Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast, where we talk all things tips, tricks, and strategies for growing local service businesses. I'm your host, Austin Gray, and in this episode, we have Sam Tyler joining me. He is the owner of Fire Guard and Tyler Snow Solutions down in the Uray, Colorado area.

The guy works all day and all night at the fire department when he's on shift, and we recorded this episode actually when he came out of the firehouse. He had been up all night, so I'm really thankful that he still kept his time and recorded this episode.

The way I met Sam is he reached out to me at the beginning of this summer; he asked for help starting a fire mitigation business, which is a service we offer here at Bearclaw. I answered some of his initial questions, and he just took it and ran with it 100 miles an hour. If you're considering bringing on snow services, this is going to be the episode for you. We also talk a bit about the fire mitigation business and how he got started in that.

I'm going to stop right here, and we'll jump into a little plug about Land Service Marketers. If you're a land clearing, excavation, grading, or snow removal contractor, check out landservicemarketers.com. LSM is the same growth agency I've used to grow Bearclaw Land Services from zero to over seven figures of revenue.

We've created a seamless process for owner operators to upload photos and videos from the field, and LSM will do all the heavy lifting for you on the back end. They'll do all the editing, all the publishing, all the social media management, and they'll run your paid ads to bring you more leads so that you can close more high-ticket jobs. Check out landservicemarketers.com.

Austin Gray: Welcome back to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast! I have Sam Tyler on from Fire Guard over in the Telluride area of Colorado. He also owns Tyler Snow Solutions, and he's also a firefighter. He just got off shift. Welcome to the show, Sam. Thanks for being on!

Sam Tyler: Thanks, Austin! Thanks for everything. From the ground up of Fire Guard, you've kind of been there, and so I appreciate that.

Austin Gray: Well, it's been exciting to watch you grow. I remember when you reached out to me, and you were looking at getting into the fire mitigation work, kind of the land clearing side of things after snow. I immediately knew that you were somebody who was just going to go zero to 100 because of how fast you took action.

So I want to jump into the business models of both, and I'd like to start with snow. You started snow on your own; you built that up to, what, 180 or 200 accounts, is that right?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, just about. Just about. When did you start that business?

Austin Gray: So really, it was kind of side pocket money for a while. When I had just graduated high school, I took on my neighbors’ only shoveling clients. People who called would say, "Hey, when it snows, I'll be there. I'll clear it," and I made $600 a day just shoveling my neighbors’ sidewalks and stuff.

My accounts grew and grew. When I came back from college in Texas, I decided to hit it kind of full swing and develop that same idea into something that would actually bring me cash flow. That's when I started putting my phone number out there, created a website, and everything else.

Slowly but surely, it started developing into something a little more positive, a little bigger that I could hire employees to and start to grow the business. Now we're up to around 170 clients, and that's in a span of really three years, but I've been doing it off and on throughout college and high school.

Austin Gray: So you started with shoveling?

Sam Tyler: Yep, basic shoveling.

Austin Gray: At what point did you buy your first truck?

Sam Tyler: I did Wildland firefighting for a summer season, so I had some money piled away. I spent $6,000 on my first ATV with a snow plow on it. What that did is turn a whole day’s worth of work into three hours’ worth of work. Now I could take on more and more clients slowly but surely, and that's when I started expanding.

I think within the first year that I took it seriously, I probably grew that to 30, 40, or 50 clients. That next season is when I had put enough money away to buy that first truck with a snow plow. At that point, I had two routes that I was working.

I had the truck route, for which I would hire subcontractors, and then I had the ATV route, which most of the time I would end up doing.

Austin Gray: In the beginning, whenever you were starting, you were doing all the shoveling, and then you did all the work with the ATV?

Sam Tyler: Oh yeah, I was out there from 5:30 to 6:00 at night. They were all mine. I had nobody to help, so it was brutal, but the money was there to where I was motivated enough to get out and hustle and do it.

How old were you at this point whenever you started taking it seriously?

Sam Tyler: 20.

Austin Gray: Okay, talk us through the economics of this. Like what is an average cost? Are you shoveling sidewalks, or are you shoveling like entryways to homes?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, kind of really anything that the customer wants. Now, we're completely full service from snow blowing driveways to the basics, tiny sidewalks. Really, the customer will come to us and say, "Hey, look, the city is on us about clearing the sidewalk after 2 inches. I need somebody that's reliable, that will show up every time," and they'll pay us $40, or whatever it is. Our minimum is normally around $30.

As long as it's in the path of other clients, it'll start. We started with a minimum of $30, and we built a monthly fee, which is kind of like a subscription fee, so it's $25 a month on top of whatever snow removal we do.

This year, we kind of switched game plans and we're doing seasonal bids with the option to do the per push, but the seasonal bids are really nice because you get that money upfront, number one, and nobody can burn you.

Number two, it’s about 10 times less of a headache with paperwork. Trying to reach out to customers halfway through the season—they want to know how many times it snowed, and I'm not at my property. Can you take care of this, this, and this?

So just having that all right up front at the very beginning, I think that's going to help us a lot on the back side, at least for me in my paperwork.

