208. The Boring 8-figure Business Hiding in Plain Sight

0:00Andrew graduated college in 2011 and jumped straight into a job at Bartlett tree experts. His day started with the toughest manual labor, hauling brush, dragging log, and sweating in the Texas heat for just$13 an hour. But Andrew's drive quickly stood out. When the company gave him a shot at sales, he took off, earning six figures in a short time and learning the ins and outs of RBO culture and business operations. Then came the breaking point. After a clash with a regional manager who dismissed his accomplishments and told him he was replaceable, Andrew walked away. He took time to travel, reset, and rethink his future.

0:34That's when his friend Austin, already running a small tree-cutting side hustle, invited him to help out a few days a week. Andrew didn't just help out, he doubled down. He believed in the business so much that he liquidated his 401k to buy in as a partner, which is just crazy to think about. Together, he and Austin transformed Tree Amigos from a side hustle with basic tools into a company, pulling in over$100 ,000 a month. I'm Ryan Atkinson, and you're listening to Help With Podcast, where we uncover the secret of running successful businesses. I am super excited to welcome Andrew to the podcast today, talk a little bit more about Tree Amigos going from failure to$180 ,000 a month.

1:08So Andrew, thank you so, so much for being here. You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to do this. Yeah, you've already been on the YouTube channel. You're a great YouTube guest. So excited to have you on the podcast now. But for people that are like, hey, you know, I didn't check out the YouTube video. You should. But Andrew, let's let's kind of give them back and rewind the clock to get back to like 2011. You're starting out at Barlow Tree Experts. You're making$13 an hour. Kind of talk to us what life was like in 2011. Yeah, so 2011 was the year I graduated from Stephen F.

1:36Austin State University, the college where I went to to get a forestry degree with an emphasis in urban forestry. And I got recruited straight out of college to join the Bartlett Tree Experts. I graduated, had my ceremony on a Saturday, and that Monday was my first day at Bartlett. Little did I know what they were starting me as was basically the lowest position possible. All I did was drag brush and carry logs and feed a wood chipper and sweat and rake and just all the like grueling low end work. And I did that for a long time there. I was one of the only white people on the crew, the only person speaking just English.

2:14So, you know, they weren't super eager to elevate me or teach me much. So I had to kind of figure that all out by myself. Well, talk to us about that shift then, because obviously a super important part of your story is going from that laborious job to sales. and you're making six figures quickly. So kind of talk to us about that shift and how that shift happened and any takeaways from that. Yeah, so I mean, I just kept at it. I became a certified arborist very quickly. Luckily, coming out of college, it was pretty easy to get that credential. And then, you know, I just kept learning as much as I could, working as many Saturdays as I could, you know, taking on as much responsibility as I could with the company, you know, volunteering to go to other offices around the country and doing, you know, extra work and storm work.

2:55you know i just made myself stand out that i was going to be a good asset to the company and then you know the day came someone in the arborist position quit and i was the next best candidate and took my shot and you know within that first year i was making six figures oh man so so cool so let's talk about that decision to leave like what happened you know the regional manager comes up to you what did he say how did that push you away because that's obviously a super important part of tree amigos and listeners stay tuned for that because we're going to dig into that and how you can start a similar company but yeah talk to you about that decision to leave and kind of what led up to it yeah i mean you know it was a great job i love working for bartlett tree experts they you know it's a sales job too which is like as motivated as you can be you can make as much money as you can as hard as you're willing to work you know the sky's the limit but you know i had been there for about eight years and you know i've been doing pretty well I wasn't given like the cream of the crop of territory or everything, anything.

3:52I had a pretty middling territory, you know, nothing too desirable, kind of on the outskirts of town. And I had been, you know, making it work as best as I could. And on year eight, my regional manager calls me into his office and, you know, basically tells me I'm replaceable. And it's like, man, you've been training me. You've been teaching me stuff for eight years. And then you're going to go and say something like that is just didn't make any sense. and really caused me to lose a lot of faith in my future at that company. I knew I could have stuck around and they would never have fired me, but I was just like, what am I doing here?

