Austin Gray: In this episode, we will discuss how I put together my content system to grow and scale my local service-based business.

For those who don't know, we have a forestry and excavation business here in Colorado, and we started from scratch in 2012. We've leveraged all the social media platforms to grow the business. I’m going to talk about some of the most important things you need to do in the early days and how you can layer in other strategies that will drive long-term growth.

If you are a land clearing, excavation, grading, or snow removal contractor, check out LandServiceMarketers.com. LSM is the same growth agency I've used to grow Bare Claw Land Services from zero to over seven figures in revenue.

They have 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 backend. They'll handle all the editing, publishing, social media management, and run your paid ads to bring you more leads so that you can close more high-ticket jobs.

Check out LandServiceMarketers.com.

Build Your Website

The first and most important step I recommend is to build yourself a website.

When you build a website, the person or agency designing it will typically also create a Google My Business profile and help you get verified. If you don’t have someone to build your website, go to stryker-digital.com. They are my website and SEO partners and have helped me rank number one on Google for my specific search terms in the state of Colorado.

I have great things to say about them. They have also helped many of our other listeners who signed up with them, sharing excellent results.

For example, the guy who bought Colorado Power Wash from me is seeing incredible lead volume. My little brother is starting a power washing business in Texas, and my first recommendation is, "Dude, you need to get a website from Striker and let them optimize your SEO!"

You will outrank your competitors and get search volume from people looking for power washing services, just like those searching for excavation services or land clearing services will find us if we are optimized.

Striker Digital is the best in the game right now for local service businesses, whether you're in HVAC, electrical, roofing, or power washing—they do it all for locally owned service-based businesses and they are crushing it. They have hundreds of clients and a system that just works.

Delegate to Scale

So, that's where I started—with the website, SEO, and Google My Business. Let them handle it while you practice your delegation skills.

The better you get at delegating as an owner operator, the quicker you will grow your business. If you try to DIY everything, you'll run yourself ragged and won't be able to accomplish everything.

The reason I recommend starting with SEO is that it takes the longest to rank and get results. Get your website optimized for SEO and let Google start ranking you.

I tell everybody to expect a minimum of six months for results. I got results faster than that, and so did Jake at Colorado Power Wash.

However, I’m hesitant to promise results sooner than that because it depends on many factors: how competitive your market is, how competitive your service is, and how many competitors you have.

Striker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bod and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bare Claw Land Services to the number one search result on Google in my state for my specific search term.

If you want to learn more, visit stryker-digital.com (that’s STYKR-Digital.com).

Invest in Ads

The second critical aspect is running ads. The agency I work with, Josh, crushed it this year—we booked our whole schedule based on Facebook and Instagram ads.

You need to look at Facebook and Instagram ads together. The reason we have been so successful with that is that we’ve invested in a consistent short-form video content system. We go into the field, capture short-form videos, upload them to a shared iCloud album, and they handle it from there.

They post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. Since then, I think we’re at around 10,000 followers on Facebook. The more followers you have, the more reach you have.

If you are trying to expand and grow your business, your marketing platform is unlimited today. You must think bigger than just being one person offering one service in one market. Your business can grow exponentially if you invest in the right marketing.

Investing in your business allows you to grow as large as you want. I know a guy in Florida who’s doing roofing and has over $22 million in sales because he has invested in the right marketing.

Creating Content

People ask me how I create so much content. I focus on the creation piece. I don't just hit record and talk; we’re recording the videos of the work being done, and they take it from there.

I believe social media is the absolute worst place a business owner can spend their time outside of a few platforms. For example, X (formerly Twitter) is a great networking platform. Some people have found success using LinkedIn to make business connections.

For me, it has been X, where I have met all of my agency partners who have helped me grow my business.

What’s not a good use of your time is taking a video and trying to come up with a creative caption. Someone else can do that for a lot less money than what your time should be spent on.

You should be focusing on growth, recruiting, hiring, and strategy—figuring out your next moves, what nobody else in your business will be doing.

Every piece of the team is essential, but one role you, as the owner, must fulfill is focusing on growth strategy, cash flow, and how much cash you have in the bank to reinvest for the upcoming season.

You also need to know when you need to purchase equipment. There are risks you have to take, and they must be calculated. You need a sound mind to do that.

Build Your Marketing System

So, the third piece of the content system is to ensure you have a team in place to handle the backend.

The reason I’m sharing this is to answer the question of how to create a content system to help you market your business in this day and age.

The short answer is that you have to find the right agency partners, pay them the price they charge, and build that into your business model. You then need to roll it into your overhead.

I pay $1,500 a month to my SEO partner and $2,000 a month to our content partners. On top of that, during our busy season, I spend $1,500 a month on ads.

That's a total of $5,000 a month. Whenever you realize that if you spend this $5,000, it equates to a $200,000 month, it starts to make a lot of sense.

As a solo OWNR OPS, you might be tempted to DIY everything, like my little brother, who is starting a pressure washing business. I advised him to stack as much profit as he can, which comes from doing the work—sales, marketing, and posts.

He’s currently posting to his friends and family, getting jobs, putting money in the bank, and then reinvesting it into the best equipment he needs to serve the job.

After he's got the equipment, he’ll reinvest in marketing, which is this content system I’m talking about.

The first thing you need is a website from Striker Digital. It will cost about $1,500, and you should commit to them for six months at $1,500 a month.

As soon as you start having cash flows of about $5,000 to $10,000 a month, you should invest $1,500 into marketing. Trust me when I say this works.

The sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll see results on autopilot; people will call your business phone from your Google My Business profile and your website because you’ve invested that $1,500 a month.