And then growing, you know, $25 bucks a month from client to client, you know, now we're at around 170 clients. So now, no matter if it snows or it doesn't snow, we at least have that base to survive on—to keep my equipment up and running, keep my guys happy, keep my insurance happy, everything else.

Sam Tyler: Yeah, it does. The reason I'm curious about this is because we are jumping into snow at Bearclaw here, and I've been really interested in...

Well, right now Millennials are moving into the workforce; traditionally, snow has been done by baby boomer service providers, and those people are moving into retirement age. So right now, we're seeing Millennials and then Gen Z come into the workforce.

The interesting piece is all these tech companies are hiring people in the millennial and Gen Z workforce and setting these expectations of, "Hey, you can work from anywhere in the world," and you get all these cushy benefits.

To convince somebody to come plow snow and wake up at 3:00 in the morning or sit behind a computer and wake up at 9 or 8:30 in the morning and start work at 9:00 and then have unlimited paid time off—those are the things we're dealing with in today's day and age.

So I thought about this a lot: how do you build an attractive business model to attract the next generation of people who will be fulfilling the services and paying them a fair wage to do so?

And then, too, you hit the nail on the head there; there's so much paperwork on this per-push snowplow contract style. How do you change the rhetoric here as we move into a new generation of snow plowing? That's where my head has been living for the past 18 months as I think about building a snowplow business.

So that's a little side tangent. But right now, for our listeners, can you tell us the different styles of contracts currently? Like you have per push; you have mentioned the seasonal contract. Can you tell us the difference between those?

Sam Tyler: So, essentially, what I've done is I've broken down the previous year's contract. So I say, "Hey, I'll plow this bank for $350 per push—that's no salting. We don't do salting at all."

That's $350 per push, plus our $25 fee. You can either select the per push, and so I'm going to come out. I'm going to start billing next month, in November. So right off the bat, you're going to give me that $25, and then say it snows three times. We're taking that, you know, $700, well, $1,050, and that's what you're going to owe us at the end of this month.

The seasonal contract helps alleviate all those emails and all those QuickBooks that I have to write through and delegate. It'll say I'm going to average that we're going to get anywhere from 16 to 22 snows. So I'm going to go 18 snows.

I'm going to do that $350 times 18, plus that $125. That way, they're looking at this and going, "Okay, I won't have to send an email. I can properly finance." Especially with things like banks, they like to know right up front how much it's going to cost, how much can I allocate for snow removal for the whole season.

That's something I found not so much with homeowners—because it's a lot of money upfront for some people—but with these bigger HOAs and stuff, they like knowing exactly how much it's going to be right off the gate.

So those are kind of the two options that I have right now. It seems like the majority of people right now this year are going with a seasonal push.

Austin Gray: I think that they agree on their side. It's also a lot of paperwork, and I think they're switching to seasonal rates. It's also a little bit discounted as well.

Sam Tyler: It's also like we're in this subscription economy, right? People are used to paying a monthly fee. Snow is unpredictable, yet at the same time, if you're a homeowner... I mean, I even look at this as my home and my driveway.

If somebody said, "Hey, that's X amount per month and I'm going to be here every day that it snows, and I will have it pushed within—what is your time span? Is it within 24 hours of snowfall stopping?"

Sam Tyler: Yeah, tentatively. We never obviously go that far without plowing. But yeah, that's in the contract.

So, in my mind, as a homeowner, I'm like, "Well, if I can have my driveway removed, you know, plowed within 24 hours of when it snows, and it's I know it's X amount per month and I don't have to deal with the emails back and forth with a contractor, it's a way better deal for me as a customer," right?

In my opinion, as I think Millennials move more into the customer base and the homeowner stage, I don't think any customers in the future—and correct me if I'm wrong on this—but I just don’t believe that any of the current Millennial base, as they grow older, are going to want to deal with three emails a week from a contractor with an invoice that they have to pay each time.

It's like, "Dude, just put me on autopay and tell me what I'm going to pay per month and plow my snow."

Sam Tyler: Exactly! Something easy, simple, something you don't have to think about. It's done. You sign the paperwork; it's done.

Austin Gray: Okay, I’m glad to hear that you are validating that because this is where my head has been living and I'm interested to see how long it's transitioning. So keep me in the loop on what you're hearing from your customers there, but it sounds like they're moving to seasonal, right?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, 100%.

Austin Gray: Also, as well as the monthly fee goes, you know, when I started doing this, it was an idea from my older brother who has a guiding service for snow and Vias. They would just hire other people, right?

And so there's no benefit the customer would be getting from this $25 fee, and I definitely got lashback. They were like, "Why would I pay an additional $25? I could just hire the next guy."

If you sell the idea that they're signing up for something that allocates them more resources and will get that done a lot faster, then they're much more driven to sign up for that $25 fee. That's really just sales because there really is no benefit to having the $25 fee.

And that doesn't make it, you know, any different from somebody who doesn’t pay that fee, if that makes sense.

Austin Gray: So basically, what you're saying is the reason you charge a $25 fee is because you're running a tight ship, and you are going to make sure that there's someone there with the right equipment at the right time to plow their driveway to make sure that the service is fulfilled.

Whereas somebody that they could hire off the street may just be, you know, chucking a truck, and he's been boozing all night the night before, and he may show up hungover one day, and you just might not get your driveway plowed.