4:26If after eight years of toil... I'm sure listeners are in that same pot. They're like, oh man, I've been at my company forever. I just know I don't want to do this forever. So I'm thinking about doing side hustles. And let's talk about how Tree Amigos popped up. And Austin's obviously a humongous part of this equation. So first tell us who Austin is, how did he approach you? Like what was the initial idea with Tree Amigos? Sure, sure. Yeah. So Austin is one of my best friends from middle school. We were friends through middle school into early high school where, you know, we were kind of punks and getting in a lot of trouble.

4:58And he got in really big trouble and he kind of got shipped off to wilderness school. And so we kind of parted ways. But then in our early 20s, we came back together and I actually got him a job at Bartlett Tree Experts. And so he worked with me there. He had a college degree in computer video game design. and he worked in that space a little bit and kind of hated it. And so then I got him a job, you know, climbing trees and working chainsaws and he kind of fell in love. So he started doing side work, you know, because when you tell people you work with trees, they're going to say, oh, hey, I got a tree thing.

5:29Can you give me a good deal? Blah, blah, blah. And his side hustle, you know, he had his he was busy every weekend. And in the two days he would work in the weekend, he would make more than he made in a week at Bartlett. So he eventually left Bartlett to start Tree Amigos with another friend of ours named Tom. And those two were just a dynamic duo. They were a powerhouse team. And so they really got the company off the ground and got it going. But so he started it. And then, you know, when I finally quit, I took a lot of time to travel and relax. And then, you know, finally got a little antsy and said, hey, can I come, you know, work at Tree Amigos three days a week?

6:05And I started right back at the bottom again. And I was dragging brush and carrying logs, you know, nine years into my career. But it was with friends and it was, you know, it actually was kind of nice. It was a lot less responsibility. Was there any mindset, though, with you there of being like, oh, man, like I was just making six figures a year doing sales. I'm sure you're working in AC with like a comfy chair. You maybe got a blanket wrapped around you. I don't know. But I mean, you're doing manual labor. I mean, was there any part of you is like, oh, man, I can't believe I'm doing this. I know you're doing with friends.

6:36Was there any like part of that? I'd love to talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, just being in sales, it's all communication. It's all emails. It's phone calls. It's, you know, making sure the plan is right. You're always on, you know, your work follows you. So, you know, it was actually great to switch back into that, you know, very physical, very hands on, you know, style of work. And I was doing that, you know, and I was only doing it for three days a week. So it was a lot of fun, you know, Only having to work three days a week and making some extra cash. I was doing some other things on the side to make more cash.

7:09I was selling pot and doing things like that to just make extra cash, keep it going. But it was a dream, honestly. It was a lot of fun in those early days before I bought into the company. I was having fun and enjoying my time away from that corporate stress of quotas and all of that. It was honestly a huge weight off my shoulder. I used to have really bad TMJ, which is like a, you know, it's a jaw issue where your jaw just gets really tight and locks up. And as soon as I quit Bartlett, that was gone. And it's never been back. So something about that corporate pressure, that corporate lifestyle just inflicted a jaw disease on me.

7:50Most people spend months, sometimes years, just thinking about starting a business. But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business. I'm sure a lot of listeners are like, Andrew, I feel like you're talking to me right now because I am going through it with corporate. I've been through it as well. So listeners, I definitely get where you're at with that. But an important part that you mentioned there, you bought into the business.

8:22I mean, that's a pretty big risk for you to do. What did you exactly do? What was that stake in it? And then why did you decide to buy into a business? Because I think I want to ask this question because listeners, they might not view this as like a way to actually get into businesses, like team up with a friend and buy into it. So I'm curious, like, what did you do? Yeah. So Austin approached me, you know, I think he was getting pretty stressed out having to run the ship by himself. And, you know, at that time I was already a board certified master arborist, which is like a pretty, you know, it's about as high of a level as you can get in the arborist world.

