Austin Gray: Yeah, welcome back to the OWNR OPS podcast! I'm your host, Austin Gray, and I've got a special guest, Garrett Williams, on the show today. Garrett owns GM Outdoor Services up in Big Lake, Minnesota, correct?

Garrett Williams: That's correct.

Austin Gray: Sweet! So I came across Garrett whenever I was starting my land clearing and excavation business. Garrett's on YouTube. What's your handle?

Garrett Williams: I think it's just Garrett Williams—G-A-R-R-E-T-T Williams on YouTube. If you type in G&M Outdoors, anything comes up.

Austin Gray: Yeah, so I came across Garrett, and he's a younger guy in his 20s. How old are you right now?

Garrett Williams: Uh, 23.

Austin Gray: Garrett is awesome to watch on YouTube because he's built this business from the ground up. He's got a great mindset that if you're ever in a point where you think you're busy, just go watch some of Garrett's videos. He's taken like hundreds of calls a day. He approaches it with such a great attitude. I remember coming across your videos and would watch them at night whenever I was trying to learn how to do some things. I think I came across them whenever I was building our first boulder wall.

Garrett Williams: You're specializing in boulder walls, right?

Austin Gray: Yep, that's one of the services that you guys do really well. So I came across your channel because I was searching for how to build boulder walls. From there, your positive outlook on building a business and just the energy you bring every day—it's infectious, man! I like what you're doing, and I've appreciated our conversations up to this point, so thanks for being on. I appreciate it.

Garrett Williams: Sure!

Austin Gray: Yeah, I remember a lot of people reach out. It goes in waves. Sometimes I'll have 15 people reach out in one day and then maybe a couple the next day. I talk to guys in the business—starting out and guys that have been in the business a while. I mean, all day every day, I'm talking to contractors all around the United States. I've built a lot of relationships over the years with a lot of different guys, really from the East Coast to the West Coast to Florida to Canada.

The power of the media and the online space is remarkable. It's like any other tool. You can use it to your advantage, or it can be detrimental depending on how you use it. My thing with social media is that I've always spent more time creating and making videos than I have scrolling. It's fun to see what other guys do, but there are a few guys that I really follow closely.

Yeah, it's been a ton of fun! Everything I do is with my iPhone. I don't have a fancy camera. I had one, but it was too clunky to carry around, charge the batteries, and download the footage. It took too long. My time is valuable to me, so I just film with my phone and edit on iMovie. I might spend half an hour editing a YouTube video. If it's a crazy video, I might spend an hour, but I don't have a ton of time. I've tried three different guys to edit for me, but each has a different style, and I want things to be a certain way. I don't like any "ums" in there, or repetition of footage. There are certain things I'm just not willing to budge on, so it's hard to just edit myself. I'm looking for a really good editor who can watch some of my videos and edit them the same way.

Austin Gray: Yeah, definitely! We'll add a way you can reach out to Garrett in the show notes here. I want to provide some context for listeners, and then we’ll dive into your story. Garrett started this business from the ground up, and they're going to be just under five million in revenue this year, if not at five million, right?

Garrett Williams: Yeah, correct.

Austin Gray: You started this from the ground up. You are partnered with—is it your brother and sister?

Garrett Williams: That's right. Originally, it was me and my sister, Marina. She's my older sister, a year or two older. I also have another brother who's about a year and a half younger than me. He started working for us after we’d been in business for just about a year, and then as of January last year, he became a partial owner. He worked his way in, so that's where we're at now.

It's really nice working with family because they're people you know and can trust. It's not like working with someone you just met on YouTube. At the end of the day, you trust each other. There are pros and cons, but we definitely wouldn't be where we are now without the three of us—that's for sure.

Austin Gray: So as of today, you guys offer excavation, land clearing, landscaping, snow removal. What other services do you provide?

Garrett Williams: We do a lot of new construction. We do commercial landscaping, boulder walls, excavation, utilities. That's kind of the core of it. We also started a concrete flatwork division this spring/summer— I think it was like June. We have about five or six guys on that crew now, one truck and a van for all the tools. That's been good because it goes hand in hand with everything we do. We're always working around the concrete guys, and we’ve tried a bunch of local companies.