But yeah, you'll save your $25, but you might have several times where you don't get your driveway plowed.

Sam Tyler: Exactly.

Austin Gray: So you buy your first truck—how much was that first truck with the plow?

Sam Tyler: I got a 2006 6.0 with 30,000 miles on it with a plow for $9,000.

Austin Gray: A 6.0 diesel with 30,000 on it— that's incredible! Where'd you find that?

Sam Tyler: It was a guy. He had it worked in town here. He got out of the snow removal business. He hated the business; he had no idea what he was doing. He was like, "You know what? I'm getting out. Hey, do you want to buy this?" He actually approached me. I had another business across the street from him, and I was eyeing it and eyeing it. Then one day he walked up and was talking about it, and so I shot him an offer, and he took it. That was a great purchase.

Austin Gray: The old 6.0, huh? Is it still running?

Sam Tyler: Scary, yeah, but worth the $9,000.

Austin Gray: Absolutely! Shoot, the plow, depending on what plow was on there, might have been worth that!

Sam Tyler: It was a two-year-old Boss.

Austin Gray: Wow! So talk us through, as somebody who's interested in getting into the snowplow business but who has never looked into pricing— what’s an average plow cost?

Sam Tyler: Too much! You're looking at, depending on which plow you got—V plows, straight blades, extension plows—if you're looking anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000 for a base new snow plow.

Five years ago, right before COVID and the pandemic and everything, you could get a brand new snow plow for $6,000 to $8,000, but now, I mean, everything is just... It's expensive. It's a really expensive game to get into, but the rewards are there.

As long as you trust the investment, it'll work out. As far as service, I mean, service on those things—they're not super difficult to work on, but I like outsourcing most of the service, and so that's $3,000 to $4,000 a year just to replace parts and new fluids and everything else.

And so they're expensive; that's also really hard on the truck too.

Austin Gray: That's what I hear. So do you have a bare minimum as far as what type of truck that you will put a snow plow on?

Sam Tyler: 250s is kind of what you need. There are some driveways and stuff that, you know, you can get away with a Jeep but they have to be really tight and you need to be able to turn around on a dime.

A lot of people around here run the smaller Jeeps or whatever else they put them on, but I think the 250—you want something heavy enough to be able to push snow, and reliable enough to keep it running—and as short as you can possibly get it.

Those huge crew cabs with 8 ft beds and then you've got the spreader sticking out the back, I mean, that's an eight-point turn in any driveway, and slowly but surely that’ll start to kill you as far as productivity on snow days.

Austin Gray: So 250 minimum, 3/4 ton truck for any brand. Are you a brand agnostic, or are you a Ford guy?

Sam Tyler: Definitely not! I'm a Ford guy because I haven't bought any other truck.

Austin Gray: Those are the couple points. As far as trucks — short bed, yep, single cab or extended cab?

Sam Tyler: Yep, single cab— even better. Flatbed even better!

Austin Gray: Because of the weight?

Sam Tyler: Because of the weight, number one, and just visibility—you can see exactly where you are at all times.

Those tight driveways, it gets really tight fast, and so being able to see almost exactly where your hitch is and everything else helps a lot.

And then do you have a preference—gas or diesel?

Sam Tyler: Diesel's nice because of the weight. They're more expensive to maintain. If they break, they're a lot harder to fix, and they don't love the cold weather, so obviously you have to plug them in and kind of keep them warm. I have two gas trucks and three diesels that do snow removal, so kind of across the board.

Austin Gray: And what year models are those, and what engines do you have?

Sam Tyler: I have a 250 crew cab with a 5.4—it's an older truck, a 2008—and then I have a V10, which I was really scared about, but it's a super clean truck—Grandpa owned it. So I have a V10, and then I have two 6.0s and a 6.7.

Austin Gray: And the 6.0s are still running fine for you?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, they have their problems. The one with 30,000 miles now has like 40,000 miles, and that thing kills it. The big 450— that thing struggles a little bit. It's manual, so it gets burnt up.

Austin Gray: And then how about flatbed? Is it ideal? What if you just have a short box on it? What are you doing for weight?

Sam Tyler: Just sandbags. The thing is with sandbags, you know, they definitely make up for multi-use. You can build a road with sandbags. You can get out of pretty much everything, you know, if you tear open a sandbag—try to get traction.

So that's kind of multi-use. I also put salt in the back of my trucks; you've just got to be really careful doing that because once you start opening up salt over a whole winter season, you know, you're going to start getting holes in your bed, and it'll rust right through them.

So I'm putting the toolbox as close to the tailgate as I can. You know, some dudes do it right over the axle, which is another fine idea. My thinking behind it is I want to cancel out the weight of the plow. You know, weight in the front's good, but if you don't have any weight in the back, your four-wheel drive is just taking a beating on your front axle and hubs. So I try to kind of cancel out the weight and try to make it as even as possible.

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Austin Gray: All right! Let’s talk snowplow estimating. How do you even start with that?

Sam Tyler: This one's tough. There’s no algorithm. I'm on all these Facebook groups, and there are these guys that have an algorithm for everything, which is great. It's just super hard to get two properties that are similar enough to use the same pricing system.