8:52And I'd had a ton of sales experience and I was an easy poach, you know, a really good candidate for him to bring on board. We'd just known each other for so long and made sense to him to try to get me on board. I loved what I was doing. I didn't really know it was going to blow up into this at the time, but I've always been a little disillusioned in the whole 401k. Things seemed like a trap. I knew I didn't really want to go back into the corporate world, which is where the only place where it makes sense is if they're doing that match, that high match. I liquidated it because it was a big stack of money that could buy me into this business.

9:26And it bought me into a partnership with a really good friend who I knew had a really, really good work ethic in Austin. And, you know, I knew with our powers combined, we couldn't fail. And if we did fail, you know, I was fairly confident that if we liquidated things at the end, we would get at least our money back. Yeah. So it was an easy decision because the 401k thing always seemed a little corny to me. Nice. Oh, I like that. I mean, I mean, was it scary though at all doing it? Or were you like truly like, this is all like upside here. Worst case scenario, like liquidation here. I mean, like, did you have like family or stuff?

10:01Like, yeah, talk to us about that. No, no, it was, it was all upside to me. I didn't, no fear at all. It just all seemed to make sense. This is going to sound so cheesy, but like I live myself, like my life, like, you know, in a way where I learned a lot just from playing video games growing up. And in video games, you don't save a ton for the future as much because you're playing right now. And so to me, it was like, okay, this money is for when I'm 60. Does 60-year-old me really need this$30 ,000 that I can spend on life now to get something now that's also an investment that's going to be more active that I can put sweat equity into?

10:42It just made so much sense. Why am I waiting for 40 years to touch this cash when there's opportunity today? Like I may not be alive. Let's talk about then blowing up here and like popping out. So where did you join in the business? And let's just say, okay, you know, I'm Austin, you're Andrew, like, okay, you now have a 25 % stake in the business. How do you divide up? Like who's doing what? And like, take us from that partnership and like kind of how you guys grew. I mean, it kind of just happened organically and over time, like, you know, in the beginning we had way less administrative duties and Austin kind of handled most of it while I was handling sales, like just really heavy hitting the sales.

11:18Cause that was my specialty. You know, eventually more and more administrative tasks would be put on my desk. So, you know, handling sales tax every week, every month and, you know, sometimes doing payroll and stuff like that. And, you know, it just kind of naturally fell different administrative tasks. But, you know, in the beginning, it was basically sales and then production. So it was actually lovely. And my favorite way to practice arboriculture is you would, you know, go out on Thursday, Friday, you would do sales days and you would. sell work. And then the next, you know, in a few weeks you would come back and you would be the foreman on your own projects.

11:56So you would get the commission plus you would get the hourly rate of doing the work. And, you know, when you're the foreman of something you sold, you're just, it's really easy to keep quality control. And so just quality was just through the roof, especially for what people were used to in an industry that's been very commoditized. You know, it's just like been a race to the bottom in terms of talent and cost. And so many companies just they just hire the cheapest guys. And, you know, as soon as you want more money, you're fired. And so, you know, it was easy to stand out with that. And like we were the only company where a master arborist would show up, sell the job and then do the job.

12:37I can't think of another master arborist who's in production still to this day. So it was a huge selling point. I was basically just headed up sales in the beginning. I want to talk about like the sales aspect of it. So if someone's like interested in something similar to this or even home services as general, like what you know of now, like how would you advise someone that's trying to land that first sale, that second sale, that third sale? Like, what do you know now? Like what's the tactics you would use specialties, anything like that to like really get your first customers home service? Yeah.

13:06I mean, I think it all starts with, you got to really know the, what you're doing in your field. You know, you have to know how to sell it and what you're selling is a great place to start. So it probably does make sense in a lot of home services to get a ton of training in something and then work for another company, kind of, you know, another company that you admire, see how they do it before you cut out on your own, just because there's just so much information that you won't know until you, you know, get into the situation. But if you're just trying to get your first sale, you just started your company.

13:38Yeah, honestly, I would do kind of like Austin did. I would work somewhere that's stable. And then on the sixth day that you have to yourself, that's where you work on getting those first customers. And in the beginning, you want to use your network. So your friends, your family, try to work that first because those are easy leads. Does your mom own a house? Does your dad own a house? Does your uncle own a house? Do they have trees? Do they have air conditioning? Do they need your help? Targeting your family network, doing a really good job there. And then, you know, trying to radiate yourself out.

