257 - This "Moron" Quit Tech to Grind Stumps (Makes $270k) with Tyler Mumford

0:00I just want to know, this year, how much are you going to do in revenue? I think we'll sit at like$265,$270. And how much of that will be net to you? It depends what you... No, no, don't hem and haw. How much of it will be net to you? Just say it. $180 at least. At least. Yeah. Dude, that's so cool. You've replaced your SaaS income. I have, yeah. This is Tyler Mumford. Last year, he was a tech sales guy making$180 ,000 a year. And then he heard a podcast where me and Chris were talking about starting a stump grinding business. And so he quit his job, bought a machine, and started doing manual labor.

0:30like a moron. But Tyler is not a moron. In his first 90 days, he did over$30 ,000 in sales. He didn't look back. And in this episode, we're going to break down how Tyler generated over $270 ,000 in his first year, netting him more than his sales job with zero boss. We're also going to break down the exact awkward psychology hack that he uses to get hundreds of five-star reviews, how he ranks number one on Google business profile, even against 20-year competitors, and the exact math behind a one-man blue-collar business. If you're tired of the corporate grind, And this is the episode for you. Let's get into it.

1:05The cool thing is that you just jumped into it. You heard Chris and I on a podcast talking about it. So we own a tree trimming business. And we had this idea, which was like, I think there could be someone who starts a business grinding stumps. Because we go, we trim these trees, and then we've still got to remove the stump. And the homeowner's not happy if the stump's not removed. But we don't have necessarily a reliable sub that we can call out to grind these stumps down. if somebody just contacted tree trimming companies etc they could definitely launch a business and so you listen to that you listen to that episode you know 10 times in a row and you decided i think i could do this yeah that's exactly it i i heard your guys's story i had worked on a tree crew in high school but we never really did removals it was mostly just trimming i didn't know stump grinding existed for the few that we ever did but i don't think i ever ground a stump myself it just kind of was one of those moments where i understood what you guys were talking about.

1:57I was familiar with trees and a little bit familiar with trees, I guess. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And then how you guys framed it, you guys framed it as like a B2B play, which is really how it started for me. Now I feel like I've evolved past it being a purely B2B play, but that's how it started for the first six to eight months of just purely grinding sums for tree companies. What do you think was the biggest differentiator that allowed you to go from zero to replacing your income in about a year? The biggest one was doing it, being fully focused. I've listened to a lot of different podcasts on Focus lately.

2:31And I guess lately, we could talk about this, a few other things that I'm doing now. Maybe I'm breaking my own rule of being fully focused. But to start to get it off the ground, we talk about this a lot. I coach for BYU Lacrosse, and we always talk about to the winner goes to spoils. And what we mean by that is the people that work the hardest usually get the most playing time in practice. If you get the most playing time in practice, you improve the most and you get the most playing time in games. And it's just a self-fulfilling cycle. And I felt the same. You could change that saying a little bit to the risk taker goes to spoils.

3:06because I quit my job, I was able to be at every stump job for tree companies right on time, if not early, do their job in a way that they've never experienced before having a sub do it with that much attention to detail, text them how the job went and the customer's thrilled, go land other jobs from them, and then also have time to go land more and more and more jobs. And it just started being this flywheel. And now I don't do a lot of cold outreach. I just get tree contractors reaching out to me saying, Hey, Jim uses you, you're going to do mine. Is that okay? And yeah, that's, that's perfect.

3:41And so, yeah, we'll double click. Cause you did change the strategy. Like Chris and I had an idea and we're like, Oh, we think it could be this. And you launched with that, but pretty quickly you pivoted because you're like, actually the lead flows better in this area. Before we talk about that though, when you launched, you had no experience, right? Is the fact that you needed to be focused, is that why you ended up quitting your job? Because like you could have kind of done this as a side hustle, right? Like you didn't have to quit your job to do this full time. What was the moment where you were like, I should quit and why?

4:11One piece of it was I wanted to quit. I really wanted to get out and do, you know, whatever I was going to do next full time. My job was great and I made good money. I did not like my job though. So I wanted to quit was one of the things. But the other thing was exactly what you're hitting on. I had just no experience in the industry. And after I had that first month of balancing my job and doing it, I realized that if I went full time, I could get a lot better, a lot faster and have a lot more time in the day to do everything that I had a ton of ideas. But when you're balancing that with a nine to five, I only had opportunities to do one or two ideas a day.