For sidewalk jobs, you know, I base the price off of how close you are to my next property. If you butt right up to it and we can do one clean sweep in 30 seconds with an ATV or a tractor, then I'm doing a little cheaper rate.

If we have to go across town and the access is horrible, and if you're just doing your sidewalk and you're out of the way, that price might range up to $50 or $60 versus the easy sidewalk being $40.

Most of my pricing for small stuff is just by eyesight. When I first started getting these bigger clients—like the banks, residential, the post office stuff like that—I was saying, “Hey, let me do it a couple times, you know, the first couple storms. Let me do it, and then I'll give you a better price.”

So I would give them this rough price right now, and then let me do it a couple of times, see what the difficulties are, see what it will actually take for time, materials, whatever, and then I’d get back to you with a final adjusted price.

I stopped doing that because I was finding that my prices were close enough—my initial estimates—were close enough that I didn’t have to change them once I plowed that a couple of times and got a better idea.

So there's no grand answer for you; the majority of my pricing and bidding is just relation to where my next client is, how much time it'll take me or my guy to plow this, the difficulty of it.

If you have a driveway that's going to take you—I mean, what's an average driveway take you?

Sam Tyler: 10 minutes, maybe?

Austin Gray: So what's that average driveway going to cost?

Sam Tyler: $60 to $70. I think I calculated at one time it takes guys normally four to five hours to complete their route. My goal for that is for them to bring in $2,500 per guy, right?

If I have five heads out there, $2,500 divided by four hours, and so that would be my hourly. Obviously, some routes and some storms are a lot bigger.

Sam Tyler: My biggest truck route brings in, depending on the storm size, anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 per event.

Austin Gray: Your biggest truck route—$4,000 to $10,000?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, and why does it differ in price?

So this is something I didn't mention. In my contract, there's something that states initially getting into this, you know, obviously, I didn't want to price the same for 2 inches versus 12 inches.

I struggled for a while to try to figure out a system that would be, number one, easy for the customers to understand, easy for me to understand, and that made sense, right?

Because you're not going to double pricing for the amount of snow—that's just way too much. So what I did was give a base price for their driveway from 2 to 5 inches of snow. Anything over 5 inches—6, 7, and 8 inches—I give a 20% increase.

So if I'm clearing 6 inches of snow on a $100 per push contract, then I'm billing them out at $120. And so on and so on. If it snows, you know, that 12-inch storm, then I'm billing them 60% of their initial base price.

So I'm billing them at $160, and on some days of those big storms, I'm getting that 50% increase or that 60% increase of my $4,000, or I think it’s $4,500.

Austin Gray: So whenever you're starting, how do you calculate that? Is it total amount of snowfall within that storm?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, like if it's snowed 12 inches in a day but you start, let's say it's only 3 inches in at 4:00 AM and you're starting, right?

Sam Tyler: No. No, that's super tricky. That's where kind of people—you really start to lose people, you know? You'll get a couple guys around here that are almost zero tolerance, so they'll cycle through, you know, three or four times a storm, and the customers hate that.

I mean, they're not going to pay you. They're not going to pay you to clean up multiple times, you know, and get billed four times for one storm.

So this is a conversation for the client, really, but it's just this trust and the integrity in my judgment—that's also in my contract. Essentially, if it snows... If it starts snowing at 6:00 in the morning, I'm not sending my guys out at 6:00 AM to go clear.

If it starts snowing at midnight the night before a storm and it snows for four hours, obviously, I'm going to send my guys out then. If it were to snow again throughout the day, then we would send the guys out the next day.

If that makes sense, um, it's really just based on judgment. You don't want to screw your clients or your customers and you really want to build a good relationship with them and their trust in you.

It's really hard to describe or explain, really, just based on common sense; don’t screw the customer.

Austin Gray: For sure. Absolutely! It's like, what would you do with your own property?

Sam Tyler: Like you said, there are definitely caveats to that, you know? With the banks and the post offices, we have a big theater in town and stuff like that—the're like, "Hey, we need to keep this on a 2-inch route, clear at all times."

A lot of commercial places are like that.

Austin Gray: So do you have one route that's completely dedicated to commercial?

Sam Tyler: I don't. I like to split it up because I want to do commercial and then elderly first— that's kind of my first goal when plowing.

If I had one truck dedicated to just commercial, I would probably get done with the last job at noon, which is just too late for a lot of commercial businesses that open at 8 or 9 AM.

So I try to stack it up to where everyone gets three or four commercials in the mornings and then they go on to do the residential route or the sidewalk, and they just keep going.

Austin Gray: Got it. How do you keep track of all this stuff?

Sam Tyler: Oh, it's a kind of a nightmare! I have spreadsheets—it's kind of a system. I've always said this, but I really want an app that I can use to benefit exactly what I'm doing.

This is another thing I saw on Facebook—somebody was talking about apps. What app to use? What's the best snow removal app?

One guy in the comments said, "Look, you're not going to find a snow removal app that's going to work because it's not based exactly on what you're doing." He was also an app creator, or something digital.

I always thought that I think building an app exactly the way that I want it would benefit me so much that it would be worth tens of thousands of dollars just to get this done.