People are always asking for residential work; they want someone to build a wall and then do a patio or a driveway. We tried working with a majority of the local small companies to sub work to, and while we found a couple that were decent, none of them flowed really well. That's kind of why we started our own division to give it a shot, and that's been really good. It helped us get more residential projects because people can work with one company instead of having to find the concrete guy and trying to coordinate.

We come in if it’s a new yard or existing. We can come, build a wall, grade everything; we know when that’s going to be done so we can get the concrete crew in the next day. We bust out the patio and finish everything up—grading, site work, whatever it is. People love that it’s more streamlined, so that’s been really good. We did around $300,000 this year in flatwork, so for just starting out, that’s pretty good. Next year, I think we’ll aim for a million in flatwork.

Austin Gray: That's awesome!

Garrett Williams: As for the concrete guys that have experience, people say, "How do you do so many things at once?" The only way to do it is like how any other larger company does it: you can't hire one guy to do everything. You can't hire Brian to do the concrete, boulder walls, and utilities. Brian only does boulder walls, Caleb only does boulder walls, Scott only does concrete. You don’t want one guy doing all those different things because that doesn't work. One guy can't drive a truck that’s set up to do everything; you have a concrete truck.

So we keep our guys doing the same things, and that's how we're able to do a few different things all at the same time.

Austin Gray: That makes sense. I want to dive into that after we paint some pictures on the context of building the business too. So right now, what is your current team size? How many team members do you have?

Garrett Williams: I think we're in the upper 30s for winter plowing, and then in the summertime, it’s right around the high 20s to 30s. So on average in summer, probably 28, and winter around 38.

Austin Gray: Okay, so 28 to 38 team size is dependent upon the season. How many different crews are you running right now?

Garrett Williams: In summertime, it's around six, and then for plowing, everyone has these certain accounts. For example, these guys have these three accounts, so we plow mainly in about a 15 to 20-mile radius.

Everyone is just plowing in that area. In summertime, it’s six different crews around six different jobs every day.

Austin Gray: How do you break those crews apart currently?

Garrett Williams: We always have a foreman who is responsible for the job and anyone else on that job. We have a few guys—three or four guys—that are kind of floaters who operate as laborers. For instance, today, the guys are doing a big job on the golf course, building boulder walls and a dry riverbed. There’s a lot of material moving around, so we’ll throw the foreman maybe one or two extra people if they need more help.

I’d say on average, we have around three guys, but sometimes it can go up to six, depending on the job.

Austin Gray: And out of those six crews, what specifically do each of those crews do?

Garrett Williams: We also source our boulders. In order to do boulder walls really well—at least in our area—it’s hard to find a good supplier. When you’re building a wall, say it’s a tight wall—like a wall we just did this week, which was 15 feet between two houses—building it had to be 48 inches from the footing but couldn’t be more than four feet off the line.

So we need two-foot boulders for this job because that’s what we do. We work a lot around lakeshores, and it’s always tight; there’s never enough room. Getting the right size boulders on time is crucial.

On that job, it’s critical to have the boulders delivered the morning of because we had to dump them right in the middle of the driveway. There are other contractors working on this house, so we need to drop them off in the morning, get them off the driveway, and get them around back to build this wall. Timing and size are crucial to do boulder walls quickly and efficiently.  

We've tried two to three guys in the metro who haul and supply boulders, and we tried them all. One guy, Derek, we did pretty well with, but then year two in, I started to get "Hey, I’ll be there at 10 AM," and then they’d show up at 2 PM, and the rock they brought could be four-footers. Those four-footers aren’t going to work, so now we’ve got to load them back up or not dump them and go get the right size. You just ruin the day.

So we went out and started looking around and said, “Now we source all our own rocks.”

We have a guy, Travis, whose crew sources the boulders; he’ll dig them from gravel pits, farms—anywhere. People ask me where we get our boulders, and I say, "Wherever we can find them. Wherever they are, that’s where we get them.” We’re about an hour north of the metro, and you have to go anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to find them.

Travis sources them, and we have our own trucks. Now we have the right size when we need it, every time. If we don’t, it’s our fault, and that’s exactly how I like it to be.