4:46The moment I quit, I remember the first day I had a to-do list of like 10 to 15 things. Three of those things were the three jobs that I had for the day. And then the next 10 to 15 were like cold outreach stuff. and I got like most of that to-do list done in that first day. You know, cold email blast, text blast, all this stuff that I already knew how to do. I just didn't have time when I was balancing both. And so the first day that I quit, I remember being like, oh dude, I could get this, I could get a to-do list this long done every day for just the business. And I think that will carry into the bottom line.

5:17And that was the risk I took and it kind of paid off a year later. What was the strategy that you started with to get jobs? And then what was the strategy that you quickly pivoted into? too? So to start, it was cold texting to contractors, contractors, business card with my info and basically like, Hey, what are you doing for stumps? Are you renting? Are you using someone else or do you own one? And regardless of what they replied back, I would call them from there. Most of those people would say they had some other use. I would call them and a lot of them I didn't sell, but I would know where they're at with their stump grinding.

5:52And they would know me as a familiar face if their stump grinder ever went down, if their guy was ever unreliable. And I've actually gotten a lot of jobs eight months later after those phone calls, because I picked up the phone and called them. Were there any benefits to those cold calls, like other than getting jobs? Like, was it a way for you to validate the market or was it like, what other things did you glean from those conversations? Every single time they used a competitor. So like another stump grinding sub, cause I'm not unique. Like there's another five to eight guys in my market that do stump grinding, do solely stump grinding.

6:22I do think I'm the biggest now, which is kind of cool. Okay. You don't have to flex so hard, dude. I coach BYU and I'm the biggest dump grinder in Frodo. All right. Yeah. Okay, brother Monford. I need to humble myself. I agree. No, every time they were using a competitor, it was easy. I'm decent at building some rapport early in the phone call. And so after I built that rapport, I could ask them anything about their sub and they would tell me exactly how their sub worked. So, hey, yeah, they give us this price branch or they usually schedule us only on weekends. And I go, oh, only on weekends.

6:55Like, do you want to get paid a little faster than that from the job? You know, like I could be there an hour after you get the tree down. You would ask me like, well, what do they charge you? Yeah, exactly. How quickly are they getting out? And I wouldn't do that off the rip. I would try to ask them other questions, just get them talking, do classic sales, build some rapport of like I'm a normal human being. And then I'd be like, I'm just curious. Like, I think I had a story back then and if you want to call me a liar you can call me a liar and i understand but i said that i just moved from arizona and i did stump grinding in arizona and so i was trying to learn the market and this did two things one i mean i was on a tree crew in arizona in high school so like is that super far from the truth i don't know whatever you want to but this did two things one they felt like i know the industry and two they were now in the seat to help me out because i was trying to research the market up here in utah and they would just start giving me like whatever I asked them, which is awesome.

7:49For people who are listening, I want to like pin that because we're going to come back to it. Tyler's willingness to be awkward and like just straight up ask people like, well, how much money do you make? Well, how big is your house? I have a huge problem with asking all of those questions, by the way. My friends come over, friends of my wife. My wife has really good friends and their husband will come over and I'm like, oh, what do you do? Oh, cool. Like, what do you make? And then I find myself asking the most personal question. I don't mean it in a bad way. I have no judgment. I just want to know.

8:15Like, it's kind of cool. I just want to know what everyone does. And it's funny. Some people will pin that pin that, you know, Tyler's willing to be awkward. We're going to come back to that in a second. Okay. So that was the initial thesis. Let me talk to these contractors. What, what did it morph into? So the initial thesis for the first six months that carried me, it was just jobs from contractors. And then I did two things like the, that was the sole path that I was following for the first six months. The winter came, things slowed down. So So it gave me an opportunity to work on the business a little bit.

8:45And I forked into two different ways. One was getting the jobs directly from consumers. There are not as many stump jobs directly from consumers like homeowners, but they do exist. Like stumps that were left from a tree that was removed a few years ago, or the tree company just charges them or quotes them way too high. And so I wanted to build my Google side reviews, SEO, all that good stuff. And so what I actually did, I used the list of all the jobs that I did because the contractor would usually give me the number of the homeowner. And I had all the homeowner's numbers saved. So I was like, all right, I need to go get reviews and get boosted by Google presence.