So that's something that I've thought about, you know, kind of twisted my thumbs over— getting someone to build the perfect app to where it would hold timesheets for the guys, be able to upload pictures exactly what needs to be done, photos of the property, kind of a layout of exactly what needs to be done on each property.

Then I can split it up into these six lists and go, "Okay, here, man. Let me tag you on this one. This is going to be your roundout for the day," and it'll automatically populate where they need to go next, which I think would be huge!

Austin Gray: Have you tried Jobber for snow?

Sam Tyler: I have not.

Austin Gray: It'd be worth looking into. That's the one I'm going to start with this year as we build our routes.

But it offers timesheets; it offers, like right now for all of our estimating when we go bid a fire mitigation or a land clearing or driveway job, Jobber Estimator goes out there and adds pictures to every single job.

Then our Field Supervisor takes that information when they get to the job and reviews all the notes, and then they walk the property together.

All those features exist inside Jobber. I don't know if they have a route planner. I do know there’s software like—whenever I was helping with a pool service business, there was software called Skimmer that basically allowed you to optimize the route.

You’d plug in all the properties, and it would just like use AI or something to GPS optimize. I think that could be cool for snowplow.

I’m not sure if that’s... So if anybody's listening to this episode from Jobber, that would definitely be a feature to look into for the snow side.

Sam Tyler: Yeah! I’d encourage you to look into Jobber and let me know how it goes this year!

Austin Gray: Absolutely! Please do.

Sam Tyler: Okay, what else would you be looking for? I think the biggest thing is just organizing time, date, and a picture, as well as the route.

I already talked about that, but those would be the biggest. I don’t care what else they offer— that would be life-saving as far as the amount of work.

You know, working on spreadsheets is nice and I've developed a quick enough system to where it works now, but in the future, you know, if we keep growing the way that we are now, it definitely needs to change.

Austin Gray: Yeah, it's a slow, slow process. So what are your plans for growth with the snow business?

Sam Tyler: I want to get better clients, is really the goal. You know, the amount of small jobs that we have is great, and I'm super thankful for that, but I think that the high dollar, you know, commercial bigger jobs is really where the bread and butter is.

You know, you're not answering your call or your phone 40 times a day during a storm. They can count on you; they pay you. Residential, there's good money.

I love helping people out, but I think that the commercial and the bigger clients is really what we want to target.

Austin Gray: Why?

Sam Tyler: I mean, I think I have a guess, but like why are customers calling you 40 times a day?

Sam Tyler: It beats me! They kind of walk in circles. They go, "Okay, well, hey, you said you were going to be here at about 8, you said— hey, could you add this on to it last minute? Hey, could you do this? I have family in town; it's Christmas. Will you please come over by... you know, I have 15 people staying at my house."

Which is fine; I understand, but it just becomes overwhelming very, very quickly when you have that many people that have your phone number and count on you for snow removal. So it's tough, definitely.

Austin Gray: So what does a commercial client look like?

Sam Tyler: More legality, more deeper looks into, you know, the contract. They want to, you know, they really want to cover themselves as do I.

They’ll request more changes to the contract and stuff like that. But once that piece of paper is signed, there’s minimal communication between you and the manager or maintenance director, or whoever else it is, and it just makes it a lot easier to kind of swallow.

Austin Gray: And how are those contracts designed? Is it a 1-inch trigger, 2-inch trigger?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, it really depends. You know, because it snows pretty frequent up here with a lot of dustings, I do a 2-inch trigger. With that being said, you know, we have two clients right now that do almost zero tolerance with 1-inch triggers.

So it just super depends, and I like to fit my model around kind of everybody. I would rather make our company move a little bit and become more fluid in order to make those customers happy or in order for it to work.

Austin Gray: Do you do per-push contracts or seasonal contracts with your commercial?

Sam Tyler: Both, but a lot of those people, like I said, are switching to the seasonal because it's a lot easier on everybody, and they know exactly how much that year's snow removal is going to be.

And the reason you can confidently do that is because you have several years’ worth of data to go off of, correct?

Sam Tyler: Right, exactly. There is no simple solution to bidding once you start getting into the massive commercial properties, the footages, the Walmarts, the FedExes.

The FedEx called me yesterday and that one's a little more difficult trying to figure out exactly how much time it would cost. Or another thing is showing the customers why the price is where it’s at because a lot of people come to me now and say, "Okay, well, will you show me your thinking behind this?"

And like, "Well, that I’ve seen it; I’ve been doing this for four years. I know exactly how much it's going to cost."

But they like laying it down, you know? If I charge X amount per square foot, they would rather see that and understand the reasoning behind it rather than just me saying, "It’s going to cost this because I said so."

Austin Gray: Interesting! Yeah—what does an average seasonal commercial contract look like? Like just a range as far as pricing?

Sam Tyler: Total price for a six-month contract: $3,000 to $4,000 a month, and then we have some bigger clients that are around $20,000 for the total year or total—$20,000 per month.

Austin Gray: Per year?

Sam Tyler: Per year for a six-month contract, yep.

Austin Gray: Okay! So anywhere from three or four to 25.