Since we started doing that, it really helps scale our boulder division. We have Travis, Caleb, and Bryan who mainly handle boulder walls. They’re tearing out old walls, putting in new ones, and working for builders. They go to a lot of new houses and buildings to do new walls. Then we have Jackson who handles a lot of excavation stuff and utilities, and Tanner who does a lot of smaller landscape projects, including new builds and tear-out projects. We work for a few builders where we offer the full landscaping package, subbing out irrigation while we handle all the sad trees, grading, black dirt, and all that.

For some bigger jobs, we’ll put two crews together, but it works great where we’re now doing full packages. For instance, if someone puts in a pool, we’ll come in, and Brian will build a wall. Then Tanner will come or the concrete guys will come to do the pool deck, and then Tanner will come and do the landscaping. Sometimes we have three different crews on one job, just working in sequence, and people really like that.

They would rather work with one than try to find three different guys or companies to get their job done.

Austin Gray: I love it, man! I also love that you just move a million miles an hour; it seems like you're always making things happen. I remember I called you whenever we were on the federal project this year, and one conversation that stuck out— I think we were talking boulders at that point—I asked you that same question: where are you sourcing your boulders? You said you go make deals with people, and that’s a common trait with successful business owners. You’ve got to be able to make deals.

One thing you said is that you like having full control. Right now, we’re constrained by our truckers. If I have some great truckers who run for me, but they also take care of other excavation contractors, if one guy's tied up for three days, I can't get that job in for three days, but I only had a window on Tuesday afternoon to squeak that ins.

So if anyone listening right now is interested in getting into the land services business or outdoor services related to excavation, go watch Garrett's YouTube channel. It’s awesome and very impressive what they do with their equipment, how they brand it, and how they run their crews.

Can you tell us real quick what your current fleet of equipment is right now to control those inputs?

Garrett Williams: It’s funny you bring that up—needing the trucks. You need the trucks when you need them; sometimes, there’s not room to stockpile, and it doesn’t always make sense.

The reason we bought dump trucks and a side dump is that we were dealing with this exact same issue. If I only have Tuesday to do a job and I'm slammed the rest of the week, I’m going to do that job Tuesday, no matter what. I’m going to wheelbarrow the material from the pit to the job if I have to. That’s why we bought our own trucks; it just didn’t work for us any other way.

If I need a truck, I need it. I get it; not everyone waits for your schedule. No one’s sitting around with a truck waiting for your call. They’re busy doing other stuff, so you can’t tan stuff out or move things around. That’s precisely why we have trucks. They’re incredibly expensive to run and buy. Finding a nice, newer dump truck that is reliable is tough.

Today, this is our sixth full season, and I think we have like 23 trucks total. We have around 18 pickups, a smaller dump truck, a side dump, two quads, and about 10 skid loaders—mostly track loaders except for one. We think we have about seven excavators ranging from six tons up to 30 tons, plus a bunch of hand tools. It's a lot to keep track of and maintain.

At some point, I’d like to go all the way back to the beginning and get you to tell us about taking us back through that, but we’re discussing some good topics right now. One thing I called you about before is your thought process on equipment purchasing. I remember calling you whenever we were buying our Bobcat E50.

Can you talk about how you view purchasing equipment and let us know if that mindset has changed since the beginning?

Garrett Williams: My mindset on equipment has always been to put the cart before the horse. From day one, we’ve always made sure—we may have made it the right way to do it; this is what has worked for us. We always had to get to work first before I could afford the skid loader.

I wasn’t going to go buy an excavator and hope I could get work for it and try to keep busy. I always got work lined up—two to three months of good work—before buying anything.

If you’re looking around and can’t find what you need, you rent until you can buy it. Call around, find a good rate, negotiate a good rental deal with a local company, and rent. You know, while you’re doing the work, rent it and get more work done, then buy it.

We’ve always gotten the work first and then the equipment—not vice versa. Equipment just sitting around doesn’t work when you’re a small business. Get all the work you can, and then buy it. You have to keep it busy.

If you run it 250 hours profitably in a year, you can at least cover the cost. Try to keep it busy, get more to keep it busy, but we do everything that’s small—anything under $25,000 we buy with cash or put it on a credit card to pay it off within a month.