9:20I text blasted all of the homeowners I'd ever done a job for. Like, hey, you don't remember me. I did your stump. I'm starting my own business. A review would really help if you could spare it. And I remember that first day, I got like 20 to 30 reviews off of like two text blasts. and from there instantly my seo was both boosted so this summer that was kind of the biggest thing i added i still do contractor jobs about half and half now are contractor or directly from google so that's helped me grow so if i go to the old google and i and i google stump grinding provo utah i get all these stump grinders who pop up we got riddendale and excellent dude how how How mormon of a spelling is that?

10:03Yeah. Excellent brothers. Yep. Joe's Stump Grinding, Lifetime. These are all like established businesses, right? Uh-huh. Are any of these new? No, none of those are new, I don't think. All right, cool. So all these are established. And if you look here, the reason they're showing up first is because sponsored. These guys are paying to pop up in Google's search. If I scroll down a little bit more and I go to finally the organic. So we also get Thumbtack. We get Angie. Organically, Grind Time, which is Tyler's company. is for those who speak Spanish, numero uno. That means number one. So we got grind time showing up number one.

10:40Here's the map. And then 104 five-star reviews in a little over a year that you've got. And you're ranking. So like the Google business profile organically is doing better than pretty much anybody. I mean, Joe's obviously is up there. Some dude named Steve is up there. But these are all established companies that have been around four years. I want you to talk about, because I have this theory that because Google is going more towards AI search, the Google business profile in Maps is becoming even more important because there's not AI there yet. That's just your business. So my question for you is, how did you optimize your Google business profile?

11:22How are you ranking number one? What did you do? To be quite honest with you, I paid someone, and that was a great choice early on. It was a friend that ran an SEO agency and he gave me a great price on it. And it was just like, Hey, you know, can you shout me out when it's done? The company's name is localized, localized pro. I want to say this wasn't Bodie Gallows company. No, not Bodie's. Actually I, after working just like with a few months with this guy, I, I, I benefit from an industry that is not the most competitive industry and not the biggest. So I mean, it was like after I had like 30 to 50 reviews and he optimized my profile, he actually kind of fired me.

12:03And he was like, hey, man, like you're one in most of the places that you service. And if you just keep getting good reviews, like you're going to keep boosting. And I'm friends with Bodhi. I'm friends with a few SEO guys from Twitter. And all the time when we first get introduced, they always... SEO guys have a bad habit of looking up your Google My Business just right when they beat you. because that's like all they think about. They're savages. And each one is like, yeah, you don't need my services. You're good. The reason for that is because you started getting so many reviews. Correct. After they optimized the first few things with like tags and from what I understand, like a few different backlinks and websites and stuff, the rest of it was just reviewed.

12:40Give me the secret to your reviews. I love this. Yeah. So we talked about this, I think, on the YouTube video with you and Chris. Yeah. Basically, you know, you could say you don't have leverage when you're an owner operator, which you don't because you're doing most of the things day to day. But the one thing that you do have, which is an advantage over other people that have employees is you have a care for your business because you're touching like most of the aspects of your business early on. And so you can really benefit from that if you're smart and you care about what you're doing day to day.

13:09So what I would do if I'm coming up to your door, Nick, and you hired, let's just say you hired Rivendale trees. You hired them for your tree work and I'm doing their stumps. I don't do their stumps, by the way, so don't, but they hired me out to do your stump. You don't know that they hired me out to do your stump. All you know is that a tree is getting removed in your backyard. I text you, Hey, I'm the stump guy. I will be there at 3 PM tomorrow. I go at 3 PM, knock on your door. What's up, Nick? How are you doing? Like I'll be here doing the stump. This is how it's going to go. Here's a few things to watch for.