Sam Tyler: Yeah, I mean, it definitely ranges a lot. We also don't have huge commercial where I'm at. I wish we did— well, no, I don't—but we don’t have these huge shipping centers or anything else that I could build more with.

It's mainly all smaller commercial.

Austin Gray: So what does a total revenue year look like for a six-month period in the snow business?

Sam Tyler: So for six months, you know, obviously it's been growing over the years, but I think last year I looked at my books last week, and I think we did close to 140.

Austin Gray: Accounting with everything?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, total.

Austin Gray: Cool! And you've got five trucks. Do each guy have truck accounts and shovel accounts?

Sam Tyler: I had a guy last year. He says, "Sam, I'll plow for you; I'll be there for every storm, but I'm not getting out of the truck." At first, I was like, "You’ve got to get out of the truck. You’ve got to shovel!"

But then I was like, "All right, all right, I'll switch things around. As long as you're happy and you show up every single time, you won't have to shovel at all!"

And I was okay with that, and since then, I kind of built an ATV or a tractor route that takes over the majority of the small shoveling jobs. The trucks mainly stick to driveways, some light shoveling, and then one of the truck routes has zero—you do not have to get out of the truck.

Austin Gray: Got it! For somebody who’s getting into the snowplow business, what advice would you give them?

Sam Tyler: Just start it. Just do it! You know, there are a lot of these guys that will watch YouTube until they die, and I’m one of them. But the difference between if you've never started a business to where you have is you just have to put your foot in the door.

Start buying things; start making phone calls, start answering your phone, and just do it.

Austin Gray: Do you have all your vehicles paid off at this point?

Sam Tyler: Yes, except for one, but that's a 2023 Platinum 350—that's the one you drive.

Austin Gray: Nice! Nice! This is your fourth year?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, four. Taking you seriously!

Austin Gray: And you've got five trucks, five plows, paid off?

Sam Tyler: Yeah!

Austin Gray: So five trucks, five plows, a hold holder tractor, we have two ATVs, and a small sidewalk tractor. This year, I'm going to be buying a mini skid. Have you looked into those tool cats from Bobcat?

Sam Tyler: Is it like the I-23s?

Austin Gray: No, it's like the UTV.

Sam Tyler: Oh yeah—yeah! Have, but they're starting like something ridiculous, like $60,000 or $80,000, right?

Austin Gray: I think so! I didn’t know if used ones on the used market were worth looking at or not. One of my friends over in Steamboat is always like, "Man, I feel like that could be the residential snow plow machine!"

Sam Tyler: Oh, absolutely! Residential snow plow machine for sure.

Austin Gray: Yeah! I'm kind of toying with a lot of ideas, but I want to be able to use something for snow in the winter that I can have a plow or a blower on, then I want to be able to switch it to a grapple during the summer to be able to load the chipper and everything else.

Kind of run around with small projects.

Austin Gray: I'm going to transition to the summer side of the business here. We're going to take a short break. If you haven’t signed up for the Weekly Newsletter yet, go to ownrops.com/newsletter. That's ownrops.com/newsletter.

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Austin Gray: All right! Let’s talk summer. The way we met, you reached out. You asked me for just some tips on the land clearing business.

The coolest thing is I remember sharing. I think we jumped on a call for like an hour, and I was like, "Hey, here's the business model; here's how to think about it." Then the next week, you had already purchased your skid and muler, and you were off to the races!

And then from there, you're like, "What do I need to do for advertising?" I’m like, "Here’s what we’re doing."

Paid for ads, closed leads. You called me about, I don't know, two months ago or so—a month and a half ago—you said, "I'm going to Vegas!"

So obviously, you started making enough money from it in the summer. I’m just interested to hear, and I know listeners will be as well.

So Sam started another business called Fire Guard, and he is doing land clearing and forestry for fire mitigation purposes over in the Telluride area. Yeah, take it away—tell us how all that started!

Sam Tyler: Kind of a weird start. I think the very first time I started thinking about it, one of my captains on the fire department said, "Man, you should start a right-of-way business for pipelines or power." Then he goes, "You should start something like that, like a tree service."

I go, "Okay, that's like a really good idea! I think that would fit." I looked into it, kept looking into it. I noticed that nobody really likes, you know, nobody specifically does right-of-way or anything like that.

But I saw a lot of fire mitigation, and from there, it was kind of set that I was going to start this business. I started reaching out to a bunch of people trying to find a business model that I wanted to directly copy.

I have another business, Urray eBike Rentals, and I called somebody when I started that business and said, “Hey man, I like what you're doing, I see that you're doing good. Can I pay you for like, you know an hour of your time?”

Whatever it was, and we did exactly that. He sat down and said, "Hey, this is a great business to get into. Do like this, this, and this, and you can copy my business." I go, "Great! That's awesome. I love everything you do!"

So I called Austin and said, "Hey man, give me the lowdown. Is this something that's profitable? Is this something that's fun? Does it have a lot of growth potential and everything else?"

You were ecstatic about it, and I could tell that it was something, number one, there’s a need for, and something you love doing. I think that was kind of the point where I was like, "Okay, this is something I want to do."

With my background in the fire service, too, you know, I did wildland fire—we were on 24 fires in 2019, kind of across the country. From the fire side, I knew exactly in my head what needed to be done on these properties.

