Austin Gray: All right, welcome back to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray, and today, we've got Carl Rosenberg joining us. Carl, welcome to the show!

Carl Rosenberg: Hey, thanks for having me on today!

Austin Gray: Yeah, so we were just jumping into it. You were going to tell us a bit about the start of your business. You said you started before COVID. How did you get into the business?

Carl Rosenberg: Uh, well, it's a funny story actually. I got into it, I wouldn't say by accident, but I kind of grew it off of everything from a stump grinder. It's odd to say that, but I started off with a stump grinder. At the time, a lot of tree companies around us had chipper trucks, and I mean $100,000 chippers, and they had all kinds of equipment. But a lot of these tree guys didn't have stump grinders.

So it kind of dawned on me one day. I found a stump grinder in an auction for like, you know, 10 grand. I was like, you know, as a side gig, I’ll go grind some stumps for these tree guys. So I started like calling up tree companies, like, "Hey, do you need some stumps ground down? I'll start and think $50 a stump at the time or something like that. Maybe I was doing it by the inch; I don't recall. It was close to five years ago.

And, you know, I got into it with a stump grinder. From the stump grinder, I just kind of grew. I had a little Kabota sub-compact tractor with a little grapple on it, a little backhoe on the back of it. You know, I got that maybe a few months later after my stump grinder, and I was just kind of doing small cleanup jobs, you know, little brush jobs and cleanup jobs. That's kind of where I got more involved into it, from all starting from that stump grinder essentially. Then I kind of grew it into, you know, I ran a 299 with a mulcher on it. Then I eventually got into, you know, an excavator with a mulcher head on it. Now I've got a Cat 953, and I was doing land clearance. It all started from that little $10,000 stump grinder. I was just going around grinding up stumps for guys.

Austin Gray: That is awesome! I've heard some people talking about stump grinders as like a very specific niche focus to offer. You know, one of the guys was actually talking about it. I saw it online the other day; he was like, man, I feel like buying a stump grinder and just going around to other tree companies and telling them that you have a stump grinder and being a subcontractor for the tree companies could be a good business. He's an idea guy, so he always talks about it on his podcast. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I'm curious to know how you went about getting your first jobs with that stump grinder.

Carl Rosenberg: So getting the first jobs with the stump grinder were pretty much all with the tree companies. Then I started marketing stuff on like Facebook Marketplace at the time. On Facebook Marketplace, you could put like an ad up without having to sponsor it and do all the stuff you have to do through Ads Manager. They kind of cut that stuff out. But back in the day, you could actually just put like almost like a phony ad up, and people would just call me from that Facebook ad. I guess they were just searching stump grinders. I had my little pictures up there and a little bit of a pricing sheet kind of attached to another picture, and they would just, you know, message me through Facebook. I would figure out where they were at and go and quote jobs. I was kind of dabbling with a little bit of the Facebook side of things there for a while getting work for it.

Austin Gray: That's awesome! But you said you did target the tree companies too?

Carl Rosenberg: Yes, I targeted the tree companies to start off with. So when I kind of dove into it, I just started calling around some tree companies and saying, "Hey, need a guy that can grind stumps?” At the time, that market really wasn’t very saturated with stump grinders, so there really weren’t a lot of people that had them, which is kind of odd.

Now the market is just saturated; everybody and their mom has a stump grinder. You know, a lot of firefighters do stump grinding on the side now, so there are a lot of firefighters out there that do stump grinding as a side job, which, hey, that's great. But yeah, it just started just cold calling tree companies and like, "Hey, you need a stump grinder?" If I was driving around to go grind another stump, I’d see a tree guy, you know, out to the side of the road cutting trees. I just go right up to him and talk to him. "Hey, what are you all doing with these stumps?" Oh, we don't know yet, and we haven't discussed with customers. I'm like, "Y'all have a stump grinder?" "No, we don't have a stump grinder." I was like, "Cool, well, you mind if I give you my card, or if I can give you a price on it, you can sell it to the customer and pay me, or I can, you know, work directly with them?" That's kind of how I did it, just by driving around and seeing guys doing free work and stopping by and talking to them.

Austin Gray: Man, it's as easy as that, huh? I think sometimes we just overcomplicate business, but at the end of the day, like you found a niche. I see this a lot; it's like a lot of the tree companies don’t actually own their own stump grinders, and I feel like that's a piece of equipment that is rented consistently.

Carl Rosenberg: Oh, yeah, for sure! Yeah, because I think the reason why those guys rent them is the maintenance on them. It’s not too bad; you will eat through some teeth pretty quick, and for some reason, it's little bitty teeth that grind those stumps up. They're kind of expensive, you know, like $15-$20 a tooth, and you get 30 on a flywheel. It adds up kind of quick.

But that's the only thing I could think of as the reason why tree guys just didn’t want to really get into the stumps. I guess they didn’t find it profitable. I did; you know, I was doing most of the stump drops for, you know, $500 or $600 on average. I guess they just thought, you know, two more hours worth of work or three more hours worth of work just wasn't worth $600 to them. But when you're banging out two or three of those types of jobs in one day now you're making $1,500-$1,600 in a day off of a $10,000 stump grinder. So your ROI is like really, really good if you average that every single day and just keep on moving through with it.

So that's how I looked at it, you know? I was like, they're turning down these little $600 jobs, but you know, do three of them a day? It adds up pretty quick.

Austin Gray: Yeah, that is a great ROI, especially as an owner-operated business. I mean, I'm sure at this time it was just you, right?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, at the time it was just me. So I was just kind of running my stump grinder. At the time, I was still, you know, I was still doing construction and I was an electrician at the time too, so I was still kind of dabbling in the construction. So it was kind of a side gig for me. So I didn’t just dive right in like, "I’m going to make a living out of this."

So I had a strategy that I used, and I implemented my strategy. It worked really well. And shortly after I began getting into stump grinding, learning how to market it and cold calling companies, it didn't take long after where I was like, "You know what? I’m tired of pulling wire; I’m tired of doing construction work; I think I'm done." So I just, like, pulled out of that whole entire industry that I was in for over a decade. You know, I got tired of it being in the industry, so I was looking for a change anyways.

Austin Gray: If I had the math correct, that means you had to do 20 jobs to pay off that stump grinder, pretty much?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, it paid for itself! Well, between maintenance and fuel and my insurance and some other stuff I was kind of spending money on at the time, I think I had that stump grinder pretty much paid for itself within about two months, roughly.

Austin Gray: That is awesome! What kind of machine did you buy?

Carl Rosenberg: It was a Toro. So it was the STX26, which is a track unit; it’s a 26-horsepower Kaki motor in it. It was a great little stump grinder. I mean, I wouldn’t put it on like a 36-inch oak; it’s going to struggle. But there’s really not a lot in our area; there’s really not a lot of people cutting down 36-inch trees. Nine times out of ten, the trees I was grinding down were mostly pine. We have a lot of pine in Georgia, and most of those pines are between 12 to 18 inches.