13:42Do you have any sprinkler lines in the area? They'll say no. and then I'll go do the job and ideally they'll say no they'll be wrong yes every once in a while they will be wrong and you'll hit their sprinkler on that's why you tell them before that I'm not liable for that no but then you'll do the job well and then on the way out you will I will knock on your door be like Nick like hey so it's kind of a weird situation I have I'm actually a sub for the tree company that you hired I'm just getting started like I'm young just got married and like every review really helps like would you be able to write a review for me and then let's role play it real quick let's do it hey hey what's up be able to write a review for me uh yeah sure i'll write a review are you are you want me to write the review right now oh yeah yeah i have a link for you can you actually write it right now it would help me out a ton sure sure yeah okay and then i pull out my phone you feel very awkward and i don't care that you feel awkward because i'm never going to see you again most likely but i just got a review from you and that's what i do every time I tell them a personal story, which is personal.

14:43This is my business. We're growing and every review helps. Can I please, if you felt like I did a good job today, could I get a review from you? And they always go, yeah. And then I just wait quietly until they go, they do that. It's like, oh, like, yeah, could you actually write that right now? That would really help me out. And then they pull out their phone and they usually write me a review right there. Well, so, okay. Yeah. I said it when we, I've said it multiple times now, but I just love the fact you're willing to be awkward in that moment. Cause like that, that little, it might be three seconds.

15:14I don't know. I'd have to go back and time it. Let's say it was five seconds of awkwardness probably increases your conversion to reviews by 50%, 80%. Cause I might have every intention of leaving your review or like, Oh yeah, I'll leave you a review. I don't have a problem with that. But then I get distracted or I go inside or I'm like, wait, where am I supposed to go? What's his company name? I don't remember. 50 % might even be, you know, too low. Maybe like increases your conversion by 80 % or something ridiculous. But I just think the willingness to stand in there and the awkwardness for an extra two, three, four seconds.

15:46Yep. And that's what I learned. I think it's an old sales trick. I think people say like, it was something they used to say, the person that talks first after the close loses or something like that. That's probably a bad way to say it. But basically, after you close someone, we do this in door to door. So when you go ask for the card, for them to go get the card, you would look down at your iPad and you wouldn't talk until they either walked away and got their card or like said something. Like their credit card. Credit card to pay for pest control. This was the same thing in tech sales, by the way, you would close them.

16:19You would never close them nearly as aggressively as pest control. Sure. But you would close a business on the software that you're selling and then you would stay quiet on the call until they either gave you a yes, which is awesome. And you're like, okay, perfect. I'll send you the paperwork right now and let's get that signed. Or they would come up with an objection and then you go to the next. It's like being on a mission, right? You know, Mormons just learn how to go door to door. Now we'll role play. You'll be the investigator. I'll be the missionary. Yeah. Tyler, will you be baptized? Yeah.

16:45Yeah, I will. Yeah, but there's always a pause. No, no, no, no, no. Don't pause. Don't pause. Oh, okay, okay. Tyler, will you be baptized? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I will. Yeah. Okay. Go get your white clothes then. See, I was paused. I paused until you asked so that I could tell you that we're just going to go do it right now. My clothes are so much higher. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, but there's something there with silence. There's, I mean, I did do that on the mission. That is a thing. There's something there with silence and confidence. Cause I mean, if you flip it and this is like talking sales, but if I, I asked, Hey Nick, would you mind, you know, write me a review?

17:29You go, yes. and then I go, oh, great, that's perfect. And I just like talk away from that point. We lose the point and then you forget to do it after. Yeah. But like if you focus on the one point, the thing that you want the most, which is a review from this customer, then you can get it every time. So you have some pause. I do love that. I love that aspect of it. Okay, I want to show you something. I showed you this briefly, but I think it's amazing. Tyler, as he's been growing, has also started sharing his journey. He's got a good following on Twitter. I don't even know the other channels that you have.

18:05But I love this. I was looking at stump grinding as a Google search term. This is the last five years. And you can see it's pretty steady, pretty cyclical. And then all of a sudden this year, it's the highest it's been in five years. What month is that? That it peaked? This is August. August 24th through the 30th of this year. I think that's pretty close to right when your guys' YouTube video came out maybe or something. I don't know. Probably. Or it's just summer and then like it's an Excel, whatever. So if you look like right here is where Chris and I's episode came out and Tyler decided, screw it.