I could give a good vision to the homeowners. I also knew that insurance rates around Uray and Telluride—people were getting dropped left and right. It was in the newspaper; it was kind of all over the place.

And so I knew there was a great source of clients there. There were people needing our services in my area, and so yeah, I took it and ran.

Austin Gray: So for people who don’t know about the fire mitigation business, what machine do you buy? What services are you offering?

Sam Tyler: So in a perfect world, I would have Austin's setup. I definitely need the track chipper, but as far as our equipment, we have a T770 skid with a masticator attachment and a grapple bucket. We have all the simple attachments—we have a Bandit wood chipper.

It's small; I think it's a 14-inch wood chipper. With those two tools, you can really kind of get pretty deep into the fire mitigation business.

Obviously, there are a thousand more things that you need to buy, purchase, you know, running expenses—everything from chainsaws and stuff like that. But with those two things, I was able to significantly get my feet off the ground to start this business and show people what it's all about. It's been a lot of fun doing this!

Austin Gray: How did you get the first job?

Sam Tyler: The very first job was a previous client, actually for snow removal.

My second and third jobs were neighbors. The majority of properties that I work at, I go right next door, knock on the door, leave my card, and explain what we could do to their property. That's worked great! That's worked amazing!

That's got me tens of thousands of dollars worth of jobs. Then, it kind of went to a standstill. At the very beginning, I was doing all this work by myself, and it was exhausting.

It was the hardest I’ve worked in a long time, which is good. It was exactly what I needed. I needed to be able to get into the operator's seat, the operator's mindset, and be able to grind for a little bit before I was able to hand it off to somebody else.

After those couple of jobs—knocking on doors—it started to slow down, and that’s when you reached out. I remember waking up at the firehouse, and you said, “Hey, you should run ads!” That’s exactly what we did, and that transformed everything.

That gave us 30 great leads that we were able to turn into something profitable! I've always been taught with marketing—my little brother’s in business school—essentially, you really can’t push enough money towards marketing and advertising.

It’s the same thing with—I have a tourist-based business as well, and that’s the same thing. You know, dumping as much money as you can into it, you will be rewarded eventually. You might not see that upfront; you might not see that instantly.

But as time goes on, you're going to go, "Okay, well this, this is working.” I remember the first lead that the marketing agency gave me—it was for a $25,000 job that we did in four days!

Austin Gray: I like those numbers!

Sam Tyler: It paid for a whole year of marketing! Super, super happy with it.

At that time, were you operating by yourself, or did you have a guy helping you?

Sam Tyler: At that time, I pulled one of my friends who was doing something very similar in Texas, and I went to fire academy with him.

I said, "Hey man, you’ve come to visit, you love this place! I'll give you housing, and I’ll pay you more." I don’t like stealing employees, but I understand that his mindset is that he didn’t like the company he was working for; he hated what he was doing for that guy.

He wanted to switch it up, and so I offered, and now he’s on full-time, which is awesome!

Austin Gray: So from there, what were some of the other jobs you did this summer?

Sam Tyler: It was busy. Busy, busy, busy! You know, kind of that three or four $6,000 jobs that we’ve knocked out in a day!

I was like, "Man! You can’t get better than that!" Like, I understand you still have to transport. It’s not going to be that, you know, that big job that makes it or breaks you; it's something super simple. They're super happy with it.

You're on site for 10 hours, and then you're out of there. We just got done with one of those. We're on another one—my equipment's broken down right now—but that's kind of the point where I'm like, "Okay, this is where the bread and butter is!”

But there's also, you know, the bigger jobs that you can knock out really quick. We were on a job in Mountain Village right outside of Telluride. This guy contacted me; didn't give me the time of day. He was like, "Give me a price; I'll sign it; do it." I was like, "No zero communication."

I was like, "All right, man, go! You just sign this piece of paper; we'll knock it out.” And so I gave him a bid of $22,225, and my guy goes up there. He goes, "Man, this is going to take like two days," and I was like, "No! Just make it look perfect! Like it has to take longer than that!"

Okay, it absolutely has to! We ended up popping tracks and, you know, messing around for a while, of course. But that job was about four days, and it works out.

Two days ago, I got a call from a housekeeper, kind of right above Mountain Village—the same super fancy subdivision—and I was working on this bid over the last couple of days.

I think this is going to be a six-figure job, and so something as easy as just answering the phone going on a site visit can turn into something huge because he has NDAs, and I can’t say anything.

But I mean, it’s a big, big job. It’s a lot of work, but that's awesome! You never know where that perfect job is going to come from.

Austin Gray: You know, we were on a job. I—that’s the coolest thing! It's three hours away, and we get there, and there's this dilapidated trailer, and it looks like people are living in it.

I’m like, "Man, I don’t even want to go on this property! Know it's kind of intimidating. I need my, you know, I need backup!"

And so I pass this trailer; this lady comes out, and she looks rough, and I go, "Hey, I’m looking for Christian," and she goes, "Oh yeah, he’s building up there."

He's over there! So I drive through the gate, whatever. I passed two other trailers, and people are living in all these. I go, "Man, like where is this guy? Like why would he want me, you know, out here to take a look?"