Now, pine is a very soft wood anyways, so me grinding the stumps down in 15 minutes per stump on a pine stump. So I tried to stay away from the oaks if I could because those are typically when you get up into the, you know, the 75-horsepower, 100-horsepower diesel-powered stump grinders. Those are the big boy ones that get, you know, the bigger trees like that. So I kind of veered off to that side of it because I was like, “Hey, it’s not worth my time sitting here for 4 hours to do a stump for, you know, $200 or $400 or whatever the price would have been at the time.”

Austin Gray: That's awesome, man! The Toro STX, you said?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, I think that's the model number. I think it was an STX26.

Austin Gray: I've got it pulled up here. This is the one that our rental company has here locally. I do rent this one on a consistent basis. We've got a Fecon mulching head for our skid steer, but on these smaller residential jobs, like where we can't get the skid steer or if we're close to a house or something, we will rent this. Man, this is awesome! 10 grand, paid it off roughly in two months; that's an awesome little business model!

So this jumped-started you into where you are now. So let's take the next step. You go, you start grinding stumps. Where's the next opportunity that you come across?

Carl Rosenberg: The next opportunity I came across after I was doing stump grinding was, I guess you can call it like a little bit of brush clearing or brush cleanup. And that's what had my little Kabota tractor because right there at the time, my wife and I, we moved to a new house, had a little bit of property, and the front of it was kind of an overgrown pasture. The person we bought it from let this property kind of go; I mean, they pretty much let it go to hell, essentially, you know? It’s overgrown.

I had that little farm tractor. I was like, "You know, I'm going to buy this little farm tractor. I got my stump grinder; I'm going to clean this front pasture up." So I ended up buying this little Kabota BX, uh, what is it? BX23S, which I actually still own that tractor to this day. I use it to cut my grass. It has a belly mower on it. And that little BX23S had a little backhoe on the back of it. I had it with a third function valve and a grapple, and I was like, "I’m going to clean this pasture up." So I started kind of cleaning into that pasture, working through it, and I was like, "Man, I wonder if I can kind of do some stuff like this."

You know, I got this little I bought this tractor for our property; I wonder if I could start cleaning up other people's pastures. That’s kind of where I got it to the next step. So for a very short period of time, I was using that little Kabota tractor. You know, I hit a small little pasture. It needed to be cut. I had a little 4-foot brush cutter on the back of it, and I was like cutting power lines for people that owned over in different counties for farms. I was just like, man, I don't know what to charge for this. I think I started off like $75 an hour or something like that or maybe $50 an hour; I can't remember at the time. Next thing, I start brush mowing little fields and pastures with it, just small little, you know, two to three-acre fields. It only took me a few hours to do each one, and I just kept growing it from there to see what kind of get into next. I just kept stepping it up and stepping it up.

I kind of did it really fairly fast, realistically, because between the stump grinder and the little Kabota tractor, by the time I got into that and started brush mowing stuff, we’re only talking about like maybe a six to eight-month time frame difference, so it’s kind of like one after the other. Then I was starting to do a little bit more bigger jobs after that too. That’s where I got my first skid steer, and that was a Cat 226. It’s a wheel loader; it’s a 226B3. Bought that at auction too, and it was a great unit—a great unit for just doing grapple work and tree work with it. It wasn’t a track system, which kind of slowed me down a lot of the time, especially in the terrain we have in Georgia with all of our mud and stuff.

But it did help get me kind of started into it. Then from that 226B3 I had, that's when I got my first 299, and I was like, "Hey, I want to get into forestry mulching.” You know, like instead of doing it the hard way, I just want to mulch all this stuff. That's kind of where I got into the mulcher from there. That was probably back in 2020; I bought that one in ’21 or ’20. I can't remember the dates exactly, but anyways, it was shortly after.

So I kind of kept bumping it up to bigger, better stuff in a relatively quick time period, essentially.

Austin Gray: Now, did you buy that 299 new or did you buy it used?

Carl Rosenberg: It was used, yeah. The first one was used. It was a 2017 model.

Austin Gray: So that first one, was it a Cat 226?

Carl Rosenberg: Right, that's one of the smallest wheel machines a Cat makes, and it was a 2014 model. I bought it at auction; it was used, obviously, too. But it had 600 hours on it, man! 600 hours, came from a Cat dealer out of South Carolina; it was a rental unit, I believe, and it was like immaculate, like brand new looking almost. It’s crazy! I think I only picked that thing up for like $20,000.

Austin Gray: Wow! Okay, so you bought that one for $20,000, and at this point—okay, so here's what I'd like to know because I know our listeners are going to want to know. A big question I get all the time is equipment purchasing: do you buy new or do you buy used?

So I do want to take the time to go over your thought process of how you bought that, but at the same time as we layer in each piece of equipment in your story, I want to understand where were the jobs coming from? How were you getting the jobs that were driving those equipment purchases?

So you said you moved more kind of into the brush clearing piece at that point with the Kabota tractor. You've now bought the 226 wheel machine. Where were these jobs coming from, and how were you finding those jobs?

Carl Rosenberg: So once I got into the brush clearance side of things and I got that 226, I was working out in the West Georgia area. Out there in West Georgia, they had a big timber tract that they divided up, and they were pretty much selling like little 10-acre or 5-acre lots off. Well, I was still advertising on Facebook Marketplace, you know, for land clearing and all that kind of stuff. I think a Facebook page—I already set a Facebook page up that day one, but I was still able to like post on Marketplace kind of like a sponsored ad, and you know I'd get a customer that called me from that was out in that area.

He was like, "Hey, you know, I bought this lot out here in West Georgia. I need to get it cleared.” Well, when I got out there, I noticed like, man, there’s like 400 acres out here and these guys just took this timber tract and they divided it all up into little smaller tracts and this is all like, you know, little three to six-inch pines that they planted. I guess the deal went south, so on and so forth.

So, you know, they had a big parking lot out there where people were coming to look at this property. Like, hey, there’s property for sale out here for a really good price actually for that area. You know, I went up there one day when the guy was up there trying to sell it all off and they had all these different side by sides and they were driving around showing all these different people from the city like, "Hey, you can buy this land for $50,000," and so on and so forth.

When I did that first lot up there, I was like, "I’m going to get some yard signs; I’m going to start sticking them down the road. Hey, we do driveways, we do clearing; we do all that stuff.” That’s where I pretty much did a lot of those lots up there just because I had those yard signs. I paid, you know, five bucks a piece for. I had them made up; they looked good; they were printed in color, all that kind of stuff on it, and I just started sticking those signs in the road, you know, because I think they were selling off like 60 or 70 different lots up in that area.