Anything over that, we finance, and then we try to make double payments on everything in the summer. If we take a five-year loan on a skid loader, we try to pay it off in two and a half years. The same goes for excavators, especially the bigger ones like trucks.

With our new Peterbilt 567, I think we financed it over six or seven years with money down and try to make double payments while it’s working, making minimum payments in the winter and then doubling up back in the summer.

We try to pay most off in half the time, that way we’re ahead on equity. In our industry, it's expensive; you can build equity in vehicles. You know, if you have a $100,000 tractor that’s paid off, you can sell it or upgrade it if you want.

Once you’ve been in business for six years and start having some stuff paid off, it really helps.

Austin Gray: This is awesome, man.

Garrett Williams: So, we do some leases—like a wheel loader is nice because we’re not going to keep it. We just run the lease out because once you’re done with the lease after five or three years, you can give it back, and you don’t owe anything. Or you can buy it and keep it or sell it, whatever you want to do.

As for the financial structure you’ve used to purchase those first pieces of equipment, has that developed with time? Do you buy with cash or finance? What’s your outlook there?

Garrett Williams: There are a million ways you can do it now. There are so many lease and buy programs. One thing I’ll say is that there’s no such thing as a free loan. Just remember that. If a bank gives you a loan, they’re going to make money on it; they’re not giving you a loan to do you a favor.

In the last couple of years, I learned that your interest-free loan is not what it seems. For example, if a machine is $100,000 and you walk in with cash, you’re not going to pay $100,000; you’ll pay about $85,000 or $90,000 because they mark the price way up.

No bank is going to give you a loan for free. I always remember that. If the bank is giving you a loan, they’re not doing you a favor; they’re not going to take liability and risk on you for nothing.

Our approach now for anything—anything small like skid loaders—if we have more than about 250 hours of work for them in a year, we will buy it. If we’re going to use it every couple of weeks, we’ll buy it and do what it takes to get enough work to cover the cost.

Most people think that renting is just a viable option, but it’s so much hassle picking it up, dropping it off, fueling it, and making sure it’s back today. We only rent when we absolutely have to.

For us, if we can run it 250 hours profitably in a year, we buy it. Just try to keep it busy. If it’s more than that, we finance and try to make double payments.

We do, however, like to just buy because you get the most flexibility; you can do whatever you want with it because you own it. I can sell it today, or I can keep it.

With a lease, say we have a machine, and we leased it for five years, the payments are low up front, which sounds great, but then three years in, you have to make the remaining payments and the balance due.

Now, if I want to sell this excavator because I need to upgrade it, then I have to cover those payments plus whatever the balance due is.

It’s harder to get out of a lease. You can sell it, but you have to make sure you cover the payments and whatever the balance due is. Like a skid loader, if you lease it for five years, you could end up with a balloon payment at the end.

So, if I have a five-year lease and I’m three years in wanting to get rid of it, then I need to cover those remaining payments plus those thousands of dollars. You can sell it for a higher price to cover the debt, whereas if you buy it, you’ve paid it off; you can do whatever you want.

With a lease, once you’re done with it, you can give it back, and you don’t owe anything.

Austin Gray: Quick question for you; this is specific to my business because we’re looking at wheel loader options next year for the federal contract we’re going back to. Are you able to buy Doosan equipment through your Bobcat rep, or is that a specific branch within that holding company?

Garrett Williams: Yeah, there is. We have a Bobcat and Doosan dealer about a half-mile from our shop, which is why people ask why I run with Bobcat. Well, there’s a dealer nearby for parts and everything, so it's a brand we like. I can buy a new skid loader, drive it over to our shop; that’s why I run Bobcat—I was most familiar with it when we started.

Austin Gray: That makes sense.

Garrett Williams: We’re going a little bit more toward CAT, believe it or not. Our local dealership is about a 40-minute drive, but they just bought a massive building that’s two miles from our shop, and they're opening early in 2024. That’s so nice for us—parts, everything is so close now instead of 40 minutes away.

You'll see more CAT equipment in our fleet in the future because they moved in.