Those who reinvest back into their business get rewarded. It’s hard at the beginning because you might only generate $5,000 a month. It’s easy to doubt if you can justify that expense, but just do it.

Building a business is uncomfortable. You’ll encounter many difficult moments, but you can take the risk that pays off.

Getting Leads

Once you understand that spending $1,500 a month only requires one job to pay off, it will all start to make sense.

At the same time, once you get leads, a $10,000 or even a $200,000 job will come in, and that’s when business starts to get fun!

In the beginning, invest in a website, invest in SEO, and invest in Facebook paid ads. Pay someone to create your content; don’t spend your time on social media.

You need to keep doing sales—go door-to-door knocking or handing out flyers.

Every job you do should involve knocking on the five doors surrounding it and handing out flyers and business cards. You don’t need to sell them right then and there; just introduce yourself, say you are with Bare Claw Land Services, and that you do tree removal and excavation.

Offer your business card and ask if they can share it with anyone who might need your services.

If you do that with the five homes around every job you do, your word-of-mouth marketing will start to increase.

What you’re doing is hustling with word-of-mouth marketing while also focusing on SEO in the background. Trust me when I say they are a trusted partner who will get results within months.

Once your word-of-mouth is generating leads and your SEO is bringing in clients, that's when you can start running Facebook ads.

This episode is brought to you by Dialed In Bookkeeping.

Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you want to keep your books up to date, visit Dialed In Bookkeeping.com.

When you use this specific landing page, you’ll get your first three months at 50% off. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing pressure washing, excavation, or tree removal—the strategy is the same.

In the beginning, you have to get jobs. Next, reinvest that money in the equipment needed to deliver a five-star service.

Invest Wisely

For instance, a chainsaw for tree removal was one of the first things I bought. The second was a brush grapple I bought for $2,000, and small equipment purchases like that should be your first priority.

He bought a $1,400 pressure washer, and he’ll be able to use that for the next year, likely doing it all himself as an OWNR OPS.

After he builds up his equipment, he can reinvest in marketing, particularly this content system.

As I mentioned, the first thing you need is a website. Get one from Striker Digital. It will cost you about $1,500. Commit to them for six months at $1,500 per month.

As soon as you start having cash flows of about $5,000 to $10,000 a month, invest that $1,500 into marketing.

The sooner you do it, the sooner you will see results on autopilot.

It’s important to remember that those who reinvest into their business get rewarded. You will face uncomfortable moments at the beginning.

Whenever you do that and start getting leads, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Your Google My Business profile will bring in calls, and if you invest properly, it becomes a cycle that allows you to grow your business effectively.

If you haven’t signed up for the Weekly Newsletter yet, go to OWNROps.com/newsletter.

We summarize all the learning lessons from our podcast guests and distill those into actionable tips, tricks, tactics, and strategies you can use to grow your local service business.

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I love what Cam Hayne says: "Nobody cares, work harder." It really is true. Nobody cares if you don’t have an employment contract; just hire the person and figure it out later.

Nobody cares if you’ve never run SEO before; take a chance on yourself and a trusted partner.

There will be many early mornings and logistics to handle as you begin hiring.

Whenever you receive a lead via SEO, your website, Google My Business, or Facebook ads, ensure you have an automation set up.

If you hire Josh from Land Service Marketers for your excavation or forestry/tree removal space, he will set up all these automations.

You’ll receive your lead info via text straight to your phone as soon as they fill out the form.

You should be calling them.

“Hi, my name’s Austin with Bare Claw. How may I help you?”

“Oh my gosh, that was fast!” should be the response you hear from the customer.

When you call, they will share all about their project and their problems. You should say, “I’d love to come take a look at this in person. What time works for you, mornings or afternoons?”

Every sales call should involve showing up within that hour.

If you can do that consistently, you’ll win jobs.

I guarantee you; they won’t be looking for other service providers. All you have to do is show up, shake hands, and listen to their needs.

Know your pricing, and if you’re unsure, reach out for help. Plenty of people in the OWNR OPS community can assist you.

That’s the process in the early days.

Go get jobs, deliver five-star service, invest in a website, SEO, and Facebook paid ads. Pay someone to handle your content creation, and keep focusing on sales and marketing.

One of our listeners recently contacted me via Twitter, thanking me for the podcast. He mentioned he was starting a moving company and appreciated the tactical advice for early-stage growing service businesses.

That feedback resonates with me because that’s exactly what we aim to provide on this podcast.

If you own a local service business, please like and subscribe to our channel on YouTube. We would also greatly appreciate a five-star review if you gain any value from this on Apple or Spotify.

Thank you for all the support! Josh and I reviewed the analytics this morning, and our listens continue to grow—above 40,000 at this point.

I did this for fun last winter, but I’m excited for this winter because we will invest significant time and effort into improving this podcast.

Looking back, if you check our earlier descriptions or we look at how we started, we had some cheesy cartoon animations for the podcast. It was just hacked together! I was creating podcast content quickly and changing things along the way.

We transitioned from the Owner Operator Podcast to the OWNR OPS Podcast. This change was inspired by my passion for backcountry hunting and the Mountain OPS brand, which speaks to supporting those who thrive.

Similarly, OWNR OPS is about providing tactics and strategies to help owners of local service-based businesses thrive.

That’s what we’re here to do, and I get excited about it.

We have some great guests coming up, including Sam Tyler from Telluride. He reached out for consulting on starting a fire mitigation business similar to what we do. He’s off to the races and is now one of our Land Service Marketers clients, and we’re generating a substantial number of leads for him.

Thank you again for listening!

Please like and subscribe, and leave us a five-star review if you enjoy this content.

Work hard, do your best, and never settle for less.

See you in the next one!