So I just put the yard signs in the road at the stop sign down the road, and next thing I started getting multiple phone calls from people like, "Hey, we just bought this property. We're from, you know, Atlanta; we bought this property out in West Georgia towards Alabama. We saw your signs on the road!" That’s kind of where it just kept continuing to grow, is with, you know, yard signs and just kind of getting on Facebook and posting up some stuff on Facebook and waiting for the phone calls to kind of roll through.

Then as I started to grow the business, you know, I grew it into, "Alright, now we’re brush clearing; we’re doing stump grinding; we’re doing forestry mulching now." And I started thinking more and more about it, like, "Man, if I really want to get in with builders, I really need to get an excavator and a loader." Because at the end of the day for me, land clearing technically to me—I don’t classify land clearing until I take my loader in there, and I’m pushing up trees with stump—whole entire trees, ripping it up, grading back out. To me, that’s more like land clearing in my classification.

I know a lot of guys are going to hate against me on that. “Oh, land clearing sport mulching,” but that’s what I classify as land clearing.

Austin Gray: So that’s running a little bit on about it, but yeah, I pretty much just kept growing it to better equipment and just kept doing the hustle, you know? Yard signs, Facebook, stopping by job sites, talking to builders, passing out my card, and just kind of running it that way, keeping it going.

Carl Rosenberg: Those yard signs, I’m very curious to hear what people put on their yard signs. What text, what words, what phone number? Did you put your logo?

Carl Rosenberg: I kept it really simple. I just did the logo because you’ve got to brand your business. So I just did the logo, phone number, big bold letters, and then underneath that phone number, I just did, you know, "forestry mulching, land clearing, gravel, or site prep," you know, that kind of stuff. I kept it real simple, with big bold letters. I didn’t put too much stuff on it to where somebody driving by wouldn’t be able to grab their attention quick and know because if you have too many small letters.

But I kept it real simple. I did a couple bullet points of what I can do, phone number, and logo; that was it.

Austin Gray: That’s great! I want the listeners to hear that again; it’s very simple on yard signs. I see like way too many people trying to get so creative with it. I would even go so far as to say like on ours, we've even decreased the size of our logo because I believe to the customer it’s like if they’ve never heard about us before, all they really care about is if I’m targeting a fire mitigation customer, like all that customer cares about is the fact that there's fire mitigation and a number to call right there.

That’s how I look at it. It sounds like you have taken the same approach; it's like big bold letters for the services you offer and big bold letters in the phone number. And I’ve talked about this before, but I’m glad you brought it up. These yard signs are not expensive in any way, shape, or form.

Carl Rosenberg: Um, you can order them online; where did you order yours from? Do you even remember?

Carl Rosenberg: Uh, we have a local company in the downtown area where we live at, and that's all—it’s a print shop. So, you know, they—and I like to support local businesses, besides buying online. So, you know, I kind of call around and find out who's got what. And a lot of times it’s just, it’s faster and cheaper to use a local business because you kind of go in there and tell them what you want. You go right when they’re done with it, you go pick it up. You don’t have to worry about shipping. To me, time is money.

So I didn’t want to waste, you know, time getting online and trying to figure it all out and wait for them to ship it to me, so I did everything with local businesses with the yard signs. Love it! So yard signs, big reason as to why you were able to grow during that period.

So you had the 226 at that point. I want to jump into the next piece of equipment you bought, which was the Cat 299. For those of you who are listening, the Cat 299 is Cat's version of—it’s the machine you want to mulch with, correct?

Carl Rosenberg: Pretty much! Yeah, I mean, it’s one of their—well, the D2, so it kind of really back then, that 2017 model really wasn’t set up for mulching; it did okay. The D2 series had a little problem overheating, though, that’s the only problem about it because they had to change a couple things around the motor. But it got me through to get started with it, though.

I didn’t keep that one very long. I bought a used one with a mulcher head on it; I think it only had like 1,700 hours on it. I can’t remember. It was like 1,700 hours on it. I didn’t keep it very long because it started having problems with it. Luckily, I did buy the extended warranty and Cat was going to cover it, but it got to be down for so long. I was like, man, I can’t afford this. Like I just got into this mulching thing, you know? I’m only a few months into it; like I really need to get something different.

So anyways, my Cat dealer—really good Cat dealer; they took really good care of me. I was really happy about it when I was having problems with that used one I bought. I don’t think they inspected it properly in the street I was having issues with it. But at that point, I was already getting phone calls for forestry mulching. I didn't want to lose out on opportunities, and I was like, “You know what? I think I can get this to carry on; I can get more mulching.”

Let me just go buy a brand new one. So I bought a 20—I think it was a 21 model. I still have that machine today too, a 21 model. It was the D3; it had the LM2 package on it, so it has the hydraulic oil cooler on top, saddlebag tanks on it; it had every option I could outfit that thing with. That’s where I started at with like, now we’re a mulching company, you know? We can get mulching going; let’s run it! Like I got a brand new machine on a warranty; it runs great; and I’ll just run with it that way.

Austin Gray: Cool! So you did buy used on the first one. How much did you pay used for that machine?

Carl Rosenberg: The used one with the mulcher head on it, I think it was around about $120,000 with the mulcher head on it, the used machine with 1,700 hours.

Austin Gray: Yeah, and you bought that from the Cat dealer. Did Cat offer financing on that machine, on a used piece?

Carl Rosenberg: They did; that's why Cat too. Their financing was a little bit easier. I talked to like Deere and Bobcat, and they were using like Wells Fargo as their deal, as their banks and stuff like that. And I know when you're a new business, it's really hard to get started because, you know, they’re going to look at your books for the last couple of years. I was like, man, like a year or so into it at this point, they’re not going to want to finance me like Wells Fargo and the big, you know, big banks.

That's why I ended up with Cat, because they have in-house financing. And Cat's a multi-billion dollar company, so they can afford to finance their own equipment. So, yes, that person one was financed through Cat Financial, and they approved me. I was like, I didn’t think I was going to approve to be honest with you. I was like, man, I’ll just try it. He’s like, "Well, just fill it out. Let’s get it going. Let’s just try it." I tried it; it came back and said, "Hey, we can get you that mulcher if you want." I was like, "Okay, I’ll take it." It was a no-brainer at the time. I was like, "Yeah, I’ll take it; let’s just get it."

Austin Gray: Alright, and are you willing to talk terms for our listeners as to just an idea for what did those financing terms look like and then what did that put you a monthly payment at?

Carl Rosenberg: Um, I don’t really recall on the first 299 I bought. I think it was a— I think it was a 48-month term. I want to say it was like around about $2,000 a month for the payment, somewhere around that.

That included the mulching head?

Carl Rosenberg: Okay.