Austin Gray: So take us back to the beginning. I get this question a lot whenever I’m starting a business: How long do I need to rent, and at what point do I need to make that first purchase?

Garrett Williams: Rent until you get enough work for it. I bought my E50 after I’d had it on rent from a rental company for two months straight—that’s exactly what we did.

Austin Gray: I remember we talked about it, and when we had the federal contract in the pipeline, you said, “No-brainer: pull that trigger. You’re going to make a ton of money with it," and we did. It was a great decision.

Whenever you're ready to make that first purchase, can you take us back to what financing structure you used, and how did you set that up in the beginning?

Garrett Williams: Well, to bounce back to your previous question, the dealer right by us does have Doosan and Bobcat, so we can finance either one through them.

For our first skid loader, we rented for about a year and a half. It was tough; one would break down, and we’d have to get another one. It’s an expensive monthly payment. I think renting is more for one-off jobs or when you go to a job far away and don’t want to carry your equipment that far.

You can rent locally for a week or a month and bring it back. What you pay for rent is ridiculous—like $4,000 a month for a new skid loader. If you buy it, it costs about $1,000 a month. You have debt, but you’re covering more of the cost.

Plus, you still have to pay for fuel. If you back into a tree and dent the door, you have to pay for that, too. When you rent, you’re not just trashing the machine. You’re still 100% liable for everything. So we rented until a local bank would give us a loan for a new machine. We had the work and didn’t want to buy an old clunker that we’d constantly need to fix.

Every old machine has a lot of problems. If something is 20 years old and you use it all day every day, you’ll have a lot of issues. If you use it for an hour here and there, you probably won’t.

So, once we established a relationship with a local bank, we got a loan at high interest, but we didn’t care. We needed a loan to build credit.

I called him a year later, and said, “I know you gave us high interest on this loan because you were skeptical at first, which I don’t blame you for. We made our payments every time we made double payments for the last year. Can you give us a better rate?”

He brought it down maybe 1.5 percent. You can negotiate rates when a bank gives you a loan—it’s not set in stone.

Then when I wanted to bid on the machine, I told the guy, “I really need this machine. Is there anyway we can take these last two months of rental payments and apply that to the purchase?” He said yes, so we ended up purchasing the E55 with a grapple.

We used it so much—seven or eight hours a day—until we eventually bought the next one, which was the E145.

Austin Gray: What grapple did you get?

Garrett Williams: It’s a CMP Hydro grapple for boulder walls. It’s a must-have; it works great for everything—tree work, grubbing. It rotates 360 degrees and clamps. It’s beneficial, and while it's not super easy to unhook the hydraulic lines, for what we do, they're a must-have.

Austin Gray: That's the one you started with, right?

Garrett Williams: Yeah, I think it’s like some age-old machine.

It’s amazing how it works—my friend over in Steamboat started an excavation business and brought me on as a subcontractor. I showed him your videos, and he ended up buying the CMP. He brought that in on the federal project, and it was awesome for tree work.

Garrett Williams: It’s a game-changer! It takes your excavator from being limited with a bucket and thumb to being virtually limitless. If you're doing tree work, demolition, boulder walls—you can sort stuff, crush rocks, and make perfect piles.

So it’s an incredible investment for us. It is still in incredible shape even after 2,500 to 3,000 hours. That was the best $14,000 we ever spent.

Austin Gray: All right, let's jump into the beginning.

Take us back to the beginning. A lot of our listeners want to start their local service business. How do you go get work in the beginning? How did you start this business?

Garrett Williams: Starting out is the hardest part. If you can get through the beginning and stick it out for a couple of years, then you can do the rest as long as you keep the same mentality and drive.

When we started out, I was 17 and Marina was around 19 or 20. I had some family involvement; my grandpa had a construction company. He did boulder walls and concrete and built several homes throughout his career.

I started working with him during the summers when I was young, and that’s how I learned what hard work was. My grandpa retired and said he didn’t have enough work to keep me busy anymore when I was 16, so I went and worked for another big company until I was 17. I then went out and started my own business.

I knew the basics—I knew how to run an excavator and skid loader. I learned to run a frontend loader at that landscape company. I was even driving a manual dump truck at 16 because I was the only one who knew how to drive one. They put me in it, and I loved it.