Anyway, this guy's from the Virgin Islands; he created a massive company with surfboards. He goes, "Hey man, like I own this mountain; I need you to clear out a spot on top of this mountain. I want to put my house there."

I love it! And it was a crazy feeling! That same day while I was looking for him, I don’t know if you’re familiar, but Eli Tomac—he’s a professional Supercross racer—I accidentally ran into him!

Like it was just a weird sequence of events that led to something awesome— and that's one of those jobs, you know? We knocked out in eight hours; he was happy with it, and he wrote me a check, and then we were out of there.

Austin Gray: So you did work for Eli?

Sam Tyler: No, no, not Eli! I ran into him; I was on his property, but I didn't know I was on his property! When he and his wife pulled up in a brand-new Escalade, he wasn’t too happy.

Austin Gray: Who's the contractor on my property, right?

Sam Tyler: Exactly!

Austin Gray: That’s awesome man! Well, I’m excited for you! I’m excited that you’re getting plenty of work. I mean, I knew it from the day that we jumped on that hour-long call; I was like, "Yeah, this guy's going to crush it!"

Sam Tyler: No, it’s been working! I’m super, super glad that I took that, you know, that jump and that leap because this is going to transform something much more profitable—something that I would love to throw all my attention at.

You know, eventually I have a lot of stuff going on right now; I've got a lot of pans in the fire, but this is one of the things that I want to pursue and give all my attention to—it's been a lot of fun!

Austin Gray: You think you’ll ever have a year-round business down there?

Sam Tyler: I don’t think it's possible unless you go into construction. We just get hammered with way too much snow that outside business is really tough.

With that being said, you know, Union Pacific called me looking at getting 40 acres cleared out by Vail, and that would be something that we could work during these spring and fall months to get out of Uray.

You know, it snowed here last night but get out of Uray and keep working throughout the summer.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I agree with you on that, and I think that’s why snow is such a necessity. I did it flip-flop from you; you started snow first, then jumped into this.

I feel like it’s all come full circle here. I’m going to end up—I feel like this was a consulting call just on a podcast here for the snow earlier.

Thanks for sharing all that stuff! What are we missing as far as getting into the snow business? Is there anything you've learned over the last four years that you’re like, "Hey man, just be prepared for X, Y, or Z"?

Sam Tyler: Yeah, absolutely! New equipment's great because you get that warranty and everything with that. It's less likely to break; snow plows are going to break; everything will break.

It will 100%. So, I like using trucks that are more reliable than others but are not in perfect condition. They have dents and dings; they’re already abused.

It’s so hard on the drivetrain, the engines, the frames of these trucks. And so I think buying slightly used equipment is more beneficial than a brand-new $60,000 to $80,000 truck with a $20,000 snowplow.

Austin Gray: Yeah, you're cutting into a lot of your profits if you can't pay straight up cash for some of these snow removal things.

Any rules of thumb that you have on buying as far as like, "Hey, I will only buy if I can pay X amount cash? I will finance X amount"?

Sam Tyler: No! I didn’t finance anything in the snow removal company; nothing! It was all cash— all cash brought in through snow removal money, right?

So now these are all assets that are at my disposal. I'm not worried about making payments. I can use the cash that they generate me to keep upkeep or buy new equipment. There isn’t something super specific that I would watch out for, besides keeping the trucks as short as you can.

Austin Gray: Keep the trucks as short as you can! That’s the main thing.

All right, well this has been fun. Thanks for sharing and jumping on the podcast, Sam!

Sam Tyler: Oh, absolutely! Thanks for the invite!

Austin Gray: Of course! Well, I’m excited to continue to stay in touch! How long are you going to go on the fire mitigation?

Sam Tyler: However long the weather kind of holds out. I’m hoping for another month. That'd be nice. Our equipment's down right now, which really sucks. But we’re still staying busy!

I’m really hoping for another month or so. I think we’ll get it with the weather how it’s been.

Austin Gray: Cool! Well, listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS podcast.

Once again, this is Sam Tyler with Tyler Snow Solutions and Fire Guard out of the Telluride area in Colorado. If you are listening on Spotify or Apple, we would sure appreciate a five-star review if you are enjoying this type of content.

If you've gained any sort of value from this and you’re listening on YouTube, please leave it in the comments below. And don’t forget to like and subscribe to this channel so that you’ll get notified whenever we drop new episodes.

We also have a Weekly Newsletter, so we just implemented a system where we are leveraging AI to summarize all of the podcasts into high-level bullet points to take the actionable tips and insights and tactics that you can apply from these episodes and then apply them to your business.

So go sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already, that’s on ownrops.com/newsletter—that’s ownrops.com/newsletter.

Finally, if you haven’t checked out landservicemarketers.com, that is the agency we talked about in this video that was bringing Sam his leads for land clearing, forestry, and fire mitigation work in the summer.

I am also personally running snowplow ads to fill our pipeline this year for our company Bearclaw, and that is a service that we’re offering.

So if you're a snow removal company, if you are an excavation or land clearing and fire mitigation company, we can help you get more leads! So go check those out!

Without further ado, let’s wrap up this episode. Don't forget: work hard, do your best, never settle for less! We'll see you guys in the next one.