Austin Gray: That included the mulching head with it too because they were able to finance the mulching head on it, and it’s a Cat mulching head.

Carl Rosenberg: Because everybody’s pushing the whole SEAMOTH thing, but I think at the time Cat wouldn't finance like a SEAMOTH mulching head at the time. This is not a Cat product, and Cat wants to push their products, obviously, so I just bought the, you know, the Cat mulching head, which pretty much is the rebranded FAE head. Essentially, there’s nothing anything different about it besides stickers, is all it really is.

How did you like that mulching head?

Carl Rosenberg: Well, it was my first mulching head, so I didn’t really have anything to compare to. I did run a SEAMOTH head briefly with one of my friends that kind of like, "Hey, pushed me to get into the mulching business." He was out of the West Georgia area; he came out to help me out on the job, and he was running a Cat with a SEAMOTH head on it. I ran his briefly, you know, I was like, "Alright, let me run this and get into it." As soon as I got in that saddle and tried it out, I was like, "I got to get me one of these things! I got to get me my mulcher setup!"

I didn’t really run it long enough on the SEAMOTH versus the Cat head to really like have an experience to say, "Alright, well this one's more efficient; this one cuts better," so on and so forth. I didn’t really have enough time in the seat to tell the difference, honestly, so I didn’t. And I still run a Cat head to this day, believe it or not.

Austin Gray: And I want to go back to that used piece of equipment. So you decide that that's not the piece of equipment for your operation for a number of reasons. One, it was going to be down. What was the situation like transitioning into the new piece, and how did that work with Cat?

Carl Rosenberg: Actually, it worked out pretty well. I think Cat sold me a little bit of a dud of a unit, essentially; because right when I got that thing and started mulching with it, you know, it was kind of, it didn’t have problems like since day one, but it was having slower issues here; it had, you know, a fuel problem. I think the turbo was going out, and I think that was the end result of that machine; was the turbo actually ended up going out in it.

And, you know, they claim that this is supposed to be a certified, I have less than 1,000 hours; I think it was considered like a certified used machine, which was supposed to have certain conditions that they test the oils and all that stuff on, and I don’t really think they did with it, honestly. And I was like, “You know, I gotta get another machine.”

So I was kind of like pushing against time. I wouldn’t say I went in there guns blazing to the Cat dealer, but I told them how I felt about it. I was like, “Hey man, you all told me this is a used machine. I get it; it’s used. I bought the extended warranty with it. You said it was certified; you know, this thing is broken; it’s been running for me. I’m out here trying to make a living with this. This machine; I can’t afford this anymore."

So they actually ended up buying that machine back from me for the three months that I had it, roughly. I think it’s about three months that I had that machine. They bought it back; even though I made the payments, they discounted a new machine for me for a pretty good little rate on the new machine. That’s when they put me in that 21 model 299, and I think they just took really good care of the situation I was in. They understood that the machine they sold to me was kind of garbage. I think the motor was about to go out; I know the turbo was done.

So they had to tow it back up there to get it off the trailer, and I think they just felt relatively bad about it. So they made it right. And they didn’t have any 299s that I wanted on their lot, so I think they ended up doing like a dealer trade with like another company, another CAT dealer, and brought one in for me. They had it within like a week and had me back up and running, and that’s when I had to redo all the financing and all that stuff for the new machine.

The new one, I had a lot more money involved in it, but at least that was a new machine I knew was going to work, and that’s the same machine I used to this day; I haven’t got rid of it yet.

Austin Gray: Okay, and how much was that machine, that one out the door?

Carl Rosenberg: So, like I said, that was an LM2; it’s a D3, so it had the saddle bags; it had the hydraulic cooler on it. I think I had putting Y tracks on it too. At the time, I was like, "Let me get zigzag tracks because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, go zigzag!’"

Which come to find out, those are pretty much garbage in the type of terrain that we're in. Now I had a Cat mulcher head; actually, I went down to a smaller mulcher head. The first one I had was a 418C, and for that three months I was getting to run it, and I was like, "Man, this head is just too wide for this machine."

The machine's kind of trying to get in between trees; I wasn’t a big fan of it, so I dropped it down to the 415C, which is a little bit smaller. I also had bite limiters on this one too, so with everything with the Y tracks they put on it, the mulching head, the actual machine itself was $171,000.

Austin Gray: And what were the terms for the financing on that?

Carl Rosenberg: That was a 60-month term. It worked out to my advantage at the time, which I know you're paying for it. It was 0% for 60 months, was the deal that Cat was using. And my other machine was like, you know, 4 or 5% interest because it was used. So I was kind of saving money on interest, which I think everybody, all the listeners— I get; everybody knows that, you know, they’re going to put the interest back into that machine; they have a cash price and they have a finance price, so they’re going to add it back in there.

But still, it was kind of nice to have it. But yeah, I'd been in the 60-month term, 0%, and the payment on it was just a little bit less than $3,000 a month with the mulcher included.

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, yeah, that's great!

Austin Gray: What is your—oh, I got sidetracked because you mentioned the zigzag tracks. I was looking for a picture on my phone to see if I could find it. But we had zigzag tracks; we got it for the wintertime for the snow because they were saying it has better traction in the snow. Then we ended up just running them in the summer; we didn’t take them off and put our dirt tracks back on.

And I have a picture somewhere, and I hope I can find it by the time we edit this podcast because we’ll do a screenshot of it. But, um, yeah, it basically ripped in half on one of our JPS. I heard this pop, and I stopped and I went out, and I was like, “Holy crap!”

This thing was literally just ripped, like almost using zigzags.

Carl Rosenberg: Same reason, man; I delaminated one of those things. They pretty much separated the entire track, and I was like, “Well, that’s not good!”

No, it’s not good at all!

Austin Gray: You get the 299. Now, what kind of jobs are you doing at the point of this purchase? You said this was what, 2021?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, 2021. So for about two years—well, actually not even two years, really beginning of ’21. So for, you know, maybe a year and a half, maybe two years, I was just running the forestry mulcher, man. I was out there every day, five days a week, sometimes seven days a week, just banging out mulching jobs one after the other as much as I could do as fast as I could do them.

And that’s all I did for almost a year and a half, just trying to make that money back on that machine as quick as I could before I decided to, like, "Let’s get another piece of equipment and expand the business." I just ran solo, you know?

So at this point, it was just you, and you were focusing on that forestry mulching. What type of customers were you serving at that point?

Carl Rosenberg: Mostly at that time, I was servicing more agriculture-type customers, like the clients that had anywhere from 10 to 100 acres. You know, I was really just mulching out properties like that, like going through and thinning out the woods. I had a CL of bunch of clients with 10-acre lots like, “Hey, you know, our woods are overgrown.” And I used to sell them on the “I’m going to make it look like a park when I’m finished. I’m going to keep all the big pins; we’re going to get rid of all the underbrush.”