14:15You know, I always think of sales as you're kind of like a virus and you're trying to infect as much of your service area as possible. And once you get an infection site, you work to spread from that site. So if you do a really good job for your uncle, then you go to all of his neighbors and say, you know, Hey, just did this project next door. Here's my car. If you need some help and he'll naturally refer you, you know, you can ask him, Hey, can you refer me to your neighbors when you get a chance? Can you refer me to your friend, ask for the referral. Cause a lot of people, you know, you do it a good job.

14:44They pay you. They don't really think about that. But if you just ask for the referral, it puts something in their mind, you know, Hey, I should, you know, look out for him to see if I can help him out and get him work. That's, that'd be the easiest way to land that first job is just work your existing network. I love it. You know, you work your existing network. You kind of go through the contact list on your phone and you're like, okay, I've contacted all my 8 ,000 contacts. I doubt anyone would actually do that, but let's just say you do, uh, you get an A plus of course for one, but then going to like net new clients that are cold, they have no idea who you are.

15:17I mean, what did you guys do? Were you guys doing like door knocking? Like what did that look like for tree amigos? So at Bartlett, you know, I had a pretty rough territory, especially for the, at the time he has before Austin boomed. So I actually would knock on doors and I was really desperate and really needed some, you know, work, but a tree amigos, you know, the only door knocking I ever do is like, I was just referring, we call it four corners. So if you start that first job, you get, you start that job before you even start, go to the neighbors, give them your card, say, Hey, I'm working next door.

15:50You know, if I make a lot of noise, let me know, here's my card. If you need to get ahold of me, if you also, if you need any help yourself, you know, here, give me a call. But you know, nowadays there's also, you know, things like Google ads that are pretty great. You know, if you can learn how to build yourself a good ad. The easiest way if you're starting from scratch is to have a really good offer. There's a guy, Alex Hormozzi, and his whole shtick is the offer. And especially if you're coming in at ground zero, I mean, an irresistible offer that the client can't say no to is going to be huge to getting those early clients.

16:26For example, there's a company called Benny's Tree Service. I don't know if they're any good. My guess would be no, but they have a offer that's any roof clearance$250. So even if you have a two story mega mansions surrounded by trees, the roof clearance is only going to be$250. And that's just, it's such an astounding offer. First of all, because it's just irrational, you know, there's almost no way they can do that and still turn a profit, but they're obviously using it as a tool to get leads. And then they're either just juicing up other parts of the estimate or, you know, they're doing something, but there's just no way on some of these properties you're doing the whole roof for 200.

17:11Like what if the client says, no, just the roof, just the roof of my three story mansion, but that offer got them to call. And so even if they lose that client, there's going to be like another 300 people where that$250 worked. And so, you know, I think having a really good offer, if you're going to start fresh and do digital media is key. But we started, you know, just word of mouth and next door worked out really well for us. But that one, again, back in the day, you couldn't work next door. Like nowadays people work next door. Back in the day, it was just someone recommended you and then that was it.

17:47Like you weren't able to go in and someone's like, I need tree services. And then 70 people are like, I do tree work. Call me. You know, that's how it is now. It's lost a ton of value there but in the beginning that was a huge referral machine for us for you like what can you kind of give us any examples of like offers tree amigos has like put together had it worked yeah i'd love to hear that so most of the offers in my opinion that tree companies come up with are just like slimy shady sketchy stuff like that 250 dollar route that's an example our real offer is satisfaction guaranteed it's like you will be happy with the product or the service, or we will come back and we will make you happy with it.

18:28And if you still aren't happy with it, we'll either give you a discount or we just won't charge you at all. And then we'll blacklist you so that you never get the cause again. But it's that same thing with the roof. Okay, that one person, they may not be able to do their roof for$250. Or for us, that one person, we may not make happy, but the other 300 leads we got from that satisfaction guarantee worked. And so that's really the only, I mean, besides just the value of our service, that's the big offer is satisfaction guaranteed. You will be satisfied with our service or we will come back and work with you until you are.