18:42I'm going to start a stump grinding business. And then you just see the search volume go up. The even crazier one is I'm going to show you this is the 20-year history of stump grinding over time. And you just see this year, crazily, the highest it's ever been in the last 20 years, stump grinding. So that is so crazy. Isn't that crazy? You're out there sharing your story and it's like obviously happening. And then at the same time, there's been all these people on Twitter. I call them the stump grinding mafia who have popped up in like all of these other locations. There's a guy, I think it's in South Carolina.

19:20I saw he's like started a business. He's like, I just, I just landed a 30 or 300 tree city job. And like another guy start dozens at this point. It's like, it's above 10 who have started their own stump grinding businesses in these markets. And it's about 20. Yeah. Is it 20? I think that I'm like, I think that number might be even be higher. I'm, I'm bringing that number down. Like people that have like actually done any sort of revenue from stump grinding, like rented the machine for a day, went and landed a job and just like, we're like, that's not for them. That's a lot higher. Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract.

19:55I would spend time, energy, and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business. And you would like, subscribe, and leave me a five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights. We both get a ton of value. But I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend. I think it's 15 to 20 guys with like, you could say they have businesses or side hustles, whatever level they're at.

20:31But it's about that, I think. That's freaking nuts. This is my next project. I haven't done this yet, but I'm trying to get the aggregate revenue across all, you know, of, of, let's bring it back to summer sales, all of my downline revenue. Not that I take any sort of percent. but I'm going to find my downline and figure the aggregate revenue. All of your downline revenue? That's pretty great. You've got your downline stump grinding business? Exactly. I'm going to find the, where is it? Stump grinding mafia. Here it is. I only have 10 members, but right now. There's more too that don't post on Twitter.

21:08I get hit up from Instagram and other places, and then I'm going to try to aggregate a list. But yeah, there's at least 10 to 15 on Twitter that like posts about what they're doing. I'm sure there's more. There's just 10 that I've put together, but yeah. Yeah. Here's the guy, North Carolina State Parks guy. Yep. Mike Compton, obviously you, this Owen land clearing business who still doesn't follow me. He lives at land clearing. It's not like I care. I don't care. That hurts. Owen, follow him, dude. Luke. Anyways, these guys have like actually started real businesses, grinding stumps, and they're making real money.

21:41I have this feeling about entrepreneurship, which is just getting in the game, it exposes you to other opportunities. And so many times you get into the game of entrepreneurship and it's like the thing that you're doing today isn't necessarily the thing you'll be doing in five years, but the skill set you're developing today will be the skill set that you're utilizing in five years to kind of accelerate you. Something that's interesting about growing in public though is you start getting a bunch of people hit you up who are like, hey, how do you do this? Hey, how do you start a stump grinding business?

22:11Or hey, you bought a business. How do I buy a business? and at first you think I'll help as many people as I can and then it's like it's just too much did that happen to you yes but after the first podcast with you guys I got hit up so much on Twitter every single person I gave him my phone number because I don't know I just believe in helping people especially people that are out of my market like I'm like yeah it doesn't hurt me to help you so like I might as well and then I remember I spent a week on the phone like literally all of these calls were like a half hour to an hour helping guys answer questions.

22:43And I realized I was answering the same questions over and over again. And so. Wait, wait, wait. So like just a week, you're like literally just on the phone for a week talking to people about stump grinding. Yeah. I mean, it was in between jobs. It was fitting it where I could, right? It wasn't my priority. Were you thinking like, oh, I'll help them out and partner with them. Like, oh, they'll start, they'll start a stump grinding business in North Carolina and I'll be an equity partner in that. Or like, was it anything like that? The first 10 guys that hit me up, I 10 to 20 probably calls that I had were like completely free value.

23:12You hit me up. I was new. I had just been tweeting for a few months. You guys put your podcast episode out. I was like, oh, this is like cool. It's attention. It was fun at the beginning. You know what I mean? Because I was putting content out. And so I was like, oh, I'll help people. I didn't have any plan. It's hard though, because you want to pay it forward, right? You want to be like helpful to other people. And then you're like - You have a post on this that I love. Yes, I think I saw it on linkedin. It's a post on this specifically where people asking to pick your brain makes you feel like the bad guy Because you want to help Like I want to help people genuinely like I actually do But then i've realized that if you just spend a week on the phone helping other people in different markets My stump granny business made no jumps in that whole week And so it's like what am I doing with my time?