I didn’t get pulled over, thankfully, but I had to work hard to prove myself. My goal was always to be the best employee they ever had. I always looked for a way to improve efficiency and make the company money.

I filed for our LLC in July, which cost about $400 or $500, and we needed to be smart. We didn’t have a marketing budget; we had no money to spend.

I started out by building a website—Marina built it using a free platform like Wix. I took pictures of everything; I’ve always documented the work I did, even before the business. I took tons of pictures and started making videos right off the bat.

Our first job ever came from Facebook. You can create a business page on Facebook for free, and that’s what we did.

After I got that, I was so excited because it was a little landscaping job for two grand. Our second job was a referral from them. During our first week of work, someone mentioned HomeAdvisor to us; we looked into it, and it cost $500 to sign up, plus $20 to $80 per lead. We didn't have the $500 at the time, so we put it on a credit card and hoped for the best.

We ended up getting a decent amount of work from it, and this really helped us. I don’t know if there is another way to get leads instantly; if you need leads, you can always get them from HomeAdvisor.

You need to pay for it, but because it’s free for the consumer, homeowners want to get boulder walls or other services. They put their info in, and it goes out to multiple contractors.

Most of them won’t reach out though, so it's somewhat competitive. But it’s not super tough to beat the competition if you just do what you say you’re going to do and answer the phone.

So, that’s how we got a lot of our work, and we took good care of everyone. Then we started building our core base of customers, alongside advertising on YouTube, Instagram, and even Billboards. A lot of our best jobs come from referrals, but to grow quickly, you definitely want to do some advertising. If you want to stay small, you can avoid it, but it’s all about scaling.

Austin Gray: How did you bid those first jobs?

Garrett Williams: That’s a great question. I had zero clue how to bid a job. Everywhere I worked before, I didn’t know anything about bidding.

I remember the first job I got was for about $2,200, but I underestimated the amount of block, so the materials ended up costing me just that much. I didn’t mark them up enough.

I really learned to bid just by doing thousands of bids and jobs—job costing everything so I would know how things went. If you plan for a $10,000 job, bid it for $10,000, and plan to make $3,000, after the job is done, if you didn’t calculate all your labor and material costs, you can’t truly know how it went.

I was always running numbers in my head, thinking, “That one did pretty good,” then putting it on paper and realizing we only made $600 when I thought we'd done well. It took time for me to get all that from my head onto paper.

So many people look at it now and think it’s cool, and they don’t understand the effort it takes! For the first three to four years, I committed my whole life to this business—every waking hour.

I worked all day Saturday and half-day Sunday. It was all in. You have to fully commit; it's not a side hustle; it’s not an option. I wanted to succeed, so I put in what it takes.

It’s much easier when you’re single, but as you grow, the dynamics change. I lived in a camper for a year and a half just to focus solely on work, paying $200 a month. Now, I’m 23, married, and I have a baby on the way next month. I can’t do what I did before—work until midnight and be on the job until dark.

When you have a family, you can’t put them on the back burner. You must balance everything. I had the flexibility to focus solely on work back then, but you have to learn to find that balance.

Everyone needs to understand that what I did was a significant sacrifice. It was all about the time and effort I put in to get to where I am.

Austin Gray: I love this story; it’s a testament to how much work you’ve put in and your work ethic. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t talk about this. They want to play armchair quarterback and retire early on the beach without addressing what it takes to actually build a business.

People can watch your YouTube channel now and see the equipment you have, your teams, and how well you treat your employees, but you didn’t get there overnight. You put in countless hours day in and day out over the years to get here.

Most of our listeners are in their 20s; I think it’s the best time to start this kind of business. I’m 32, married, and have a kid, so I must be very efficient with my time now.

Garrett Williams: Exactly! I didn’t have to be as efficient then. Now that I'm married and have a baby coming, I can't work until 11 PM as I used to. Now, I have to finish work by 5 or 6 PM. I can take a few calls or texts afterward, but I can't be on the job until dark.

That’s what I used to do; I didn’t just overcome that to make it successful. It took years, and we didn’t just grit our teeth for two weeks and have this business.