When I’m finished mulching this area out, it is going to look like you’re in a park, essentially! Like, it’s going to be the most beautiful thinned-out piece of wood you’ll ever see in your life.

I was just selling the whole concept of, like, “We’re going to make it look like a park for you.” And it just kind of caught onto people's attention. They’re like, “Yeah, that’s what I want! I want my front yard, which is all wooded; my backyard, which is all wooded; I want to be thinned out; I want to look really, really pretty when it’s done.”

Those were the type of jobs I was doing with the mulcher, and I was, you know, doing, you know, videos and I was flying drones up and making videos like that. And at this point in time, this is when I was actually advertising on Facebook through Ads Manager and I was, you know, boosting ads and, you know, pushing out, you know, boosted campaigns and message campaigns, and I had these drone videos that I was shooting—drone shots with that are up high.

And people were like “Man, that’s really cool,” and those videos I was creating were, you know, they were getting thousands and thousands of views. And the next thing, that just started rolling up, more and more messages, more and more work came through.

Austin Gray: That’s awesome! So you're just cranking on forestry mulching jobs for what—two years?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, roughly, maybe a little bit less than two years. But yeah, I kind of stuck it in with mulching there for a little while until I got—I wouldn’t say bored with it, but I was ready for kind of the next step, I guess you can say. You make it sound so easy!

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, it wasn’t, though! The back end of it sounds like it’s easy, but there was a lot of hustle in between it. There was a lot of cold calling in between it; there was a lot of trying to get in with builders. That was my end goal was like, “Hey, I want to get in with a builder, and I want to start clearing out lots; I want to start digging out basements; and I want to get into that side of things.”

At the time, the reason I wanted to get into with the builder was because everybody started buying mulchers around my area, and our area is very saturated for mulching guys. These guys just go out and brand new trucks, brand new trailers, brand new mulchers. I mean, they’ve probably got $400,000 just in truck, trailer, and equipment easy. And they started kind of undercutting the price down a little bit.

I was friends with a lot of other mulcher guys, and we kind of came together and collabed like, “Hey, if everybody just says the same day mulching, we’ll be fine. That way nobody’s undercutting somebody; you’re not going to drive the market down.” Because usually what happens is when you get other companies or other guys that want to get into mulching, they’re like, “Well, I just need to make a payment. I’m going to go out and mulch for $1,000 a day,” and everybody else in my industry that I was friends with and still friends with, you know, we’re charging $2,000 a day.

So that’s kind of hard to compete against. But the problem is when those guys come in, they drive that market down; they just dive it off, and they mess it all up for everybody else.

Austin Gray: And is that still your day rate?

Carl Rosenberg: Um, yeah, it is. So I do anywhere from $1,600 a day to $2,000 a day, just depends on how big it is. A lot of times here lately, you know, I’ll be getting smaller jobs like little one-acre jobs that I’ll go thin out, and as a business owner, I just don’t feel right charging somebody $2,000 for something that only took me five or six hours, which I know I probably should anyways because I like overhead to clear and all that fun stuff. But sometimes I’ll just go in and hit them up with, you know, $1,600 or something. It took a little bit less than I quoted it for, you know? I’ll discount it out.

I always believed that just being straightforward with people and honest with people has gotten me a long way. It’s gotten me a lot of repeat customers; it’s got me a lot of referrals being that way. Like, “Hey, I quoted you $2,500. I knocked out a lot of young I thought I’d drop it down to $1,800.” You’re like, “Oh, well we’re expected to pay $2,500.” I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to charge $1,800 because I’m happy with what I made, and you’re happy as a client, and you’re going to tell your friends that I was just being straight up with you about the pricing.”

Austin Gray: Now is that how you bid out all your jobs? Do you have a like—you have a day rate in mind and then you give an estimate? Or do you tell the customer up front, "Hey, two grand a day is my day rate, and I think it's going to take me x amount," or like, I’ll let you take it from here. How do you estimate your jobs on forestry mulching?

Carl Rosenberg: So I estimate it by the day rate, and I know how fast I can mulch and how many acres I can mulch in a day. And I've gotten to the point where I have my 299 I have now; that thing's got well north of 3,000 hours on it. Like I got over 3,000 hours of mulching time and that just, that one tractor, so I've gotten to the point where I've got it pretty well dialed in to where I can see a piece of property; I can look at the terrain, I know the density of it. I'm like, “Okay, I can do this in a day.”

I just do a day rate because it keeps you safe, you know? Versus bidding it out, which I know bidding out you’re more profitable, but the day rate does kind of keep you safe because the problem I was having trying to bid out the jobs was saying instead of doing $3,000 a day and doing like $2,500 for the jobs that customers would have you do a lot of extra stuff that wasn’t a part of the original bid, and it ended turning into like almost like an argument, almost—not like an argument, but they were like, “Well what about this area over here?” I’m like, “Well, we never discussed that area?”

“Oh yeah, we did.” I’m like, "No, no, we really didn’t, actually." So they would try to like add on a bunch of extra stuff to kind of justify getting their money’s worth out of you. And that’s why I’ll just—I stopped bidding it by the job and just start doing it by the day.

That way, hey, you know I’m here for eight hours when that trailer turns on on my trailer before I back it off; it turns on, that’s when the clock starts, so it starts when that trailer turns on in the morning.

You get eight hours, and I always tell people that, hey, with an eight-hour timeframe I do stop for a few minutes for lunch, which I’m still there for today; that’s included in the time, you know. If I got to sharpen up the teeth or I’ve got to add fuel or blow an air filter, that’s all in that eight-hour day. And it keeps me safe because if they want something extra done, I’m like, “Well cool, I got an hour left on the clock; I can do whatever you need to if you want to pay more after the eight hours, then it’s $250 an hour or $200 an hour or whatever it is at the time.”

So it just kind of keeps you in a safe zone where you keep people trying to take advantage of your time, essentially.

Austin Gray: And you don't have any push back on that from your customers? I mean, it seems like you're booking plenty of jobs doing it that way.

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, I don’t really get any push back. I think people like the day rate too. Um, every now and then you’ll get a client that wants to do a bidded job, but typically the guys that want the job bidded out are usually like your builders and developers. Um, your average homeowner, they’re cool with the day rate as long as you explain how your day rate works.

I did get another client; I did a job about a month or so ago, and I told her I was doing a day rate. She’s like, “Well, how’s your day rate work?” And I said, “It works when my machine turns on. You know, we walk the property for 10 minutes in the morning; I come back to my machine, and as soon as that machine turns on, that’s when the clock starts.”

And she was like, “Well, I had another guy out here, you know, last year, and he said he does a day rate but he was just slacking off for, I mean, like six hours is what I kind of measured out. He was in and out in six hours; he charged for an eight-hour day.”