19:04How do you like then put that in like Google campaigns? I know you mentioned Google ads before. Is that something that you'll then take into like Google campaigns or you kind of like give us what goes into like a good, effective like Google campaign? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a marketing expert by any means. I personally like Google pay-per-click ads the most because with all the Facebook stuff, all the Instagram stuff, I feel like a lot of that just gets helicoptered out into the universe. And it's like you're hoping that whoever comes across it will need tree services when they see it. Whereas Google pay-per-click is like someone's like, I need tree services now.

19:40And then boom, your name shows up. And so that to me is like the most value for your money. And so, yeah, I mean, I think we're a little lucky and that our branding is really good. Like just the name Tree Amigos, I feel like it's pretty catchy. And people, when they're searching for a tree service and they don't know anything about them, even just that name works. But, you know, using those taglines in the ad, you know, satisfaction guaranteed. The other thing is, you know, you really want to geofence your ads so that they're only showing up in the neighborhoods that make the most sense to you.

20:12So for us, it's like a no brainer. I know the city, I know where the trees are. I know where the people who own their homes and have money to pay for their trees to be trimmed and their trees are big are at. And so I can just isolate, you know, those zip codes and send ads to them. and then your return on investment per ad is gonna be a lot higher if you can really aim that. And then you also, for service, you wanna only homeowners, you only wanna send it to homeowners. You can kind of dial in who it goes to so that you're getting a better return on investment. But I'm not an expert in that regard on just like raw ads.

20:52We have a very ad-free system. We only use ads when we are like selling for next week. we don't have any marketing budget basically. So like this year, for example, we spent$1 ,400 on ads. That was our whole year's ad spend. And that was only in the slowest of seasons. So, you know, in most years it's zero. I like it. But one thing that I think is interesting of your story here is like Reddit. Talk to us about that strategy. I believe you talked about this on the YouTube channel as well. So there's, I remember this being a very good gold nugget. So listeners, I grab a notebook or rerecord this or whatever.

21:27But yeah, Andrew, Talk to us about your Reddit strategy that you had then. Yeah. So sort of the confidence and the authority that Nextdoor used to have has been transferred to Reddit. You know, people trust stuff from Reddit and, you know, they use Reddit as a way to search for trust for the information and recommendations, et cetera. You know, that is the advertising wolves and, you know, parasites have kind of figured that out and they're really attacking it. So that game may change. But what I've really done is I've created a business account about three years ago and just really tried to provide expert advice, expert opinions, and throw my hat in the ring whenever people are talking about trees in Austin.

22:07We're really fortunate. Austin has a huge Reddit community, over half a million people. There's even a more specific subreddit called Austin Gardening that has around 30 ,000 plus people. And so by interacting and contributing to those communities, I've become a name that people will recommend. I swear even people who haven't even used our service will recommend us because I've been so active in those communities. So, you know, I've been going into Reddit and doing a lot with that. The big breakthrough, though, was about a year ago, exactly to August. A lot of Reddit forum searches are now ranked on the front page of Google.

22:45So for years, I had been, you know, interacting with the community and posting on subreddit. And then all of a sudden, those posts are now showing up on the front page of Google. talking about tree services and tree work and stuff like that so if you can manage to get to the front page of google without having to spend a bunch of money you know that's huge oh my gosh yeah my competitors i know spend hundreds of thousands to get to that front page i was gonna say that would explain why you don't really need a marketing budget but kind of tell us about that strategy and like a little bit more because like so far we've like and you know in short we've done some offers like pvc but i think i love this like reddit strategy some of you actually haven't really talked about on this podcast before.

23:26So talk to us like a little bit more about like that right strategy. Are you ever promoting? Are you always just like consulting? What does that look like? Yeah, yeah. I've never, it's never an ad. My basic strategy is I've set up something called if this, then that it's a website that is basically a web crawler. And so I have that set up so that, you know, if anyone says the word tree or arborist on the Austin subreddit or the Austin gardening subreddit, I get an email. And so that means I don't have to sit on Reddit and wait for something important to come up for me to comment on. If anyone's talking about trees, it lets me know.