We sacrificed all of our time! Marina worked full time for a year and a half, two years, making calls and sending emails during lunch breaks. As soon as she was off work, she worked until late on backend stuff—helping with quotes and everything.

Austin Gray: The commitment is evident!

Garrett Williams: We always took just enough money out to pay our bills and eat. All the rest went back in because building things is expensive.

We could have started taking salaries sooner, but it would’ve stunted our growth. We took all our money and put it right back into the business—buying the next thing and paying it off. That's what it took for years to build the fleet we have.

Austin Gray: What do you think is the most important thing to reinvest back in during those early days?

Garrett Williams: It depends on your business. For a service-based business, like my in-law’s painting company, he has a bunch of little vans and paint supplies. To add another crew for him costs maybe $10,000, but for us, to add another crew might cost $500,000 to a million due to equipment.

Everything goes in flow: you get work, then you need equipment. Then more equipment comes, and eventually, you need more people, processes, and permits.

It’s about balancing everything. As you gain work, you need more staff and equipment, and you can get overloaded. So, just keep everything even, not having too much equipment or too much staff for the workload you have—growing gradually.

Austin Gray: We’ve already talked about equipment buying from a reinvestment perspective. Let’s talk people. How do you find people? If you decide you want to reinvest in your team, how do you recruit?

Garrett Williams: That’s everyone's struggle. Some people have done really well with it, but people are the hardest part.

I can buy equipment, use and abuse it 12 hours a day, and it’ll always be right there, but people aren’t like equipment. We’ve always treated our customers and employees how we want to be treated.

If someone wanted a day off, we give them the day off. People are human—they have strengths and weaknesses too. I always think every person is going to have a couple of bad days a year where they have something in their personal lives, so the more people you bring on, the more guaranteed bad days you’re going to have.

It's the hardest thing to manage. Training people takes time and patience. You can't get mad and freak out over small things because everyone will make mistakes in time.

Finding the right people? A lot of employees came from referrals, but we’ve also had great success using Indeed. We’ve gotten a lot of people who have watched the channel for a year and already feel like they know us. The important thing is to retain them.

Austin Gray: That’s an interesting perspective. I know from my background and experience that you either focus on getting the right people or on just getting warm bodies into your business.

If you don’t have the right leadership, things won’t function.

Garrett Williams: Right! In my opinion, there are good employees out there; you just need to find them. I believe the employer problem is often far more of an issue than the employee problem.

When people say there are no good employees, I ask, “Well, are they out looking? Are you a good employer?” Most of them probably aren’t.

You cannot demand the world from an employee while paying them $15 an hour. It’s all about how you treat people. Not every employee can be treated the same; understanding the foundation of their strengths and weaknesses is key.

For us, that means being willing to move people around where they can be most beneficial. You can’t have it the other way around—it’s the hardest part, but you have to treat people how you want to be treated.

It costs money, it takes time, but that’s the only way to have a good company. You have to truly care about your people.

Austin Gray: Absolutely, that mindset should come first. Your core values can make a significant impact on your business. You treat your employees with dignity and respect.

At the end of the day, it’s your job to cultivate a place where people enjoy coming to work together.

Garrett Williams: Exactly! Listening to your employees creates that team environment.

My mantra is: "In order to get results that someone else is getting, you have to do things someone else isn’t doing."

You can’t go out there doing the same thing and expect different results. You have to take the leap, be willing to try things others aren’t doing, and be ready to accept whatever transpires.

Austin Gray: I love that! Well, there you have it! Garrett Williams with GM Outdoor Services, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Garrett Williams: For sure! This has been fun. It always feels like the time goes by in a blink!

Austin Gray: I know! We reached the end of our hour! I wish you the best; you’ve created an incredible business, and so many people can learn from you.

Remember, Garrett's on YouTube at Garrett Williams. We’ll put the direct link in the show notes. Anything else you want to add for listeners?

Garrett Williams: Just take accountability and put in the work. There are no shortcuts—the work isn’t going to come to you. You must be proactive and put yourself in a place where you can succeed. It will be what you make it to be.

Austin Gray: Well, figure it out! Thanks for being on, Garrett!