I said, “Well, I’m sorry that happened to you, but that’s not the way I do business. Like I’ll give you a full eight hours, and if I finish it up early and you want something else done, just let me know and I’ll do it.”

So I always used to carry with my mulcher, I carry my bucket and my grapple, and that’s how you keep that money in your pocket, is if I finish up in six hours. Well, a lot of my clients have gravel driveways; I’m like, “Hey, you know, I’m done in six hours. Do you mind if I throw my bucket on for another hour and a half, two hours? I can fix your driveway up and regrade it out. You know, you’re paying for the day rate; let me just, you know, redo this for you or refix this yard.”

I switch out attachments and just keep on working until they got everything they wanted to get done under that $2,000 day rate.

Austin Gray: That's great! Your customers got to love you!

Carl Rosenberg: Oh, yeah! Yeah, it helps out a lot when you're providing a service for somebody. I always felt like, hey, you’re providing a $2,000 day rate service, and if you finish up in six hours, you have two options: either you discount it back, which I’ve done that before too; I finish up in like five hours, and I thought something that’s going to take me, you know, eight hours, I’ll discount it back to make sure that they’re getting their money’s worth.

Or I’ll ask them if they need something else done with either the grapple or bucket. Like sometimes people have brush piles or logs that I can’t mulch up or logs I need stacked or a grapple drive I can just regrade out and smooth it back up and fix the crown on it and do that kind of stuff.

So I would find something to do to make sure that I’m making $2,000 a day so that keeps, you know, money in my pocket but they’re also getting what they deserve as far as what they’re paying me for too.

Austin Gray: How has your business model developed? Like are you still operating under this skid steer mulching $2,000 a day service business model or have you moved more into the land clearing side of things with what you mentioned earlier in the podcast?

Carl Rosenberg: Both. So I’m still doing the $2,000 day for the mulching, and then when it comes to clearing a lot and land clearing, you know, nine times out of ten those usually have site plans with them. So those I bid out by the job because if you have a site plan out, I know how much the silt fence needs to go in, I know how much area we’re clearing; you can clear what the site plan requires.

So if it’s a three- or four-acre or a half-acre, that’s really easy to bid that kind of stuff out because you can’t bid more than what the site plan is calling for, you know? So when it comes down to that kind of stuff, when land clearing kind of stuff, I do it all by the plans, and I have a contract rolled up to where, hey, I follow the plan step by step. I put x amount of silt fencing in as the plans require. I’m going to clear this much land as the plans require, and I’m going to bid this all out by the job. I stick with those plans the entire way through.

And it’s just like doing it by the job is, it’s easy when you have a site plan because you can’t go outside the site plans. You know that builder can’t come in and say, “Hey, can you do this and this?” And I’m like, “That’s not on the site plans. No, I cannot do that. I can do it as a change order, but I can’t clear more than what the site plans require from the county.”

So when it comes to land clearing, I do it all by the job, and when it comes to like mulching or excavator work, typically I run that by a day rate typically. Um, and it’s just a safer way to keep homeowners happy on a day rate; you keep your builders happy on a bid-style type of job.

Carl Rosenberg: You mentioned an excavator after you were running that 299 skid steer with the mulcher for a couple of years. When do you layer in the next piece of equipment?

Carl Rosenberg: That’s when I layered in the excavator. The one I have now is a 2022 model; I bought it in August—no, June of ’22. And right when I got the excavator, that’s when I kind of really started doing more land clearing.

The way I started doing the land clearing was I would go through with the mulcher and mulch it all out, thin it all up, and then I would have a friend of mine that does more logging stuff, so he would go through and cut all the trees out, log it all out, take the wood, take all the logs on a log truck, and don’t think I was left with pretty much stumps and a pile of slash.

The slash I would mulch it down. After I got it mulched down, I’d put it up in a pile, and then I’d take my excavator; I started digging stumps out with the excavator. I was like, okay, well, there’s got to be a faster way of doing this. I did it for about a year, roughly, probably a little bit less than that.

But that’s how I started with the actual land clearing, you know, clearing out for lots for these builders. I was just doing it with a skid steer, my bucket, my mulcher, and excavator, digging the stumps out, and I would put all the slash and the mulch inside of dumpsters. Stumps went inside of dirt and we were cleared and we’re grubbed.

I was able to do, you know, pads, and I dug out a few basements with a 299 and a 306. That’s not easy, but it can be done. You can dig out a decent-sized basement with those two machines. I’ve done it quite a few times, believe it or not, and it’s really not that bad.

Austin Gray: You said you bought a 306, a Cat 306 excavator—and that is, if I remember correctly, what is that?

Carl Rosenberg: Uh, like a, is that like a 14,000-pound machine?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, I think the sticker on the side of mine says it’s 15,800, so you're almost close to like an eight-ton.

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, it’s actually kind of a heavy machine. Is it the K? The 36 is a really good portion of the machine because you’re not into a 305 class and you’re not really getting up to the 307s, 8s and 9s.

You start getting into those weight classes, then you got to start pulling those things on lowboys because this thing is just way too much. And, you know, I was only rated to pull with my gooseneck, and my duty was around about 18,000 pounds, the payload capacity on my gooseneck, so I try to, I try to buy the equipment to where I could stay in that weight class, and I didn’t have to, like, go out and buy a lowboy.

And, you know, do all the fun stuff with do and everything like that, so I tried to keep it real simple with the pieces of equipment that I had. That's why I just chose to go with the 306. I wanted the biggest machine I could get that I could tow myself. This is what I was shooting for, essentially.

Austin Gray: Yeah, definitely. My friend who’s an excavator over in Steamboat, CO, bought the Bobcat E60, and I believe it’s the same very SAR size machine. And man, that thing, that thing's pretty sweet! We have the E50 because we bounce around to a lot of residential jobs, but there are times when I wish that we would have gone that one step up just for a little bit more oomph on some of the jobs.

But the 306-Okay, so the 306 is bigger than the E60? Interesting.

Carl Rosenberg: I think it is; I think it’s a little bit bigger than the E60. It’s kind of like a little bit—kind of—it’s very large for its weight class realistically. It’s actually a very powerful machine too. Like, it’s impressive how stout that 306 is built; you know, I was taking out some size stumps with that thing and it was a great machine.

Austin Gray: And so let’s talk purchasing of that machine. What was the price of that?

Carl Rosenberg: Um, that one was—what was that thing? I think it was around $125,000 for it.

Austin Gray: Okay, and then similar financing structure, I guess?

Carl Rosenberg: Uh, 60 months—zero? I think it was, yeah, 60 months at like, I think at the time it was 1.8% or something like that.

Austin Gray: And what did that put your payment at?

