000 people in it. I mean, I'm telling you, dude, it's like it happens over and over and over. People are just worried about saturation and demand and all these things. And then I just talked to another company doing $3 million a year in some place no one's ever heard of. It's like, dude, get that language out of your, out of your head.

Speaker A: Yeah, look, you guys, if you're listening to this, if you're still on, if you're still with us right now, take a minute. What is your main bottleneck if you had to pick one? Leads, sales hiring. Lead sales hiring. Which one? What's your main bottleneck right now? Put that over there in the chat. I know Jacob and I get fired up sometimes. Like when I get in those things. Like, I want this to be. I, uh, want you guys to know this. Like, I'm viewing my earlier self when I. When I talk about this stuff. Like, this is the stuff that I just wish I could have told myself three years ago. And I just wish I could have told myself to focus here and not get distracted here and it would have helped.

Speaker B: Can I throw out a few crazy statistics?

Speaker A: Go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker B: If Yalls constraint is leads, Austin has dropped the info in the school group. Guys like go get the leads like that. That should not be your constraint. Please, please do not let lead speak your constraints. But for sales, the crazy statistic right now it takes six to eight touch points, six to eight tries to get someone on the phone on average. Now of course there are people that still answer right away. Do not fumble those people work them quick, fast and often. From there it's an average average of 24 touch points to close a deal, 24 touch points to close a deal and 30 days. So if you do the math, there almost one a day to go from lead to it closed. And I have also analyzed the lost deals. Most lost deals they gave up at 12. It's actually 12.5 touch points. So most of you are giving up at 12 and it takes 24 to close them. And on the actual getting a hold of them, it takes six to eight and most of you quit at three. Yeah, that's from analyzing 460 land clearing companies with thousands of leads, conversations and phone, um, calls.

Speaker A: This is where the goal is. I'm sure some of you guys zoned out right there. And I, I want Jacob to say that again because that's from 460 companies who you have access to see the behaviors. I want you to repeat that again for everybody in the back. I want you to hear this because this is incredibly important right now. I'm going to take this right now. I'm uh, taking this to our next team meeting right here. I am. Because this right here is the goal. No matter what size of business you're at, if you're starting, if you're doing several million bucks a year, this is gold right here. This is gold. Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bode and Andy, the two co founders, have helped me get Bear Claw Land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state. For my specific search term. If you want to learn more, visit stryker digital.com that's s t r y k e r-digital.com so it takes six

Speaker B: to eight times on average to get a hold of a lead. Most of you quit around three attempts because you give yourself the excuse you don't want to be annoying. And it takes an average of 24 to 32 touch points to close a Deal. From the time it becomes elite. Most of you quit at 12.5. Halfway there and the average deal takes 30 days to close. Average. So don't think that because somebody's not ready to give you $15,000 in the next 24 hours doesn't mean they're a tire kicker and they won't close. Close. But if you do the math there, 24 to 32, that comes out to almost one touch point a day in 30 days to close a deal. That's the average.

Speaker A: Hey, YouTube algorithm. Hey, X algorithm. Hey, Facebook algorithm. If you're listening, this is the most valuable piece of information that anybody could learn for building a land clearing, forestry mulching or a fire mitigation business. If you want to close more jobs. Jacob, do you mind to say that again for the algorithms while they are listening?

Speaker B: 100 takes an average of six to eight times to get a hold of a new lead. Most of you quit around three tries. It takes an average of 24 to 32 touch points in a 30 day window to close a deal. Most of you quit at 12 and a half attempts.

Speaker A: How many weeks in are we on this? 11. 11.

Speaker B: 11 or 12 somewhere right there.

Speaker A: 12 weeks in, I believe that's the most valuable thing out, uh, of the whole 12 weeks right there. So for those of you who are on here, that's gold. If you go take that and if you just figure out how to do better than the average in your market, you will win. If you have a specific topic that you would like us to cover in this, go post that in the school group. It's free to join school.com owner ops talk all things land clearing, forestry mulching, fire mitigation. Jump over in the community and post the topics that you want us to cover here. Okay. We want to make sure that this is valuable for you guys. So thanks again for jumping on to another episode of the land clearing live stream on the Owner Ops podcast. We appreciate you guys being here. I'm your host, Austin Gray.

Speaker B: Got ah.

Speaker A: Jacob Neffendorf with Rise online ads and land clearing growth. Hey, if you're looking to grow your land clearing or forestry mulching business, consider joining our school group where we offer a free Kickstarter training to show you how to put together a crew, day price, how to make the phone ring, and how to put together a simple operating system to help your business grow. You can join school.com ownerops that's S K-O-O-L.com O W R O P S. See you over there. We'll see you next week on another episode. Land clearing live stream, 7am Mountain Time, 8am Central. Don't forget, work hard, do your best, never settle for less.