Carl Rosenberg: Like $1,800 per month for 60 months. I put money down on that one, though; okay, got you, got you. Yeah, I put—I want to say I put like either $15,000 or $20,000 down on that machine, though, so I only financed less than right at $100,000 on that.

Austin Gray: And what was the trigger point of buying that machine?

Carl Rosenberg: Well, before I even step back into that, where were you in your payoff structure with your skid steer, the Cat 299 with the mulching head?

Carl Rosenberg: How much had you paid down?

Carl Rosenberg: I was over, I was about halfway through it at the time, just about halfway through the payoff structure on that.

Austin Gray: And were you taking revenue from that job or profits from that job and like dumping it back into that payment as you went?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, as much as I could. So if I had extra money, I’d dump it back into the payment, and you know, I was spending a lot of money on advertising at the time too, trying to build it up to try to get it to the next step. So, it was a little bit of both, you know? I was putting a lot of money back into the business.

When I got the 306, that’s when I hired an operator at the time. So at that point in time, I had, you know, had payroll going; we were doing Facebook marketing.

So when I was able to work by myself, I had more money to allocate to put to a down-force machine to pay it off a little bit quicker. But when I started hiring operators, that’s when I needed more work, and that’s when I started spending more money into the business to help grow it to get more work in and use it for marketing.

Austin Gray: For sure! And how many operators do you have right now?

Carl Rosenberg: Right now, it’s just me! I went back to zero! And that wasn’t intentionally done that way, but I went back down to zero. So right now, I’m running, you know, three different pieces of machinery all by myself. Typically, whatever job I’m going to, I’m taking the mulcher out; I run the mulcher; I’m taking my 953 out, you know? I’ll have it moved to a job site; I’ll run it by myself.

Um, but it’s not really intentional that happened that way. The operator I had working for, he was with me for a couple of years; he was an older gentleman. And man, he was great, man! This guy had 48 years running equipment! I mean, 48 years of operating equipment, and I was able to just leave him on a job and like, “Hey, here are the site plans; it’s all staked out; this is where we’re clearing; we’re cutting the basement in; have a nice day.”

I’m gonna go run the mulcher on another job site, and he would just get in there and just knock it out. I didn’t have to babysit him; he knew about equipment; he knew about how to stay on grade. And he’s actually the reason I know how to run a 953.

With his 40 years of experience, he showed me a lot of like, “Hey, I’m going to show you how to run this machine, and you’re going to learn from what took me 48 years. I’m probably going to give you crap because you’ll probably figure it out in six months.” And he was right! Um, he had me dialed in really fast with that 953.

But then he had—I guess operating for 48 years he had back surgery, and the doctor told him that he can’t go back to work as an operator anymore. So, I lost him about three months ago.

Austin Gray: That’s a bummer!

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, it is a super bummer! So about three months ago I lost him, and he just can’t run equipment anymore, so I was like, that sucks. But long story short, you know, I kind of went back a little bit solo until I kind of get business back where I wanted it again. I’ll hire somebody next year; I’m kind of—I kind of waited out the rest of this year just because, you know, this is an election year, so it’s kind of been a little bit slow for us anyways.

So I really can’t take on another operator. And the guys that I’m trying to hire, you know, they say they can do this, that, and the other; you put them on a job, and they just act like they’re in, you know, middle school, pretty much, the way they work or they show up late.

So I’ve been having problems trying to get the right kind of guy in. Ever since Ricky kind of couldn’t come back, it was just me and Ricky there for a couple years; essentially, it was just me and him doing all these jobs by ourselves, and we’d get in there just tag-team him out, just knock him out quick.

Austin Gray: That’s a bummer to hear. Is he doing good now?

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, he’s doing good; he’s recovered from it. You know, I think he has a little lawn care business kind of he does now. He just kind of goes out and mows grass, you know, does something to keep him busy and to keep him active, but yeah, he can’t get into another loader ever again unless he wants to have surgery once a year.

But he’s that guy that’s like pushing the limits, huh?

Like, doctor, get back on the equipment. And he’s like, “I’m going to get on a riding lawn mower.”

Austin Gray: Yeah, the doctor approved him for a riding lawn mower. He’s like, “Hey, you probably mow grass; you know, that’s not as bouncy as running loaders and pushing trees over with loaders. You know, that’s a little bit easier on the body”, so that’s kind of what he does now.

I still talk to him on a regular basis too, so I didn’t cut ties with him. He called me up about as sad as he gets. Man, he’s 60 years old, and man, he was great. He was a great mentor to have for those two years I had him—I learned a lot from him.

I have to babysit him; he bought me a bunch in that two years that I had him for, and I thank him every day for it because that’s what got me to the point I am now. I know how to operate all these different pieces of equipment because of him.

Austin Gray: Yeah, well, man, I wish him the best in recovery! That’s always a bummer to hear. Um, so you mentioned the 953—that’s a track loader, is that right?

Carl Rosenberg: Yep, 953 Track Loader; it’s a 2017D model. When did you buy that piece?

Carl Rosenberg: At what point in the business?

Carl Rosenberg: I bought it, let’s see, I bought it in June—yeah, I think like maybe earlier in June. Might be like May of last year.

So it actually started off as a rental unit from one of my friends. He rented it to me on this big job that me and Ricky were doing. It was a big 14-acre job, we were clearing out 14 acres for a horse pasture, and we had a lot of dirt to move.

We had to build an arena that was, you know, 150 by 300, the arena size, and we cut a whole hill down that was 15 feet of dirt down to the level on grade. And that’s why I was renting it out for just for a few months, and I was like, “I really love this machine; like, this is what I want to get into.”

And Dan just sold it to me; he’s like, “Maybe if you really want that 953, like, I’ll sell it to you; you don’t have to rent it anymore.” And I was like, “I’ll take it!”

So, I called Cat Financial up and said, “Hey, I found a loader; I really like it. It’s a good unit; it’s only got 4,000 hours on it; you know, no emissions on it either, which is another plus for me.” And shortly after renting it for a few months, I just bought it.

So I’ve had that machine for—oh, what is that? A year and a half now, probably, roughly.

Austin Gray: And what was the purchase price on that one?

Carl Rosenberg: It was $180,000 for it at the time.

Austin Gray: The kind of up on those things, you know, there wasn’t a lot of them floating around. You know, over a year and a half ago, you can probably pick one of those up now for—sucks! It’s just the equipment for you, but you can probably pick one of those things up now for about $120,000; you know, somewhere in that area, $130 maybe.

Carl Rosenberg: Yeah, it’s like I’m right there with you, man! I bought my chipper for $180,000, and it’s the same thing. I’m like, dang it! I don’t even want to look at the market right now because—

Austin Gray: Yeah, at the end of the day, it just is what it is! You and I had to make decisions to like grow the business at the certain time where we were at.

So I think it’s sort of irrelevant to pay attention to that; like I think what you and I could focus on is like continuing to just keep the hammer down, paying down the equipment, getting jobs, blocking and tackling out there.

Carl Rosenberg: This track loader, though, is really cool. I’ve got it on screen share right now for listeners. If you guys are watching on video, it looks like a sweet piece of equipment!

Austin Gray: Why did you make a decision?

Like, what was the—well, before that, before I ask this question, what were the financing terms on that used piece?

Carl Rosenberg: That one was well, it was used, and you know the rates from the feds kind of gotten up as far as financing goes, so that kind of shot me in the foot a little bit because the economy is the way it’s going right now.

So it was actually at 8% for 48 months and the payment on it was $4,000 a month, which is cheaper than renting one—that's how I looked at it. You know, I was renting it for like $7,000 a month.

I was like, “Well, if I can buy and own it for $4,000 a month and get it, there’s maintenance involved in it because the undercarriage on those things are like $20,000-$25,000 to replace.

But it had a brand new undercarriage on it, so I was like, "Well, I've got at least 4,000 hours to kind of material." I’m sitting in, you know, the undercarriage is good for at least 4,000 hours, maybe 3 if you’re getting some rockier material.

So that’s why I decided to purchase it because that drive that we were on, I mean, we were there for nearly 10 months on the same project.

And I was working the excavator, digging out rock. We had the—I had my 299 doing all the final grade for the pond, the pad, the arena, the driveway. I mean, we were out there for almost 10 months on that job, and I just figured, “You know, I’m here for 10 months, I can justify the expense of this machine.”

And then, once I got that machine, I felt like once I got my loader, that’s when builders took me seriously. When I started reaching out to builders, “Hey, I got a loader now and I can get in here and clear this lot out for $8,000 or whatever, or $10,000 to clear this lot out.”

I felt like the loader took me to the next step, and that’s what builders really took me seriously because when I was doing some work for builders prior to that, you know, with the skid steer and excvacator, they’re like, “Hey, you know the old school builders, they’re looking for guys with loaders, you know? They know how it works! A loader can push the whole tree over, stump and all; you can strip the top of the tree out.”

You can break it down in half; you get a saw guy on the ground that can cut it up into logs. You can do a lot of work with those things. I mean, I can clear out an acre of trees; I can break it down, strip them down, and clear out my acre in like two days of that thing. You know, it’s very efficient.

And then, I’m sure you're able to use it on the dirt side as well?

Carl Rosenberg: Oh yeah, you can get ... yeah, once you get the dirt side, you can use it for grubbing; you can use it to dig out the basement; you can use it to rough grade your lot.

I still use a 299 to final grade it out just because it’s a little more tuned for final grade than the loader is. But it gets you to that lot clearing, that basement dig out, and that rough grade in; the loader all day long is like a Swiss army knife with the machines; like, there’s nothing you can’t do with that loader, essentially, as far as clearing out lots or land out with it.

Austin Gray: Alright, so now we’ve sort of talked about all—we’ve talked about your skid steer, your excavator, your mulcher, your loader. Do you have any other pieces of equipment?

Carl Rosenberg: Nope, that's the only ones I got! So I’ve got the little Kabota tractor, that’s what started at all. I edit from my own grass now, but no, that’s just the three pieces of equipment I have.

And, you know, I had one operator, and typically having one operator, with three pieces of equipment, I’ll be like, "Well, you need to find an operator to keep the excavator busy." There’s not as much excavator work out there as there is loader work for either a skid steer mulching or excavator work, typically.

The excavator is just kind of a—I probably view it as more of like an accessory; you know, it’s a good backup accessory. If I need to load dumpsters with it or do like a small demo, you know, it doesn’t get used as much; it only has— I don’t think I've got about 1,000 hours on it, realistically.

We’re all machines; you know, I average over 1,000 hours a year on each one of them or more. But it’s a good unit to have when you do need it.

Carl Rosenberg: Now what would you tell yourself going back to what you know now and building up to these three pieces of equipment?

Carl Rosenberg: I’d say probably the best thing I can always recommend to anybody that’s starting up is don’t get discouraged. When you stop hustling and stop trying, that’s when you’re going to probably end up failing. And you’re probably going to—at some point in time, everybody’s going to fail.

The difference between failing and being successful and just failing and being unsuccessful is the guys that fail, get up and try it again and try a different strategy. And I’ve always felt that’s how I’ve always run all my businesses, is that “This idea may not have worked; I may have lost money on it; I failed at this. But you know what? I’m going to keep on trying until I get it right.”

And not getting discouraged is like the best thing ever, because, I mean, you’re going to at some point, any business owner, startup guys, you’re going to fail at some point, you know?

And like I said, it’s just if you can get back up and continue to try, continue to hustle and grind and keep yourself moving forward and not look back like, “Well, I wish I would’ve done this differently.”

No, just keep moving forward and keep trying your hardest and just don’t give up. You know, the guys that give up are the guys that go out of business, and that’s pretty much what I can say for all the new guys out there that are trying to get into this industry is like it’s going to be tough, you know?

And the difference between you and the other business person you’re competing against is how fast is he going to give up versus how fast will you not give up?

Austin Gray: That’s awesome advice! Thank you for sharing! Where can people find your business website?

Carl Rosenberg: Sure, yes! So if you go on, just go to Google, the website is landmanagement.com, and then go through and check it out!

Austin Gray: And how about social media?

Carl Rosenberg: Um, social media is what? I think it’s Land Management as well on social media—Facebook, Instagram—yep, all Land Management on Facebook, Instagram, and the website, land management on the website as well.

Austin Gray: Okay, perfect! Well, thanks again for being on, Carl. And listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast, where we bring on other service-based business owners, and we talk all things growing local service-based businesses. If you are enjoying these episodes, and if you’re listening on Apple or Spotify, we would sure appreciate a five-star review.

We talk about how important it is to get five-star reviews in this day and age for our local service businesses on Google, and very similar to local service businesses; podcasts are the same in the sense that five-star reviews are important. So if you’re enjoying it, we would sure appreciate you taking 30 seconds to leave us a five-star review.

And if you’re listening on YouTube, we’d sure appreciate a like and subscribe to the channel so that you will get notified whenever we do drop new episodes.

At this point, we’re publishing an episode each week, and we are very appreciative of the support you guys have given us.

So thanks again for listening! Don’t forget: work hard, do your best, never settle for less. We’ll see you guys next week!

I wanted to introduce you to two of my growth partners. Striker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bod and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw 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.

Secondly, Local Service Marketers specializes in paid ads and unlimited content creation. I’ve been working with Josh since the beginning of Bearclaw, and all I’ve had to do is upload my content, photos, and video into a shared iCloud album or Google Drive album, and they handle everything else from there.

Thank you, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook—all